The Wait

by Frank Turner Hollon

  Samantha watched me put the photograph in the suitcase. She let me walk out the door to fly to California to see my daughter in the hospital, without a kiss goodbye. Without putting her arms around me and telling me everything would be all right. Even if it wasn’t going to be all right. Even if it was going to be bad.

  I stepped inside one door of the waiting room just as the doctor stepped in the other. Kate and her old husband, Russell Enslow, stood. There was no one else in the small room. The doctor explained he believed it was pancreatitis. Rare in young people. The pancreas becomes inflamed, shuts down, wreaks havoc on the body. There would be more tests. It was a very serious situation. Gretchen was asking for her mother. The doctor took Kate with him, leaving me and Russell Enslow alone in the small waiting area.

  I’d spent the last eight hours in airports and taxicabs. I could smell myself. The smell of self-pity and body odor. I hadn’t spoken a word, just walked up in time to hear the explanation from the doctor. I sat down across from Russell Enslow. We’d never had a conversation. Not one. We’d passed each other in the hallway of the courthouse seventeen years earlier. He answered the phone sometimes and handed it off to Gretchen. But no conversation. I knew nothing about the man, and all he knew about me was the venom he’d heard spewed from Kate’s mouth. He probably thought I smelled bad all the time.

  We nodded to each other. There was no real anticipated relief. Kate’s return might ease his anxiety, but not mine. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. It was hard to believe earlier in the day I was sitting in my office with Frank Rush, a gun between us, and now I sat in a hospital waiting across from Russell Enslow, nothing between us except a coffee table covered in old magazines.

  I was exhausted. All of it, Eddie in jail, the gun, the fat lady in the lobby, Samantha’s indifference, pancreatitis, all of it on the same day. Just another seemingly random day empty on the calendar where circumstances converge and take the wheel of your life out of your hands, the feeling of falling, free-falling into the future.

  I let my head go back on the chair. I let my eyes close. The sound of pages of a magazine turned by Mr. Russell Enslow created the only sound I could hear, until he spoke.

  “My wife is in love with you,” is what he said.

  I thought I must have dreamed it. Could he have said anything less expected? Maybe, “Do you mind if I take a dump on the carpet?” or, “My left ear is on fire.”

  I swear to God I thought I dreamed it, maybe I’d dozed off, and without actually seeing Mr. Enslow in my dream, heard him speak. But when I opened my eyes, the man was looking at me, and I knew it wasn’t a dream. He was angry, not because he said what he said out loud, but because it was true, and looking at me half-asleep on the other side of the coffee table, he just couldn’t figure it out.

  “What did you say?” I asked, just in case.

  He spoke succinctly, “My wife, Kate, is in love with you.”

  We were in full-disconnect. I began to wonder if I was having one of my episodes, but even weirder than ususal, seeing a world that didn’t exist instead of just seeing the real world though another set of eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Believe me, neither do I, but our lack of understanding doesn’t change the fact.”

  He appeared resigned to the situation, like years had passed since he found it out and surrendered to the knowledge.

  “I’m married,” I said.

  “No shit,” he said. “Me too.”

  It was no place to laugh. There was a strange comraderie. We were in it together, destined to share equally in the misery, both free-falling through the experience, no more in control than a butterfly in a storm.

  We looked at each other for a long time. Me at him, and him at me. Russell Enslow was in his fifties, well-dressed, not overly handsome, but not ugly either. He had a slight paunch under his shirt and a sureness I never had, not even in my best moments.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” I said.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. I thought you’d know. I’m not unhappy. I love Gretchen. I’m excited about her going off to college in a few months. Kate respects me. She appreciates what I provide, financially and as a father. You’d think it would be horrible to share your home with a woman who is in love with someone else, but it isn’t so bad. I’d rather be me than you.”

  I wanted to stand up and punch him in his little head, but maybe he was right. Our first conversation hadn’t really helped me in any way. There was a youthful excitement to it all, but I had a wife, and a young man at home who needed me, maybe more than anyone else in the world. Eddie Miller was in jail for a murder I committed, and I had an office covered in framed certificates and fancy plaques. Even if Russell Enslow was correct, and I couldn’t imagine why he’d lie about such a thing, what would it mean in real life? It was all some crazy crap the world conspired to place on my doorstep at exactly the wrong moment, as if there would ever be a right moment.

  Kate came to the door. Russell and I stood.

  From across the room Kate said, “They think she’s going to be okay.”

  “Thank God,” Russell said.

  Kate seemed to be looking at a spot between me and her husband, some comfortable middle ground with no eye contact. Maybe the fictional place she envisioned we should all come together in our concern over Gretchen.

  “She wants to see you,” she said.

  I turned my body toward the door.

  “No,” Kate said, still looking at no one, “She asked for Russell.”

  He looked at me, but I saw no spite or satisfaction in his face. It just was what it was, no matter who was at fault. Right and wrong, good and bad, have no place in the present. They exist in the past and in the future, to be predicted and judged. Different-colored highways on a map leading to some seemingly random day on the calendar, like the day where I stood in the place where I stood waiting like the butterfly waits for the storm to blow itself out.

  Later, when I was alone in the room, I rooted my hand around through the clothes in my bag until I found my father’s picture. I could see Gretchen in his face. Very clearly I could see her outline superimposed upon my father, two people a generation apart. Never allowed to be in the same room together, connected only by me.

  three

  I’ve always had a real need for permanency. A fundamental clinging demand for believing the idea that some things are forever, set in timeless stone, dependable certainties. Maybe it’s a human characteristic, or maybe it’s only a characteristic of me. The difference is difficult to distinguish sometimes.

  It might derive from the shake-up of my father’s death and the blunt-force realization at age eleven of the eventual loss of all things. It’s a complicated concept, and even more complicated to overcome. The constant need to rotate around something permanent. Another person, a job, the vows of marriage, even the certainty of the arrival of the Sunday morning paper.

  It wasn’t until I was able to break through the idea of permanency, set it aside and see the world as it is, every minute changing, evolving, temporary, unable to make or keep a promise for tomorrow, that I set myself free. Unfortunately, the cost of this freedom became a prepossession with suicide. The idea of it. The balance. The reasons for and against. The manner of the deed. Not for attention, nor for the purpose of some grand statement to the world, but to be dead, at ease.

  Maybe suicide, and the idea of it, was my mind’s attempt at replacing the concept of permanency. When all else seemed beyond anyone’s control, maybe my mind clung to the idea that at least I could control how long I remained.

  They say thoughts of suicide are supposedly symptoms of mental illness, but I didn’t feel mentally ill. I doubt seriously I suddenly suffered a rapid chemical imbalance. It wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction, an impulse to run outside and hang myself from the nearest tree. Instead, it came as a coldness, a vague narrowing of reason, and the idea, like a billowing white cloud, slowly took shape, and the
n began to flow from day-to-day virtually the rest of my entire life.

  My mother was out of town and asked me to stop by her house and water the plants. It was a good chance to climb up in her attic and look for those baseball cards I’d been telling Allen about. I found a box in a wooden chest, and opening the box of baseball cards was the closest thing to actually going back in time. The smell. Bent corners I remembered. Batting averages I’d memorized, with the numbers so ingrained in my memory they came back instantly, like addresses or phone numbers of childhood homes.

  I took the box and started to close the top of the wooden chest, but something made me stop. There was a small bundle of paper. Letters and envelopes, yellowed and held together with a rubber band, in the corner of the chest. I sat down under the hanging attic lightbulb and began to read.

  They were letters from my mother to another man, and from the man back to my mother. His name was Bruce. The postmarks on the envelopes told me they were sent and received before my parents were married, before the night Bobby Winters was shot in the head outside the window of my conception.

  He loved her, and he told her so in the words of the handwritten letters. And she told him how she thought about him all the time and wondered what her life would be like with him. There was a photograph of them standing together in front of a house I didn’t recognize. He was a big man, much bigger than my father. His arm was around my mother’s shoulder and she was looking up at him with a smile I’d never seen on her before.

  I started to read another letter, a long one, and stopped. We never really know our parents, the events that shaped them before we were born. The first kiss. The first person they ever loved who didn’t love them back. The choices they regret, and can’t change, because time has pushed them beyond the chance to go back.

  And so it goes that Gretchen and Allen will never really know me. They will know what they see of me, those parts shown, but not the rest. Because I couldn’t tell them about the night that I sat staring at Kate passed out in the backseat of the car, or how good it felt to beat the man on the mattress into a bloody mess, or my fear of becoming my mother, or the idea I had yesterday morning of swimming out into the ocean, putting a gun in my mouth, and floating slowly away. And they wouldn’t want to know those things anyway, just like I didn’t want to know about Bruce, or the letters my mother kept, or the smile in the picture.

  I was becoming more like my mother, and it was hard to decide how I felt about it, mostly because it appeared her detachment was based on fear instead of strength. And learning this fact removed yet another delusion of permanence. My mother was getting older. Her mortality was becoming clearer to us both, and it didn’t seem to sit well with either one of us, for different reasons of course. She would never remarry, and we both knew that. Not Bruce or anyone else. She would hold bitterness for me, choosing to lay the blame on me for Gretchen being so far away. And I would accept the blame, the guilt so thick between us it sometimes seemed visible, like a fogbank.

  Gretchen’s illness got better, and my relationship with Allen continued to grow. We spent an entire week together looking for a car for him. He was genuinely a good kid, growing up, ready to become a man. He fought with his mother on occasion, and she expected me to be the disciplinarian. I walked the line between best friend and stepfather, and I must say I walked it well. We avoided using the “step” word whenever possible. I introduced him as my boy, and he was truly my boy, with the hint of something unseen nearby. I couldn’t describe it, but Allen Kilborn Sr. still occupied a place inside our home, our lives. We never spoke of him, Samantha and Allen Jr. avoiding the subject in my presence. I imagine they spoke of the man when I wasn’t around.

  My relationship with Samantha reached a routine oddness. We seemed almost uncomfortable around each other, but so dependent the oddness was endurable, inevitable. It was a constant struggle of miscommunication and unfulfilled expectations mixed with reliability, trust, and commitment. It occurred to me I might be entering a phase in a long-term relationship I’d never entered before. The leveling off I’ve spoken of. An apparent profound compromise, but without effect. Expectations settled like an old dog going round and round, coming to rest on the same comfortable pillow. There would be no more nights of unashamed passion. There would be no more flutter in the chest at the sight of her in the backyard planting flowers. But so what? I thought. Until the letter arrived.

  It came to the office. The stack of mail was left on my desk. Maybe a dozen envelopes. There was one different than the others. Handwritten. I recognized the handwriting before I saw the name on the left-hand corner. Kate Enslow.

  She hadn’t written me a letter since the day she left. Not so much as a note. I held the envelope in my hands. If there was something the matter with Gretchen, Kate would have called like before. I remembered Russell Enslow saying the things he said in the waiting room at the hospital. I remembered Gretchen telling me they slept in separate rooms. I turned the envelope around and held it to my nose. There was no smell. No words written on the back. There was nothing to do except open it.

  Early,

  How are you?

  I know it must have been strange to see this letter mixed with your business mail. I’m not very good at explaining myself. I just felt like writing you a letter.

  Last night I found a shoebox on the top shelf in the storage closet with pictures of you and me. I knew it was in the house somewhere, but I hadn’t been able to find it for the longest time. Getting older is different than I thought it would be. Watching Gretchen leave for college was harder than I imagined. But I didn’t cry, which is hard to believe. I cry now at the drop of a hat. I sat down in the closet and looked at the pictures. I could hear you and feel your touch, but then it was time to put you back in the box. I left a little crack in the top.

  Kate

  I read the letter. Then I read it again. And again. I’m not sure what I thought I’d see different each time, but there was so much to see. So much to think about. All those many years had passed, but one letter, written by her hand, could still tie me up in knots.

  I hid the letter in my file cabinet, in a file I knew no one would look for. The next day I pulled it out to read again. It took a lot for her to do it. As much or more as it would have taken for me to sit down with pen and paper. Write the words. Fold the letter. Address and stamp the envelope. Put the letter in the envelope. And finally, drop it in the mail. Each part of the process as difficult to finish as the one before. More than enough time between each level to throw it in the trash. Reconsider. But she didn’t. She finished every step, and now she knew I held the short letter in my hands. And undoubtedly she understood what it did to me.

  She’d been looking for the pictures of us in her house. The feelings were strong enough to hear my voice and feel my touch, or at least to say she did in writing, which was equally amazing. And the part about the crack left in the top of the box. Just a little space for the possibilities to breathe. But I told myself, “She’s going through a down time. Getting close to forty years old. Mid-life crisis. Her only child leaving the nest. A lull in her marriage, discontent.”

  It’s easy to remember only the good things. It’s easy to toy with the idea the grass is greener, and maybe life would have been different. Just like my mother, and Bruce, and the letters she kept in the chest in her attic.

  Days passed. I felt guilty around Samantha for something I hadn’t even done. At the baseball game, watching Allen, I knew I’d never leave him, no matter what. It wouldn’t make any difference if Kate showed up at the front door and delivered the letter herself.

  I agonized over what to do. Write back? Don’t write back? Pretend I never got the letter? But I ultimately couldn’t do it to her. I imagined Kate going out to the mailbox each day. Worried she’d done the wrong thing. Full of regret one minute and the next minute wishing for my response to arrive.

  Dear Kate,

  I got your letter. It was a surprise, but a good


  surprise.

  Seeing your name in the corner of the envelope on my desk made me smile. Like we used to smile a long time ago. I wish you’d send me copies of those pictures. Somehow I didn’t end up with any. It would be nice to remember, and have my own box, with a crack left in the top.

  You’re right. Getting older is different than I thought.

  Early

  I sent it four days after I received hers. Not too eager, but also not purposefully cruel.

  My letter made no promises, but at the same time, invited a response. A chance to see another one of her letters, handwritten, in my stack of boring business mail on the desk. A chance to let my imagination run wild on Kate Shepherd, and be back in my apartment in college, and see all those imagined moments in high school, but still remain totally under control. Letters were one thing. Calls or meetings were altogether something else. I would control the situation this time. I would decide the rules. The next day I threw her letter away, and wished to God I’d never sent my own. What if Russell Enslow got the mail? What if Kate called the house and told Samantha she loved me, and that I loved her, and we were gonna be like those crazy-ass people who leave their husbands and wives for each other out in Hollywood ?

  It was upheaval, but pleasant upheaval. I would keep her inside my mind where she belonged. At least that’s what I told myself.

  four

  I read somewhere that not a single cell in our bodies is the same as the cells contained inside us at birth. Our bodies are constantly regenerating and replacing old cells, and so, technically, we are completely different people than the day we were born. If this is true, and I believe it is, who are we? Are we strangers to ourselves? Is it just our invisible souls holding us on a certain track of identity until we die?

  The call came from the hospital. “Mr. Winwood, this is Sherilyn McNally. I’m a nurse. It might be a good time for you to come down and see your mother. She’s asking for you.”