A Time to Love

The gift box was preposterously large and stuffed with a gratuitous amount of miniature pillows to cushion the tiny object and handwritten note it contained. First, the garter, a sky-blue elastic band engulfed in a thick fringe of cornflower lace. Next the card and its painfully familiar lettering, which Iris had known since her earliest memory, declaring, “Something blue! X O X O.” It was signed, “Mom.”

Iris’ mother had slipped it into the box of opened Christmas gifts when no one was looking. Now, alone with Kacey Musgraves cooing to Santa Baby for company, the last gift of the holiday presaged the event that would ring in the new year. The day when everyone anticipated Iris becoming Mrs. Iris Joyce.

Just when it seemed nothing could make the wedding any more uncomfortable, this came along. Conversations about her love life with her mother, who had never crossed a line more risqué than whether David Duchovny had been “an actual fox” in reruns of the X-Files, would never—could never—feel normal. Things absolutely had to go back to the way they had been after the ceremony was over. Except, they never would.

Iris rose and walked to the table, leaving the garter behind. It fell to the edge of the box, then tumbled silently to the carpet. She did not notice. Though her eyes lingered on the tall bottle, now half empty, her eyes were unfocused. Maybe she stared into the future, hazy, or the past, also cloaked in mist. The present, she understood, was an illusion, a place where what was coming transitioned into what had been so quickly that she never managed to do anything constructive with it.

She drank, the wine chasing the pills. Zolpidem, diazepam, lorazepam. They had been her mother’s true gift, even if she never knew it. These three weren’t the first Iris had swallowed tonight, and she suspected she had reached the point where she should stop. It wouldn’t do to get sent to the hospital and delay the ceremony that would take what remained of her future and transition the whole damn thing into her past. All her tomorrows…POOF! Yesterdays.

It was a comical image for some reason. She laughed. That felt good—even though she sensed that it wasn’t, not really—so she drank a little more wine. Then she just sort of fell asleep standing there, not seeing anything but Derek. Her Derek. The man for whom she would sacrifice the rest of her life. It wasn’t that he was a bad man. In fact, he was quite kind. Generous with his time and attention. And it wasn’t like the sex was a problem. Mom’s garter would see use next week, maybe before sunset. Hell, maybe before the reception was over. Iris and Derek had been making love since before they were even in love, and it seemed unlikely they would disappoint either of their mothers by stopping now.

Standing there, remembering their first night together, the corners of Iris’ mouth quirked upward.

But was there such a thing as too nice? Really? With so many lonely women in the world. So many abused women in the world. Women forced into relationships, or trapped in ones they had entered willingly. How could she not marry her Derek for something so utterly inexpressible as…what? He wouldn’t argue with her? He never showed his anger? He wouldn’t stop bringing her gifts, even after so many years, like some forlorn puppy hoping for a scratch behind the ears and a pat on the head?

No, Iris thought. She would have said it, but her lips did not comply. In fact, in a strange way, the thought echoed in her mind. It came apart, grew fuzzy, swelled on the moisture of her brain until it filled her head. The word pressed against the backs of her eyes, forced its way into her throat. It was something that should have concerned her; she understood this much. So, sagely, she attempted to return the wine bottle to the table.

Like the bottle, she came down sideways, her neck striking an unyielding surface before she rolled onto the floor and came to a halt. Unlike the gurgling bottle pouring its contents onto the carpet, Iris was silent.

----------------------------------------------------------------

“Mam?”

She woke, a little surprised to be awake. Her head had cleared, mostly, but her eyes felt tacky, as if tears and wine had mixed into a paste she had to wipe away before opening them. Her fingertips brushed over the imprint from the carpet as they worked. She forced her mouth open, rolled her tongue around.

Then, Someone spoke to me.

Iris snapped her mouth shut. She attempted to open her eyes, but only one obeyed. Then, burning, it too snapped shut after offering just a glimpse. She rubbed at both of them. There was someone with her, a child, sitting on her knees on the carpet. If it had been anyone other than a child, she would be screaming right now, kicking her way backwards onto—and probably over the back of—the couch. But the child had instilled the opposite of panic in her. Maybe it was just the pills. If she’d taken as many as she suspected, then she would feel their sedative effects all day and into the night.

This time her eyes stayed open. A little blurry, but she could make out an oddly familiar face.

You could be me, Iris would have said. She thought it was fortunate that her voice hadn’t returned yet. That would have sounded pretty disturbing coming from the drunk woman whom the child had just discovered passed out on the floor.

“Mam?”

Iris nodded, still unable to focus on the child’s face. Damn, though. That hair, that round face, that maroon jacket—Iris had pictures of herself as a child that would have looked just like the figure before her, if they had been taken out of focus.

“Iris,” the girl said, and Iris felt the force of her own name grip her. It wasn’t just the fact that the child—this strange teenager kneeling in her home—knew her name. It was the way she said it, as if she knew it, in a way no stranger could. She spoke Iris’ name in a way that said she knew Iris just as intimately.

You could be me.

“Iris, your future is not set,” the child said. “Tomorrow is a place of promise, even if it is not guaranteed. Yesterday is not ashes in your wake; just look back to see it. Out of your tomorrows and yesterdays, you will experience five Christmas suitors, and five Christmas proposals. Five men will profess their love and offer you their forevers. You may choose any of them, or none at all.”

The girl got up and crossed the room, pulling the door shut as she left.

Iris stumbled after, relying on furniture to guide and steady her. That certainly had not been her. She had never spoken like that when she was a teenager. Yet she found it more comforting to accept that she had been visited by the specter of herself as a teenager than to acknowledge the possibility that some stranger had broken into her home while she’d been unconscious. The pills and wine encouraged her to go with that reading of events. After all, said specter was gone. No harm had been done.

As she reached the door, someone knocked. The surprise nearly sent her sprawling onto her back. Still rubbing her eyes with one hand, Iris turned the knob and pulled with the other. The door traveled just a few inches before the chain drew taut. Iris glared at the chain, the first thing she had actually seen clearly since coming to. She gave the chain some slack, unlocked the door, and then promptly forgot about doors and chains and half-seen teenagers. Another teenager stood before her, this one a boy.

“I didn’t expect this, either,” he said, and the world threatened to blur all over again. Her mother’s Dean Martin Christmas CD had replaced Kacey Musgraves. His name was William Tolliver. Iris recalled his words, each one, just as the years had never faded her memory of the earnest, terrified look in the boy’s avid eyes. “But, I love you, Iris. And I would be willing to spend the rest of my life with you. If you’d want that.”

I would be willing to spend the rest of my life with you, she thought now as she had then. Even as a child she had known that marriage should be built on more than a willingness on the boy’s part to “do what’s right.” And yet, she had not declined immediately. Not until after the scare had passed, a few days after Christmas, and their brush with eternity had revealed to them both how little they really wanted to spend it together.

“I never forgot you, Iris,” William said. His eyes, no less earnest, tried to capture Iris’. “The woman I married never lived up to my memory of you. It wasn’t fair to either of us. When she left, it was for the best.”

Panic welled in Iris’ breast. This was not the way it had happened. This was not William’s voice, and the look in his eyes revealed years of experiences to which she had no right. She slammed the door. Then, just as quickly, she jerked it open, horrified by what she had done.

William was gone.

Slower this time, Iris closed the door. She closed her eyes. Put her back against the wall.

“Irey?”

Oh, God, she thought. She knew this voice, too. Christmas carols mingled, and a new one took hold, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” She inhaled, anticipating the odor of stale beer soaked into cheap carpet. She opened her eyes. Before her stood the cramped walls of the dorm room where she had spent most of three semesters. The young man on one knee before her was Billy Cramer, whom she had refused to call William in deference to the ghost of past mistakes never divulged.

“Irey,” he said again, marshaling his courage. No one else had ever called her that. Eye-Ree. “No one has ever made me happier than you do. I can’t imagine anybody ever could. We’ve got one semester left, and then we’re going into the world. Nothing would make me happier than to go into it with you by my side.”

For a second time Iris watched Billy Cramer put on a nervous smile that guaranteed he understood the stakes of the question he asked. Seeing it again, so vividly, felt obscene. His vulnerability, his willingness to gamble both their futures on the threads of hope they had twined together.

Iris remembered kneeling in front of him, taking his hands in her own. She remembered the moment when his eyes changed, when he understood the meaning of her silence. When he knew that her answer would amount to two letters instead of three, no matter how many words she uttered. She had told him something about finding jobs and being able to go where the work was, and what if one of them found a job in Texas and the other in New England, what then? Even she couldn’t remember exactly.

Shaking her head, Iris sank to the floor. There was no carpet, only the rough surface of the old welcome mat, which bit into the palms of her hands as she steadied herself.

Why is this happening?

Minutes passed before she realized that the rough edges against her skin were not part of Billy’s dorm room. She dared open her eyes and found herself at home. Pushing herself shakily to her feet, she raced to the sink and began splashing cold water over her cheeks, into her eyes and mouth.

A warm hand touched her hip. She stiffened.

A small voice asked, “Mommy, what’s the matter?”

She turned to find a child of maybe six standing before her. The Christmas channel now played “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which felt ironic, and the artist was unfamiliar.

“Devin,” Iris said, not sure how she knew his name.

“It’s nothing, sweetie,” she would say.

As she watched, the little boy—her son Devin, whom she somehow understood would not be born for another three years—sank to one knee, still holding her hand. He stared up at her face, eager to make her pain go away. He had Derek’s eyes.

“Will you marry me, Mommy?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she heard herself say, and while one version of her—a version yet to be—knelt before her son and took his hand in both of hers, today’s Iris pushed away from the kitchen counter and walked into the living room. Déjà vu followed her as she sank onto the sofa without a glance back. Little Devin was gone. Of course he was, because Little Devin hadn’t been born yet.

Hands on her forehead, she lay back, vowing not to open her eyes again until Christmas was over. The strange sense of fogginess faded, replaced with what felt like hyperawareness. The song, which had faded, became something else with lyrics that she had never heard before. A new Christmas song, she thought. Over the music she became aware of steady, rhythmic beeps. Distant murmurs of people speaking as if in a library. The whisper of wheels on bare tile that should not have felt as familiar as it did.

Please only one more time, she thought.

She opened her eyes to find herself lying not on her couch but in a bed. The room around her was blurry, but she got the sense of chairs in an arc around her, and the blurry figures of strangers she would come to know, all watching her as they pretended to converse.

Then a hand gave her own a tentative pat. She turned her head and found an old man staring back, hair in wisps, creased forehead spotted but still furrowed in concern for her. He was the one figure who had clarity, and she knew him at once. Time had done nothing to diminish those eyes.

Realizing she was awake, Derek took her hand. His tremors never ceased, but he grounded himself on her. She smiled, grateful to give something back after all these years.

“Merry Christmas, Honey,” Derek said, his voice a whisper upon sandpaper. His lips trembled, forming a smile that delivered a prognosis.

Derek, she thought. After all these years, my Derek.

He spoke again. “It was forty years ago today, that I asked you to marry me.” One of those blurry figures sitting along the wall released an abrupt, shuddering sob. Maybe it was Little Devin’s sister. Maybe it was his wife. Derek continued. “You told me that night about your fears. What had happened with each of your two Williams when you were younger. And I promised that I would never hurt you, and never leave you. No matter what.”

Iris nodded. She could do nothing more.

Derek stared into her eyes meaningfully, and for a moment the connection between them had never been stronger. He was not the same man she had married—time had forced alterations upon even stalwart Derek—but he would forever be her Derek. She was aware that he had raised a hand, palm up, holding a jewelry box. Unblinking, holding her gaze, he let go of her for a moment to open the lid with some effort, tight hinges snapping as they relented. She didn’t see the ring, she couldn’t look away from him, but the sparkle danced in her peripheral vision.

“It’s been forty happy years,” he said, “and I would not change a single day in even one of them. There’s a minister in the hall. Iris Joyce, will you marry me? Again?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but she found she could not. Behind Derek, shadows crept into the room, obscuring the blurred shapes of the family they had made together. She tried to tell him, but her mouth refused to move. Her throat tried to work but could not; it felt thick, swollen. Her eyes bulged, screaming a silent warning that the shadows were coming for him.

A voice spoke her name, strong but distant.

Derek leaned closer, pain in his eyes. The ring case clapped shut. His palsied hand took hers again. As he moved to kiss her, the shadows swirled behind him, filling the space where he had sat a moment earlier.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“Iris.” The voice that spoke her name was not that of the man who now receded into darkness. It was more familiar, not a memory at all but reality. Strong hands grasped her shoulders, supported her head, and she floated upright. Bleary eyes coming in and out of focus, she blinked away a sheen of tears.

Derek—her Derek, strong and young—repeated her name. She may never have heard a sound so wonderful. She looked into his eyes, already careworn but full of so many tomorrows. He recognized that she was seeing him, and his face relaxed.

He offered a self-deprecating laugh. “I just came by—are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said.

He watched her a moment, as if fathoming the whole meaning of what she had said. “I know it’s late, but I came by because I realized that I had never formally asked you. I mean, it’s crazy, and we’ve already got the date and the church and the minister and the cake…but, everything just sort of happened, and I never actually asked the question.”

“Yes.” She said.

He smiled. “You will?”

She nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck. Hot tears spilled from each of her closed eyelids.

“Yes.”