Worlds Apart (3 page)

Time passed.
Actual time, true time.
And as it did, the private world in which Lonnie and Laurie could wander didn’t appear so often. They didn’t mind. It was wonderful when it happened, of course, but the novelty certainly wasn’t there anymore. Instead of being an adventure, their forays into a realm of their own became more of a brief vacation, a refreshing of their souls, gently worn by work and duty and life.

Belinda turned twelve, then thirteen, then fourteen. Marriage for Lonnie and Laurie occurred exactly a week before Belinda’s thirteenth birthday, two years to the day after they met at the circus.

Married Life, Year One: moving in together, much discussion as to whether to have children immediately or later, continuous improvement for both in the culinary department.

Year Two, First Child: diapers, lack of sleep, much discussion as to whether they should have waited to get pregnant, lack of sleep and more diapers.

Married Life, Year Three: a move to a larger house, the shifting of nearly all cooking to Lonnie, discussion as to whether to have a second child or not.

Year Four, Second Child: a repeat of year two.

The first time the clocks stopped after Laurie gave birth was an uncomfortable moment for both. Holding each other in the bedroom, the baby being asleep, Lonnie thought it was getting
too
quiet. He got up to look at the clock, and sure enough, for the first time in several months, it had stopped.

“Oh my God, the baby!”
Laurie cried, running to the bassinet. “He’s gone! He’s not here!”

Lonnie tried to calm her, but she was exhausted and frightened and distraught.

“What if we never come back? What if
he
never comes back?” she screamed, running from room to room as if their son, at three months old, had decided to start playing hide and seek.

“He’ll be back. He’s fine. Why don’t we just lie here?” Lonnie said mildly. He was worried as well, for it had never occurred to them to wonder where the other people disappeared to when they disappeared. “Let’s go to sleep, and when we wake up, he’ll be back.”

Their son just didn’t fall into the category of
other people
, though, and Lonnie could feel a tightening in his throat as he thought about their child, such an accepted presence for both of them now, being gone from the home and from their lives.

“Something
awful’s
going to happen to him!” Laurie screamed. “What if he can’t breathe? He’s going to get hungry!”

It took what felt like hours, but finally, finally, Lonnie soothed both Laurie and himself with soft words and caresses. Quietly sobbing, they eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep that terminated with the explosive cries of a miserable baby. Miserable not because of anything worse than a soiled diaper, but the grateful looks on the awakened parents’ faces!

Some months after that, when it happened again, Lonnie persuaded Laurie to take a walk. And once her initial qualms had passed, they strolled for miles, viewing the lanes and trees and houses as though for the first time, their lives having become so centered around the baby that all else seemed foreign and unreal.

Both Lonnie and Laurie were happy with each other, with their child that would soon become children, with
who
they were and where they were. Lonnie would think sometimes about how just a few years earlier, he had found life and all its repetitive machinations ludicrous, practically meaningless. Sitting in traffic on the way to work, surrounded by the same cars that surrounded him every weekday as they plied the same journey into downtown, he saw everything he did as part of one huge circle of uselessness. Wake up, shower, eat, drive, work, eat, work, drive, eat, sleep,
wake
up.
The identical things day after day, with the occasional ball game or movie or holiday or traveling circus being the only variations on that stultifying pattern of sameness.

Laurie had altered those assessments of his. Laurie had brought meaning to Lonnie’s existence. The life they led together was truly a world apart, whether that world was the mysterious isolation they experienced as a couple, or whether it was the one in which they dwelled amidst the hundreds or thousands or even millions of other people.

For Laurie, the day she met Lonnie at the circus was the beginning of her life. She had fond memories of many things from before, but none were as rich, or vibrant, or as
real
as those she shared with this man who adored her. Who loved every inch of her, inside and out, flaws and warts and scars along with all the good
parts.
She
knew
he would do nothing to hurt her, she had understood this even before he hadn’t bought her a popcorn that day, buying instead the one for Belinda and the one for himself that he had said she could
mooch
from!
A gentle man.
And he had been Laurie’s safe harbor from that day forward.
And with luck, forever.

As the years slipped by, the secret that Lonnie hadn’t shared with Belinda didn’t occur that often. When their children were younger, this was a relief to Lonnie and Laurie, for the worry that is an inherent part of every parent’s life could never entirely be quelled while they were alone. And as more time passed, and it happened with less and less frequency, they almost didn’t notice, so engaged were they with living.

“Do you think we could ever make it happen again?” Laurie whispered late one night when it had been so long that neither of them could recall the date of the last occurrence. But Lonnie didn’t answer.

For it didn’t really matter. It was just what used to happen. And what might happen again
some day
.

They had each other either way.

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