RINGS

RINGS

A trill ring. Tara startles. Urgent. Slowly, she rises from the kitchen chair.

A few minutes later, Tara struggles to take it all in. Seated at their kitchen table she cradles her hot mug of tea as if it were an injured bird.

A knife, a scuffle, a pregnant woman, husband, hero. So sorry, ma’am…

Two police officers sit at her kitchen table sounding muffled, monotonic, like adults in a Peanuts cartoon. She does not offer them any coffee because she doesn’t have any. She wants them to leave. Thrice, she’d dismissed herself to vomit in the guest bathroom. What seemed an eternity later with nothing left to say, and a police officer’s card in her hand, and promising to come to the station the next day, she gently closed their front door, well, just her front door. As singular as the tear that rolls down her cheek.

Tara resumes her seat at the kitchen table. Just twenty minutes earlier, Jack had pecked her longingly on her cheek as he headed out for his usual Saturday morning run. She envied her husband for his dedication. She was still wearing his torn Stones tee-shirt, and her happy jams Jack endearingly called her sweatpants.

“Wait for me just like that, we can shower together. Back in 30, hate ya’.”

“Hate ya’ back.” 

Shouldn’t I have felt a cleaving? Tara wonders why it’s not the same as losing a part of herself. A chest pain of sorts, like when they had to put Sunday down, their 9-year-old lab, part of the family. It had been the three of them for a long while but wanting many more. When they’d said goodbye to their beloved dog, Tara realized her heart really was a muscle, that it could tear, feel it rip. Sunday was their dog. Jack was her world.

The two of them rarely used the word “love.” Sure, over food at a great restaurant, or some page-turner, but how can that compare to the love between two people? The L word, in Jack’s opinion, was thrown around recklessly, dangerously. Jack told Tara every New Years Eve, that he loved her, and it enough to carry her another entire year.

“What we share, Tara, it’s above love,” Jack said when they first began dating. It was there from the start. Intangible, but ever-present. So why was that same feeling still there, why wasn’t it severed, like an arm? She wanted to feel something prior to the frantic ring of the doorbell at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. She believed in Jack, believed in the idea of him, long before even meeting him.  

If love exists on a visceral level, then why does the universe allow the mundane sipping of tea to consume her? It is her second cup of the day in the chipped, old mug Jack made her in ceramics class back in high school, almost two decades ago.

Tara always giggles at the inscription underneath:

“Above love…” J xo

She sees only sees it when she’s done with her lovely morning ritual and then rinses the mug, dries it, and gingerly places it back in its rightful spot in the cupboard. It starts her day off on the right foot.

Tara has always been “T” to Jack because she’d spilt a cup on him on their first date. The mug- lopsided and ugly enough to be adorable, still somehow managed to leave a perfect permanent ring on the table. A table Jack had proudly built himself. They found the stain ironic, “And besides, it’s my circle of love, always coming back to you.” Jack had said.

‘Table charm,” like that was a thing. Then, it was.

“I hate you very much.” She’d smiled.

And isn’t that a real kind of love?

She realizes certain things do stay. Memories, she hopes...

The unique spoons he brought her from his trips from exotic lands which sit clumsily displayed atop each other. “Beautifully mismatched,” he’d said, “like us,” whenever she’d admired them, her odd collection. He’d shared that some were stolen but never divulged their origin. Jack’s secrets hidden forever. 

The time Jack tirelessly repaired and secured that tree branch during a vicious storm because a nest full of eggs about to hatch had made its way to crook in an upper branch. They still had those birds every spring and summer, year after year. 

Kittens, he’d surprised her with after Sunday’s passing, Fred and Ethel, already 6 years old, nestled into each other on the sofa, innocent, unknowing.

Her treasured books resting on his hand-carved shelves. The way his words fit, pen to paper, to make her homemade cards.

And the way his cup holds her tea every Saturday morning while he goes for his run.

Not sure what to do next, Tara sits at the marred table Jack built, absentmindedly spinning her wedding ring around and around. She’s alone with her thoughts for a little while, at least. It would soon be on the news; she’d need to deal with family and friends but for this moment in time. This was hers to process alone.

“What’s wrong?” He’d come through the door at any moment, want to hold me. He’d know it was very bad. The “I love you.” too acrid on his tongue. Not yet. I’d known I’d always have to let go, say it first.

Where did his half go, the part so enmeshed in her own nervous system swimming around every second of everyday? Not a single perceptible cell seeming to shift while she nonchalantly sipped her tea. Not a particle seemed to have changed even in her surroundings.

Hum of the fridge, check.

Red Sox wall clock tickin’ – check.

TV nonsense, background noise, check.

Everything was as it should be and all accounted for, check.

My own heart still beating, how? Checkmate.

They were forever. Almost.

Truth be told, love may not have been in their words, but in their actions. Love moved them in together, love married them years ago. Love made this table, love was made on this table. Scrabble games where Jack let her make-up words provided she could use it in a proper sentence. And of course, as with all couples, numerous heated discussions across this table.

Jack never bought flowers on special occasions, believed them to be cop outs, for last minute wannabe romantics. When he did gift Tara with flowers, it was for no reason other than he was simply thinking of her, and it was always just one red rose. Never wavered, just a single red rose. She glances in the family room and sees the vase with the rose Jack gave her last week because she’d cleaned his rugby boots. The rose was dead, but hadn’t it been the second it was slashed from the branch? As if he’d slayed it thorns and all, for her.  

Their chemistry was like nothing she’s ever known, so why? How can she continue to sit there; go on when there is no molecular change? When half a compound goes missing, the entire elements rearrange, right? Kinetic energy never goes away, like love, that energy simply changes form over time. Is he still there with her?

Jack would give her a very scientific answer. He’d tell her death is something we aren’t supposed to comprehend otherwise we would, and that would be that. It is at that moment she knows he is most certainly somehow still with her. A shiver runs down her spine and although she is still queasy, her nervous system is very much excited. 

Love has always been shrouded by the mystery of those who share it, like a secret, but she could see it, even as a little girl, when her parent’s embraced, a kiss, a slow dance, but more so Tara could feel it.

Sipping her lukewarm tea, she contemplates pouring another, as she rubs at the perfectly ringed stain for the umpteenth time, knowing futility, it will be a significant part of her life forever. But what if she doesn’t want to be here anymore? She’d never have what her parents shared.

One miscarriage, and it was rough, but they’d weathered through together, growing even closer along the way. Jack had even said the L word, especially when she wept. They’d been trying a lot lately, and it had been fun. She decides that love isn’t just a noun, it is also a verb. But not for everyone, they were lucky ones. At least they had been, less than an hour earlier.

She twirls the gold band on her left hand, aware it’s the hand closest to her heart. Tears start to flow freely. She isn’t sure she wants to be here on this earth without her Jack. She could avoid it all, the phone calls telling everyone, ruining people’s lives, her parents for starters. And Jack’s mom, forget about that call. She doesn’t believe she has it in her to go on, to even get out of her chair.     

She stares at the oven for a long time. It would be so simple, so neat and quick. She imagines her mother-in-law’s reaction. “I told you, ya’ shudda given my son a kid! Then, you’d get double from that state, with him dead and all.”

Another wave of nausea hits her, and that wasn’t like her. She was not a crier or a puker. An infinitesimal light, so tiny like a star yet to reveal its full self, long after it’s burnt out, but just not yet visible to her. Does she not feel the abrupt loss of Jack because she is consumed with another presence still unknown to her?

Something stirs in Tara’s loins. Anticipatory? The cop had said “hero, pregnant woman.” How odd, she thinks. If she doesn’t feel Jack being torn away, would she feel the growth of some new kind of love?

Slowly, Tara stands and walks to the oven. She turns the timer for 10 minutes, then makes her way to the master-bathroom. Back in the kitchen, she makes herself a fresh cup of tea and waits at the table for what feels like an eternity. Again, she hears her mother-law, “It’s just false hope. Better this way, move on.”

Tara dismisses it without a second thought. Jack taught her a long time ago, there is no such thing as false hope. There is just hope. For the time being, that will sustain her.

"Riiinngg.