Guilt And Relief
Riley Elisabeth Morrison (née Washington) woke up in the early hours of July 19th, 1943 and discovered that her husband was missing.
She cursed herself. She yelled her husband’s name through the window. She ran downstairs in panic.
During the next five weeks, a squad of at least 300 policemen, firemen, neighbors and personnel from a nearby Air Force base covered every inch of the county of Fremont, some going as far as Larimer, Cheyenne or Conejos, not finding the slightest clue that would explain the last disappearance of Walter Joseph Morrison Jr.
Mr. Morrison suffered from severe trauma caused by shrapnel debris lodged in his brain, a living hell that plagued him since his days as a Marine fighter in the fourth brigade, during the Aisne-Marne offensive 25 years earlier. His health had deteriorated every day since then, new symptoms added as a curse to the constant pain, one that no doctor had been able to cure.
The worst of those symptoms were the lapses of amnesia that would last for days in a row, bringing him — and his beloved Riley — to the edge of insanity.
The first time he appeared after two days in a hospital in Des Moines. The next time he showed up in Poughkeepsie, after three days in the road without eating or sleeping. Then came Bellevue, Portland, Mobile, Orlando, Cleveland, Sausalito, New Haven. His flashes had taken him all over the country. As far as Riley could remember, this was probably the 30th disappearance of her husband. By car, by boat, by foot. By plane even, once at least.
She could not help him. After the sheriff told her that the search was over, she stood for a brief moment in the porch watching the police car drive away.
Riley felt guilt and relief at the same time.
Guilt and relief. How else could this be explained? How could she remotely enjoy the fact that her husband, the war hero of yesteryear, damned by the living hell of the remains of an exploding device stuck into his skull, was gone and, apparently, forever?
Is there any way to separate that guilt from that relief? What is the glue that holds them both together?
Did not she want to disappear, too? Oh, the realization. She touched her cheek in dismay, eyes and mouth wide open in a silent scream.
Maybe it was neither guilt nor relief, but just plain envy.
Riley stumbled and hit her head against the door knob. She got up and for a second she feared God. She walked — did I say she walked? She ran upstairs, screamed, and got into the bathroom.
She watched herself in the mirror, her robe covered with dirt and oil and soot and blood, her eyes injected with blood and bribery and boredom and bourbon. She touched the glass and cried, like a newborn baby, like a grieving wife, like a mother losing a child in yet another war.
She yelled.
The guilt. The knife in the drawer. The knife on the wrist. The cry of horror. The determination. The endless stream of incivilities. The mourning. The tiredness. The lack of empathy. The world that she had to endure. The wars that never ended. The blade cutting the flesh. The red drop. The drop in the sink. The sharp noise of the blade hitting the floor. The floor approaching. The white skin in the mirror. The skin turning black. The blackout in the eye. The echo of a head hitting the chair. The chair and the blood. The cry of horror. The man in the doorway. The arms wrapping a cold body. The shaking. The flowing. The tears flowing. The useless memories that returned too late. The memories of her tears. The memories of Tigny. The misery of an existence. The idiocy of a destiny. The fulfillment of a lifetime. The phrase uttered but never heard. The destiny cut short. The souvenirs of a lifetime on the shelf. The rocking chair on the porch. The wind that took lifes away. The pain in the head. The pitch of a dream. The name of a wife. The pity of a soul. The ridiculous entropy. The eye of the storm. The loss of innocence. The cry in the night. The machine crunching love. The absurdity of our time. The love we shared. The unbearable solitude on the horizon. The friends in the battle. The Colonel Feland screaming at us. The knife on the floor. The desperation and the hurt. The lost pride. The blade that repeats. The blood spilt on top of another blood. The black and the white. The him and the her. The first and the second world war. The war in their head. The bodies piled up. The smiles. The relief.
