After the Climb (River Rain 0.50)

“The way I needed to do that, Genny,” he retorted.

“So he is actually stuck in your head,” I deduced.

“No, honey, you dreamed of having your own trailer and making acceptance speeches. And I dreamed of not having to worry about money, being in a position my family would not worry about it either and living in a big house surrounded by nothing but trees and maybe a lake.”

He didn’t need to tell me that.

I knew his dream.

“So we both got what we wanted in the end.”

“Yeah, but it would have been nice to have had the shot to do it together.”

“Sadly, that didn’t happen.”

“We finally agree on something. Though ‘sadly’ for me isn’t a strong enough word for it.”

Time to resume our earlier topic.

“And why was your marriage unhealthy, Duncan?”

“Because Dora was great. She was fun. She could cook and she loved hiking and mountain biking and she had a beautiful smile and she had drive to make something of herself. In the beginning, and for a long time, she was light in the darkness. She also had two assholes cheat on her before she met me. I did not know this next part. She did not know it. Neither of us saw it coming. But they did a number on her. And for some reason somethin’ twisted somewhere along the line and she got it in her head I was fucking everything that moved. No matter what I said, I could not convince her otherwise. No matter what I suggested to get her head straight and our marriage back on solid ground, it didn’t work. It was frustrating. Then it got old. Then it got aggravating. Then it got crazy. And when that crazy was looking like it would infect our boys, I ended it.”

This wasn’t a fun story.

In fact, living it had to have been agony.

What it also was, however, was a perfect opening.

And in an attempt to guard my peace of mind, I strolled right through it.

“I know a little something about how you felt, Bowie,” I said smoothly.

“And don’t think that hasn’t been the top thing on my mind since the instant I saw those ‘I’m sorrys’,” he returned. “That was my punishment, a thousand-fold, for what I did to you.”

I felt my head twitch in surprise.

“So you knew what was coming when you saw those apologies?”

“It felt like I was on the gallows and they were putting on the noose.”

“That’s rather dramatic,” I scoffed.

“That I knew in that moment I threw you away for nothing at the same time I personally understood your pain? That isn’t dramatic?”

Understanding that pain, and only having the one incidence of it, not what sounded like a rather uncomfortable, heartrending and demoralizing amount of time in failing to protect a marriage from it, I couldn’t argue that.

Duncan didn’t make me try.

He said, “Though, I didn’t throw you away for nothing. I did it because I was weak, and I was an asshole because I knew after I ended us in high school that we shouldn’t get back together until I had something worthwhile to give you. But I saw you and I couldn’t stop myself. That was the weak part and the asshole part.”

God!

It was like being thrown back in time.

“I already had the something worthwhile I needed, Bowie,” I told him something he knew.

“Yes, Genny, baby, and you said that a million times then and you coulda said it a million more. But honest to God, if I said I wanted no part of LA or New York, that to have me, you had to stay in Chicago, I would have taken something integral from you that you needed.”

That made me angry.

“I wasn’t holding you back, Bowie.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It sounded like that.”

“What I meant was, we were too goddamned young to be able to handle how big what we had was. I had come nowhere near sorting out the harm my father inflicted on me. And I was all about you. Lost to you. And I was that at the same time I was not the man I needed to be for you. And I needed that, Genny. Whether you get it or not does not negate the fact I needed it.”

Since this made sense, even though I didn’t know precisely how in the context of how he’d ended us, I decided it was time to move back to an even earlier topic.

“Should we have this talk you wish to have, a talk we’re not going to have, and it got past the beginning phase, which it wouldn’t, then it would eventually get to the part where you would have to understand that people taking pictures of me, approaching me, even touching me, people I do not know, is a part of my life, Duncan. Everywhere I go, I do it ready to face something like that. It’s automatic. It used to disturb me, but now I’m used to it. And anyone in my life would have to be used to it too.”