Copyright © 2013 by Tom Winton
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
For better or for worse, certain events remain clear in our minds forever. Not only can we pull up visions of those memorable moments at will, but we can also rekindle the emotions we felt when we lived them. Granted, whether they were happy emotions or sad ones, ecstatic or devastating, we may not be able to bring them back with all their initial impact, but we can still feel them. Believe me, it’s true. I know all too well. I have one particular memory that to this day, twenty-one years later, still rips away another piece of my heart every time it invades my mind.Clustered beneath a white comforter the way we were that early morning, Wendy and I resembled a single drift of the snow that was soon to fall. Outside our tract house, the darkness and stars were about to surrender to morning’s first light. All over Smithtown alarm clocks tore into people’s sleep, lights came on, toilets flushed, and coffee brewed. Yes, the winter sky over our Long Island town was cloudless, but that would soon change. Also on the cusp of change, though I hadn’t a clue, was the course of my life.
It started out like any other morning when still in a semiconscious state after silencing the alarm clock, I got out of bed first. Arms outstretched in the darkness, palms up, I followed my bare feet across the carpet, feeling for the bathroom door. As I began my morning rituals, all of them involving running water, Wendy pulled my pillow over her head as she always did. It hadn’t dawned on me yet but the date was February 22nd—my thirty-ninth birthday.
After I finished doing everything I had to, I quietly padded back into the bedroom. I put on my gray pinstriped suit with the “slightly irregular” stamped over the inside pocket, a white oxford shirt from Penney’s, and a burgundy tie. In the dim light beginning to seep through the curtains I watched myself in the mirror as I tied a Windsor knot.
The salesman’s dreaded uniform, I thought. What a waste of time this charade is. No matter how hard we work, Wendy and I still keep getting knocked back farther and farther. I am so sick and tired of worrying about money.
Easing up to the dresser mirror then, I carefully assessed myself.
At a shade over six feet tall, people often told me I was broad at the shoulders. Despite the extra half inch I couldn’t shake from my waist, the three weekly trips I was making to the gym were paying off. I still had a good head of hair too, despite the few pesky strands of gray that had recently homesteaded up there. I was reasonably content with my face and most women didn’t seem to find it objectionable either. But that didn’t matter. I loved Wendy too much to be interested in anyone else. The bridge of my nose had been a bit out of kilter for years, but you’d almost have to be looking for the flaw to notice it. It had been broken at a dance club when I was nineteen—after being sucker-punched by a guy with bad judgment. By the time that fight was broken up, the instigator looked far worse than I did.
“Are you getting up, Wendy?” I asked, finger-combing my hair one last time.
“No,” came her muffled voice from beneath my foam pillow, “I’m going to have to call in sick today, Sonny. I just can’t seem to shake this cold. It’s been what…three days now?”
Picking up one end of the pillow, I leaned over and kissed my wife’s bed-warmed cheek. Then, while still holding the pillow, I straightened up and marveled for the thousandth time at how enchanting she still was. We had no children. Wendy was unable to. But kids or no kids, most women her age and many much younger would have given their entire wardrobes and more to look as good as she did. As I stood there a few seconds, I experienced one of those fleeting isolated moments in a busy man’s life when he truly appreciates what’s most important to him.
