Monkey Games
By Vince Coyner
Chapter 18. Loved ones lost
Telling himself that Alex and Albert would pay for this, Jonathan continued to stare out the window as be concentrated on calming his breathing. He closed his eyes so that the anger would not overtake him. Sebring had always taught him that anger can be useful to a point but too much anger can cause one to lose focus. It must therefore be held with a tight rein. As she sat next to him, Laura could not imagine what was going on in Jonathan’s head. Sebring was the only family he had ever known. He was a mother, a father, a friend and everything in between. Her mind instinctively went back to when she lost her father. Her mother had died not long before he did, but her father was the light in her life. He was in every respect her Shining Knight, her champion of all that was great. To her he was always bigger than life, fearless in his every day existence. After she first found out about what he did for a living and that policemen sometimes were killed, he would tell her “I’m ready to go whenever the Lord needs me in heaven. Until then, I’m here for you.” She thought about the day when she first saw a chink in his armor. She was seventeen and a senior in high school when she came home one day and his Lincoln was parked out in front of their brownstone in Brooklyn. It was strange because he was never home before her. Unlike many cops, shift work was not a part of his life after his first couple of years on the street. His schedule was almost set in stone by virtue of the job he held. Bank robberies almost never occurred between 6 PM and midnight so he was almost always home during those hours, but it was not unusual for him to go off during the middle of the night. When she walked in the house on that day her parents had obviously been crying, but had tried to put on a good face. Her dad walked over to her and said “Sweetheart, I’ve got great news. We’re going on a trip. I’ve always promised you that one-day we were all going to drive across the country and see everything we’d always read about. Well, now’s the time.” “What?” she said, not sure what the heck he was talking about. “When?” “We leave the day after tomorrow,” he said. “The day after tomorrow? What do you mean? What about school?” “Don’t worry about school, I’m going to talk to your teachers tomorrow. We’ll take your books with us. You’ll be back in a month and a half.” Dumbfounded, it was not until the next day that her parents sat her down and told her that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer that had spread throughout her lungs and stomach. Surgery was out of the question and they could not start the chemotherapy for another 45 days for reasons having to do with medicines she had been taking, a situation the 17-year-old Laura never really understood. There was little chance the chemo would be successful, but they were going to try. Her parents had decided that there was no time like the present and that they were not going to put this trip they had talked about for 15 years off another day. They talked to Laura’s teachers that day and they were leaving the next day. The trip was at the same time the most wonderful and the most difficult time of her life. Her parents had never been so happy. They had caught a case of “Vacation Love”, which is a love that one shares with another when, for whatever reason, the situation can only last a certain length of time. Given that finite duration, you can give everything you have. It is like running a 50-meter race relative to simply running as far as you can. If you know exactly when the race is over you can give 100% for that specific period of time. If you are running as far as you can go, your exertion level will be controlled, limited. In the same way, with “Vacation Love” by knowing the vacation is of limited duration, it is easier to give 100% because you want to get everything out of it as is possible. Laura’s parents certainly were experiencing that and Laura was enveloped in it. Her most vivid memory of the trip was of the three of them standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon watching the sun set through the hues of red, orange and purple. It was as if that beautiful sunset, glowing like a supernova bursting with one last brilliant firestorm before it died was symbolic this trip. None of them mentioned it, but they all recognized the same symbol. The trip and that day in particular had the potential to become very somber. Her father would hear nothing of it. He quickly packed them up and drove to Las Vegas. She remembered it was almost impossible to keep a smile off of her father’s face that entire trip. And his smile and laugh were contagious. It was the most wonderful month of her entire life.
They returned to Brooklyn a week early and her mother began therapy forty days after the cancer had been found. She lived only another two months and by the end she was a frail shadow of the vibrant 44-year-old woman she had been only six months before. While her father tried to put on a strong face for Laura, there was no hiding his loneliness. He was a man who had lost his best friend, his soulmate and his reason for living. Laura never doubted that her father loved her, but without her mother the spark that had been his eye for as long as she could remember was gone. He became dark and quiet. Six months to the day after they buried her mother her father had a massive stroke. He survived two more days in the hospital and died on a brilliant May evening just as the sun set. The doctor’s talked about cholesterol and hypertension and exercise, but Laura knew all along that her father died of a broken heart. While she was unsure of God’s existence, she often hoped there was one and that if he did exist, her parents were together somewhere in heaven reveling in the happiness they shared on that wonderful trip together.
She knew how difficult it was for her when she lost both of her parents in six months. She now looked over at Jonathan and her heart hurt for him. After this chaotic, macabre and unbelievable week, now he had lost the only family he had ever known at the hands of the person who gave him life, and who now sought to take it. She was surprised he was able to function at all. She could not even imagine an equivalent set of circumstances for her or for anyone she had ever known. There was so much beautiful and wonderful about the world but in one week he had been taken from the Garden of Eden and shown nothing but the most vile and contemptible of what mankind had to offer. She leaned close to him and clasped his hand in both of hers. She knew there was not a thing she could say that would make him feel any better, so she simply held his hand and kissed it. “I promise sweetheart, this will all be over soon.” It wasn’t much, but at least it was true. He looked at her for a moment with tears streaming down his face and then turned to the window once again. Suddenly, he recognized he was losing the battle within. He had been angry many times in his life, typically at a rock he had stumbled over, or the fact that he didn’t hit an exercise mark he was shooting for or when one of the girls brought to the island had to leave, but he had never experienced what he quickly recognized as a rage, which focused on a desire to exact revenge. Rage was exactly what he was feeling now and he knew it. He didn’t know how natural it was and he knew Sebring would not like it, but he felt it pulling his entire body like a strong undertow from a storm driven surf. As he felt himself grow tense his hands begin to form fists, he heard Laura saying “Jonathan, Jonathan, my hands.” She had been holing his hands and he had not realized that he was crushing them. “I’m sorry Laura” he said softly, feeling himself grow more calm just by looking at her. He was so glad she was there. Even though all of this chaos started when she came into his life, she seemed to be an angel leading him through the darkness. He held her hands up and kissed them, once again saying “I’m sorry.” She put her left hand on the back of his head, brushing his hair from his neck while her right hand cupped his left cheek. “It’s OK.” She smiled at him. “I promise, this will not last. I know it probably seems impossible to imagine right now, but things will get brighter. Someday you will look back at your time with Sebring and it will bring a smile to your face that you were lucky enough to have him in your life in the first place. I know that does not mean much right now but I wanted to tell you that I know from experience that while the missing him will never go away, the emptiness will. They both turned and looked out the window. It would be a half-hour before they would arrive at La Playa Arena. Jonathan leaned his head back on the headrest keeping his focus on the clouds below. Laura leaned over and put her head on his shoulder seeking a few moments of respite before what she knew lay ahead.
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