Lisa couldn't put her finger on it exactly. It was nothing and it was everything. All she knew for sure was that darkness had descended on her life and she didn't know how to find the dawn.
It all started with the accident. It hadn't really been her fault, but she had been driving when the boy on the blue bike came out of nowhere. She'd swerved to miss him and instead, hit a tree that totaled the car and put Tim in the hospital and out of work for six months. Everyone said she had no choice. Lisa hadn't been speeding or drinking or anything that should have produced the guilt that had been hard to shake all these many months. The boy was fine; her husband was healing nicely, too. Insurance paid for the whole thing. Tim had even told her that in some ways the accident had been a blessing.
"It forced me to get off the fast track long enough to reevaluate my priorities," he told her. "Material things were becoming too important." Tim talked about quitting his position at the advertising agency to take a lower paying job with more satisfaction.
There had been no silver lining for Lisa, though. It was as if that near tragedy had been the catalyst for a sea change in her soul. A curtain was drawn over the rosy window that had been hers and no amount of effort could push it back again. It affected everything in her life. She found no pleasure in the garden anymore or the theatre. The work Lisa did at the gallery that once had been exciting became tedious and almost more than she could bear. Even music and sex lost their appeal.
Tim hadn't noticed at first. But then, a man in traction could hardly be blamed for not seeing that his wife was unhappy. After he had recovered and reprioritized his life, he mistook her lack of enthusiasm for materialism and disapproval of the major changes he was making. She couldn't explain -- she didn't understand it, herself. If Lisa could have been happy about anything, she would have been happy for Tim. He had found renewed vigor for life just as she was slipping into a black hole. The resulting gulf between them only plunged her deeper into darkness.
When an elderly co-worker was badly injured by slipping on the ice, Lisa felt responsible because she hadn't been with her -- a last minute decision to accommodate a client. She couldn't put it behind her and began to obsess about the mishap, calling Adele daily for updates on her condition. A stray dog Lisa had been feeding for several days was killed in the street in front of her house as she watched in horror. She blamed herself because it would have wandered off if she hadn't fed it. She couldn't get the picture of the dying animal out of her mind. If ever she needed Tim to be her rock, she needed him now, but shame prevented her from confiding in him. The chasm that separated them grew larger.
Lisa was adrift in a dark sea of thought. She began to think about the choices one makes in life and their consequences. If she had chosen differently that night in the car, a child might have died. The choice she did make nearly cost her husband his life. An inch to the right, the surgeon had said, and Tim would have been killed. As it was he barely escaped becoming a paraplegic. If she had gone to lunch with Adele instead of working through the noon hour at the gallery, she would have been there to steady her arm when she lost her balance. But maybe they both would have fallen; perhaps something worse would have happened. If she hadn't fed the stray, he would probably still be alive, but he would be hungry. Every choice she made could have tragic implications for someone or something. She couldn't take a step without the possibility of crushing a tiny insect beneath her feet. Lisa began to feel guilty for every choice she made and agonized over the simplest of decisions -- like what to have for dinner. She began to think she was going crazy. She felt resentful, too; Tim was letting go of their moorings just when she needed to hold fast to something steady and sure. Lisa felt too vulnerable to share her heart with him. If he loved her enough, he would somehow know and make it all right again.
Her struggles were more obvious at work. Lisa's expertise and confident personality had made the gallery a success, but now sales were plummeting. The last showing was a disaster. By spring, the owners could no longer afford a manager frozen with indecision.
She was too ashamed to tell Tim she had been fired, so she told him what he wanted to hear.
"I guess I'm getting disillusioned with the rat race, too. Suddenly today I just had enough. I'm ready to smell the flowers."
He was thrilled, believing that they were finally on the same wavelength. Tim treated her with such warmth and gentleness that she wanted it all to be true. He made love to her that evening like it was their first time. Lisa faked that too. She felt nothing but a longing to feel what she once had in her husband's arms.
When Tim suggested that they move to the country, an acreage he had found with an old farmhouse they could fix up, Lisa felt trapped.
"There would be plenty of room for a vegetable garden," Tim had told her, excitedly. "It would mean a lot of work before we got things going, but we could start a whole new life. We'd be free from the pressures of the city - we could even start a family."
The last thing in the world Lisa wanted to do was fix up an old farmhouse. How could someone who couldn't decide what to wear in the morning make all the decisions required for such an undertaking? And a family? Lisa was barely functioning. She couldn't think of taking on the responsibility of children. She wanted to hide from the challenges of life, not take on new ones.
Tim knew soon enough that the new Lisa was a facade. He didn't know what she wanted, but it wasn't the dream he believed they had come to share. It all blew up when Tim took her to see the deteriorating farmhouse. She simply couldn't hide her dread at the idea of so much remodeling.
"This is your idea of simplifying life?" Lisa said bitterly. "You're just being selfish. I didn't quit the gallery to become a slave to this dilapidated salt mine while you go off every day to your new dream job for half the money."
"I never knew you were such a witch, Lisa." Tim responded. "A crazy witch, at that."
The argument lasted only fifteen minutes, but it was nasty and followed by a week of silence. Lisa didn't mean half the things she'd said, but she could see that their ten-year marriage was over.
"We've simply grown apart, Lisa," Tim told her as he packed a suitcase with tears in his eyes. "No ones fault, really. We just don't want the same things anymore."
Lisa couldn't cry, although she was filled with regret and fear. "Can't we wait a while?"
"There's no reason to stretch this thing out," he said, "From the moment my values started to change, I could see you backing off."
"I'm going through some changes, too. Can't you see that? It's not anything that I know how to explain, but right now things are moving too fast."
"You can stay in the house until it sells," Tim said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. "With the equity there should be enough for you to rent an apartment for quite a while. I won't take a full half, just enough to put a down payment on a little place to start over. You'll have to get another job eventually, but you were never the homebody type, anyway."
And that was that. There was no choice for Lisa to make. Tim arranged for a realtor and Lisa's last refuge was about to be swept away.
The house sold in less than three weeks to out-of-state buyers who asked for a delayed closing. Lisa would have 60 days to vacate the premises. Her life was out of control and racing toward ruin. She couldn't really blame Tim. She loved her husband, although the feelings were locked away. He must have felt bewildered and perhaps abandoned when she withdrew, but she felt betrayed. The husband she thought would always be there for her had been too quick to cut and run. It was ultimately her fault, of course. Somewhere she had made the wrong choice and started the chain of events that had her life spiraling downward.
Lisa started grasping for straws -- anything that promised an end to the long night. She prayed and went to church. She read a book that Adele recommended on spirituality and one about herbal remedies. She tried meditating and listening to chants and a new age relaxation CD. Lisa even made an appointment with a psychiatrist and took the prescribed pills. When the darkness did not lift, he said to give it some time and suggested she write her thoughts in a journal. Lisa tried, but she didn't know what to write. The mockingbirds sang outside her window and her neglected garden bloomed, but Lisa found little relief for her troubled soul.
Gradually, though, during the weeks that followed, the obsessive concerns began to fade. Lisa didn't know if it was the pills finally kicking in, the meditation or the prayers. Whatever it was, it came too late. Her marriage was over. She and Tim had both said hurtful things that couldn't be taken back. Lisa's life was in shambles. Another week and her furniture would go into storage because she hadn't found an apartment. She would stay with Adele until she decided where to go. What good was mental health if she'd lost everything?
It was then that Lisa learned that a seed had begun to grow in her belly. She didn't realize it until she was well over two months late with her menses. She was desolate at the news. With packing and everything else she had to contend with, suddenly she was facing an enormous decision that must to be dealt with soon. Would she tell Tim? Should she -- could she -- make the decision without him? How could she raise a child alone? Even when she thought they would be together forever, the idea of raising a child had been too much to consider. She and Tim had wanted a family once, but what kind of life could she give a baby now -- alone and hanging onto sanity by a thread? Could she deliberately end this life growing inside her? The questions were staggering and she had only a few days to think about it.
Inexplicably, the emotions that had been unavailable for months returned and with them, all the tears she'd been unable to shed. Lisa cried for two days. About her marriage, about the baby she may or may not give birth to. About a life that had gone terribly wrong. She knew if she told Tim, he would probably take her back. He would try to forget her cutting words and do the "right thing." He would give the child a home and put up with Lisa's craziness. But was that the "right thing" for her to do? Could she get past the bitterness? Could she truly be Tim's wife again?
The "right thing:" that illusive concept that Lisa had struggled with so long. How does one know? More tears and bouncing from one argument to the opposite extreme and back. The "right thing." How could she know unless she knew what the outcome of either decision would be?
Lisa woke early the next morning, poured a cup of coffee and walked out on the deck that soon would belong to someone else. She searched the eastern sky as the sun appeared on the horizon, outlining the clouds with a whisper of yellow light. A summer breeze brushed against her cheek, and Lisa had a simple thought: "all one can do is lean toward the light." It wasn't even a new thought, but she suddenly owned it. Lisa wasn't responsible for the repercussions of every decision she made. All she could do was check her heart and act out of love. If she tried to do the right thing then the future would be as it should be.
Sometime during the night, Lisa had made a decision without knowing it. She would have the baby. She didn't know what the future held, but she would love the child and be the best mother she could - wherever she was and with whomever she found herself. She would be honest with Tim for the first time since all this began, not because she would need his help, but because it was the right thing. If he wanted her back, they would decide together where to start over again.
Lisa watched the sun rise from the horizon streaking the whole sky with gold and radiant yellow. She put her hand on the belly that soon would swell with the life growing in her. Perhaps the darkness in her soul had lifted forever or perhaps it would return with the next decision. Lisa didn't know, but she did know one thing. She had found her dawn this morning, and she would always know which way to look for it again.
THE END