The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs

by Michael Ciardi

I still leaned the bulk of my weight against the oak tree on Overlook Avenue after I sensed my vision returning again. When the haziness lifted, I immediately scanned the street and surrounding yards for any trace of the custodian’s whereabouts. However, just as before, this elusive janitor evaded my search. I briefly toyed with the idea of hollering for him to come forward, but I never even asked the man for his name. Beyond that embarrassment, I didn’t want to encourage others to scrutinize my advance. Whatever the custodian wanted from me couldn’t be more essential than my primary objective. This journey had taken me to within a hundred paces of my front door, and it was here that I needed to confront Rachel.

  At least the rain had stopped momentarily, and while navigating the unleveled sidewalks toward my house, I heard sparrows twittering in a sapling’s frail branches. If the ravens were still nearby, I cared not to hunt for them. In spite of my drenched clothing, the chill had thawed from my body. The exhilarating warmth that accompanied my footsteps belied the storm clouds’ impact on this late afternoon. My neighborhood appeared brighter than I ever recalled before, almost as if every house on the block received a fresh coat of paint and shingles overnight. Amazingly, the closer I walked to my house, the more vibrant these colors became. My muscles relaxed to a point where I barely felt the dull headache that nagged me almost continuously until this moment. In this short span of time, I abandoned my cruelest thoughts.

  My wife had parked her jeep crookedly in the driveway, indicating some urgency on her part. Maybe she had already driven to the school in a frantic bid to locate me, or perhaps she even ventured to Dr. Pearson’s office to confirm my earlier visit. Either way, I stood motionless in front of a bluestone walkway winding toward my home’s front door. I studied the cracks in the cement that barely bonded this fifty-year-old masonry. I fondly remembered patching this walkway’s joints alongside my father when I was just a boy. Of course, my father wasn’t much of a mason—at least not by trade—but what does a boy of ten know about his father’s limitations? Apparently, he was skilled enough to keep this walkway in the identical condition that I now examined it.

  With my journal tucked securely in one hand, I walked halfway across the bluestone. My stride was purposeful and unbroken. Then, a sudden epiphany seized my mind, causing me to stop abruptly. In spite of everything that I ascertained about my wife today, I couldn’t detest her. In fact, while standing beneath the sky’s billowy shades of gray, I determined that Rachel made me feel like no other woman had managed to do before or since. I never stopped loving her, and perhaps this was the truest crucible for any couple in range of adversity. My hand brushed against the gun hidden under my shirt, and it now occurred to me that this weapon had no function in my forthcoming exchange with Rachel. Murder was not an antidote to any man’s agony.

  I couldn’t harm the woman whom I adored since the first day we met. Why had I even contemplated such an abhorrent deed? In perhaps the clearest action I accomplished in many hours, I pulled the gun from my waistband and held it out in front of myself. No matter how self-indulgent my wife behaved, her wantonness didn’t merit a death sentence. I simultaneously pitched the gun in a spot of tall grass beside the walkway.

  The ripe scents of spring filtered through me, and I was almost positioned like a garden statue at the center of my front yard. A few strands of sunlight escaped the cloud cover, which triggered a diminutive smile to form on my lips. I now realized that it didn’t matter what anyone else thought of me. Even Rachel had to learn to appreciate me for the man I was always afraid to become. Whether or not she wanted to do so remained unverified. At least my wait for the truth was almost over.

  My hesitation hadn’t gone unnoticed. Rachel must’ve observed me from inside our house. By now, I hadn’t even bothered to check on how many of her phone calls I ignored. After she jarred open the front door and studied me from the porch, it seemed as though the barrier between us dissolved in the damp spring air. She was still dressed in her business attire, although no longer wearing her heels. From the distance between us, I distinguished a few teardrops sliding from the corners of her eyes, although I couldn’t be certain what emotion spawned them. I preferred to believe that she was grateful I was still alive.

  Unlike a mawkish encounter in a romantic movie, we didn’t rush into each other’s arms and embrace fervently to demonstrate our affection. Perhaps it was only fitting that we stared at one another in silence for a few seconds, simply to reacquaint ourselves with what we had foolishly abandoned. I wondered how long had it been since we last shared a meaningful gaze? As it was with so many marriages, complacency had dulled our vision. She edged off the porch tentatively, depositing the prints of her bare feet on the cracked bluestone. I held my position firmly, almost as if I waded into a vat of glue from Tillens’ Labeling. As my wife advanced toward me submissively, I noticed something she hadn’t managed to imitate in months. Her eyes didn’t break away from mine; she kept them trained on me as if I was suddenly the only man left in this world. In this moment and place, I finally sensed that I was really home again.

  Although Rachel’s gait was understandably cautious, she remained resolute in her choice to greet me. Only eight feet of winding bluestone separated our paths now. At this range, I noticed she had smeared the majority of makeup from her cheeks. She wore only a hint of raspberry lipstick I so often associated with her visage. With the artificial mask nearly stripped from her flesh, she looked intensely human to me. Ironically, her slight imperfections made her appear more perfect in my eyes. Her flaxen hair, which I relished like sunbeams upon my cheeks, fell in unruly strands across the front of her shoulders, but it was a welcomed explosion of golden rays, untainted in every turn and tangle.

  My wife continued to stare at me as if she had forgotten how I appeared in natural daylight, although I knew that my sickness had altered my face and body considerably at this hour. Maybe she wondered why I held my journal in my hands so tightly at this precise moment. Whatever the source of her silence, I didn’t want to internalize anything remotely negative. It was fair to suggest that we were both reluctant to proceed with what needed to be broached. I waited until she felt obligated to express her motivations.

  “You didn’t answer your phone,” she mumbled. Her voice was absent of any strain of annoyance now. “I…I thought something horrible happened to you.” Rachel brushed another tear from her cheek with a knuckle on her left hand. A glimpse from her diamond wedding ring sparkled against my eye.

  “I guess you know what happened at school, huh?” I remarked.

  “It’s all over the news. I was scared to death that you were somehow involved, Corb.”

  “I’m okay,” I answered with a hint of uncertainty. My eyes then shifted to the gun settled in the tall fescue consuming the front lawn. From Rachel’s vantage point, I wasn’t certain if she’d notice the weapon or not. “I should’ve called you back. I’m sorry for that oversight.”

  “It’s okay,” she murmured. Her voice then trailed off into a frightful whisper. “You don’t look well, and you’re soaked to the bone.”

  It pleased me that she finally recognized the severity of my illness. She must’ve been shocked by my appearance, otherwise I figured she would’ve asked me where I parked my car by now. Instead, she withheld the small talk. “Look, I know it’s been a long day for you. Why don’t you come on inside and get changed into some dry clothes? I’ll make some coffee and we can talk things over.”

  Her suggestion, although well intended, struck me as conventional. “I’d like to stay out here awhile longer,” I proposed. Rachel looked baffled by my choice because of the way I stood shivering in my tracks. Normally, she would’ve expected me to follow her lead into the house without resistance, but I believed we both realized that the days of compliancy on my behalf were past tense. She had little flexibility for exercising any dominance over me now.

  “When you didn’t return my calls,” she admitted, “I phoned Dr. Pearson.”

  “Then I�
�m sure he told you what he informed me.” Since I wasn’t yet fully convinced that Rachel accepted my illness as a legitimate disease, having the prognosis delivered by my doctor relieved me of the burden of this chore.

  “He told me everything,” she sulked. Rachel’s eyes moistened as if her sullenness was scripted on a cue card. But her voice quaked with vibrations of guilt and anguish, which strengthened the sincerity of her forthcoming admission. “I…I can’t believe how horrible I’ve acted toward you. I really had no idea you were so sick.”

  “There’s nothing you could’ve done about it anyway, right?”

  “That’s not true, Corb. I should’ve listened to you. I needed to be there for you like…like…a….”

  “Like a wife?” I finished her thought. She paused again to seemingly contemplate the cruelty she either consciously or subconsciously inflicted upon me over the past several months. Her eyes then dissolved behind a cascade of tears.

  “I’m ashamed of myself,” she groaned. “It makes me cringe to think how poorly I treated you, and you hardly ever complained. God, I don’t even know if you’ll believe me when I tell you how sorry I am for everything that’s happened.”

  “If you’re acting, I’m ready to phone Hollywood. Meryl Streep could always use a successor.” My poorly timed humor was meant to alleviate my own anxiety just as much as Rachel’s sorrow.

  “I never wanted things to turn out like this,” she wept. “I’ve tried to talk to you about what happened so many times, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It sounds so odd to explain right now,” she offered, “but I guess I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “You’re right, Rach. It sounds very strange that you’d think cheating on me would preserve my emotions in the long run.”

  “I…I don’t know what to say, Corb. I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me.”

  Although I was tempted to let Rachel grovel a bit longer, it would’ve been unfair of me to permit her to solely take ownership for our crumbling marriage. I understood that it required two people to create a strong union in any loving relationship, and an equal number to undo it.

  “I stopped by Leon’s house on my way home,” I mentioned almost as an afterthought. I purposely stated this abruptly to monitor my wife’s spontaneous reaction. Her eyes flickered with mild curiosity, but she let me finish my thought. “Peggy was at home, too.”

  “Did he tell you the truth?”

  “Not until he had to.”

  The anxiousness heightened in her voice as she stammered through her next question. “Did…umm…you…tell Peggy?”

  “No.” The brevity of my response triggered a quizzical expression to form on Rachel’s face. She obviously presumed that I wouldn’t have bothered to visit Leon’s house unless I planned to sabotage his marriage in a retaliatory move. Rather than speculate on my motivations, she waited for me to elaborate on the details. “I thought about telling her,” I divulged, “but I didn’t want Peg to remember me as a herald of bad news. So I decided Leon should have the dishonor of explaining his actions. If he can do that, then my business with him is finished.”

  “I guess that’s a noble way to handle this situation,” she said, pouting.

  “There’s nothing noble about it, Rach. No matter what happens from this point forward, I’ve still lost a best friend. But even more hurtful, I’ve lost my ability to trust you.”

  “So what do you want to do now?”

  Rachel’s inquiry was almost too simple, yet it clearly carved to the murky core of this conversation. What did I want to do now? For the better portion of the day, this quandary reverberated in my head. Before delivering a response, however, I still needed to unveil my wife’s unspoken intentions.

  “One thing is certain,” I said. “I didn’t want to come back home today and berate you for having an affair with Leon. But I can’t get one nagging thought out of my head. I want you to tell me exactly what you were planning for in the future.”

  Rachel couldn’t even watch my eyes as she pondered my words. Instead, she directed a flighty stare at a fixed position on the curbside behind me. I hoped she hadn’t noticed the gun, which was at least partially camouflaged by the high grass bordering the walkway. I waited tolerantly for Rachel to collect her thoughts, but I couldn’t regulate her inconsolability. Whatever statement she wished to make was initially incoherent. In the meantime, I observed a crow touching down on the chimney of Cora Hart’s roof. The old lady might’ve insisted it was a raven, but I wasn’t yet convinced. Its irritating caw distracted me momentarily. Finally, when I nearly resorted to repeating my question, Rachel stopped crying and readied her response.

  “I…I don’t have any plans to be with Leon,” she sniveled.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Many things,” she sighed. “I wanted to tell you that it was over between Leon and I earlier this morning. I was so stupid about everything. I built up this fantasy in my mind that he really loved me. I don’t know why I did that.”

  “Because you loved him,” I answered for her. Rachel swallowed and bowed her chin so that the tears trickled down her cheeks and splattered over her crimson-polished toenails. In this instance, I didn’t blame her for averting her gaze. Perhaps there was no task more humiliating than confessing to your spouse that you’ve loved his best friend.

  “I really thought I loved him,” she confessed in one breath of honesty. “And he told me that we were always meant to be together. It’s no secret that I’m a romantic at heart, and he just said all the right things when I needed to hear them.”

  “Who made the very first move?”

  “I…I don’t remember, Corb.”

  “But you must know when you first started having feelings for him.” I pressed harder with my interrogation now, perhaps even caving to the pangs of jealousy that reduced all men to common buffoons. Rachel acknowledged the tension in my voice by extending her fingertips toward my right hand. I wanted to entwine her fingers and sense the warmth of her palm against mine. Such a feeling of security reminded me of our walks around Lake Endelman. But I couldn’t overcome the rigidity in my mannerisms. My hand clamped to my leg as if it was seized by a muscular disorder. Ultimately, Rachel lowered her arm and officially withdrew her invitation for me to touch her hand again. She then resumed her explanation as if governed by a force stronger than us both.

  “We were all at Rounders one night,” she said despondently. “It might’ve started then.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Umm, five or six months, I think.”

  I cringed at the possibility of my wife playing against me with Leon Chase for almost half a year. Why hadn’t I expected anything between them before this morning? I felt a hostile sensation rising like a leviathan to the surface of my skin, but I forced myself to repress this ugliness before it consumed my mind and body.

  “I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” I muttered in disgust. “But now that I think about the timeline, it makes sense. You stopped wanting to make love to me around then.”

  If Rachel could’ve completely tucked her face between her shoulder blades, she might’ve done so at this moment. She seemed to melt in her stance before whimpering, “I’m so sorry, Corb. I got lured into this whole crazy idea that we were drifting in different directions. Leon promised me things I always dreamed about, and I was caught up in the thrill of just running off with him and starting a new life far away from Willows Edge.”

  “And far away from me,” I said tonelessly. “Within the workings of all this frantic energy, Rach, did you ever stop and think about Leon’s family? Peggy had become almost as good a friend to you as I was to Leon. And if that wasn’t enough of a dissuasion, did you even pause once to consider his commitment to his son?”

  “The whole thing is just ridiculous now,” she confessed. “I should’ve realized that Leon was just using me. You know, I even thought about telling Peggy e
verything.”

  “You may still get that chance.”

  “I don’t know if I could ever face her. How do you tell a woman that you were ready to steal her husband?”

  I gathered this chore was no more problematic than informing your husband that he played second fiddle in the orchestra of love. It struck me as unusual that Rachel allowed herself to be outwitted by Leon’s gravitas, but I now suspected she wasn’t the first or last woman who’d find herself in this unenviable predicament. Of course, the deceitful dance practiced between my wife and Leon couldn’t be perfected without two nimble partners.

  “Love can be a very potent drug,” I told her flatly. “Once a syringe full of the heavy stuff gets pumped into your bloodstream, it’s not easy to go back to a lighter dosage later on.”

  “You always had a clever way of summarizing things, Corb.”

  “Not always,” I lamented. “Somewhere along the way, perhaps when I wasn’t even expecting it, I let something vital get lost inside of me. Once I let that go, a huge piece of my confidence followed. If I learned one priceless lesson over the course of this day, Rachel, it’s that when a man stops dreaming, he stops living.”

  The longer two people stayed together, the less frequently they really looked at one another. The type of glances strangers exchanged while passing on a crowded street held about as much significance as Rachel’s attention toward me over the past two years. I waited for a vital time when her eyes truly discovered mine again. She then lifted her chin just far enough so that a glint of her pupils collided with my own. This single expression of innocence belied the nature of her unfaithfulness. Ironically, I viewed her as a genuine woman in these seconds, and our present feelings for one another mattered more than all the failings that ushered us to this standpoint.

  “I never wanted you to stop dreaming,” Rachel whispered. She raised her arm again and dangled her hand in front of me. I watched her fingers tremble slightly, but before she sensed rejection for a second time, I clasped her hand with my own and basked in the fusion of our subdued love. Gradually, our bodies drew together. The barrier keeping us from one another vanished like a fogbank surrendering to sunlight. We held each other in a way that reminded us of a simpler time, a time when obstacles like Leon Chase had no chance to thrust between us.

  Of course it was an unachievable expectation to presume that our troubles would’ve vanished in the harmony of a single embrace. Yet having Rachel nestled against me with her head tilted compassionately on my chest, and my journal cradled between us, rekindled a glimmer of hope that this wasn’t the final curtain for our marriage. I made no attempt to withhold my affection from her as a ploy for punishment. If we were ever going to love one another as we both initially intended, the punitive portion of our romance needed to be eradicated without pretense. For better or worse, I never intended to unwrap myself from this woman’s body or mind again.

  “We can only go forward from here,” I spoke softly into her ear. “I don’t know how much longer I have left to live, Rachel, but if it’s only a month, a week, or a day, I want you beside me.”

  “I will be,” she returned, while gently caressing the back of my head with her hands. “I’ll never leave you, Corb. You won’t ever have to worry about being alone. I promise.”

  Until this point in my day, none of the choices I made averted complications. But at least this one made the other miscalculations less severe. My adoration for Rachel was so absolute that I hardly realized that my watch had slipped from my wrist. Only the crack of the watch’s crystal face against the bluestone caused me to shift my gaze to the timepiece. Through the splinters of broken glass, I saw that it was just after five-thirty. I now contended that the most horrible part of this day had already occurred.

  Chapter 70

  5:38 P.M.