Authors: Elyse Douglas
I shrank in defeat and injury. We didn’t move for minutes. We hardly breathed.
Rita finally rose to her feet, still staring at the hot line of sky and trees and the glare of sunlight on the pond. “I’ve failed you, Alan James. I’ve failed myself.”
“No, no, Rita,” I said, quietly. “No, you haven’t. You haven’t failed anybody.”
She began to pace. “God is punishing me. No more kids, Rita Fitzgerald Palmer. You didn’t protect your first. You killed your second with resentment and anger at your husband. You refused him your love and your body. You pushed him away when he came for you, needed you and wanted you, because he disgusted you with his weakness and his constant whining about how life had treated him so unfairly.
“‘If I hadn’t destroyed my knee, Rita, I would have made pro. If Dad hadn’t drunk up all the money, Rita, we would have had so much success. If you had just believed in me, Rita, I mean really believed in me, just once, we could have really done something with our lives!’”
Rita stopped pacing and whirled toward me. She was burning with remembered hate. “I despised him, Alan James! I despised him in those last two years and I finally told him so. I told him that he sickened me! I told him how he frightened Darla! I told him he had destroyed us! I told him to get out and leave us alone! And he did! He did!! He left for awhile. But he came back that Sunday morning. He came back…”
Her shoulders sagged. Her eyes drifted up, then down to the floor. She drew a long resigned sigh. “So, I’ve been punished again. Finally, punished. No more children. No more family.”
She looked at me with regret. “I’m sorry, Alan…Ja….” Her voice fell away into despair.
I stood utterly motionless and ruined. “No, Rita. It’s not you. We both know that. It’s not you. It’s my fault.”
She turned away.
I continued, shaking. “It isn’t. God isn’t punishing you. I am. I should have taken you away from here. Right from the beginning. I should have.”
My voice was urgent. “We can try again, Rita. We can keep trying. It’s only been three months or so. There are so many things we can do. Easy options and solutions. Artificial insemination, in vitro, adoption. We can have kids, Rita. We can have a fami...”
She turned and in her eyes I saw a savage misery. She wilted into deep sorrow. She threw up a strong hand to stop me; shaking her head, entranced by pain. “No… Alan…James…” her voice fell to the floor in quiet defeat. “I know that now. I’m being punished.”
I started for her. “No, Rita! It has nothing to do with being punished. We just have to keep trying, that’s all. You’ve got to keep believing in us. It will happen...!”
“Believing in us?!” she yelled, strongly. “Believe!” she shouted. “That’s what Dusty said! The same damned thing, Alan James!” Her face tightened in pain. “I was stupid. I trusted again. I trusted us. I trusted you just like I trusted Dusty. ‘Just give us more time, Rita, and everything will work out.’ I didn’t leave Dusty when I should have and look what happened.”
I felt a driving panic. “I’m not Dusty, Rita. You know that!”
Rita’s face was set in a fire of determination, anxiety edging forward. “I can’t do it anymore, Alan James. I’ve got to get out of here! Out of this town! I should have left after Darla—never moved into this house! Never called you back here!”
I blinked fast against her painful words. “…Rita...don’t…”
She turned sharply and started for the door. I went after her. She stopped in the doorway and whirled to face me—to stop me. Her eyes were firm, face taut with hurt. “We can’t go back, Alan James. We tried our best, but we can’t. Let’s just face it. Our relationship ended years ago. It died when I went off with Dusty.”
“No, Rita. We’ve just started! You can’t say that these last three months haven’t meant anything. You can’t!” I pleaded. “We have a new life now.”
I felt her retreat from me. I saw the fire leave her eyes. I strained for the right words. “Rita, we love each other. We will help each other. We will get through this. We’ll move somewhere. Anywhere. We’ll start again. We’ll do whatever it takes!”
Her voice was soft and beseeching. “Let me go, Alan James. Please let me go. I can’t stand this place anymore. I can’t look at it, remember it... I can’t look at you anymore, Alan James. You’re the past. The past that died when Darla died. The past that will never let me forget... You’ve got to let me go.”
I shivered. “I can’t, Rita. I can’t do that.”
She came toward me. She lifted her hand, gently brushing my cheek. “Yes. Let me go, Alan James… Please… let me go…If you truly love me... let me go.”
The gap between us grew, as she backed away, holding me in her grieving eyes. I kept my eyes on her. She turned and started for the front door. I took two impulsive steps toward her, and then froze with a little jolt. I inhaled, sharply, hearing an inner scream—a rant against the impossibility of the moment.
I heard the front door close; heard the car engine turn over; heard the motor die away in the still afternoon, leaving me in an agony of silence.
Chapter Eleven
In the wine cellar, I drank a 2003 Cabernet Franc that Dad had brought back from the Jefferson Vineyards on his last trip to Monticello. I was crouched in the corner, knees up to my chest, sipping the fruity wine from an opulent crystal glass. I tasted red berries, spice and flowery aromas. It would go nicely with chicken, pasta or a light beef dish.
I recalled my father once telling me how much Thomas Jefferson loved the wines of Bordeaux. He’d invested in an Italian winemaker, whose name I couldn’t recall, and in 1774, this Italian fellow bought 400 acres of Virginia land adjoining Monticello. His sole purpose was to build a house, start a vineyard and make wine. Jefferson had attracted famous investors, including George Washington.
Unfortunately for the Italian fellow, the Revolutionary War ended his efforts to make wine and it wasn’t until the early 1980s that the owners of the old property resurrected the vineyards and made the dream come true. I was sipping part of that dream, and the wine was good. I’d ship some off to Dad before Thanksgiving.
At sunset, I was nearly drunk when I piled into my car and drove off in a flair of fishtailing and squealing rubber. I took the back roads, leaning into the curves, dropping low into the hills, skimming the crests, bouncing, yelling and screaming at the sinking sun, like a mortally wounded animal. I drove for hours, losing time, plunging into the darkness with a careless speed, confident that there was no danger in this aggressive driving—assured of my safety because, as the song goes, “
Only the Good Die Young
.”
When hunger gnawed, I pulled into Big Joe’s Truck Stop, but didn’t go in. I stared, blankly, suddenly unable to move. I sat there for a time, watching the great semi’s rumble on; watched the drivers wander by with ball cap bills pulled low, working tooth picks or pulling on a cigarette. I watched them swing up into their cabs, start their engines and crank through the singing gears as they jolted heavily toward the interstate highway.
I wanted to go with them, befriend them, talk of travels, trucks, and women who were waiting anxiously in some distant honky-tonk bar. I wanted to listen to country music and drink beer. I wanted to travel to some unknown spot, tug on that air-horn and take the steep hill, yanking through those stubborn gears. I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. I wanted to be a truck driver.
I drove to the Holiday Inn where Rita and I began our final date. It was still there, looking much like it did 15 years ago. I parked and got out, cursing the stifling heat, leaning back against the car, feeling its fever. There was no motion in the air. I pushed away and fought a mosquito.
Looking up at the green neon sign, I focused on HOLIDAY. I wondered where Rita would go. South to Florida? West to California? Maybe to Canada? I kicked across the parking lot, taking in the still glass-enclosed swimming pool, remembering.
I’d have to change my life, too. I’d sell the house, leave the practice in New York and maybe start a fellowship in cardiology at Harvard. Maybe I’d do something trite, like others do after a breakup, and travel for awhile. Where? Maybe I’d leave medicine altogether and find a new career. What?
At first, I was only vaguely aware of the sirens. They were just insinuations, cutting in and out of the counterpoint of thoughts and memories. But they drew near, startlingly close and dominant, finally seizing my full attention. They were wobbling alarms, piercing the night with fear, as a hook-and-ladder truck raced by on the interstate below. I heard others in the distance, echoing an instant emergency.
I fumbled with the car door and, once inside, strapped myself in and shot away. I drove with deliberate speed, following the trail of sweeping red lights and harsh pumping horns, off the Hartsfield exit, onto the two-lane road that led to the house, swerving and passing the leisurely traffic. I was caught by the incarnate horror of a half-recognized thought that I’d suppressed and locked away. I heard the converging cacophony of wailing sirens just up the road and smelled acrid smoke. I shoved the pedal to the floor, tearing across the shoulder of the road, passing slow curious traffic.
When I saw a bright smudge on the horizon, like the slow rising of an orange flickering moon, I knew. I had forgotten to reset the house alarm. Traffic snarled, slowed and stopped. I pulled up on the right shoulder and cut the engine. I bolted from the car, slid down a rocky embankment and raced across the dark wildflower field, heaving in hot dry breath. My chest burned, I felt tears, I sprinted up the hill, stumbling—hit the path that led to the pond—broke through the trees and stopped dead, gasping at the sight.
The house was engulfed in flames. Cobalt smoke columns billowed from the angled bay windows. Ugly red teeth devoured the gabled roofs; licked at the turrets and lively facade. Fire engulfed the porch, the gingerbread trim, the ornate spindles and spandrels. It swarmed the shrubs and the helpless trees.
I charged ahead in a dead run, lengthening my stride, struck dumb by the shock, sure that I could help save the house somehow. Most of the family albums were there; mom’s and dad’s letters to each other when he was in the Navy. My old yearbooks, short stories; my high school and college diplomas, most of the antiques still not sold! All of the loves, hates and confusion of lifetimes were in that house!
I could at least save a floor, a room—preserve some small part of the past that had given me life, guidance and definition. I could save my mother’s memory, my father’s old books and wine, rescue those last hopeful nights with Rita, when I’d believed.
But I was blocked and wrestled to the ground by a hard, stocky fireman, who shouted phrases I didn’t hear. Heat poured over us in waves, hurting and angering us. The smoke stung my eyes with tears. Two firemen heaved me up and dragged me off toward the pond, dropping me in a defeated heap. I watched helplessly.
Firemen, gray frantic shadows against the spreading blaze, attacked the fire, tugging hoses, stomping through the gardens, hacking through walls, slamming down doors and shattering glass. I watched it on my knees for a time as the hoses, like huge tentacles, crossed and sprayed streams of water, in hopeful, terrible and, finally, fruitless action.
As the roof buckled and plunged and the walls collapsed into great sweeping plumes of fire, and as I heard ringing shouts of fright and warning, I struggled to my feet. I stood firmly, bravely. I stood for a long time. I stood until the house smoldered and died. I stood drenched with sweat, beaten and lost, unable to call down any guidance from the gods, or the ancestors.
I sat by the pond until dawn and finally feel asleep there.
Part Three
Ascension
Chapter One
During the autumn, I worked five mornings a week at the hospital and five afternoons at the office. I volunteered at a homeless shelter on Saturday and a free clinic in the Bronx on Sunday. I slept only three or four hours a night.
“You look tired,” Megan, one of my hospital colleagues said, as we passed in the hallway, on the way to collecting our next patients. She was kind, soft-spoken and lovely. Megan had a child, Tyler, who had just turned 2; Nicole and I had spent some time with Megan, her husband, Paul, and Tyler before we split up.
“I’m good,” I said, with a syrupy smile.
Megan stared doubtfully, from behind her concerned aqua blue eyes. “Alan…you look terrible. I can barely see your eyes and you’ve lost weight. Let’s not belabor the obvious: you never took time off when you should have and you’re working too many hours now. Are you sleeping at all?”
We paused at the door, before entering the reception. I beat back a yawn with my hand. “I think that probably means, no.”
Megan laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Alan…take some time off. We can cover for you.”
“Not now. Maybe later.”
“You’ve got the classic symptoms, you know.”
“Of what?”
“Self-punishment. Guilt.”
“I deserve them.”
“Need I say it: and self-pity.”
I fingered the stethoscope that was wrapped about my neck. “You know it’s funny, I woke up this morning and I remembered something I wrote in my diary when I was in high school. I wrote it just after a girl named Rita, left me for another guy: