consecutive days. The only cost to the plan was my time, and by this point I was so miserable without Melody that I spent every waking hour at the restaurant, could only fall asleep at night by passing out, wanted so badly to numb myself that it was the only alternative to a full-blown depression and the self-destructive behavior that would soon follow.
I smile a little and drink again, already halfway through my beer. Then I shake my head slowly. “I’m just a cook.”
He leans in a little, speaks softly. “It’s okay, you know. You can move on. Start again. Let yourself be open to finding someone.”
Though he’s referring to my nonexistent, now dead wife, Chuck has no idea how true his words are, how badly they bother me. I stare at him for a long time before I finally respond. “There will never be anyone like her.” I take a drink to avoid getting choked up. “You have no idea how much I miss her.” I look down and wipe my eyes, then my face. “I’m just a cook.”
Chuck wrinkles his chin, droops his shoulders. “You can have the thirty percent anyway,” he says, then turns and looks out the front window. “Just… please don’t leave.”
I place my beer between us on the table, cover my mouth with my hand. I suppose his request is the one thing I can’t promise. Though I have no real reason to think I’d ever be yanked away, the chance exists, the possibility that Chuck will one day open the restaurant without me and I will never show, will never call in, will never return. Another solid relationship and assumption of trust to one day be thrown aside, never explained. Another story that ends with the line: and we never heard from him again.
So the rut begins, working all morning and day and most of the night, seven days a week, because I can’t stand the idea of being alone with my idle mind. Chuck institutes a daily regimen of begging me to take a long break, fearing I’ll burn out. What he will never know is that being at home with the images that run through my head before I drift into sleep, the first that enter when I open my eyes the next morning, will destroy me far sooner than the long hours and being on my feet thirteen hours a day. Avoiding those thoughts is like avoiding a hit man; no matter how many times I duck around a corner, he’ll find me eventually.
And today I ran out of hiding places. I run through my morning routine today, a day the same as all the others. I shower and brush my teeth and drag a razor across my face, make one full swipe through a lather of shaving cream, leave my cheek looking like a yard of snow with a shoveled sidewalk down the side. And that’s it; I can’t lift the razor again, can’t move. I open my palm and let the razor fall into the sink. I stare at my reflection in the mirror until I no longer recognize myself, the view of my face distorted from tear-filled eyes.
I fall back to my towel rack and slide to the floor, rest my back against the wall and drop my head to my hands and pray in a manner that would too easily be confused with begging.
Through my sob-laden requests, I ask God to free me of Melody, to finally let her go, to feel the freedom that she now feels, to help me stop wanting her and loving her, to stop wondering how and where she is, to complete the process of becoming the new man that Justice created.
I sound so desperate, I’d convince any onlooker of my genuineness, though I’m so unsure of what I really want, of what I really need; I pray for ten straight minutes for freedom, then end with this: “Unless, God, I might possibly one day find her again.”
I am doomed.
“Please, God. Help me find her again.”
His answer isn’t No.
As I make my true request, I sense a darkness falling upon me, a creation made of my own hand, composed solely of possessiveness and passion.
His answer isn’t Not yet.
All those moments, beginning when I was just a child, I prayed that I could keep Melody safe—and that one day I could set her free. God answered those prayers, gave me precisely what I so badly wanted. Here I am asking for more: