Wish You Were Here

HIM

I saw the red-haired woman the first time around ten p.m. one evening when I drove past her house. 

She was standing in the front window of her house and I tapped my brakes when I saw her. She stood there, illuminated by the room’s light behind her. She was smiling and her lips were moving, talking maybe? To someone else in the room? Someone out of view? She looked like a pretty picture in a frame, standing centered in the window. It seemed she should be looking out at the quiet night. But her eyes were cast down. Her body swayed. 

I slowed down a little more. I was lost staring at her. She was lost in some other world. Some other night. She was somewhere else. 

I could stare as much as I pleased. 

There was an alley to the left. I pulled into it. My heart raced. I sped up to circle around the block through the alleys, then turned to pull back down the red-haired woman’s street. I had to see her again. I told myself it was because I was so curious about what she was doing in the window. At ten o’clock at night. 

I drove by four more times when I figured it out. Her kitchen sink was right there. She was doing the dishes. Upon closer scrutiny, I discovered she was singing. The singing brought that smile to her lips. The fourth time I passed, she was not there, and the lights were off. Nothing was left but a dark window. 

***

I wondered if she washed her dishes at the same time every night, so I drove by every night. I soon discovered that indeed she did wash them sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. each night like clockwork. I loved that about her. I could tell she was neat and tidy. She kept a strict routine, it would seem. After all, someone so devoted to keeping the dishes washed; seven days a week would certainly be meticulous about other things. 

Ritualistic even, I imagined.  

She always sang when she did the dishes. Several weeks after I first saw the beautiful red-haired woman, the weather warmed up for spring. One night, her window was open. I slowed down almost to a stop. Much to the delight of my pounding heart, I heard the red-haired woman sing for the first time. Her voice had a slow, sleepy lilt to it. I could hear the music she was singing along with coming from somewhere behind her.

Mesmerized, I pulled to a stop across the street from her house. My breath caught in my throat. I had to hear her voice. 

How I wish, how I wish you were here

We're just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl

Year after year

Running over the same old ground

What have we found?

The same old fears

Wish you were here…

Tears sprang to my eyes. The red-haired woman was singing straight into my soul. Wishing for me. And now I understood I wished for her too. 

HER

I finished the dishes, relieved to be done and ready to hit the sack. I left the kitchen, flicking off the light on the way out. 

Howard had fallen asleep reclined in his chair. His copy of “The Celestine Prophecy” was open and resting on his chest, which gently rose and fell. I sighed. He’d read that book a dozen times since the nineties and here he was reading it again. 

It was probably new to him now. 

The thought brought a lump to my throat. His diagnosis was new. I was still going through so many daily slaps in the face over ways I was losing my husband. Only 44 and already experiencing the effects of early onset dementia. 

I removed his book, tucked the dust jacket into his current place, closed it, and placed it on the side table next to his chair. Then I bent to kiss his forehead, knowing it was the method of waking him that would startle him the least. 

All the same, he jarred awake and shoved me back, his face riddled with fear. I wanted to cry, but I remained calm as I’d been trained by his physician, and I gave him a few seconds to adjust. Once he did, he calmed himself and reached up to caress my face. Recognition and sorrow shadowed his handsome face, which was only just beginning to show his age. He mumbled his apology for the shove and his deep shame broke my heart once again. 

I offered my hand to help him up, suggesting we get to bed. He became agitated again, insisting he would sleep in the chair. Sometimes, I let him sleep in the chair, too tired to fight. But it always hurt his back. I engaged in the small tussles to get him to come to bed almost every single night. 

It had practically become a ritual. 

HIM

Once I heard the red-haired woman’s voice, I heard her song; I heard her heart calling to mine. I knew we belonged together. Thoughts of her had already consumed me, ever since the very first time I saw her doing the dishes in the window at night… And now I knew that her heart was seeking me, too. Even if her mind did not know it. 

I took the sound of her voice with me and let her sing to my memory all night. I didn’t sleep until long past the sun coming up and the red-haired woman was still singing in my mind’s eye. I slept away the day. She sang in my dreams, and when I woke up again, the red-haired woman was there… Wishing me there with her…

That night was cooler again, and her kitchen window was closed as I passed by. Still, just the sight of her soft skin and the cozy light of the kitchen glimmering on her hair, was enough to make my heart soar. 

I had to get closer to her. 

I pulled my car into the alley down the street and slid to a stop behind a clump of metal trash cans and someone’s garage. Except for the murky light of a street lamp, everything was dark. No one nearby had on any porch lights or security lights. These people in this quiet, comfortable neighborhood didn’t realize that increased your chances of being murdered by a serial killer. Nonetheless, I was thankful for their ignorance as it allowed me the opportunity to cut through a couple yards and land in the yard of the red-haired woman. 

I found a window that provided a view into a dark dining room, but I could see light from a nearby doorway, which had to be where the red-haired woman was doing dishes in the kitchen. 

It was hard to stand still there in the dark as I waited for her to emerge from the kitchen. The last time I’d been so excited I was a kid, waiting for my mother to arrive for Christmas. 

Of course, she never arrived. The red-haired woman would be different. This was more exciting. 

Finally, she came out, shutting off the kitchen light, and switching on a dim lamp in the dining room to light her path as she walked through. 

I drew a sharp breath. In the closer proximity, I saw she was even more beautiful. She had a spattering of freckles. Her eyes were green. The first hint of tiny lines appeared at the corners of her lips and I knew she loved to laugh. 

She passed across the dining room and then entered another room. I could follow her to the next window on the side of the house. There was a side porch there. When I crept up onto it, I could peer into a small window next to the door and see the red-haired woman. 

And a man. Asleep in a chair. 

I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was a special sense I had about bad dudes. I was good at identifying the ones that were the bad dudes because of a radar that had been entrusted to me by God. 

The red-haired woman roused the slumbering bad dude in the sweetest and softest way a person could imagine. She woke him in a way I longed to be awoken by her. 

And the son of a bitch shoved her. 

Woke from a dead sleep pissed off and ready to fight. A drunk if ever I saw one, and believe me, I’ve seen plenty of drunks. Drunk bad dudes who beat their wives. Drunk absent mothers who don’t show up for Christmas. They’re all the same. 

It never ends well for their victims. 

It was all I could do not to break down the red-haired woman’s door and rescue her then and there.

It was over my dead body she was going to be the victim of any bad dude. Not as long as I drew breath. 

HER

By the end of the summer, Howard was still maintaining well thanks to medication and therapy with a great healthcare team. Still able to work, still taking part in all his regular activities. Just the incidents of confusion when being awoken continued to worsen. I understood. Even a person without dementia could be startled and act out of sorts when awoken from sleep. But I couldn’t just let him hurt his back by leaving him to sleep in the recliner. 

Anyway, I’d faced the fact that I would not have the long lifetime to sleep next to him at night as I’d thought. I wanted to be selfish about the nights I had left to feel him next to me. Thinking those nights would not be many plagued me with dread. Not many at all. 

I was working on that fear in therapy. 

On a night late in August, I finished the dishes and shut off the kitchen light as usual to go and bring Howard to bed. The lights were already off when I walked into the den. He snored softly in the chair. Ethereal moonlight streaming in the windows outlined him in an otherworldly glow. I decided waking him in the dark might help him be more calm. So I removed his book (A Man Called Ove, this time) from his chest and leaned down to kiss him. 

Howard roared awake. With an animal-like snarl, he lashed out with a fist and sent me spiraling backwards. 

I reeled back, flailing and floundering for anything to grab on to. My heel caught on the rug and transformed my stumble into a full-blown fall. Gravity and momentum flung me across the room and I slammed into the piano. My head struck the lowest keys as I fell. I hit so hard that the big old upright jostled and a loose sheath of sheet music popped into the air and then fluttered down in the ghostly moonlight like some sort of sinister snow. 

HIM

I had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from yelling when the bastard hit her. Straight up, punched her. Sent her flying across the room like she weighed nothing. He roared like an animal, all because the red-haired woman wanted to kiss his forehead. 

I wanted to break down the door. I wanted to hold her. Nurse her wounds. Put her bad dude down like the animal he was. 

The piano music flapped in the air, and I had to walk away. I hopped off the red-haired woman’s porch and stole into the night. 

HER

I had a pretty good goose egg, but wasn’t badly hurt. About the time I hit the floor, he’d come to his senses and was on his knees, scooping me into his arms and begging me to forgive him. There was nothing to forgive, though. It was only an accident. 

There was a flurry of doctor visits and appointments following the incident at Howard’s insistence. The care team doubled down with training and resources to help us manage everything Howard was going through. 

I’d thought it was time to start thinking about him retiring early. He was a cable technician. He spent a lot of time on roofs and ladders. When not doing that, he was on the road to jobs. He drove day and night hours, and all kinds of weather. But I hadn’t quite mustered the nerve to bring up such a thing yet. 

I would come to regret that choice. More than any mistake I’ve ever made, that’s the one I would take back if only it were an option. It was a Thursday in October when a police officer showed up at our door. 

As far as I’d known, Howard was pulling a graveyard shift that day. The officer informed me there had been an accident. Howard’s work truck left the roadway and went into a deep ravine. He died on impact. My knees gave out, and the cop caught me before I could crumple to the floor. 

***

It’s been a year since I lost my Howard. 

Sometimes, late at night when I can’t sleep, I do ask myself if things moved too fast. Maybe in all my grief, and that I’d already been mentally preparing to lose him, maybe it caused me to not think rationally. I’m sure plenty of people around town think so. But, right or wrong, I am remarried, and I am happy. 

Officer Whitaker later told me they rarely offer physical comfort when they have to inform a loved one of a passing. But, for one, I’d left him no choice but to catch me. And for another, he’d confessed that having me fall into his arms felt more right than anything he’d ever experienced. 

He’d shown up at Howard’s funeral to offer his condolences and support, which I thought was so sweet. He later revealed to me he’d been the one to discover Howard’s accident; the first responder. The whole situation had saddened him, and he’d felt compelled to see it through. 

But then I ran into him a week later. I was having coffee at Tim Horton’s one morning. Really, I was staring out the window into the rain and gloom and my coffee was getting cold on the table in front of me. He came in out of the rain, looking dashing in his uniform. After he received his coffee, he’d come to my table and bashfully asked if he could join me. His shy boyish way created a contrast with his muscular, manly looks that I found appealing. 

Anyway, this love story has been told a million times. It was all a whirlwind from there and it was less than a year later that we were married. 

We’re still in the honeymoon phase, but everything is wonderful with him. I suppose it will change some day. For now, everything is great. Romantic. Passionate. He tells me he feels like he’s known me forever. He’s obsessed with my red hair.

He sometimes tries to get me to admit that I was always wishing for him deep down, even before I knew he was there. I don’t know what he means, but maybe he’s right. Who am I to say?

HIM

Her name is Mary. I know it because it is on our marriage certificate next to my name, which is now also hers.

Whitaker. 

But I already knew it because once I decided to kill her husband, I plugged their address into the NCIC at work and knew everything I needed to know about them after that. 

Howard had no criminal record of any kind. It was hard to believe what a monster someone could be behind closed doors, but I suppose that’s how it goes, isn’t it? The worst kinds are the ones you’d never suspect. The ones who sneak and hide. 

The ones who lurk and pretend. 

Oh well, it’s a nonissue now, isn’t it Howard? Wish I could say wish you were here, buddy. 

But I don’t.