For the Love of Freedom by D. J. Vallone

Author:D. J. Vallone [Vallone, D.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Funny how your perspective on life changes with your frame of mind. The afternoon beckons with its golden September glow but I am too self-absorbed to notice, much less to stop and enjoy it. The road stretches on ahead in what seems like a measureless protraction of our ill-fated, fatiguing journey. Even Maryanne sits motionless, staring out her window toward the fields, ripe and ready for harvest. Nothing I am thinking can be expressed. Thoughts whir inside my head; questions rise and fall; strategies for the days ahead momentarily appear only to prove callow and insubstantial upon further consideration. Finally, I call Dan on the cellular and find him working around the house. He’s been washing windows, touching up outdoor paint, mowing and raking in the yard—all things a beautiful fall day is made for. When I say I need to talk with him regarding the governor he agrees to come over at six. We will provide burgers and beer, of course. Touching him, if only by phone, helps loosen the grip of my somber mood and frees me from the prison of my thoughts.

“We have so much to be thankful for,” Maryanne says, breaking her silence. Just think: it could have been you or me in that situation back in high school. It could have been our lives that were ruined, or are now about to be ruined.”

“Thankfully, that is not the case.” I cannot imagine what I might have done under similar circumstances to those of young Colin, but I realize that there were no painless solutions to his predicament. “What disturbs me most about the story is not that Kathy had an abortion, but that she and Colin have experienced totally opposite and contrasting results. He is the governor with a wife and two beautiful grown kids, while she is a neurotic spinster with regrets and a cat.”

Maryanne springs at what she presumes I mean, “Chip, don’t be a chauvinist. The woman always gets the shaft in situations like this.”

“Hang on. You’re jumping to conclusions. I mean it’s curious, that’s all. Nobody feels more empathy for her than I do. Sitting there while she poured out a lifetime of sorrows gave me a real appreciation for her condition. But, think about it, couldn’t she have gotten beyond it all somehow? You know, found somebody else, got married, maybe adopted a child or two—shown Colin, and anybody else who cared, that she wasn’t going to let him ruin her entire life.”

“That’s just exactly what a guy would think. You and the whole cluster of male-dom don’t get it. Women get emotionally attached when they have intercourse. It’s not something they can always get 'beyond’, like you suggest. And, when they do, it’s through some extraordinary manner of coping. Some women can’t pull it off. Take Kathy Nichols, for example: When you pile on pregnancy, the abortion, having to bottle it all up inside, Colin manipulating her feelings and then ultimately dumping her like yesterday’s newspaper, and what would you expect was going to happen? She drowned in the flood of her own emotions.

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