by Mary McIntosh

The shrill ringing of the telephone woke me from my Sunday afternoon nap.

“Hello,” I said, still not fully awake.

“Is this Mrs. McIntosh?” a strange voice asked. “This is the West Valley Police. There’s been an accident. You’re needed at the hospital here as soon as possible.

I’d never been in West Valley. It must be someone teasing me. My son Greg might do that, but he was hiking alone in the mountains today. “Oh, my God, something has happened to Greg,” I wailed.

I hung the phone up, and ran to my closet. What should I wear? What the hell am I doing? I need to get to the hospital as quickly as I can. They won’t care what I have on. I need Mac, but my husband and I had separated several years ago. I had tried to understand and compensate for his continual drinking and his abusing me, but it had finally become too much. I was granted a Legal Separation wherein I received his retirement check, but each month sent him some money, c/o General Delivery, Encino, CA. I didn’t know where he lived, or what he was doing.

Clutching my purse and the car keys, I jotted a note to my other kids. As I drove on the highway, my eyes filling with tears, I thought of Greg. I could see him as the little blonde boy who loved to color pictures. But now he was a young man of twenty-two. Today I could see him with a broken leg. I could see him writhing in pain. I could see him dead. I sobbed.

I drove as fast as I dared. Cars whizzed past me, their stereos blaring rock and roll music. “Shut the damn noise off,” I shouted. No one heard me. Why was it taking me so long? Finally I saw a large white building on the right side. I turned off the road into the parking lot, jumped out of the car and headed toward the nearest entrance. I ran down the hall where I found a nurses’ station.

“Please, can you help me? A policeman called and said I had to come here right away.” She quietly directed me to the room across the hall.

As I entered, a gargantuan man stood up and came toward me. Dressed in a brown business suit, he was huge, tall and broad shouldered, but with such a kindly face.

“Mrs. McIntosh? I’m Detective McGraw. There’s been an accident. We believe the deceased might be your husband. He was DOA.”

My knees buckled. With his long arms dangling by his side, he caught me before I fell. It wasn’t Greg who was dead. It was that bastard, Mac.

“What happened?” I managed to ask.

The detective led me to a chair. “Apparently he fell dead in the street and was brought in here. As soon as you are up to it we’ll need you to identify the body. We hope you are the right person, as the only identification he had on him was an empty envelope with your return address on it.”

Anger, mixed with sadness, engulfed me – anger that he had put me through the last few hours when I thought it was Greg who was dead, and sadness that his life had ended this way.

“Yes, that’s him. That’s my husband.” I muttered as I looked at his face caked with dirt and dried blood. With tears in my eyes, I turned away from the lump on the table. I had once loved this man, and he was the father of our four children. I recalled the night we became engaged and celebrated by dancing down Broadway together at midnight. I remembered when, as a family, we’d go fishing off a riverbank, and how patient Mac was as he showed one of his sons how to bait his hook. Then we’d all enjoy a picnic together.

How sad, I thought, that it was just an empty envelope that brought us together again. But the hurt and bitterness I’d experienced left me, as I gazed on my husband’s face now quiet in death.

He was finally at peace and so, too, was I.