A Life Worth Living

by Lorrie Kruse

  The only good thing about the shower was that the water was hot. The bathroom filled with steam that hung in the air like a London fog. After a while, his resentment loosened its hold. By the end of his shower, he felt much better. Refreshed. Rejuvenated.

  He transferred back into his chair and towel dried his chest and arms. The bedroom door opened. A floorboard outside the bathroom creaked as Crystal walked by. Feeling much more optimistic about life, he realized Crystal would need to shower. He was still mostly wet. Maybe the morning wasn’t a complete loss, after all.

  “Hey, babe,” he called out. “Shower’s all warmed up for you. I can wash your back.”

  “I’m busy.” The coffee machine was already gurgling as it brewed a fresh pot. A cupboard door opened and closed, followed by another door opening and closing.

  So much for salvaging his honeymoon dreams he thought as he loaded his toothbrush with toothpaste. Another cupboard door closed loudly in the kitchen. He shoved the toothbrush in his mouth and then wheeled to the kitchen in time to see Crystal slam another cupboard door.

  “What gives?” he asked as he laid his toothbrush on the counter.

  “Where are the mixing bowls?”

  “Top shelf, far left cupboard, over by the clock.”

  She opened the door and stretched to reach. Her fingers barely brushed the shelf. “Stupid place for mixing bowls.”

  “I never used ‘em, so it seemed the best place for ‘em.”

  “Sure. You’re tall. What would you care?” She dragged a chair over and then pulled down two mixing bowls.

  Water dripped from his hair onto his shoulder and then ran down his back.

  Still standing on the chair, she looked at him. “Are the measuring cups something you don’t use often?”

  “Next cupboard over, top shelf.”

  Another drop of water drizzled down his neck. He grabbed the kitchen towel from the oven bar and rubbed it over his head. Crystal crawled down from the chair in time to see him pull the towel from his head and drop it onto the counter. She glared at the towel and then shifted her gaze to him.

  “What?” He had the urge to back away, but he held his ground.

  “Why do you do that? Why do you drop the towel on the cupboard like that?”

  He picked up the towel and started to hang it on the oven bar. Her horrified look stopped him. “What?”

  “You just used that on your hair.”

  “So? My hair’s clean.”

  She rolled her eyes and gave him a you-can’t-be-that-stupid look.

  “I’ll put it in the hamper, okay?”

  “It won’t dry out in the hamper. Hang it on the towel bar in the bathroom.” She turned around, pulled out a drawer, and then pushed it back in with a thud.

  “Now what’cha looking for?”

  “Measuring spoons.”

  “Why don’t we make breakfast together? You tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.” The idea was perfect. A way to give them that together time he wanted.

  She shoved her fists on her hips. “Why? You think I can’t make pancakes on my own?”

  He held up his hands. “I just thought we could do something together. You don’t want my help. Fine. I’m out of here.”

  “Ma…att.”

  He shook his head and wheeled from the room. In the bathroom, he stared at the faint reflection of himself in the steamy mirror while he tried to shake off his anger before it could take root. This wasn’t how marriage was supposed to be. She was driving him crazy. Up one minute. Down the next.

  “I’m sorry, Matt,” Crystal said from the bathroom door. “I wanted to surprise you, but I couldn’t find anything I needed. I guess it’ll take time getting used to your kitchen.”

  He turned his wheelchair toward her. “It’s not my kitchen. It’s yours. You move the stuff so it’s where you want it, okay?”

  She nodded.

  He opened his arms, hoping she’d curl up on his lap.

  She took a step back. “I need to get back to breakfast or it’ll be lunchtime before we eat.”

  An empty hole opened inside him as he watched her walk away. Give it time. All new marriages have to go through an adjustment phase. Even those without a wheelchair.

  She’d barely left when she came back.

  Decided you want to cuddle after all, huh? He spread his arms and grinned.

  She plopped his toothbrush down on the edge of the sink and then stalked off. From the hallway he heard, “And he wonders why he can’t ever find anything.”

  He dropped his arms to his side. His fingers curled into fists as he stared at the empty doorway. If I die when I’m seventy-six, then I only have to make it through eighteen thousand two hundred and forty-three more mornings with her.

  §

  “We should do something,” Crystal said a few hours later after the breakfast dishes had been washed and put away. She shifted her position on the couch, pulling her legs from beneath her. “Go out. Have some fun.”

  Matt thought about the massage oil and wiggled his eyebrows. “We can stay here and have some fun. Finish what you started last night.”

  “Ma…att.” She made a face like he’d asked her to do a strip tease on Main Street. “It’s not even noon yet.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Think of something else.”

  “We could play a board game.”

  “Sure. Or we could pluck all the hair on my legs. Then I won’t have to shave tomorrow.”

  “Well, what do you want to do, Ms. Smartypants?”

  “We could go shopping.” She smiled. “That sounds like fun.”

  “I’d rather you pluck all the hair on my legs.”

  A vehicle pulled into the driveway. Crystal’s eyes narrowed slightly below arched eyebrows. “Company?”

  Matt shrugged. The visitor traffic had decreased to a trickle over the last two weeks. He wheeled to the kitchen just as footsteps sounded on the deck. His father. Through the window, Matt saw Brad and Derrick sitting in his father’s truck. Exhaust curled out of the tailpipe. A stop in between jobsites.

  “Forget where Mr. Jones lives?” Matt asked as he held open the door.

  “Came to bring you this.” His father set a stuffed three ring binder on the table. The project book. Pages stuck out of it at haphazard angles.

  Matt leafed through the book. Only about a fifth of the pages had actually been fastened into the binder. The rest had been shoved inside in what appeared to be a random order. “Gee. Thanks. Crystal and I were trying to figure out how to entertain ourselves. You just solved that problem. For about the next month.”

  “You’re lucky the pages are with the book. It’s been a hectic couple of months.”

  Matt easily read between the lines. Hectic couple of months as three men did the work of four. The disorganized binder was Matt’s penance for taking an unplanned, extended vacation.

  “And if I don’t want it to get worse,” his father said, “I’ve got to go.”

  “Thanks for stopping by.” Matt swung the door closed. He leafed through the first couple of disorganized pages and sighed. “Thanks a lot.”

  Crystal came and stood in the doorway. “What’d your father want?”

  “To ruin my life.”

  She looked at the binder, raised an eyebrow, and sighed. “Can you handle being on your own for an hour?”

  “Do I look like a baby?”

  She closed her eyes. Her mouth turned tight. Counting to ten, he guessed. Apparently, it took a lot of patience to deal with him. As he watched her for those ten seconds, he wondered why he was with her. Because there were times when he really didn’t like her. Then, when the ten seconds were up and she opened her eyes and the tightness disappeared, she looked like the woman he’d fallen in love with, so beautiful with her hair done up just right and her makeup so expertly applied. Right at that moment, he couldn’t imagine ever being without her.

  “I don’t have to work on the project book right now.”<
br />
  “From the looks of it, you’re going to need every spare second of the next century to get that thing back in order.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’m going shopping. Call my cell if you need me.”

  She slid her leather jacket on over her fuchsia silk blouse and grabbed the expensive purse that’d cost more than he made in a week. With a wave, she left him all alone with his father’s mess to clean up.

  “I’d rather go shopping,” he mumbled as he listened to her car start up.

  For the next hour, he worked on the first step—organizing the pages, grouping them by project. They had a contract on a garage build, cabinet installation, window replacement, installing a new roof, and a re-siding project. And those were just the big jobs. There was a one-room painting job, a replacement of a sidewalk, adding a railing to a porch, and putting in wood flooring in a den. None of this included whatever projects they were working on today that might take them through the coming week.

  Eliminating the unknown jobs the guys were currently working, he quickly calculated how many man hours it’d take for three men to complete the projects. Unless they worked sun up to sun down, there was no way they’d get it all done before the group home build started.

  They had to go into the group home project with a clean slate.

  Even if Matt had the energy to go back to work, he couldn’t physically do enough of the work to make a dent in it.

  He closed his eyes and buried his fingers in his hair. Somehow, he had to figure out a way to get his father to hire someone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Matt wheeled over to the weights that had been brought down to the bedroom. Eighteen thousand two hundred and thirty-two, he thought as he listened to Crystal moving around in the bathroom, although that number didn’t seem as frightening as it had a week and a half ago. All he had to do was keep in mind that she wasn’t a morning person, that’s all. Keep that in mind and they’d be just fine.

  The blow dryer started up. He pictured her standing in front of the sink wearing close to nothing, just two scraps of light pink satin. Catching her in just her bra and panties made the morning mood swings almost bearable. Catching her in just her bra and panties at night though, that was even better.

  “Yeah, right,” he muttered as he pulled on the weights. The body oil had come out only once since she’d bought it.

  He knew there was more to marriage than sex, but it’d been over a month. Five long, sexually stagnant weeks.

  May as well concentrate on something more encouraging. Like Huntz & Sons Construction’s backlog of work. They were supposed to start the group home today, but the little jobs were still not finished. If only he could be of more help than keeping the project book in order, doling out the jobs, ordering the materials, and placating the homeowners who were getting restless.

  If only his legs would cooperate and start working again. He was on page eighty of the Internet listings, and he still had yet to find anything useful.

  The blow dryer went silent. A moment later, Crystal came into the bedroom looking like a Victoria’s Secret model. Her gaze fell on him for the briefest of moments as she walked toward the closet. There was something cruel about living with a woman who looked that hot but didn’t care about sex.

  He tightened his jaw and tugged on the weights. It wasn’t sex she had a problem with, at least she never used to. What he couldn’t figure out was if it was his useless legs that freaked her out? Or was it him?

  “I don’t know how you can work out so early in the morning,” she said. “It’s all I can do to get up enough energy to take a shower.”

  “I’m used to being at a jobsite already.” Thinking of their unfinished jobs, he wondered how impossible it’d be to put in a porch railing while being confined to a wheelchair.

  She turned around and pulled a floral dress over her head. “The point is, you’re not at a jobsite. You could be sleeping.”

  “Other than my internal alarm going off at five and my not being able to fall back to sleep.” He could mix the cement for the sidewalk, but there was no way he could dig up and remove the old cement.

  She leaned against the wall, her gaze burning into him as he worked the weights. A hint of a smile formed, apparently liking what she saw, which gave him an idea. Tonight, when she got home from work, this was where she’d find him. With any luck, his sexual dry spell would come to an end. If he couldn’t be a success in the workforce then be a success in bed, right?

  “Speaking of jobsites,” she said, “if you have enough energy to lift weights at seven-thirty in the morning, don’t you think you’re strong enough to go back to work?”

  He yanked harder on the weights. “You sound like my father.”

  “You won’t know what you’re capable of doing if you don’t try.”

  He let go of the ropes and the weights fell with a clang. “Yeah, I do. I would love nothing more than to be back at work, but I know there’s nothing I can do.” Nothing useful, anyhow.

  She shook her head and sighed deeply. “You’re so damn bullheaded.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wish you’d just try, honey. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Anything you can do at the jobsite is going to help your father more than you sitting on the damn computer all day looking for miracles that belong to other people.”

  He tightened his jaw and stared through her. Eighteen thousand two hundred and thirty-two.

  She sighed again. “I’m sorry, Matt. I told myself I wasn’t going to nag you about the computer, but I just can’t help myself.” She came closer and knelt before him. “It hurts to see you like this, that’s all.”

  He focused in on her again. “If I never walk again, so be it. But what if there’s some crazy treatment that can fix this? What if the answer is out there on the Internet and all it’d take is one more day’s search to find it? I can’t give up, not if it means I could be a real, honest-to-God help to my father again.”

  She stood and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’m going to be late for work.”

  He listened to her make her way through the house, pausing in the kitchen long enough to gather up her purse and lunch and to slip into her shoes. The imprint of her kiss clung to his cheek. Was this really what married life was supposed to be like? A kiss on the cheek without so much as a goodbye or a have-a-nice-day or an I love you from either of them?

  She hadn’t left yet. It wasn’t too late. He navigated the wheelchair through the bedroom as quickly as he could and then raced down the short expanse of hallway to the kitchen. She stood by the counter with her left arm wrapped around her waist and her right hand pressed to her mouth. Her cheeks glistened. Seeing her like that made his chest ache.

  “I’ll stop searching, babe. If it means that much to you I’ll stop.”

  Without looking his way, she brushed her fingers across her cheeks. “I have to go.” She grabbed her purse strap and the bag with her lunch and then turned for the door.

  “I love you,” he said just as she reached the door.

  She paused.

  Turn around, babe. Turn around and say you love me, too.

  She nodded and then pulled open the door. His chest ached with each breath as he listened to her footsteps on the deck. Why are we even pretending? he wondered as her car door opened and then closed. A second later the engine fired to life. He heard her little Honda CRX back down the driveway. And then she was gone. For just a second, he wished she’d never come back.

  §

  It had been easy to avoid the computer. After Matt finished up his half hour on the weights, he showered. Then, his mother and Kaylee arrived, and they all had breakfast. He took Kaylee for a walk while his mother did the dishes. After his outpatient therapy session, he worked on the project book, looking for any smidgen of work he could do to help on any of the projects. He’d come up empty.

  Now, he sat with Kaylee in front of the TV where a cucumber dressed as a superhero cried out, “I am that h
ero.” The first time he saw Larry Boy and the Bad Apple, he thought it was cute. Somewhere over the last month of daily viewings, however, it’d lost it’s charm.

  “Wouldn’t you rather watch Little Mermaid?” he asked, fully aware that right now his father, Brad, and Derrick were doing important work. He envisioned them sawing the two by fours, laying out the walls, hammering together the framework. He should be there, too, wielding his hammer.

  “Lawwy Boy,” Kaylee insisted, turning up her nose at his suggestion of changing movies.

  Matt crossed his arms, something Larry Boy couldn’t do since he had no arms, which made it really amazing that he was a super hero. He wondered if good ol’ Larry Boy had Googled Armless Super Hero Stunts. Maybe that’s what he needed to do. Google Legless Super Construction Stunts.

  Kaylee laid her head on the arm of the couch and popped her thumb in her mouth. She blinked. He gave her five minutes before she fell asleep. Then, he could have the TV to himself. As if soap operas were any better than the twentieth viewing of Larry Boy.

  Kaylee’s little eyes were soon shut tight. Didn’t even take the five minutes Matt had given her. He wished he could crawl onto the couch and take a nap with her, but he wasn’t the least bit tired. Which only gave him more time to be bored. More time to be aware of how helpful he was to his father. More time to wonder if just one more day’s Internet search would lead him to the cure he sought.

  He felt the pull of the computer. Didn’t mean he had to look for miracles. He could play Spider Solitaire. Or maybe he could look for a cheap used car. He couldn’t expect his mom to keep on running him everywhere he had to go.

  The guys would arrive soon for lunch, but he still had time to run a few searches.

  Leaving Larry Boy to his super hero stunts, Matt wheeled over to the computer and logged on. He typed in used cars, central Wisconsin and then wondered why he was looking for a car. He was never alone long enough to need to go anywhere by himself. He backspaced and stared at the blinking cursor, acknowledging the true reason he’d logged on to the computer. He’d promised.