The Photograph 2.0: John Beckett's Unpleasant Memories

2.0

The memory plays like a stain splashed across the tapestry of my life, a smear of ugly red among the softer more gentle pastels, a reminder every time I see her face or speak her name that I failed her in my singular duty as a husband and as a police officer.

It is a sight that my eyes won’t forget, that the years cannot wash away.

I won’t let them.

I can’t let them.

Still, I don’t want to remember Mary that way, lying crumpled and broken in the driving rain, common road kill left to die in the street gutter after being rundown… no, murdered in cold blood.

And I saw it all happen.

It was my birthday and Mary had taken me out to dinner at my favorite restaurant in Midtown, a trendy little hole in the wall steakhouse off 12th Street and Peachtree called O’Ryan’s Belt just a block up from the old Fox Theater. You could get a great steak there, a nice cold beer and not have to shout to one another to be heard of above the crowd. They played some easy piano jazz there, not that I’m a big jazz fan, but in its moment I can handle the stuff. The soft lighting and old brick walls dating to the original structure made for an intimate setting and I could let myself believe it was just Mary and I for the moment and the rest of the world ceased to exist.

We left Stacy at home that night – we didn’t make a practice of that, but she was fifteen and dinner out with her parents on a Friday night wasn’t her idea of the ideal time. She was all we had and we cherished each moment with her, but there are a few occasions where Mary likes to take her husband out for a nice dinner, and Mary’s husband likes to oblige.

Hindsight being 20/20, I’m glad Stacy wasn’t there.

What happened to her mother was hard enough on her. I’m glad she didn’t have to be witness to it too.

We should have stayed home.

It had rained all day and by nightfall deteriorated into one of those late autumn thunderstorms. Downtown traffic had been oddly sparse for a Friday night, probably due to the weather, but that seldom kept the movers and shakers of Atlanta’s up and coming business sect off the streets at the end of another grueling workweek.

Parking wasn’t an issue tonight as we found a garage just up from O’Ryan’s. We had a 7:30 reservation and due to the light Friday night traffic, by 7:40 we were seated at our table and had drinks ordered. Mary wore her black silk dress with the spaghetti straps and a matching shawl – my favorite. I loved the way she looked in it. I managed a nice white Oxford shirt and red print tie combination, the tie a present from Stacy that I managed to leave be through appetizers before jerking it askew, with my standard blue blazer.

We didn’t say much, just enjoying the moment, but I remember every word spoken, savoring them like morsels of prime cut steak.

“I forgot your present,” she spoke up with a wide-eyed gasp. “It’s in the car. I wanted to give it to you now.”

I touched a hand to her wrist.

“Don’t worry about it. We can get it after dinner. It’s raining. Stay.”

“No,” Mary insisted. “I wanted you to have it before dinner. It’s not raining hard. Don’t worry I won’t melt.”

Mary’s smile sparkled, her brown eyes flashing a hint of jade in just the right light. Chestnut curls framed a soft face that you wanted to touch and fell in a cascade beyond her shoulders.

I watched her leave, the easy way she glided across the floor, slender hips swaying in poetic motion, in love with the shape of her legs tapering down to her delicate ankles.

I hurt every time she left, and felt incomplete until that time would come when she’d return.

When Mary threw me a ‘be-right-back’ smile over her shoulder as she left the restaurant, I felt an ache tighten about my chest. I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see her without blood-matted hair drenched in rain and that pink froth bubbling from her lips from pierced lungs and crushed ribs.

My heart broke for her.

My life ended when she died.

A cold sensation of dread crept up the back of my spine as the minutes stretched uncomfortably from five to ten. A spike of panic stabbed at my heart when I heard the wail of emergency sirens from outside and caught the reflecting red and white strobe of the emergency lights bouncing off the high canyon walls of concrete and steel.

I raced outside into a chaotic kaleidoscope of color and sound, a cacophony of blaring white noise that told me my life had been torn apart at the seams.

Just up Peactree Street, barely a block along the opposite curb, backlit by the wash of headlights from stalled traffic unable to pass now because of the police and emergency vehicles blocking the road. I heard the horns and wet hiss of falling rain. The sirens screamed a banshee’s cry, echoing off the high walls of downtown.

Terror and dread squeezed the warmth from my heart as I cut across traffic to get to the center of the blaring lights. I flashed a gold shield at the slashing flashlight and cut around barricades and parked cars to reach the center of the maelstrom, where Mary lay, crumpled and broken along the curb, the rain wash curling around her on its flight to the sewer drains.

I rushed to her and scooped her into my arms, paying no mind to the EMT’s who had surrendered to the inevitable and allowed us these final precious moments, merely waited for nature to run its course.

“Hit and run,” a disembodied voice said from above. “She never saw what hit her.”

“Did anybody?” I asked in reply, but knew the answer to that already. If they did they wouldn’t be standing here now.

Then Mary looked up at me, said my name twice through a choking wet gurgle and a foam of red froth, told me she loved me, and died in my arms, the light forever dimmed in her jade eyes as she stared sightlessly upward into the falling rain.

And now, nine years later, I saw her, my Mary standing across the room, and smiling that smile of hers that makes your heart skip a beat.

Smiling back at me.





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