Happy Valentine's Day

“A fishing tournament? You didn’t tell me you’d signed up for a fishing tournament. Who the crap holds a fishing tournament on Valentine’s Day?”

My husband looks at me, embarrassed but not contrite. “I told you about this three weeks ago. I’ve already paid the fifty dollars entrance fee. I’m not going to back out now.”

“But I made reservations at Dragonfly and there’s the dance at the Senior center.” I didn’t mention the money I’d spent on a new dress, or the tickets.

“I wish you’d said something,” he says. He’s cleaning up from breakfast, putting a washed knife carefully into the strainer. I look at the knife, wondering how much effort it would take to plunge it into his back. Nope, that wouldn’t help anything.

“I really wanted to go to the dance,” I say, hoping for a last minute change of heart.

 He nods and then says. “You know what a poor dancer I am, Margie. Honestly, I hate those things. Why don’t we just go out for supper when I get back from the tournament.”

He is not going to change his mind, and my hopes for a meal in a wonderful restaurant and the two of us dancing like newlyweds, washes slowly away.

It’s not fair, I think. Not fair. I take my coat and head for the beach, which this morning is deserted except for a few hardy dog walkers and the sea gulls who have no choice but to be there.

On the beach I pass an empty coke can, a lone sandal, a pack of cigarettes, and a discarded candy bar wrapper. Pulling out my plastic bag I tuck these items into it. Two gulls are huddled together against the wind. They may be a pair mated for life or just strangers finding warmth beside each other. Do gulls mate for life? Do male gulls pass up dances in favor of fishing tournaments? I’m sure they do. Perhaps if you took a survey of all the men sitting on the sidelines at dances, looking uncomfortable in their seldom- worn jackets and high water pants, nine out of ten might say they’d rather be fishing. This thought does not make me feel any better. 

I pass a heart drawn into the sand with the words “I love you” now being washed away by the tide. Once upon a time, about a million years ago, I felt the same way. I was a sophomore in college, writing my husband’s name over and over in my notebook, or my first name with his last name, trying out a future self. I would hang out near the cafeteria where he had a part time job, just to catch sight of him. My God, I was so young, so hopelessly naïve. Now, almost forty years later, I have learned that sometimes the things that attract you to a man in the first place, become the things that annoy you the most. His gentle condescension becomes his inability to make decisions. His thriftiness becomes cheapness. It’s nice that he loves his mother, but does he have to call her every single week? 

I try to remember the teen age girl who was so in love that every thought was of this man, the girl who couldn’t sleep for three nights before her wedding, the couple who had a special song, “Nights in White Satin,” a special place “Smokey’s Bar and Grill,” where they would neck until the place closed. I try to recall the bride who put love notes in her husband’s lunch. That person is long gone, but who has taken her place?

I continue to walk the beach, watching as the dank morning begins to clear. Light on the edge of the ocean spreads outward over the water and touches the sand and I see a couple striding toward me, holding hands. They are not talking, just walking together in harmonic synchronicity. Before my husband got his exercise machine, we would walk together in the morning too, but now he’s too busy. An exercise machine and fishing have made me obsolete. Dang.

Ahead of me in the sand is a castle, not one of those child-created things, decorated with sea shells and bits of coral, but a professionally designed, architecturally accurate palace with turrets and a moat. “For Julie, with all my heart,” is written in the sand. It really is sweet, and I envy Julie, whoever she is, even though she is probably eighteen and gorgeous, and the guy who labored all day on the castle might not even be someone she cares about. Grab him, Julie, I want to say. Even if he is a little stingy with money and calls his mother every Friday night, summer and winter. Grab him, even if there are times when you look at the freshly- washed knife in the strainer and wonder how it would look in his back. Grab him, even if, after many years of marriage, he gives up a Valentine’s Day dance for a fishing tournament. Grab him, because he loves you.

I turn and walk back toward home, my anger now dissipated. In the distance, I can see my husband walking toward me. Even on a foggy day, or in a crowd I would recognize him by the way his head is tilted forward as though he’s plowing through air.   

We reach each other and he takes my hand as we continue toward home. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize how important the dance was to you. I’ll give up the tournament. There are always others.”

I look at his face. He is sincere, and I suddenly realize how little the dance really means. “Go to your tournament,” I say. “I can give up the dance.”

“What if we go up to San Antonio the next day. We’ll stay in the Marriott , eat at La Tortuga.”

“Take a boat ride on the river,” I add.

“Of course.”

Ahead of me, in the sand, the incised heart is still visible, though growing fainter. I think of my own heart, somewhat faded and beaten up by life, but still there, still loving.