I was passing her apartment on my way back from putting trash in the dumpster. She was slamming things around on her patio ... dragging a lawn chair here ... kicking a flower pot there ... A voice in my head told me to keep walking. Too late. She saw me.
"Beth," I called out, "Are you okay?"
Shaking her head from side to side, she began to cry.
Beth and Roy had been living nearby for about three years. Their domestic difficulties had required police intervention more than once. I didn't want to get involved.
But she was crying ...
"I can't stop to talk, Beth. I need to hurry back to Phillip," I told her, "would you like to come home with me for awhile? Is there something I can do to help you?"
Without saying a word, she came.
Phillip watched from his hospital bed as I walked in the door with a tearful unplanned guest on my heels. "Beth's going to sit a few minutes, Darling. She needs a friend right now."
Phillip said a warm hello, fumbled for his remote to lower the volume and turned his eyes back to Clint Eastwood.
I gave my neighbor a glass of coke, a box of kleenex and my attention. Her words, pent up way too long, began tumbling out willy-nilly. It took a while for the story to make sense. I already knew the basics: She and Roy - each with one failed relationship behind them - met and married shortly before moving into our apartment complex, planning to be here only long enough to build a house of their own. Beth is a youthful forty-five. Roy, a little older than Beth, has two daughters in their early thirties. His youngest lost her job a year ago and moved in with him and her stepmother until she could find another. She's still there and still unemployed.
"I can't take it anymore," Beth sobbed, "My human rights have been compromised. I can't bear to spend one more day in the same apartment with Roy's phycho princess, piece of trash daughter who hates me."
"Why does she hate you?" I asked.
"For no reason. For existing. She wants me dead, and, you know what? I want her dead too. If she died today, I'd miraculously learn to turn cartwheels!"
Poor troubled soul. Younger than my youngest child. Of course she doesn't mean the things she's saying. She's upset and probably with good reason. Life can be awfully hard for blended families. I know ... I know ...
When I was the age Beth is now, a hundred dreams had already been lost and a thousand wishes turned to dust. My spirit rose from the ashes again and again. I was kind when there was no kindness left. I cared for a home when there was none. I opened closed doors and accomplished what others thought I'd fail.
It was hard to see the positives back then. There weren't many. Sometimes ... just the fact that I survived.
"Have you talked to Roy about the way you feel?" I asked.
"I've talked and talked and talked," Beth grabbed a fresh Kleenex and threw a wadded one into the wastebasket, "He listens and understands and agrees and then does nothing. Nothing! I've lost all respect I once had for him. He's spineless! This morning, I told him I was leaving. First time I've ever said those words out loud. I know he didn't believe me."
"Did you believe you?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. Yes!" she mopped her eyes and sat up straighter, "I meant it. I'm leaving!"
Glancing toward the hospital bed, I saw a stillness come over Phillip. People were shooting each other on TV, but he wasn't paying attention. He was hearing marriage vows breaking and hearts crying. He knew the sound well. I knew it too.
Talked out and exhausted, a calmer Beth was ready to go back to her own apartment. Closing the door behind her, I turned to meet Phillip's eyes. We smiled at each other. Sad smiles for what we knew lay ahead for Beth and Roy. Grateful smiles for what we had salvaged for ourselves from the wreckage of years gone by.
Looking up into my face and holding tight to my hand as I stood closer than close beside his bed, Phillip said, "Promise ... if you ever leave me, you'll take me with you."
Gently kissing his face, I promised.
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