Fisher's Light

Seth chuckles and I can’t help but laugh right along with him. He stops pacing and looks at me again. “I hadn’t even realized that while I was going through all my shit and I was changing into a different person, Mary Beth was changing right along with me. She realized she quite liked a little drama and excitement, as long as neither one of us was being downright cruel or purposefully hurtful. It also spiced things up in the bedroom and that’s how we got three more kids.”

Seth winks at me and I roll my eyes at him, pretending disgust at the talk of his spicy bedroom.

“You’ve told me a lot about Lucy during your time here, and the one thing you have always stressed to me is that she’s strong. Stronger than anyone you know, including yourself, and that’s why you felt the need to send her those divorce papers,” Seth reminds me. “You didn’t want to bring her down to the level of weakness that you were feeling at the time. If she’s as strong as you say she is, don’t you think she would’ve said something if she didn’t want what you were doing to her? Don’t you think she would’ve kicked your ass if it pissed her off?”

Closing my eyes, I think about every moment in that alley, even though part of me wants to forget. I think about how her sweet ass pushed back against me and how she begged for more. I think about how fast she came and my name on her lips when she did. I remember the look on her face when I pushed her away and apologized and a light bulb goes off. She was definitely pissed then, and about two seconds away from kicking my ass, but it wasn’t because of what I’d done. It was because I regretted it. While I was wallowing in guilt because I thought I’d hurt her, she was angry because. . . shit.

Did my Lucy like it a little rough?

I shove down the thrill that thought brings me when my mind flashes back to the marks I left on her body the day I returned home from my last deployment and the way she wrapped her arms around her waist, almost like she was holding herself together, the night I forced her from our home. Every time I loosen up the grip on my emotions, Lucy is the one who suffers. I cannot lose control where she’s concerned.

“I don’t want to hurt her like I did the day I ended things. I’m so afraid of turning into that man again and lashing out at her. It’s better if I stay calm and not get overwhelmed with emotions and anger,” I tell him, walking over to the window to stare out at the street below.

Beaufort reminds me a lot of Fisher’s Island. There are no cars racing up and down the street or people rushing around to get where they’re going. Seth told me they’d deliberately chosen a small community, having had their fill of the hustle and bustle of the big city during his forty-year career at a Detroit steel mill. Up until I met Lucy, I thought that was what I wanted. To live in a big city where things actually happened, to get away from the island that was my personal hell, once upon a time. Ironically, it wasn’t nearly seven years in a sandbox in the Middle East that made me appreciate the beauty of my island. It was spending a year in a treatment facility less than fifty miles away, where I could still hear the sound of the ocean and smell the salt in the air, that gave me the strength to get better. There was nothing like being so close to everything I’ve ever wanted to provide the kick in the ass I needed to get my shit together and get my ass back to the island where I belonged, where things made sense. Not only did I hate being away from Lucy, I hated being away from my beach, the lighthouse, our small cottage on the water and our close-knit community where everyone knows each other. Even now, it feels like my skin is filled with bugs that I want to scratch and brush away. I itch with the need to go back home to my Lucy.

“You haven’t had a drink since you got back home, right?” Seth asks.

I shake my head. “No, and the crazy thing is, I’m not even tempted to have one, even with all this shit going on in my head. It feels good to be clear and focused, but even without the alcohol, I still have moments where I get fuzzy and I have to really concentrate on calming down.”

“Of course you do, son. It’s called PTSD, and it’s probably going to be with you for the rest of your life. Forty-plus years later and sometimes I still wake up in a cold sweat and it takes me a minute to realize I’m not neck deep in a swamp of rice paddies, soaked to the bone, waiting to get my head blown off,” Seth explains. “You can’t keep that shit inside or it will eat you alive, as you very well know. You spent years keeping your nightmares and your problems to yourself and look what it did to your marriage. Talk to your woman, Fisher. If you want her to trust you again, you need to give her that same level of trust. You need to have faith that she’s strong enough to take whatever you give her.”

Seth and I spend some time wandering the grounds of the rehab facility and I talk to a few of the guys who came in right before I left. I see so much of myself in them, and for the first time in a long time, I feel proud about how far I’ve come since I checked in here. Seth is right; I can’t expect Lucy to ever trust me or believe in me if I don’t do the same with her. She needs to understand what was going through my mind while I was slowly unraveling over a year ago. Sure, the journal pages of happier times that I’ve been sending her are a great way to remind her how good we were together, but I can’t expect her to give us a chance at a new future if I don’t talk about the bad times, as well.

As much as I want to keep my anger and my jealousy as far away from Lucy as possible, I have to accept that they’re a part of me. They live and breathe inside of me and I can’t just ignore them and expect them to go away. I know I will never hurt Lucy like I did the day I made her leave our home, but what guarantee do I have that I won’t hurt her even worse with my words and actions when those feelings take hold of me like they did that day in the alley? I want to believe that Seth is right, that Lucy would’ve found a way to make me stop if she truly didn’t want it, but it’s hard for me to see her as anything other than the sweet, shy, beautiful girl I married, no matter how much has changed since then. It’s hard for me to fathom that she would want me to touch her with anything but gentleness and soft hands, but I also can’t erase the sounds of her moans of pleasure from my ears, telling me that she loved what I was doing to her.