Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

‘Still, that summer before our senior year, he took me cross-country on a road trip, which was kind of wonderful. Even if I did frequently wonder what I was doing with this guy. But it was comfortable and easy. So on it went. Then, another small disaster. We’d always used condoms as birth control, as I’d gone off the pill after Eric’s death and it really didn’t agree with me. One night — around two weeks before our graduation — a condom that Dan was wearing broke while we were making love. At the time it was difficult, but still possible to get the morning-after pill. It required a drive down to that clinic in Boston where I had my termination. I had a biology final on Monday and I was frightened of failing it — that’s how much I had let myself slip, even after hooking up with Dan — who, truth be told, wasn’t much of a student when it came to chasing high grades. And I was due to have my period in seven days. And.

‘Oh, the excuses I invented. I think now, deep down, I couldn’t bear the idea of terminating another pregnancy, even though the morning-after pill — despite what the born-again lobby thinks — is a far cry from a termination. There was another part of me that, ever since Eric’s death, had been carrying a huge amount of guilt about not doing what Eric suggested and having our baby. You can’t believe the amount of times I’ve told myself, if only we’d had the baby Eric would still be here today. If only I had listened to him, and hadn’t pushed for an abortion. If only. ’

Richard reached out and took my hand.

‘You can’t think that. You did absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing.’

‘I would have had his baby. That part of him would still be here. ’

‘Had Eric not run that red light at the time—’

‘The only reason he ran that light is because I’d gotten sick. Had we gone to Boston despite my stomach flu—’

‘Laura, please, stop. You had no hand in what happened to Eric. It was the music of chance, nothing more.’

‘But afterwards I did have a choice — and what did I do? I walled myself into a life I didn’t want. My mother — who never knew about the first abortion — firmly told me that she would “take care of everything” if I wanted to terminate the pregnancy. Even Dan was OK with the idea of ending it. But no. The guilt I felt was so rampant, so unexamined, so self-punitive that I insisted on keeping the child. And to keep Dan’s very conservative, very Baptist parents happy we were married that same summer. Even a week before the wedding Mom tried to talk me out of it. Saying I was making the mistake of my life. But. ’

I reached for my drink and drained it, gripping Richard’s hand even tighter as the alcohol provided momentary balm against all I had refused to confront for years, decades. Then:

‘Every day I give thanks for the fact that I have my two wondrous children. When I think how, had I terminated that second pregnancy, Ben would not be here now — my brilliant, extraordinarily talented son — that nullifies all the other regrets. Just as Sally — whom I so adore, and who I see is in the midst of a gigantic struggle right now — would also not be here had I not chosen to stay with Dan. So, there are huge recompenses for a life otherwise—’

I broke off, feeling my eyes welling up, a sob in my throat. But I managed to stifle it and say:

‘And here’s the question with which I keep torturing myself — had Eric never set off on that bicycle, would the entire course of my life have been different? Would I be a doctor somewhere now? Would my brilliant husband still tell me how extraordinary I am? Would I feel loved? Would I be happy?’

‘WOULD I FEEL loved? Would I be happy?’

Those words lingered for a very long moment after they were uttered. They filled the silence that followed them. A silence during which Richard took my other hand and fixed his gaze directly on me. Then he said:

‘But you are loved.’

This statement landed with such quiet force that I felt myself involuntarily tense. Having avoided Richard’s gaze while telling him that very long and terrible story, now I could not take my eyes off him. Though I wanted to say exactly the same thing — ‘But you too are loved’ — an innate fear kicked in. I was now in a terra incognita that I hadn’t known since I was eighteen. But when I fell so madly for Eric, I knew nothing of life’s larger intricacies and the disenchantments that begin to pile up within you. Having decided in recent years that there was little future prospect of intimacy, passion, ardor, yet alone the possibility of actual love.

No, this was all too strange, all too fast, all too perplexing. I was terrified of being even somewhat adjacent to all that I was feeling right now, to all that I wanted to blurt out in a mad romantic rush. and which I knew I couldn’t bring myself to do. Because that would mean taking my foot off the emotional brakes for the first time in more than twenty years.

I withdrew my hands from Richard’s grasp.

‘Have I said the wrong thing?’ he asked.

I took my eyes off him, using the swizzle stick from my cocktail glass to draw invisible circles on the paper coaster in front of me.

‘No,’ I finally said. ‘You said a wonderful thing. But one which I can’t. ’

Synonyms came rushing to mind: accept, acknowledge, concur with, mirror, embrace, agree with, acquiesce to.

I didn’t finish the sentence. My swizzle stick kept making manic circles on the paper coaster. I told myself: You are being absurd. You are closing down the possibility of something for which you’ve longed since.

Soon after Eric’s funeral, I drove myself in his Volvo to a river not far from our apartment. It was a perfect late-spring afternoon — the sun at full wattage, not a cloud up above, the water unruffled, becalmed. I couldn’t help but think: This is an immaculate day that I can see, but Eric can’t. Just as the realization hit that I would never hear his voice again, never feel his touch, never have him deep inside me, whispering how much he loved me as our passion rose. My grief that afternoon was so new, so raw, so overwhelming and acute that I felt as if the very act of breathing was an affront to Eric’s memory. I so remember being so numb, so spent, that I could no longer cry — having spent the past week crying nonstop. Staring at the river, considering that I had lost the man of my life, I told myself that I would never, ever encounter such love again — that there was nothing but emotional sterility ahead. And yes, I do know how wildly melodramatic and bereavement-laden all that sounds now. But in light of what Richard just told me — and my timorous backing away from it — another uneasy rumination clouded my mind. By deciding all those years ago that I would never know such love again, had I actually set myself up to ensure that this prophesy came true? Was that the reason I married Dan — because I knew he could never be the man that Eric was? As such, our relationship — so lacking the zeal and heat of my time with Eric — would ensure that my sense of loss would never dim?

Out of nowhere, I reached for Richard’s hands again.

‘The truth of the matter is,’ I said, ‘I’m scared.’

‘Me too.’

‘And when did—?’

I stopped myself just before the pronoun ‘you’ came forth.

‘When did I know?’ he asked. ‘From that moment yesterday when you recited that poem.’

‘As bleak as it was?’

‘It was hardly bleak. It let me know what I had sensed from the start — the fact that, like me, you have been lonely. Lonely for years.’

My hands tightened within his.

‘You got that one right,’ I said.

‘And that story you just told — the story of Eric — the fact that you perceive yourself to have walled yourself into a life you don’t want. ’