Learning to Love Louise

Paul nodded, but said, "You're forgetting one thing. Louise probably won't want anything to do with me ever again."

Jane walked to the bedroom window, and looked through a gap in the curtains. "Really? Then who is coming over here right now? A clone of Louise?"

Paul looked out too and saw the slim, attractive redhead making her way towards his house, dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt.

"Told you so," said Jane triumphantly. "Louise is right for you, and you're right for her. You'll make things work, trust me. And now it's time for me to go. Goodbye Paul, and I know that you'll make it with Louise."

"No Jane, don't ..." Paul pleaded, but Jane cut him short.

"Please don't make it harder than it already is Paul," she pleaded, looking at him with her big brown eyes. "You need to move on with life, and I need to rest knowing that you have done so."

"Jane wait ..." said Paul, but even as he spoke Jane vanished from sight. Near the wardrobe, the ginger cat also vanished into thin air, their departures leaving the room with an eerie silence, which to Paul seemed as loud as a train.

Paul turned and looked at Jane's photograph on the wall, the smiling face of his late fiancé looking back at him. Feeling tears streaming down his face, Paul could only stare at it, feeling almost like he had lost Jane all over again. But he knew that wasn't the case, he had lost Jane years earlier on a cloudy, cool September evening at Glenelg, and his life since had been a mix of reality and spending time with a ghost that appeared to him through his subconscious. "Oh Jane," Paul whispered, his voice choked.

The sound of the doorbell broke through the silence in the house. Getting a tissue to wipe his eyes, Paul swallowed hard and composed himself, before going to answer it. Opening the door, Louise was standing on the doorstep waiting for him. Her pretty face already wore a worried expression when she was on her way to the house, seeing the obvious state Paul was in when he opened the door Louise's expression showed even more concern.

"Paul, I came over to see if you were okay after you ran out on our date last night, but I think I have an answer to that already," said Louise.

Paul opened the door. "Would you like to come inside?"

"Thank you," said Louise, going with Paul into the lounge room, where they sat facing each other.

"I'm really sorry about last night," said Paul. "You must be really angry with me after what happened."

"I'm not angry, Paul," said Louise. "I'm very concerned about you, but not angry."

"You should be angry," said Paul. "You have every right to be angry."

"Paul, after my divorce came through my sister convinced me to try online dating," said Louise. "I went on some dud dates with absolute creeps before I gave up. One guy ran out halfway through the date after I mentioned I had kids. Another guy said he agreed to date me because he hadn't had sex with a redhead, and he wanted to cross it off his bucket list. He didn't stick around after I told him that wasn't going to happen, and even left me with the restaurant bill to pay. But you aren't like those losers Paul, you're a nice guy and you wouldn't do something like that, so there must be something seriously wrong. I know that it wasn't because I suggested ordering strawberry pancakes for dessert."

Louise's words brought back memories to Paul of when he and Jane, happy and holding hands, would go to the café in the city, now no longer there and order and share strawberry pancakes together. This image faded and was replaced by one more recent and less pleasant, of how he had freaked out in the restaurant the night before, hurting Louise in the process. The emotions were too much for Paul to hold inside this time and he bent forward, sobbing into his hands.

"Hey, it's okay," said Louise soothingly. Seeing a box of tissues on a nearby table, Louise jumped up and grabbed them, standing beside Paul with her hand upon his heaving shoulders until he composed himself, wiping his eyes with some of the tissues.

"Sorry," sniffed Paul.

"There's nothing to be sorry about," Louise assured him. "Paul, it's obvious that there's something really big going on for you. You can confide in me as a friend and tell me about it if you like, or if you don't want to, I understand."

"Perhaps I can show you?" Paul suggested, still trying to get his voice under control.

"Okay then," said Louise, who followed Paul into the spare bedroom kept as a shrine to Jane's memory. Too emotional to say anything, Paul simply pointed at Jane's photograph on the wall.

"She's very beautiful," observed Louise.

Paul shrugged his shoulders sadly. "You mean she was very beautiful. She's dead." He picked up the wedding invitation, and Jane's funeral card, handing them to Louise.

Louise looked them over, noting the date of the wedding and Jane's date of death. "So Jane was your fiancée, but she died two weeks before your wedding?"

"Yes," said Paul.

"Paul, I am so sorry, I had no idea, that was such a terrible tragedy," said Louise, horrified that such an awful thing could happen to such a nice man. Louise knew that whatever was behind Paul's strange behavior wasn't going to be happy, but the reality of the situation shocked her. She looked again at the date of Jane's passing. "And that date ..."

Paul nodded. "Yes, what happened the next day in America made it all so much harder. It was like the world was coming to an end. It suddenly felt like Jane wasn't important, some random 25-year-old female teacher dying suddenly in Adelaide didn't matter, and that made me angry. Then I would get angry at myself for being more upset about Jane than all those people who died at the World Trade Center, Pentagon and on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. A few weeks ago we were discussing September 11 in one of my history classes and the kids asked me what I did that Tuesday. I said nothing much, it was just another ordinary day at work until late that evening. I couldn't tell them the truth that I was sitting in an undertaker's office arranging Jane's funeral with her parents, brother and sister."

"That's understandable, you loved Jane and you didn't know anybody in the terrorist attacks," said Louise. "You must find some things so hard to deal with."

"Yes, even after so long," said Paul. "Like last night, everything was going so well with us, and I freaked out because you'd suggested ordering strawberry pancakes for dessert. When Jane was alive, there was this little café in the city, and we'd go in there as a treat and order and share strawberry pancakes. I'm so sorry, it was such a stupid thing to react to. If you'd suggested apple pie or chocolate mud cake, everything would have been fine."

"I don't think its stupid reacting to things like that," said Louise. "Anybody who has lost a loved one would have things that remind them, that upset them."

"With me there's some things that I can understand," said Paul. "At Jane's funeral, her brother and sister put together a Power Point presentation about her life, and now I can't stand to hear the song they played when they showed it. But other things are illogical. Like one time, I went to the university that Jane and I attended for an open day, I saw an old picture of Jane's hockey team, and it referred to her as 'the late Jane McKinnon'. That didn't upset me, it was just stating a fact. Then the next year, I went to our old high school for a meeting for work, and I saw the sporting honor boards in the gym. Jane won an award in 1992, and next to her name there was a cross, to indicate that she had passed away. I just couldn't deal with it and had to make an excuse that I was sick and had to go home. How stupid is that, getting so upset about a cross?"

"Again, it's not stupid," said Louise. She glanced at the photograph album that remained open on the picture of Jane and Paul holding the two kittens, the black and white one and the ginger one. Missy had now relaxed and come out of her hiding place and walked by the bedroom, Louise looking from the black and white cat to the kitten photograph and back again.

"Is she ...?" Louise asked.

"Yes, the same cat," Paul confirmed. "Jane and I decided we were going to get a cat, and one weekend we went to a cat shelter. There were these two little kittens in a cage together, from the same litter and they looked at us, we looked back at them and we just fell in love and we adopted both of them. That photo was taken a few days later, on Jane's birthday, her 25th birthday." Paul sighed sadly. "Her last birthday as it turned out."

Louise looked towards the wardrobe. Paul had failed to close the door properly and it had swung open, showing Paul's keepsakes from his and Jane's life together. Most prominent of all was Jane's wedding dress, which held Louise's attention more than any of the other items. "You've kept Jane's wedding dress all these years?" Louise asked, unable to prevent the look of dismay on her face.

"You must think I'm crazy seeing all this," Paul lamented. "You're probably going to send your sons to live with your husband or mother while you find somewhere else to live far away from the lunatic who keeps his late fiancé's wedding dress close to 16 years."

"I don't think you're crazy, Paul," said Louise. She again looked at the wardrobe, seeing the beautiful white dress on its hanger. "Okay, maybe the wedding dress might be a bit too close to Miss Havisham territory in my opinion, but I'm not you. I didn't go through what you went through."

"Maybe not crazy, but morbid then," said Paul. "Obviously I never saw Jane's dress, it's supposed to be bad luck, but for some strange reason I don't believe that anymore. Anyway, a few months after what happened Jane's mum and sister were discussing what to do with her dress, and I made up this story that I would take it and donate it to a disabled girl who was getting married. They thought this was beautiful, and were really moved. But there was no disabled girl getting married, I kept the dress and hid it in here."

Paul gave his head a frustrated shake, still unable to make sense of his different reactions after so many years. "The funny thing is, I wasn't morbid at all in other ways. Jane's family wanted her ashes scattered in the ocean at Victor Harbor, which was always Jane's favorite holiday spot when she was a kid. I fully agreed, and went with them to do it. It always felt like the right thing to do, setting Jane free like that in a place she loved so much. The thought of keeping her ashes I found so morbid. But then I go and do that with her dress."

"Paul, there isn't a book or website that says how we should handle grief," said Louise. "We all react differently. It's obvious how much you loved Jane, and how what happened to her devastated you and left you absolutely heartbroken. Would it help if you talked to me about Jane? You can say no if you like."

Paul considered this, then nodded and he and Louise sat down in the chairs facing each other. "I don't know where to begin," he said.

"How about at the beginning?" suggested Louise. "When did you meet her? How did you meet her?"

"Have you ever met a couple that's been together since childhood? Childhood sweethearts, if you like?"

Louise nodded. "Yes, I've got a cousin like that. She and her husband met early in primary school, and they've been together ever since. And my ex-husband Simon and I knew each other as kids, but we didn't start going out until we were in our late teens, so that's not quite the same."

"Jane and I met very young," said Paul. "It was summer 1985, and the house next to my parents' house was empty, and we were wondering who was going to move in. It turned out to be a couple called Bill and Patricia McKinnon, and they had three kids, twins Tim and Jane and a younger daughter Laura. They were moving in and I took one look at Jane, and that was it. It was love at first sight, well I thought it was love but I was obviously a kid, so it was probably more a case of a crush at first sight. Anyway, the kids were carrying boxes to the house and I went and introduced myself to Jane, and gave them a hand. It turned out Jane was the same age as me -- eight turning nine that year -- and she and her brother were going to be in the same class as me at school. We spent the summer together, and walked to school together the first day back. My sister and brother and I all became friends with the McKinnon kids, and our parents became friends too, but there was just something so special about Jane. We were best friends, and even though we were just kids we knew there was a magic bond between us."

Paul stopped and gathered his thoughts. "Jane and I had so much in common. We both loved playing sports -- Jane was a great hockey player, and I played football -- and we both wanted to be teachers when we grew up. We got older, and in high school we were boyfriend and girlfriend. There wasn't a time I asked her out, it just happened, we were meant to be." Paul looked at Louise. "That's part of the reason why I was so nervous asking you out, I'd never actually asked anyone out before. Anyway, we dated all through high school and had part time jobs together at a supermarket -- Jane was a checkout operator, and I worked in the fresh produce section. We went on to university together, studying for our teaching degrees. Those were such happy times, we had great friends and a lot of fun together. We graduated and got teaching jobs, me as a social studies teacher and Jane as a science teacher. Not at the same schools obviously, it wouldn't have been ideal for us to work together and everything was going so well."

"When did you get engaged?" Louise asked.

"On Jane's 21st birthday," said Paul. He smiled wistfully. "I still remember her face when I asked her to marry me, she was so happy and said yes straight away. I never doubted that she would. We were sort of like birds that pair for life, like swans or geese. Anyway, we had a long engagement -- we had HECS debts and we wanted to reduce the mortgage on our house - before we set the date. It was the Saturday after school finished mid-semester, and we had a two week honeymoon on the Gold Coast planned. We were both so looking forward to our wedding day, living the rest of our lives together and having kids. We'd even discussed what we would name our kids when they were born."

Paul had to pause and steel himself, knowing that the part of the story that was so hard to say aloud, and said, "Jane and I had a nice, pleasant budget wedding planned, nothing too fancy or expensive. But even so, the lead up weddings can still be stressful. You were married, did you find that?"

Given Louise's mother-in-law had referred to her as 'that red-haired bitch' before, during and after her marriage to Simon, she knew this feeling only too well. "Yes," she said, nodding in agreement.

"Jane was getting a bit stressed over a few things before the wedding," said Paul. "She'd had a bad case of flu in late August which caused her a week off work and feeling very run down for another week after that. On the Friday before, well you know what happened, Jane came home stressed after the kids she was supervising on a class trip ran riot. Jane had already had enough stress to deal with courtesy of one of her aunts who was making a huge drama about the entire menu not being gluten free and her daughter -- Jane's cousin -- not being asked to be a bridesmaid despite the fact that Jane and this cousin were never close. Once she actually made Jane cry, and Jane was never a girl to dissolve into tears at the drop of a hat. Jane relaxed a bit on the Saturday, we went out to lunch with our parents but on the Sunday we heard that the airline we'd booked our honeymoon tickets with was in difficulties, and expected to become financially insolvent within a week. It was just another thing to worry about."

Having reached the day his life changed forever, Paul had to swallow hard. "On Monday morning before work I suggested to Jane that after work we go out to Glenelg for the evening, walk along the beach and have tea at this restaurant we liked and forget about badly-behaved kids, weddings, squabbling relatives and troubled airlines for a few hours. Jane thought this was a great idea, and after work we set off and we walked hand in hand along the beach, on the jetty and through the pedestrian mall close to the tram stop. It was early September so it was quite cold, windy and cloudy, but it didn't matter to us. Jane and I were laughing and joking and having a great time, and Jane was relaxed, saying she couldn't wait until we were married in 12 days' time. I said the same, and we set off for the restaurant. We'd just rounded the corner into the street where it was, and ..."

Paul's voice trailed off, and Louise waited patiently for him to continue. "Jane just suddenly fell to the ground, it happened so fast. One moment she was fine, the next her legs went out from under her and she collapsed and hit her head on the pavement. Even though things happened so quickly I remember thinking that this didn't seem right, Jane didn't make any attempt to put out her hands to break her fall, which she would have done if she'd just slipped. What happened next was a blur, I remember screaming out for somebody to get an ambulance and these two girls called one, I started CPR, a nurse was going by on her way to work and she stopped to help and a doctor ran out of a nearby medical practice and took over, the ambulance came fast but there was nothing anybody could do. As we later found out, Jane had a brain aneurism, and she was gone before she even hit the ground."

Louise felt a lump in her own throat, tears pricking her eyes at the tragic tale, and picked up a tissue. "Paul, that is so terrible."

Paul nodded. "Thinking about that day, it feels more like I watched it like a movie, rather than actually lived it. I just remember I couldn't believe that Jane was gone, that I was never going to see her again. It was the same at her funeral, I kept thinking this is just a terrible mistake, that Jane would turn up and everything would be okay. At home, the cats would go around the house looking for her, wondering where she was and on the nights I actually did sleep I would awake and find Jane's side of the bed empty. I would tell myself that Jane had got up to go to the toilet or get a drink of water, or she couldn't sleep and was in the lounge room watching a video. When I returned to the house during the day, I would tell myself Jane was just out or at work and would return soon. I would say to myself when she still wasn't back by night that she was away supervising kids on a school camp, which she had done in the past. But of course she didn't come back." The sadness was evident in Paul's face. "All in all, I didn't handle Jane's death well."

"Come on, there's no easy way to cope with something like that, losing your fiancé who you'd been with since childhood so suddenly, so shockingly like that," Louise assured him.

"I really struggled," Paul said. "I blamed myself, I still do for suggesting we go out that night, and not catching Jane and preventing her from hitting her head when she fell. I know there was nothing I could have done to save her and that it would have happened anyway at some stage of her life, and that's what makes it all the worse. Some days I would even get angry at Jane for leaving me, and then I'd be wracked with guilt for thinking like that, obviously it wasn't her fault that she died. At work I couldn't cope, I had to go on stress leave. My family, Jane's family and our friends tried to reach out to me and while I appreciated it, they couldn't do the one thing that would make this right. Jane and I always kept fit and ate healthy, but when she died I stopped doing anything and gorged myself every day on junk food. I gained over 30 kilograms in three months, and if that was the worst of it that might have been okay. But my mindset was so bad. Like in the two weeks where Jane and I should have been on our honeymoon in Queensland, I kept thinking about what Jane and I would have been doing at that exact moment. I would go out and see happy couples walking around enjoying themselves, and on weekends I would see weddings going on and stop to observe things. It was just torturing myself, I knew before I did it that it was stupid, I knew while I was doing it that it was stupid and I knew afterwards that it was stupid, but still I kept right on doing it. And then there's ..."