[stylist] CK Gratitude prompt, plus bonus track

[vejas]

Hi Chris,
I really, really liked your story.  I felt bad for all that Emily 
had to go through, and though what she did with Patrick was 
wrong, she was still very emotional.
The story made me wonder what Bobby was thinking, and what kind 
of a person he really is.  You showed times when he wanted her to 
do everything for her, as well as a single time that he helped 
her.  I wonder if he really cared for her, or what.
The other character that interests me is Patrick.  What reason 
would he have to flirt with Emily if he already has a family of 
his own?
Keep it up.
Vejas

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Kuell" <ckuell at comcast.net
To: "Stylist" <stylist at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:27:02 -0500
Subject: [stylist] CK Gratitude prompt, plus bonus track

Greetings.  Here's my response to the November gratitude prompt.  
I'm not completely satisfied with this story, but I need to put 
it away for a while, and then take another look at it.  All 
comments, critiques and suggestions are welcomed.  It's about 
3400 words, just so you know.



The Burden of Gratitude



By Chris Kuell



She wasn't surprised when the only other patron in the hotel bar 
took the empty stool next to her.

"Mind?"He asked.

She turned and performed a quick assessment.  White shirt and 
loosened tie meant he was traveling on business.  Sandy blonde 
hair, slight wrinkles at the corners of playful hazel eyes, 
somewhere in his mid-forties.  A little short, but broad 
shouldered, thick arms and just a hint of a middle-aged paunch.  
She nodded.  He sat and ordered a Dewar's over ice.

"Patrick Conrad." He extended a hand.

She put down her wine and accepted the hand.  "Emily McPherson."

"What brings you to Indianapolis, Emily?"

His voice was relatively accentless, perhaps Pennsylvania or 
Michigan or one of those other uncharacteristic states.  "Just 
passing through." She considered telling him that she'd started 
off in Biddeford, Maine, the day before, made it to a town just 
outside of Rochester yesterday, and after nine long hours in the 
car, pulled into the Ramada about an hour ago.  But after two 
days of minimal conversation, she'd grown to appreciate the 
silence, the unspoken, and    opted for a sip of Merlot instead.

"Business or pleasure?" he asked, taking a healthy pull from his 
scotch.  Despite the lack of a wedding ring, she noticed the 
untanned band around the second finger on his left hand.  A hand 
that probably spent a lot of time outside a car window while he 
drove from town to town selling computers or pharmaceuticals or 
whatever kind of widgets filled the trunk of his company car.

"A little of both," she said.  "And, neither." His caterpillar 
eyebrows raised in a 'do tell' fashion.  Again she opted to leave 
her thought hanging.

Don, the bald bartender with a graying, Stalin-like mustache, 
wiped the clean granite bar top in front of them and placed a 
bowl of mixed nuts and goldfish between their drinks.

"Since we appear to be playing twenty questions, I'll go with-and 
what is your final destination?"

She smiled.  He gave off a genuine vibe, not sleazy or full of 
himself, just a guy killing time before he has to get into his 
car again by chatting with the only other person in the bar.  
"Not sure," she said.  "Southern California somewhere.  I hear 
San Diego is beautiful, but very expensive."

"Right on both counts," Patrick said."I attended a conference 
there four years ago.  I work for Amesbury, the third largest 
synthetic flooring manufacturer in the country.  In the week I 
was there, it was sunny and in the low eighties every day.  And 
the boys in accounting nearly shit their pants, pardon my French, 
when I turned in my expense report.  It's a beautiful place with 
beautiful people, fabulous restaurants and a great zoo, but it 
ain't cheap." He threw a handful of the bar mix into his mouth 
and signaled to Don to bring another drink for both of them.  
"Why California?" he asked.

She figured if she was going to have another glass of wine, she 
better eat something and also took a handful of nuts.  "It's as 
far away from Maine as I can get in my car."

He waited as don brought the drinks, handed him a twenty and 
sniffed his scotch before drinking.  "You running away, or just 
taking a little personal vacation?"

She twirled the wine in her glass thoughtfully.  Three days ago 
her husband had left a post-it note on the refrigerator which 
read:

Pick up my shirts at the cleaners.  Get more dog food for Max.  
I'll be home around 7 tonight so wait on dinner.

No please, no thank you.

"A little of both, I suppose."

"Things a little rocky with the hubby?" he asked.

She saw Bobby in her mind.  His scowl, the passive aggressive 
hurt in his wishy-washy eyes, like a puppy that has just been 
smacked with a rolled up magazine.  The contempt at her drinking 
with another man.  "I'm pretty sure things are over with the 
hubby," she said.

"You're still wearing the ring, I notice."

"Habit," she answered.  "And a vague hope it may keep away 
lecherous men."

He laughed and a playful smirk grew at the corners of his mouth.  
"Is that a hint?"

Now it was her turn to smile.  "The jury is still out."

"Look," he said, swirling the ice cubes in his glass.  "I have a 
long evening ahead of me and I'd rather spend the time with a 
pretty lady than by myself." He glanced at his watch, a sleek 
silver model that looked expensive.  "It's going on 7:30, and I'm 
famished.  I know a great Indian restaurant about three blocks 
from here.  Can I buy you dinner?"

She did a quick mental calculation.  There was a money order for 
thirteen thousand dollars in her suitcase, half of the savings 
account she'd built with Bobby.  Hopefully, it would be enough 
for a fresh start.  There was about four hundred bucks in cash in 
her purse, and she had a new credit card, with the bills going to 
a post office box so she could charge without Bobby tracing her.  
Part of her would like the free meal, but she didn't want to give 
the wrong impression."I'll pay for myself.  Give me ten minutes 
to freshen up, and I'll meet you in the lobby."



In her room she brushed her teeth and hair, and dabbed on a touch 
of lip gloss.  She looked hard     at the woman in the mirror, 
checking the eyes for the crow's feet women in her family were 
famous for.  She took her earrings out, considered changing to a 
gold, dangly pair, then decided to stick with the plain white 
hoops.  In the suitcase on the bed she found her medicine bag, 
removed several bottles of pills and began counting.  Two 
cyclosporine, two rapamycin, one prednisone, one Lipitor and 
three 50 mg toporols.  For the third day in a row, she left the 
Prozac unopened.  The handful of pills didn't mix well with the 
wine in her stomach, and she belched like a bullfrog in a moonlit 
bog.  The cyclosporine gave her breath a slight sulfury odor, and 
caused fine blonde hairs to grow on her back and shoulders.  Yes, 
it could be removed with wax, but it still hurt like hell.  The 
rapamycin caused undesirable scar tissue growth, and the 
prednisone lowered her bone density.  At thirty-six, she'd 
already developed osteoporosis, an old woman's disease.

Next, she dug into her purse, pulled her cell phone out, and 
reluctantly turned it on.  As soon as a signal was found it 
chirped a dozen or so times.  A quick scan showed seventeen voice 
mails, and twenty-three texts.  Most were from Bobby, although 
three were from her mother and two from her older brother.  Bobby 
had undoubtedly coaxed them into helping bring her back.  Since 
cell signals were traceable, she would email them later.  But, 
what would she say? He hadn't hit her or cheated on her or 
gambled away their money or taken up drinking.  No, Bobby 
McPherson, who made fifty-four thousand dollars a year as a state 
department of labor statistician, and chaired the welcoming 
committee at the First Congregational Church of Biddeford, was by 
all accounts a stand-up guy.

Despite telling herself not to, Emily checked the latest text.

After all I've sacrificed for you, how could you do this to me?



Patrick was waiting for her in the lobby.  He'd changed into a 
navy blue polo shirt and she detected a musky cologne she hadn't 
noticed in the bar.

"Shall we drive, or would you prefer to stretch your legs?" he 
asked.

"I spent all day in the car," she said.  "I could really use the 
walk."

Although Indianapolis wasn't New York or Boston, to Emily the 
number of shops and offices and lights were quite a change.  As 
they strolled, Patrick told her about how, after bouncing around 
a handful of jobs, he'd ended up selling flooring for Amesbury 
and found his niche.  He was based in Pittsburgh, but covered all 
of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Western New York state.  When she 
asked about his family, he didn't flinch or lie, telling her he'd 
been married for twenty years to his college sweetheart.  They 
had two kids, Laura, who was sixteen and ready to change the 
world, and Timmy, a sedentary twelve-year-old who sat on the 
couch and played video games for hours on end.

The Bombay Palace was about half full when they arrived.  It was 
an immense white building which really did look palatial.  Inside 
were fine rugs, elephant and various goddess statuettes, and 
pungent odors of cardamom, curry and other exotic spices.  After 
being seated, Emily ordered another glass of red wine while 
Patrick switched to a beer called Taj Mahal, which came in a 
large, twenty-two ounce brown bottle.

"To fresh starts." Patrick raised his glass.  Emily clinked her 
glass to his and sipped, savoring the dry taste of the wine.  She 
admitted to Patrick that she'd never had Indian food, as Bobby's 
idea of dining out meant going to the Longhorn Steakhouse for a 
rib-eye with mashed potatoes.  Patrick helped her order a fry 
bread appetizer and a lamb curry dish that was spicy and 
delicious.  He shared his chicken korma, which was so hot it made 
her forehead sweat.

While the dutiful, dark-skinned waiter refilled her water and 
brought them both another drink, she told Patrick about her job 
selling housewars at Macy's in the Portland Mall, and how she'd 
been taking pottery classes for the past two years.

"Ever sell anything?" he asked.

"Oh, no," she said, feeling suddenly shy.  "I've made some funky 
candle holders, some bowls, a few mugs.  Not much more.  I just 
like the feel of the fresh clay in my hands, and the sensation as 
it spins on the wheel, slowly taking shape.  The raw clay, it's 
full of possibilities."

He held her hand as they walked back to the Ramada, and she 
didn't object.  He was nice, made her laugh when he joked about 
how bad a cook his mother was.  Her single cooking method was to 
boil everything for a half hour, no matter what the recipe called 
for.  "Instead of the typical freshman fifteen," he said, "In my 
first year of college I gained fifty pounds!"

They walked by a shoe store, a hair salon, a bridal boutique with 
headless mannequins wearing thousand dollar dresses.

"One time," she said, feeling a little tipsy from the wine.  "My 
friend Stacey and me went to a complete stranger's wedding."

"Is life in Maine so boring you have to resort to crashing 
weddings?"

"No, silly.  It was, I dunno, sort of a dare.  Stacey said she'd 
never been to a wedding.  We were seventeen and stupid, so I 
suggested we dress up on Saturday and visit all the local 
churches until we found a wedding.  We hit on our second church, 
Saint Gregory's.  We sat on the bride's side, then followed a 
couple of cute guys to the reception.  They bought us drinks and 
we danced and had a helluva time."

"Did anyone discover you weren't invited?"

Emily laughed, caught up in the memory.  "Nope.  You know those 
match books they always have at weddings? Stan and Margaret, 
October 10, 1999? We just told people we were friends of 
Margaret, and avoided her and her family during the reception." 
She looked toward the sky, but didn't see any stars because of 
the city lights.  "It was the best wedding I've ever been to."

Emily allowed Patrick to convince her to have one more drink at 
the hotel bar, and then accompanied him to his room.  The four, 
or was it five, glasses of wine had relaxed her, loosened up her 
usual inhibitions.  When they kissed, she could taste the scotch 
on his breath, smell the Indian restaurant mixed with cologne on 
his skin.  He helped her with her sweater and jeans, and she 
pulled the polo shirt over his broad chest, marveling at how 
hairy he was.  In bed, she in her bra and panties, him in his 
boxers, he ran a finger languidly over her smooth skin, then 
along the rough scar that curved on her left side from an inch or 
so below her rib cage to just above her pubic bone.

 "What's this from?" he asked softly, kissing the coarse skin.

In her mind, she saw Bobby doing the same thing a few months 
after the bandages and stitches had been removed.  "How's little 
Bobby doing in there?" he had said, pressing his lips to the 
still-tender scar.  "Now I'll always be a part of you." He 
grinned up at her.  "You'll never be able to leave me."



"I had a kidney transplant seven years ago," she told Patrick.

"Watt happened?"

"I was born with systemic lupus erythematosus, although it wasn't 
diagnosed until I was in my twenties.  By then, I had lost 
thirty- pounds, had no energy, and felt like dog shit in a paper 
bag.  Basically, my kidneys were shutting down.  I had three 
choices-dialysis, transplant, or taking an eternal dirt nap."

"Yikes," he said, moving up to kiss and hold her.  "Where did the 
new kidney come from?"

 She lay flat on her back, Patrick's strong arm supporting her 
head, and stared blankly at the ceiling.  Where had the kidney 
come from? Wasn't that the sixty-four thousand dollar question?

"My husband."



The sex was quick and perfunctory, no shades of Gray or steamy 
Danielle Steele novel stuff.  He was heaving like a bull on top 
of her, and she thought her hands looked like starfish against 
his broad, hairy chest.  Twenty minutes later, Patrick lay on his 
side snoring, and she swam in the waves of emotion crashing all 
around her.



For the first three years of their marriage, she and Bobby had 
been so happy.  Thursday night was movie night, and Saturdays 
they food shopped together, always keeping an eye out for 
bargains.  Laughing at all the freakish chickens at the state 
fair, watching the sun rise on top of Cadillac Mountain.  They 
scrimped and saved to buy the house on Cottage Street, and she'd 
spent hours on end planting flowers and even putting in a raised 
bed vegetable garden.  They met the other families in the 
neighborhood, went to church on Sunday, and could have been on 
the cover of Yankee Magazine.  Then, after a year of trying to 
get pregnant without success, she'd gone to the gynecologist for 
help.  Dr.  Ashby discovered the kidney trouble, just as the 
disease was affecting her other organs.  She lost weight, had 
less than no energy, and her skin turned corpse gray.

She started taking iron supplements and painful injections to 
keep her red blood cell count up.  She went on the transplant 
list, with about fifty-thousand other people, and waited.  The 
average wait time is two-and-a-half years for a kidney.  In the 
meantime, ninety-thousand Americans die every year from end stage 
renal disease.

Her brother wasn't a match, nor were any of her cousins.  
Finally, Bobby asked to be tested, and he had four out of six of 
the critical genetic factors.  He was healthy, passed the 
psychological testing.  On a hot July morning, both of them 
dressed in paper johnnies, she kissed him, told him she loved 
him, cried, and said she'd see him in a few hours.



Six months later, the guilt trip started with a joke.  Bobby was 
watching football with his friends, Gary and Al.  He called to 
her.  When she went into the family room he asked, "Hey babe, can 
you get us some beers, and maybe the bag of pretzels?"

The request caught her up short.  This wasn't the fifties, and 
they had always had a relationship based on equality.  "Your legs 
work, don't they?" she said.

"C'mon, Em.  I mean, I gave you a kidney.  The least you could do 
is grab a few beers for me."

She thought maybe he was playing the macho pig for his guy 
friends, and she didn't want to make a scene, so she got the 
beers and the pretzels, then went upstairs to fold laundry.  
Somewhere in her head she heard the voice of her long dead 
grandmother Ella, saying, "Many a true word is said in jest."

If he wanted another beer, he could get it himself.

A month later, a similar incident occurred over his turn to do 
the dishes.  Then he asked if she would run an errand for him.  
Then it was mowing the yard.  Sometimes his guilt trips were 
blatant, sometimes subtly hidden, but the basic message was 
always the same.  I saved your life, and you owe me.



Patrick rolled over and elbowed her right breast.  He had big 
arms, and it hurt.  A lot.  She got out of bed, his snoring went 
on uninterrupted.  Gathering her things, she slipped into the 
bathroom and dressed.  She found the hotel stationary and a pen 
on the desk and tried to think of something clever to write.  
Nothing came to mind, so she scrawled, Happy Trails, Emily.  This 
struck her as stupid, so she tore off the sheet, balled it up and 
tossed it in the trash.

Back in her own room, Emily took a twenty minute shower, the 
water so hot it left her skin red and tender.  What had she done? 
Getting drunk and sleeping with a man she didn't know, just two 
days after leaving her husband.  What would Grandmother Ella have 
to say about that? She scrubbed her skin until it was raw, and 
then she scrubbed some more.



The summer after the transplant, she and Bobby had taken a canoe 
trip down the Saco River.  They put their packs, cooler, camp 
stove and sleeping bags into a rented canoe, and left 
civilization behind for three days.  Bobby had scheduled a 
pick-up forty-two miles downstream.  She sat in front, he in the 
back, and after a bit of struggling they developed a nice rhythm.  
They talked, watched the birds, sang songs from when they were 
kids, did a little fishing, and even saw a moose, big as a house, 
sipping from the edge of the river.  Late that first afternoon, 
the sun was hot and she took off her shirt, paddling in her 
bikini top.  Bobby warned her to use sun screen, but the 
afternoon didn't seem that bright to her, and she wanted to catch 
a few rays.  She thought she'd be fine.  Big mistake.  After 
setting up camp that first night, she could have fried an egg on 
her shoulders.  She couldn't get comfortable on the hard ground, 
and Bobby made her lay his sleeping bag on top of hers to give 
more padding.  He just laid on the vinyl tent flooring, holding 
her hand.  They had no aloe, of course, so Bobby kept rinsing out 
a wash cloth in the cold river water, using it to sooth her 
burned skin.  In the morning, he took care of cooking breakfast, 
reloaded everything into the canoe, and did most of the paddling, 
since with her blistered skin, her paddling was next to useless.  
He was kind and gentle and giving, never getting angry that he 
had to do all the work.  He hadn't complained that they couldn't 
have sex, which she knew he wanted.  Bobby just comforted her and 
made the best of the situation.



Emily stepped from the shower, wrapped her hair in a towel and 
dried off with another.  That's what a marriage was, she thought.  
Two people who love and help and support each other.  Two people 
who operate better as a team than they would individually.



Emily made a cup of coffee, running it through the machine twice 
to make it extra strong.  She got dressed, dried her hair, and 
repacked her things.  As she drank the strong coffee, she pulled 
out her cell phone.  Finding Bobby's name, she pressed enter, 
then text, and wrote:

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.  Gratitude is happiness 
doubled by wonder.

She hit send, wiped the tear from her cheek, and left the hotel.  
As she exited the parking lot and approached the highway, she saw 
the sign for I-70 West to the right, and I-70 East to the left.  
A home and a thousand miles of pavement one way; a clean slate 
and boundless uncertainty two thousand miles the other direction.   
After a momentary hesitation, she turned left and drove into the 
first glimmer of the dawning sun.



  *   *   *   *



Continuing loosely with the theme of gratitude, and if you'll 
allow me a proud poppa moment, below is a link to a video of the 
Conn Men, an acapella group from the University of Connecticut.  
The song is 'Thank you', and the lead vocalist is my son, 
Nicholas.  It was recorded last Saturday at Georgetown 
University, and the audio isn't great, but I hope you enjoy it 
anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsiM4XZU6oc
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