Wounds of Time

by Stevie D. Parker

  Now I started raising my voice. “You’re not allowing it?! You’re not my father, don’t speak to me like I’m your daughter.”

  “Don’t tell me how I speak to my daughter! You have no idea how I am with my daughter!”

  Now he was screaming, too. He slammed the glass down on the nook so hard, I was surprised it didn’t crack.

  I looked at him, lowered my voice and said, “You’re absolutely right—I have no idea how you are with your daughter, or with anybody for the matter, because I don’t exist in your world!”

  “Whose fault is that?” he yelled. “I wanted to leave her—you said no. You said over and over NO. Guess what? I’m leaving her. I wasn’t going to tell you because I didn’t want you to have any guilt, but we are over, Sarah! Samantha and I do not have a marriage, not a normal one. You know, when Nick was ten years old, we were at an open school night, and the teacher was concerned by a picture he drew. He drew a house that was supposed to be his when he was all grown up. He drew exactly what his bedroom looked like and then what his wife’s bedroom looked like. We laughed it off, didn’t think anything of it. I’m just a bad sleeper, right? But then you slept with me and apparently, I’m not! Maybe it’s more about the woman who’s been sleeping next to me all these years.”

  “Why do you even want to be with me? So, you can cheat on me too? You’re forty-six years old. You lived your life; you have your kids. I’m going to be thirty, don’t you think I deserve the same?” I demanded.

  He went still. “You don’t trust me? I have never lied to you, ever. Well, except for the past few Mondays. Look, there was an incident in Aruba, I….” He looked down at the floor and rubbed his forehead. “I slept with her. I slept with Samantha, and I can’t get it out of my fucking head, it’s driving me fucking crazy!”

  He started choking up, and a single tear trailed down his cheek. He quickly wiped it away and tried to compose himself.

  “I was afraid I couldn’t look at you. I felt like I cheated on you. Think of that statement—I felt like I cheated on you with my wife! What about me? I don’t deserve to be with a woman who loves me? Or even her, she doesn’t deserve the same?”

  As he started walking towards me, I turned my back to him. I couldn’t look at him.

  “Sarah please,” he pleaded, clutching my waist from behind. “It’s Christmas Eve, tomorrow is Christmas—give me until the 26th. I am leaving her. Yes, you deserve all of that, and I will give it to you. All of it, and more, I promise. Please, you can’t marry this guy.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “There are so many things I still don’t know about you,” he started arguing. “Things that are going to drive me crazy. Look at how I went crazy for an entire year, just wondering if you could sing—what if I have another question? What if I need to know something?”

  “What could you possibly need to know about me that you don’t already? Go ahead, ask me now.”

  He paced the rooftop as he searched for questions. He was in panic mode. It was really hard to see him like that. Then, he started firing off ridiculous questions.

  “What’s your middle name?” he asked.

  “Danielle.”

  “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

  “Really? That’s what you need to know?” I asked. He shot me a look, so I sighed and answered. “Nineteen.”

  “And your first kiss?”

  I rolled my eyes. This was absolutely insane at this point.

  “Six,” I said, completely unamused.

  “I mean your first real kiss,” he specified.

  I took a deep breath. “That was my first real kiss. He wasn’t six; he was much older.”

  He looked at me, disgusted. “If he was anywhere over the age of ten, I don’t even want to hear this story,” he said.

  “It’s actually a beautiful story,” I replied. There was silence.

  “Okay, now that’s going to drive me crazy. Go ahead, tell me the ‘beautiful’ story about the older guy who kissed the six-year-old,” he said.

  I paused for a moment. I’d never told anyone this story. Vincent was now bringing me back to a place that I wasn’t sure I wanted to revisit.

  “I was six,” I began.

  “I heard that part,” he said.

  “I had, have a sister. Much older than me, by ten years. She had a boyfriend who was even older than her. I don’t know how old he was, but I know old enough that it was a big problem in the house.”

  He sat down on the nook, now drinking the rest of the wine directly from the bottle. He was so disinterested in this story.

  “I thought he was gorgeous; I was so enamored by him. He drove this little red sports car. I don’t know what kind of car it was, but it was small, and it was fast. And loud. I heard him pulling up, and I heard him driving away.”

  “Yeah, you and your guys with hot cars,” he said, taking another slug.

  “Anyway…” I continued, “I devised a plan. It was Christmas, and I had just learned what mistletoe was. I made a bouquet of mistletoe with cardboard and hung it in my room. I lured him in by asking him to help me with something, fix a toy—I don’t know, I don’t remember my exact excuse. I do remember having him under this cardboard mistletoe and looking up and saying in the sexiest six-year-old voice possible, ‘Do you know what it means to be standing under mistletoe?’”

  I remembered back to that moment.

  “He had looked up, realized we were standing under the mistletoe, and then squatted down to get to eye level with me. He explained to me that customarily it meant you kissed the person you were standing under there with. I puckered up, waiting for his kiss. He kissed me right on the cheek. I begged him to run away with me, told him I was in love with him. I told him I wanted to be his wife. He smiled and told me that unfortunately, he was already spoken for, but that one day I was going to have a man fall so madly in love with me that he didn’t know what to do with himself.”

  I was smiling at the reenactment while Vincent now stared at me, the bottle of wine dangling from his hands between his legs.

  “Then my sister came in. Asked me if I was trying to steal her man. I didn’t know what to say, we both knew I was. She told him they had to go. He winked at me to indicate he wouldn’t tell her and get me in trouble. Like it was our secret. As they were walking out, she turned around to me and in this firm voice, said, ‘And when I get back, we are going to have a long talk about a sister’s bond and their men.’ I watched them drive away. I heard them drive away. They never came back. I never saw either one of them again.”

  Vincent jumped unsteadily to his feet. “And that’s why you hate Christmas.”

  I nodded. “They ran away together. My parents never spoke about them again. I think they were hoping I was too young to remember, so I never had any ideas of running away. I’d like to think they’re still driving around in that little red car, traveling the world. So madly in love, that they can’t take their hands off each other. Stopping at rest stops along the way to make love.”

  He set the bottle down and slowly approached me.

  “That’s a nice fairy tale you created for yourself in your head, but this is real life. That is not what they’re doing.”

  I looked at him, angry. He was telling me my story was stupid.

  “Oh, no? That’s not real life? That’s so unrealistic? Tell me, Vincent, you know so much, you’re so good at rewriting endings. Tell me, what are they doing?”

  He looked up to the sky.

  “Oh, I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say she was at some fancy club right now drinking some two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine and bragging with her bougie friends about their make-believe wonderful lives and him…well, he’s…” He paused for a moment. “He’s on a rooftop, on top of a strip club—staring at the woman he loves so much, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Realizing that when he’d told her about the man who’d fall in love with her twenty-
four years ago, he’d had no idea that it would turn out to be him.”

  I stood there, stunned. In complete shock. What was he saying? That boy, way back then, was him? No, no, it couldn’t be. His name had been Vinny.

  “And for future reference when you tell that story, that red car was a Camaro. We didn’t run away, Sarah. We told your father that night that she was pregnant. He kicked us out; he kicked her out. Threatened to have me arrested, amongst other things. We struggled for years to make ends meet after moving to New York. He told us we would fail. We spent all this time just trying to prove him wrong,” he said.

  I stepped back with my hand over my mouth. I had no words. His name was Vinny—who later became Vince, and then Vincent.

  Not only had I been sleeping with a married man, but I was in love with a married man. And that married man was my sister’s husband. All of a sudden, I remembered everything he’d said in the past three years; things that I’d never put together before. They’d moved here from California. She was naturally blonde with green eyes, Irish. They’d been together since they were kids, and he was always a guy with a hot car. His smile that seemed so familiar. How comfortable I was around him from the very beginning. The fact that he was the first man who I’d ever introduced myself to as Sarah.

  He wrapped his arms around me.

  “Sarah, come on, you don’t think this is a sign? A sign we’re meant to be together? You begged me at six to run away with you, and here I am, over two decades later, begging you to be with me.” He put his hand over my mouth to prevent me from speaking. “You know what, don’t say anything. I am going to take my hand off your mouth, and I am going to kiss you. When I’m done, if you can look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me then…” He choked up again. “Then, I’ll leave you alone. I’ll walk away, and I promise I will never bother you again.”

  He removed his hand and started kissing me. Slow, passionately, like this might be the last time he ever kissed me. His hands cupped my cheeks, pulling my lips to his. All I tasted was the wine on his breath mixed with salty tears now streaming down my face.

  He pulled back. “Tell me. Tell me you don’t love me.”

  I looked him in the eyes. “I can’t,” I admitted.

  He took a step back, slowly raising his voice again. “I’m leaving her on the 26th. It’s over. And I’m going to tell you two things. One—my marriage is over, whether you’re going to be with me or not. It’s done. And two—the second I’m through with it, I’m showing up at your door. That guy, that gamer, well, he better not fucking be there.”

  That said, Vincent stormed off the roof.

  When I walked back to my apartment, I was crying so hard, I could barely see. What was I going to do? I loved him so much. Would he eventually get tired of me if we were a couple? Or was he right? Was it a sign, a sign that we were meant to be from the start? How could he have been married to my sister? I’d never even known that they’d moved to New York; I hadn’t remembered Vinny even being a baseball player. The image of him squatting down to talk to me all those years ago, was suddenly all I could see. The same position he’d demonstrated for me while explaining the requirements of a being catcher. It made all the sense in the world now.

  How had I not put it together?

  So many emotions were running through my head. Knowing how my sister had grown up, picturing how my father had treated her. I was so happy that she’d escaped—and now I was going to take her marriage from her? But Vincent was right. She also didn’t deserve a man who didn’t love her.

  I picked up the phone and called Isabel; she would talk some sense into me.

  VINCE

  “Hey, it’s Bianca, leave a message.”

  I got her voicemail, again. I’d called her at least twenty times over the past two days, but she never picked up. “Hey baby, it’s me—again. Please call me back. I know you’re mad, or maybe you’re with him, I don’t know anymore. I just know I need to hear your voice. Please, please call me back.”

  Christmas came and went. I was in a daze. Practicing over and over in my head what I was going to say to Samantha. If only I could hear Sarah’s voice. I was scared she was going to marry that gamer guy. I was still in complete shock that she was Samantha’s sister. The parts of that story that she didn’t remember, I graphically did.

  That night, I had just gotten into a fistfight with their father. Their mother had somehow pulled me off of him, and told me to walk away. I went into the bathroom to cool down. I was washing my face when through the mirror, I noticed this little girl crouching in the corner behind me; the same little girl who used to keep a lookout for us when Samantha would sneak me into the house.

  “You can’t hear the yelling in here,” she had said. She did ask me to help her fix a toy. I remember walking into that room with her, and her handing me a doll with all of its limbs torn off—no way could that have been accidental. Then, when I looked up at that cardboard mistletoe, I realized she must have been plotting the scheme for a while.

  It was now the 26th, though. I needed to have the conversation with Samantha, and this was going to be even more of a blow to her. How was I even going to explain this? She stood in the kitchen by the sink, surrounded by all the plates from Christmas. There were so many plates. They couldn’t even all fit in the dishwasher. When she heard me come in, she didn’t even look up. She kept washing, scrubbing away with her hair tied up, no make-up on, and still in pajama pants and a tank top. “You know Vince, we spend all this money on catering, next year we need to spring for a cleaning staff.”

  I looked down at the floor. “Next year? How long are we going to do this for?” I asked.

  Her attention remained on the plate she was washing. “You’re right; the kids are grown. We don’t have to do this anymore. Maybe we’ll just go on vacation like we do on Thanksgiving. Italy, maybe?”

  “I wasn’t talking about hosting Christmas,” I said.

  She finally put the plate down, shut the water off, and looked at me. “Then what exactly are you talking about?” she asked, but it was obvious she knew exactly where I was going with this.

  I put my hand up, pointing at the house. “This—everything. The lies, the façade…”

  “No, shut up,” she said, pointing her finger at my face. “Stop, no, if you’re implying a divorce, we are not getting a divorce! I am not going to give up—”

  “Give up what exactly?” I interrupted, yelling now. “The money? Guess what, you’re getting half of everything, congratulations you’re still rich! The image?”

  Her phone started ringing. She ignored the call. “No Vince, no…what, do you think I am stupid? You think I don’t know you have a girlfriend? The tattoo, the stupid way you shape your beard! The Wednesday night poker games you haven’t shown up to in ages? Yeah, I know all about that!”

  Her phone started ringing again. She pressed ignore again. “We’re going to keep doing what we’ve always done. You go do whatever the fuck it is you want to do, and I’ll keep closing my eyes to it. But you are absolutely not ending this!”

  “Why?” I shouted. “You can’t even stand me! How long are we going to keep proving this point? We were never in love—not the way we should have been. We got dealt a hand that we played. And we played it well, we raised two amazing kids. We went into survival mode, and we won. The kids are adults now, though, so why are we still doing this?”

  “Yeah, easy for you to say, you look better than ever at forty-six, men always age better. I’m forty. I get worse and worse as the years go on!”

  I rolled my eyes and snickered. “Oh please, give me a break—you’re hot, and you know it. You will have no problem getting a man. Don’t you want a man you love so much you can’t wait ‘til he gets home at night? Don’t you want a man who can’t take his hands off of you? Don’t you want a man who gives a fuck when you come home at 2 a.m. dressed like a whore?!” I screamed.

  She grinded her teeth and cle
nched her fist, stalking closer to me. Her phone started ringing again.

  “Who the fuck keeps calling me?” She picked it up and screamed, “What!”

  I had no idea who was on that other line, but I felt bad for them.

  “What?” she repeated. “Who? Speaking, who is this? I can barely hear you—Mom?”

  I hung my head. That would be just my luck, to have my mother call during the middle of this. Of all the people in the world who would disapprove of me leaving my wife, my mother would top the list. She’d compare me to my father and the way he’d left her when I was a kid.

  Samantha continued, “What? How? Oh my god…yeah, okay. Thank you for calling.”

  She hung up. She walked over to the kitchen table and slowly sank into the seat.

  “Was that my mother?” I asked, afraid of what she was going to say next.

  “No,” she said quietly. “It was mine.”

  “Your mother? The same mother who hasn’t spoken to you in twenty-four years? The one who stood by when you got abused. The one who did nothing when you were kicked out of the house, that mother??” I asked.

  She held up her hand to stop me from coming any closer. “Vince, just shut the fuck up, please. I’m trying to process what even just happened. Just give me a second to breathe!”

  I stood there patiently waiting, studying her facial expression. She looked upset. Really upset. She was leaning her elbows on the table now; her head in her hands, rubbing her temples with her thumbs. Like she didn’t know what to say.

  Finally, she spoke. “Do you remember…?” She paused, and looked up at me, glassy eyed. “Do you remember when I was living at home? I had a sister? A pretty little girl. She had a huge crush on you.”

  My heart dropped. I stood there paralyzed. Sarah must have told her mother. Was she calling Samantha after all these years just to tell her they were right about me all along? Could she be that malicious and vindictive?