[stylist] Heart of it, chapter 1 revised.

[Alan]

The heart of it

By: Alan Wheeler

 

chapter one

Heart Break

 

 

 

 

BUMP!!

Michael looked up from his section of the Sunday paper as he and Anna sat in the front of the first class section of the airplane. The jolt of turbulence brought Michael back to his distracted thoughts. He and Anna  weren't moving, no real "turbulence" for them,  they were stagnating, standing still, and it drove him mad.

 

Oh, they loved each other, that wasn't the problem.  It was communicating; communicating their love for each other to each other, communicating without putting the other on the defensive all the time.  Those were the problem areas for them.  They both knew it.  Yet, neither Michael or Anna took steps to remedy the problem.  It had become akin to that proverbial elephant in the living room that no one speaks of, but rather walks a wide circle around, simply to avoid it.

 

Michael had hoped their trip to South America would nudge them out of this routine, cause them to break down barriers, but it didn't happen that way.  No change occurred at all, in fact.

 

He looked over at her as she read her Stephen King novel, and his heart seemed to stutter in his chest, as beating every other beat.  He loved her so much, and yet felt so far away.  It hurt him; hurt him deeply.  He caught her looking at him out of the corner of her eye, and the look on her face told him in no uncertain terms she was thinking about the very same things.  He saw the love in her eyes, but he also saw a seemingly bottomless sadness and loneliness there, too.

 

He wanted to throw down his newspaper, tell her just how unreservedly he loved her and demand she say what she was thinking.  It was futile.  It was futile because Michael knew that he would balk if she made the same demand of him.  He had tried to open up, tried to get past the barriers he felt between them. To Michael it was like body-slamming a brick wall.  

 

All he could bring himself to do was brush a lock of her long, black hair out of her face.  It was a gesture of affection, to him, anyway, but she just vaguely glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and continued to read.

 

 

***

 

 

Anna felt Michael's hand brush the loose lock of hair.  She really did love him.  He was like no man she had ever known, let alone loved.  Yet, for her it seemed like her head was extroverted and her heart introverted. She could talk with him about their work in South America, the impact that work would have back in the states, and do so for hours.

 

On the other hand, ask her to express her love for him, and it as if she were pathologically shy, or mute.

 

Ask her to talk about some way, big or small in which Michael may have hurt her, even just with a unintended sleight, and her emotional throat closed up and her voice was silent.

 

She hated herself for it but she kept waiting on Michael to be the one to open up. She knew she should take the first step since it seemed Michael never would.  Unfortunately, she seemed too mired in it all to take that step.  She recalled how she once thought being a better housewife would tilt  the balance, and cause them to open up to each other.  But, it was like the lyric she had heard in a song by the band Wilco says, "keeping things clean doesn't change anything."

  

They both sat, mutely gazing at each other. They both knew something had to break, and both silently wondered if it ever would.

 

***

 

abruptly, for Michael, something did.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with their relationship.  It was pain, starting from the left side of his chest and slowly radiating down his arm.  For the love of everything holy, was he having a heart attack?  Here?  On this airplane?  He squeezed Anna's hand, almost violently.  His eyes registered her shock and horror as she realized something was wrong, then everything faded to black, just like a TV show or movie.