|  Chapter 14:
I propped on my elbows, waiting for the vertigo to subside.
“Mary?”
I blinked away the dregs of disorientation and with it the flecks of this dream and Mary’s face, but when I opened my eyes, and my vision cleared, drawing into permanent focus now, Mary’s face was still there, above mine.
I scooted back, retreating across the floor, almost afraid to be near her. Shock hammered at my chest stealing my next breath in sudden gasp.
I kicked at the table, a table littered with empty bottles labeled Bacardis, Jack Daniels and Gilbeys, and they overturned, spilling to the floor. I heard a cocktail glass shatter and Mary uttering, “Jesus,” as she stepped to avoid the broken glass yet staying near to do what?
Keep me from doing further damage to myself?
What?
“Mary.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Her name fell off my tongue and out of my mouth, my brain not used to formulating her name.
It had been nine years.
I blinked and collected my bearings… and my thoughts.
“You’re alive.”
I wanted to jump up and take her in my arms, hug her tight and smother her with kisses.
And never let her go.
Never.
My God.
She’s alive.
I smiled.
“Jesus John, you did it.”
My legs didn’t want to work.
Mary looked just like I always dreamed she would look: the most beautiful woman in the world in my eyes.
The past nine years putting smile lines at the corners of her eyes that sparkled in the light. Her hair had lightened a shade and I liked the color, and the shortened cut. She still kept her figure and if ever a middle-aged woman looked good enough to eat, it was my wife.
Mary.
“Mary.”
Tears welled in my eyes.
“My God… you’re alive.”
Mary rolled her eyes and her expression fell. She sighed and shook her head.
“Please John, not now. I don’t have the energy for you today.”
My stomach collapsed upon itself when I saw Mary’s expression, but more, when I saw the way she looked at me.
Beyond pity.
With disgust.
“I thought perhaps today, of all days, you could just once pull yourself together.”
I found support against the sofa and scooted to a sitting position.
“What are you talking about? My God Mary, you’re alive.”
“Will you please stop it with the ‘my God Mary, you’re alive’?”
Anger flashed in her eyes and she threw the glass she’d been holding against the wall. She brought a hand to her forehead and pressed the heel of her palm there, as if the pressure could force all this… what?… unpleasantness from her mind, an unpleasantness of which she had long ago grown weary.
Her lower lip threatened to collapse and tears spilled form the corners of her eyes.
“If not for me John,” she said stifling back a sob. “Can you at least do it for Stacy?”
I offered a helpless shrug.
“Do what?”
Panic started to tickle at the pit of my stomach.
Something’s wrong.
Something’s definitely not right.
Mary’s alive.
My God, she’s alive.
Then why do I feel this growing sense of helpless dread?
“Mary, I don’t understand.”
“John, come on. Lay off it. We’ve been over this too many times before. We’ve beaten this horse about as much as the poor thing can be beaten.”
She waved a hand about the room in disgust.
“Look at you,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “Look at this… this filth. You live in squalor. You drink. Lord only knows the last time you’ve taken a bath.”
“Mary wait,” I said, scrambling forward on all fours, my hands grinding on broken glass.
I didn’t care about the cuts.
Panic had set in good and hard now.
Something was not right here.
Something’s different.
“You don’t understand,” I said, the cold fear settling in like fog.
“You keep saying that, John,” she said wearily. “But you see? I do understand. I understand better than anybody, John. And I’m tired.”
Mary was crying.
“Do you know that? I’m tired. I’m tired, John.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.
I scrambled about the floor, knocking the table again, like a blind man frantically seeking his glasses.
I was like the blind man.
I couldn’t see.
But I was about to.
I knew that, and the dread that crawled up the back of my throat was nearly overwhelming.
“I would like to let down the guard John. Do you know that? Don’t you think I wish I could just collapse and wallow in my misery and self-pity? Wouldn’t it be nice to grieve? I’d love to be able to grieve John, but I can’t. I can’t grieve. Do you know why? Because I have no one to count on, no one to pick me up if I stumble and fall, no one to be strong for me during a weak moment. I can’t afford to be weak, John. My daughter needs me.”
“No Mary, wait.”
“No John, you wait,” she said, her anger supplanting her grief and sadness now. “I’m tired of waiting. I’ve been waiting on you for nine years, and today, just once today, I had hoped you’d be strong for me. For me John, I needed you to be strong for me, and you couldn’t even do that.”
“Mary, you don’t understand,” I said, and then my hands touched upon the familiar plastic contours of the Raybans.
I snatched them up as if I’d just recovered the secret treasure I had until now, lost.
“You see Mary,” the frantic tickle crept into my voice. “You were dead. They killed you. On my birthday, nine years ago. They ran you down Mary. It was awful, the most horrible thing I’d ever had to endure. You had died. And I missed you so, oh God Mary, I missed you so bad.
“But now you’re alive. I went back. I used these, these glasses. They took me back and I was able to change things, Mary. God only knows how but I was able to change things and I saved you Mary. I saved your life.”
“God d*mmit John! You saved nothing!”
I fell back against the sofa as if I’d been slapped. I sat there among the shards of glass, staring up at Mary with bloodied hands, clutching the Raybans in one, and terrified that I was about to learn the secret.
That horrifying secret that nobody wants to tell.
Mary was about to.
“I can’t do this anymore John,” she said in weary resignation. “I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried, and the therapists beg me not to give up, not to quit, but I can’t do this anymore John. I have my life too. You may have quit living yours, but I still have to live mine. I’m not ready to die yet, and I don’t want to end up like you.”
She snapped open her purse and removed a thick sheath of folded papers.
“You don’t even have to sign these,” she said. “Not that I’d expect you to anymore. My attorney says that given your condition and situation, I should be able to get a divorce easily.”
A divorce?
“Mary no.”
“John, I’ve gone to bat for you so many times… so many times. I was going to give you this last chance today. I told myself if you were up and you were ready, and you were in a good frame of mind, ready to accept this – however horrible our reality might be, that I would stay with you to the end, John. I love you. You are my husband and my soul mate, but I refuse to live another day like this. My daughter needs me more than you do John, and I will not let Stacy down. Do you understand that?”
She reached down and snatched the Raybans from my trembling hands.
“I should have done this years ago.”
She turned to leave.
The room suddenly teetered.
Vomit roiled in my stomach.
“I hope you find your life John, and if you do, it will be without these.”
Terror clasped its icy talons around my heart.
“Mary no!”
Then the memory wave hit.
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