Sunday, January 1 #6
Garrett stretched his arm, the one with the broken hand, across the back of the sofa. This was a tangled web. Everything was wrong—something was off with her, and he was a twisted, mangled mess.
He swallowed hard. “Angelica, I’m so sorry. That should never have happened. Please forgive me.”
Angelica’s mug stopped an inch from her lips as she turned toward him, her eyes vacant. “Sorry for what?”
At this point, he didn’t think explaining would be favorable or ingratiate him with her. Nothing good could come from it. He already felt bad enough, but if she didn’t remember his body’s erect reaction below his waist or his kisses along her cheeks, it was best to let it go.
“Forget it. It’s not worth bringing up,” Garrett said. But he’d never forget. He let out a long, tortured sigh.
His unease about her well-being deepened as he noticed her glossy eyes. Something or someone had driven her out of her house.
“Tell me what happened. Why did you go outside without a coat?”
Talking to Angelica felt like speaking to a sculpted granite monument—pale, cold, and stiff. Would she even be able to give feedback? His heart raced. “Did someone hurt you?”
A tear trickled down her face as she glared blankly. “I didn’t lie to you, Garrett ... I never could … I forgot … I forgot everything … I didn’t know,” she rambled, with an unearthly hollowness.
If he had ever heard one, this jumbled statement told him nothing. He needed much more information to follow her train of thought.
“Try to tell me what this is about. What did you forget?”
Angelica leaned back, her shoulders slumping so low they nearly met her elbows. Was she ready to reveal? Was there anything to reveal? Garrett ran his fingers through his hair. In his mind, a clock ticked. Tick … tick … tick … It might be attached to a time bomb.
Her heavy breathing shattered the room’s imperfect calm, freezing the hands on the mantle clock. A radiator pipe banged out a hollow tune as the rising steam whistled off-key, muffling her erratic, labored breath. He found no comfort in any of it. Tick … tick … tick …
“I didn’t know I was married … I’m still married to him,” Angelica choked, eyes downcast. “I forgot because of the accident, and he never told me … How could I lie to anyone? I didn’t even know it myself.”
He got the clarity, all right. Understood her words.
Understood them too well—words that were as hard and painful for her as for him.
Did Garrett believe her? He believed everything about this woman—her innocence, her nightmares, her accident, and her “blanks.” This was one hell of a “blank” to forget.
Angelica slurped from her cup, then handed it back to him. “I had a daughter … She died in my arms when I was hit … She was one year old … How could I forget that? I can’t even remember my own daughter. What kind of mother am I…?” she quivered, trailing off into her lost world.
Random tears tiptoed down her cheeks. Garrett set the cup on the coffee table and wiped away her watery grief.
He wished all her pain could be wiped away so easily.
Every detail of her life appeared to grow more tragic.
This was terrible. Horrifying. Thank goodness Angelica didn’t remember.
Please, God, don’t let her ever remember.
No parent should have to recall such a tragedy.
Garrett took her hand and looked into her swelling eyes. “You were a beautiful mother, Angelica. You couldn’t be any other kind,” he said, equally choked up.
Far from serene, Angelica sat like a ghost in her troubled world. Every second she spent on the soft cushions, it was as if both her life and this piece of furniture might swallow her whole. They sat side by side in the quiet that was killing each of them in different ways.
“What’s wrong with me, Garrett?” Her grieving gaze, imploring an answer as much as her question did.
All because of a truck, with no one to blame. It sucked. Neither Garrett’s face nor his words gave any hint of it. “Nothing’s wrong with you, but there’s plenty wrong with everyone else, honey.” Including him.
“I found out by accident. My husband didn’t want me to know … He thought remembering would be too painful. But I can’t remember anything … How could I forget those things?”
“There are many things we need to forget,” he replied.
Amid all his misery, as if any of it weren’t daunting, overpowering, or dooming enough, two questions nagged at him. “Where’s your husband? And why isn’t he here with you?”
She turned to him, her big brown eyes, which he adored, now overflowing with defeat. “I sent him home. I have to think.”
With a broken heart, Garrett uttered what he never expected to ask. “Do you want me to call your husband for you?”
“No … I don’t know anything anymore.”
He added another dreadful thought to the mix, as if he hadn’t already been battered enough. What if he knew this lucky man? If he did, Garrett hated him.
“Who’s your husband?” he asked, sighing.
Angelica’s dark, mournful eyes seemed to beseech, Do I have to tell you? More seconds passed. Tick … tick … tick … She hesitated. “He’s ... he’s Nicholas Ponte.”
After being blindsided in the shower, he was trampled on the ground.
He’d been slugged first with a right, then a wild left.
But what was the point? The first blow had already killed him.
Now the vultures were pulverizing his carcass.
Garrett closed his eyes. He sat ensnared in a portal of silence, worse than words.
Regardless of the human condition, someone breaks the calm sooner or later. Angelica did. “Why did you come here?”
What would have happened to her if he hadn’t shown up? Thankfully, he did, despite the shower incident. If someone had to die today, it should have been him.
Reaching into his jeans pocket, he pulled out the key to the kitchen door and set it on the coffee table. “I came to return your key.”
It was over. He handed the key back. Angelica could keep his shirt, though she’d probably burn it in the fireplace.