A View to a Thrill
Sean Gregory
This submission is, for me, very short and like nearly everything I've written so far, once I start laying down words the original idea I had for the story is out the window, looking for somebody else to harass. It started out being my second attempt at a 'Stroke' story but if you're brave enough to endure this 'tedious brief scene' looking for stroke inspiration, I'm afraid you'll only find 'very tragical mirth.' (My apologies to Pyramus and Thisbe, and of course, The Bard.) This is because, like my first attempt, my original inspiration which I intended to comprise the meat and potatoes of the story ended up as only a vague intermission that nudges the narrator out of his melancholy memories and back into his desolate reality. Anyway, as you will probably be able to discern, less than forty-eight hours expired between my first inclination to pen this tale to the last period that ends the last sentence.
Btw, if the Good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise I hope to have two more submissions posted very soon, one that has been requested for almost five years.
G.
It was late August, the year isn't important, what was important is the fact that we were on our first vacation since we were married eight years earlier that didn't include either my wife's sister's family or her parents in some way. Well, after her parents finally acted like they accepted our marriage and children, anyway. I never objected to those trips because Rachael rarely got to see her family and to me it seemed to be a small price to pay for her to have those visits. Her family lived three states away and she was somewhat estranged from her parents. It was her parents' choice, but still, my wife was the victim who suffered the detachment from her kin.
We were vacationing in a small town on the gulf coast of Florida, and this was the second of six nights we had reserved in the beachfront hotel. My wife and I had just had another disagreement when she once again deflected my attempts to initiate sex with her before springing out of the bed and locking herself in the hotel bathroom. I was all but certain that she had a boyfriend who she was fucking regularly. I was even pretty sure I knew who he was. I honestly didn't care about it (or her) enough to be angry, by this point in our relationship, everything I did was for the benefit of my sons. I pulled on a pair of shorts and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt then came out to sit on our third floor private balcony overlooking the Gulf just to let my mind wander and to consider where our lives had brought us and in what direction we were headed.
I wasn't finding much encouragement.
I sat in that flimsy plastic chair and thought back longingly over my life to the happier times early in our relationship.
My wife and I had been married for eight years at the time of the vacation. We had two sons, four and six years old, both of them intended and planned. Both of them loved deeply by their mother as well as their father. Ours was not a fighting marriage, not really, we never shouted at each other, at least not until recently, I realized. We never threw random projectiles in each other's vicinity, and we never struck one another physically. We never even really had an argument of any noteworthiness. Nevertheless, over the preceding couple of years our marriage had devolved into a battlefield that hosted a war of attrition. I don't know exactly when the animosity began to grow or from where, but I had my strong suspicions.
Like many, if not most young marriages, ours germinated from a strong, passionate seed. I saw that seed as an acorn, destined to mature into a magnificent red oak with a broad canopy, a massive trunk and robust roots that delved deep enough into life's fertile soil to withstand any storm or strong wind with no more injury than having a few leaves stripped away.
But even the most majestic oak, that has stood fast in the face of countless thunderstorms and raging winds can be quietly brought to the ground by the subtle efforts of something as innocuous as a fungus, like Oak Wilt.
So can a marriage once destined to be the definitive example of how a strong, healthy relationship should look, be brought low.
My wife and I met while she attended college in my hometown, and I was a patrol officer for a local police department. I was in the waning stages of a six month relationship at the time and although my then current girlfriend and I both knew the demise of that relationship was imminent, I refused to do anything that even resembled cheating. Respect, for me, was the preeminently desirable personality trait a person could demonstrate, and disrespecting my girlfriend, even though I knew she wouldn't be my girlfriend for much longer, was not an option I was willing to entertain.
When a mutual friend introduced us at a cookout he was hosting I had never dated anyone so much younger than me, and I had no intention of dating her. After the brief period of time that she and I sat at the patio table talking, surrounded by the throng of other guests, I had no contact with her until more than a month later.
My relationship lasted less than two weeks after that cookout, the coffin was finally interred when my girlfriend settled on her next candidate for the position I held for almost half a year. I saw a movie once, I don't remember which one it was but in a particular scene, one of the characters made the comment that "Women are like monkeys, they won't turn one branch loose until they have their hand on another branch." I always thought that was an arrogant, egotistical remark for someone to make, not to mention generally disrespectful, but looking back now, I suppose it describes Erin's philosophy, as it existed then, fairly accurately. We both knew that as a couple we were doomed, but she refused to admit that fact until she agreed to go on a date with her next acceptable suitor.
Afterward, I had no immediate desire to find another girlfriend, I was emotionally exhausted and the concept of jumping directly into another relationship did not appeal to me. I decided to enjoy being happy with myself and rest for a while.
That lasted for another three weeks.
I was sitting at a corner table in a rundown barbeque joint that had been serving the same delicious recipe for brisket thirty five years earlier, struggling to get as much of the food on my plate consumed as possible before I was interrupted by my next call for service when she walked in the front door.
I recognized her from Tim's cookout and remembered our brief conversation on his patio, but I didn't acknowledge her presence. After placing her order at the counter she brought her drink and a small white plastic 'tent' bearing a black number 3 into the miniscule dining area, looking for one of the rarely vacant tables. Seeing the vacant chair at my table and obviously recognizing me, she changed her course and headed my direction.
"Hey, Jason, right?"
"Yeah, hey Rachael. Would you like to sit?" I glanced around the intimate room, then back at her face, "there doesn't seem to be much else to choose from."
