An Ache That Can't Be Cured
A passive man experiences a sudden emotional change that he isn't prepared to understand.
Luther lived his life as if he stood on a moving sidewalk. On his face was a permanent, content, peaceful smile. When he was young, he learned not to want for much, and so he became content with the bare essentials. Sometimes he was content with nothing. While others purchased cars or houses, Luther was content to drive the same old car, to live in his quiet apartment and enjoy his tidy space. While others started bands, went to barbecues, attended art exhibits, he sat on his balcony and watched and listened to the city. He kept few friends and thought little of that, too.
Life moved quietly past Luther, crawling with the toes of a cat. He saw it moving. He didn’t mind. Friends came and went. People promoted, changed jobs, moved away, came back, settled down. Luther understood that he lived a stagnant life, but stagnation meant comfort. It meant having the bare essentials. It meant sitting on the balcony at night and watching the rain fall like white pine needles in the glow of streetlights. He wanted for nothing. He was content.
One morning, Luther decided to go to a park and watch the world. It was unusual for him, but something about a day in the open sounded pleasant. He walked down to the nearby park and found a seat for himself on a bench adjacent to a walking path and a fountain. The sky was deep blue; the air was calm. Luther drew in a breath, feeling refreshed.
Just then, a short motion drew his eye. A woman squatted near the fountain, evidently waiting for something. She wore the palest blue dress he’d ever seen; it was almost white, and it was beautiful. He recognized her as someone he knew in school, someone he had liked but said nothing to, had never approached. He wondered how she was doing.
A moment later, a young boy raced toward the woman. She lifted him into her arms and kissed him on the cheek, and together, they departed from the fountain. Luther smiled and nodded. Good, he thought. She made it out okay, after all.
Then something unusual happened: a feeling Luther had never experienced bit hard into his stomach. Luther sat up, then pressed a curious hand against himself. The feeling gnawed in his abdomen. He wondered if it was something he ate. No—this was different. He thought about the woman. The feeling bit again, harder this time. His curiosity fell to concern. Was it a serious health issue? His neck felt tight. He probably just needed to move. Luther stood and began to walk.
The knot remained in his stomach despite his walk, and soon his thoughts drifted to the woman by the fountain. He hadn’t seen much of her face. He remembered her as someone with a family, with an active husband, and yet with just that little exposure, Luther knew that she was no longer with that man. It struck him as odd, how the feeling in his stomach gnashed at that thought. He entertained it again, and again, and again, and each time as he thought of how the husband had left her with a child and gone away, a sickness burned in his belly like he’d never experienced before.
Luther leaned against a tree. He suddenly felt too queasy to move. What was wrong? Could it really—yes, he thought, it was the woman at the fountain. There was something about her that he recognized, something he’d seen before, something besides her face. What was it? Luther’s stomach stabbed and he doubled over, and then he realized what it was: he saw that she had nothing. She had no one. Her child had been brought into the world and she was left alone to handle it. Alone. All alone. Some man had given her a child, his child, and now that man was gone. Why did he do that to her? Why did she accept that fate? Was it fair for her to be stuck with something like that? Perhaps she loved it. The feeling thrashed inside him: no, what if she hated it, but tolerated it, only because it was the right thing to do? If that was true, then it seemed as if she, too, was living life as if she stood on a moving sidewalk.
Luther seized up against the tree and dry-heaved. His face was flushed and his skin was cold. Panic, he realized. But panic over what? Over some woman he only knew in passing? Over a stranger? He saw her again with the child. His stomach turned again. He looked like the father, didn’t he? Boys always did. How many years did that boy have ahead of him, of staring into a mirror wondering about the origin of his own face? Of standing on his own moving sidewalk, watching others with their fathers who looked like them, watching their happiness, and never knowing his own.
Luther threw up in the grass. The park no longer felt like a place he wished to be. He walked carefully back home.
The night crept in on padded paws. Luther sat on his balcony, watching the city and feeling sick with panic. A mirror had been given to him, and in it, he saw something for which he was wholly unprepared: unrestrained, irreconcilable pity, pity for himself and his wasted life, for the woman and her regrettable life, and incoherent rage at some nameless figure shifting around in the dark somewhere far away, some creature who took momentary happiness for itself and then fled, leaving broken lives littered on the floor like shards of shattered glass.
With immense effort Luther told himself to have faith—that his life was not wasted, that her life was not regrettable—that he wanted things to be this way, that she wanted things to be that way. But the panic stayed. The silence crushed him. Then it began to rain.
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