One Can Only Hope

He finally came. She was waiting longer than she usually had to for him. The bus stop, the corner where she picked him up after work for the three weeks his car was getting repaired or the four months of marriage counseling, for all of them, he was exactly on time. Never being late was his staple, a pride of his, unspoken but definite. But this time he was as late as she had ever known.

She waited patiently, calming herself with thoughts that everything was all right, thinking of other things to get her mind off it. Perhaps if she moved around a little bit, she thought—people say that helps when you’re waiting—like when she paced back and forth at the doctor’s office every year.

It wasn’t working. No matter how much she moved around, clenched, arched, one leg after the other, the time never seemed to pass. It reminded her of when she was in school, so many years ago it seemed, and the teacher would never stop talking. The black minute hand was frozen on its oversized white background above the door, the exit to freedom, as if taunting the students. Then when they looked back from the clock to Mrs. Farley she would be staring at them, her hands on her hips, eyes peeking over the gold rims of her glasses. She would always scold them followed by a comment about the students supposed hot date. Everyone would laugh, no matter how many times it was said, everyone laughed. It must have been her timing. Her comment was timed out perfectly, never late. Phillip was late, but Phillip finally came.

Leah gave out an exhausted moan as his fluids entered her in a rush.

She immediately lifted her legs above her head and started her exercises almost before he pulled out. Phillip got up and went and cleaned himself in the bathroom. When he came back Leah was switching positions and breathing in intermittent passes while pressing the back of her hands on the inner part of her still moist thighs. Phillip noticed the hands.

“I’ve never seen you do that before.”

“I just read about it today.” She continued the pressure and movement on her thighs as Phillip watched. She concentrated on the movement. “Don’t forget to mark the calendar.”

“I know.”

Phillip walked to the far wall where a world map sized April calendar hung over top three April calendars of the previous years. He picked up the marker that was attached to the end of a string, which was taped to the calendar, then wrote the time, “9:35 pm” in the middle of the day marked April 25^th. The marker was red. The rest of the calendar was blank. He turned back to Leah who returned his gaze with a coy smile, admitting gratitude. Phillip walked back to the bed and got in, giving her a kiss as he nestled under the covers. “So it begins.”

They both laid back, eyes open, looking to the ceiling for comfort till Leah spoke up. “You think this’ll be the year?”

“One can only hope.”

Leah rolled over to face him. “But do you think it will be this year?”

He thought it about. He didn’t know, he didn’t care anymore, it was all just the same thing now, it had lost all its adventure, all its love. It was mechanics. It was a guess and a hope and a thought at the back of the mind that didn’t stop showing itself. “Yeah, I think so.”

Phillip closed his eyes and thought about the nursery down the hall with its white walls. He went to sleep with red marker on his index finger.

The next two weeks Phillip would mark the calendar in the same prophetic red that didn’t wash off the next morning in the shower or during the ten minutes he spent scrubbing at it with Leah’s botanical blend of rocks and herbs and other things that claimed to be organic. He felt only the rocks as they scratched his skin away raw, making them even redder than the marker’s evidence. If people at his work kept track they would have been able to log the time of year down to the day in which the red would start to appear. They would also be able to log his behavior as becoming a great deal more indecisive, on edge, and ill tempered.

Many of his co-workers during this two week period that occurred starting sometime in late April would speak behind his back about how he wasn’t getting laid at home and how the “Mrs.” must be keeping the goods under lock and key. They’d all have coffee and eat lunch, then drive home, eat dinner with their families, possibly have sex with their less than fulfilled wives, all the while thinking of new terms and puns for Phillip’s supposed lack of sexual congress at the homestead.

Every day while saying their thought out comment to the group, each person would listen carefully and secretly scorn the speaker, telling themselves that their own joke was much more creative and had a better delivery. Following the conversation, usually broken up by Phillip when he entered the room, the group would disperse and repeat their jokes over in their heads wondering if they could have timed the punch line better.

Phillip would nod in hello, consciously hiding the red maker on his left thumb, index finger, and on the side of the hand where the night before he was in a hurry to get to sleep causing him to accidentally smudge the wet red.

Phillip always got mad at himself when he did this, not just because he would have a new, even more obvious red mark on his hand, but because after three years of the process, this being the fourth, equal to the years he and Lisa had been married, the calendar had grown to be a place of pride for him. His one job, after of course inserting, thrusting, coming, and cleaning, was to mark the calendar with the time, date, and manner in which said steps (inserting, thrusting, coming, not necessarily cleaning) took place.

If he had taken calligraphy as a technical skill class in middle school instead of shop he would have been able to really class up the calendar. Unfortunately though, shop was chosen and the skills of sanding and varnishing a book end in the shape of a light bulb that fell apart while walking to the bus after school, after a month of hard work, have yet to yield any benefits later in life as the teacher had promised. He still hits his thumb when hammering a nail. He also wishes on occasion that he had taken electric engineering. These occasions usually came when the toaster has stopped working for no apparent reason, and the one thing he’s craving is a piece of buttered toast. The calendar was therefore going to have to deal with the red scratch and smear that claimed itself as writing.

His left hand withdrew deeper into the recesses of his pocket as he thought about Lisa reading about impotent remedies at home.