An Unbroken Heart

Jeremy Elton stepped into the swelter of late July in Chicago. Even after leaving his daughter’s un-air conditioned apartment, the heat under the afternoon sun was oppressive. He could feel the humidity collecting with sweat on his arms, and if he did not get to the air conditioning of his car soon, he would be dripping in sweat.
His daughter required a brief exchange of money for promises, the cure for another of her monetary stumbles. Cherise, is his oldest child, though none of them were children, was having the hardest time making it in the world. She moved in fits and starts, the result of dreams too big for her britches. He knew she would succeed eventually, either she would dream smaller or reach higher and with a more sure hand. But in the mean time, there was this again and again.

Even before Cherise had called with her plea, her mother, the increasingly overbearing harpy Darlene, called, insisting that he not assist her in dealing with her latest financial mishap. It was apparent that she was not like her younger sister, Charlene, a bastion of responsibility according to the many comparisons their mother had made of them over so many years. It had always been unpleasant to watch Darlene blatantly favor Charlene over Cherise, it had not become any less unpleasant since they were grown and had moved out of her home.

It was an imbalance he long tried to counter, but being where he was in their lives, he could only accomplish so much to that end. Still he couldn’t figure out why Cherise did not just call him first and avoid the abuse her mother would heap on her and him, because every failure of Cherise’s was his fault and he should be fully informed of each and every failure of the daughter he damaged the most, by leaving Darlene’s well prickled nest those many years ago.

He never thought of Darlene as his ex-wife, always as ‘their mother’. It was hard for him to remember being married to her. She was not the first girl he saw after his accident and rehabilitation, so the warnings about it being a rebound romance did not make sense. There had been three years between Donna and Darlene. By all conventions of the idea, he should have been over Donna by the time Darlene even came into his life, after all he and Donna had only been together for slightly more than a year.
Not long after they were married, Darlene was pregnant with their second daughter, and even with the impending arrival of his daughter, he knew he no longer wanted to be married to her. He’d come to this conclusion in the parking lot of the Museum of Science and Industry; staring, not at the glistening beauty of Lake Michigan right across Lake Shore Drive, but at a tree in the small lot across 57th Street.

He did not ask for a divorce, he continued to go to work and come home in the evening. Isolated in the basement, he would watch television and drink beer until everyone else had gone to bed. Darlene doted on the Charlene, something he remembered but was not conscious of at the time. They lived in one house in front of separate televisions in different worlds.

Finally, like a swung cat, she demanded that he leave and give her a divorce. He objected to none of it. There was one fit thrown over custody, but he knew the least he could give his daughters was an occasional break from their mother. So he stood his ground against her shrill objections and saw his daughters once every other weekend at least, as life did indeed go on.

For three years, he was unfettered in sitting by the lake, gazing at that tree across the street from the lake. He wondered and wished with ease. His attentions were turned from the passion of a past he could not take hold of, to an innocent and sweet interjection into his life. The lady who worked where he bought gas had become the reason he went to that station. After a few weeks of dimpled smiles flashed from behind inch thick plastic, Edwina agreed to a drink with him, which turned into a night, which became 15 years and two more children.

His second marriage took a gentler slope to a river of quiet that separated them. It was always enough for him, to be simply as they were, watching their two children Charles and Donna grow, with his older daughters spending every other weekend with them and a good deal of their summer vacations.

Edwina fussed over the children, both hers and his, softly nudging Jeremy into a reasonable semblance of family life. He did whatever she asked him to do, but of his own accord he did little more than the perfunctory, which slid into nothing at all. Yet he always thought it was enough. Edwina responded by asking him to do less and less until every unsaid thing between them became a thread pulled loose from the fabric of their marriage.

He would have let that go on and been quite content with it, so much so that he was shocked by her break of their silence asking for a divorce as they drew toward their 15th year of marriage. But he did not contest. For a while, he imagined that he should have, that if he had resisted, she would have stayed with him. But that was not an idea that would linger long as he found himself on a park bench across from the museum, even closer to that tree.

It was a small and comfortable lie, after his second marriage ended that he’d ‘found’ himself there, the way a tourist might find himself in an unseemly part of town. He knew exactly what he was doing, just where he was going, but had not quite settled in the idea that he would want to go there and do that. So he simply found himself there on one summer afternoon, under a calming lake breeze. A few weeks prior, he would take the previous exit, then two weeks taking the following exit, then the exit by the museum, but he would drive by. Finally one day he took the exit, then turned the first corner and parked the car.

He walked back, taking a seat not far from the tree. This was the closest he had been to that tree in the 20 years since his car had been pushed into it. It was a thick barked cottonwood tree. On the bench, he knitted his fingers behind his head looking at the tree as though it might explain why he’d lost so much there so long ago. Before that day, he’d had a life.

The two of them attended the same high school and would have graduated the same year. In their freshman year, he’d seen her pass by in the halls. She was cute, but not a standout compared to so many of the other girls he’d seen. Then one day at lunch, during his sophomore year, he looked at her and she looked back. In her eyes, the din of the lunchroom fell silent and the world blurred around her. Then she tilted her head and smiled at him and it was as though he were overcome by fire from his own insides.

He would hold his breath as she passed him in the hall, their eyes locked like puzzle pieces, his heart swollen to the point of choking the words in his mouth. He held his breath until that school year ended. During the summer break, he would only see her in his dreams, where they would languish in young, summer love. He returned to school waxed so in his desire of her, that Aphrodite responded by seating him next to her in English and Biology classes.

In the first English class, he smiled and nodded, she smiled in return. Had he not been sitting at the time, he would have surely fainted from the rush of blood her smile brought in him. He rushed out of the class as soon as the bell rang, tripping on his way out of the door. Two classes later and there she was again. Smiling. Not simply next to him, but at the same table, his lab partner. Her name was Donna Anderson, a title too simple and unadorned for a thing of beauty such as she was.

By the third day of classes, he was able to speak to her in complete sentences and not faint. But if she looked into his eyes for just a moment too long, the world around her would again blur into silence. He asked for her number under the pretense of an assignment. He called her as soon as he’d gotten home and they talked until bedtime. The following day, she was only more beautiful by the light of her dimpled smile.

In English, the ache to touch her overwhelmed him, when the class ended he reached out to her as she rose from her desk, his fingertips igniting him as they grazed the skin of her arm. “So you got gym next, huh?”

“Yeah…” she smiled, melting him to the chair.

“Uhhh, could I walk withcha?” he asked, trembling under the softness of her gaze.

“Sure, but I have to stop at my locker if that is okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, that will be fine.” Jeremy answered smiling so hard that his cheeks began to burn.

And so it began, an elevation of sensations from which he would never recover. Once when walking her home from school, she took his hand, placing her palm to his. Though his hand was much bigger than hers, it felt as though it were her hand enveloping his, a shock of softness as their fingers slowly intertwined, and then still so that there was nothing but his heartbeat not simple in the palm of his hand, but only where her palm touched his.

Under the falling leaves and a brisk breeze, he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, two blocks from her home and turned her towards him, then pulled her to him. He looked down into her fired brown eyes, then leaned in and closed his eyes hoping she would close hers too. He lightly pressed his lips against her lips, quickly followed by the soft pop of their lips parting. Again he pressed his lips to hers, slightly more insistent, relishing in the softness of her lips, again there was the soft pop of their lips parting. For a third time, he pressed his lips to hers and a full passionate kiss blossomed between them for a blissful, eternal moment. The kiss ended, he nestled his face into the nape of her neck. Her hair smelled of lilacs, scenting the surreal with summer and remembered dreams that paled when held to the reality of this moment.

The memory of the kiss would spin into other moments; laying his head in her lap on a park bench, holding hands while dreaming out loud through store windows downtown, the first time they made love, a Halloween party, her family’s Thanksgiving table, kissing under the mistletoe, walking to the grocery store through the snow, exchanging gifts on Valentine’s Day and the rising excitement of graduating, all coming to a screeching halt on rain slicked Lake Shore Drive on an April afternoon.

Here the memories would close his eyes, so that he could see now what he did not see then, a car barreling from his right as he made a left turn onto Lake Shore Drive. Jeremy wondered what they had been thinking. They could not make the light, they were way too late, and he had already entered the intersection. In his memory he could hear the tires squealing that he did not hear then. In his memory, he was not looking ahead, but he watched as the right side of his car crumpled in on Donna with such force it snapped her neck before the car rolled over. In his memory, he could remember seeing her as the car rolled over, she had not gotten thrown from the car. In his memory, he was still conscious as the car finally landed upright next to that tree. In his memory he could still see her sitting next to him, he could remember touching her before he passed out.

Three weeks later, he asked about her. His parents shook their heads and told him he needed to concentrate on getting better. A few days later, he knew he was never going to see her again. No one talked about it; he had rehab to go through if he was ever going to walk again. He did not know why he would want to walk again, but did as he was told.

I would really appreciate some feedback.

What a beautiful story. I really enjoyed reading this. The sadness, sweetness, and pathos... You write so beautifully.

I read it twice and will again.
I even love the very clever title, An Unbroken Heart.

Jeremy's entire life was colored by his tragic loss of young love. You captured his life, all of it so well. There are many examples of this, but one of the best is :

quote:

Edwina fussed over the children, both hers and his, softly nudging Jeremy into a reasonable semblance of family life. He did whatever she asked him to do, but of his own accord he did little more than the perfunctory, which slid into nothing at all. Yet he always thought it was enough. Edwina responded by asking him to do less and less until every unsaid thing between them became a thread pulled loose from the fabric of their marriage.

With that, you described the deconstruction their marriage, a very sad thing indeed---but you managed to do it so poetically. That contrast is, for me, what good writing is about.

There is so much sadness----his loss, the fact that he had a very full life in which he was emotionally unable to participate, his suppressed memories, and the continued haunting... The focus on that spot at the cottonwood tree is good grounding (no pun intended ).

I could go on and on; that's how much I've enjoyed reading this. Your understanding of the human condition, your intelligence and your mastery of words--a beautiful thing.

Do you have more? I would love to read more of your writings. Check your PM!

Nice story. Very sad. It really made you feel some stuff. Made me remember my first kiss.

Why is Jeremy's heart UN broken?

quote:

Originally posted by negrospiritual:
Why is Jeremy's heart UN broken?

My take is he lost his first love before that crucial first heartbreak could happen; from that point in his life, his heart has been in a state of tragic suspension. Thus, it remains unbroken because it is unreachable.


But I would love to hear from Wiz what it means.

quote:

Originally posted by Momzed:

quote:

Originally posted by negrospiritual:
Why is Jeremy's heart UN broken?

My take is he lost his first love before that crucial first heartbreak could happen; from that point in his life, his heart has been in a state of tragic suspension. Thus, it remains unbroken because it is unreachable.


But I would love to hear from Wiz what it means.

Momzed, I like the way you pick up on things.

That is what it means. I wrote a story some years about about how my first love broke my heart into dust, it was pretty funny.

But as I got older, I could see the good of having your heart broke, like a seed or something along those lines. He never got his heart broken and even worse he never got anything near closure on her death or that relationship.

That is one reason he tries to remember things that did not happen. But he was not totally devoid of life or living, just not as receptive to things as he could have been.

I am going to change the end. He has to wind up back at that tree.

Why wouldn't the death of his first love be considered a broken heart?


i'm just sayin

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:

I am going to change the end. He has to wind up back at that tree.

I was going to ask what you would change. That would be interesting to read.

Thanks, negrospiritual.

It should have, but he never really got to talk about her dying. When he was in the accident, it was over 20 years ago, his parents withheld it from him because his health had been so tenuous (people held the truth from their children a lot back then). So he did not deal well with her death and she was the love of his life.

His life was not horrible after that, he did get married, had children, did the day to day, but for the love they shared overshadowed the rest of his life.

quote:

Originally posted by negrospiritual:
Why wouldn't the death of his first love be considered a broken heart?


i'm just sayin

IMO
I don't think he had a chance to grieve the death of his first love. We have to accept the feelings of loss and pain. There is a process to grieving. This man was ask to concentrate on his physical rehabilitation but nothing was done for his emotional well being. Unfortunately, you must accept the grief as real and its ok to feel the pain of grief or the process will be prolonged.

quote:

The memory of the kiss would spin into other moments; laying his head in her lap on a park bench, holding hands while dreaming out loud through store windows downtown, the first time they made love, a Halloween party, her family’s Thanksgiving table, kissing under the mistletoe, walking to the grocery store through the snow, exchanging gifts on Valentine’s Day and the rising excitement of graduating, all coming to a screeching halt on rain slicked Lake Shore Drive on an April afternoon.

When we lose someone close to us, we not only grieve them we also grieve the loss of shared activities such as a dating, walks in the park or other such activities. Learning to cherish a memory without letting it control you is a very important step in the grieving process.

quote:

Three weeks later, he asked about her. His parents shook their heads and told him he needed to concentrate on getting better. A few days later, he knew he was never going to see her again. No one talked about it; he had rehab to go through if he was ever going to walk again. He did not know why he would want to walk again, but did as he was told.

I ask the question, Is he still grieving? My answer is YES!

He is defintitely still greving, which is why he goes to the tree.