It was as if for the first time she was seeing this skinny child, her fifty nine years old husband. Why was he unloved? Why was she unloved? She walked to the door and left the room as abruptly as she could. She needed to get away for awhile. She needed unaffected air, she needed to see the wild flowers she had seen with Melisa, going to her sister's in Canton, even though in July they were all dead. She needed to see the blue sky, as blue as it could be without the interference of any cloud. She felt suffocated in that house. Walls seemed coming together to chock her. She went back to the room. Joseph's eyes were still fixed on the ceiling.
"I need to get out for a minute. Are you going to be okay?"
His eyes moved but not his face: " I understand. I'll be fine." He stammered.
Anna picked up her car key and her purse and ran outside. There was nothing close by to give her that sense of freedom she was yearning for; freedom from all these responsibilities, chains, and strangulation. Everything around was man- made, streets, lights, houses, even a man- made lake not that far. She needed to be with a naked nature, a pure nature that no man ever had the power to touch it; and that required driving far, very far, out to the country. But how could she do that? The thought of running away entered her mind; but no, no, she was to do her duty until the last second of her last breath. She should go back to Joseph, her sick, dying, and demanding husband. She thought what she had conquered in her life was the darkness made by open arms of God; silence which was not solitude but a hush holding its breath. Torn between flying off, going away, disappearing, and returning home to her dying Joseph, she finally decided to just drive around the neighborhood for awhile.
Some small children in a park not far from her home, were playing. Some mothers were running after them. An ice cream truck driver was engaged selling ice cream to some of those children. Life everywhere seemed normal. She wished to stop and talk to those people about her life and tell them what she was about to do tomorrow morning. She recalled a conversation she had with Mary, her old friend, the other day. Mary was suspicious. She was insisting that Anna would take Joseph to hospital. She was just acting like a mother that Anna wanted her to be for her. At one point of their conversation she said: "You know you need to absorb the color of life, but never remember its detail; because details are always boring." She did not tell Mary that she did not understand her at the time, but now she knew what Mary was saying to her. Yes, she was intense; Mary was right. Being honorable, as her father had taught her, now was there to haunt her. "You gave your word to me." Joseph had reminded her of that so many times that if she would hear it one more time, she perhaps would scream. She parked the car, turned off the engine, and brought the window down. She wanted to hear the sound of life, the simple ones and the complicated ones. However the sound of life there was all simple. Mothers calling their children, "Don't run, be careful, oh, it's okay, Let me kiss it and make it better..." She never had any of these simple things. Her life had been one intensity after another one. She envisioned tomorrow and the day after that, and the next... She envisioned Mary visiting her in prison. " Tell me what you've done. I would rather know the painful truth than imagine it." That was Mary; how she talked, or acted, blunt, to the point, but kind, kind, ... She thought about calling her. But on the second thought, "no, I can't do this to her." Her daughter just had a baby; and she was staying with her. She started the engine. Sweat was running down her back. She turned the air condition on as high as it could go; and its murmuring sound distracted her for a moment.
In the next street, there was a grocery store she always shopped. The parking lot was full with cars. Everywhere she looked, life appeared normal. She wondered if any of these people knew her pain or any of them had any pain of some sort; and if they did, why the acted so normal. She studied herself. Was she acting normal? Could people tell what she was going through?
The dusk was opening its wing over the vast sky, and the sun looked like a globe of fire. It was a lovely scene. The globe of fire stretched its wings all around with color of orange and purple and .... She would be back home in ten minutes. She knew herself well. She was not the type to run away. She had never run away. She had always faced the problems straight and forward. She sat in the car in front of her home for unknown time, pondering about tomorrow. What would be like for her tomorrow? Would she survive; and if she would how? How would she live? Would she be a widow again for the second time at age forty seven?
Tomorrow would be a new day or new misery! Would it be easy or heartbreaking? Her poor children were all gone, whom she loved as their were really hers. She loved her jobs with its miseries and its happiness. When a child was cured and was going home, she always was static. When a child dyed of his or her disease, a part of her dyed, too. She remembered her brother, Aria, Steve, her father, mother, and Stacy, oh, Stacy. They were all her children. Now this last unruly child, Joseph, this skinny, unsightly man, whom she adored, who wanted too much and he would sit still and was hard to make him listen. Was he the last she could love? Would he be gone tomorrow? What a great price she had paid for love all her life! She could and would not break her promise; and what was the sense of breaking it? No mother wanted to see her child in that much misery, pain, and close to death for two years! No, she had to, she should; that was the right thing to do. That would be the value she put on her love for him. But would she be able to love again? Would she be able to work again? Would she be prosecuted for speeding her husband's death? She called it mercy killing. She did not know the answer of any these, and at this point it did not matter. She did not want the sympathy of others. She had come to this world all alone, emigrated to America all alone; and now she would endure and face all the consequences all alone, too. But being lonely again! Oh, how awful it was to be forlorn, abandoned. If she could just turn the wheel of her fortune or undo everything! No, It would not work that way. Life never worked that way. You never get a second Chance. History books were filled with dead people. She would be dead one day, too; but her name would not be in any history book. What a shame! The names like Khomeini, Hitler, who had slain so many innocent people were in those books; and historians would write about more corrupt leaders to come in future, more dictators, more blood suckers who would do anything for money and power; but never the name of the uncorrupted, ordinary people. Why was it like that?
To Be Continued
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