The Call

It was time to make that call that Alex Morrell had hoped he'd never have to make. Ron Becker, his close friend since they were both sixteen, was gone. For five years, Ron had waged a valiant fight against cancer. It had gone into remission, only to come roaring back to take his life. He was seventy-one.

The call would be to Michelle Cicierski, Ron's first wife and, as he often told Alex, was the "love of my life." They met when Michelle was still a college student and Ron was in a graduate program for psychology. They married after a six-year courtship. By then, both were pharmacists (Ron had dropped out of psychology to pursue pharmacy).

That first year of marriage was rough. While dating, both of them had lived at home, unlike many couples who live together before tying the knot. In other words, they didn't really know each other the way people do when they share the same space. It was a huge adjustment. Arguments were frequent, tensions high. But, after that first year, things settled down. Love might not conquer all, but there was enough of it in the marriage for them to make compromises, to hear each other out, to make the marriage work.

Alex remembered one Saturday afternoon that showed him just how much love and affection that Ron and Michelle shared. Saturdays was the day that he and Ron got the chance to hang out together. Ron was usually off, while Michelle worked a shift at Walgreens. On this particular Saturday, they stopped by Walgreens just to say hi. Alex recalled how Michelle's face lit up when she saw her husband approach the prescription counter. Michelle was busy, but not too busy to lean over the counter to give Ron a big kiss. Alex, single at the time, stood by and watched, a bit envious because he so wished he could one day share with a woman what Ron shared with Michelle. Besides that, Michelle was so damn pretty, with her long blond hair and lovely smile that accentuated her perfect cheek bones and seemingly perfect teeth. Her fair skin and blond good looks cut quite a contrast to Ron's swarthiness, his wavy black hair and light olive complexion. "I went for Ron's ethnic kind of look, among other things," Michelle once said.

For a few years, things hummed along quite nicely. Then Michelle, bored with pharmacy, decided she wanted to go into dentistry. Ron was all for it. He made enough to where he could support them both. Michelle's parents, while not rich, had enough in the till to supplement Michelle's student loans for dental school. It might be a cliché to say that things went downhill from there, but that's exactly what happened. Michelle was fully committed to dental school. Perhaps too committed because her studies took priority over the marriage. Sometimes, she didn't get home until eight in the evening. She and Ron argued over that. Ron heard from a mutual acquaintance that Michelle said that Ron had "stopped growing." What the hell did that mean? Ron told Alex he wasn't sure, but he assumed that Michelle meant it in a professional way. Michelle was going to be a dentist, while Ron stayed a "lowly" pharmacist. The comment, Ron felt, was just an excuse to leave a marriage that she no longer wanted to be in.

At that point, Ron felt the same way. "Michelle's become someone I don't know anymore," he revealed. They separated. Ron and Alex helped her move. There was no fighting then. In fact, Michelle and Ron engaged in good-natured banter while moving furniture into Michelle's apartment near the dental school. For a few weeks, they even continued to see each other. Of course, things had changed. The bad feeling had passed but there was no reconciliation, no trying to make things work like they once did. Divorce followed, generally amicable.

Years passed. Michelle became a dentist and remarried to another dentist but kept her maiden name, Cicierski. Ron remarried also, to an attractive nurse. Ron and his wife Wendy had their friction and issues, but their love endured, and became even stronger after Ron's diagnosis. "Good thing I married a nurse," Ron was wont to say. Good thing indeed, for she kept expert care of him through his rounds of chemo, through his pain and mental anguish, though his panic attacks and moments of despair.

Ron and Alex remained close, even after Ron and Wendy moved to North Carolina. Living in different states, they talked for hours on the phone. Alex found it remarkable that Ron still maintained his sense of humor. They had made each other laugh from the time they met, and that continued almost to the end. From time to time, they talked about their past loves, Michelle included. "I once thought we'd stay married and have kids," Ron would tell Alex. "But, I don't know, things just got out of control, took on a momentum of their own. I totally lost control of the situation." He blamed himself as much as Michelle for their breakup.

Toward the end, Ron made a request to his good friend. After he died, Ron wanted Alex to call Michelle and tell her how much she had meant to him. Despite what happened, she had been the love of his life. It was a time well-spent, full of great memories. But there was one that stood out from all the rest. One snowy Christmas Eve, during their courtship, Ron came over Michelle's house for dinner, where she still lived with her parents. Diane and Larry Cicierski lived in a rural area of Maryland adjacent to their store, one of those wooden, corner country stores that dotted the rural landscape. Michelle answered the door wearing a cute red jumper and white blouse. She was so glad to see him. Oh man, he could still see her smiling face, bright as sunshine, and the love that sparkled from her beautiful blue eyes. "It was one of those precious moments in life that you never forget, that you yearn to relive," he told Alex. "I slept over that night, the night we made love for the first time. If only I could go back..."

Ron wanted Alex to convey that memory to Michelle. "It probably doesn't mean as much to her as it does to me," he said. "We all have a different a perspective when it comes to everything, including the past. She might not even remember it at all. I wonder if she even ever thinks of me."

"That's one phone call I hope I never have to make," Alex had said. "Look, I might go before you. You never know."

But Ron succumbed to his illness, and Alex had what he considered his sacred duty to fulfill. Before Ron died, Alex had filled Ron in on Michelle through her Facebook page (Ron wasn't on Facebook). He had even sent him pics via email. She was still pretty, despite putting on a few pounds. Facebook and other web sites revealed how successful she had become. Patients wrote rave, 5-star reviews. She was still married, though it didn't appear that she had kids. At the time of Ron's death, she was in her mid-sixties and semi-retired. She appeared happy and fulfilled. Didn't most people on Facebook?

*****

Michelle Cicierski WAS happy and reasonably fulfilled. She had good health, a rock-solid marriage, healthy finances and was on the tail-end of a career that had brought her the kind of professional success that many envied. She and her husband Todd, fully retired, now had the time to travel, to see places they didn't have much time for when they worked full-time. Hawaii. Alaska. Spain. She never had kids, something she sometimes regretted, other times shrugged off. "Wasn't in the cards," she'd said.

Ron had questioned whether Michelle ever thought of him. In fact, she did. Not a whole lot. But once is a while, something she saw or heard would trigger memories of their time together and a wistful sadness would pass over her. She wondered how Ron was doing, where he was. She had even tried to find him on Facebook before realizing that he wasn't on Facebook. The wistfulness would vanish as quickly as it came.

In the beginning, she also had high expectations that the marriage would last 'till death do us part,' as the vows went. She had no regrets that it didn't. Life was good and it was about to get even better, for in another day, she and Todd were scheduled to leave for Paris with another couple. She smiled in anticipation while taking off her white dental coat, preparing to leave work, now down to twice a week. Once into the lobby, she was only steps from the door when the receptionist told her she had a call.

"Who is it?"

"An Alex Morrell."

Michelle stopped dead in her tracks. "Alex Morrell?! What the...I'll take it in my office."

She stepped into her glorified cubicle of an office, pushed line one and picked up. "Alex? Is this the THEE Alex Morrell, Ron Becker's best bud from a million years ago?"

"That's me. How are you, Michelle?"

"Doing great. How are YOU doing?"

"Doing okay myself. But not so great right now. Bad news. Ron died last week. He wanted me to call you."

Michelle took a deep breath, trying to process. She was a jangle of emotions. "Oh my, I'm so sorry. Had he been sick?" Alex gave her a brief rundown of Ron's illness. "Oh my goodness, that's so sad. Ron was such a good soul." She sat on the edge of her desk and ran a hand through her shoulder-length, still blond hair. Then she began to cry. "Alex, please give me a moment."

She put down the receiver, then stepped around her desk and took a seat. She reached for a tissue, blew her nose, then put her head down and cried some more before picking back up. "I'm so upset to hear this. Guess you can tell."

"Yep. I did my share of crying also."

She choked back more sobs. Then: "You said he wanted you to call me?"

"Yes, shortly before the end. He always called you the love of his life."

"Aww..."

"Yeah, and he kept a special memory of you, one Christmas Eve when he came over for dinner. Light snow was falling, he said, and he even remembered what you wore. A red jumper and white blouse. Do you remember that?"

"Yes, because..." She struggled to hold herself together. "I can't recall what I wore but I do remember that night because it was the first and only time he stayed over our house. We'd been dating for only a few months. I think Ford was president. Anyway, he stayed over because the snow picked up and my parents felt it was safer for him to stay rather than risk driving over those rural roads. Mom fixed this great Christmas dinner. Later, dad got the fireplace going and we listened to the stereo snuggled on the sofa. It was something out of one of those holiday movies from the forties. Later, when my parents went to bed, I snuck into the guest room. Ron was wide awake. Neither of us could sleep."

She paused and closed her eyes, picturing it as if she had been whisked back in time and she stood watching as an invisible observer from the future. She saw their bed clothes coming off, the passionate kissing snuggled under quilted blankets, the whispers of I love you in between. They had gotten naked before, had done "everything" but stopped short of going all the way. She hadn't been ready. But on this night, this snowy night, she was more than ready. Did she remember, Alex had asked. Oh, did she ever! She remembered the feel of her lover's dark, warm body pressed against her pale skin, the erotic, sensuous uplift of his hard sex sliding across her breasts and tummy and then slipping inside her--by then, wet as wet could be. Neither of them had been protected but at that moment, neither of them cared. She could see herself laughing, trying to muffle her moaning when he brought her to climax. Then she could see him pulling out, could almost feel his warm cum sprayed across her body.

She saw the two of them in that twin bed, snuggled in sleep until dawn, and could picture herself tiptoeing down the hall to her bedroom before her parents awoke. Unable to go back to sleep, she saw herself as the young, "innocent" girl she was back then, lying on her pillow, hands folded behind her head, bathing in the golden afterglow of that magical experience.

She opened her eyes and shook her head. It was back to present reality. "Alex, I don't know if Ron told you, but that night was the first time we went all the way."

"Yes, he told me. Michelle, he coveted the memory of that night as if it were a precious stone. He really did."

Michelle, receiver pressed against her ear, nodded. "I do as well, Alex, I do as well." She sniffled, teared up again. "I better stop crying because my husband will notice my reddened eyes and ask what's wrong. And it's not something I wish to tell him." She paused to wipe her eyes. "Well, I better get off. Terrible news but I appreciate you calling me. And look, if you ever want to talk, you can call me at work."

She ducked into the rest room and splashed cold water over her face. She looked into the mirror above the sink. Her eyes were still red but maybe they wouldn't be by the time she returned home. Todd knew she'd been married before, knew some things about Ron from what Michelle had told him. She couldn't very well hide her sad mood, so she'd tell him why. The rest she'd keep to herself, stored in her private memory, stored in her heart.

She walked out the door, thinking about Ron and also her upcoming trip. In a couple days, she'd be in Paris. Then she remembered that she and Ron had talked about going there. They never made it--other matters got in the way. Such was life.

*****

Per Ron's wishes, Wendy had him cremated. She planned to sell their suburban house, then move back to Maryland where she had family. Ron had told Alex that he was welcome to take "anything you might want. Stuff to remember me by."

Of course, Alex didn't need anything material to jog his memory. The only thing he might want was one or two of the model ships that Ron used to put together. Building model ships had been a hobby of Ron's since he was a kid. Wendy told him she'd bring a few of them up when she returned to Maryland. Alex looked forward to that. He knew the work that went into building those ships and the pride and joy that Ron got out of building them. They'd look great on one of his bookshelves.