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The Picture

Ed Nichols

    I sat in my rocker on our back porch with a drink and watched birds flapping their wings in the water in Beth’s concrete bird bath sitting in the middle of her red and white azaleas. It was hot for April. Everything seemed to be blooming early. Someone at the office said it seemed like we were going straight from winter to summer. Sounded right to me; the ice in my drink was melting too fast. I figure Beth will have a good explanation as to what’s going on with the weather. She truly believes Florida, and New Orleans, will be completely covered in water in a few years. I told her it doesn’t matter to us—we probably won’t live to see it.
    Beth arrived home a little after seven o’clock and joined me on the back porch. She poured a glass of chilled Zinfandel. She looked really tired.
    “Hard day? And you had to work late again,” I said, as she sat in her chair and propped her feet on the stool.
    “Oh, yea. FDIC is back for a couple of days,” she said.
    I chuckled. “Is the bank going under?”
    “Charlie, you know that’s not going to happen. The bank is as strong as it has ever been.”
    “Yea, but this economy is not too strong.”
    “That’s true, but we’ll get through it,” she said, and turned away to watch the birds playing in the bird bath. I looked at her, and felt something different. Maybe she was thinking of another new landscaping project for the back yard, or is worried about her job.
    “What’s up?” I asked. “Got something...on your mind?”
    She turned to me and stared for a long minute. She shook her head. Then we both looked up as a jet moved across our backyard sky leaving a long contrail. She didn’t answer—I figured she was letting the tension from the bank fade from her mind. We sipped our drinks in silence. She finally got up and said, “I’m going inside, if you don’t mind. I want to relax in a tub of hot water, and then go to bed early.”
    “Fine by me. I’ll fix a ham and cheese sandwich and watch a little TV. Sure you don’t want something?”
    “Not really. We had a bunch of snacks and goodies at the bank. I nibbled all day.”
    “Keeping the FDIC boys happy, huh?”
    “Yes, of course,” she answered.

———

    Strangely, and out of the ordinary, Beth left early the next morning. She had gotten up quietly and dressed and left without waking me. There was a hushed silence throughout the house. I had a bowl of cereal and dressed for work. When you have lived with someone for twenty-five years, and unexpectedly that person is doing things out of the ordinary, you become somewhat perplexed. I did try to call her, several times during the day. The answer from the bank was always, “She’s meeting with the FDIC representative, and can not come to the phone.” Understandable, I thought.
    Since it was Friday, I left my office early and went home. I hung my suit up and put on a pair of shorts and a tee shirt and went to the back porch with a glass of iced tea. The birds were having a ball with the new bird bath. A flock of geese flew over, headed for the pond on the edge of our subdivision. They’ll hang around a day or two, I thought, and then head out, migrating back up north for the summer. Probably to Michigan, or Ohio, or another of those terribly cold-winter states. Places that Beth and I have no intention of ever visiting. We’d always loved, and sometimes even craved, warm weather. When we were dating at the university, we’d leave Athens on a Thursday afternoon and drive all night to a beach in Florida, and return Monday morning just in time for classes.
    Funny how some things never change, and some things do. Very recently—just over the past few weeks—I began to detect a subtle change in our marriage, in our routines. A breaking down of walls, no, more like building up of a new barrier. Something impenetrable. Not understandable. The conversations were different, not strained exactly, but different. Almost like we were speaking to each other as if we were complete strangers. The weird thing was, why? What was happening? Was this what other married couples go through after twenty-five years? I had no answers. I went in the kitchen and refilled my glass and returned to my rocker on the back porch. I wondered if we actually loved each other anymore, or were we just comfortable, and so set in our lives that love was not that important. Was love secondary to living our lives fully involved with our careers; looking after our property, keeping our vehicles running, staying close to our long-time friends, and so on and so on? What was important, really, at our age? Maybe it’s not companionship. I thought it was, but it was also nice this morning when Beth had slipped out quietly and I had silence surrounding me throughout the house. Is there a primeval impulse stashed in our DNA that pushes us apart after so long? I didn’t know, and I really didn’t care. I closed my eyes and dozed for a while.
    Beth arrived at six-thirty and woke me. I looked up at her standing beside me and said, “Another long day, huh?”
    “Yes, my goodness,” she said with a tired voice. “Reports. Reports. And more reports.”
    “FDIC, right?”
    “Yea,” she said. “I bought some chicken fingers, slaw and fries, if you want to eat something.”
    “Good idea. I could use something,” I told her.
    We ate at the breakfast table in the kitchen. I was really hungry, and the chicken and slaw and fries were good. We ate mostly in silence. I did ask her at one point why she’d left this morning without waking me. She said, “I didn’t want to wake you because you were sleeping so soundly.”
    Like the previous night, she got her hot bath and went to bed early. She said that she had to work Saturday until noon. I stayed up late and watched a rerun of the Masters Golf Tournament. I asked Beth to be sure and wake me before she left for the bank because I wanted to mow the grass before it got too hot. She did, just as she was leaving at eight-thirty. I got in my work shorts and a tee shirt, filled up my mower with gas and started cutting. It takes nearly two hours to cut our lawn and blow the clippings off the front sidewalk and steps and off of the driveway. After that, I went around the edges of the azalea beds and the roses and sprayed weed killer. I came inside and took a shower, dressed in shorts, a polo shirt and sandals and went uptown to Mid-Town Grill for a sandwich.
    Beth came home around one o’clock. I was in my lounge chair in the den watching the golf tournament and sipping a beer when she sat down on the sofa. She said, straight out, nervously, “We need to talk, and...I need to tell you something.”
    Whoa! She had a certain tone in her voice. A tone almost like the one that I hadn’t heard since her mother was dying last year in the nursing home. “What?” I asked, sitting up in my lounge chair.
    “Okay, here goes. First, I want you to know that I have loved you since I was nineteen years old. But, I don’t think I love you anymore—and, I’m in love with someone else—and I want a divorce.”
    I leaned up in my chair and almost dropped my beer. “A divorce!” I said, the word leaping out of my mouth.
    “Yes. And I know we can do it peacefully. And I know that you are probably as ready to split up as I am.” She sat up on the edge of the sofa and clasped her knees with her hands.
    “I don’t know...I haven’t,” I stammered. “Damn! You’re in love with someone else?” I looked at her lips, tried to determine if she was smiling or sneering. I felt nauseous. This was what had been going on—the thing that had created the barrier between us.
    “Yes, very much. You don’t know him,” she said, pulling her bottom lip in.
    I drank the last of my beer in one swallow and held the bottle by the neck, very tight in my fist. I asked, “Does he live...here?”
    “No,” she said shaking her head. “He lives in Washington.”
    “Washington? DC?”
    “Yes. He is divorced and lives in a condo in Washington,” she continued, “and I hope, Charlie that you’ll try to understand. I still care—“
    “How in the heck did you—uh, okay, it’s a FDIC rep, right?” I knew it. I knew it.
    “Yes. His name is Phil Harrison,” she said.
    “So, you’re in love with him?” I said again. “Damn! Damn!” I closed my eyes—and suddenly saw her standing on sugar-white sand in a two-piece bathing suit. Without knowing what I was going to do, I rose and walked quickly to the kitchen, with other scenes of her flashing across my mind, as if they were flickering on a screen from an old 35mm projector.
    “Charlie! Charlie, don’t leave!” she said loudly. “We have to talk!”
    I didn’t answer. “Damn! Damn!” was all I could say as I went from the kitchen to the garage to my car and drove away, looking in the rear view mirror and seeing her standing in the driveway. I drove north out of town, into the foothills. I drove for an hour before stopping at the top of Low Gap Mountain. I parked on the side of the road at an overlook, got out and leaned against the front fender. It was a little cooler, and I could smell honeysuckle. Looking south, I could visualize Atlanta, sitting beyond the horizon, a hundred miles or so away. Millions of people: married folks, divorced folks, congested interstates, crime, high taxes, and on and on. What was I going to do? Was the twenty-five years all for nothing? To her? To me? Or was this day predestined from the day we first met at the university?
    I stood for a long time, staring toward Atlanta, and running all the scenes from twenty-five years through my mind. I thought, I guess she’ll move to Washington. If so, I’ll sell the house and everything she doesn’t want to keep, and I’ll move my business to Florida. That’s my first idea. But I may have other ideas in the days to come—I just don’t know, today—at this moment. But it will come to me, I’m sure. I drove slowly back to town, and went around the back street and came up near the bank and saw her car and another one in the parking lot near the rear door. I drove home and went straight to the living room and pulled all of our picture albums out of the cabinet under our dining room hutch. I sat on the floor and started looking. Beth had once been almost obsessive taking pictures—we had hundreds of them in several thick albums. I wanted to find the picture before she came back home, and we started up again. I found it in the second oldest album. I gently lifted the plastic covering, removed the picture and put the albums back in the hutch and went to the back porch.
    Sitting in my rocker, I stared at the picture. She was standing on sugar-white sand in a two-piece bathing suit, staring out to the Gulf, and her skin was smooth and tanned, and her hair was loose in the wind.

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