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Doris

W. Dean Marple

    Doris O’Volk was dead—dead just like the tattered, burnt-orange leaves that danced across her grave. Neither the leaves nor Doris could feel the bite of the north wind that prowled over the freshly turned dirt.
    Nestled under a large, almost bare oak, Doris had no knowledge of the leaves or the wind or the old man who clutched at his jacket as he hunched over her. Harold, her husband of sixty-odd years. The first boy she ever kissed. The first man, the only man, she ever slept with.
    He looked deep in his eighties, maybe pushing ninety. Slight stoop, sparse gray hair, pants worn high, and dark age spots competing with deep wrinkles. Maybe he was only a shadow of his former self, but Harold knew two things: He missed Doris, and he hated being old. He wanted to stride, not shuffle. He wanted to grab a giggling Doris and spin her around. He wanted what was.
    Remember the first time you held my hand? He stood there, thoughts of their shared past drifting through his mind. A young Harold who didn’t know what lay ahead, only that the prettiest girl in school had said yes when he asked her out to a movie. He remembered being shocked when, after the movie, she asked him to turn into the cemetery grounds and stop.
    “C’mon, get out,” she’d said. “Let’s stroll.”
    He hadn’t moved right away.
    “I love it here, it’s so quiet,” Doris said. “Don’t you want to walk in the moonlight?”
    “What, here?” was his confused reply.
    “Come on, Silly. You’re not afraid of ghosts, are you?” she teased him. Slowly he opened the car door and stepped out, not sure what she expected of him. That’s when she reached for his hand. The smile, the warmth, the softness. That’s when he knew.
    Where was that warmth now? Next to the grave, Harold was getting colder as the light faded and the temperature dropped. His aching knees made him sag against the tombstone for support, but he didn’t even notice the chill. His mind was warm, and her small hand was in his. He could still hear her.
    “What do you want, Harold?”
    “Uh, to talk to you, I guess?”
    “No, what do you really want?”
    What he wanted to do was sit there forever, looking at her soft red hair that gleamed almost silver in the moonlight. What he wanted was to kiss each one of the cute freckles on her face. He knew what he wanted but didn’t know what to say. But she did. “Harold, I know what I want. I want a house with babies in it. I want a husband who makes me laugh. What about you, what do you want?”
    Listening to her, imagining her, he didn’t realize he was slowly sliding down the front of the tombstone until he was sitting on the ground. Strange how his back never felt the engraving on her stone. It didn’t matter. He could talk to her forever.
    “I think—um—I think I want whatever you want.”
    “C’mon, Silly, that’s not an answer. Really, now. What dreams do you have?”
    “You’d never believe it if I told you.”
    “Harold, come on. What fun is life if we can’t dream? Tell me yours.”
    “Really? You really want to know? You won’t laugh at me?” He paused. “I want a small farm.”
    He could hear her laughing with delight as he slowly laid down right there, his right cheek resting on the frozen ground. The dirt was hard, pushing his glasses into his cheek, but he didn’t notice. He no longer saw the snow, starting to fall around him, nor the browning flowers laying near his head. He only saw moonlight and a smiling red-haired girl who dropped his hand and clapped, “Oh, I’d love to live on a farm! We could have chickens and ponies and puppies and ducks. See, Harold, I told you that you could dream.”
    Harold liked the sound of that. Puppies, ducks, and Doris. He felt her lean against him and hold out her hand. Everything seemed very quiet as he grasped it.
    When the cemetery crew found Harold’s prone body the next morning, they each remarked about the slight smile on his face—and how his hand was curled, almost like it was holding on to something.

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