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Fling
Decades ago the married couple celebrated their one year anniversary with a trip to London. It was a troubling time for them with a backdrop of dark April skies and frigid winds, of predatory nights, like black ink, spreading gloom. Curiously it never rained the whole time they were there, but nonetheless it was a hellish eight days, always an argument looming over their heads, unresolved differences surrounding them at every turn.
They spent their days sightseeing - and then out to the theater every night followed by a shouting match or two. Midway through their sojourn, the wife visited her sister in Paris. The husband didn't go. He needed some time alone. She returned to London after a few days and they flew home. Nine months later, a son was born. The husband had to wonder how a mostly loveless stay abroad had resulted in this beautiful, healthy baby boy.
They survived much over the years. Counseling, trial separations, the usual alcohol-fueled marital warfare, but something always pulled them back together. The marriage actually survived. And then quite suddenly she passed away late last year, just a month before their forty-fourth wedding anniversary.
A few weeks later, he began to look through her things and happened to find some of her old journals. In one of them, he discovered a few mentions about their long ago trip to London and what really happened during that brief visit she made to her sister's apartment in Paris. There he found written evidence of a fling she had with a man. The moment he read the shocking words, documented in her childlike scrawl, he recalled a puzzling feeling he'd always had about their son, how the boy didn't closely resemble either of them...coloring, features, temperament, especially height. They were both just average height as were their family members. Where did they get a kid who was six feet four when he entered college? How did that happen? Once in awhile someone would make a joke about the disparities and everyone laughed, but the nagging feelings he already harbored were just intensified. He also vividly recalled his wife's absolute insistence on naming the boy Philip. And there it was in black and white, staring at him, mocking him, like a slap in the face directly from the grave...the name of the man she'd been with in Paris so many years ago.
Philippe.
Vernon Waring
Vernon Waring is a four-time winner of international poetry competitions sponsored by Tom Howard Books; three of the winning poems - "the death of memory," "juror number twelve," and "Not A Poem" - originally appeared in Ascent Aspirations Magazine. His work has also been featured in Nerve Cowboy, First Literary Review - East, WestWard Quarterly, and The Great American Poetry Show. Mr. Waring's short fiction has been singled out for commendation in the Glimmer Train, New Millennium Writings Awards, and Soul-Making Literary Competitions. He lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Email: Vernon Waring
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