A Promise Kept

Erin James winced as she slid the long, curved hook of the jewelry through her lobe. She’d been wearing her smaller stems lately and the hooks were just thick enough to make putting them in a delicate procedure. After putting on the second chandler-style earring, she turned her head from side to side, admiring how beautiful they were.

“You said that you were staying in with me…”

Erin’s heart lurched in her chest and she swung around to face behind her. Her husband’s large frame filled the doorway. As intimidating as his size made him appear, the grim expression on his face and the tears threatening to well up in his eyes made him seem so weak to her.

“Robert!” She said, holding her small hands to her chest. “You scared the shit out of me! How many times do I have to tell you not to sneak up on me?”

The tears in Robert’s eyes welled just a little more and he said, “I don’t try to sneak up on you…I just walk up to the door. What’s with the dress and the earrings? I told you I need to talk to you tonight.”

Erin turned back toward the bathroom mirror, opened her small make-up bag and pulled out a tube of lip-stick. She popped the top off, screwed up the deep, red lip-stick and applied it generously; then she put the cap back, tossed it back into the bag and zipped it shut.

“I told you, Robert,” she said, looking at his reflection in the mirror, “It won’t make any difference.”

Robert James entered the bathroom and hugged his soon to be ex-wife around her shoulders.

“Maybe not to me,” he said, just barely above a whisper, “but to you…”

He buried his nose in her hair and breathed in her scent, that natural perfume that he’d grown to recognize as one of the powers she’d had over him.

“What you mean?”

He stood up a little straighter, rested his unshaven chin on the top of her head, and looked at her face in the mirror with eyes that were about to let go of their liquid cargo.

“I mean…I have a plan,” he said. “I have a plan and we both can win.”

He kissed her on the back of the head and let her go. As he left the bathroom, he stopped in the doorway and looked back at her once more.

“Just think about it,” he said. “One more night with me and you will get everything you want and more.”

Erin closed her eyes to avoid tearing up herself. When she opened them again, Robert was gone from the doorway. She sniffled back the single tear drop that was trying to escape one of her own eyes and closed the bathroom door. Alone at last, she pulled her phone from her purse and dialed the newest number in her address book. Just one more night, she thought. I owe him at least that much.

***

Robert was sitting at the kitchen table when Erin entered the room. She saw two things immediately that relaxed her a little. Robert had poured them both a glass of wine and had hers sitting on the table just opposite of him and the yellow folder that was laid on the table directly in front of him. The divorce papers, she thought. He’s finally given in… She sat down in the chair across from him and took a long pull of the wine.

“What’s this about, Robert?”

He didn’t answer at first. He took a few sips of his own wine and seemed to drift off into his thoughts, his eyes flittering around the kitchen, looking at everything but her.

“Robert; what do you want to talk about?”

“Remember when we got married?” He asked, still not looking directly at her.

“Yes, I remember. Look Robert, if this is some self-pity trip down memory lane, I…”

“I felt like the luckiest man in the world.”

Erin let out a long sigh and took another sip of her wine. It’s only one night, she thought. Who cares what he says as long as he signs the papers when he’s done.

“You know why I felt so happy?”

“Why?”

“Because, you looked at me that day like I was the best thing that ever happened to you. Your smile that day could have lit up the world. I haven’t seen you smile like that since.”

“People grow apart, Robert! I told you…”

“Just let me have my say, please,” he said, holding up his hand to silence her. “I just want to tell you everything that I’d never told you…I need the closure.”

“Sorry…” Erin said.

“That’s okay, Hun. This isn’t a pity party. It’s our last time that we’ll spend together as husband and wife. I’ll try to spare you and keep it brief.”

Erin nodded slightly, put her thumb and forefinger together at the edge of her mouth, and pulled them across her lips like a zipper.

“So anyway,” Robert Continued, “that smile stayed with me after all of these years. I was determined to see it again on your face. It became a sort of mission for me…my Holy Grail, so to speak. But, no matter what I did for you, what I gave you, how many trips I took you on…it never came back. Oh, you smiled here and there, but never like that; not on my account anyway.”

“So, what’s your point?”

“My point is…well, that’s how I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“About your new guy… You wondered how I found out; remember? You accused me of going through your private things and following you around. I never did any of that stuff Babe. You told me all I needed to know. That night; on the last date we went on to that one restaurant…You went to the bathroom in the middle of dinner. When you walked out, you had that smile on your face. I knew then that you’d been talking to someone who put that smile there. You told me…”

Erin’s face grew pale as she realized what Robert was implying.

“That was months ago,” she said. “You knew all of that time and didn’t tell me until four weeks ago?”

Well, it wouldn’t have made a difference really. If you’d known that I knew back then, you would’ve tried to end us sooner instead of sneaking around. Am I right?

“I guess, but…”

“I had to try and save us, without blemishing our marriage. I turned on the charm…tried to bring back the romance again, the love that you used to feel for me. If you would’ve changed your mind, I would’ve pretended that I’d never known about what’s-his-name. I wouldn’t want you to live with that guilt on my account.”

***

“Do you remember when Vincent was born?”

“Ummm…duh!” Erin said. “I kinda had to be there.”

“Yeah, well,” Robert said, “what do you think he’d be like now…you know, if he didn’t…?”

“I don’t know, Robert. Why does it matter? He isn’t here.”

“I know. I was just wondering. I miss him sometimes; you know?”

Erin lowered her eyes, the conversation was taking an unexpected turn and she hadn’t been prepared for it. Discussion of their son was off limits, had been off limits for years. It was the one, major taboo in their marriage…You don’t talk about Vincent, not ever, for any reason.

“Do you think that kids become adults when they get to heaven, or stay children?”

“I don’t want to talk about this Robert. Move on to something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like what you have there in that folder. Is it what I think it is?”

“I could be,” he said. “I don’t know what you think it is.”

He slid the folder around to face her and opened it up to display an assortment of legal looking documents. Erin pulled the folder toward her slid out the top sheet and began to read it. As her eyes moved back and forth across the document, her expression grew dark. She slammed the paper down on the table-top and pulled out the second and scanned it…and then the third…

“What is this shit, Robert?”

“What’s it look like?”

“It looks like a Will, Robert.”

“Well, there you go. I need you to sign the last page, if you’d be so kind.”

“What’s the point of a Will?” she asked. “We’re going to be divorced soon, idiot!”

As soon as the word, idiot left her mouth, Erin regretted saying it. The tears that were recently budging closer and closer to Robert’s cheeks seemed to evaporate immediately from the heat that must’ve been radiating from his red face. He shot up from his chair and before she knew what was happening, the table and everything on it was thrown onto its side. After toppling the table, Robert looked down at his wife as she cowered in her chair; his expression softened, the color of red on his face dissolving from anger to the lighter shade that embarrassment leaves behind.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me…Must be the wine.”

“What the hell is going on with you, Robert,” Erin said, her voice cracking from the fear of what her husband might do next. “Are you planning to kill me or something?”

For the first time in days, Robert James smiled.

“No baby,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to kill myself.”

***

“Oh great… Not this again! How many times have you threatened to kill yourself over the last month?”

“This is different.”

“How’s that?”

“Because… I’ve already done it.”

Robert reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, black bottle.

“This is ricin…Do you know what that is?”

Erin shook her head.

“It comes from the castor oil plant. I scored some from one of my contacts at work. A couple of grains of this stuff will kill you within twenty-four hours. I got enough left in here to take out everyone in the city.”

He slipped the small bottle back into his pocket, bent over and turned the table back into its standing position, then he fetched up the loose papers that were scattered on the floor and placed them neatly back into the folder. He placed the folder back in front of his wife, sat down in his chair, and buried his face in his hands.

“It’s all been set in motion and can’t be stopped now. You don’t have time for a divorce my love; you’re going to be a widow.”

Erin leaned across the table and put her hand on his.

“Why would you do this?” She asked. “You didn’t have to do this…I’m not worth it.”

“I’ve made you a lot of promises that I haven’t kept,” he said. “I promised on our wedding day that I’d be faithful to you and I haven’t; I promised to cherish you and I’ve taken you for granted; I promised that I would work less, exercise more, and that we’d try and have another baby…All of those promises, I broke.”

Erin got up and walked around to the back of her husband’s chair. She wrapped her arms around the man that she’d been married to for so many years; the man that she’d shared so much joy and sorrow with, and embraced him. It was the last moments that she was ever going to have with him and she knew it.

“I broke all of those promises too,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Robert turned around and pressed his face against his wife’s chest, his tears quickly soaked through the thin fabric of her dress. She pulled him in tighter, rubbing his hair and feeling her own flood of tears wash down her face.

“The one promise that I have left, the one that I have kept, I can still keep,” Robert sniffled.

“What’s that baby?”

“I promised that I’d always take care of you.”

Erin’s tears flowed even more as she wrapped her arms around Robert’s neck and gave him the most passionate kiss she could ever remember giving him since their wedding night. What’s wrong with me, she thought. Nobody will ever love me this much…Not ever.

“You always have,” she said. “You always have, Baby.”

She gave him another long kiss and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Robert asked. “Stay with me…Be my wife for just one more night.”

“I’m going to call 911,” she said.

“There’s no point!” He said, grabbing her arm as she walked away. “There’s no cure, Hun.”

“Then you will die fighting,” she said and pulled away from him.

She retrieved her phone and called emergency services. The operator stayed on the phone with her until the first signs of help arrived. To Erin’s surprise, the first signs of help weren’t the paramedics or police, but Soldiers, dressed in astronaut suits. The Soldiers cordoned the house off and swept through every room. They brought in some kind of field testing unit and tested the contents of the small, black bottle in the kitchen. When they were convinced that it wasn’t ricin, but ground up grains of rice, they pulled out and let the paramedics do their job.

***

A few weeks later, Robert James sat comfortably on a park bench, eating a hot dog and feeding bits of the bun to the pigeons that clustered around at his feet. Since his release from the mental ward at the hospital, he’s been doing much better. He knows that it had nothing to do with the therapy and suicide prevention classes that the doctors made his attend…he knew it was because of her. She stayed with him, his beloved wife. She was there through the whole thing, helping him muster through the process of becoming mentally stable. Going crazy isn’t the best option, but it seemed to Robert that it was just what his marriage needed to give it a little kick-start. He was just about to give the last bit of bread to the birds when his phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey buddy! How’s it hanging?”

“Ted?”

“Yep, just came back from the Bahamas Bro! I heard you did it…Did it work?”

“Yep…She bought it.”

“So, you two staying together?”

“Yep… It’s funny; just a few weeks ago, she was talking about a divorce. I swear to God dude, she was talking about having another kid last night.”

“Wow man…bummer.” Ted said.

“Hey, Ted…Hold on…She’s trying to call.”

“Hello; Baby”

“Mr. James?”

“Yes…Who is this?”

“Are you the husband of Erin James?”

“Yes.”

“Sir…there’s been an accident. Please tell us where you are and we’ll have an officer drive you down to the…”

THE END