Second Chance
by
Mark Rickman
Email: MRICKMANS@aol.com
‘I might as well have kept my mouth
shut,’ the almost transparent shade of Mabel Green muttered resentfully. Her
husband Sam rustled his morning newspaper in the light breeze, sneezed noisily
into a crumpled handkerchief, and ignored her question about his cold. ‘I only
asked because you don’t look well.’
The truth was he hadn’t
looked well since she passed over. Guilty conscience, she thought. Not about
her death, Heaven knows that was natural enough. No, he had a conscience
because instead of holding her hand and helping her through it, he’d turned
away and walked out of the side ward.
His irascibility had increased,
she noted wryly. Or would have if he had anyone to be irascible with. Knowing
there wasn’t much time left to either of them, she untied the loose knot in her
hair, lifted its light mass with both hands, and allowed it to fall back on her
bare shoulders. Smiling at Sam’s grimace of distaste, she settled beside him on
the bench he and their sons had named in her memory.
When she was alive, she
often shrugged off his complaints about her walking about with no clothes on. It
was only in the house, she told him. Her parents were naturists. Tumbling about
naked with her siblings was the way she had been brought up. She had a
housecoat to slip on for callers and meter readers. Who was going to see her
naked apart from her husband? And he never seemed to mind. Not when they were
young.
Now that no one but Sam could see her, she’d
extended her range to the small park across the road. He still disliked her
wearing nothing but what was the point of a see-through nightie on a see-through
ghost? She asked him as much the first time she manifested herself. A question
that led to threats of bell, book and candle and every other horrid thing he
could think of.
‘You’ve got a wicked tongue, Sam Green,’ she
complained when he finished bellowing at her. ‘We were married fifty-four
years. You ought to be pleased to see me. The boys only visit you once in a
blue moon. If it wasn’t for me, you’d have no one to talk to.’
‘I’d rather have no one to talk to,’ he snapped.
‘Besides, I’m only seventy-six. How is it going to look if I bring a new wife
into the house? She might see you cavorting about with no clothes on.’
‘She wouldn’t see me,’ Mabel retorted. ‘No one
but you can see me. And it’s not as though she could touch me. Not even you can
do that.’ She shed a near invisible tear, wishing he could touch her, hold her
in his arms even. She had grown to dislike much about her husband and his
bad-tempered outbursts when he’d had a bad day in the shop but she’d always
taken comfort in the warmth and nearness of his body at night. She was happy in
the early days of their marriage. They loved each other, or so she thought when
his desire for sex and her need for affection seemed to be the same thing.
‘Why couldn’t you have treated me properly?’ she
asked him, wondering where and why it had gone wrong, and was rewarded with
another sneeze and an irritated shift further along the bench. ‘I was a person,
wasn’t I,’ she persisted. ‘Before I died and became a ghost I was a person.
Someone entitled to a little consideration when you came home from work and
took your coat off? Someone to have a conversation with when you sat down at
the dinner table and picked up your knife and fork? If I asked you to put away
your newspaper and talk to me, you looked as though you hated me. What was so
important in the newspaper you couldn’t talk to your wife for five minutes?
You’re doing it now. I don’t know why you hate me, Sam. You looked as though
you loved me when you asked me to marry you.’
‘What did I know about love?’ he asked aloud,
making a couple passing by look sharply at him. ‘I was twenty years old. What
did I know about anything?’
Mabel laughed softly. ‘Not a lot,’ she conceded.
‘Do you remember how we met?’
Sam folded his newspaper and turned to look at
her. ‘Of course I remember how we met. It was here. It was January. The pond
was frozen over. You got in my way while I was trying to win first prize in a
nature magazine with a photograph of a duck skidding on the ice. You made me
buy you a coffee and a doughnut. Oh yes, and your nose was red.’
‘Samuel Green, you are a dirty rotten liar. You
cannoned into me, almost broke my ankle, sat me a bench and said the least you
could do is buy me a cup of coffee. Only you had no money so not only did I
limp to the café and have a red nose, thank you very much for reminding me, I
was the one who paid for the coffee and the doughnuts. You didn’t even thank
me. No wonder you’ve always taken me for granted.’
‘I did not always take you for granted,’ Sam
replied, remembering the glow of her upturned face when she looked at him over
the steaming cup. He hesitated for a moment. ‘I did love you when I asked you
to marry me. I always loved you. I never wanted anyone else, did I? What more
do you want from me?’
‘You shouldn’t have left me on my own when I was
dying, Sam. I wouldn’t have been afraid if you’d held my hand. I needed you.’
He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Is that what you’ve
come back to tell me? To make my life even more of a misery?’
‘No, Sam, I came back to ask why you stood up
and walked away from the bed.’
‘Because I didn’t want you to die. Because I
hated what was happening to us. I tried to keep you alive. I couldn’t bear it.’
‘You’re my husband.’
‘I know I’m your husband.’ Sam tried to put a
hand on hers and withdrew it when he felt nothing. ‘I knew one day you’d ask
why I didn’t stay. You think I didn’t make excuses while I walked the streets
outside? I didn’t stay because the dog hadn’t been fed. I didn’t stay because I
had no black shoes for the funeral. I didn’t stay because I’d been offered a
lift home. I didn’t stay because I had to get some air.’ He shook his head.
‘The truth is, I didn’t stay because I didn’t want to cry in front of the
nurse. I walked away because I was losing you and I was terrified. I came back,
didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ Mabel said softly, ‘you came back and sat
with me all night until the boys came in the morning. You cried then, Sam.
After you came back, you held my hand and kissed my forehead and you cried.
What were you wishing for when you kissed me, Sam?’
‘I was wishing it had been me that died. The
boys would know how to deal with a grieving mother. They’d put their arms round
her and say you’ve got us, Mum. You’ve always got us. What can they say to a
grieving father? What could I answer? I wish I’d been a better husband. I wish
I’d been a better father? I wish there were such a thing as a second chance.’
‘A second chance?’ Mabel asked while she gently
closed his eyes and watched him fade to her own near transparency. ‘A second
chance is what Heaven is for. Didn’t you know?’
For a few moments they watched the girl standing
at the edge of the small lake, her nose red and her arms wrapped round herself against
the bite of the cold January air. An astonished duck spread its wings and
frantically tried to regain its footing as it landed and skidded across the
ice. On cue, the girl yelped in sudden pain when the boy with a camera cannoned
into her and apologized. Mabel and Sam rose to leave when the boy half
supported, half carried the girl to the bench.
While he knelt to fuss over her ankle and say
the least he could do was to buy her a cup of coffee, the girl saw the small
plaque on the back of the bench. As he began to search his pockets, slap
himself on the forehead, and confess to having no money with him, she wondered
who Mabel Green who loved this place and invited others to sit and enjoy it
with her might have been. It was with the strangest sense of déjà vu she ran
her fingers over the sudden warmth of the plaque and heard herself say, ‘Don’t
worry about it. I’ll buy the coffee.’ From somewhere came the ghost of a giggle
when she added, ‘And something tells me you might be wanting a doughnut,
too.’
©2006 Mark Rickman
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