Subject: The ghost of Thanksgiving Past
Maybe Charles Dickens wrote that story for the wrong holiday, because there’s no fucking way I could’ve waited until Christmas to learn this lesson.
I know that I’m not Ebenezer Scrooge in the literal sense, but he and I share many similarities. In fact, it truly didn’t hit me until I was driving home from my parents' cold and empty mansion. My car was so quiet, since I tend to not want to listen to music when I’m driving in the snow, and hand over my heart, I heard someone speak to me.
I’ve never believed in angels, and my view of God or a higher power is the slimmest version of being a theist, but it was almost like I knew what they were saying to me before the moment the voice hit my ears.
You need to give more, Nathaniel.
That’s what I heard. I don’t know if it was a memory, something Diana told me once upon a time, but it sounds like something she might have said. I’ve never wanted to tell anyone this story, Adele. Not in four years. Only my father, Diana’s brother (who hates my guts, incidentally), and now you, know this. And me not wanting to tell it is pretty irrelevant. Because the moment you slammed that door at my house, I knew exactly how much I’d fucked up. I had ripped the still-beating heart out of the one person who had made me find my own again. So that’s why I’m telling you this. Because I trust you enough to show you what’s inside of me, what’s been gnawing at my guts and my heart for over four years. You may not even want it anymore, but I’m giving it to you nonetheless.
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but I don’t think you need a background on my relationship with Diana. It was a good one, a solid one that made me happy, made her happy, too. We’d been married for three years, four months, and twenty one days on the day that she died. It hadn’t been anything but a normal day, other than the way it ended. I had some friends, at that time, and we often got together to play poker and drink some beer. Nothing crazy, just blowing off steam. It had been a few weeks since I’d seen them, and Maurice sent me a text before Diana got home from work, asking if I could come out to his place. He lived about forty five minutes from us, from the house you know, and it had been raining all day.
Diana was disappointed I was going to be gone all evening, but she didn’t forbid it, because that wasn’t her way. She just gave me a kiss and told me to be safe. Once I was with the guys, I had more to drink than I should have. Honestly, I didn’t even realize it until I went to grab another beer and it was the last in the six pack. I knew myself well enough to know I shouldn’t have been driving, but nobody else lived remotely close to where we did, so I called her, asked if she’d come and get me.
It was about eleven when I’d called, so I knew she was probably in bed. She was pretty quiet after I asked, quite apologetically, may I add. But she agreed, because she didn’t want me to attempt the drive on the slick, wet roads in my condition. I was saying “I love you,” when she hung up, and the guys ribbed me about having to sleep on the couch when I got home. They all left, leaving just me and Maurice. I told him to go to bed, I’d wait on the porch for Diana, since it was warm, despite the rain. In my buzzed state, I remember sitting on his porch swing and thinking it was the greatest night ever.
An hour passed, and she still wasn’t there. I wasn’t terribly worried, given that I’d probably woken her when I called. But when I stared at the phone until the numbers clicked to the next hour, I pounded on the door until Maurice woke up. I’d called Diana’s cell about twenty times by the time I got back home, the house completely dark upon my arrival. It was six hours later that a police officer knocked on the door.
Maurice told me that I spoke with the cop, but I don’t remember anything from the conversation. In truth, I don’t remember much until I had to identify her body in the morgue and they told me what had happened. A drunk driver had T-boned her car, and the force of the impact made her small car skid so far off the road that the front of the car slammed into a tree just off the curb. The drunk died on impact as well, but that wasn’t much of a comfort to me. All I knew was that my wife, the woman I loved more than my own life, who always told me to be safe when I left the house, bled out in her driver’s seat, her face cut so badly from the glass that they needed me to identify her. And the only reason she was there was because of me. I killed her, just as much as that man had. And when I grabbed her lacerated face in my hands, my tears coating her cold skin, I wished I had died right along with her. I've always thought that I kind of died with her.
That’s what I’ve carried with me, every day since she died. The knowledge of my complicity. It was nothing that could ever be punishable by law, and the papers never even picked up that she was only out because I’d called her. But every day, I had to remind myself to breathe, remind myself that it was no one’s fault but mine that I was alone, and would probably die that way. Until you, my beautiful, vibrant Adele. I felt like I was touching fire when I held you that first night. And every night since. And I’ll never stop trying, not until you look me in the eyes and ask me to. So this? This is as much as I can give you. You have it all, and I hope you want to keep it.
Yours,
Nathan
• • •
I hit send and sank back into my chair, stretching my fingers out. Nope. No tingling.
“Holy shit, I can’t believe I just did that,” I said into the quiet room. None of this, none of this felt like enough. Every fucking word I’d sent her in the last week hadn’t been enough. Maybe this last one wasn’t either. She was probably going to get home after a shitty day at her parents’ and groan when she saw the email there from me. But if this didn’t do it?
Then she was done with me. I’d all but gouged my heart out and served it to her, still bloody and pumping. I slammed my laptop shut and stood, suddenly wanting to break something. Break a lot of somethings.
What if it didn’t work? The thought snaked through my brain, planting a horrible seed that grew and grew and grew. What if all this time, she didn’t want to be left alone. Maybe she wanted to be chased. That no matter what I could say to her, how much of myself I could spill out into those emails, it wasn’t going to be enough. She needed to see. See what a miserable fucking wreck I’d become in the last week.
I yanked my coat out of the closet outside of my office, shoving my black knit cap into the pockets, and sprinted down the hallway to the garage.
The snowy roads forced me to drive slowly.
“Fuck!” I yelled, banging my hand on the steering wheel when I had to slam on my brakes to avoid rear-ending another fishtailing car. I couldn’t even feel the cold. Not when I whipped into a parking spot across from her building, not when I jogged across the slushy street, not when I hit the buzzer for her apartment.
Nothing. No answer. Hell, I would have been happy with a “Fuck you” in response through that tinny speaker. I braced my hands on the metal grates that covered the door, absolutely loathing that she needed to live in such a shit hole. I pushed back and went back out onto the sidewalk, peering up at the window that was hers. What an idiot. It was dark in there, which I would have been able to notice before ringing the bell eighty four times if I’d just looked up when I’d crossed the street.
With a huff, I jammed the cap over my head and fisted my hands in the meager warmth that my coat pockets provided. A woman walked by and clutched her purse tighter around her shoulder.
With the beard growth on my face, given I hadn’t shaved in ten days, and the fact that I was wearing all black, I probably looked like a mugger. When I attempted to give her a polite smile, she glared at me.
“Okay then,” I said into the frigid air. “You have a happy Thanksgiving, too.”
I’m not sure how long I leaned up against the brick wall behind me. But it was long enough that my feet were now chunks of ice in my tennis shoes, my nose had probably frozen off about forty five minutes ago, and I’d probably never convince my balls to drop again, for fear that they’d fall off.