How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [20]
Andrea and her way-too-handsome husband, Mark, are missionaries in Taiwan now, and she often feels she’s getting mixed messages. “You should see some of the English translated by Chinese—totally confusing,” she wrote in an e-mail message shortly after she and Mark arrived in Taipei. “I think Mom’s influence is strong even in Asia.”
As I set a place for one at the wooden dining table, I decide that it is just as well that I didn’t mention anything about Lucas to Miriam.
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I wake and look at the digital clock on the bedside table. Two minutes after three. What woke me? Did I have pain in my legs, or my arms? What is that noise? I turn on my stomach and cover the back of my head with a pillow. This is a crazy thing to do because who can sleep with a pillow smothered over your head? The pillow feels heavy and stifles my neck. I can’t breathe. I toss the pillow aside. The noise is still there. Sitting up, I realize that it must be the hooting of an owl. Once, we had an owl living in our oak tree by the barn. My mother wanted to call the county extension service to come and rid us of its disturbing cries. But Daddy said the owls were in Tifton long before humans were and that we had to just let it be.
I’m wide awake now. I’ve slept through the sirens that blare throughout Atlanta, but sleeping through nature’s cries will take some getting used to. I wonder how Yolanda is doing. I miss the Peruvian delicacies she would share with me. My thoughts of arroz con pollo and leche asada are replaced with thoughts of my little apartment. My bedside table not only held an alarm clock but also a framed picture of Lucas. The thought of Lucas causes my skin to itch.
One thing I don’t do well is lie awake at night. Getting out of bed and doing something helps me when I can’t go back to sleep. After the accident, I woke at all hours, so I invested in a number of jigsaw puzzles. I sat at my kitchen table many nights while sirens blared around my neighborhood, working on finding the pieces to quiet forest scenes.
I leave my bed, pull on my bathrobe, climb down the loft stairs, and head outside onto the deck via the sliding glass door.
The night is chilly, but the fresh air feels good against my face and in my lungs. I stand with my hands on the deck railing and watch the stars glitter above me. They look so near; if I just reached out, I could gather a few hundred in my hand.
The owl continues his own concerto. Unlike the stars, he wants to remain unseen. I once wondered aloud what it would be like to listen to an orchestra play Vivaldi’s La Stravaganza in total darkness. No viewing of the musicians playing violins—just an audience sitting and listening to the notes in the blackness. Lucas asked me how the musicians would read their music if there was no light. I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it would be too much to ask them to memorize it all. Lucas said it was an intriguing idea, however, and gave me that smile of his that seemed to encompass total appreciation for me.
“Ha!” I cry into the air. There is strength in the sound of my own voice. “Ha!” I repeat and hear the echo in the forest around my cabin.
I now wonder if Lucas’s smiles meant anything at all. When did he stop loving me? I once told Sally that perhaps he was trying to kill me that rainy night. She shook her head so hard her curls flung into her eyes. “Oh, Deena, no. No.”
“He was angry at me. We’d been arguing. Maybe he did want to kill me,” I said as Sally continued shaking her curls.
I don’t know why on this beautiful mountain night I have to spoil everything by thinking about Lucas, but my mind will not stray from these thoughts. Leaving Lucas and Atlanta was supposed to make me forget.
Finding out your boyfriend is secretly seeing someone else, and has been for a long time, makes your stomach feel like a bully wearing spikes just kicked it. When you’re a couple going to the movies on Friday night, when you’ve pledged your hearts to each other, and he asks someone