I Wish She Hadn't Ch. 02

Anyway, she rode with me to the cemetery instead of in the limousine with the rest of her family. On our way, we were driving by a Starbucks, and that gave me an idea. I asked Libby if we had enough time to stop, and even though I think she thought it was pretty strange to want a cup of coffee at that particular moment, she said, "Sure, why not?"

I could have gone to the drive-up, but I didn't. I had a reason. Instead, I ran inside, and two minutes later, I emerged carrying a brown, paper bag. "What's that? I thought you wanted coffee," Libby asked, kind of confused.

"No, this is for Madi."

"You're buying my sister something from Starbucks?"

"Yeah, I owe her." I said, and I smiled. She didn't say anything else, just looked at me like I was insane, though I think she also sensed that there was a good reason for that visit to Starbucks, a profound and substantial reason. Anyway, I didn't have to explain, and I'm glad I didn't because I don't think I could have made any sense out of it for her at that moment.

We got to St. Mary Magdalene and they put the urn in this cube-shaped container that was already set in the grave, and after the priest said what he said, everybody brought their things up to lay in it. Everybody walked up and then had to kneel down and put whatever they had in the box, and when they did, each of them said something about what they were leaving and why.

I was the last one to go up there, and everybody, including Libby, probably thought I was the strangest fucking dude in the world when I placed a blueberry-walnut muffin wrapped in cellophane in that box. "A long time ago Madi bought me a blueberry-walnut muffin", I said in a quavering voice, "and it was the best muffin I've ever eaten in my life. It's time I paid you back, Madi."

That muffin was the only thing I could think of to leave with her, and what I'd said was the only thing I could think of to say. Most of our relationship was not the stuff of family gatherings, and almost anything else I could have shared would have been inappropriate. But, in retrospect, I think my offering made sense, and I'm glad I thought of it.

Madi was always giving me things, not physical objects, but things of real and consequential value. Usually, they took the form of compliments, encouragement, or adulation, and, of course, selfless love in all its myriad forms. But, ironically, the only thing I did in response was to buy her physical objects - mostly things of fleeting, ephemeral value at best: tickets to see bands that I liked that she'd never heard of and would never hear again; dinners in restaurants that she'd never been to and would never visit again; drinks or drugs we clearly didn't need; that leather jacket that was probably out of style before she got a chance to wear it outside of my presence; and that fucking lingerie that she undoubtedly threw in the garbage once I so unceremoniously and cruelly ditched her.

But that muffin and that cup of coffee that morning in Minneapolis were the only things she ever gave me that I never attempted to repay. "Payment" and "Repayment" - what weird fucking concepts! I realize now both of us were always trying to repay the other, and, let's face it, it doesn't fucking work. Anything that has real and lasting value can never be repaid.

That muffin was a symbol of love and it was appropriate because it was given freely and without the expectation of anything in return. And that was Madi's essence - that was what her brother was saying about her at the funeral - her love was infinite, immeasurable, unending, and anybody that didn't understand that was a damn fool. It took me a long time, but I'd like to think I've put that behind me.

After that long and taxing weekend, I still had a job interview to get ready for, so I wasn't going anywhere. I wouldn't be leaving town for at least four more days, and it really didn't matter when I went back to Madison. I didn't have a job, so frankly there was no rush in returning.

Unbeknownst to me, Libby wasn't leaving either. She never told me that night after the rosary that, she too, had left her job and was in the process of looking for a new one. She hadn't planned on looking in Omaha, but I think knowing that I wanted that job there may have had something to do with her decision-making. Actually, I know it had a lot to do with her decision-making.

I suspect you know how this story ends now. I got the teaching gig at Creighton, and Libby got a job at, what used to be called, Creighton University Medical Center, now known as Alegent Creighton Health, which absolutely fell, like manna from heaven, into her lap. She's in charge of nursing training there. We bought a house together, and last summer, a year after Madi's funeral, we got married.

They say you can't go home again, and I get that. But I kind of feel like I haven't really gone home, even though we live only six or seven miles from the houses we both grew up in. No, this isn't really home, because, to this day, everything around me seems new and different, no matter how familiar it is. It all feels like a dream.

Yesterday morning, a cool, cloudy Saturday in September only a week or so after my second year at Creighton began, I awoke from an actual dream. In my dream, I was making love to Madi. We were lying in bed spooned together, and my thick cock was thrusting in and out of her, and then only seconds before I came, I woke up to the reality that I was shooting my semen inside my wife, not her dead sister.

Libby and I want to have a baby. It's pretty late in life for both of us, but neither of us has ever had a child, and now we feel an undeniable need to start a family and soon. So, this morning has been like every morning for the past months. Libby gets me hard with her hands and her mouth while I'm sleeping, and before I even reach consciousness, she puts me inside her. It's a nice way to wake up!

I know she knows that I still dream about Madi, and though it's unarguably strange, I am absolutely certain that it doesn't bother her. In fact, I think, for some bizarre reason, she feels comforted by it. Still, yesterday morning it was almost clairvoyant when afterwards, with the two of us still coupled together in coital embrace, she reminded me that it was Madi's birthday and asked me to explain the story of the blueberry-walnut muffin. I couldn't believe it took her over a year to ask about it.

It's still difficult to put my feelings into words, but I rehashed the tale of our trip to Minneapolis so many years ago, and how I had awoken in the morning to find her gone, and how I thought she was mad at me, and then how, when I got out of the shower, I found her in the room reading the paper, drinking coffee, and eating that muffin.

"I was always buying her shit, Libby - stupid shit that she didn't want or need, and somehow, in my mind, that appeased me because, fool that I was, I thought buying that stuff made up for the fact that I knew I wasn't going to stay with her."

"You shouldn't have done that, John." I thought Libby was going to reprimand me for my cruelty, something that she'd never done, and that, I now know, she'll never do. Instead, she was, like her sister, only concerned about me, even the me of two decades earlier. "You shouldn't have bought her those things. You were as poor as we were at the time, probably poorer. I remember Madi telling me that the only thing you had to eat in your house in Lincoln was bags of Ramen noodles and boxes of mac and cheese."

"Yeah, but that's how everybody lived back then. Anyway, the only thing I let her buy for me in the two months that we were together was a cup of coffee and that blueberry-walnut muffin. And so, after I had treated her so badly and had to live with the guilt I felt for such a long, long time, that muffin became sort of important in my mind. And then at the funeral, when Michael asked everyone to put something in with the urn, I didn't have anything, and so that was the only thing I could think of."

I pulled Libby closer to me and kissed her cheek. "In my mind, it became the symbol of her love, because I finally figured out that she didn't want anything from me except love, and that was what I was refusing to give her." Tears were welling up in my eyes, and I knew that Libby could see how hard it was for me to talk about Madi.

"I've already told you this, she loved you, baby. In her entire life, that was the most intimate thing she ever confessed to me, and the strange thing is that when she told me that, I knew I was in love with you, too."

"You know that makes me feel even worse."

"Why is that?"

"Because it took me almost 20 years to figure out the real reason that I chose to hurt her, and you're that reason." I kissed her cheek again, so fucking amazed and blessed that I find myself so deeply in love.

As Libby turned, rolling over to face me, I felt myself slip from her. Then she moved her hands to my face, grasped it gently between them, and stared deeply into my eyes. "It's okay, baby. She knows. She knows you love her now."