When Vanessa told me she never wanted children I told her we’d have to end our relationship.

And I have felt messed up about that decision ever since—it was back in 2004. I mean, we had been together for four years. 

She didn’t dump me while I was in Iraq writing home those rambling emails, not sure about anything about myself anymore. 

She didn’t dump me when Dad kept mumbling during take-away dinners in the back of his RV about Vanessa’s agency being part of America’s “predatory capitalistic shark tank”. (Yeah, no shit.)

Vanessa shrugged it off and stayed with me. And I did my best to fix stuff in her 2-room apartment in Albuquerque and make myself useful.

 We were planning to get married. 

And then we couldn’t agree on the family thing and, yeah, I said some things to her that were just as bad as my father’s BS. I didn’t mean it, of course. We never do, do we?

And you know, she didn’t seem too ruffled by my diatribes, which I always wondered about afterward. Had she made the same decision in secret—to split? Did she expect me to lose it like that and had already chosen to ignore me, as a mother ignores a loud kid? 

Or was she just being her usual stand-offish self—the thing that I guess had drawn me to her in the first place? I like women who aren’t afraid to stand up for themselves. I really do.

But after Iraq I wanted kids. To settle. 

So I broke up, moved out. And only months later I met Carrie. Which is a whole other story.

But did I make the biggest mistake ever by marrying Carrie and not staying with Nessa? I mean, with Michael’s autism diagnosis, and Emma now with some sort of anxiety condition like her mother? 

Maybe I was a little bit too fast in wanting to show the old man that it was possible to have a family without being a complete jackass and dragging us all over the US all the time; no roots, no stability. And then God nodded and said, ‘Sure, Jonathan—show the world you can do better’.

No. No matter what happened I did want a family. Just not … with so many issues. (Ha, who doesn’t?)

And yeah … if Vanessa and I had had any kids eventually they might have had problems, too, but I can’t imagine Vanessa ever having an anxiety attack about anything. It’s flat-out impossible. 

In Iraq, we used to say ‘remember to stay cool under fire’, to each other—knowing it was a joke because everybody was shit-scared once we got into close combat. You are only cool under fire in movies. 

But I think Nessa would’ve been just that, had she been a soldier. ‘Cool under fire.’

So did I throw a much better life in the toilet by not thinking things through back then, and splitting too early? I was barely 30 and she was 26. She might have wanted family down the line. I could’ve given her a chance if I believed in it.

Today I got an answer. Sort of. And it kinda reminded me of that oddball article, my lovely self-styled high school nerd of a wife obsessed about all weekend—a piece about something called ‘ghost universes’.

Well, don’t worry about the finer details—I don’t—but Carrie says that some science guys say ghost universes are kind of alternate versions of our world that exist at the same time but where things play out differently. Only we can’t really see them.

I beg to differ. I don’t think the science guys know what to look for.

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I gave a ticket today to a driver who turned out to be Vanessa—of all people.

Out near Gila. She was on her way to Phoenix. Driver’s license confirmed it. Even her surname was still the same—Lundy.

I didn’t say anything at first, just business as usual, checking her vehicle for defects and so on. But my mind was racing.

First time in 12 years I had laid eyes on her and she was as beautiful as ever. Blonde like Carrie, but curls … and those dark, serious brows, just visible above her shades. She was also distracted, impatient. 

No other occupants in the car, except plenty of discarded Starbucks paper cups. 

She was late for a meeting with some shareholders, she said. She hadn’t looked at the speed because the road had been free. 

I didn’t give her a hard time, but it felt strange that she didn’t appear to recognize me. I figured, though, that maybe she had other things on her mind than old memories. You usually have that when the police want to talk to you. After checking her car—a big silver-gray Sedan—I decided to try one last tactic before I told her who I was.

“Can I move on now, officer?” she asked before I could say anything.

“Yes… mam. Everything is juuust peaches.” 

Yup, that was my tactic: ‘Juust peaches.’  

Vanessa and I used to say that to each other all the time back when we lived together. Something silly she picked up from her brother, I think. He was into standup comedy, always saying it with some foreign accent or other.

I had taken my shades off before I gave her back her license. I tried a smile.

She looked at me through her shades, without flinching, just as she had when I first pulled her over. 

Then she received her license without a word and drove off.

I let her.

*

Maybe things would have worked out ‘if only’.

With Vanessa and me, I mean.

And I still feel bad about some of the fights I started, instead of just respecting her decision. I can be an ass like that. At least I could back then. I’d like to think I’m getting better at not being an ass, but you have to ask Carrie about that.

Anyway, maybe I could have had an easier time all around, with easier kids—if I had had them with Nessa. Maybe not. 

But for sure, I could have been with a wife who may not have all of Carrie’s heart but doesn’t have scars on her arms either. 

And that would have been better, wouldn’t it? 

Maybe. 

That little troll in the back of my mind has been telling me ‘maybe’ for 12 years.

But I think it finally moved out today.

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JON, April 2016

End of “Ghost Hearts” part II

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Next up: EMMA

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Cover photo by Andrej Nihil on Unsplash

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