By Susan Bloch
The man who is John puts his arm around the woman’s shoulders and pulls her toward him. He drapes his arm across the park bench and his fingers caress another woman’s cheek.
Betrayal.
She, whoever she is, snuggles into his neck. Her blonde curls flow down his chest. The man pushes his tweed cap—the one I gave him as an impulse gift a few months ago—back off his forehead. His hands are in full view; I recognize the long fingers. I can almost feel them sneaking up under my sweater and stroking my breasts. I try to breathe but my throat is blocked.
I recognize his tan moccasins with tassels. He crosses his right leg over his left, swinging it the way he does when he’s happy. They’re laughing but the laugh is not his laugh. John doesn’t chortle—his contagious laugh rumbles up from his belly.
In Regent’s Park, crimson, yellow, and golden oak leaves shimmer in the frosty autumn sunshine. Geese, preferring the English winter, fly back from Scotland in a perfect V formation. They glide onto the grass and feed in a nearby pond where water gushes out of the mouths of babes from a bronze centerpiece fountain. In the rose garden, few magenta and pale pink blooms remain. White airplane smoke streaks the clear sky, buses and cabs grumble in the distance, and the earth beneath my feet quivers as underground trains rattle through tunnels.
These details of my surroundings fade as I dart toward the man who is John, my shoes crunching the brown, dry leaves lying on the ground. Even my favorite scent from a cluster of nearby pine trees dissipates. All I can smell is John’s familiar Ralph Lauren aftershave. For weeks I was convinced that he’d come back to me. And now, when I’d almost given up seeing him again, I find him.
A breeze blows into my face. Stray locks of hair fall out of my topknot and over my eyes. I tuck the greasy strands behind my ears, wipe the oily residue onto the back of my jeans. John loved the scent of my jasmine shampoo; I wish I had washed and styled my hair before coming out. Nudging my glasses up onto the bridge of my nose, I pick up my pace.
Besides shopping for food and going to work, this is my first outing since John’s memorial at the crematorium. Everyone loved the humanist service, the violinists from the Yehudi Menuhin School of Music playing Ravel’s string quartet in F major, and the various speeches that made me cry.
The words soon forgotten.
All I remember is the coffin containing John’s mutilated body flying down the chute and then turning away from me at a ninety-degree angle; the small door, reminiscent of an Auschwitz oven, opening on cue; and my John swooshing into a crimson hell. The kind of hell I’d seen depicted in Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgement at the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Flames leapt up to welcome him into the 900-degree Celsius inferno. Then the iron door clanged shut and he was gone.
Sitting on a wooden bench in the chilly cremation anteroom, surrounded by family and friends, I imagined hearing John’s hair sizzle, his blood boil, and his shriveled lungs frying. In my mind’s eye, I saw his flesh char, his bones crumble, and his eyeballs shrink and curl like an egg frying in a pan. Only the asbestos fibers that had sucked the life out of him survived, flying triumphantly up the crematorium chimney stack. As John’s body turned to powder, I entered the first circle of Dante’s hell, Limbo, carrying my own special secret: the hope that John would return to me. It was the wrong kind of hope, irrational and crazy. But hope nonetheless.
Something about this particular autumn morning, when the thick cumulus cloud cover finally gave way to patches of pale blue sky—or maybe just the fact it had stopped raining—made me brave enough to go for a walk in the park, brave enough to believe that John would come back to me. I changed out of my weekend pajamas and struggled to pull on a pair of jeans. The top button wouldn’t close and the zipper stuck halfway up. I took in a breath, pulled in my belly, and finally pushed the button through the hole. That job completed, I slumped, breathing heavily in the armchair at the end of the bed.
Heaving myself up, I opened the closet and scrummaged for a bra, then a shirt. But the shelf for my fleece tops was empty. A stained sweatshirt lying on the bed would have to do—the rest of my sweaters were piled up next to the laundry basket. Tears dropped onto my sneakers when I bent over to lace them. My back stiffened as I stood up and walked to the front door. Stepping into the street, I felt the chill against my cheeks and headed to the park. That’s when I saw him.
I stride toward John, now, almost bumping into a little girl feeding the ducks, paying no attention to a woodpecker hammering desperately against a pine trunk or a helicopter grinding overhead. Intent on my mission, I don’t notice the crumbling stair. My ankle twists sideways. I fling my arms up in the air to regain my balance.
Slow motion.
First my hands, then my chest, and my face hit the ground with a thud that echoes across the nearby pond. Rough concrete stones crunch into my knees. Warm blood trickles out of my nose. My chin judders.
“Best you don’t move for a moment,” a male voice commands.
I strain my head to look up and pain shoots down my neck, but I recognize the perfectly pressed cuff of John’s olive-green corduroys—enough to know it really is him: my beloved husband. He touches my shoulder and I shiver. At one level, I’m aware that my thinking is completely demented, yet even the man’s voice is husky like John’s.
“Do you think you can sit up?” he says. “May I help you?”
For a moment I’m confused and struggle to understand why he talks in a Scottish accent.
“Please do,” I rasp. “Thank you.”
I roll onto my side and ease myself into a seated position.
“Why don’t you take this Kleenex to stop your nosebleed?”
A familiar hand covers my palm, exactly the same way John used to hold my hand. I stagger up to standing and sink into his arm. How gently he touches my throbbing wrist.
“Here, you probably need your glasses.” He wipes them on his sweatshirt and hands them to me. “Rather scratched I’m afraid.”
The ground sways, and the man who is not John leads me to a nearby wooden bench. Unable to banish the delusion from my mind, I slump onto the seat, scrunch up my nose, and squint. Through smudged lenses he slowly comes into focus. I feel as if I’m in a kind of waking chimera yet still dreaming. I stare down again at his shoes. Yes, the same tan moccasins with tassels that John used to wear, the same Argyle black-and-gray socks, and the same dark brown floppy fringe. But there are no streaks of gray like John’s and no dimple in his chin. He is so very much like John, but the cold reality is that he’s a stranger and John is not here.
“Is there someone you can call to help you?” He leans over me.
“If I sit for a few moments I’m sure I’ll be okay,” I lie. “I can’t believe I’m so clumsy.”
What I really want to tell him is that I was sure that he was my dead husband, that his presence threw me down on the concrete path. I try to take in a deep breath but find myself shuddering, bursting into tears like a five-year-old kid. After a few seconds, I pull myself together.
“I guess I just missed that step,” I mumble on, hoping he’ll stay
I root for another tissue in the sleeve of my shirt and try to hold it up to my nose. My hand shakes, and I can’t seem to find my nostrils. Blood dribbles onto my jeans.
“You’re awfully pale,” the stranger says softly. “Will you be all right getting home by yourself?”
“Yes, thank you,” I lie again, hunching my shoulders. “I only live a few blocks away.” I dread this solitary walk, dread returning to what was our home, and dread the musty silence inside our bedroom.
“I’m glad nothing’s broken,” the man says, letting go of my arm and easing his large, warm hand off my wrist.
I am, I want to tell him. I’m broken. But don’t.
“I’m so sorry to have disturbed you,” I add.
As the man walks away, back to the comfort of mellow autumn colors, my oranges, reds, and yellows turn gray. The woman on the bench puts her head back on his shoulder. The loneliest image in my world just then is that sight—the couple snuggling on a park bench; the loneliest sound—their laughter.
At the edge of the pond, raucous crows attack a lazy lizard sunning on a small rock but I can’t be bothered to chase them away. A pine cone plops onto the ground and a squirrel runs up the tree trunk. Two white swans waddle toward me hissing and grunting. It is time to leave before they peck at my legs. My body feels wobbly, my bloody knees stick to the fabric of my jeans, and a sharp pain shoots through my ankle.
The first thing I do when I walk back into the house is to call John’s cell phone.
“Thank you for calling. Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m able.
I start to ask him to call me back…please. But his mailbox is full.