The summer I found the rabbit by the side of the road

I fed the rabbit lettuce, he refused to eat. He died within seven days.

It was within the same seven days of moving into our new home that I found the pictures of her (who you said was a friend), and I believed you.

I'd not yet developed that deep intuition which erupts during times of stress. That was soon to come.

I knew something was up; our marriage was in shards -  we went through the motions and searched each other's eyes for remnants of the other.

Quickly, we looked deeply into each other's eyes, fearful of what we'd find. That we'd find nothing. That we'd find we still loved each other. Either was the road to further destruction.

Just as quickly, we looked away, only to look again.

Each time we looked, my stomach leapt into my throat.

All summer, the summer I found the rabbit by the side of the road, you brought a chill with you.

When you walked through the door, the  chill followed you, it whooshed in as you opened the door.

You closed the door. The chill was still there.

All during that summer, that summer when our love was still green, (or so I thought),  my heart beat to the tom-tom's drumming, its drumming a deafening roar in my mind's ear.

With each footfall that hit the road on my daily runs, I could hear its drumming become louder and louder. I knew something was up.

I ran to quell my nerves. I ran for miles, up country road past willows, back down past the golf course, where men in plaid were in the rough.

For them, it was a game. For us, not. 

For us, it was life. And death. Death of us, death of another.

Winter came, an impasse.

On New Year's, you came clean,  that she was more than a friend;  that you'd continue with her whom you refused to name; I threw the champagne flute against the picture window and said, not here, you don't.

You applauded my outburst, feeling relieved of your guilt, yet you said I was too calm. Too calm for what? I knew you were out of control, that the chill you brought with you had come for you, not me.

You were determined to stay; I was determined you'd leave. You left.

I knew all too soon you'd be in the arms of your angel, a devil in disguise. I knew it would hasten the end of that relationship, hasten your return, yet I didn't want you back.

I knew then you'd sunk into quicksand and that you'd never again surface whole.

The summer I found the rabbit in the road, the tom-tom's beat in my heart grew deafening; the anxiety was unbearable.

The videos of all our birthday celebrations showed nothing of our distress. We played, we stepped around each other, mincing footsteps dancing a waltz of avoidance. How cold and lonely I was.

How easily we stepped outside of our bodies to smile for the camera.

We created an invisible double of ourselves, someone to process the stress so the other could get on with the business of life.

Everywhere I turned I felt her presence; I drove to where my intuition directed me; you told me she lived on the street just down from where I was.

By next midsummer, I had a dream: You and she were on a dark, still lake in a rowboat, sitting in the boat together,  your oars lost.

I, too, was in a rowboat in that same dark, still lake. I passed you, rowing ashore, as you and she were stranded without oars, in the middle of the lake.

In my dream,  I survived while you drowned.

I knew then we were finished.

I knew then that we would continue together.

You moved back home. We continued, but we were also finished.

Years later, you heard she killed herself with drink and drug, was found naked in a motel bathtub next state over, dead from an overdose.

You never did climb out of that stinking quicksand.

The shards from the clay pot that once gave our lives meaning and fed our souls remained broken.

I had known early on, in that first summer when our love was new and we were blissfully blind from lust, that one day our differences would eventually cause problems longer than shadows in late afternoon.

***

This is fiction.

This has been rewritten from previous postings.

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Copyright  © 2006, 2007, 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski