[stylist] One more go at "the heart of it" chapter 1.

[Alan]

Hi everyone,
I was thinking about what James said, and I knew I had to fit a description of Michael and Anna's work into the first chapter.  So, I have given that a go.  Let me know what you think.  I also have chapter 2 almost ready.

The heart of it

By: Alan Wheeler

 

chapter one

Heart Break

 

 

 

 

BUMP!!

Michael looked up from his section of the Sunday Chicago Sun Times 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 if 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.  She was no magazine model, no cover girl, but that didn't matter to Michael.  Anna's inner beauty, her sense of happiness and peace manifested itself in her glowing skin, bright smile, lush black hair and made her outshine any model on any magazine. 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  soft slightly rounded 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 lightly callused hand brush the loose lock of hair.  She really did love him.  He was like no man she had ever known, let alone loved.  Even now, looking at him made her heart stop for a moment, her breath silently hitching.  So many female friends of hers had commented on how, if his reddish hair was just a slightly different color, he could pass for Brad Pitt.  He, of course, had laughed this off. Brad Pitt wasn't thick around the middle was Michael's argument. He also didn't have brown hair. Anna always thought that Michael could put any matinee idol to shame, especially Brad Pitt.  That is how much she loved him, inside and out.

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.  They both had found a job that was tied to their deepest compassion for people in need.  It fed people in the remotest villages in Sot America, and shamed the United States government, what with the current administration making rhetoric-filled promises to help these villages devistated by bad weather starvation and disease.  The organization they worked for did more in one week than the U.S. did in a four-year presidential term.  Anna loved seeing Michael work with his hands as he did handyman-style jobs around the village. 

 

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 had found a job that was tied to their deepest compassion for people in need.  It fed people in the remotest villages in South America, and shamed the United States government, what with the current administration making rhetoric-filled promises to help these villages devistated by bad weather starvation and disease.  The organization they worked for did more in one week than the U.S. did in a four-year presidential term. They both loved watching the other work.  Anna often just sat and adored Michael as he did various handyman chores around the village.  Michael caught himself pausing, quite often, in his work to admire Anna from afar as she sat under a tree, teaching children from the village how to read English. For both of them, the key word was "afar." They were like two islands that depended on each other with no bridge between them, and no open shipping lanes.

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 small, silky hand, almost violently.  His eyes registered her shock and horror as she realized something was wrong, then everything faded to black.