Bogged down in our trials, we didn’t notice two weeks fly by. The pleasure from a Sunday morning coffee was interrupted by a phone. It was Pat, my husband’s friend, who informed him that the snowmobile he ordered a month ago, arrived, and he could pick it up. It turned out my husband had bought me a snowmobile. Perhaps he also knew that it was better to buy one in summer. That was great!
On the one hand a snowmobile in July was, to put it mildly, neither here nor there, but on the other hand, I suddenly found in me this irrepressible craving for this type of transport and whined that I wanted to have my snowmobile here and now. I was even ready to drive if Mike was going with me on the passenger seat. So we settled on that, immediately packed up and went. Having passed a little more than halfway there, with longer than to go forward, I suddenly started complaining about a terrible headache.
“Oh, Mike. I can’t drive any more, this headache is killing me. I feel dizzy, I just can’t—”
He was silent. Biting the bullet, he got behind the wheel. I wasn’t sure if he got my trick, but all the way to Homer, the city where my snowmobile was waiting, he drove in silence. Mike was pale and sweating. I pretended to be sick, though there was no need for that, as I was trembling from stress for my husband, and almost I cried with pity for him, but there was no other way.
Finally we safely reached Homer. Having loaded my snowmobile, over which I sighed and gasped for half an hour, either looking under the hood, as if I understood something in that, or in the bag for tools, expressing my admiration, we headed back home. My head was still “hurting,” so Mike sat behind the wheel. Four hours of a journey, which he used to overcome in two. Five miles before Anchorage, Mike, gritting his teeth, passed a car for the first time since the Volvo had hit his trailer.
I sighed with relief. Thanks to God, he did it! Now everything will be all right, I thought.
There was our house. I felt like a boiled rag. Mike looked even worse: pale, his eyes glistening with some unusual light, his lips trembling. He slowly walked over to me and looked into my eyes. I thought, If he hit me right now, it will probably be right. But instead he dropped to his knees in front of me, embraced my legs, and whispered “Thank you.”
Investigation of the accident took a full year. Finally the police sent us the report, in which the deceased woman was found guilty of the accident. Finally, our life could return to normal. Though how could it?
We had become different. We had changed.