On
the kitchen counter asking her, “Please remember
to go to the bank.” When had she forgotten to do anything?
Her
frustration goes back quite a ways but not so far that she’s forgotten how
happy she was not too long ago. She didn’t feel trapped by her life but devoid
of choices. She only made those best for everyone. Everyone else.
Standing
before him requesting a $10,000 cashier’s check, the teller failed to ask for
identification. They knew her but usually did anyway. Instead of scolding the young
man, she filed the information away.
Accompanying
him to their security deposit box for the deed to the house, she grabbed it and her passport.
From
that point forward, the decision had been made, in her mind. And a very short
time spent on the phone determined which flight and when.
A
word was never said to anyone (not true, except to her) although she had
mentioned it in passing to him just one time before. She’d leave a note
saying “Please don’t worry”.
A
small bag was all she needed to grab when the taxi pulled into the driveway. It
was the beginning of “her” life again for as short as that would be.
Pulling
up curbside to the International Terminal, she sat frozen for what seemed like
an hour until “Joe” startled her saying, “Mrs. F.?”
Next
thing she really recalled was the family sitting down for dinner at 6:00 just
as they always did. The only evidence, of anything, was her ripped up note deep in the
bottom of a trashcan in the garage.
Calling
her at dusk after the dishes, “Meet me in the street.” Where they always did.
The
first words out of her friend’s mouth were, “You couldn’t do it.”
“Come
with me.", she said.
“Where?”
“Paris.”
“I
hate Paris.”
“Spain.
But on the water.”
“Spain
is perfect.”
Ten
days later, they were sipping Rojo at a table in the Barri Gotic district of Barcelona.
Comfortably
silent, happy, alone in their thoughts.
