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Deviant 8: Sun Spot

“And the problem is,” going on, “what has me scared is what happens if in six months or a year, or two years you should happen to decide, ‘Gee, I don’t think I love Mitchell anymore. As a matter of fact I think I hate him and I think I should, either,  pick one from Column A or one from Column B: throw him out, or just politely take the kid’—or by then, kids—‘and run away’.” Sighing, “I don’t know where  I ‘want to be’  Marsha.”

He waited for her to say or do something… When she didn’t, not knowing what else to say, laying down, turning onto his side facing away from her, he hoped she’d say something to give him a glimmer of hope, to say anything to encourage him. And more than anything he wanted Marsha to touch him, to physically touch him.

But Marsha didn’t. So after a few minutes he sat up, looked at the water, then at Marsha’s back as she, too, had turned onto her side, facing away from him. “Marsha…”

Rubbing her fingers across her eyes before turning around and, maybe, were it not so bright, or maybe, were he just a bit more observant, Mitchell would have noticed that her eyes were red and glassy.

“…I spend so much time working in the sun that lying out like this, sometimes gets boring real fast. Besides, I’m getting kind’a hungry. So unless you really want to stay here, what if we go back to the cottage, change our clothes and the three of us take a walk into Union Pier and go for lunch someplace.”

“Yeah. Mikey’s going to start screaming for lunch pretty soon anyway.”

Their conversation over, their time together now strained, taking his bag from the bedroom, Mitchell changed into shorts and his yellow shirt in the bathroom as, this time closing the door behind her, Marsha went into the bedroom to put on shorts and a blouse.

Watching as Michael gobbled two slices of Oscar Mayer Bologna and a slice of Kraft American Cheese, Mitchell attempted to help feed his son dessert but, insisting on holding the “ ‘poon” himself, Michael ended up dumping half the contents of a bottle of Gerber’s tapioca over his bib.

They walked the shoulder of the Old Road in silence.

Pushing the buggy before her, Marsha prayed the nostalgia of walking this road, of walking their Old Road with his child would trigger Mitchell’s sensibilities as it had hers two and a half months ago.

Walking on the outside, to the left of the buggy, Mitchell was quiet because, yes, the memories of the past were at play and, yes, he did feel that being on this road, the road he’d walked as a child…

Walking the Old Road of some of Mitchell’s yesterdays with his child called forth a nostalgic emotion that bordered on a soft, subliminal pain.

Facing forward, sitting with his back resting against the rear of the buggy with his head tilted upward, void of infantile gibberish, Michael was silent because, looking skyward, he was mesmerized by the alternating radiant blue sky and the lacy shadows of overhanging trees.

Not realizing they were abreast the ‘Lakeside Hotel’ until they were almost beyond it, his head turning to the left, Mitchell looked until they were past the once-manicured, beautiful grounds. “Sometimes things really do go to hell, don’t they, Marsha,” he said sadly, more a reflection of the state of their marriage than the neglected grounds of an old hotel.

“Yes, that’s true ,” Marsha said, adding faintly, “but sometimes things can be fixed again,” referring only to the state of their marriage.

Looking to his right, he wondered if he’d truly heard Marsha’s words, and if he had, did they have the meaning he prayed they had? But…

Pushing the buggy, the set of her face giving nothing away, Marsha looked straight forward.

The summer town of Union Pier was crammed with people over this long Fourth of July weekend and the ‘Palladium’ was jammed with adults and children only too happy to shove their nickels into the slots of pinball machines that were illicit in Illinois, but legal in the state of Michigan.

Leaving the buggy outside, with his wife at his side Mitchell once again hoisted his son onto his shoulder.

Inside the Palladium, those adults that noticed Marsha and Mitchell stopped a second to look at the handsome couple and then turned their attention back to what they’d been doing with whomever they were with.

Waiting in line for seats at the crowded lunch counter, they enjoyed the incomprehensible, intermingled chatter of the horde of people, the din of dinging pinball machines and the raucous, blaring sounds of the jukebox, all of which were a well-remembered part of the memory of this place—of this place where they’d first met  those nine years ago—Also the mind-numbing cacophony helped take their minds off themselves and their problem.

Seated, finally, with Michael on Mitchell’s lap, with hamburgers and Cokes before them, eating French-fries from his father’s plate, probably ‘back-washing’ more than he drank, every now and then the squirming child was given a drink straight from his father or mother’s glass.

“Marcie…”

Warming to the degree of calling each other ‘Mitchie’ or ‘Marcie’, outside of the momentary touch of his finger onto her chest, neither had yet to touch the other. Marsha still waited for him to make the first move and he, besides feeling he should still maintain his rapidly crumbling of façade of anger— at least for a little longer—Mitchell was hesitant for fear of rejection. Besides, for just once, he would like her to, at least, apologize.

“…I’m curious about something.”

“Yeah…” Taking a bite, putting the burger onto the plate as she chewed—now that they had begun to address each other in a less formal more affectionate way; as though the name of the other was the bit that would bore the hole that would begin the process of crumbling the dike of their separation, each using it whenever possible—“…what’s that, Mitchie?”

“Marcie, how come you never got hold of, uh, Mister Berman to have him send me a letter or something?”

“No need to, Mitchie. You started sending me money almost right away. Besides, I didn’t see any reason to build up a bigger bill till I knew what was happening with us. How come you didn’t have…uh?”

“ ‘Hoffman’,” Mitchell said, giving Michael—who turned his head to the right when his mother spoke and upward when his father spoke—another slurp of Coke.

“Yeah, ‘Hoffman’.” Putting a French-fry in her mouth, “How come you didn’t have him send me a letter or something.”

“Well, Marcie, I…”—Mitchell didn’t want to say, ‘I never stopped hoping you’d change your mind and come back’.  Or, ‘I never stopped loving you’, so—“me, too. I didn’t want to spend more on lawyers till I knew what your plans were. So I thought I’d wait to see what you planned on doing first.”

“I can’t believe it, Marcie! In all these years it’s like nothing’s changed here.”

With the exception of going in the opposite direction on the other side of the road—also, their time at the Palladium diminishing the tension—all was as it was an hour ago: Marsha pushing the buggy; Mitchell walking to her left and Michael, still sitting up, watched the passing scenery.

“I guess so, Mitchie,” thinking of the Lakeside Hotel, “except everything’s getting older.”

“Hey!” Passing it on the way to town, Mitchell had been in such deep thought over Marsha’s observation about ‘things can be fixed again’, that he hadn’t recognized it. “That’s where we used to stay,” adding, “that summer I met you.”

“Yup, that’s it, alright.”

Marsha remembered the cottage only too well because, after that first night—remembering their kiss. Her first real kiss—passing the cottage on her way to Union Pier, on so many occasions she would see Mitchell through the screened porch and had wanted to knock on the door to say that she wasn’t angry at him any more for dropping her as ungraciously as he had after she had been forced to admit that she was not quite thirteen years old. But of course, even then, Marsha, being Marsha, never did.

Passing slowly, putting his hand onto the buggy handle, Mitchell stopped momentarily to see if he could see through the screened porch and open door; and if he could, he half expected to see Lawrence, at six years of age, sitting at the table eating a bowl of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and his mother, on the old, flaking wicker sofa reading a book.

His hand remaining on the buggy handle, about three inches to the left of Marsha’s hand, they went on.

Shining over their shoulders, the sun cast a gleaming star of reflected light onto the buggy’s chrome-plated handle. Unaware that they were, both sets of eyes were drawn to the dazzling spot of light emanating from between the tip of the little finger of Mitchell and that of Marsha.

Walking on, approaching the southern boundary of the Lakeside Hotel, the star of light all but gone because, without noticeable movement, the fingers of Marsha and Mitchell had stretched inward, to the glaring point of light…

Now, the very tips of their fingers touched and that quarter-inch of flesh transmitted a shock of spiritual power that transcended pride and stubbornness, anger, hurt and fear of rejection and, as a shock of electricity might cause one to unwittingly fling their arms about themselves, suddenly…

The husband and wife found themselves in the arms of the other with their lips on the lips of the other and the breath of each, again, became the breath of both… of one.

The leaning fence splintered and no longer whitewashed.

The lawn overgrown. Weeds choking what scraggly flowers there were.

Though it was mid-day.

Their eyes closed.

Their minds again sensing the flickering silver light of fireflies reflected in the eyes of the other from that distant night so long past.

I love you! I love you! Oh, God, how I love you!

The thought of each the unspoken words of both.