Until by Timmothy B. Mccann Page B

I don’t know how to work. You shouldn’a did me like this, Jerry. Jerry, I’m sorry for what I did to you all those years. I’m so sorry, Jerry,” she wailed with a voice full of remorse and pain. “Just please come back.”
    Drew glanced at Mr. Douglass as he rubbed his trembling callused hands together like a raccoon and looked at the ground.
    â€œHow long has she been doing this?”
    â€œAlmost every day since your dad died. I always come by here to see if she needs me to run by the store or anything, and sometimes she’ll let me in and everything is fine. And then other times . . . well, she is like this,” he whispered, and looked up at Drew.
    Time and a bimonthly visit with a counselor had dampened the loss of Jerry Staley. Time and the bimonthly visit had made it bearable for Judith to learn to live without him and get over the guilt. She had not married for love. She had married for security. Once, as a teenager, Drew had walked in and heard her say on the phone, “How do you leave a good man? If a man is sorry, it’s easy. But what do you do when he’s good?” Drew had never fully understood what she was talking about until as an adult he saw how she looked at Mr. Douglass.
    At her advanced age, Judith Staley took a driving course to learn how to drive her husband’s emerald Buick Electra and also put together a card-playing group, which rotated houses each Thursday and Saturday night. And every afternoon, after she watched “General Hospital” and “All My Children” back to back she and Mr. Douglass would drive, sing old Motown hits, and talk about yesterday. While she felt guilty because she had never been true to Jerry Staley, the pain lessened when she learned for the first time in her life it was all right to be true to herself.
    Drew parked in front of the fresh-cut headstone with Felicia’s name as the rain blew sideways. He turned off his motor and thought back to the first time he saw her. Therewas no magic. Not even a spark. He had walked downstairs from an appointment with an accountant on Valentine’s Day. It was a few minutes before five, and as he’d walked through the secretarial pool toward the door, he’d noticed that every woman had a bouquet of flowers or a box of candy from her lover—except for the lady in the thigh-high yellow skirt. She’d had a picture of her man, but no gifts. “Child, you all know how Zack is. I bet you anything he sent them to my old department. He’s so absentminded.” Drew could hear her from across the room, and as he passed her desk he could see the hurt in her eyes as he and the accountant headed out the door.
    Shaking his head to dust away the memory, Drew noticed the rain was falling in thick splats and he reached in the backseat to pull out the weekly gift to his beloved. Gazing at it, he was again pulled back to that fateful Valentine’s Day. He’d decided that night that he would not spend the evening alone, so he’d gone out and by chance he’d seen Felicia again. That night had proven to be their first date. After they’d left the club, Drew had parked in front of her home and they had talked about everything imaginable deep into the night. And then the topic of the conversation had switched to eternal love and she’d mentioned how Paul and Linda McCartney had never slept in separate beds in over twenty years of marriage. She also mentioned how Joe Di Maggio had continued to have flowers sent to the tomb of Marilyn Monroe years after her death.
    â€œCan you imagine loving someone that much? So much you want to give them flowers every day . . . forever?” And then she’d looked at him and said, “Drew, that’s how much I want to be in love with someone one day. For just once, I’d like to be in love so much it hurt. Until it didn’t make any sense. Know what I mean?”
    It was then that he’d