Holy. Freaking. Gosh. This took me a really, really long time! It's four and a half whole pages on Microsoft Word. Longer than most of my essays, anyway. ;) I promised I would give you an extra-long Chapter 9, so here. Please enjoy it, and as always, review please! Love you all! Seriously. 3
P.S. The "I want a sign" bit is taken directly from "Hello, Dolly!". I don't own it.
The number 305 fills my brain, making me its slave. I repeat it over and over in my mind until I could do it in my sleep. It's so important because I'm standing in front of Mary's apartment right now, waiting until my arm works up the nerve to reach for the doorbell and ring it.
Why am I here? There's no point in asking myself that, because I already know the answer. I'm here because I feel awful for not checking on her for an entire month to see if she was doing alright with her injuries, but I know that if I had tried to contact her, just once, psycho Connor might have snapped again, possibly even killing her. I push the awful thought out of my brain. I prefer not to think about her in pain.
I confronted Connor later that day when Mary found me at Columbus Circle. He denied ever touching her, or even talking to her after he first met her. I could tell he was lying, though, by the way his voice rose in accusation and how his face flushed scarlet, not for the first time. I hate him. He can go to Hell. And not just because he's gay.
I'm also here because I miss her. So badly. I want to see her face and hold her hand, and tell her that I will do whatever it takes to protect her from the evil, persistent force that is Jealous Connor.
I count down in my head. Three, two, one. On "one," I jerk my arm forward uncertainly towards the doorbell. I hear a light, pleasant ding dong ding dong echo from behind the wooden door. And then I hear the click of a lock. The door opens. And sure enough, it's Mary. But not really.
The crutches are gone. She looks as though she's completely recovered from her injuries, and her black eye had all but disappeared, apart from a faint, just barely visible ring of dark skin around it. But she doesn't look normal. Her eyes are sad and lonely, and they're red, like she's been crying. She looks like she didn't sleep very well last night. But her hair is perfect, and the minimal amount of makeup she has on is untouched by her previous crying session she must have had. When she sees me, her eyebrows raise slightly.
"Hi, Mary."
"Hi, Kevin." Her voice is flat, without motivation. Something's terribly wrong.
"What's the matter? Are you OK?"
She sighs and breaks eye contact, gazing sorrowfully at the ground. "Just…come inside, Kevin."
She opens the door wider, and I step in. A small hallway greets me. "This way."
I close the door behind me, take off my shoes, and follow her through the hallway and into her kitchen. And let me just say: the place is spotless. Everything is in order, all the metal in the room sparkles, and there's not a speck of dust to be found anywhere. Before I can say anything about it, though, she opens the door to another room. "Come in here," she says, her voice faltering.
When I step into the room, I recognize it as a bedroom. It's clean, just like the kitchen, but something seems amiss. I scan the room, and I find a wooden vanity with a mirror. On the vanity are various framed pictures, a metal candleholder in the shape of a crucifix, and I even spot a copy of the Bible, which looks new, or at least barely used. Mary walks over to the vanity, and I follow her. She sits down in a tiny stool and picks up this weird-looking, really long necklace with evenly-spaced beads and a pewter cross at the end of it.
"What's that?"
"A rosary."
It must be a Catholic thing, so I don't say anything else about it. She carefully hangs the rosary on the side of the mirror while I wait for her to talk, because obviously the reason she's so upset is hidden on the vanity. Then, I think of the pictures. I look over Mary's shoulder at one of the frames. It shows a smiling couple on their wedding day. One of them is Mary. The other is a guy I've never seen before, with a jet-black mop of hair and electric blue eyes. The picture looks like it was dated a couple years back. Then, I piece it together.
"Mary…is this your husband?"
I look at her reflection in the mirror. She looks at mine. "Yes."
I'm confused. "So, where is he now?"
Her head drops. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying not to cry. "He's…he's dead, Kevin. Today is the anniversary of his death."
Wow. She never told me about that.
"Oh…oh, my gosh, that's awful. This was a really bad time to come, I'll just go…"
"Please don't leave, Kevin."
I stop and look at her. Her eyes are full of tears. "Can you stay, Kevin? I want someone to talk to. Please."
Nodding, I reply, "Of course. Any time."
"Thank you." She stands up from the stool and stares blankly at her reflection in the mirror, as if she's shocked to see herself cry. I reach out my hand and gently touch her arm. She doesn't flinch, but instead her hand lifts up across her chest and rests on top of mine. I feel her squeeze my hand, as if it was a spasm of her fingers, and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.
"His name was Michael."
I say nothing, just waiting for her to continue.
"We met in college, and we got married two months after graduation. June 29th was our wedding day. We were both twenty-two. My degree was in Piano and Music Composition. His was Sales and Communications.
He worked in an office, selling textbooks and school supplies in bulk. I worked as a studio pianist, playing for album recordings. We loved our jobs. We were happy. We were happy because we loved each other, and no amount of money could be set equal to that.
When we moved into this apartment, he told me that this would be our place. That he would stay here with me for as long as he lived." She stares wistfully at the photographs on the vanity. I stay silent. "He was the only one I ever loved, and I'll love him for the rest of my life."
When she resumes looking at my reflection, her story continues.
"One Friday morning, October 15th, before he left for work, he told me that he had an office party to go to that night. He said it would be over by 11 and that he'd be home by 11:30.
When it came time for him to leave for the party, I stayed up in the living room, watching TV. I went to bed at 11, a half-hour before he was due home.
Then, for some unexplainable reason, I woke up that night at 3:49 A.M…I'll never forget that time…and looked over toward his side of the bed. He wasn't there.
I panicked and called the cops. I told them that he had been gone for nearly 4 hours more than he said he would be. The cops went to go get his information, and then they told me that…" Her voice fails her, and she stops looking in the mirror.
"That what?"
She takes a deep breath before she chokes out these next words: "That he had been hit by a drunk driver. On his way home. At 11:22 P.M."
There is dead silence in the room.
"He was completely sober when the crash happened. He didn't drink. He never drank. He hated the taste." Her eyes fill with tears. "It just doesn't make sense. How something you've been faithfully avoiding your whole life can kill you in the end." She laughs harshly, but it's stopped by the audible lump at the back of her throat. Then, she takes her hand off mine, and I let my hand fall back at my side. She goes and sits on the bed, which has a faded yellow comforter. I join her.
"I didn't cry that day. I just screamed. I screamed at myself, I screamed at society, but most of all, I screamed at God. I hated how He could just go and take everything I loved away from me. I hated how His "plan" involved killing the best thing that ever happened to me. That was the day when I told myself I didn't believe in God anymore, because God is a sadistic asshole for murdering my husband."
"But…I thought you were Catholic."
"Well, no, not really. But I just keep my Catholic name…for him."
After she says that, all my confusion is lifted. I always wondered how a Catholic girl could live with herself for kissing a guy she just met and whose name she didn't even know.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
There is more silence. Then, she leans on me unexpectedly, resting her head on my shoulder. "I just miss him."
I put one arm around her waist, and my other hand runs through her hair. It's soft, like the fur of a cat. We stay like this for who knows how long. It feels right, being so close to her. After a while, I ask her, "Well…do you have faith that God exists?"
"I don't know."
"Well, you could always renew that faithfulness through…um…Mormonism." The request seems a bit weak, considering what she just told me, but I have to do my job somehow. Besides, if I could get her to just try being Mormon, she might see why finding Heavenly Father changed my life and made me so happy. She could have some faith in her existence restored.
She shakes her head a bit. "No. I could never do that."
"Why not?"
"My husband…he's watching me from Heaven. I know it. Being Catholic is my way of telling him I still love him."
Then I want to ask her why she acts so un-Catholic, and why even be Catholic when she's an atheist at heart, but I know that this isn't the time.
"Please. Just give it a chance. It could change your thinking. Please, Mary. For me."
She doesn't respond. She just gently runs her fingers up and down my arm that's around her waist. "I couldn't. Really, I couldn't." I hear tears in her voice, filled with the confliction between her new interest and the man she's loved unconditionally for two years.
"Yes, you can. Do you ever pray to God anymore?"
A pause. "Sometimes."
"What do you ask him for?"
She thinks. "Piece of mind."
"Well, Mormons believe that if you ask God in faith, he'll answer you, no matter what you ask for. If you try Mormonism, Heavenly Father might grant you your piece of mind!"
She breaks our little embrace position and looks at me. "I can't just abandon Catholicism. It's my husband!"
"I didn't say you have to."
"I know, but still…"
"Mary, I want the best for you."
"I know you do, but even so, it's just that I can't abandon him!"
"You won't have to. If you ask Heavenly Father for piece of mind, maybe Michael will forgive you in your mind, too."
She thinks that over for a bit. "I guess you're right."
"Just try it. For me."
She sighs. "Alright. I will. What do I have to lose?"
I smile. "Nothing."
She smiles back. "Still, I wonder if…"
Her sentence is never finished, but I think me kissing her is an acceptable interruption. I feel her surprise as she freezes at first, and then the tension releases. It's fairly brief, but it's genuine, and it seems as if we've been doing this for ages.
When we part, we just stare at each other, grinning like idiots. Then, Mary lifts up her eyes and tilts her face towards the ceiling. I do, too, thinking that there's a spider up there or something, but there isn't. I'm confused until she says:
"Hi, Michael."
Oh.
"Michael, this is Kevin Price."
"Um…hi."
"Kevin is a really great guy, Michael. He's smart and considerate and a good listener."
"Not to mention handsome."
"And modest."
"Very funny, Mary."
"Come on, you know you like it when I make fun of you."
"I know."
"Anyway, Michael, Kevin is an amazing person. He's my boyfriend. And I love him." She reaches for my hand, and our fingers join like clockwork. "So I want a sign. Sometime today, that you approve."
I take a wild stab at talking to the essence of Mary's husband. "Hi, Michael. I just want to say that…that Mary must have been really lucky to have you for a husband, judging by how much her life was altered by you and your good nature. And I am the luckiest guy in the world to have her for a girlfriend."
She plants a kiss on my cheek and squeezes my hand. I return it.
Just then, I hear a faint whistling sound coming from the kitchen. It gets louder and louder.
"What's that sound?"
"I don't know. Let's go check it out."
Cautiously, we exit the bedroom and go into the kitchen. Immediately, I locate the source of the squealing sound: a kettle on the stove. Thick clouds of vapor pour out of the mouth of the kettle, and it is whistling profusely.
"Were you going to make tea or something, Mary?"
She stares at me with frightened, wide eyes. "I didn't put that kettle on. I haven't used it in weeks."
I realize it right away. It takes her a little bit longer before she figures it out. When she does, her face splits into a huge smile and she throws her arms around my waist. I give a small "oof!" of surprise, but she just hugs me tighter until I choke out in the middle of my laughter, "OK, OK, Mary, stop! You're hugging me to death!"
She lets go and looks at me, still grinning. Then, she turns toward the stove. "Well, what about the kettle?"
I smile at her and put my arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer to me. "It's OK. You got any instant coffee?"
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