The End for Charles and Betty Wright

Charles and Betty Wright sat together at a tiny wooden table in the middle of Hamil’s coffee shop and bakery, locally famous for their dark chocolate coconut cake.  Hamil’s was where Betty liked to disappear to for an hour each morning to eat cake, read the paper, and watch as the morning rush died down and she was left sitting alone at her table.  But this was not morning.  This was lunchtime and the place was crowded with men in expensive dark coats and ironed suits standing too close for comfort.

The fat piece of dark cake, blanketed with white flakes of coconut, sat untouched and perfect in front of them.  Often, Betty came home to Charles, raving about the heavenly piece of cake she devoured peacefully alone at her morning table.  She never invited Charles to go with her in the mornings, but he didn’t care.  He understood that this was her place, her place away from their tiny apartment, her place to feel independent, her place to have her mornings alone.

She had asked him to come along with her today, but at lunchtime—the mornings were still hers.

Charles sat, secretly eyeing the room, unimpressed by the paintings that hung tightly to the wall.  Paintings probably purchased from an upscale gallery in the city. Paintings that made no sense to him, their bright colors slapped against each other to form figures that meant nothing.

This place was unlike Betty.  This place had an air of snobbery and sophistication, an air of—“My briefcase cost twelve hundred dollars, how much did yours cost?”  Charles hated places like this.

“This place is nice,” said Charles.

“No need to lie,” smiled Betty.  “I knew you wouldn’t like it.  You lack a certain….sophistication.”

“I’m very sophisticated,” said Charles, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.  “I own a robe.”

He chuckled, but Betty only smiled.

“If you knew I’d hate it, why’d ya bring me here?” He leaned forward.  “You know I don’t like chocolate cake or coffee.”

Charles studied Betty, her once blonde hair now scattered with puffs of white.  Deep wrinkles made a home around her eyes.  Even though she was fifty-five, her green eyes were still vibrant and exciting, but there was a sadness behind them today that made Charles’ stomach tighten and his heart break a little.

Betty took a deep breath, closed her eyes, straightened up in her wooden chair, and smiled slightly at Charles.

“I have cancer,” she said.

Charles looked at her blankly.

“Cancer, Betty, is this some sort of joke?  Disgusting, even for you, Betty,” he chuckled slightly, shifting in his seat.

“No, Charles.”

Suddenly, the room was smaller.  The crowd was bigger, louder. Charles and Betty were engulfed by herds of ironed suits and coats, trapped at a small wooden table in the middle of a fancy coffee shop Charles hated.

“Betty, what do you mean?” His face was flushed.  His collar was strangling him.  He unbuttoned it revealing white curly chest hair.

Why here?  Why in a public place?  Maybe she thought he could keep it together if she told him in public, but now here was Charles with tears in his eyes and a red face like a tomato.

“Charles, it’s really not that bad.”  She reached out for his hand.

“Not that bad? Betty, what’s going on here?” his raised voice cracked. Everyone was looking at them now, but it didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter that his chest hair was showing or that he had hot tears streaming down his wrinkled red cheeks.  Nothing else mattered.

“Charles,” Betty said, her voice shaking, “Charles, please.  Don’t cry, Charles.  Not in front of all these people or they might think I’m abusing you.”  She tried to laugh, but then tears streamed down her face, “Charles, it’s lung cancer.”

Charles breathed in heavily and the tears came bigger and quicker until his shirt was soaked and there was a puddle on the hard wooden table.

* * * *

Charles remembered the first time he saw Betty.  She had been barefoot on the grass lawn in front of the University they had both attended, bouncing around alongside a black dog with a white belly and white whiskers on its chin.

Charles had been ten minutes late for his Physics class when he had passed her.

“Herbert!”

The black dog knocked into Charles’ side.  The dog grinned.  Its bumpy pink tongue bounced against its chin.

“Herbert,” laughed Betty as she jogged over.

Charles rubbed Herbert’s floppy ears.

“Nice dog,” he smiled.

“Yeah.”  Betty patted Herbert’s rear.

“Herbert,” he nodded. “Interesting name.”

His palms were hot.  He hoped a handshake could be avoided.

“Roxanne!” they heard a male voice calling in the distance.  “Roxanne!”

The dog ran off in the direction of the voice.

“It wasn’t even a boy.” Charles grinned and shook his head.

“Well.  Maybe she was a masculine female,” Betty smiled.

She cocked her head to read the title of the book sandwiched between Charles’ arm and stomach.

“Physics,” she winced.

His palms were thick with sweat.

“Am I holding you up?”  She brushed her hair back, revealing her pale, freckled forehead.

Beads of sweat slid down Charles’ neck and made their way down his back.

“No. I just finished.”  His tongue was dry and heavy.

“I hate science,” she said as she rubbed her neck softly, “and math.”

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“I’m an English Major,” she said.

He bit the skin on his lips; they were chapped and peeling.

“What are you?”

“Undecided.”  The coppery taste of blood lingered on the tip of his tongue.

He curled and uncurled his toes in his hot, sweaty sneakers. Curl. Uncurl.

“Where did you find that dog?” His voice shook.

Curl. Uncurl.

“In the parking lot,” Betty smiled, “he looked playful, so I played with him.”

Charles tried to chuckle, but it only came out in spats.

Betty lowered her eyebrows, but then she laughed cheerfully.  “I was on my way to get some cake.  Wanna come?”

After Betty ate her cake and Charles picked at his, they went to her dorm room to listen to music.  When it got late and it was time for all the boys to leave the girls’ dorms, Betty and Charles snuck up to the roof.

Betty sat on the rooftop, legs dangling off the edge, while her small, yellow cassette player rested on her lap.  She lit a cigarette and looked back at Charles clinging to the entrance door.

“Come on,” she patted the pavement.  “There’s an empty seat right here.”

Charles’ stomach was thick with sickness and his knees felt like melting butter.  He inched his way toward her, feeling like the sickness in his stomach would make its way up into his throat and then out with each step.

“I won’t let you fall,” smiled Betty.  “And I won’t push you.”

He sat down slowly, making sure not to look over the edge.

Betty pushed play on the cassette player.  Music danced out around them, absorbing them with sweet melody.

While they listened to music, they talked about their future careers.  Charles wasn’t sure what he wanted to do.  When he was a child, like most boys, he dreamt of working for NASA.  But his family was poor and even though he was smart, he was no genius.  He was working his way through college and probably couldn’t afford to go next semester. He would have to drop out, decide what career he wanted and could obtain, and then return to school if he had the money for it.

Betty confessed to him that she didn’t know what she wanted to do either.  Her parents were very strict and fairly poor.  Her father worked in a factory assembling automotive parts while her Christian mother sewed and taught Sunday school.  Her parents saved up enough money for her to go to a university, but they had the choice of picking where she went and what she studied.  They had always hoped she’d be an English teacher and so that’s what Betty was preparing to be.

Her parents wanted to move closer to the university so she could commute, but they couldn’t afford to move, buy her a vehicle or pay for the gas to put in it.  She saw them on holidays and she said that was enough.

Betty stared off into the lights near campus.  “I think you’ll make a great friend of mine, Charles.”

“Oh,” frowned Charles.  He nodded.  “Yes, a friend.”

“Unless,” Betty said as she turned to him.  She blew cigarette smoke out of the corner of her mouth and smothered her cigarette against the rooftop pavement.  “Unless we kiss and there’s something…”

Charles leaned in and kissed her.

“You taste like cigarettes,” he said softly.  He pulled away to look at her.

She stared at him with blushing cheeks and parted lips.

“But I don’t mind,” he said and leaned in to kiss her again.

Now, after the diagnosis when he tasted the tobacco lingering on her lips, he

winced and something in his stomach dropped.

* * * *

“Remember this?” asked Betty as she peeked out from the bedroom. She held out a veil dripping with soft sheets of ivory colored silk.

“How could I forget it?” Charles smiled.

Charles had sat waiting in his parents’ blue station wagon as Betty bought the veil in a wedding boutique on their way to the courthouse.  She had run out smiling with bright pink cheeks.

“How does it look?” Betty had asked as she adjusted it in the mirror.

She had put the silk in front of her face.

“Well,” he said, “I can’t see your face, so I guess that’s a good thing.”

Betty pinched his arm.  They laughed cheerfully and made their way to the courthouse.

While Charles stood at the altar, he watched as a woman gave Betty plastic flowers.  His palms were wet.  Tiny beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. He thought he might just cry.  But then the music came from an old cassette player and Betty made her way to him on the arm of a short woman with white hair.  When he lifted the sheet in front of Betty’s face, she was smiling from ear to ear and he burst out with laughter and so did she.  They laughed so much the preacher asked if they were drunk at ten in the morning.

When the words were said and all was done, Charles called to tell his parents the news.  They were disappointed to not have been there but said they were glad to have Betty officially part of the family now.

Betty didn’t call her family.  Instead, she asked Charles to take her home that evening.  He waited in the car for over an hour outside of her parents’ old, dry house. He could see the fat, blue paint chips clinging desperately to the pale wood even from his distance across the street.  Their garage was nice though, almost new.

When Betty finally emerged, she waddled toward the car with two large black bags on her shoulders.  Charles got out to help her but she motioned for him to stay in the car.  When she got in, her hair was wild.  Tears clung to her chin.

“Betty.”  He reached out and squeezed her knee.

Betty sighed and turned to the window.  They drove off, away from her family, toward Charles’ apartment in the city.

Betty didn’t talk to her parents again for three months and when they finally reconciled, they went out to dinner.

“What do you do for a living?” asked Betty’s mother Marlene.  She delicately chewed on a piece of steamed carrot.

“I work at Laurel’s Cleaning Supplies and Repairs,” said Charles.  “And I…”

“Oh,” her parents said.

Every dinner after was the same.  They asked him where he worked.  The answer was always Laurel’s.  They never cared to listen to the fact that he was Laurel’s best employee and repairman.  They didn’t care to know that he was promoted as assistant manager and then manager.  Secretly he wished Betty were an orphan.

Now he watched as Betty twirled the veil on her index finger.

“When I lose my hair,” she sighed, “maybe I’ll wear this.”

Charles hoped he wouldn’t see the veil again.

* * * *

He had always told her to stop smoking cigarettes, but she would never listen.

“Stop smoking those cigarettes,” Charles had said, “You know, one day they might kill you.”

Betty would laugh her usual cheerful laugh. “Oh, Charles.  I’m going to die some day.  I might as well enjoy myself.”

“So be it.”

Now here he was, standing next to her, helping her pick out her casket.  She wanted the grey one, but the brown one was cheaper.

“Well, if I get the grey one, you’ll spend the rest of your life eating out of soup cans,” she said rubbing the cold slick casket with the tips of her bony fingers.

Charles tried to smile.  He grabbed her waist and pulled her close.

“I’ll be eating whatever you fix me, woman.”

He kissed her long and hard.  She looked up at him in his glistening blue eyes, a tear in the corner revealed itself.  She smiled quick and wrapped her arms around him.

“The brown one will do,” she said.

* * * *

One night as Charles slept, violent, muffled coughing echoed through the apartment.  Charles’ body stiffened.  His eyelids shot open.  He stumbled his way through the darkness, dizzy with sleep.  He pressed his face against the cold wooden bathroom door.

“Betty?” his voice cracked.

The coughing continued.  He turned the stiff doorknob, but it was locked.

“Betty?” His muscles tightened.  “Betty, open up.”

“Give me..” she coughed, “some privacy.”

Charles laid his forehead against the door.

Betty unlocked it, still coughing, and emerged holding a tissue against her mouth and nose.

Charles touched her shoulder as she brushed past him.

“I’ll be going…”she coughed.  She grabbed more tissues out of a tissue box on the kitchen counter.

“Going?” Charles rubbed his eyes.  “What time is it?”

It was still dark out.

“…to Hamil’s,” Betty tried to compose herself.  She threw tissues in the trashcan.

“What?” Charles shook his head.  “Betty, you’re in no condition.”

“Don’t tell me!” She tried to shout, but her voice cracked and she coughed violently.

He stepped closer to her.

“Betty?  Why are you still going there?”  He motioned for her to come to him. “Let’s go to bed.”

Betty grabbed more tissues.

“I’m going now,” she wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“Betty,” Charles said softly.  “Why are you…”

“I’m going,” she said as she stepped toward the door.

“Betty! You’re not going!”

“Are you embarrassed, Charles?”  She glared at him.  Her face was trembling.

Charles stood with his mouth half open.

“What…” he shook his head.  “What are you…”

“Well,” Betty said coughing into tissues.  “I don’t care about my bald head.”

“Betty, please,” Charles pleaded.  “Why are you…Why do you go there?”  He loomed over her.  “Who do you see?”

“Oh, please,” she huffed and opened the door.

“You’re not going!” He leaned his arm against the door.  “Who are you seeing?”

Betty coughed.  Tears formed in her eyes.  Her eyebrows lowered and her mouth trembled.

“I need this.”

“Who?” He extended his chin.

“Oh, Charles” Betty coughed and shook her head.

Charles moved away from the door.

“See who you want,” he sighed.

Betty coughed into her wet tissues and opened the door.

“I need this.”  She stepped out and shut the door softly behind her.

Charles fell back onto the sofa.  He stared at the door, listening as Betty’s small footsteps went farther and farther away from him.

* * * *

Eleven months and thirteen days after the diagnosis, the lung cancer made its way into Betty’s brain. When she went into the hospital, so did Charles.  The hospital became his new home.  He spent days and nights there, next to Betty, in a small chair, with a hard back and a worn cushion on the seat other visitors had sobbed on before him.  The nurses offered for him to stay in the waiting area, but he refused.  Sometimes Betty would move over and Charles would crawl in bed with her to hold her.  Her head rested in the pit of his arm.

“This is my pit,” she said, nudging against it.

Charles closed his eyes and smelled her.  The smell reminded him of the time they went camping in the mountains in West Virginia for their honeymoon.  Betty had complained that she wasn’t able to wash her hair.

“When I get back,” she had said, “I’ll no longer have blonde hair—that’s a fact.  I’ll be a brunette.”

“What do you have against brunettes?” Charles had tried to appear offended.  “Why, I’m a brunette.”  He touched his hair delicately and cocked his head back.

Betty laughed, “You’d be better as a blonde.”

“Is that so?” Charles scooped her up in his arms.  “Now you’ll pay!”

Betty laughed and shrilled fake shrills.  He carried her to the water and threw her in.  The splash of her body hitting the water echoed in his ears and mind.  For a brief second his heart stopped but then she popped up.

She screamed with delight.  “You better get in here,” she said holding her underpants high in the air.  “You need a bath too.  You smell like rotten eggs.” She laughed and went underwater.

Holding her now in his arms, Betty felt small and fragile and hard.  He could feel her ribs and her spine.  Her body was disappearing in front of him.

* * * *

The last days were short.  Betty drifted in and out of sleep more and more.  She stopped eating, so they fed her from a tube.  She needed help breathing, so they gave her an oxygen tank and a mask.  Charles could no longer get in bed with her.  She was too delicate, like a glass doll with cracks.

When Betty woke from sleep, she called Charles from his bedside chair.

“You look awful,” she smiled, her oxygen mask lying on her chest.

Charles touched her hand.  He smiled, exhausted.  He leaned closer to her.

Her voice was soft, like a whisper.

“Don’t follow me, Charles.  Not this time,” she said, looking at him with heavy eyes. There was a milkiness that replaced her once vibrant green eyes, making them appear like dusty, faded marbles.

Charles’ eyes filled with tears.

Betty slipped into a coma and Charles waited 3 days for her to wake up.  He stayed the night every night, in his bedside chair.  He whispered to her, his hot breath against her ear.

“Come back,” he begged. But she never did.

When the monitors screamed that she was gone, the nurses found Charles clinging to her lifeless body.  They tried to get him to leave, but he refused.

“Do you have friends or relatives, sir?” they asked.

There was no one to call.

When Charles came home to their small apartment, he fell on the flannel sofa and cried until he fell asleep.  When he woke, he called for Betty.  Realizing that she wasn’t there and never would be again, he cried until his body couldn’t take it.  Until there was nothing left inside of him but pain and anger and a fat lump stuck in his throat.

He sat with his head in his hands on the flannel sofa that was heavy with cigarette smoke.  The smell was different than it had been before.  It left a thick, sour taste on his tongue and a strange, prickly sensation on his skin.  His stomach thumped and churned.

He sagged to the kitchen to find dirty dishes in the sink and the dark brown countertop littered with salt.  His nose stung from the smell of old garbage still in the trashcan.  His jaw tightened and his head pounded.  All of his blood rushed up into his head and neck, making his skin feel thick and hot.  He threw the dishes into the trashcan, Betty’s dinnerware, dinnerware she had received on their wedding day from her Aunt Claudett.

Then he stormed into the bedroom and threw out her clothes, only saving the dress she had wanted to wear for her funeral.  The dress was white, with large pink and yellow flowers printed throughout.  When she had found it, three winters ago, she had said it reminded her of spring and that spring was her favorite time of the year, why not wear it during winter to cheer them both up.  It had made Charles smile then, but now he wanted to destroy it.

Why had she done this to him?  Why hadn’t she stopped smoking?  Why didn’t he try harder to stop her?  What would he do now?  Why didn’t he get her the grey casket she wanted?

After Charles finished throwing her things out, he made himself a sandwich.  He had not eaten in days.  Ham and cheese, that’s what Betty always made him.

“Don’t forget the mayo,” he had always said.

“You’ll die of a heart attack one of these days.”

“Well, I’m going to die some day.  I might as well enjoy myself.”

So Betty had slapped the mayo on the sandwich.

Charles couldn’t eat it now.  The lump in his throat prevented him from doing so.

* * * *

After the funeral, Charles was out in the parking lot crying.  He stared up at the sky and wondered if Betty was up there making jokes with God.  Did she remember Charles and her life with him?  Was she happy now, wherever she was?

His body ached and his eyes burned.  He wanted to be with Betty, to smell her and hold her.  He wanted to be young with her again, camping in West Virginia, bathing in the lake, drinking under the stars.

He wiped his tears with his stiff buttoned up sleeves.

“Charles Wright,” came a woman’s voice behind him.

Charles’ stomach bounced.  He turned to see a plump woman, in her thirties, with dark hair and bright blue eyes, wet with sorrow.  She dabbed her upper lip and the tip of her pink nose.

“Charles?” the woman asked with a trembling voice.

Charles rubbed his eyes and breathed in thick air.

“Yes,” he mumbled.

“I’m Elvi Glenfield,” she said as she stuffed the tissue into her black purse. “I saw in the paper…I know…knew….your wife Betty.”

Something crinkled in her purse as she pulled it out.

“I work at Hamil’s,” she said with a plastic box in her hand.  “The last day Betty came to the café, she told me to look for her in the paper and to give you…this.”  She reached out, her chubby fingers gripping the box.

As Charles took it, the plastic crinkled in protest.  He examined it.  The cake had collided with the corners of the box, leaving behind traces of thick chocolate and flakes of coconut.

“She showed me your picture, Charles,” Elvi smiled.  “I’m very sorry.  She was a lovely woman.” She squeezed his arm.

As Charles rubbed his fingers on the top of the hard plastic, he listened as Elvi’s footsteps vanished.  Then he searched for the nearest trashcan.

When he got home, his body shook over the thought of Betty.  He didn’t want to live without her.   If he died, no one would miss him anyway.  He didn’t have children.  After Betty had a miscarriage when they were twenty, she didn’t want to try again.  His parents were long gone, dead from an automobile accident when he was just twenty-two.  He had no close relatives and had grown distant with all of his friends from work when he went on Retirement.

No.  Charles was alone.  Betty was the only one he had and the only one he wanted.

With a pencil and a yellow piece of notepad paper, he made a list of ways to kill himself.  He couldn’t shoot himself.  He didn’t own a gun and thought it would be too brutal anyway.  Maybe he could take pills, but that was risky.  What if he lived?  He would surely be thrown into a mental institution or worse—a nursing home.

“Jump,” he said to himself, “I’ll jump.”

Charles took the stairs to the roof.  He clung to the banister like he was hiking up a mountain.  When he reached the top, he collapsed onto the hard pavement.  He lay there for a moment feeling the warm pavement against his skin.

He slowly got up and slumped to the edge.  He peered at the parked cars ten stories below.  He stared into the sky.  The sun was setting; the orange, yellow, and red made the sky look like it was bleeding.

He peered over the edge again.

“Don’t follow me.  Not this time,” echoed in his mind while he stood on the rooftop ready to kill himself.  Since they met, he had always followed Betty and she had always followed him.

“I’ll follow you anywhere, everywhere,” he had said.

“Do I need to get a restraining order?” Betty had asked with her hand on her hip.  She had grabbed his face and kissed his cheeks, then his lips.  She had sat down on his lap and nudged her head against his pit.

“Don’t follow me.  Not this time.”

Charles gasped.  He dropped to his knees and leaned his back against the hard concrete ledge standing between him and ten stories below.  He closed his eyes and moved his head gently back and forth, feeling the tiny rough edges of the concrete against his scalp.

“Betty,” he sighed.  “Goodbye.”

Salty tears graced his lips.

He slowly got up and made his way to the door.  He looked back at the rooftop once more and hoped he would dream of Betty that night.