Дуглас Кеннеди - Five Days

‘The next eighteen months were a depressed blur. My father was never good at emotional ballast. And my mother — though initially sympathetic — essentially told me to snap out of it, that I was young and had my whole life ahead of me, and what I needed to do now was look forward. My college friends were nice. I did talk for a bit to a psychologist on campus. But he wasn’t making me feel better, so I stopped the sessions, which I now realize was a bad idea. Back then, I didn’t want to feel better. I was so consumed with grief. So profoundly devastated. Everything just started to come asunder. Though my professors were, at first, kind to me, my grades really started to slip, as I no longer cared whether I did well or not. I cancelled the year abroad in Paris because I thought it would be unbearable without Eric. I kept largely to myself. I did middling class work, and my straight A average slipped into the Cs. But so what? I no longer had a purpose. The love of my life had been snatched from me. Though several professors and friends really did try to get me to start some serious therapy I refused. I was wildly depressed, but still functional enough to get through the day, to keep my apartment clean, to do just enough course work to pass my exams and not flunk out. What I realize now is that I was on a self-destructive kick — and really needed to punish myself. I went about it with profound determination.

‘Somehow I made it through junior year. My mother looked at my grades and shook her head and said: “There goes your medical career.” I didn’t care. My dad — when I had his attention — told me I should really think about doing something outside the box for a couple of years, like maybe joining the Peace Corps. But when I started to cry and ask him where and when I would meet another Eric, he just put a hand on my shoulder and told me that life would go on and — if I allowed it — it would get better.

‘Actually that was smart advice — especially about joining the Peace Corps and taking myself off to some extreme Third World country where I could maybe get a great deal of distance and emotional perspective. But did I follow it? I was so bent on hurting myself — something that I only understood rather recently — that, in the final trimester of my junior year, I managed to allow myself to be asked out by a guy named Dan Warren. A computer science major from way up north in Aroostook County. A nice enough fellow — whom I met when I got talked into joining an outdoor club by a friend who thought that getting me hiking might improve my mental state. Dan came from a different planet than Eric. Though intelligent he wasn’t an intellectual, had no imaginative flights of fancy, preferred the concrete to the realm of ideas, and his basic philosophy could be summed up as: Feet firmly on the ground is the only way to travel. Still, he was kind. And he really seemed to get me and couldn’t have been more sympathetic and canny when it came to dealing with all the deep, residual grief I still felt for Eric. We were friends for a month before we became romantically involved. Though there was none of the passion I felt for Eric it was an antidote to the past months of agony. Dan himself couldn’t have been more thrilled. He thought I was a catch. My friends found him “nice”, “straightforward ”, “uncomplicated ” — all those euphemisms for dull and less than animated. My parents met him. “Decent enough guy” was my dad’s rather flat verdict. Mom was more direct. “I hope he gets you out of your dark wood and then you move on to someone with a little more depth in the outfield.”

‘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?’

Seven

‘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.