Patience

She started smoking the day he left, nearly thirty years ago. She didn’t think about why it was just something to do when he walked away. She sat at the window, hoping, peering, and smoking. One cigarette lit from the other, smoke dragged deep into her lungs, and everyone said that was a bad thing to do, but she still smoked, and most of them had passed away. She kept her hand outside to let the smoke drift up into the clouds and thought of it as a signal, a beacon that he could follow home. The ash burned close to her fingers and many times had scarred her fingers, so there was little pain left. The pain was all in her heart.

It was not always like that. They were happy people, loving people, caught up with each other in a carousel of mid-life love. Then the lies started and were compounded, she was afraid of the truth, he had little regard for it. He met the other woman in their own home. There was a party for his forty-seventh birthday. A cake was baked, songs were sung, drinks were drunk, and somehow, he and this other woman were unseen for a while.

After he left, not saying much, just packing a small suitcase and his old Army duffle bag, she would stand in his closet among the hung clothes and ask herself in a soft voice, “Why? What did I do wrong?” Then she would sink to the floor and cry among the old shoes he didn’t bother to pack. He left his bowling trophies and his magazines, used tissues in his bathroom wastebasket, his fishing rod. He took the unopened bottle of whiskey from the kitchen cabinet and his favorite ball cap from the hook behind the door.

There was still a lot of him left in the house, and she washed and ironed and dusted and polished so that it would be perfect when he returned. It’s still perfect today. Those things she could not do, the things that required his strength or skills, she had to hire help. As the years added up and the money ran down, fewer of these things were done. But she knew in her heart that he would make short work of that when he returned and why she waited so patiently. She knew they would dance again in their stocking feet on the linoleum floor. Sit on the porch swing and watch the distant thunder clouds. Get another dog. All the things they did before, she never doubted they would do again.

She smoked and waited, and sometimes she would see a man approach, but it was only an illusion. She kept the window clean and bought new glasses at Walmart because her vision was beginning to cloud. She wanted to see him from afar as he walked, no strutted, down the street head high, shoulders back, handsome as hell—her man. She will rise from the window, throw out the cigarette, rush to the bathroom for mouthwash and a hairbrush.

“Wait! Is that him?” She rubbed her eyes and cleaned her glasses. Maybe. Maybe. A man parked in front, at the end of the driveway. He didn’t get out right away, just sat there. He’s teasing me she thought like he so often did. She laughed a little at the memories, he was such a card. That last Christmas he dressed in a Santa suit and climbed on the roof. She danced with joy in the yard, then hugged and kissed him when he was safely on the ground, so thankful.

Her breath was coming in shorter grabs as the car door opened and the man, her man, got out. She was so sure. He was tall, not as much as he had been, but that was only natural, it had been a lot of years. But he was dark-haired still and had the same purposeful gait. She dropped the cigarette and waited, not sure what to say as he approached. The door was always unlocked in case he had lost his key. He opened the picket fence gate and stepped forward on the brick walk, crushing the weeds with his shoes. “Oh, God!” She clutched at her dress as the anticipation flooded over her like an ocean wave. She couldn’t speak, but she would struggle up and hug him to pieces.

He stopped at the door, placed a Foreclosure Notice on it and left.