The Cost Of Love

He loved her but it didn’t show:gave her protection from a distance and  understanding without a sense of intimacy. Just some guy in a cubicle crunching numbers through the working day: it wasn’t climbing Everest but it paid the bills.

“Hey Bill” she’d call, asking for advice, given, always, without a comment. Some years before, and in another place, he had been king of the track and a man of influence but that was then. Now wheel- chair bound after some horrific accident he kept his glories to himself, and ambitions in his memory. The evenings were never short: unfilled hours, stacked upon themselves, brought no relief from his reflective solitude.

Pride is the last refuge of the unfortunate; spectators of the happy story, a background presence on the road to glory. He loved her but it wouldn’t show.

Now the day had come. Her smiling lit-up face telling everyone the news: the diamond on her finger, the crowd of workers circling her desk , asking for the details. Without access, his chair was poor in crowds, he worked as if no news could touch him. Before him the numbers queued up on the page, commanding attention: patient, ordered, logical.

Desire was the gate to pain, wanting placed you in a desert, silence was his dearest friend. Why should he embarrass the girl he most adored?  Some awkward guy, buckled in his chariot, quick of mind but lacking feet: young but now without his youth.

“Hey Bill” she said, moving over and standing by his chair, fingers extended in that glowing way. Sadness surfaced briefly in his eyes,telling  the unspoken truth that his heart was now an orphanage for dreams. “I’m very pleased for you Sarah,” he spoke in monotone. Caught off-guard she stared into his eyes , now restored to ordered symmetry. “I wish you joy.”

Not all we feel is for consumption. not all mountains can be climbed. For some, he thought, love must remain impersonal.

Advertisement