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American Sublime

Riley Winchester

A man met a woman. We’ll call the man John but don’t worry about the woman’s name. John and the woman got married. John cheated on the woman nineteen months later and they got a divorce. I told you not to worry about her name. Three years passed. They weren’t important years. John met another woman who we’ll call Ava. They met at a pier on Lake Michigan. It was a nice summer day, the kind you dream about. This beautiful weather and all, John and Ava thought, it must be a sign of things to come. The light wind cutting across the lake brushed Ava’s hair across her face. John had never seen someone so beautiful in his life. They scheduled a date. John told Ava he wanted to get married. A little fast, Ava thought, but she wasn’t opposed to it. I love you, he said. I love you too, she said. And they kept saying it. Two years later they were married. They bought a quaint little farmhouse a couple miles away from where John grew up. Ava grew up in the city but she acclimated nicely. Their first child was born, a daughter. Ava told John she wanted to be a lawyer. That’s sound, he said, you’ll make a great lawyer. She enrolled in classes. John worked nights at a job he hated, doesn’t matter what it was but he hated it and his hatred for it worked its way into his life outside of work. He started spending his weekends at bars with friends. John and Ava had another kid, this one a boy. The boy was born sick, very sick. The doctors thought he had no chance of surviving. John got down on his knees and prayed to God. He said, God, please heal my son, please. He stood up from his knees and three weeks later John and Ava left the hospital with a healthy baby boy. John returned to the bars. Ava stayed home with the kids. One night Ava left with the kids, said they were never coming back. John begged for them to come back, said he would change his ways. They came back and John never spent another weekend at the bars. The kids started school, smart kids with lots of friends. Things were starting to look nice for John and Ava. Then John complained about kidney pain, woke up every night groaning about his kidneys. Go to the doctor, Ava said. OK, John said, but I doubt it’s anything. You’re dying, the doctor told John. Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, the doctor said, life expectancy of ten years. John couldn’t work anymore; the disease and treatment tore down his body and mind. Ava had to drop out of school and get a job to support the family. The kids broke bones and sprained ankles. They were kids, it was part of their education. They knew their dad was dying but they gave it little thought. After all, what hurts more than falling off a swing on the playground and crushing your wrist under the weight of your own body, the body you thought you could trust and would never turn on itself, on you? They didn’t understand it, mortality or eschatology or the indelible consequences of death or the psychological attrition concomitant with witnessing the pernicious expiration of a life. John’s ten years were up. Came fast, he thought. He looked like a ghoul, a fragment of the man he was when he met Ava at the pier on Lake Michigan. He lay in bed in his final days. Ava lay by his side. You can do it now, he said. His voice was coarse and grated the air. What? she said. Be a lawyer, he said. Sometime after John died Ava said, All I want to be is yours forever. She wished she had said it at the time, to John. It would have been beautiful, it would have been poetic, she thought. Instead, she said nothing and she cried, she cried.

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