Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 2. Panic

One morning a boy looked up and around and didn't see his girl. He looked and looked and shouted and shouted but she was not thinking of hearing him or standing where people could see her so he was very lost from her.

He tried not to panic.

He thought he would make her a treat, the sort of thing he knew she liked very much.
He baked and baked.
The sun was going away when he took the treats out and spread them under the trees and by the stream and among her flowers and carefully on the edges of the bookcases and delicately in her favorite shoes and down along the path to her friend's house and balanced some on the sleeping baby.
But she wasn't hungry just then, and she was thinking of other things so she did not come for the treats or clean up the crumbs til after he had fallen asleep on the living room floor, his hands all sticky.

The next day he thought he might try with flowers.
He bought some and he took some and he made some and he tied them in strings and wreaths and ropes and swags and bundled some in bunches and some in pairs and some all by themselves. He took all those flowers and laid them on her bed and everywhere in the refrigerator and twined them about the children and pressed them between the pages of the telephone book and heaped them all about the sewing machine. He got so tired from all that flower arranging that he fell fast asleep across the sofa and one chair and she had to be very quiet and careful when she gathered up all the petals.

The next day he remembered she loved music.
He sang in the shower and on the street corner and while he waited for the toast to pop and in his taxi where the driver made requests which he obligingly took, though he knew those songs were ones she particularly disliked. He sang to the birds in her garden and to the children while they watched television which made them turn the volume very loud. He sang a sincere thanks to the postman for the package and to the policeman for the speeding ticket and to the clerk for his change. He sang himself hoarse and silent and went to bed early and she left him a cup of honey lemon tea to drink when he woke in the morning.

He tried poetry.
He wrote with erasable markers in blank verse on the blender and on the back door. He wrote rhymed couplets on her jeans and all around the rim of the pickle jar. He wrote Italian sonnets in mustard on the children's sandwiches which they wiped off with napkins and reminded him for the millionth time that they did not eat mustard. With the erasable markers he wrote heartfelt doggerel fit for the finest, fanciest, glitteryest greeting card a mother-in-law ever resented all over the bed sheets, about which she swore quietly when she did the wash the next day.

He sent presents.
Chocolates in heart-shaped boxes. Shoes with high heels and shoes with no heels. Dresses a flattering half-size too small. Wigs, luxurious and blond. Engravings and signed first editions. Cashmere throws and designer perfumes and tickets to exotic places. A pedigreed lapdog and a case with a padlock to keep it in. A house in the country and a yacht on the ocean and a castle in the sky. An empty honey pot, a wishing ring, a flying horse and a magical bird in a golden cage. She sold all of it on eBay and put aside the money for the kids' college fund, except for the magical bird, which she let out of the cage and carried to the garden to set it free. But it sat on her head and sang a song of days long gone by and asked her, with tears in its eyes, to let it stay and to also keep the cage so it could sleep there at night, as that was the only really safe place for a magical bird to sleep. She agreed and carried the cage and the bird to her bedroom where she found him, dead to the world, sleeping on her side of the bed, his wallet empty and his credit utterly exhausted.

In the morning she called a meeting.
He sat across from her, trying not to panic.
She asked him what on earth he was on about and he asked where in the world she had been.
He told her he loved her and she pointed out that she had been thinking of other things and he asked her why she stood where no one could see her and she had no answer for that, no answer at all.
Now he was not even trying not to panic.
He asked her if it was over and she told him it was.
No more looking for her,
no more treats,
no more traps,
no more bribes,
no more sleeping when there was work to be done.
He put down his head and that was the end of the meeting. She went to feed the bird.
He mowed the lawn and she went to the bank. She had a large deposit to make.
He sent her a text and she answered almost at once.
She made chocolate cake and he grilled steaks.
She pushed him off her side of the bed and slept in the middle, to hold the ground.
He forgot to look for her and she sometimes stood where people could see her.
He let her flowers grow in her garden where she liked them and she made sure the children played nicely with him and with each other and he sang softly to her the songs she loved the best and which the magical bird didn't know. The bird didn't know any new stuff.

And she told all that was in her heart to the magical bird, which was what she had needed all along. He was happy that she liked his present.
Like it? she said, I love it!
He slept with a smile and the bird sang a song of days long gone by while she ate chocolate cake and watched the children and the flowers growing in her garden.