Pat and Marianne

A note to the reader: This story takes place forty years after an earlier story of mine, Love Shack. I owe a big thank you to Erin Page for suggesting several major revisions to this story. Her creativity and candor have been invaluable. All characters and situations are complete fiction, a product of my fertile imagination. Any similarity to actual people and situations is purely a coincidence. All constructive criticism is welcome.

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As it was for many people, the novel coronavirus pandemic was life changing for me. Despite taking every precaution under the sun, my wife Terri and I came down with the virus. We never figured out how we caught it. One day I came home from work and Terri was running a 102 degree fever. I contacted her doctor and her pulmonologist because Terri had severe asthma. She was prescribed several medicines. Because I now had to quarantine, I asked our neighbors, Rita and Mark, to pick them up for us.

Things went downhill from there. By the next morning, I too was running a high fever and Terri was coughing constantly. Just a trip to the bathroom exhausted her and had her out of breath. I called her doctor and we arranged for the EMTs to transport Terri to the hospital. When I kissed her good-bye that morning, little did I know that it would be the last time I saw her alive.

My VA doctor tried something different with me. She prescribed Tamiflu, which didn't sound right at all, but I actually responded. Within two days, my fever was gone. I had a slight cough and weakness, but I was well. I told Terri's doctors, but they didn't think it was an appropriate treatment for her.

At first Terri responded well to treatment, but after five days, she suddenly took a turn for the worse. I later found out that Terri had a cytokine storm that took over her lungs. She was put in the ICU and intubated. She passed away two days later. I was not allowed to be with her when she died. Her death left a massive emotional wound. .

The days after Terri's death were a blur and my memory of that time is slightly worse than foggy. When I married Terri, I also married into her Protestant denomination. Our congregation was very supportive. There was a funeral, but there were only four people in the church -- me, the pastor, the music director who played the piano, and a technician who livestreamed the event for friends and family. I found out that over 550 people attended the event online. That fact alone gave me great solace. The wound slowly began to heal.

Rita kept bringing food over to me for at least a week, but I didn't have much of an appetite. Over the next three months I lost twenty pounds. A deep depression settled in as I struggled with the grief of losing my wife and best friend. I had known Terri for thirty-seven years and we had been married for thirty-three. We had met when I was in flight school to become a navy pilot. We were married four years later. She stood by me through the good times and the bad. Through seven deployments and ten moves to different duty stations around the world. She was a wonderful navy wife and the perfect partner. She blessed me with two beautiful children, Aria and Daniel. Aria married a wonderful man eight years ago and we now have three beautiful grandchildren. Dan followed in my footsteps and became a naval officer, although he went through the Naval Academy and became a submariner.

Dan is stationed on the West Coast. Aria and her family live in the heartland. Terri and I settled in New England because I landed a well-paying management position with a major defense contractor after I retired from the Navy. Now that Terri was gone, I was regretting that decision and I wished I was closer to my children.

My friends and neighbors rallied around me though and took care of me as much as the pandemic would allow. The wound healed some more. In the warmer months, I was invited to a number of events, often with the intention of having me meet a nice lady. Nevertheless, I really didn't have the desire to jump into a relationship. There wasn't a lot of joy in my life and I felt increasingly isolated. That winter was exceptionally lonesome, isolated in my home, working remotely via Zoom, with the occasional visit to the plant.

Living in my house was difficult because everywhere there were reminders of Terri. I contemplated selling and moving, but starting over in a new location seemed just as hard. Doing that alone would have been a struggle.

One joy was weekly visits via Face Time with my grandchildren. Another was opening up Facebook and seeing a post from my daughter about her family. I have never accepted many friend requests. I think I have a total of forty friends. I limited them to family and old shipmates. I generally ignored people from high school, although I did accept three dear, old friends from my hometown: Kathleen Finn, her sister Becki, and Julianne Hildegard. All three are married and also have grandchildren. It is fun to see how their lives have progressed.

Terri and I had always planned on retiring when I reached sixty. Between my military retirement and some savvy investments over the years, financially I was in wonderful shape. I didn't see any reason to not go through with that plan. So at the end of July I said good-bye to the corporate world and decided I would start traveling as soon as the pandemic eased.

I came home after a nice retirement party on the company's patio with the intention of posting pictures of the party on Facebook. When I opened the app, there on the right was a friend request from Marianne Thorborg Huddleston. Marianne. Wow!

I have known Marianne since kindergarten, fifty-five years ago. Although, the last time I saw her in person was when we were both nineteen. Perhaps I need to back up.

Growing up, Marianne lived two blocks from my house and we walked to and from school together every day from kindergarten through the end of eighth grade. We did everything together. When we were in third grade, I remember stopping in the park by the fountain in our hometown where we promised that we would love each other forever. When her family moved away the summer before we started high school I was heartbroken.

I didn't hear from her until the summer between my first and second year of college. I was the head lifeguard at our local lake and she came back in search of me. She was attending an Ivy League school. I was studying engineering and enrolled in NROTC at Tech. I spent six glorious days with her that summer. I was her first lover and she took my heart away with her to Cornell when she left.

I wrote to her constantly, but I rarely ever heard from her. I tried to arrange a meeting again. I even saved money to fly to New York State to see her. Nevertheless, by the following spring she had once again disappeared from my life. I loved that woman more than life itself and I acutely felt the rejection. That was another emotional wound, although it has healed.

About ten years later, I was reading the newspaper and I saw a picture of Ambassador and Mrs. Huddleston in Berlin. I could have sworn that the woman was Marianne, and upon further inquiry, I found out that it was her. Over the next decade or so, every now and then I would see something about them in the news. People had an article about her and I found out that she met the future ambassador when she had a translating internship at the US Embassy in Bonn, the German capitol at the time. They were married when she graduated from college. David Huddleston was twenty years her senior and I learned they had two children. They had traveled and lived throughout the world in a variety of diplomatic roles. I learned that Marianne had become a well-respected diplomat in her own right. She also worked for a number of charities.

That article twenty years ago was the last news I had of her, although I can't say that I sought her out. So when I saw the friend request, I was a bit torn. Should I accept it and have that ancient wound ripped apart, or just ignore it? I contemplated what I should do for several minutes, the old hurt and rejection returning. I really didn't need that. For the time being, I decided to ignore it.

When I retired from naval service and accepted the corporate position, Terri and I built a custom post-and-beam home on one hundred acres of forested land in Vermont. One of my great joys is walking or cross-country skiing through my woods. Even though evening was approaching, I decided a walk would be a great way to work through my emotions regarding Marianne. Part of me was very happy for her and the life she built for herself. Part of me was jealous because in my youth I had always hoped that I would be the person with whom she built that life. The final part of me felt emotional pain.

As I walked, reality set in and I came to my senses. I realized that Terri and I had been perfect for one another. She had the ideal temperament to deal with the stresses of my naval career. When I was the commanding officer of first a squadron and later an air wing, she had supported me completely and stepped up to be the unofficial leader of the spouses when we were deployed. I don't think Marianne could ever have put up with half of the stressful situations that both the Navy and I had subjected Terri to. I felt tremendous gratitude for having had her as my partner for thirty-three wonderful years. This reflection confirmed that I had made the correct decision in marrying her all those years ago. I was a very lucky man.

I ended my walk as the sun was low in the sky. I prepared a salad for dinner then retired to my library to read the series of emails congratulating me on my retirement. I opened Facebook and posted the pictures of my retirement party and accepted Marianne's request. I decided not to spend any more time online and logged off.

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I spent the next couple of days putzing around the house. I decided I would start doing some of the things I've always wanted to do so I drove down to Massachusetts and walked the battlefields at Lexington and Concord. I took some pictures and a selfie with the minuteman statue. When I got home that evening I posted the pictures and commented on my trip.

I went through my feed and I saw that Marianne had posted congratulations on my retirement post. I clicked the 'like' button. I decided to look at her stuff and clicked on her home page. Part of me expected to see the beautiful 19-year-old woman of that summer so many years ago, but of course Marianne was much older. Still incredibly beautiful, but a beautiful sixty old woman. I learned that she had two children and four grandchildren. I looked through her pictures and didn't see any photos of the Ambassador.

Now I was curious and I googled 'David Huddleston'. I found out that he had died about a month after Terri, also from COVID-19. The Wikipedia page on him said that after retirement he had settled outside Jacksonville, Florida. Most likely that's where Marianne lived now.

I scrolled through her pictures. She didn't hide the fact that she was sixty. Her brown hair was turning grey. Nevertheless, she looked good for sixty. Yes, she had added pounds as we all do, but her figure was very attractive. She even posted a picture of herself on the beach in a bikini with two of her granddaughters. That did not surprise me. Marianne was always a confident woman. I remembered when she told me about going topless on German beaches when she had an internship there just before she came to see me forty years ago.

The next day a former RIO, call sign Spunk, posted a picture of the two of us walking off the flight deck after a mission during the First Gulf War. He wrote: Charms, always loved this picture of us. Charms was my call sign. The Associated Press had picked up the picture and it had run in many newspapers. In my hometown newspaper back in the Mid-West, it took up half of the front page and my father had the newspaper framed. It hung in a place of honor in his house. When my folks died I got the picture and now it hangs in my library. There were several posts from friends and shipmates, but I was really surprised to read Marianne's. She wrote: "I still have my copy of this picture that I cut out from the paper. I let everyone know that you were my best friend growing up. So proud of you Pat!" I gave it a heart emoji.

Marianne had also commented on my trip down to Massachusetts: "Pat, you always were a history buff. That's so cool that you get to visit all these historic places." I gave that one a heart too.

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As August progressed, I harvested first my garlic, then my onions. My tomatoes were producing more than I could possibly consume and I gave most of my produce to the food bank and my church.

It was near the end of August when I received a message on Facebook from Marianne: Hi Pat, I have been asked to give a lecture at Cornell in September. How far is that from your home? I would love to see you.

I wrote back that it was about five hours away and asked if the lecture was free or did I need a ticket. She asked me for my address and said I would get one of her complimentary tickets.

Two days later I received a FEDEX envelope addressed to CAPT Patrick D. Sullivan, USN from the Cornell Alumni Association. It was quite a package. First, there was a cover letter from the president of the association cordially inviting me to Cornell for Marianne's lecture, plus receptions before and after the event. I looked closely and it had been actually signed in ball point pen, no facsimile or stamp. It referred to me as 'Mrs. Huddleston's Special Guest'. The association had reserved a hotel room for me at The Statler Hotel at Cornell University. I looked it up. It was a pretty swanky place right on campus.

Also enclosed was a briefing sheet on the lecture. It was billed as the 'Inaugural Marianne Thorborg Huddleston Foreign Policy Lecture'. It gave a rundown on all her accomplishments during her time in the State Department and why she was qualified to give the lecture. Part of me thought, Well, she's qualified because she probably just gave several million dollars to endow this lecture. But as I read through the briefing, I could see that she was quite accomplished in her own right. She wasn't just an ambassador's wife, she was a superb diplomat on the global stage.

I looked at the brochure for the hotel and it was an impressive place. The lecture was scheduled for Thursday evening at 7, but my reservation started on Wednesday and ran through Saturday. I decided I would make an extended trip out of it. Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, is along the way and I decided to visit there before going on to Ithaca.

I made arrangements with Rita and Mark to watch my place. In return, they got to harvest the all the produce from my garden and the late season raspberries as they ripened. Mark asked if I could get him something from Cooperstown. Mark and Rita were Red Sox fans. It was the least I could do.

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The Tuesday before the lecture I drove over to Cooperstown. It was only a four hour drive and I checked into a nice Bed & Breakfast. I split my tour of the Hall in two and spent Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning immersed in baseball history. I bought a Ted Williams jersey for Mark and a Carl Yastrzemski jersey for Rita. After lunch on Wednesday, I drove the two hours to Ithaca.

When I pulled up in front of the Statler, I was treated like royalty. A valet greeted me and a bellboy took my bag. I asked the guy if he was sure he had the right person.

He said, "You're Captain Sullivan right?"

"Yes. How did you know that?"

"I have a picture of you and also from your license plate, sir. I've been looking for a Vermont plate."

"Can I see the picture?"

The young man showed me a picture, probably obtained from the Navy from my last deployment. The caption said that the carrier was in the Arabian Sea supporting the troops in Afghanistan. I was in my flight gear and I was addressing a group of pilots, most likely either before or after a mission.

"Thanks. That's me."

When I went to the front desk, I found out that everything had been paid for by the Alumni Association. The woman behind the desk handed me a folder, my key card, and an envelope addressed to 'Captain Sullivan'.

I took the elevator to the top floor where I learned I had a 'Superior View' room. A fruit basket was on the table. The only other time I had been in a hotel this fancy was when the senior officers on the carrier were hosted at the swankiest hotel in Dubai about twelve years ago.

I thought, Marianne is certainly making sure they lay out the red carpet for me. I picked up the envelope and thought I recognized Marianne's Catholic school penmanship. The card read:

My dearest Pat,

I hope you find everything to your satisfaction. I will be arriving sometime around four this evening and I would be delighted if you would join me for dinner. We have reservations at Taverna Banfi on the first floor at six. I am so looking forward to seeing you again.

All my love,

Marianne

One of the habits I got into back in my piloting days was that if I needed to think things through, I would go for a walk. A stroll around the campus would be just the thing. I grabbed an apple from the basket and headed out the door. First stop was to figure where this Taverna was. It was easily located, but it was closed. I went back to the main desk.

As I approached the young lady said, "How can I help you Captain Sullivan?"

"Wow! You remember me. I know it was only 30 minutes ago, but that's impressive."

"Thank you, sir. We make it a point to learn all our guests' names. Mrs. Huddleston asked us to address you with your title at all times."

"It sounds like my childhood friend is pretty important around here."

"Oh yes. She has been supporting programs at Cornell for many years. Everyone loves her."

"Perhaps you can provide an old sailor some guidance then. Mrs. Huddleston has asked me to join her for dinner in the Taverna. What would appropriate attire be?"

"You can get away with wearing just about anything, sir."

"Yes, but for dinner with Mrs. Huddleston. What would you recommend?"

"Do you have a jacket and tie? That would probably be the right mix of formal and informal."

"Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate your counsel."

I headed out the door and began a circuit of the Cornell campus. I fell in the stream of students walking this way and that. I tried to sort out the information that I had -- an intelligence assessment, if you will. Marianne was a really important person around here. To use a sports analogy, I felt like I was the visiting team. This was definitely her home turf. She had also gone out of her way to ensure that I was treated like royalty. She was trying to impress me and it was working.

So, what do I do when I finally meet her? This has the potential to be really awkward. I still hadn't worked through my emotions from forty years ago. I was hurt and pissed, but a bit excited to see her. What do we talk about? Probably shouldn't bring up the fact that she never wrote back. Let bygones be bygones. Don't let her know how badly you felt. Focus on the present. Grandchildren. Living in Florida. Yes. Focus on the present. Be positive. Remember Terri. Marianne couldn't done half the things Terri did. You are a very lucky guy.

As a good pilot, I worked out all sorts of scenarios in my head. I had contingency plans for every outcome I could anticipate. I had probably walked several miles and I started heading back to the distinctive hotel. I had turned onto the tree-lined road that led to the Statler when I saw a limousine. I didn't think much of it as it went by, but it stopped.