Alternate Ending

Short fiction, by Aaron Romero

            “You know what? Fuck you,” she shouts, slamming the door in my face.  My blood boils.  I never curse at her, and I rarely shout.  It grates my nerves, and I feel like exploding. 

            I stand in the hallway, my fists balled up tightly.  I am angry and I really want to beat the hell out of something.  I’ve never considered hitting her; I love her way too much for that.  Still, the urge to destroy is on my mind, and so I trudge back down the hallway, looking for a target.  Looking around the living room, I eye the couch.  It looks like it could use a beating.  On my way over to show that sofa what for, my Xbox catches my attention.  I let the couch off the hook, for now, and quietly slump down on the floor in front of the television. 

            I boot up my video game console and flip the television on.  It seems that blowing the heads off of digital flesh-eating zombies is much more therapeutic than taking my aggressions out on the sofa.  As I sit there, my mind begins to wander.  My body is totally engrossed in my plight with the dastardly mutants, but I can’t help but think about her.  My hands effortlessly manipulate the game controller; zombie parts are flying everywhere, and I feel awful.  I hate it when we get like this.  I feel like crying right now, and I hate that even more.  I’ve tried to stop getting so emotional over things, but it’s just plain hard with her.  It breaks my heart when she’s angry or upset with me; no matter what she has told me in the past, I can’t help but take it personally when she’s short with me.  There has to be something wrong with me if she can get so angry.  Like I said, I never yell at her, and I don’t understand why she has to yell at me.  I feel pitiful and small.

            Somewhere into level three, she opens the bedroom door.  She comes scurrying out, the cordless phone pressed to her ear.   I can already guess who she is on the phone with, and it leaves me unsettled.   She walks with purpose into the kitchen, disappearing through the door.  I can hear her rummaging through the shopping bags on the kitchen table, mumbling an occasional “uh huh” into the phone.  It’s depressing.

            “Alex,” she calls from the kitchen, snapping me back to reality.  “Do you know what happened to my new bottle of shampoo?  I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

            “I put it in the shower already,” I reply.   She does not respond.  The zombies have now eaten my partner, and I am quickly losing my grip on the situation at hand.  Just then, she comes out through the kitchen door again, holding a bottle of body lotion.  She is wearing a pair of navy-blue addidas shorts, the kind with the white stripes running down the sides, and her favorite Notre Dame t-shirt.  I look up at her, holding the phone, and she looks right back at me with a stern, cross look on her face.  I can’t believe that we have been married for three years now. 

She looks fantastic.  She is beautiful, amazing and wonderful to me, and I still cannot believe that we are married.  Out of all the people in the world, of all the many who find her to be charming, witty and brilliant, she has chosen me, and it feels like I fall in love with her all over again every day.  This is why it breaks my heart when she yells at me.   She still looks every bit as lovely as the day I married her, and I am lost for words.  Even though we are fighting, I am filled with amazement and wonder. 

I am still watching her talk on the phone, when she suddenly becomes even more agitated.  I have not been listening to her on the phone, so it is surprising when she raises her voice. 

“Chris, you’re not listening to me,” she says.  “I already told you why, so stop trying to bargain with me.  I’m not your mother, and I’m not going to try fixing this for you.”  She pauses for just a moment, listening.

“Because I want to go with my husband, damnit,” she shouts, simultaneously flinging the bottle of lotion down at the floor.  It lands a foot or so away from me, and skids to a halt on the carpet.  I look down, studying it for a moment, oddly enough, pondering the physics involved in its crash landing.  After a few silent moments, I pick up the bottle, stand up, and hand it to my wife, who is fuming now.  Our eyes meet as I hold the bottle out in my hands, and she has a surprised look on her face.  I don’t realize that I appear frightened to her, and just as quickly as I have stood up, I sit back down on the carpet.  I look back at the television, and come to terms with the fact that zombies have indeed prevailed. 

I pick up my game controller again, ready to take on the warehouse full of monsters again, when she suddenly walks up to me in the living room.  Without warning or provocation, she leans over and kisses me on the forehead and whispers “thanks.”  Without saying another word, she stands up and walks down the hall again, still on the phone.

“Look, I’m not going to argue with you anymore.  I said no, and there isn’t anything else I can do for you.  I’m sorry, but it’s not my problem.  Learn to fucking say no, alright?  Call me back at 7 if you still can’t find a ride.”  I hear her slam the cordless down on the charger in our bedroom.  It is silent for a moment, and then I hear her rush past the hallway and into the bathroom.  Moments later, I hear water running.

It’s four o’clock on Saturday.  I still feel confused, and so I walk into the kitchen, open the fridge, and pull out the carton of milk.  Fetching a glass from the pantry, I pour myself a glass full of skim (chalk water, she calls it), and walk out of the kitchen.  Passing through the living room and into the dining room, I look out of our glass patio door.  We have a little balcony-patio thing, and it looks out at the bay.  I feel lucky to be alive, and even luckier to have her with me. 

From behind me, I hear pounding on the wall.  It’s coming from the bathroom, and so I quickly make my way through the hall.  I’m sure she needs something simple.  I assume that she forgot to grab a new towel or something like that.  I come up to the door and shout “are you knocking?”

“Yeah,” she shouts back.  “Come in here for a minute.  I need your help.”  Not knowing what to expect, I open the door and walk in.  It’s steamy and hot in the bathroom.  Winter is just beginning to set in around the bay area, and she’s enjoying a nice hot bath.  I stand in the bathroom silently for a moment or two, thinking about her.  “Are you in here,” she asks finally.

“Yes,” I reply, not knowing what to do or what she wants.  She pokes her head out of the shower curtain, looks over at me and says “come over here.”

I do as I am told, coming closer.  Her shoulders are also peaking out of the shower curtain, and I can see that they are covered in soap suds.  She is smiling at me, and the sight of this makes my heart melt.  She has an incredibly sexy, seductive look on her face, and before I can say anything, she throws her arms around my neck and pulls me closer.  She kisses me passionately, her wet lips and face pressing against mine.  I am surprised by all of this.  The attention is confusing, to say the least, especially considering the fact hat we were still fighting not even 10 minutes ago.  She looks up at me with that incredible smile of hers and says “I love you, Alex.”

“I love you too, Maribel… with all my heart.”

“Come in here and take a shower with me,” she begs playfully.  She is 28 years old and radiant.  I can’t resist her.

I feel guilty standing in the shower with her.  She has her arms wrapped around my neck, and we are kissing like teenagers.  While this isn’t an abnormal occurrence, I know that she is trying to apologize for what happened earlier.  I feel guilty because technically, I am the one who started the fight.

It’s all centered around Davis.  We’ve been here in the San Francisco area for a while now, and Davis has been a constant factor in our lives.  He makes me uncomfortable, and no matter how I try to explain this to Maribel, she just doesn’t understand.  I guess it’s hard to hear your spouse tell you that they’re afraid of your friends, but in my case, I just can’t think of any other way to articulate my feelings.  It seems that for now, I just have to deal with it.

After graduating from college, I opted for an internship with Dell’s Austin facilities.  She’d been in Austin for a year at that point working for the Statesman, and I was eager to try our collective hand at living together.  She wasn’t so easily convinced, so I spent the first six months in Austin (when my internship rolled over into a full-time position) living alone.  I had a small apartment, and every day after work, I’d invite her over for dinner.  I tried to cook for her.  Some meals were extravagant, when I’d go for a full blown Asian or Italian menu, and others were not particularly noteworthy; some dinners consisted of me being so tired after a grueling day on the job that I’d just order a pizza. 

Every evening, after she was done with work, Maribel would come over and have dinner with me.  Some nights she would have to rush off to cover some event, and other nights she would sit down and unwind with me in front of the television.  For about two months, she’d collect her things and leave every night at eleven, right after the evening news and Letterman’s opening monologue.   Then one day, she just fell asleep on the couch next to me.  I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there all night.  I got up and grabbed a blanket for her, and she slept soundly until about two in the morning.  She woke up, looked over at me, sitting on the couch watching her, and apologized for inconveniencing me.  Truth be told, I didn’t mind at all.  She tried to get up and leave, but I insisted that she stay the night.  I loaned her a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and over her protests demanded that she take my bed for the night.  I slept on the couch, and at about six thirty, I woke her and sent her on her way home.  She needed to go home and shower, and while I would have been happy to let her shower at my place, I figured that she probably needed her own shampoo and a fresh change of clothes, too.

She started staying over periodically after that, feeling more comfortable with the idea of staying with me.  She’d bring extra clothes and stuff; I went to the store and bought her brand of shampoo and put it in my bathroom. Four months came and went, and it got to a point where she was sleeping over every night.  After my six months in Austin, we found a bigger apartment and moved in together.  Six months after that, we were married.  We didn’t have time for a honeymoon then; in fact, we’re finally planning on taking one soon to Central and South America.  I am trying to brush up on my conversational Spanish, and she is writing a dissertation in Spanish for her master’s degree.  It’s a great plan, in my mind.

I stayed on with Dell for 14 more months before I got the call.  I was 27 when a technical director’s position opened up in San Francisco, and Maribel practically kicked me out the door when the job offer came in.  I was torn; I didn’t want to leave my wife of only a year, even if it was for the job I had been dreaming of since I was in high school.  In the end though, Maribel convinced me that I had to take the job.  It was my dream, after all, and she threatened me with the silent treatment if I declined the offer.  I moved to the bay area in August of that year, and for two months, I flew home to Austin every weekend to be with her.  It was torture being so far away.  I missed waking up next to her, and I especially missed cooking dinner for her.  I was lonely and sad most of the time, and several times I considered quitting.  So I was stunned when she informed me that she was applying for positions in San Francisco during the weekend I flew home to Austin for my birthday in October.  She told me before that she really didn’t like any of the papers out in the bay area, and said that they had expressed even less enthusiasm in recruiting her straight out of college.  This time, it seemed, she had changed her tune.  By Thanksgiving, we had settled into an adequate condo in the bay area suburbs.  That was a year ago.

Like I said, I feel guilty.  Today’s fight was largely due to some disappointment with Maribel, but it was mostly due to my uneasiness with Davis.  Davis has a first name.  It’s Chris.  I call him Davis because I have a lot of friends and colleagues named Chris, and managing them becomes a chore.  Each Chris has an individual nickname, but for Davis, I just use his last name.  It’s partly because I can’t find any endearing qualities on which to base a proper nickname.  It’s also partly out of disrespect, but I’ve never told Maribel about that.

When Maribel decided to move out to the bay area, I was grateful, to say the least.  I was getting homesick being out here on my own.  She once told me that she defined home as “the place where you are, where I can feel safe and happy in your arms.”  I agree with that definition whole-heartedly, and it applied it to my life as well.  Home was where she was, and I ached for her during the week.  When she moved to California with me, I assumed that everything was going to be like it was in Austin.  My hours were longer and I frequently came home exhausted, but I realized that it was a necessary part of working on major motion pictures.  Despite the fatigue, I still wanted to cook for her and treat her.  Being a reporter could be unpleasant at times, and I wanted her to feel comfortable at home with me. 

Things were not the same, though.  During her first two weeks on the job, Maribel met Davis.  She was the new metro reporter, and covered goings on within the city.  Davis was a sports reporter, and after her orientation meetings, he made it a point to introduce himself.  To be fair, he’s a nice guy to people and he did it to be friendly to my wife.  I was even glad when she came home that night and told me all about him and how he offered to help get her accustomed to working in the bay area.  I wanted her to be as happy as possible.  After all, she had made a huge sacrifice to live with me in California, and while I had two months to find friends and neighbors, she was new to the scene.

Weeks into this arrangement, I started experiencing the first of my feelings of doubt.  I appreciated that Davis was nice enough to show my wife around the city and help her get a hang of her new job, but I didn’t really appreciate the fact that he was now calling every day, three or four times a day.  Some nights, he’d call her to comment about what was on TV.  Other times, it was sports scores.  It was always something.  I didn’t feel like saying anything at this point, because he was still a friend, obnoxious or not.  I did become concerned when Maribel started skipping out on our dinner dates.  I relished the fact that I could fairly proficiently cook meals for her, and I felt crushed the first time she called home to cancel dinner.  She and Davis were going to grab dinner and a drinks, then go back to the office to do some more work for the paper.

When I mentioned it to Mark, one of the other TDs in my department, he was not quite as understanding as I had been with the situation.

“Whoa, buddy, you’d better watch what’s goin’ on there,” he said, sitting on my desk.  “I don’t know what this guy’s like at all, but if she cancelled on you, then there’s definitely a reason to worry.  You’d better make damned sure he’s not trying to get with your woman.”

My eyes narrowed, and I glared at him from behind my desk.  “First of all, she’s not ‘my woman,’ you idiot.  Maribel is my wife.  Treat her with some respect,” I growled.  “Secondly, she loves me, so even if he was trying anything, she wouldn’t respond.”

 I looked at Mark and suddenly hated him for his thoughts.  I looked over at the picture of Maribel that I took right before I moved to California, when we were in Austin.  “And get the fuck off of my desk,” I added.  “Don’t you have some work you should be doing?”

Even as I sat there, writing off Mark as an insensitive asshole, I couldn’t avoid the fact that he had effectively planted the seeds of doubt in my mind.  The situation was uncomfortable for me.  Maribel and I still made time for each other every day, and we spent our weekends shopping, seeing movies and enjoying the tail end of our twenties.  About halfway through my first year, though, my supervisors started asking me to come in on Sundays to work.  We were approaching our print to film deadlines, and much of the art department was well behind schedule.

The situation frustrated me, as I wasn’t use to having so much of my family time taken away.  Maribel was always so busy during the week that I really relied on our weekends together for reconnecting with her and experiencing all of the affection that went with being married.  In short, the time away from her made me miserable; I felt like I was missing out on our marriage.  But it only got worse.  Football season was nearly upon us at the time, and while I was busy typing and clicking away on our movie for work, Davis starting inviting Maribel out to watch the 49ers play.  It was part of his sports coverage job, and he got sideline passes for the both of them.  He’d write, and she would go along and help.  Some weeks, they’d share bylines for their coverage of the Niners.  She was having a blast doing this, and it nearly broke my heart.

I once made the mistake of discussing my fears with my wife.  “You’re being way too paranoid, and on top of that , you’re being fucking insulting.  Of course nothing’s going on between us,” she said, her eyes beginning to well with tears.  “I mean, my God, how could you possibly say that about me?”

The trouble was, I hadn’t actually laid it all out on the table.  I certainly hadn’t mentioned my infidelity fears, but she had somehow come away from the conversation believing that I had just accused her of the things I secretly feared.  Naturally, I felt like a complete asshole.

“Maribel, I never said that,” I tried to say, hoping to ease some of the pain I had just inflicted.  “I’m just saying that I miss you, I miss the time we used to spend together, and frankly, I am a bit jealous of Davis…erm… Chris.”

She was in tears.  “Just shove it, Alex,” she whispered before retreating to our bedroom.  Ten minutes later, she emerged, dressed to go out.  I tried to ask her where she was going, but she brushed past me and stormed out.  I never mentioned my fears again, and she got over her anger a few days later.  While that episode was enough to allay my fears for the time, I still held my breath every time the phone rang at home.  Every time she had to go back to the office, the fear in the back of my mind crept over me.  There were times when she had to run out and lend Davis laptops, press passes, tape recorders and even times when she had to give him a lift to events.  Every time he called, my heart would ache.  On top of managing to insult my wife over the situation, I had also inadvertently caused her to stop telling me anything about when she would go out with Davis.  This ended up fueling the paranoia even more.  By this time, it felt like she really did have something to hide from me, and it killed me.  It presented an interesting conundrum for me.  I was totally in love with my wife, and trusted her with my life.  I believed her every word and cherished her.  We had been married for two years at this point, and despite all the worry, I loved every moment.  We had some great days where Davis wasn’t even a concern, and when my work schedule finally relaxed, we went back to spending our weekends together.  She would occasionally still catch a 49ers game with Davis, and it felt somewhat insulting that she never invited me to go with her.  I knew there were reasons for all of it, but it still hurt that she never told him “you know what, I want my husband along.  I miss him.”  It just plain hurt sometimes.

Like I said, I feel guilty.  I feel guilty because I brought all of this on our marriage by myself.  My worry and pain caused it, and I feel like I am an asshole for being concerned.  I feel guilty because today, I started our fight.  On this Saturday in November, we are screening the final production reel of our newest feature film for the entire production team.  It’s an in-house screening, but it’s still a formal affair.  I have to go get my tux out of the closet in an hour, but for the time being, I am in the shower with my wife, kissing her passionately, feeling guilty because she felt compelled to apologize to me.  We’ve known about this day for weeks, and when I mentioned it to Maribel, she immediately demanded that I go.  I was supposed to go fishing with a friend of mine from college this weekend, but she insisted that I put off fishing for another weekend. 

“Of course you have to go, silly,” she exclaimed.  “What do you think you’re going to look like when you’ve poured so much time and effort into this movie,  and you don’t even show up for the screening.  That’s almost as bad as missing the premiere.”

She pretty much strong-armed me into going.  On that particular Saturday, we went shopping, picking up shampoo, laundry detergent and other household necessities.  We had just gotten home at half past noon when the phone rang.  Maribel accidentally left her cell phone at home while we were out, and when we walked in, the house phone was ringing.  She ran over to the kitchen to answer the phone, and I walked into the bedroom to check the answering machine.  There were about twenty calls from Davis.  It seemed that he needed a ride out to Santa Barbara to cover something and needed Maribel to give him a ride out there and help him with the coverage for the paper. 

I walked back out of the bedroom, agitated, and sat down on the sofa in the living room.  Maribel walked out of the kitchen, having just hung up the phone.  She looked over at me staring out at the bay.  I know it’s coming.  I know what she’s going to do, yet I am praying that she won’t.  I am hurt, and I know that it’s not going to get better.

“Sweetie,” she starts, “That was Chris.  I need to go help him cover…”

“I know,” I said, interrupting her, rudely.  “I heard the messages on he machine.  Why the hell does he always do this to us?”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, and how it degraded into a shouting-insult match.  I don’t remember what I said exactly, but I did let her know I was pissed off.  After all, she forced me into going to this screening, promised she would be there with me, and that was the only reason I had agreed to go.  How could she back out on me when she was the one who put me up to going in the first place. It wasn’t fair, and I hated it.  That was essentially how she ended up slamming the bedroom door on my face, setting off this entire chain of guilt.

So, I am standing in the shower, kissing my wife.  She is breathtakingly beautiful to me, and I feel ashamed for bringing this upon us.  The water is streaming down on our faces, and I feel compelled to say something.  I pull away from her kiss, and look into her eyes.  She looks back at me, somewhat puzzled.

“I’m sorry, my love,” I say to her.  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”  She nods silently in the shower for a few moments.

“I’m sorry too, Alex.  I’m sorry that I wasn’t very considerate, and I promise that things are going to change.  I didn’t mean to forget about you.”  She hugs me tightly.

The funny thing is that I know things won’t change.  I know that she’s promising change, but I realize that I was unfair on some levels.  I know it was wrong of her to dismiss my fears so easily, but it was wrong of me to be silently suspicious.  The funny thing is that no matter how I feel now, things won’t change.  She’ll still run off to cover football games with him, and I will still have to work Sundays from time to time.  And until we decide to move away from the San Francisco bay area, it will be like this, and I will have to get used to it.

For now, however, I am just grateful to be in love with such a wonderful woman.  I am even more grateful that she is in love with me.  For me, that’s more than enough.  I look back at her, and without another word, I kiss her again.  It’s going to be a great evening.

For Iliana René Limón, the motivation and inspiration behind the last story I intend to write in college.

Revision History

This story took 9 hours to write.  All of the content is complete fiction, yet it in some way represents both the hopes and fears of my relationship with Iliana.  I can only hope that I will one day be lucky enough to one day experience that kind of elation and joy with her.

Special thanks to Jaime Browne, Glenn Huval and Max Hazelrigg for sharing in my joy and being happy for me again.

Aaron Romero,

October 19, 2002

“Someone is talking to me,

Calling my name.

Tell me I’m not to blame,

I won’t be ashamed of love.”

~Neil Young

© 2003 Aaron Romero.
Made with Macromedia.