Bethany writes...

Maybe you’ve never had this experience…and then again, maybe you have…It is a perfectly normal day in a relatively normal time in your life.  I mean, things are not all chaotic and crazy, as they sometimes can be in peoples’ lives…especially when those lives include a busy career, a husband, and two pre-teen girls.  So it is a pretty calm and normal period…when suddenly, quite unexpectedly, you realize that your life—as you have known it for the last 15 years or so—has been turned absolutely inside out.  For maybe the first time, you are without words to adequately describe your perceptions.  And you can’t see ahead enough to be able to have any idea of where things are about to take you…but you know that you have little choice but to hold on and see what happens…

And so it began...for him...

Bethany recalled...

For Bethany...

The intensity of their relationship grew, moving slowly, but without question toward a life-changing cataclysm, at least on her part.  She gradually began to realize that her marriage would not likely survive the next year.  He, she had learned, was already separated and heading for divorce.  She was wracked with guilt…having been raised to believe that what she was contemplating was absolutely wrong.  But the force of her emotions was too strong to fight.  Her head, or rather her conscience, was no match for them. 

When he would look into her eyes and murmur her name in that husky way he had, she felt her insides simply deliquesce…there was no hope of resistance on her part.  And the way he looked and sounded let her know that he had already succumbed internally to similar feelings…Something inside her was letting go, breaking loose, and she knew she was about to lose herself.   And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, even if she wanted to…but, truthfully, she did not want to.

And Michael thought...

He was not a religious man by any standard or degree but he had developed a peculiar spiritual side. He believed that the gods playful, happy side was reflected in wondrous, beautiful things and that, at other times, perhaps the gods had been distracted. He believed that they insured some sort of balance and loved irony, especially human folly. And years afterwards, as he thought about the gods take on the course of his relationship with her he thought: they are standing around, drinking beers and can hardly stand, they are laughing so hard, each cutting off the others with another funny, ironic story...


THAT afternoon, my god, that afternoon... he never told anyone or spoke of it. He mentally wrapped it and putting it on a shelf, hid it, taking it down to look at it when it was quiet and he was certain he was absolutely alone. But the more he considered it, the more anxious he became...was it real? and if some one knew it , surely it would be taken. What should he do next? What did that afternoon mean?

He was like the poor man who suddenly wins the lottery: he was totally unsure of what to do next. He had come into a treasure and was totally unprepared. Not often, it seemed to him, but sometimes, all the stars are in perfect alignment. He was never quite sure how it happened or, more importantly, why it happened....he was never able to repeat it exactly that way with anyone else ever:

They met again, for what was to be their last meeting shortly after her responsibilities for his supervision ended. He couldn’t recall the reason for their meeting; only the sense of sadness that he had that the closeness would be gone....SHE would be gone. As they said their "good byes"  he suddenly turned back to her and, taking her wrists, he leaned forward, kissing her. Stepping back, they stood silently, looking into each others eyes. And then, wordlessly, he turned and walked away...

A few days later, she called wondering if she could bring him some holiday cookies. He answered the ring of his doorbell and saw her through the frosted door glass, smiling, red cheeked, stocking capped, with a winter scarf wrapped around her neck, bearing a small paper plate of plastic wrapped cookies. She came in, undoing her scarf and opening her jacket. Placing the cookies on the small kitchen table, he gently took her hand in his, kissed her softly and turning, lead her to his small room in the back of the shared apartment....

and he would remember forever the sun setting in a winter sky...music and waking to listen to the sounds of her softly breathing as she lay in his arms...

And Bethany remembered...

The unraveling was long and slow in so many ways and yet sudden, almost shocking in others.  She knew when she went to bring him Christmas cookies, that she was not all innocence.  That kiss in the hall had been a surprise—a soft and lovely surprise.  And her response, well, that was something else again…She knew when she headed for his place that the cookies simply provided an excuse to spend more time with him.

She saw him through the frosted window and her heart suddenly forgot its normal rhythm and began doing something that would have been completely understandable had she just run the 50 yard dash.  But, she was standing perfectly still.  She was balanced on the brink of something she barely grasped.  She knew people messed up their lives in all sorts of ways everyday…and she knew she was an expert in doing so.  And then again, sometimes people just did the absolutely perfect thing.  The real trick was in knowing which one was which.  At that moment, she had no idea what she was doing, nor did she care much.  She was giving in.  Period.

When he led her into his room she followed wordlessly…he could have led her anywhere and she’d have followed.  The apartment was warm and darkening by the minute, the music was soft and lush--encircling them and keeping all else out.  They were alone together and that was all that mattered.  The fact that they each had other lives outside of this moment was irrelevant.

He was gentle and sweet and by some magic was able to combine those with the most intense passion she had ever experienced.  His touch was almost more than she could bear, and yet, she found herself hungry for more.  She soared with him to places she’d never before visited and they came to light together in this warm, dimly lit room.  She wanted to keep the outside reality from crashing in upon them for the foreseeable future.