The summer I found the rabbit in the road

I called the vet, no hope.  We fed the rabbit lettuce, he refused to eat. He died within seven  days. Within seven days of moving into our new home, I found the pictures of her whom you said was a friend, and I believed you.

I'd not yet developed that deep intuition which erupts during times of stress.

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. We looked away, only to look again.

When you walked through the door the summer I found the rabbit, you brought a chill that whooshed in as you opened the door.

That summer, 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, I could hear its drumming louder and louder. I knew something was up.

I ran to quell my nerves. I ran for miles, up the country road past weeping willows, back down past the golf course, where men in plaid were in the rough. For them, it was only a game. For us, not.

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

You felt relieved of your guilt and applauded my outburst. You were determined to stay; I was determined you'd leave. You left. I knew 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.

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 showed nothing of our distress. 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.

By the next midsummer, I had a dream of you and her on a lake in a rowboat; you sat in the boat, your oars lost; I took my oars and rowed ashore, leaving you stranded. I survived, you and her drowned.

I knew then we were finished. I knew also 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 remained broken.

I knew one day our differences would eventually cause problems longer than shadows in late afternoon. 

This is part of the fictional series on marriage and family.

Previously:

First: Love Begins

Second: The summer I found the rabbit in the road

Third: Just when I need you all so damn much

Fourth: The refrigerator hums along in middle C

Fifth: Film at 11

Sixth:Now it all begins to make sense, at the 11th hour

Seventh:  When spring fails to come and the sun sets forever 

These were originally on Gather last year under a different title; they have been rewritten since that time.

Copyright © 2007 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski