WHEN I AWOKE the next morning at 6:45 without the aid of my alarm clock, which I had forgotten to set, Christine was already gone. Not knowing her current schedule, I could only assume that she had to be at work early and was aided in waking by her ever vigilant body clock. On the bed where she had slept for the first time was a note on eight and a half inch by eleven inch lined paper that said, “Dear Husband: Thank you for sharing so much so honestly last night. I am proud of you for all that you have accomplished in the past few weeks and I’m certain that your setback yesterday will not deter you from any of your goals. For too many reasons to mention right now, the new song you played for me last night is my favorite ever. I’m calling it ‘The Haunting.’ Call me later this evening and we can talk about it. I love you, Robert. C.”
There she was again. The old Christine who was 100 percent supportive of me, appreciative of my depth, honesty, and creativity, upon which she placed high value. She could not have known this, but her note to me had also mocked the devil.
Even though Christine’s loving nature had energized me, I still felt the drag of yesterday’s sorrows. Though I had remained in my running clothes from yesterday morning, it was not easy to pull my hung-over body out of the condo for a morning jog. But I did it, realizing that this was the first day again, of the rest of my life and I was determined to live it based on my improved standards.
During my jog my head ached behind my eyes and up toward my temple, but I overcame it with thoughts of Mary Bauer and our early afternoon meeting. Yesterday, when I called Amanda and told her I wouldn’t be coming into work, I had currently been thinking that there would be no way I would be able to face Mary with the mountain of crap I had rotting my brain. I was already planning to call the office before Amanda got there Friday and tell her that I’d be coming back Monday. When I called Amanda yesterday I was envisioning a complete downward spiral. I knew I would be shattered because I was returning to drinking. On top of that I would have to face Christine and break our date. That would have crushed me. I’d feel badly that I let a few clients who depended on me down. It would simply be one larger negative on top of another and I would be beneath all of them with my trusty rum and Coke trying to drown my sorrows.
Christine’s tenderness and compassion changed not only my working plans for the day, but the level of determination I would have as I faced my future. One night of being in the presence of Christine’s love and encouragement had reminded me of my primary reason for striving to be a better and sober man.
After calling at exactly 8:00 and telling Amanda I would be in soon, I felt a renewed vigor to meet the day. I drank two eight ounce glasses of apple juice with several ice cubes in each glass and made a tasty cheese and toast sandwich.
“Are you feeling better, Dr. McKenzie?” Amanda asked me as I bounded into the waiting room with unusual enthusiasm.
“I am, thank you very much.”
“Hot chocolate this morning?”
“Yes please.”
“Coming right up, sir.”
Normalcy recovered.
Mary was my first patient after lunch. I had not done my usual note writing the night before so I had nothing planned to say to Mary. It was one of the most important sessions with a client that I had ever looked forward to, and I was unprepared. For an instant, that scared me. But only until it came to me almost immediately, that speaking to her logically and from the heart would be sufficient.
When Mary came into my office, I felt markedly sorry for her. She had been through an ordeal that had forcibly dashed her emotions into a lingering hell. She was a petite woman of courage and conviction who, through no choice of her own, was being tested by life in a complex way. I knew that she was constantly asking herself, “How do I overcome what happened to me and be the best wife and teacher I can be, when I fear each day that he may find me and do worse to me?” Today I would alter one aspect of her hypothetical question.
For some reason I will never understand, it was a soft entry into our conversation that day. We were both very quiet, almost somber.
“How are you today, Mary?” I asked, to begin.
“Physically, pretty well, Dr. McKenzie, but mentally about the same, less than adequate.”
“I have something to tell you that might brighten your spirits a bit.”
“What’s that, Doctor?”
“Have you been watching the news the past thirty hours or so?”
“Yes, a little, the usual.”
“The bad guy that was killed in St. Pete, Reubin Tatum, was the man who assaulted you in the convenience store. He’ll never hurt anyone again.”
“He’s gone? You’re sure it was him?”
“I’m positive. I have a friend in the Police Department.” It was a white lie. I had a friend in the PD.
“I saw when the detectives who knew Mills and Barclay were so mad that they grabbed the case files and rounded up the other two gang members.”
I hadn’t really heard that. “That means that any of your fears of ever being hurt by any of these guys again can be put to rest.”
“What if they get out in a few years?” She was still frightened.
“I read in the St. Pete Times a few weeks ago that the St. Pete Police believe without a doubt that the gang was responsible for the shooting death of the Indian store clerk at the Shell Gas Station at 18 and 34 South. In Florida, when you participate in a felony which results in a death, it’s the same as if you pulled the trigger. The sentence is always life without the possibility of parole.”
She shook her head lightly twice in a yes movement as she squinted her eyes and looked outside the window to the water. She was still squinting and in deep thought when she forced herself to speak with her softest voice of any of our sessions together.
“Do you really think this is the end of it, Dr. McKenzie?”
“Without a doubt,” I said strongly but fused with tenderness.
She was looking at the water as if gaining strength from its sight. When she turned back to make eye contact with me, a single tear slid down the left side of her face.
“Thank you for telling me that doctor.” Her volume remained on soft.
“How do you feel knowing those guys can never hurt you again?”
“It makes me feel.” She paused and looked out toward the water again. She was in deep thought. Then she finished her sentence with a single word, different. And that was it. She didn’t smile. She didn’t say that she felt safe again. I was disappointed. I had expected something from her. I expected smiles, at least one. I expected joy. I expected sighs and words expressing relief. But I didn’t get any of it. Again in my life experiences, I was reminded that one can never fully know how someone will react to what you tell them, especially when you expect to ease someone’s embedded pain with a few words, no matter how powerful you think those words will be.
I realized immediately that I had much more work to do with Mary. I was certain that someday she would be happy again; it just might not be on this particular Friday afternoon. I got over my disappointment in a flash and went right back to work.
“Is there anything else that you would like to talk with me about today?” I asked.
Now she perked up a bit.
“My husband and I have been talking about going on a cruise for the past few days.” She smiled guardedly.
“You have!” I said delightedly. “Where to?”
“The Bahamas.”
“How long?”
“Seven days, not long.”
“How did it come about?” I asked, pleased to be talking about such a potentially happy adventure.
“He asked me.”
“Wow, how nice.”
“It was nice. He totally surprised me.”
She had turned her volume up and I could tell that any moment she would ask me what I thought about it.
“What do you feel about a trip like that?” I asked, keeping positivity in my voice.
“Up until today I didn’t feel good about it. I felt like I would be running away, almost as if I was being forced by those robbers to leave my home, just to have some peace of mind. But then in seven short days I would have to return to my home, but those guys would still be here. I never told you in this way before, Dr. McKenzie, but I love St. Petersburg. It’s a beautiful little city and those guys robbed it from me. Home is supposed to be where you feel safe. They stole my home from me.”
“But things have changed today, right?”
“They have, and that’s why I feel so different on so many planes. When you first told me about Reubin Tatum and his thug buddies, I almost could not compute the reality of it. Fear had wrapped itself around so many aspects of my life so tightly, that when you told me the story, the fear didn’t unwrap instantly. It still hasn’t. But I’m beginning to feel better because of the logic of it. Those guys are gone and its illogical to fear that they could ever hurt me again. But what I am feeling is that fear inside me has taken on a life of its own. Its separate from the robbers and it wants to keep me bound up within it. Do you understand what I’m saying, Dr. McKenzie?”
I not only understood, but I related what she said to my life and how fear had bound me, how I carried it around my waking days dreading the next dream onslaught of the devil and the absurd taunting of the Two-Knock Ghost.
“I understand, Mary. I truly do.”
“It’s as if fear itself has become a new dimension of me, an integral part of me. It’s made me short-tempered with the children at school, crabby with my husband, withdrawn from my mother and father, more distant from the people at my church. You would think I might have reached out to those people for support. But I’ve gone the other way. I’ve retreated inwardly. And even though it’s lonely in here by myself, I’m not sure how to get out. Even the news you shared with me today only makes me feel a little better. How do I get out of my fear head and get back to being my old self again?”
She was looking directly at me with eyes of yearning, expecting a profound and immediate answer. I don’t know how long I paused before speaking to her, but my first thought after she asked me the question, was that I felt so inadequate this moment to answer what was probably the deepest and most sincere question of her adult life. I went for the obvious.
“Going on the cruise would undoubtedly help, Mary. Now you and your husband can look at it as a celebration of your new peace of mind. Do you love the water?”
“Very much.”
“Do you love to travel?”
“Ditto.”
“Do you love adventure?”
“Yes.”
“You see, all those things are things you love. You will be pursuing things you love and that is the way you will overcome your negative self and become happy again. You must absolutely fill every aspect of your life with the things and the people you love. Gradually, the fear will dissipate because fear cannot coincide with an abundance of love.”
“You’re right, Doctor. I know that intellectually.”
“All change for either good or bad starts with a single thought, Mary. If you believe in the concept that I just shared with you, you’ll start pursuing what you love post haste.”
“You’re right, Dr. McKenzie. What you told me today has given me the motivation to pursue love and break out of the prison I’ve been living in all these weeks.”
She was sounding more optimistic. And I was feeling better about the session now than when she had first said, “I feel … different.”
We continued talking, but much more lightly than the conversation had been up to this point. I even asked Mary if she had thought of anything she might need to buy for the cruise. She told me that she needed to buy two new bathing suits. When I asked her if there was anything else, she shifted gears and answered: “I need to lose the ten pounds I’ve gained since this ordeal began.” She giggled nervously when she said that. Then she said: “You may have noticed.” I said: “I have not.” Then she said: “You’re so kind, Doctor.” But I hadn’t noticed. Since I had met her several weeks earlier, I had always been a student of her face. I looked at it constantly for any hint, however subtle, as to how she might be feeling deep inside. I searched for the truth of her affect, the depths of her sadness, the degree of her fears, how she was feeling each moment. I never noticed the extra ten pounds. And I wondered if I could ever notice that little weight gain on any of my clients.
When we came to the end of our session, Mary surprised me by showing me the only piece of physical affection she had ever shown me. When she said good-bye, she reached out to shake my hand the same way she had shaken it at each previous conclusion, but this day she placed her left hand on the right side of my right hand as she shook it with her right hand. Instantly, my hand felt like the cream filling between the black crunchy parts of an Oreo cookie. It was a good feeling—a genuine gesture of appreciation from a grateful client, one of the kinds of moments a good psychologist lives for.
Then she said, as she held her left hand firmly against mine while she maintained her grip with her right hand: “Thank you, Dr. McKenzie. What you shared with me today has helped me to turn the corner toward more normalcy.” She removed her hands. “I’ve never been good at showing my emotions on the surface, so you may be a little confused as to what I am feeling. But I’ll tell you and this comes from deep within me, I not only feel different, I feel better. I’m learning new things all the time, how to be a braver woman, a better wife, teacher, and person overall. You’ve been an integral part of that growth.”
Then she turned and headed for the door. I was silent, allowing her to conclude our session with the final spoken words.
When she left the room, for the first time since I had met her, I believed that she would not only have a good life, but a great life.
With Mary gone, I was alone again with my thoughts. I still had two clients to see, but I kept looking past them somewhat selfishly, to my phone call in four hours or so to Christine, my next session with Dr. Banderas, beginning a new run of sober days and contemplating how I would square off against the devil in our next dream and how I would motivate the Two-Knock Ghost to reveal itself the next time it came calling.
Before I left the office at about 5:45, I called Christine.
“I have a couple of filet mignons that I bought at Publix on sale Thursday, a cobb salad, some macaroni and cheese, and a package of mushrooms, if you would like to come over and share dinner with me.”
“I’d love to,” I answered, as thrilled as a sixteen-year-old going on his first date. I know I’ve said that or something like that before. But it is what I truly felt.
“Are you still at the office?” she asked.
When I said “yes,” she said, “Good, then you don’t have to drive across town to the condo. You can just shoot over here from the office. You can come whenever you want.”
“I called you as I was planning to leave work. See you in fifteen, okay? Can I bring anything?”
“Nope, and I have plenty of apple juice.”
“Yummy,” I said and then something popped out as if we had never been separated, “I love you, Christine.”
“I love you too, Turf.”
Then she put her phone in its cradle.
Twenty-four hours ago I had been in oblivion—a place and condition in which I thought I needed to be. Tonight I was back to living in hope.
My evening with Christine was memorable. It seemed like she was sharing a duality with me. One part was thanking me for what I had accomplished in the three weeks prior to my fall from grace yesterday and the other part was strongly encouraging my future endeavors.
It seemed that night that we talked about everything. I was not selfish. I asked her about her job and she told me myriad stories about how she helped people in dire need. I also boldly asked her if she was happy living without me. Whereupon, she answered, “No, silly. I miss you terribly. But now that you’re serious about getting your life back on track, we don’t have to wait too long to get you back home, right?”
Considering that only yesterday she had seen me in my personal nadir, I thought her words were pretty magnanimous. I realized that what Christine had wanted from me was totally logical and fair. Above all else, she wanted me to realize that I had a problem with alcohol. She needed me to admit, primarily to myself, that I had gradually slipped from being the man I had been in the past, not due to normal aging, but due to all the subtle and negative effects of what a chemical addiction could do to a person. She wanted me to grasp what those changes had been and begin to turn the tide to alter those resulting behaviors. She didn’t expect me to turn back the clock, she was happy to be with a fifty-five-year-old man. She simply wanted me to change a variety of behaviors and become the best fifty-five-year-old man I could be. During the past three weeks as new awareness of how I had shortchanged Christine became almost a daily theme, I became aware of what my wife needed and wanted in the future. She wanted and deserved a running partner. She didn’t need a man who isolated himself in his room most nights, no matter what his reasons. She loved not only the music that I wrote for her, but that it came from a place of deep caring within me. She had every right to expect those things and many more from me. The two nights we were spending together showed each of us how much the other cared and the extent to which we would go to love our mate more deeply in the future.
At one point in the evening, long after our dinner was enjoyed and the dishes were cleaned and put away, we were sitting together on the couch. We were each snacking on a regular flavored Klondike bar with a huge glass of apple juice on the side when I decided to exert myself with profound and complete honesty.
“Christine, I wish I could come home tomorrow. But there are a few things I need to share with you that will greatly affect the time table for that return.”
She looked into my eyes with unwavering intensity.
“There are four things that I don’t want to bring back home with me. One is alcohol. I can promise you that I will never bring another bottle of alcohol into this house again. I know myself I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. Have I ever broken a promise to you?”
“No.”
“The next one is my devil dreams. I don’t know what will be harder, giving up alcohol or getting rid of the devil dreams. Even though they are very personal, they always leave me with a negative emotional residue. You don’t deserve to be around that when it happens. It’s the same thing as a hangover but on an emotional level.”
“Then there’s the Two-Knock Ghost. I don’t know what it is or why it is, but it frightens me because I think it is going to exacerbate every bit of suffering I’ve gone through with the devil by a multitude of fold.”
“Finally, you don’t deserve an isolationistic husband. For almost thirty-five years I’ve been going to my bedroom to work almost every night. For most of those years I felt justified in doing so—rationalizing that it made me a better psychologist to be super prepared for each of my clients. But since I’ve been on my own in the condo, I’ve realized more that I’ve always felt loneliness when I first went into that room to do my work. Something’s wrong with me to cause me to feel that way time after time. I’d like to find out what it is. As far as I can figure, I have absolutely no reason to feel that peculiar type of loneliness. I had great parents, super grandparents, met you young and we were always close, and had three great kids. There’s no reason for that emptiness I feel when I go into that bedroom. But those last four things are big reasons why I hired a psychologist. I’d like to come home free from all of those conditions. Those are my four personal demons, Christine, and you don’t need to be subjected to any of them.”
Christine’s eyes were glistening with love for me.
“Thank you for being so honest with me. A few months ago when I sent you away, I asked you not to come home until you were a changed man. In these past two days you’ve let me know that you’ve identified your demons. That is amazing, Turf. You’re so far ahead of many people who never identify their demons and consequently can never work through and conquer them. Everyone has demons.”
“Even you?” I asked, somewhat stunned.
“Even me, Turf.” She kept calling me that nickname seldom used in recent years, reminding me of that time when I was young, strong, happy go lucky, sporty, believed the future was golden before me. I watched her closely as she spoke, noticing in this moment her roundish, pretty, naturally puffy lips. Then my eyes went to her hair, seeing several more grays among the blacks then when I left the marital household a few months ago.
“Like what? What demons could possibly torment you?”
“Yours.”
She paused for a poignant moment holding my eyes with her magnetic gaze.
“All of your demons now belong to me as well. And as long as it takes for you to feel you have conquered those demons is as long as I have to wait for you to come back home, the man that you and I both want you to be. And that leads me to my worst demon of all.”
She paused again, sadder than a moment before when she told me that my demons were hers.
“What’s that, Christine?” I asked, kindly.
“I thought that you might know this one, being that you’re a pretty good psychologist.”
“I really can’t imagine. Tell me, please.”
“Losing you, Turf. The fear of losing you to anyone or all of your demons is my greatest demon.”
I was looking deeply into the vast reservoir of love Christine held in her eyes for me. They were different eyes that had firmly sent me packing a few months earlier. I knew it had been done for me and our own good, but in spite of my egregious stumble of a day ago, much of that good had already been accomplished. Christine had evolved not in the same way that I had, but she had evolved. She had studied me closely the past two days and had seen enough to conclude not only that I was on the right path, but that now was not a time to be harsh with me, but to be loving and supportive. Her eyes alone gave me the desire to speed up my healing so I could get back to her as quickly as possible. I wasn’t thinking of myself now, while focusing on the connection that was our mutual gaze, I was thinking of her, of minimizing her having to ponder the demons I had revealed to her.
“Can I stay the night, Christine?”
She didn’t say anything, simply slowly shook her head yes, while her intrepid eyes whispered, could there be any other answer.
* * * * *
The next two days were a symphony of kindness between us. We shared Saturday breakfast at home, Saturday dinner at Lee Gardens on Fourth Street North. Sunday I treated Christine to a marvelous brunch at Shepard’s on Clearwater Beach, spent the day relaxing on the beach two blocks away, then showered, freshened up as best we could, put on the nice clothes we had worn to lunch and capped off the weekend with another wonderful meal at the Salt Rock Grill, a few miles south of Clearwater Beach.
Without even speaking about it, we were both thinking that it would be best if I drove back to the Beaches of Paradise after I dropped Christine at home after dinner. That would allow each of us a few hours to transition comfortably to our individual routines, which had been joyfully interrupted the past two days.
How could I know driving back to our beautiful home on Snell Island that one of the most magnificent moments of my life awaited me before I left Christine? When we arrived there, I went to our bedroom, grabbed a few casual and tee shirts, a pair of dress shoes and a few newer pieces of underwear and socks to take back with me to the condo. I was only in the house five minutes. Christine had come upstairs too and was in our bathroom brushing her teeth when I said, “Honey, I’m just about to leave,” as I stuffed the items I had gathered into one of the many travel bags I owned.
Before she rinsed the toothpaste from her teeth, she said, “I’ll be right down to join you and say good-bye.”
I carried my things downstairs and placed the bag a foot and a half in front of the front door. By the time I turned to start for the living room, she was right behind me. I had heard her bare feet bounding quickly over the carpeted stairway from the second floor.
“You’re cute,” I said, feeling boyish and I looked into the girlish glow in her eyes.
“Thank you, Mr. Turf,” she said playfully.
Mr. Turf … I wondered, where did that come from?
Prompted by a boyish urge, I bent downward slightly and with a wraparound hug I lifted my beautiful wife off the ground. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around my back. My boyishness dissolved as Christine rested her head on top of my shoulders, nestling it tenderly, as if it was a gift against my neck. And there it was, the moment I will remember till the day I die. It was the “Endless Moment,” the boy in me again becoming the man who fate had entrusted with the care of this lovely soul he held in his arms. It was the “Transforming Moment” because until it occurred, I was still feeling residue of shame for my Thursday slide back into the bottle. In this lingering moment I felt power flowing into my actual body and my spiritual and emotional self. Some of it was flowing into me from my wife, like she had an on button that she had flicked into position which allowed a palpable electrical love to flow from her body into mine. As I held her during the “Eternal Moment,” I felt like the star of a great romance novel that had been made into a movie. In this scene, the camera circled us quickly a multitude of times, revealing the depth of feeling the hug expressed from mate to mate from every angle. Some of the power was emanating from beyond the magnificent hug. I thought it might be coming from my higher power, God, the universe—from some entity greater than I. And I thanked it repeatedly, knowing with certainty that I would win in the end. Undoubtedly there would be a struggle, but I would learn from it things I did not know about myself. They would make me a better man, husband, father, psychologist. I would conquer the devil dreams, identify the Two-Knock Ghost, beat alcohol and figure out why loneliness always accompanied my isolationist treks to my bedroom. Through my hug, I soundlessly told my wife of the profound depths of love I had for her and assured her that in a short period of time I would figure out all of my challenges and return home a better husband than I’d been since the night of my twenty-fourth birthday.
I chose not to pursue my wife’s lips. If she was feeling anywhere near what I was, the hug was more than enough. It was a novel in an instant, a history, our lifetime in a moment that would not end. Christine did not move. She clung to me like a child holding on to daddy. But this was a wonderfully loving woman who had not moved a centimeter since she had nuzzled her head into its current resting position several minutes ago.
When gravity began to suggest it was time to put Christine back down on the ground, I listened carefully to what my wife was telling me she wanted me to do, how she wanted the Eternal Moment to end. It was her complete lack of movement that prompted me to carry her to the couch where with my right hand I positioned a large throw pillow upon which I would place my head. Then carefully I positioned my butt on the couch, slowly lowered my body to the pillow and cushion, with Christine immovably onto my body. Then I lifted my legs, with shoes on, onto the lower portion of the couch.
Christine never moved. Her hands were clutched around my back. Her head was tucked into the 90 degree corner between my head and shoulders. I moaned appreciatively as I felt the soft brush of her lips against my neck and smelled her fresh breath going in and out of her in a regular peaceful rhythm. I had no idea whether Christine was asleep or barely clinging to consciousness. But wherever she was between the two worlds, she was serenely comfortable. I would not disturb her. As a result, the “Unending Moment” continued. Holding my wife in this way was freezing time, as negative thoughts evaporated and my fading conscious mind could only focus on the profundity of the moment I was sharing.
I had never felt more powerful in my entire life. It was determined power, the kind of power a person feels preceding a series of life altering actions. It was the power of knowing, of knowing the outcome of future events before their unfolding. During this “Elongated Moment” while enveloping Christine in my arms, I realized that this was the most real and important aspect of my life and that in my future I must cherish and nurture the woman on top of me with every fiber of my being. The devil dreams and the Two-Knock Ghost were just dreams. Obviously, though I didn’t know what had caused them, they were obviously the result of things from my childhood that had frightened and hurt me. I knew enough about psychology to know that much. And my recurring loneliness and my isolationist tendencies, could they all possibly be tied together somehow?’ I had never considered that before, but in the Moment of All Moments my mind was soaring. For a while it seemed free of all encumbrances. There was no doubt, no worry, no guilt or sadness related to Toby, no devil fears, not even curiosity as to the nature of the Two-Knock Ghost. I was trying my best to be in the moment, to participate fully. What was emanating from Christine to me was all the powerful energy of unbridled love. If it is true that God is love, then I was holding God tenderly beneath my hands and arms.
Unknowingly, I fell asleep. It was dreamless until, after several hours, the live oak appeared in its idyllic scene amidst the resplendent green grass with the babbling brook in front of it under a clear blue sky. Christine and I were sitting on the swing holding hands. Her head was resting on my right shoulder. This time the swing was attached to the same branch, but it was much closer to the ground, the perfect height for us to scoot onto and off it. The tree was healthy again and thriving. The swing was new. Nothing was burned and the grass was glistening under a morning dew. The temperature bordered on the cool side, but overall was pleasantly mild.
Our dream selves were not speaking to one another, but it was evident that we were communicating deeply, from a realm beyond the silence. A slight breeze gently moved the swing forth and back, forth and back. There was a finality to the picture, like it was the last scene to a happily ending love story where the character’s body language was saying: “And they lived happily ever after.” As I observed the dream, I thought it out of place in the sequence of my real life. Certainly this was too early for the seeming finality of this scene. Much work was left to be done by me to improve myself, and until tonight I had no idea what work Christine might have to do with her issues, many of which had been caused by me. I felt a flash of shame pass through me as I considered how selfish I had been with her, how spiritually unaware I was of so many things. I thought, while watching the lovers on the undulating swing, that it would serve each of us better if I could return home to Christine with a few more awareness within my being. What they might be, I had no earthly clue.
That was the totality of one dream that night of “My Everlasting Moment.” There was no devil, no suspicious knocks, only the dream as I have described it. I took it as much needed and appreciated encouragement. I thanked my higher power for it. Eventually the scene faded to black and sometime after, I awoke. Christine was still above me, though she had shifted her arms. They were no longer around me, but rested against my sides with her hands upon my shoulders. With a momentary, yet pervasive sadness, I decided that it would be I who ended “The Hours Long Moment” and head for the condo.
With utter gentility and tenderness, I shifted my weight from the couch as I carefully slid Christine from my body. I cradled her head in my hands and set it upon the same pillow that I had been sleeping on for the last seven hours. I had not awakened her. I checked my watch, 3:00 a.m. I felt remarkably rested, didn’t want to take a chance of waking Christine, so I didn’t even kiss the back of her head like I wanted. Instead, I tiptoed to the hallway by the front door, grabbed my travel bag and walked out the door, locking it before driving off. For as long as I could see the house, I kept looking into the rearview mirror, realizing that the woman I had left there might very well be my higher power. If not, at least my far better self.