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“Conversation Piece”My will to live was obsolete as I told my AA group my grimy intentions to off myself before the day was over. It was only eight o’clock in the evening, and I usually fall asleep around midnight after I’ve had a cup of the Asian tea from the market. Today, I want a drink after that meeting, but I’ve been sober for a couple months now. Paul was there this morning – he joined AA a few months before me, and it has done wonders for him as he begrudgingly works at the mill. Claire, who I think is as lost as it gets was there, too. You’d think they’d kick people out of AA for drinking too much, because Claire would be gone faster than a fly’s mediocre life. Yolanda, her heavy accent and bad attitude were all present this morning. Among them, there is only one person I can say I dislike more than myself, he calls himself The Captain, and he was present as always. He is always too early, and, see, I wouldn’t care if he was early if he did not make it a point to let everyone know. It was at my house, too, and I already loathe the man. It doesn’t seem like he knows he is annoying (no one ever does). The “leader” of our alcoholic group is bright eyed and bushy tailed today. His name is Darren, and it’s Saturday – his favorite day where he gets to listen to our problems and dump his positive psalms on us. I didn’t start drinking until I was in my early thirties. January seventh was the day: the same day I met my wife. It was at my co-worker’s wedding. Now, I didn’t even know the guy that well, but we always quietly shared a smoke on our lunch break. His name was Jim – same as my father’s. I think Jim invited me to the wedding because he understood me from the little conversation we shared. The bond we had was not strong, but we cherished those few minutes a day together. Jim, besides my wife, was my only close friend. We shared a smoke right before his wedding where I asked him how he felt about the journey he was about to embark on. A poor question to ask someone, but crucial nonetheless. He was sure of himself; there were no doubts circling ‘round his head. The meeting this week was impossibly somber, because my house is never lively except for the jazz music I play. Most of them do not particularly enjoy it, besides Claire. She was drunk as all hell, which bothers me to no end that she shows up like that to these meetings. She’s not forced here by any instruction except for whatever is left of the conviction from the church she went to. Her sponsor is MIA; I think she comes because we are the only sorry “friends” she has. As the jazz plays from the kitchen, Captain taps his boot along. It is ten o’clock in the morning when Darren opens with prayer, as per, and my eyes pool with tears. I had not danced since college until I went to Jim’s wedding, and I had still never touched a sip of alcohol. It wasn’t until I saw what I thought was a literal angel on earth, dancing around by herself with a glass full champagne. She looked like a child does on Christmas when they get the gift they’d asked Santa for. I gazed at this brown eyed girl as she spun ‘round. And when she turned toward me, I stood up. I had never had such confidence mixed with such unrelenting nerves in my stomach dancing up to her – so overwhelmingly blonde. I began to dance, like I did years before, September by Earth, Wind & Fire filled the room. She and I danced all night to every beat the DJ threw our way, only stopping to get more champagne. I didn’t tell her that was my first time drinking until we got married. Near the end of the night, during a champagne break, I drunkenly informed Jim over a cigarette of my intentions to marry this woman. And not a couple of months later I married the dancing queen. Darren saw the tears in my eyes and asked what was going on. I stared out the window where the snow seemed to stop in midair, as if it knew what I wanted to say, but looked back at me with no sympathy. Darren grabbed my leg while everyone was silently watching the tears hit my shoes, and I said that his words were just beautiful this morning. That was not the reason, but they bought it and moved on with business. The snow continued to stand still when Darren asked Paul how work was going. The question was answered with a scoff, because work was just as crappy as it was last week. He added that he was tired of feeling like life was not getting noticeably better anymore like when he first joined the group. Paul looked at my sad face and said that he liked the Miles Davis song I had on. I thanked him with a half-closed-mouth-smile and a head nod, and I think Paul knew I was not crying because of the prayer. I think he knew I wanted to kill myself. Her name was Caroline. God, her name is as beautiful as her sun-kissed skin. We got married March seventh – two months to the day after I was blessed to meet her. The realization hit me like a brick as I had never been in love before I met this incomprehensible woman. She had this way about her that she wanted to make the world just a little bit better around her. There was not a single person she did not greet with a smile, and no one felt like a stranger around her. Warmth and love were all anyone received from Caroline. That was what I felt as her hands met mine on that dance floor on our wedding night. From the sweat that flowed from our pores, I swear we ruined the couple thousand dollars’ worth of attire we were wearing. It was only fifteen minutes past ten, and Yolanda is yapping about her wife. I think every week there is something new. Between her wife being too chatty with the barista and having an attitude that matched Yolanda’s, there was always something to fuss about. I think they should just get divorced. I was so sick of listening to her shit, and the Captain made it clear he was, too, when he interjected Yolanda’s rant with his own week’s issues. Caroline and I didn’t have any kids right away. As full of life as she was, I thought babies would be the first thing we talked about once we got married. She wanted us to live out our couple of “young years” we had left together, so we traveled. All around Central America we spent those couple of months after the wedding. She had no family history there, nor did she have much reason to love it as much as she did. The culture is what she admired. It was funny how we didn’t even remotely fit in there (as most Americans don’t in a foreign country). And Spanish was just as foreign as we were to the locals we met, but they loved us. The ideas she brought out of me and the thought she evoked – it was nothing that I had ever thought I was capable of. Caroline brought out the best parts of me and never wanted to replace any piece. The Captain is not all that terrible of a guy. He just really has too much energy for a military vet with an alcohol problem. The Captain works at the high school down the road as a guidance counselor. This I used to find ironic – a guidance counselor that needs guidance from AA. I guess the time he spent serving screwed him up enough to drive him to the bottle for years on end. Ten years I think it was, though he’s been sober for about twelve. This week The Captain tells us he almost found himself buying a bottle of his old reliable bourbon because of how awful his students’ lives seemed to be. He tells that when he was their age there was never this much anguish present among his peers. Then he looks at me with a look I imagine he gives his students when they tell him all they are going through. There is nothing that could ever break the bond that Caroline and I shared. Every day, we grew more grossly in love with one another. We would wake up in the morning and race to the kitchen to start breakfast or put on whatever new music we had recently found. Caroline got off work at six o’clock while I was off at five o’clock, so every weekday I had dinner ready for her. She enjoyed this Mexican soup, Pozole, that I learned to make for her the most. We usually had it once a week with chips and guacamole that she would pick up on the way home. She brought the same champagne from Jim’s wedding on one of those nights we were to have pozole to tell me she wanted to have baby. I was ecstatic at this proposal seeing as it was only a few months after were back in the states. She and I made love at all hours of the day; we were amazing at it. Still on the verge of losing my shit, my breath became shaky from The Captain’s annoyingly caring and concerned expression. I pulled whatever words would come out and said, “I want to kill myself.” That was the first time I said it aloud. I would not even call it aloud, because I don’t think any of them even heard me. Their faces were blank and began to turn to stone; their eyes were locked on me like a sniper. Silence was not what I expected to be met with. And we all just sat there while John Coltrane played from the kitchen. It was almost eleven o’clock.As good of lovers as Caroline and I were, we could not make a baby to save our lives. When she walked into the kitchen, the woman I saw on that dance floor just a year ago was lost. Caroline said to me, “I need to tell you something, and I don’t know how to say it.” For the first time her brown eyes didn’t seem so angelic, and I couldn’t focus on anything but the change in them. I was drowning in the gray that was taking over – tuning out every muffled word until I heard “cancer”. I remembered then that she had went to the doctor, and it all clicked. The blonde hair that was once so magnificent was gone in seconds. I poured us two glasses of our champagne; we shared a sad eye stare and wept. The world felt like it stood still. Claire was first to blurt something out. It wasn’t any form empathy; it was simply, “Why?” I told them the story of Caroline that I hadn’t shared with anyone but Jim (he didn’t know my intentions today). I was colder than the snow but sweat as if I were in the desert. My voice, completely broken, wasn’t my own. As I told them of Caroline’s magnificence and the overwhelming change she brought into my life, I began to long for her. Darren stopped me before I finished, and he told me of all my worth in the world. From my friends and family to the group, he pleaded with me to not take my life. He didn’t know all I had was Jim and this sad group. It was Ovarian cancer; our life was drastically estranged. I watched as her liveliness, like molasses from a maple tree, was sucked out of her. There was no chance to make children together and no chance to live our young years out together for very long. I began to drink while she began to sulk. Her energy was merely invested in surviving and not in the talks or dancing to the music we once relished. It was crippling to live this way with my Caroline. The chemo took whatever beauty was struggling to stay, and we slumped through our days – together at least, but barely. I was reluctant to really take in what Darren was saying; there was nothing that he said that I hadn’t already thought of. The Captain, though, his words rang in my head. He asked me what my “magnificent” Caroline would want me to do. He said there was more to my life than her. There was more to my life than ending it to be with her. And that had not crossed my mind. I sat there thinking of what she would have said before the cancer. I did miss that Caroline. More than anything I missed her. Caroline was in our bed when she died. She was at peace, and the dancing queen that I remembered began to flood my every thought. I imagined her as she was the night we met: full of life with wild energy and those incredible brown eyes never to be seen again. I thought of how beautiful her skin was while we were in Honduras and how her overwhelming blonde hair was brightened by the sun. I couldn’t imagine, though, my world without the warmth she brought with her. She was gone – and I alone. The drinking wasn’t what crippled me until after Caroline was taken; it was being with out her. It was almost nine o’clock in the evening, and Nat “King” Cole is singing, What’ll I do when you are far away and I’m so blue? I began to cry listening to those lyrics, because Caroline was gone. Nothing was to be done; it’s as if she stole my breath when she left. I was asking whatever deity would listen why she had to leave when Jim walked in the kitchen. I didn’t even hear him walk in.He asked me if I was crying because it was the anniversary of me meeting Caroline; I hadn’t even realized that it was today. My tears flooded my eyes as Jim and I lit a cigarette and talked about her. He saw the anguish but no realization that I might end my life. I never told him, and that was the last smoke we shared. The thought of leaving Jim almost saved me, but the thought of being with Caroline again overcame me. When he left, I left too. ................
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