Her Choice(part 3)

Karen listened to the dial tone’s buzzing until the phone company’s recording woke her from her trance. She fought to regain control of her reality. Had this really happened? Had the solace of her of her home been invaded by the one man who held ownership to the secret chamber of her heart? Yes, her mind screamed to her. Yes, you really did talk to Bobby, and yes…yes…yes…you have never gotten over him. No matter how intensely you tried, you never quite made it. She set the receiver in its cradle and drew a deep breath. Although her knees were shaking, she managed to stand on the third try.

The rest of the day was survived only with an extraordinary effort. The housework was performed in a haze. When the kids arrived from school she made sandwiches for dinner then feigned a migraine so that she could retreat into the sanctity of her bedroom. Within those small walls, the memories of her and Bobby’s union played over and over. The recollections left her mind quivering and drained. She replayed the scenes of their devotion to each other. She recalled how he had taken her from a child into womanhood. She had opened herself completely and given him her most treasured gift…her love. In turn, he had made her feel needed and he was the one who had claimed the prize of her innocence. He had been her first lover.

When her husband Charles came home, he was greeted by a darkened house and as he slipped into bed, a wife who was already cushioned in sleep. He closed his eyes, unaware that the woman that slept next to him dreamt of a faraway life when she was young and vibrant in another man’s arms.

 Time is one of life’s greatest sarcasms. The more it grows, the more it taints a person’s memory, glossing over the darker episodes and highlighting the brightest ones. Karen’s dreams were flashes of her and Bobby as two young lovers streaking across a starlit sky, glowing hot with the exuberance of youth. Gone were the other memories that had also been a part of their relationship. Her thoughts never replayed the scenes of how Bobby had demanded her total submission to him, keeping her trapped, slowly isolating her into a place where only he had the key. She refused to remember how he had made her look at the ground and not make eye contact with anyone but him whenever they were in public. Or how he watched the house waiting for her parents to leave for work then would spend hours using her body in whatever desire he wished. She never refused him anything. She thought that she owed him that in exchange for the privilege of having him love her. Her dreams ignored the fights between her and her parents over Bobby, whom they saw only as a bad kid who was unsuitable for their daughter. How could they understand him? Only she was able to see past his police record into the person that dwelled inside. She carried the banner for him, fought her family over him, always believing that the fairy tale would end with their love conquering all obstacles. “You are mine for eternity” he told her every time that they parted. Those words were what she clung to during the lonely hours without him.

In the summer of her seventeenth year, Bobby disappeared. He simply walked out of her life. It was months before she found out that he had went to California with his uncle to work as a mechanic. Bobby’s sister told Karen that he had since moved on and they hadn’t heard from him in a while. She thought that he had been living with a girl, but had left her when she became pregnant. No one knew where he was.

Karen carried the depression for years, until she eventually met Charles, a man who was the exact opposite of Bobby. Charles was unassuming and stable. She allowed him to break through her barrier of mistrust and bring her back to the world of the living. She had never spoken to him about Bobby, choosing instead to bury the memory far into the dark corners of her mind.

Now, Bobby was back to reclaim her.

To be contiued…