Secret Life

My wife died the other day and I got very sad. My son says I have to accept it, that we knew it was coming, that she lasted longer than the doctors ever said she would. My son sat in our driveway and cried for 20 minutes after he left our house. I watched him through the curtains in the living room. I stood transfixed, determined not to move before he did. But I did not cry.

Maria meant the world to me. I could never really tell her that. I tried, as much as I could. I gave her presents every year. Toasters, and garden shears and things she needed around the house. I think she appreciated them. I never wrote poetry or told her she was beautiful, but I think she knew. I was there, wasn’t I? I was there for fifty-eight years. I watched her go from a vision in a summer dress to the mother of my children to the person whose hand I hold when we go to the doctor’s office, and I loved it, I did, and isn’t that better than anything I ever could have said to her?

I tried to be honest with her, but how could I ever tell her everything? There’s so much to all of us. So much that we can’t reveal, because, honestly, who would believe it? Who would love us if they knew everything? The truth is that everyone has to have some secrets, and maybe mine are bigger than most, but they’re still just secrets, and I won’t let myself feel guilty about keeping them.

I came to this earth over 200 years ago on a sunbeam borne billions of miles away. I was born on a distant planet named something that can’t be comprehended by the languages of this earth. I belong to a sect of people with an unquenchable need for resources. I joined an elite group of explorers, who were to scour the known universe for planets that would fit our needs, and then conquer them. I was to wipe out all life, send a signal back, and then wait until the harvesters came. It was a glamorous position, and one I took a lot of pride in.

I have abilities far beyond mortal men. I can destroy all life on this planet in a matter of days.

Maria screwed things up. She came and had these eyes and this hair and this way about her that just screwed things up. She made me slow dance with her. She made me sleep outdoors. She made me LOVE those things. She taught me to hum songs and care for people like I never thought people. We didn’t have that sort of intimacy where I come from. Maria fascinated me, and she held me in a sort of suspension that kept me from doing what I’m supposed to do.

But she’s gone now. After my son finally drove off, I went across the front lawn and knocked on my neighbour’s door. “She’s gone!” I declared, as I melted his face with my heat vision.

“There’s nothing left!” I screamed, as I threw a car at the mailman.

As I punched a hole through the chest of the man who sells me newspapers, I kept thinking about her, and the way she’d always iron my shirts for me. I never figured out when she found the time. Even in her final years, when she spent much of the day in bed and sleeping, my shirts were always nicely pressed in my closet. It’s a good thing I’m an alien, I thought, as I flew a tractor-trailer into the ocean. Otherwise, I’d never again have clean shirts. I threw a big rock at some people having a picnic, and smiled.