The meeting

Remfiction This is a story that's been floating around my head after something my brother wrote.

  She's here again. I seem particularly tuned to her presence, because I look up even before the door opens. The toddler comes racing in first, followed by the baby carrier. Then she comes in and her eyes span the room and drop nervously when they meet mine. Like I knew they would...
We might speak, we might not. The playroom was crowded with other moms and demanding children, and even with my attempt to orchestrate a conversation for the past year, I hadn't got past "cute jacket" and I doubted today would be any different. She feared me. She feared what I might say if she let me start, and who could blame her? There was so much I wanted to say, and while I didn't want her to be scared of me, I knew things, and she knew it. I knew she knew who I was, and therefore knew who she had been- before the wedding ring on her finger and the two beautiful children that ran joyfully into her arms, and called her mama. When she looked at me, she looked haunted. But less so now than before. After a year of warm smiles, I was starting to get polite smiles back. I could stop feeling like a ghost.

 I first learned about her 5 years ago. My marriage of 3 years was growing distant and quarrellous and I didn't know why. I loved my husband, and prodded him for an explanation. He would look harassed, then defensive, then apologize profusely. I would shrug my shoulders and suggest maybe he should go out for a while. He always felt better after one of his drives. But not for as long as he used to. In fact, he was miserable most of the time, and I was clueless at how to help. And even had I any clue, my husband made sure I was powerless by his total distance and isolation. Yethe was kind to me and treated me well, and so I was pacified until the morning I found him unconscious. He wouldn't wake up. I cringe when I think how long I left him, thinking he needed the rest. When I saw he wouldn't, couldn't wake, I called the ambulance. He was revived at the hospital. When they told me they had pumped his stomach, I was floored! I was left for hours to ponder why he would have attempted to poison himself, but the actual answer never crossed my mind. He confessed he had for the past two years on and off, been a patron of prostitutes in a house in the city. My reaction was typical, and no longer relevant, suffice to say that there had been many other women, but he'd been a regular to one in particular. That one was the one whom he had been able to talk to. It had been her who two months prior had told him he should stop coming. She recognized his misery and wasn't interested in feeling guilty for it. He vowed to quit, and never return to any of them. Two months into his goal, he felt that the only way to keep his word was to stop living. He told me all of this at his hospital bedside.

 And then suddenly there she was, in our town. He pointed her out to me at a community dance. He had said she wasn't as pretty as me. I'd been angry that he'd say that to me, like I would care. Like it would matter at all! But when I saw her, I saw it was true, and I was embarrassed that it DID matter. Her hair was long and stringy, and looked like it would never hold a coif. Her dress was tastefully revealing, but ill-fitted and contrived to not be flattering at all. Her features were striking, but cold-possibly by Russian decent, possibly by a life of rougher choices than I'd ever had to make. I didn't need to worry that she had seen me. When my husband and I were on the dance floor, we had all eyes on us. Oddly, I was embarrassed about that. It was childish to want her to know I didn't lose my husband to her because of my looks. I owed her for getting him back. It did matter that I was prettier, but just the once-just for a moment. I wonder if I would have felt so indebted had SHE been the prettier one?...

 But that wasn't what filled my thoughts when I saw her. I had a speech in my head that I had practised a million times. I would try and tell her sorry for what had happened to her without insulting her with my own lack of understanding for her life. I would try and thank her for being there when my husband really needed a friend, without condoning where he found one. I would try and say I forgive you without implying that she needed to apologize.  No wonder I never got past "cute jacket"... The only message I was able to convey was in my own silence. By it, I said "I will keep your secret. I will let you change your life. I will not haunt you. There is no malice in me. You can trust me. I am your friend."