There You Are

They say opposites attract. Or at least that’s the phrase I have heard so many times I lost count. Almost every introduction resulted in some combination of words with the same meaning: “You and your wife are complete opposites.” Which translates into, “Do you even like each other?”

The answer was yes. More than a yes. 

We met at an automatic car wash on a Saturday evening. We both had wild social calendars. When I arrived, only one car had been in the wash and there was no line, so I decided to seize the opportunity and pulled in. You are supposed to be able to pay from your car at a terminal alongside the curb, but someone had left behind a dented plastic barrel, which didn’t allow for my car to get close enough to the screen. Instead, I had to get out of the car and walk to the screen. 

As soon as I stepped out of the car, a red Honda pulled in behind me. “Of course,” I groaned. The car ahead of me in the wash had just exited, which meant I would now start to feel the pressure of the car behind me, waiting on me to pay. 

Four minutes later, I considered asking the Honda to back out so that I could back out and give up. I had entered my card roughly 14 times, and each time the machine beeped and displayed a message of “Technical Error.” I was sweating and frustrated. 

Suddenly, a voice was beside me. She had exited her Honda and appeared by my side without making a sound. That, or I was so out of breath from my anger that I couldn’t hear her over the sound of my sighs. 

“I can show you the trick,” she said. Her voice was calm and soft. “You have to press these two buttons before you enter your card. They don’t tell you.”

Her thin fingers glazed over the two buttons as if she had done this a hundred times. How clean was her car?

I put the card back in as soon as the buttons beeped. It clicked and the screen went to the wash selection page. 

I turned and made eye contact with her for the first time. Her brown eyes felt as soft as her voice. She looked from my right eye to my left and lightly tapped the top of my hand. “There you are,” she said with a solid tone and returned to her car. 

A few weeks later, my pregnant sister called, desperate, as she had chosen to take on a bathroom project while my brother-in-law was on a business trip. “You’re three months pregnant, Janice,” I had reminded her, as she emotionally poured over what had gone wrong. She argued that pregnancy wasn’t a disability, and she was still perfectly capable of finishing the job before Brad returned. While she didn’t need help, she needed help at the hardware store and pleaded that I be the one to help. Another crazy Saturday calendar.

“There you are,” the voice emerged from behind the aisle display of liquid purporting to be the same as nails. Janice had gone to the restroom for the second time and left me in the tiling section. I looked up and caught the stare of the same brown eyes from the car wash. “You’re late,” she added, as her eyes twinkled from her smirk. 

“Late?” I smiled. “For the nails?” I gestured to the display. She smiled again, bigger this time. “For our date,” she said, matter-of-fact. “You didn’t ask me the first time it was set up, so I guess I have to take charge.” 

I raised my eyebrows flirtatiously, I think. “Hmm. Set up by who?” I wondered if my sister had been behind both meetings. To answer, she twirled her fingers through the air and glanced all around. I realized she didn’t mean a literal set-up by another person. 

I nodded but with disagreement. “I see. Do you think the small population of our town might be a factor?” She shook her head and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “But it’s okay if you do,” she accepted. 

We branched out for our first date. Instead of running dull errands, we went to a local restaurant that served Italian. She got the spaghetti, I got the meatballs. The more we ate, the more we talked. She fascinated me. 

Five years later, we were married. It rained the morning of our wedding and poured at the time of the ceremony. She wore a traditional veil and her father helped her lift it for the reveal of her makeup. “There you are,” she whispered as I saw her, full of warmth. 

The first appearance of the illness began around our tenth anniversary. She called me from the supermarket, after collapsing in an aisle. She said she hadn’t been out long, and an elderly woman had waited with her until she could stand. I argued why she didn’t call me sooner, or a doctor, and she said she knew it wasn’t needed.

In the follow-up appointment, we were seated in a private room. It’s never good if you are expected to be hidden away while you get your results. Her hand slid into mine as we heard the predicted dates. “There you are,” she answered slowly, but without a hint of disappointment. 

Unfortunately, the countdown was precise. I held her soft, thinner fingers as we knew the end of our time together was close.

“There you are,” I told her sweetly, “you’re beautiful now too.”

She smiled through her exhaustion, and I saw the familiar twinkle in her eye again. “You never knew what I meant by that, did you?”

I felt confused. “You’ve said it to me every time we’ve seen each other, or heard something for the first time,” I explained. There wasn’t anything else it could have meant in the moments she shared it.

“Yes,” she laughed. “But not that way. I always knew that my path was destined to lead to you. I didn’t know who you would be, but I knew that when I saw you, I would see you and think ‘There you are,’ because you would always be the rest of my journey. When it happened, I had to say it, and then I’ve said it along the rest of the steps of my path, too.”

“There you are,” I only said once more, as the services concluded. “My wife, my friend, my confidant, my love for you never ends.”