It's Hard on the Man

It’s Hard on the Man

by Eston Valia

“See to it that this child is raised far from my parents and siblings. Keep it from them at all costs and do anything it takes to keep the child safe from them,” panted Mariana before she gave up the ghost. Though Mariana had addressed her husband, into whose arms she had placed the child in her final moments, both her parents were present in the room. On her daughter’s last breath, Joanna Burns fell onto her husband in torrents of tears, full of double the grief she had known in her fifty-two years. “Oh, Charles,” was vaguely intelligible amid her hysterics, “what did she have against us? We were always good to her, we always did our best and she could hardly have found any better.”
“Now darling,” struggled her husband, “she was injured terribly and it must have been terrible for her to go through all of that. She probably only said that in anger. What do you say, son,” turning to Mariana’s husband, “you didn’t take her seriously, did you? You’re not going to put all your energy into distancing us, are you? You can’t, Rick, you can’t!
Richard sat. For a while, he stared into outer space and then bent over, kneading his forehead with his fingers. These fingers eventually found their way to his thick, slightly messy light brown hair, through which they began to run back and forth. Back and forth, back and forth they went till, at length, his blue golf-ball eyes surfaced, slightly red and glistening. “I don’t really know what to do, I’m really sorry,” heaved Richard, “I don’t want to say it but I think she did mean it. She always got angry whenever she talked about you and saw red if you ever came up in conversation.”
“But why?” screamed Joanna, “Did she ever say why? What did we ever do to her? We loved her dearly and we only ever did the best for her. Did she say why her own parents filled her with rage?”
With intense reluctance, Richard carried on. “Yes, quite often. She always said that she was different but you singled her out as the misfit. Your love, as she saw it, was always conditional. You loved her if she looked, moved, spoke and thought the way you wanted her to. If she behaved in any other way, you labelled her as an eccentric, a destined ne’er-do-well, an attention-seeker and a hell-raiser. She was never allowed to act according to her own principles or beliefs. She wasn’t allowed to be happy in circumstances you disapproved of. She basically had to fit your bill perfectly or she wasn’t good enough. Now, I don’t know if that’s all true but every word of it came from her.”
As Richard spoke, Joanna came within shouting distance of composing herself but she lost control again the minute he finished. Even Charles now had a few tears streaming down his cheeks with the occasional, stifled sob. “She didn’t really say all that, please tell me she didn’t, son. For all she gave us grief at times but we were sure she didn’t mean it. She was – she is – our baby and she just couldn’t have said those things and meant them!”
Richard sat in silence. All this was secondary to the fact that he had lost his beloved wife and had their child to raise. How could he fulfil the roles of father and mother? Would he be able to pull it off right? Would it be wrong to accept another woman into his life to help? Poor Richard was only human and needed someone to stand by him in life’s darker moments but he feared that loving another would betray the very special bond he shared with Mariana. More even than that, he was a father and could not play the dating game like a lovesick teenager. His child – and it belonged to no-one else alive – could not grow up with a different mother every so often. Thinking all of this at once, Richard felt like exploding. He would have killed for a solitary hour with Mariana to clear all this up.
Reawakened by his in-laws’ desperate pleading over the child, Richard told them, “Again, I don’t know what to do. I can hardly disrespect my wife’s wishes, can I? But I’ve got to think about the child; the here and now. This particular mess is going to have to wait till we clear up all the things we’ve got to.”
“Well, we’ll be off,” said Charles, “and please, do think long and hard before you cut us off from our grandchild. We’ve nothing else left to remind us of Mariana.” With that, Joanna and Charles left the room sombrely. Sure that he would be alone, Richard threw himself on his wife’s corpse and let down all his emotional barriers. He embraced her as if she were still living, stroking her tenderly, with all the affection that was in him, affection that only she had ever been able to command. Before him was the greatest love he had ever known, that he would never know again. But how could he love someone not even existent any longer? Then again, how could he just flick a switch in his head and turn all these feelings off? He walked over to the baby’s Moses basket, where it now lay, and picked it up. “Well, kid, right now it’s you and me against the world but it’s gonna be fine. I’m not quite sure how but we’ll get through.”
He then put the baby to sleep, relishing every second that it lay in his arms. Even now, he could see that his child bore vague resemblances to its mother… its soft, gentle breathing an echo of hers… that pure and innocent face a mirror of hers… it even reached for him the way she did sometimes. Richard could have – would have – stayed here for ever. Here, he could give and receive all the unconditional love that could be held in outer space and all the evil in the world, all those callous ignoramuses, the meaningless bureaucracy of life in the modern world, would not penetrate this marvellous, blissful bubble… knock-knock. “Come in.”
“Hi.”
“O, hello, Nina. What brings you here?”
“I heard – I was passing through to see Jennifer and Stephanie. I got here as soon as I could. Oh, Rick, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do, just let me know right away and I’ll do all I can.”
“Thank you, Nina, thank you very much. They’ll be coming for the body soon. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to sit with me and the baby till they come and then come over to ours?”
“Of course I will.”
Richard just smiled. The two sat on either side of the baby, looking sometimes at it, sometimes at each other. The body was taken from the room after a few minutes.
Richard got to his feet, yawning, “Coming round to ours?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna be snowed under these next few days. Paperwork left, right and centre.”
“I can imagine.”
They arrived at Richard’s house, where he put the baby to bed and went downstairs to sit just talking to Nina. Like any truly therapeutic conversation, this started out merely as small talk and idle gossip. Soon, however, it progressed to far wider matters; items on the news, opinions on various fashion trends before they finally opened out to one another…
“Jeremy, though, my boss. Sometimes he’s the greatest guy in the world, he’s a real star. Other times, though, you could just strangle him-”
“-I could do that to almost everyone. Not you, certainly not you, but so many of those other horrible, pathetic human beings!”
“I imagine it must be almost impossible for you right now,” said Nina, trying to be gentle but not too sympathetic, “but you’ll get through it in the end. And don’t ever forget that, whenever things get really bad, whenever you hit rock bottom, all of us will be waiting to pick you up, dust you off and get you going again. If you ever fall, we’ll all come running to pick you up.”
“I know that and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to the lot of you but… it’s just that, just that I,” and Richard burst into a wild fit of tears, which made barely intelligible, “I loved her so much and I miss her. What am I gonna do without her? And the baby? I don’t know if I can look after a child on my own.”
“You won’t have to,” said Nina, no longer disguising her deep empathy for her lost friend, “we’re there if you ever need a thing.” With that, Richard threw himself on Nina, thus muffling his roaring sobs. Nina simply embraced him, with true sympathy and affection. Before they knew what they were doing, they kissed. After some clumsy apologies, Nina quickly left, leading Richard to fly into a rage in private. He stormed round the lounge, cursing and screaming. He was enraged. How could he have done this, now of all times? His wife was freshly dead and here he was, making moves on another woman – one of his wife’s best friends at that! What, though, was the use of all this? Originally intending to sit down only to calm himself, Richard abruptly fell asleep on the sofa
…He dreamed at first that he was again with the average-sized, blonde, milk bottle form of Nina. He happily played the tiger, she the prey. The pair played under the vigilant watch of the full moon and the glistening stars, together with the legions of fireflies. In between exploits, they took turns at reciting love poems or filling a cup with water from the flowing stream and offering a drink to one another. The soothing zephyr was interrupted by a short, sharp gust of wind, out of which manifested Mariana. She looked very unlike Richard had ever seen her. She wore antlers and a huge mass of leaves covered in bearskin. He was terrified at the sight of her and feared she had come to punish him. Instead, she just said, “Carry on, for I am gone. As I don’t have to state, I can no longer be your mate. I have moved on and now belong to another world, in which we’ll meet again one day. Till then, love her; you need someone.” With that, Mariana vanished in a flash, after which Richard woke up on his sofa, sweating. That had had a stupefying experience but he felt sure that Mariana had given him permission to love another.
She had not, however, offered resolution to the conflict regarding her dying wish. “Why,” he screamed into himself, “did you not give me any idea of what to do about your family and our baby? Once I get all that rubbish out of the way, I’m gonna have that mountain to move!”
As it was four in the morning, Richard decided to check on the baby, who was hungry. He hadn’t really slept that well; he was still very tired so he gave a call to another friend, asking her to come round to look after the baby for a few hours while he slept. He really needed a decent sleep and he was not at all in the mood for any daytime television.
Beth arrived. With the baby safely in her care, Richard dragged himself to his bed, threw off the clothes he had been wearing for nearly a day and a half and flopped down onto the double bed, immersing himself in the duvet. He soothed himself to sleep, cuddling Mariana’s favourite teddy bear…
…He was again in a forest, this one barren and he alone. The forest had clearly been destroyed by fire and Richard could almost feel the dying agony. Mariana again appeared, this time stumbling out from behind the remains of a tree. She was again radically different from her previous apparition. She was dressed in ragged hemp, red from the blood that stained her skin and matted her hair. Visible all over were fresh and stale wounds. While last time she had stood proud and upright, she now staggered, scarcely able to stand. Richard felt like turning away in horror, but fear rooted him to the ground.
“How… how?” he stammered.
“My mother, my father and their offspring. Each and every one of them hurt me deeply and I retained every grievance, my anger and hatred being nurtured with every addition to the list. With my last breath, I unleashed it all, unaware that it would grieve the innocent man who loved me with all his heart and soul, who loved me as I was when no-one else did and who had not so much as a malicious breath, nor even look, for me. I walked the Path of Departed Souls and, at the end, was confronted by all the grief I had given others. I met the grief of those who had intentionally hurt me, of those who did so inadvertently and of him who sought only ever to do me good. All this grief was released onto me and I felt all that I had made them feel. Even now, I feel what they are feeling because of me. It is through feeling this that I have come to see how terrible my last request was.
“I beg you, therefore, not to keep the child from my family. Despite all, they did love me, I can sense that they really did love me and I mean a lot to them even now. You saw how they behaved just after I went. They could tell I was sincere and it hurt them right in the heart. You must show them that I forgive them. Allow the child into their lives. Heed what I say, act today for blood and scars are a trifle to the anguish that I stifle.”
Mariana was consumed by a burst of purple flame. Richard woke up at midday, still clutching his wife’s teddy bear. Well-rested, though still in considerable shock, he felt ready to face his house, if not the world. He donned his dressing gown and plodded downstairs to meet Beth. Beth, however, was asleep. Well, what can be expected from several hours solid with a newborn? Thankfully, James Thomas, Richard’s best friend and “identical twin” – except that James had slightly darker hair, it was very hard to tell them apart – had come in to offer a hand.
“Jim!” shrieked Richard, “What the… why the… what are you doing here? How did you get in? Not that I don’t want you here, of course I do but how…?”
“As soon as she left, Nina got in touch with me and told me I should come round for a while ’cause you seemed like you were ready to do something rash. I couldn’t get here right away; there was a break-in at the office and it was me had to talk to the police since I locked up. Anyway, once that was over I got here as quick as I could but Beth was here by that time and she said you were sleeping. She looked pretty tired herself so I offered to sit with the baby so she could get a bit of sleep.”
“James, James, James,” sighed Richard with mock exasperation, “not a soul in the world could ask for better friends. I’ve got the best of the bunch.”
“We’re only doing what friends are supposed to.”
“And today I’ve got to do one of the most difficult tasks a widower has to do and it’s not always one he’s supposed to. I’m going to have to phone Mariana’s ma and pa and ask if I can take the baby over.”
“Are you sure about that? Mariana made it clear often enough that she was sick of them and that any child she had wouldn’t be allowed near them. I suppose this is just a decision you’ve got to make.”
“Trust me, Jim, I know she wanted there to be no trace of them in her life but I could just sense at the end that she wanted the baby to know its grandpaents.”
“You know best.”
Beth then woke up and shook her red hair out of her eyes.
“What time is it?”
“Just left one.”
“How’re you getting on, Rick? Sleep well enough?”
“Not slept that well in a long time, thanks.”
There came a knock at the door. It was Mrs. Peters, Richard’s neighbour. “How are you, sir? I must tell you how deeply sorry I am about your wife. Just remember you know where I live if you ever need a thing from us.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Peters. Can I help you with anything?”
“No, thank you very much. I’m sorry, I know this may not be the best time but I found a few things of your wife’s and I’ve brought them back in case you want to keep them.”
Mrs. Peters looked first in her pink fluffy coat pocket. Out of it she took a hairpin – nothing special. Afterward she went into her pink handbag and pulled out a fountain pen. Unremarkable. An old ring. This might suit someone else so he’d keep it for now. “You’ll have to excuse me,” flapped Mrs. Peters, realizing she didn’t have the other things, “could you just wait a moment while I nip back in to get the last few.”
“Certainly.”
Mrs. Peters demurely scurried into her house. Five minutes later, she reappeared holding two books and a large canvas. She handed the first book to Richard, which he opened to reveal a variety of sketches, ranging from their friends to fighting dragons. The second book was sealed. “I think she must have given me this by accident. She didn’t give me the key.”
“I know full well what’s in here. It’s a collection of very personal notes. Thank you, very much, Mrs. Peters, for not opening it.”
Lastly, she handed him the canvas. “She came to me just before she went into hospital and said she was making this. I promised her I’d go take it when she’d finished but never look at it then give it to you if she died.
The painted side of the canvas was shrouded. Richard took off the shroud. He stared. The image was of Mariana and him, locked in embrace. Round them was what would have been a circle except that part had been broken off and bent inward. Otherwise, the scene was much the same as the dream where he had enjoyed Nina, save that the river stopped flowing halfway, only half the moon and even only half the sky existed, trees were only half there. All entities had been only half-completed except for Richard, Mariana and the broken circle around them.
“Was she definitely finished?” asked Richard, starting to grow anxious.
“I assumed so since she said to me that she would call me once she had finished and I did not check since I had promised never to look at it.”
“Wellllll…” contemplated Richard, before an inadvertently curt, “thank you kindly, ma’am.” Knowing that she had served her purpose, Mrs. Peters bade good day to everyone before returning home to prepare for her tea party.
Richard sat down on the sofa and pored over the painting. James and Beth both had the sense to leave the room with the baby. While Richard was stable enough not to have an outburst at thin air, he was still liable to be slightly aggressive when around people so the best thing to do was to leave him to calm down enough to talk to him.
Richard, poor Richard was thrown into confusion of the highest degree. What could this picture mean? Here were the two in perfect yet incomplete bliss. They were all that was whole. Why had she left the rest half complete? Did she mean it had all just been an illusion? Had all the love that passed between them only been imaginary? No! That couldn’t be so, since they had shown night after night that theirs was a deep love that reached the “special place” we often only hear of. Could she have meant that their love would survive all adversity? If so, what was the significance of her appearance in the dream? Then he suddenly understood! It all made perfect sense and fitted together almost too beautifully to be real!
Suddenly ecstatic, Richard sprang to the phone and called his dead wife’s parents. “Hello… Can I bring the baby over tomorrow? About midday? All right, see you tomorrow?”
He then went into the kitchen. He hadn’t eaten in nearly two days! This was completely unnatural to Richard, as was finding Nina in the kitchen with chicken and warm milk prepared.
“Nina!” he exclaimed breathlessly.
“Rick, I erm… came to apologize for last night. It was selfish and irresponsible of me and… and… oh Rick, I don’t know what to say!” she collapsed in his arms, sobbing violently.
Hugging her, Richard pulled up her face and stared her in the eyes, sky blue golf balls like his. “Do you love me?” he whispered gently.
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“How can you ask something like that? I love you, of course I do. You are one of my best friends and someone who clearly needs my love just now but I love you just the same as I have always loved you.”
“You’ve shown you know what I mean. Do you love me enough to take Mariana’s place?”
Though Nina had expected this, she was mortified because the truth was very dangerous. Nevertheless, “Yes. I love you and I have always. There were many times when I was quite jealous of Mariana because I had wanted you for a long time. I never hated Mariana but when I heard she had died I was happy for the chance to offer you support so you might fall for me. But now I feel like scum for thinking like that. I see that you’re not ready for another and you have to devote your life to that child.”
“You’re right,” said Richard so matter-of-factly that Nina was not sure if he thought about to same matter he had seconds ago. “I’m not ready to love someone else the way I did Mariana. But I will love again one day. Mariana saw this coming, she knew that she might die and she left a message telling me to let another into my life when I felt ready. Life’s too short to devote only to memories so I’m going to have to learn to let go of them. Now I have fallen for you a little but it wouldn’t be fair to put you second to a bunch of memories, to love you less than a ghost. This may well freak you out, be warned, but instinct tells me that Mariana has gone on to be consumed by the memories she clung to fanatically.
“Her life became run by the bitter memories she had of family life and I can just tell that, wherever she’s gone, she is being utterly consumed by the bitterness she fostered. All that for nothing more than memories! I can’t get like that but I need time to piece myself together again. If, when I’ve done that, things are right between us, I’m perfectly willing to give it a try with you. As for the child, well, all children need a mother, wouldn’t you say? For now, though, I advise you to live your life for yourself. Enjoy yourself and make the most of what comes your way. Don’t wait for me. You might find another man and, if you do, go with him. If you and I are really meant to be together, we’ll join up after the dust has settled.”
“You’re right. Thank you for understanding and for your wisdom.” Nina kissed Richard’s cheek and left the house.
With Nina gone, Richard returned to the lounge to find Beth and James. “Well?” whispered Beth, “Is anything happening between you and Nina?”
“Beth!” interrupted James, “don’t ask him things like that.”
“It’s fine, Jim, and no, there’s nothing between us at the moment and there probably won’t be for the a while yet, maybe even never.”
The three exchanged good-byes. It was well into the afternoon and Richard saw no sense in getting dressed as he intended to do nothing. He spent the rest of the day traipsing around the house, tending to the baby when necessary. He really amazed himself by managing to sleep yet again, especially as this time there were no unusual dreams.
Richard was up at six o’clock the next morning. Having quite a while to spare before visiting the in-laws, he passed some time in the annoying, tedious bureaucracy that needed done for Mariana. The clock struck ten. Richard put down his pen and began frantically to get ready. Nearly an hour of rushing between his room and the bathroom left Richard almost laughing. Panic ensued again, however, when he realized the baby wouldn’t be infinitely less of a challenge, so to speak. However; the baby was dressed and put into the car. Off they went, arriving, as predicted, presently before noon.
Joanna was moved to tears. “Oh son,” she bawled, embracing him, “I knew you wouldn’t keep our grandchild from us!” Richard just smiled foolishly.
“Please be careful,” he managed to squeeze out, “the baby.”
“Oh, of course.” Richard offered her the infant. She accepted it,
“But what made you decide not to keep away from us?”
“Instinct tells me that Mariana would want it this way.”
“But you heard her.”
“That was then, this is now; then mattered then but now matters now.”