Moving on

Claire had been dreading this day for weeks. She knew what she had to do, but that didn’t mean she wanted to do it. But she had promised herself that today was the day. Today was the day she would tell her husband she was in love with another man. 

Claire was headed to their standing Tuesday lunchtime date. She drove through town, gripping the steering wheel tight, leaning forward, and taking slow deep breaths. She wasn’t paying attention to the radio, or else she would have heard that her favorite song had come on. “I can do this,” she said to herself as she looked around the intersection to make sure it was clear to go through. She had an impossible task. How do you tell a man who has loved you since you were both 10 years old that you’re moving on with someone else? She looked at her left hand, where her wedding ring sat, and bite her bottom lip, the pain helping to starve off tears. She felt like a traitor. A cheat. A harlot. She felt underserving of self-pity. “How could you fall for another man?” She punctuated each word with a hit to the side of her forehead.

She thought about turning around. She could explain that something had come up, so she had to miss their standing meeting. He would understand. That was one of the best qualities about him, how understanding he was. No. Over the last few years, she never missed a Tuesday lunchtime date. She no longer took them for granted like she used to. Plus, she wouldn’t chicken out this time. For the first time in her life, she drove exactly the speed limit, let everyone who wanted to merge in front of her, and stopped at every yellow light. She would do it, but no one said she had to rush.

Claire pulled into the parking lot and parked in the furthest spot away from her destination. She sat in the car for a few minutes in silence with her head on the steering wheel. “Tap, tap, tap” sounded on the glass near her head. She jumped up, hit her head on the roof of the car, and took a quick inhale of air. She looked out the window and was staring Willie the groundskeeper, dead in his eyes. He was bent down to her level, staring at her with a furrowed brow and slightly parted lips. 

“You okay Ms. Claire?” Claire was shocked. Her brows were raised, her shoulders sunken in, and her mouth agape. She quickly collected herself, sat upwards, and plastered on a smile she didn’t feel.

“I’m fine Mr. Willie, just a tad tired.” The old man, with a gap in the front of his teeth, a bald head, and goatee, twisted his face up and raised an eyebrow. For a few seconds, they had a stare-off. Her smiling without her heart, him staring with his. 

“Okay,” Mr. Willie said, standing up and stepping back from the car. “You have a good day,” he said, walking away.

Claire blew out a breath and checked her makeup in the rear-view mirror. She grabbed her purse and put on some additional perfume. It was always Josh’s favorite. Under any other circumstances, it would put him in a good mood.

She got out of the car and looked up at the dark, calm sky. She hoped the sun would come back out soon. Josh was always in a good mood when it was sunny outside. She meandered towards the concrete bench and slowly sat down. Her head hung low between her shoulders, her legs crossed, and her arms stretched out on either side of her. She sighed deeply and then sat in silence.

“Hi Josh,” she said whispery. She paused for a minute letting the weight of the moment wash over her.

“I have something I need to tell you, and I need to get it out before I explode.” A second of silence passed before she quickly said, “I fell in love with another man.” A tear fell down her cheek, immediately followed by another. She wiped them both away. “You always said I didn’t know how to hold water. I just always blurted everything out,” she said, laughing. 

“His name is Henry. We met two years ago at a Bears game. Remember I told you Serita got season tickets, and I went a few times? There was a guy who sat next to us, his name was Henry.” She laughed nervously. “I already told you his name. Well, he was at every game I went to, and he always tried to talk to me. I never talked to him at first beyond a passing hello,” she said reassuringly.

“I love you so much, Josh,” she said, no longer being able to hold the rest of the tears at bay. The clouds overhead moved quickly like they were late for a meeting. A light rumble could be heard. “One day, we met at the concession stand, and he bought me a beer.” She used the sleeve of her white blouse to wipe her nose. “A few months later, I let him take me out for a drink after the game as a friend. Serita had convinced me that I needed to start making friends. I just went out with him as a friend.”

Claire uncrossed her legs and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook from the weight of her crying, but she made no sound. It was caught in the web of guilt encasing her heart.

Faintly in a distance, Claire heard, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” She looked up and saw a line of about twenty people in all black walking behind a priest softly swinging a thurible. Immediately behind him was a young woman who looked no older than 30, holding her head down, her big tight curls blowing in the wind. She looked up at Claire, and for a few seconds, they stared at each other. Claire looking at her past, and the young widow looking at her future. A tear fell down the woman’s cheek, and she broke their stare to wipe her face. Claire looked back down at the concrete slab in front of her. It read “Sunrise: 1986 Sunset: 2018. Joshua Langston. Beloved Husband and Son.” She sat in silence until the processional had passed.  

“Josh, I love you more than life itself, but over the last year and a half, I have fallen in love with Henry. He is good to me, really good,” she said quickly. “But I don’t love you any less. I just . . . have to love you differently.” She leaned back against the concrete bench and looked at Josh’s tombstone. Next to it was a spot reserved for her, like her end-of-life bookmark.

“I will never stop loving you Josh. But I think I have to see where this goes, and I need your blessing.” She sniffled and chuckled.  “I know it’s not fair. And I know that you probably have better things to do in heaven than deal with your emotional wife, but I really need your blessing on this. Maybe have someone randomly send me flowers. Or let me win the lottery. Hell, let a bird shit on me. I heard that’s good luck.” She laughed out loud. “If you were here, you would make fun of me for crying so hard that I have snot everywhere. You always did make fun of me for being such a big baby.”

Claire heard a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream. She looked up and saw the people from the procession gathered around a casket as it was lowered into the ground. Immediately next to the hole, unsafely close, was the young widow. She was crying out nonstop, slowly falling to the earth. Claire stared at her with her mouth open and hands suspended in the air. She listened to the woman cry “no” repeatedly while family and friends tried to comfort her. Claire thought about how the day of Josh’s funeral, family and friends had tried to comfort her and how there was no comfort to be found. She remembered the moment they started lowering his body into the ground and how she felt like she could hear her own heart-shattering. How final it all seemed at that moment. She would think about that moment every day for months. 

Claire watched someone bend down and help the young woman up. Claire’s shoulders sank. She wished she could say she couldn’t imagine the pain, but she did. She lowered her head and decided to stop being a spectator to someone else’s worst moment in their life.  She looked back at Josh’s tombstone. She brushed away some leaves that had blown onto his grave.

“Josh, I love you,” she said, standing up and going to kneel on his grave. She disregarded her beige pants and leaned forward to hug the tombstone. Her face felt the coldness of the stone, and her body tried not to react to its hardness.  Tears streamed from her eyes, across her nose, and onto the stone wetting it. Just then, the moving clouds slightly parted, and a ray of sun shined directly onto Josh’s tomb.

Feeling the warmth on her back, Claire opened her eyes and saw the sun shining around her. She put her hand above her eyes to shield them from the sun and then looked up at the sky. She smiled. Then cried out loud while laughing. 

“Thank you Josh. I love you too.”