Francis Parker
05-08-2007, 03:52 PM
On Fridays I come up here to the hill at the edge of the driveway and sit with our dog Tuck, and I wait for my wife to come home from work. You can see about a mile down the road from up there and the two of us watch for her car every Friday afternoon. We watch for a glimpse of her little red Ford as it rolls down the road and then up to our driveway, hidden in the dark, green woods. It’s just something that I started to do right after we got back from our honeymoon. That was two years ago, exactly.
I work out at the Army post about twelve miles from where we live. It’s a government job so I get out like clockwork, every Friday afternoon at four o’clock sharp. My wife works up at the University and that’s about twenty miles further north. She likes to hang out after work and talk with her students after class for a while, so she never gets home before I do. I don’t mind that she does and she knows that I don’t. She thinks it’s cute that I sit up here with our dog and wait for her on the edge of the hill every week. I do it because I love her. I love the sight of her face as it comes into focus, down that road through the windshield of her car, reflecting the leaves overhead, every Friday afternoon.
We were married on a Friday. It was raining that morning and I felt sad for her because I knew that she was looking forward to a perfect sunny wedding day. I wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter, that the rain and the clouds were a way of cleaning things up for a fresh new start. I wanted to tell her but I knew that it was bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the wedding. I think I read that someplace, but maybe I didn’t, maybe it was just something I heard from someone a long, long time ago. After I was dressed and ready to go, I met up with the groomsmen in front of the hotel when the sun came shining through. Everything was so bright and so clean after that you could hardly even look at it, the greens and blues alive and moving. It was a perfect ceremony and she was the most perfect bride in the world.
We honeymooned in the Virgin Islands and got a kick out of the irony. We lived for a week on pineapples, shrimp and frozen daiquiris and we had sex so often we could hardly walk after that. I remember coming back through customs how she kept rubbing up against me so that I got a little bit excited and had to hold our flight bag in front of my shorts.
When we got back home we moved into an old millhouse on the edge of Puppy Creek with the waterfall not ten feet from our door. The locals called it the Dog House because the story went that the guy who owned the farm got into a huge riff with his wife and wound up moving out of the big house up on the hill. He marched down to the mill that he owned and with the help of a couple of local men turned it into a house where he lived by himself. Supposedly she wound up missing him so much that she moved in there with him and they lived together by the edge of the falls while their children grew up, watched over by nannies and maids in the big house up on the hill. It was a romantic story and it made up for the fact that there was no insulation in the walls. We had to use kerosene heaters in the winter just to keep the pipes from freezing. They barely worked while we were awake and not at all while we slept, our breath visible in the dark blue air above our wedding bed, the dog asleep at its foot. I remember how we would hold onto each other, breathing the deep scent of two people in love as we talked ourselves to sleep at night under the covers. She teased me about waiting for her with our dog on the hill and she said that I was a fool to wait for her to come home in the cold air each week with our dog at my side. I told her I wanted to and that I always would that was that as far as I was concerned.
Most Fridays, after she got home we’d eat Mexican. I’d pick up a bag of chips and some salsa from Pedro’s and then I’d whip up a bunch of tacos with the seasoning sauce that my sister sent us and make fresh guacamole using black avocados and fat juicy limes. Afterwards we would sit on the edge of the dam in the dark with dog and share a cold beer to the sounds of the crickets and the rush of the waterfall, while meteors streaked across the late summer sky.
It’s winter now and the sky gets too dark to see inside the cars as they come driving by on the road on Fridays. The dog gets antsy and he wants to go in, wants to get inside where it’s nice and warm, where the tacos are ready and waiting. I look down the road and I wait for my wife, wait to see the headlights of her car as she heads down the road and turns in the drive, hidden in the dark green woods. My ears go numb waiting for her car, waiting for her to come driving down that road. Tuck looks up at me and whimpers in the cold air. It’s been six months since she last drove down that road, six long months since the night she died, driving home one Friday after work.
And every Friday I still come up here to sit on the hill on the edge of the drive with the dog, waiting for her car to come down that road. And like the fool that I am, I’m waiting again, this Friday.
I work out at the Army post about twelve miles from where we live. It’s a government job so I get out like clockwork, every Friday afternoon at four o’clock sharp. My wife works up at the University and that’s about twenty miles further north. She likes to hang out after work and talk with her students after class for a while, so she never gets home before I do. I don’t mind that she does and she knows that I don’t. She thinks it’s cute that I sit up here with our dog and wait for her on the edge of the hill every week. I do it because I love her. I love the sight of her face as it comes into focus, down that road through the windshield of her car, reflecting the leaves overhead, every Friday afternoon.
We were married on a Friday. It was raining that morning and I felt sad for her because I knew that she was looking forward to a perfect sunny wedding day. I wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter, that the rain and the clouds were a way of cleaning things up for a fresh new start. I wanted to tell her but I knew that it was bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the wedding. I think I read that someplace, but maybe I didn’t, maybe it was just something I heard from someone a long, long time ago. After I was dressed and ready to go, I met up with the groomsmen in front of the hotel when the sun came shining through. Everything was so bright and so clean after that you could hardly even look at it, the greens and blues alive and moving. It was a perfect ceremony and she was the most perfect bride in the world.
We honeymooned in the Virgin Islands and got a kick out of the irony. We lived for a week on pineapples, shrimp and frozen daiquiris and we had sex so often we could hardly walk after that. I remember coming back through customs how she kept rubbing up against me so that I got a little bit excited and had to hold our flight bag in front of my shorts.
When we got back home we moved into an old millhouse on the edge of Puppy Creek with the waterfall not ten feet from our door. The locals called it the Dog House because the story went that the guy who owned the farm got into a huge riff with his wife and wound up moving out of the big house up on the hill. He marched down to the mill that he owned and with the help of a couple of local men turned it into a house where he lived by himself. Supposedly she wound up missing him so much that she moved in there with him and they lived together by the edge of the falls while their children grew up, watched over by nannies and maids in the big house up on the hill. It was a romantic story and it made up for the fact that there was no insulation in the walls. We had to use kerosene heaters in the winter just to keep the pipes from freezing. They barely worked while we were awake and not at all while we slept, our breath visible in the dark blue air above our wedding bed, the dog asleep at its foot. I remember how we would hold onto each other, breathing the deep scent of two people in love as we talked ourselves to sleep at night under the covers. She teased me about waiting for her with our dog on the hill and she said that I was a fool to wait for her to come home in the cold air each week with our dog at my side. I told her I wanted to and that I always would that was that as far as I was concerned.
Most Fridays, after she got home we’d eat Mexican. I’d pick up a bag of chips and some salsa from Pedro’s and then I’d whip up a bunch of tacos with the seasoning sauce that my sister sent us and make fresh guacamole using black avocados and fat juicy limes. Afterwards we would sit on the edge of the dam in the dark with dog and share a cold beer to the sounds of the crickets and the rush of the waterfall, while meteors streaked across the late summer sky.
It’s winter now and the sky gets too dark to see inside the cars as they come driving by on the road on Fridays. The dog gets antsy and he wants to go in, wants to get inside where it’s nice and warm, where the tacos are ready and waiting. I look down the road and I wait for my wife, wait to see the headlights of her car as she heads down the road and turns in the drive, hidden in the dark green woods. My ears go numb waiting for her car, waiting for her to come driving down that road. Tuck looks up at me and whimpers in the cold air. It’s been six months since she last drove down that road, six long months since the night she died, driving home one Friday after work.
And every Friday I still come up here to sit on the hill on the edge of the drive with the dog, waiting for her car to come down that road. And like the fool that I am, I’m waiting again, this Friday.