Improbable Love

He: A brilliant computer and network hardware engineer in his early 50s, a widower who recently lost his wife to cancer. Neither tall nor short, but athletically built and active in sports. Not classically handsome, but charming with his dark brown eyes, chiseled jaw, sensual lips, and thick wavy salt-and-pepper hair.

She: A recently divorced successful restaurateur, a petite beautifully curved woman in her late 40s. Not beautiful but pleasant to the eye, with a slightly hooked nose, small but voluptuous mouth, large hazel eyes, and reddish-brown colored hair.

*****

He stopped to observe a small crab running to the water. When he moved closer, the crab dug itself into the sand and quickly disappeared. Fascinating, he thought. But in this peaceful beautiful place, everything was fascinating to him. Life itself seemed endlessly fascinating.

He was walking on the beach of a Caribbean resort, to which his daughters had brought him six weeks after his wife died of cancer. They thought he needed to change the environment and grieve away from the hospital they’d battled in a malpractice lawsuit and the home where his wife had been slowly dying for five months. Everything in the house, the street, and their small Californian town reminded them of her. After all the rituals of decency (40 days of mourning), his grown-up and financially independent daughters one day announced at breakfast, “We are all going to the Caribbean for a much-needed rest!” He went with their flow; for the last five months he was so consumed with his wife’s disease that he trusted his two daughters to run his and his youngest son’s lives without questioning their choices. They really knew best, at least most of the time.

It was their third day on the island, and he has worked out a routine of long lonely walks on the beach in the morning. Most other times, the kids either joined him or came up with activities they all could share. He could see through what they were doing: When his wife had collapsed and was taken to the hospital for the fateful diagnosis, he had a stroke that temporarily paralyzed the left side of his body. His girls were the ones who nurtured him back to health while also taking care of their mother, frequently telling him, “We can’t lose both parents at the same time, please do what we tell you.” They were bossy, those two beautiful young women he raised, but in a good and caring way, and he was their obedient and willing patient. Together, they restored his health within weeks, and the only thing that occasionally reminded him of the stroke was sudden tingling in his left thumb.

On the island, he liked getting up early in the morning when the kids were still asleep, for his alone time. He felt the need to reflect on and heal from the last months of his life. Taking his walk, he was basking in the cool rays of the rising sun, enjoying the ocean breeze. He was slowly walking on the edge of the water, letting the waves wash over his legs, completely immersed in watching the sand shifting under his bare feet, just like he did it when he was a kid. The ocean was different from the lake he went to every summer growing up, but the waves shifted the sand the same way everywhere. Watching them without raising his head, not looking around, he could walk the long beach alone in any direction uninterrupted for hours. And now, he was completely content in the moment.

“Blin,” he suddenly heard a surprised and frustrated voice of a woman he unexpectedly bumped into. “Nu nado zhe! Takoi ogromny plyazh, i nate…!” ("Damn! I can’t believe it! Such a huge beach, and still…!")

Before he even registered that she was speaking Russian, he automatically said, also in Russian, “Sorry! Indeed, what are the odds? I really am sorry!”

Perplexed by the run-in and embarrassed at the same time, he made sure she was unharmed and started to walk away. Then it suddenly clicked in his brain, and he turned around, to face the woman, whose smile suggested she was also perplexed and amused at the same time. There was something fleetingly familiar in that smile...

“Are you Russian?” he asked, shocked by his own boldness. It was a loaded question, given the realities of the recent Russian aggression against Ukraine. You’d never know who you could offend with the question.

“Ukrainian, actually,” she said, and his heart sank. It was painfully obvious, as his daughters always said, he wore all his emotions on his sleeve. She noticed and immediately gave him a way out, “But one of those Ukrainians who speak Russian as their first language. My parents immigrated to America from Kharkov in the early 1990s. I was a teenager. And you?”

“Jewish, actually. Of a Soviet variety,” he uttered a prefab answer, adding, “So, Russian speaking too.”

“Oh, I see. My grandmother was Jewish, from Irpin,” she said, referencing a small town near Kyiv that recently became front-page news all over the world because of Russian atrocities.

“No kidding?” he exclaimed, again surprised by the coincidence. “My mother was from Irpin, evacuated as a little girl to Central Asia during the Second World War.”

That was a good sign, she thought, as most pro-Putin Russian immigrants still called it “The Great Patriotic War.”

“Wow!” she exclaimed, “Who would have thought! Nothing coincidental here, is it?”

He was just as surprised. “Was it your maternal grandmother?” he asked.

“Yes, she was.”

“Then you are Jewish too!” he exclaimed excitedly.

“Yes, believe me, I know,” she confirmed, and they both laughed. “Who would have thought that in these crazy times it would be easier to admit you are a Jew than Russian or Russian speaking, right?”

“Yes, especially for people like me,” he admitted. “I cannot claim any Ukrainian heritage.”

“Wrong,” she objected cheerfully. “If your mother is from Irpin, you are Ukrainian too!”

“I guess you are right. Maybe I should claim Ukrainian as my identity. We, poor Russian Jews in America, have always been struggling with identity: Not Jewish enough for the American Jews, and not Russian enough for Russian Americans.”

“But too Jewish for everyone else!” she added, trying to add levity with an in-tribe joke. “Especially those who know of Jewish space lasers!”

“Tell me about it! I designed those lasers!” he said.

“What?? I didn’t know George Soros was so young!”

“Ah, George Soros only sponsored the lasers,” he corrected her, taken in and going along with the banter. “I was the one who actually designed them and put them into space, on Soros’ money!”

“Oh wow,” she whistled, impressed. He couldn’t tell if she was sarcastic.

“But to be serious,” he said, “I was one of those computer engineers who worked on the Soviet satellite communication program in the late 1980s, and we also launched lasers to space.”

“Oh wow,” she said again, this time clearly impressed but also a little embarrassed. She started to draw on the sand with her right foot, hiding her face. Then she lit up and said, “So, there actually are Jewish lasers in space?”

“Of course!” he was grateful for another save. “Haven’t you seen Star Wars?”

“I actually haven’t,” she replied. “Never understood all the fuss about it.”

As an avid science fiction fan, he was dumbfounded. Here he was, just starting to like this woman… But he couldn’t even imagine being with someone who didn’t appreciate his interests. One was enough.

He suddenly felt awkward and lost for words, when she added, “Just kidding. I absolutely love Star Wars, and Star Trek as well. Don’t ask me to quote anything, though, I’m just an appreciative viewer.”

“Phew,” he said with an exaggerated relief. “I’m a huge fan of both, and anything science fiction. Give me a utopia or a dystopia, any time of the day, and I’ll just gobble it all up!”

They both laughed. Standing there on the edge of the water, they liked this exchange and each other’s wits. Afraid that this fragile new connection may break, he asked carefully, “Were you going somewhere? Would you like to walk together?”

“Nope and absolutely, yes,” she said, giving him that familiar smile again. They started walking along the beach together.

“So how are you here, on this beautiful island?” he asked.

“Ah, just needed a break after a nasty divorce. Proverbial new beginning, I guess.”

“Oh, I’m really sorry,” he said, feeling awkward again. But also relieved that she was not married.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” she objected. “My ex cheated on me for years and when I found out he had a second family in a town 30 miles away, I sued his ass off for half of everything he had. Enough for me to live without ever needing to work again.”

“Oh wow,” he said, “He must be a rich bastard.”

“Too rich, he’s a movie producer, rich even after the divorce, and still a bastard,” she confirmed. “But enough about me. What brought you here?”

“My kids,” he said, smiling. “They hover over me, ever since my wife died of cancer…”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said, touching him by his elbow. He liked her warm, caring touch.

“As they say, it’s not your fault,” he said, smiling at her gently and patting her hand wrapping his elbow, signaling it should stay there for gentlemanly support. She didn’t withdraw and he felt happy. He also marveled at how much easier it was at their age, to both disclose personal information and initiate physical contact. Everything seemed sincere and natural, no stupid games young people play. Or maybe it wasn’t the age, but just her? She seemed so easy on her feet, so open and welcoming. He decided to push it a little more, “Would you like to join us for breakfast at the cafeteria?”

“Us?” she asked, to confirm.

“Yes, my two adult daughters and a teenage son,” he said. “They would definitely not let me go for breakfast alone, always cling to me like they are toddlers.”

“I would love to,” she said easily. “I hate eating alone, have been doing too much of that lately.”

“You have no kids?” he asked, and immediately regretted it, “Sorry if I’m prying.”

“It’s fine, really, not your fault,” she returned his earlier line, waving his concern off with her left hand. “It’s the bastard, my husband. He kept telling me he never wanted to have kids, meanwhile making two on the side.”

“That bastard!” he said, again relieved and impressed with her openness and honesty. She must be liking him too, he thought, otherwise why would she tell him all these things?

They shared a lot more information with each other while walking on the beach. It turned out that they lived in neighboring towns in California and both were thinking about selling their houses. “Too many bad memories!” they exclaimed almost at the same time.

By breakfast time, they both knew this meeting was fateful. He was a little anxious about introducing her to his kids. Surprisingly, they were all supportive and sometimes a little overly enthusiastic, the girls in particular. Knowing how hard and unhappy his marriage had been and noticing how taken he seemed to have been by this interesting woman who spoke his language, they tried to keep up the conversation by asking her pointed questions. They also told her great stories about their father where he inevitably came across as the best dad in the world. At the end of breakfast, they insisted to take all meals together, and started planning out shared adventures to include her. She didn’t seem surprised, it all flowed naturally, and by the end of their 10-day vacation they all became inseparable. Some people even complemented them on how beautiful they were as a family. “If only they knew,” he thought to himself, trying not to dwell on the last 20-25 years of his life.

On the last evening in their tropical paradise, he invited her to a secluded part of the island he had stumbled upon earlier, on one of his alone walks. It was fenced off by brush and palm trees and had a small private beach where he hoped no one would disturb them. He brought a picnic basket, good wine, and a big blanket. While she was swimming in the ocean riding the waves and squealing with delight like a little girl, he started the fire and set up the picnic blanket. As she came out of the water, wrapped a towel around herself and sat down to face him near the fire, he was struck by how beautiful she looked in the warm night setting of the fire light and bright stars above the calm ocean waters. She gave him her humble smile again and it finally registered with him: In that moment, she looked exactly like his long-lost first love, first wife and best friend, who had disappeared many years ago. He put his right hand on his chest, as if trying to keep his heart from jumping out. His shock was obvious on his face, as she asked him, “What’s wrong, honey? Are you alright?” His daughters had already filled her in on his stroke and she looked genuinely concerned.

“Nothing, my love,” he laughed. “You can’t even imagine how long I had been waiting for you.” He said it in Russian, looking straight into her eyes, and she knew exactly from which Soviet movie he quoted this famous line. “Sounds cheesy, I know, but it’s true,” he added.

“Oh yeah? How long?” she asked, chuckling with delight. “I mean, we just met like a week ago!”

“All my life,” he said seriously. “Too long for one man… and I am never letting you go.”

“Good then, I’m not going anywhere,” she gave him that bright smile again and added, “Well, we’ll have to leave this place tomorrow but…”

And they started to plan their future life together.