FICTION -  
    With the Theme of Choices

"He slipped away. The helicopter EMT spotted him,
crouched in hemlock dripping ice, and brought him home to me."

                          Photo by Weebly.com                                    

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Do I Dare?
by  Donna Kaulkin

​              "Do I dare disturb the universe?"
               From “The Love Song of J. Afred Prufrock”
T. S. Eliot

​“My head is boiling,” he said, and that was the beginning.
 
From there, strange turns of phrase animated every conversation. I never knew he had that command of language, this husband I’d loved for sixty years, and long before that as a bashful girl in high school, junior high. I’d bop with friends at our Friday night sock hops, and there he’d be, on the sidelines, jocular with the boys and never with a girl. “Ask him to dance,” Winnie would whisper, but I never did.
 
One could point to inevitability, karma, in the way we finally landed together. He’d gone to Drexel, I to Penn, then home again and the first rung of our career ladders. At Winnie’s wedding I was the maid of honor, he the best man. Champagne flowed. We danced and drifted toward a merger.
 
We wove a tiny universe that expanded with each child’s arrival. I’d smile, feeling fortunate that we all got on so well, among the Schwinn Sting-Rays strewn along the perimeter of our well-tended lawn, bats and paddles, book bags and board games, a popcorn maker all black and shiny, a gift--not something I would buy.
 
And before we could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ they were gone, the boys and their paraphernalia. Life sometimes seemed as dry as dust, but we plied our trades then muddled through early days of retirement, volunteered and dabbled in local politics, waxed ecstatic about our Kindles, learned how to Google and bank online. And stream: on any given evening we were ensconced in matching recliners, rewatching movies we’d loved, or learning about our heroes in documentaries that featured heads yapping about bouts with drink and drugs, awards and dalliances, island retreats and palatial Paris flats. 

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​Until his attention began to wander and the TV remote control became a toy to be poked unto death; my meticulous husband seemed to have been swallowed by a pre-pubescent boy. No. No, no, no, no, no, I told myself. This is not happening to us. I programmed a new remote control and kept it hidden in my sweater pocket and went on watching, plying him with popcorn popped in the old black popper that was not shiny any longer but did the trick.
 
And then a neighbor called to say he had parked in her carport, and Safeway called to say he was wandering the aisles and couldn’t identify himself. And his sister said, “Spill the beans,” when he couldn’t identify her. “What’s going on with my brother?” I could not bring myself to say.
 
And here we are. I’m pedaling for two our well-worn tandem. The tires need air. I struggle and breathe heavily. I am Sisyphus engaged in a fruitless task. Last night, as I slept, he figured out how to unlock the ornery contrivance on our door meant to protect him. He slipped away. The helicopter EMT spotted him, crouched in hemlock dripping ice, and brought him home to me.
 
“My head is boiling,” he said, the remaining fragment of his meager repertoire, though altogether he was cold. I led him to a warm shower and tucked him into our safe bed. But what is safe? Do I hold him here, dreading his next escape? Or do I hand him off to a place where no one will know who he was: jocular yet deeply still, my oldest, dearest friend?
 
Do I dare disturb our universe? There is no longer time to wonder.

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​​Donna Kaulkin is the author of a novel, Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown. She has written stories, plays, a musical and poetry and is developing a memoir. A Georgetown University graduate, Donna currently is a free-lance writer specializing in aviation. She formerly was managing editor of U.S. Pharmacopoeia consumer publications and an editorial director in McGraw-Hill’s aviation group. In 1999 and 2000, she served as president of the American News Women’s Club.

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