Chapter Four:

The last time Patricia and I took a walk was November thirteenth, 1955. I would have rather taken my car, but I agreed to walk because I knew Lorraine would probably be out at that hour. I just followed her, not realizing she was taking me to a certain place. She stopped at the clock tower, and gazed at it while I stood next to her, looking down the streets we had walked, not seeing anyone else that interested me.

"It's such a shame it stopped working." she finally said, turning my attention back to her.

"What?"

"The clock." she still left me confused, but I glanced up at the clock anyway. "It was struck by lightning last night," she explained. "Now it stopped running."

"That's as funny as a screen door on a battleship," I said, looking away from the clock again. "I don't remember any lightning striking that-"

"I thought you wouldn't remember..." she sighed and sat down on the steps of the clock tower, and showed me that she wanted me to do the same by patting the seat next to her. "We need to talk."

I had rolled my eyes then, hoping she wasn't going to say anything more about the stupid clock tower. I took one more look around for any sign of Lorraine before I sat down.

"What is it now?" I asked.

"I was just wondering if you remembered having a good time last night..." she paused, waiting for me to answer. I gave her a strange look but answered anyway.

"What kind of stupid question is that? Of course I remember."

"And you're not upset about it?"

"Upset about what?" I wasn't paying attention that much, because of the two people walking up the street.

"Well, I mean to say... well... Were you upset that you had to spend last night with me, instead of Lorraine?"

I was surprised to see that our walk in 1985 was similar to our last walk. She walked to the clock tower and sat down, telling me to sit down as well. "We need to talk." she said.

"Dmnit, this whole thing again?" I said, but I sat down. "Are you going to ask me this dumb question every thirty years, now?"

"No," she said quietly. "I wanted to ask you if you remembered our wedding." A silence suddenly came and went again as I realized what the question was.

"Most of it." I replied. I didn't think it was such a bad answer, but she frowned.

"Most of it?" she repeated it as a question. She looked down at her feet. "Well... what do you remember of it?" I noticed she was starting to look extremely uncomfortable. I had been with her long enough to realize that she usually didn't say anything that made her uncomfortable.

"All right, what the hll is going on? Why are you asking me all these stupid questions?" She didn't say anything like I expected her too, and I wouldn't have it, but I thought it was because of the bad mood I was in. I stood up.

"Dmnit, Patricia, are you wasting my time again?" I rolled my eyes and started to walk away from her, expecting no answer.

"Wait!" she called out and I felt her grab my arm. She looked as if she was wondering if she should tell me something or not. Finally she made a decision. "I...I have something to tell you..."

"Fine, then, tell me. Better not be something stupid." I turned to face her again and waited for her to start talking.

"When I was on vacation..." she paused to clear her throat. "I stopped by my mother's house," she waited for my outburst, but I just grunted and rolled my eyes. She then went on. "She... she said she had met a nice man who would like to meet me... and... well... She suggested a divorce."

"A divorce? Wait, you and whoever the hll that other guy is aren't married! How can you get a divorce?"

"No! She suggested you and I get a divorce!" There was another silence in which she started to feel uncomfortable again. Even I was silent with this piece of news.

"Oh." was all I said.

"And when I told her," she continued. "That I was happy with you she snorted and said, 'Get a grip on yourself, Patricia. I know you've been having a terrible marriage with that Tannen!' I tried to protest but..."

"But what?"

"I knew it was true." I knew it was true too.

"Oh, so you're going to divorce and go marry that Butthead your mother found for you? So go ahead! I don't care." I turned around angrily and started towards home, and I knew that it would my turn to lock her out. The plan I had told Lorraine was starting to fail, and I was going to forget about it, but for some reason I didn't.

"I want to take a walk with you." I mimicked her as I walked up to our front door. "Yeah right." I slammed the door when I got home and made sure I locked it. Unfortunately I forgot to lock the other door and she was back inside only a few minutes after me.

"What the hll are you doing in here?" I yelled when she suddenly appeared in front of me when I walked in the kitchen to get a beer from the pack I had taken from the McFlys.

"Biff, you didn't let me finish." she said calmly, and I'm sure she acted that way on purpose, just to pause to wonder why she was suddenly so calm so she would have time to talk.

"I am very unhappy, Biff," she said. "And my mother convinced me that if you and I were really meant for each other, then you would realize it."

"Do you always do what your mother tells you?" I sneered, and I continued to the fridge but she stopped me.

"Please listen to me. This is important."

"Look, maybe it's important to you, but I have been having an on day and I just want some beer." she let me pass, but only because she was confused by something I said. I didn't know what it was, so I just ignored it. She shook her head just as I pulled out a bottle.

"It's hard enough for me to say it... Why don't you just listen to me?"

"All right, fine," I said, but before I said anything else I took a sip of my beer. "I'm listening, but I know what you're going to say."

"No you don't." she said, shaking her head while she laughed a little. She looked back at me and I was struck by her suddenly dark look. Then it quickly changed. She suddenly looked sad. "Is the reason that you always forget our anniversary... and... and visit the McFlys so often..." she paused to clear her throat. "Do you do all those things because you would rather have married Lorraine?"

It was basically the same question she asked me last time we took our walk, in 1955. Last time I had told her that I would have been with Lorraine if she hadn't taken that Irish Bug McFly, so I told her the same thing. "I probably would be married Lorraine if it wasn't for-"

"That doesn't answer my question," she put her hand on top of my bottle, but didn't take it away. Instead she pushed it down towards the table, and kept her hand on it so I couldn't drink from it.

"What the hll are you doing?" I asked, pulling the bottle away but she had a firm grip on it.

"I just want you to answer my question!" she screeched.

"Well, right now I'd rather be married to Lorraine... And you know what?" I let go of the bottle she had taken from me and took out another one but kept it behind my back when I wasn't taking a drink from it. "I always have. I just used you to make her see what she was missing."

She looked startled- painfully startled, at what I said, and she slowly started to clench her fists around the bottle. I couldn't understand why she seemed so surprised by this- I thought she already knew. I thought she knew everything.

The next thing that happened took me by complete surprise. She chugged down the rest of the beer and left the bottle on the table- unbroken, for once- and said, "There's no reason to waste perfectly good beer, is there?" It took a while for me to remember, but slowly I realized she was quoting me from a week ago.

When I didn't say anything, she put the bottle in the sink and headed upstairs. When she passed me she leaned in and whispered, "Please don't tell the kids about this when they get home..."

"Tell them what?"

"That we'll be moving across town next week." she said it simply, as if I should already know.

"Wait a minute... why are we moving?" I asked, wondering if the beer had already gone to her head. She shook her head at me, and started playing with her hands clumsily as she explained. "On the way home from my parents, I told the kids that if things didn't work between you and me when we got home, we were going to divorce."

"And you told them that you'd take them to live with you somewhere else?"

She nodded. I leaned against the nearby counter and started to drum my fingers against my chin, trying to think about what I was going to do now that my wife had divorced me. She and the kids were out the door and across town before I knew it, and I couldn't do anything about it. First I tried to think of the positive side of it. I wouldn't have to deal with her annoying mood swings, if that was what had started this whole thing, and I wouldn't have to worry about forgetting anniversaries. I decided that a good thing had happened to me, since I didn't want to marry her anyway, but after a few days I started to wake up in the morning, wishing that her body was sleeping next to mine. I also wondered what she was thinking when she woke up.

When I realized what was happening, I stopped by to hang out with my high school friends and came home drunk more often, which didn't help because, in a way, it was easier to admit that I missed her when I was drunk. Last time she left, I didn't feel so lonely, because I knew she'd come home. Now that I knew she wasn't, I really was lonely.

Hll, it's strange hearing myself say that.