LIVE LONG AND PROSPER | Fiction by William Cass

The house seemed very empty after my wife left.  Not many square feet to fill, just a little bungalow in an old neighborhood near Santa Cruz’s boat harbor.  Close enough to the beach, though, to hear the waves tumbling at night.  Inherited from a bachelor great-uncle…otherwise, I never could have afforded it.  Timing was perfect: right before finishing my teaching credential up the hill at UCSC and being hired at an elementary school out in the fields of Watsonville.  The students were mostly children of farmworkers.  Met my wife there, the gentlest soul I’d ever known; she taught down the hall in the primary wing, while I had a 4/5 combo. 

Walter had been assigned as my freshman year college roommate.  Big, roly-poly guy, kind of nerdy and socially inept, but earnest, unwaveringly good-natured, and just plain nice.  Besides me, he had no real friends that I knew of.  We didn’t share many interests, but were companionable enough.  I admit I was often a bit embarrassed when he tagged along with me to parties and such where I never saw him so much as speak to a female.  But I listened patiently to his sheepish lack-of-romance laments and passed no judgment on his obsession with sci-fi and comic books.  We remained roommates during sophomore year as well, until he had to drop out and return to Bakersfield after his dad’s sudden death to help run his family’s agricultural supply business.  We stayed in periodic touch; he’d call, send goofy postcards he’d always close with “Live Long and Prosper”, and I’d sometimes meet him for lunch on my drives to and from L.A. where my own family lived.  Communications became spottier after I graduated, moved into my great-uncle’s place, and eloped.  In the ensuing decade, they dwindled to not much more than Christmas cards and an occasional random email from him.

That’s why it was surprising to receive his message one day out of the blue saying he’d like to stop by for a quick visit with his girlfriend and her daughter.  His message suggested a brief detour through Santa Cruz the next weekend on their way to a farm equipment trade show near Sacramento.  By then, my own wife had been gone not quite a year after flooring me with the announcement that she’d fallen in love with her yoga instructor; she quit her teaching job the following day and moved with him to Eureka where they planned to start a wellness studio.  To be frank, when I got Walter’s message proposing their visit, I was still in pretty bad shape; our divorce wasn’t even final yet, and outside of work, I’d basically become a sullen recluse.  But I replied by telling him, sure, I’d love to see them.

They pulled into my driveway crowded into the cab of an old pickup truck about two on a late-spring Sunday afternoon.  I walked outside to meet them, and Walter emerged first, shaking his head with a toothy grin, and wrapped me into a bear hug.  When he pulled away, he fixed me with a tight-lipped smile, his eyes brimming, and said, “Man, it’s been too long.”

He’d put on weight and lost some hair since the last time I’d seen him a half-dozen years before, but his happy-go-lucky demeanor seemed unchanged.  A small, mousy woman appeared at his side with a little girl about five or six attached to her hip.  Walter wrapped his arm around the woman and said, “Meet my sweetheart, Ruth, and her daughter, Charlotte.”

I exchanged short nods with Ruth, but Charlotte kept her face buried into her mother’s hip, exposing two short, lopsided brown pigtails.  She had a tote slung over one arm.

“Well, come on in,” I told them.  “I’ll take you on the two-minute tour and then get you something to drink.”

They followed me inside, and as I walked them through the house, Walter gave me periodic claps on the shoulder, muttering his appreciation for the place.  The spare bedroom was fashioned into a kind of den, and when we stopped there, Charlotte deposited herself on its small couch in front of the coffee table, opened her tote and took out a large activity book and a pair of scissors.  She arranged them on her lap, looked up at her mother, and said, “Dollies.”

Ruth gave me a blank stare, then explained, “It’s her paper doll book.  She wants to stay here and cut some out while we visit.  Is that all right?”

“Of course.”  I looked down at Charlotte who was smoothing the denim slipcover my wife had painstakingly sewn shortly before she left.  “What can I get you to drink?” I asked her.  “Water, juice, milk?”

“Milk,” she told me and flipped open her book.  “Chocolate.  Steamed.”

I felt my eyes widen, but said, “All right.  I can do that.”

I settled Walter and Ruth into chairs in my living room’s dining nook and went in the kitchen to microwave a mug of chocolate-powdered milk while I opened us bottles of beer.  I topped the hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows, then carried it and Ruth’s beer in first, placing both in front of her.

“Okay,” she told me.  “I’ll take this one to Charlotte.”

By the time I’d returned with the remaining beers and sat down next to Walter, Ruth was back in her chair slowly rotating the bottle in front of her on the tabletop.  When I asked if either of them wanted a glass, she shook her head, and I noted the identical flat affect she and her daughter shared.  Her eyes traveled around the room, pausing on the framed wedding photo I still hadn’t removed from the fireplace mantle, then without meeting mine, she said, “Not bad.  Cozy.”

Another one of Walter’s shoulder claps descended as he said, “This man right here took me under his wing when we started college together.  I was clueless back then, and he showed me the ropes.”

Ruth nodded without expression and sipped her beer.

“So, bring me up to date,” Walter said to me.  “What’s been going on with you?  And just the good stuff.”

In my email reply, I’d already explained in the briefest of terms why my wife wasn’t there, so tried to string together whatever came to mind about school, house projects I’d begun in order to fill time, and changes I’d heard about on campus.

“You still surf?” he asked.

“Rarely.”

“This guy taught me to surf one day.”  He looked with affection and pride from me to Ruth.  “Took forever, but I somehow managed to ride one small wave all the way to shore.  Biggest rush of my life.”

Ruth regarded him with narrowed eyes.  She said, “Is that right?”

 “Next to meeting you, of course.” 

Walter barked a laugh.  I returned a chuckle, but Ruth’s face remained vacant.  I wasn’t sure if it held more weariness or boredom.  Very faintly from the den, I could hear Charlotte singing off-key to herself.

For the next fifteen minutes, Walter took a turn telling me about his own life: business developments, his mother’s declining health, and highlights with Ruth and Charlotte over the past several months since he’d bought a manufactured home for the three of them.  When I asked what line of work Ruth was in, he patted her hand and said, “She’s an aesthetician.”

“I do nails.”  She took another longer swallow of beer, then glanced at her watch and turned to Walter. “What time do you have to register for the show.”

“Oh, gosh.”  He sat upright and studied his own watch.  “That’s right.  Five-thirty.  We’d better get rolling.”

As sincerely as I could, I mumbled, “Shucks.”

Walter’s chair scraped under his girth as he pushed it back and stood.  Ruth and I did the same, and she said, “I’ll get Charlotte.”

Walter helped me carry the bottles into the kitchen, commented favorably for a couple minutes about its Craftsman features, then followed me back into the living room where we found Ruth and her daughter waiting beside the front door.  Charlotte had the tote slung over her arm and her face turned into her mother’s hip again.  Walter enclosed me in another bear hug and gave me a few more back slaps before disengaging and saying, “Really great to see you.  Get your butt on down to Bakersfield soon.  Stay anytime.  We’re putting in an above-ground pool in the backyard.”

“Sounds great,” I told him.

“Walter…” Ruth said tapping her wristwatch.

“Okay, right.”  He fixed me with a last look full of such fondness that I felt my throat tighten.  “Well, thanks, then.  Take care.”

“Sure.”  I pushed the door open and held it ajar.  “You, too.”

I watched Walter walk them to the truck with his arm encircling Ruth’s narrow waist.  He opened the passenger door, helped each get strapped in on the bench seat, then went around to the driver’s side and climbed in himself.  He started the engine, gave me another warm grin with a short Vulcan salute, and I watched the truck back out and disappear down the street.

The house held its familiar, cavernous silence when I closed the front door.  I went into the den and froze in my tracks.  Five long, arching tears had been cut into the back of the couch’s slipcover, placed as if displaying a sun’s rays.  My wife’s handiwork, destroyed.  Charlotte’s scissors lay splayed on the cushion where she’d been sitting, and the mug of hot chocolate perched untouched on the coffee table, its marshmallows melted into a coagulated skim.

Staring at the spray of cuts, I found myself blinking and a numbness overcoming me, not unlike when my wife had told me she was leaving.  Both events seemed unfathomable. The image of Walter driving away with his arm slung over the backrest behind Ruth and Charlotte invaded my mind.  I imagined him whistling – pleased, clueless, and content – which made something in my gut wrench.  But somehow I bore him no ill will.  Instead, I wished for him every tender blessing, only good fortunes and soft winds in his sails in their days together ahead.  I found myself sincerely hopeful that all his sunrises would be filled with joy.

I lowered myself onto the edge of the coffee table, and for reasons I can’t explain, began to cry.

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