The Park Benches Ch. 02

Exactly three days later, she was waiting in his bed for him to return home but he never showed up. Early the following morning she got a phone call from Rodney's assistant manager telling her that Rodney was in the hospital. The bar had been robbed the previous night at closing time and Rodney had been beaten, he was now in critical condition at the hospital.

That same day she read in the local paper what exactly had happened to Rodney. His penis had been cut off during the robbery and he was in a very bad condition in the hospital.

The thing that surprised her was to discover that she didn't feel any sympathy toward him for what had happened to him. For the rest of the day she didn't even worried one bit as to how he was recovering. She didn't even bother to phone the hospital to find out how he was doing.

It didn't take Megan very long that day to realize that if she remained in Rodney's house any longer she was bound to become a suspect in the eyes of the police and worst still, she began to fear for herself since she figured that the shady characters that Rodney was involved with, might associate her to whatever was going on.

That same afternoon she placed in a couple of bags the few outfits of clothing she had in Rodney's house and she took a taxi to her mother's house. When she got there she was just in time to see her mother being taken into an ambulance. Her mother had had a heart attack while Megan was in Rodney's house. She had been able to call an ambulance just before she collapsed on the floor.

Megan was devastated and she rode into the ambulance with her mother and went to the hospital with her. Later she was told that her mother just had a massive heart attack and her chances of pulling through were slim.

Deep inside, she felt responsible for her mother's condition. After all her mother was doing find before she cheated on her husband. She figured that it was probably the shock of seeing her daughter living with an another man that had precipitate her attack.

Then while waiting at the hospital for her mother to regain consciousness she suddenly began to bleed. After the doctor had a look at her she was told that she had lost the baby she was carrying.

Naturally they put her in a room and they informed her husband that his wife just had a miscarriage and that she was in the same hospital as his mother in law was.

***

Simon

It was Friday early in the evening when he phoned at the hospital to talk to his wife. He was surprised indeed when he heard her weak voice on the phone. She told him that her mother had passed away during the afternoon. Then she talked about her miscarriage. He was tempted to be mean to her but then he figured that she was suffering enough as it was and out of respect for his mother in law, whom he liked a lot, he listen to what she had to say. She wanted his help with the funeral arrangement of her mom.

"I am sorry about your miscarriage and about the death of your mother, she was a very good woman and I liked her. As for helping you to take care of the funeral arrangement I will do it out of respect for her."

"Everything I did was a big mistake Simon, I know I was wrong and I do realize that now. There are no words to express how sorry I am and I want you to know that I love you so much. I suppose that by now you know what has happened to Rodney. I didn't even phone at the hospital to check how he was doing and I don't ever want to see him again. I was stupid and selfish Simon. Now I am begging you to have pity on me and to let me see my daughter."

Simon could hear her crying at the other end of the phone, she sounded almost hysterical.

"Maria hasn't seen you in over four weeks Megan, you haven't even made any effort to talk to her in the last two weeks. Maybe it would be better for her to just forget you completely. After all she has already begun to do that."

Before he was done talking he heard a loud moan followed by much weeping for the next minute.

"How can you be so cruel Simon? She . . . is . . . my daughter, I . . . am your wife. I wanted to phone at home but I was afraid that it would make you angry if I did. She is my baby and I am still your wife."

"A wife that has been spending her nights in another man's bed, a wife that got herself pregnant by another man. Go and ask a lawyer if you still have any right on your daughter. You have been living in another man's house for the last two weeks and that man is a drug dealer and is involved with the underworld. I certainly don't want my daughter to be in contact with the characters that he is hanging with."

"It's all over between me and him Simon. I now understand how big a mistake I made. If . . . you could only . . . forgive me Simon, I will be the best wife in the world for you, I . . . promise. I will do everything you tell me and I will never complain ever. Please do let me explain to you why I did all those things."

Simon had already decided that he would probably never forgive Megan for what she did. But for the sake of his daughter he also had to re-establish some sort of contact with his wife. Beside, he had to find out exactly why she had suddenly decided to cheat on him. What was it that she found so attractive about Rodney? What was it that incited her to throw away her family relationship with her husband and her daughter?

"I might be ready to listen to an explanation about the why and the how of your sluttish behavior later, but first I will take care of your mother's church arrangement and her burial. I will be at the hospital early tomorrow morning to have her body removed from there."

"Thank you so much Simon, I don't know what I would do if you didn't help me."

She was still talking when he hung up on her.

Early Saturday morning he phoned Megan and told her that he was leaving for the hospital. He took Maria with him and while driving to the hospital he explained to his daughter that she was going to see her mother there. For some reason he was curious to see how Megan would react when she was going to see her daughter. She had had no contact with her for over four weeks now and he knew that both mother and daughter were going to be ecstatic when they would meet.

As expected, they both went into a fit of crying as they hugged each other; it was breaking his heart to see their tears as they embraced, but his wife had only herself to blame for what was happening.

After taking care of the paper work for his mother in law he phoned an undertaker to have her body removed from the hospital. During the following two days the three of them almost acted like a normal family while at the funeral home, but of course on both nights Megan went to spend the night at her mother's house.

Later, after the funeral, he had a long talk with his wife and at last he let her explain herself. She told him how she met Rodney while in the park and how they gradually became friends. From there their friendship progress further until the day that Simon actually caught her in bed with her lover.

"I can't say exactly why I let him take liberties with me that first time, all that I remember is him kissing me and I just couldn't prevent myself from responding to his kisses."

"Surely you must have realized that letting him kiss you was wrong, so why didn't you stop it?"

She was crying by then but she went on explaining her action.

"Yes. . .I . . .knew it was wrong to let him kiss me and I tried to stop him the first time but. . .for some reason that I can't explain, it felt so right also. You had never kiss me like that ever Simon."

"I never kissed you like that because you would never let me, have you thought of that?"

"I know. I know. I was a fool then and I was so ignorant about things. I know that it's a poor excuse to give you but that is the only one I have."

"But surely when he began to do other things to you it must have occurred to you that it was going to end with him having sex with you?"

"The first few times we only kissed passionately. But then he began to introduce me to his cigarettes. They had such a devastating effect on me Simon. They removed all the resistance I had and it was only afterward that I would realize what I had done."

"Then why didn't you stop after that first time that he made you smoke?"

"I really don't know why. All that I know is that after a while it didn't feel like I was cheating on you since he was teaching me things that I intended to try with you afterward. But I know now that the drug he was giving me was probably the true reason."

"It's a poor excuse for what you did, I am sorry I can't accept that."

"I understand and I don't know what to do to make it right. Please tell me Simon."

"When you sent me to live with my mother I became very depressed, even then my mother was always reminding me how wrong I had been in cheating on you.

"Then when Rodney began to phone me at my mother's house, I found a little consolation while talking to him. Soon we were talking in his car and from there I began meeting him at his house and once again we were smoking cigarettes, taking pills and yes we were also having sex there."

She had to stop for a while and Simon let her cry a few minutes.

She also admitted to him that Rodney was making her take more and more drugs every time they were together. This more than anything else was responsible for her sluttish behavior she explained.

Amid much crying, she went on to answer all the questions he asked her, all the time begging him to take her back. She kept reminding him how much she missed him and her daughter, constantly telling him that she couldn't live without them in her life.

But Simon was certainly not ready to take her back. Every time she was in front of him he kept seeing in his mind the scenes he had witnessed that day at Rodney's house when both were naked on the bed while she was begging him to fuck her and make her pregnant. He just couldn't erase that scene from his mind.

So by the time she was done explaining everything and after he had asked all the questions he needed to be answered, he was still not ready to take her back. He wanted more time to think and he told her so.

He explained to her that she could phone and talk to Maria anytime she wanted but he was not ready to have contact with her for some time still.

Now after two weeks after the death of her mother, she was living all alone in her mother's house and she was depressed all the time. Her only pleasure in life now was to talk to her daughter on the phone every evening. Her mother was no longer there to talk with her and she had no friends to talk with. She couldn't even rely on the comfort of the drugged cigarettes which Rodney use to make her smoke each time they had sex since she got rid of them when Rodney told her to do so but she did keep the pills.

Each day that passed, she felt lonelier than she had been the previous day, she missed her daughter and her husband in an exponentially increasing way as the days went by. It was then only natural for her to start taking pills to help her overcome her depressive state of mind. She still had the stash of pills that she had taken from Rodney's house as well as sleeping pills that her mother had in the house; she even managed to find some sort of relief with them.

It was Sunday a beautiful and warm October morning, she felt even more depressed and lonely on that day. She knew that she was going to talk to her daughter on the phone that evening but it was now that she needed to hold her in her arms, to touch her hair and to tell her how much she missed her. She also needed to be held by her husband, she had done him wrong and she wanted so much to start making it up to him, to show him how much she loved him.

Memories of these nice Sundays together came back to haunt her. When the weather was nice like that they would cook on the grill in their backyard and they would enjoy a pleasant day together as a family.

Today he was probably going to cook a couple of hamburgers for Maria and a thick, juicy rib steak for himself. He always ate his steaks rare and accompanied with a potato or two on the grill.

They would sit at the table in the yard and eat and talk, simply enjoying the family life that she had thrown away for sex with a man that didn't come up to her husband's ankle. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have betrayed her husband and daughter like she had? She cried and cried and she took a few more pills to num the pain in her soul.

Early that Sunday morning she drove her mother's car to the park and she sat on a bench that was as close as possible to the backyard of the house she used to share with her husband and daughter.

She had to wait a few hours before she noticed any signs that Simon or Maria were up. The first indication that they were out of bed was when she saw someone pulling the kitchen curtains open. Once in a while she could even detect someone passing in front of one of the window but she was too far away to tell exactly who it was.

She knew that Maria was probably wearing her pink gown, the one she had bought for her birthday. Simon probably had on his long green gown the one with the small hole on the right edge. A spark from the fireplace had burned a hole there while poking the half burn wood the previous winter, she never got to repair it. Oh how she wishes he would allow her to do this for him right now.

Much later she saw her daughter come out on the deck to drop a paper bag full of trash in the bin. She had been right, her daughter was wearing her pink gown, but she wasn't wearing her slippers. Simon shouldn't let her go walking on the cold deck without he slippers, she told herself.

Megan kept religiously watching the house and yard where she used to live happily with her family. She had to take another couple of pills so as to appease the pain of being separated from her family. She no longer care about the color or shape of the pills she was swallowing, they were all mixed up in a side pocket of her purse and she didn't even bother to swallow them with water. All that mattered was the numbness they seemed to bring to her broken heart and the drowsiness that sometime help her keep her mind away from the intense sadness she constantly felt.

Later, how long later she had no idea, she saw her beautiful Maria come out into the yard. She was wearing her beautiful red dress, the one she had bought her one afternoon when they went shopping together. She looked so beautiful with the matching red ribbon in her hair.

Of course Maria couldn't tell that it was her mother sitting there on that bench in the park and watching her. The distance between mother and daughter was too great for that. Maria didn't even bother to look toward the bench as she went about jumping while holding one end of a short rope in each hand.

Megan watched her daughter play in the yard. Tears were now falling freely from her eyes. More pills and still greater sadness, the pain in her heart didn't seem to go away. She tried to move her legs but she no longer could feel them, then her mind began to play tricks on her as she imagined her body moving toward her daughter.

At just the right moment, Maria happened to be looking in the distance toward the park when she noticed the woman sitting on the bench falling to the ground. When she realized that she was not getting up, she ran inside the house to tell her father and she ran toward the bench and the woman on the ground even before her father got out of the house.

Megan faintly heard voices and she realized that it was her daughter talking to her and shaking her. She was telling her mother how much she loved her, she also heard the voice of her husband saying her name over and over.

It was very difficult for her to open her eyes now but she finally managed to do it. She thought that she was dreaming when she saw her daughter in her pretty red dress on her knees next to her. She was holding her hand while her husband was hugging her in his arms and crying. The sadness that she had felt for so long suddenly evaporated to be replaced by an even stronger feeling of love for her family.

Yes she was once again reunited with the two most important persons in her life and she was now ready to live again. But then everything faded into blackness even though for a few seconds more she could still hear the voice of her daughter calling her name.