Isabella Black walked into the living room of her childhood home, her hand instinctually moving to the light switch beside the door. Realizing the early morning light allowed enough light to stream through the glass doors, she decided against it. Instead she took off her jacket, shivering from the contrast of the outside winter weather to the sheltered heat inside of her parent’s home. She carelessly tossed her bag onto the mail table, debating whether to turn off her cell, but knowing no one would call her at such an early hour, she decided to leave it as was.
Wondering if her parents were up yet, Belle crept up the stairs, listening for any type of movement or noise. There was silence for a moment or two until Belle could hear laughter coming from John and Marlena’s room.
The top floor of the Penthouse was almost completely dark, the sunlight hidden, aside from a few flickering lights inside of her parents room. Suddenly realizing what was going on, Belle blushed, knocking gently on the bedroom door.
“Mom, Dad, it’s Belle. I don’t wanna interrupt you or anything, I know it is early, but …”
A continuation of laughter flowed through the crack in the bottom of the door and although somewhat disgusted, Belle couldn’t help but smile. After all, this was why she had come home in the first place. A school assignment had never seemed so tempting as this one did and she was thrilled to get started on it. She knew the day after New Year’s Eve was probably the wrong time to come, especially so early, but she had been so elated from the evening with Shawn the night before that she had been up and out by five in the morning.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her mother’s gentle voice. “You can come on it, sweetie. Your father and I were just-” Marlena was cut off by a whispered comment from John and the laughter began again. “We’re just watching a movie. Uh, an early movie. Come on in.”
Belle walked into the bedroom and bit down on her lip to control her laughter. The entire room was demolished. Clothes were thrown across the entire room, empty champagne glasses left next to vacant bottles. As Belle surveyed the room, her eyes settled upon the television and she burst out in fits of giggles.
“Fertilizer?” she asked, looking at her parents. “Funny, Shawn and I watched the same thing a few weeks ago.” Before allowing her parent’s to realize the similarity, Belle continued to speak. “Anyway, I’m sorry to barge in like this. First off, Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year, sweetheart,” John smiled. “Did you have a good night? You’re in early.” He looked over at the clock and cocked his eyebrow. “Very early.”
Belle turned away from her father, only catching Marlena’s eye. She grinned and nodded her head, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Uh huh. I just got in, actually. You know, late night, all that stuff,” she replied, nervously, “Ok, so anyway, I have a project due in a month or so for my Human Relations class. We can do it on anything really, the subject was extremely broad. I was wondering if I could do it on the both of you. About your life together. Your past. I know some things might be personal, but no one but my professor will read it. The main reason I really wanted to do it is because I wanted to know your life together. I know a lot already, but I don’t know, I’m just interested.”
Marlena held out her hand so Belle would take it. She obliged and squeezed her mother’s hand in return. “Belle, I’m honored. I’d love to do it.” She turned to her husband, her eyes wide with excitement. “You in, honey?”
“For a chance to remember my life with you? Always,” he grinned, leaning over to kiss her. He turned to Belle, taking the covers partially off of himself. “Belle, why don’t you let your mother and I get dressed. We’ll be downstairs in a second.”
“Okay!”
After Belle had shut the door, Marlena began to get up before John tackled her onto the bed, pinning her down against the mattress. “You hear that? We’re interesting,” John grinned, nuzzling Marlena’s neck.
She laughed, rolling out from under him. “If you do this to me now, we’ll never get downstairs. I need to shower, tell Belle I’ll be down in a few.”
John only smiled before shaking his head. “I’m going to shower with you.”
“John, no! Come on, there is no time for that.” He began to tickle her, before Marlena finally broke free of his grasp. “Fine,” she laughed, “but don’t you dare tell your daughter this for her project! Her professor might call the cops to come and arrest us for-for I don’t know some sexual felony or whatever.”
“Oooh,” John grinned, pulling Marlena to her feet, “speaking of handcuffs and sexual felonies …”
**
“Okay, so what do you want to know?” Marlena asked, curling her feet underneath her on the couch. She settled against the cushions, a steaming mug of black coffee in her hands, leaning up against John, comfortable in her morning attire of Victoria’s Secret silk pajamas.
“I guess start from the beginning. How you met and everything since then.”
John wrapped his arm around his wife. He gazed at his daughter and smiled, realizing just how much she looked like her mother. “Belle that’s been a long time. But the first day I met your mother will always seem like yesterday. She was beautiful. She had that horrible 80’s hair and these horrendous clothes …”
Marlena stared at him, smacking him on the arm. “Jerk. And besides that wasn’t the first time. The first time was when you came to see me as a patient. You see your father had just had plastic surgery. His face was all bandaged and he had no idea who he was. I found him to be such a fascinating case.”
John laughed. “Yes, all I was to your mother was some fascinating case,” he mocked. “Well, anyway, the first time I saw her was in the hospital and just looking at her, I knew it was love at first sight. It’s rather hard to believe in that kind of thing. How can you ever really love someone when you know nothing about them? I knew your mother though. I knew that she was an amazing person, I knew that if I didn’t speak to her or have the chance to love her, I’d never actually feel whole. When we met, she gave me everything I had ever wanted. She agreed to help me find out about my past and she traveled with me to places she probably shouldn’t have,” John smiled, looking over at his wife.
Marlena’s eyes were filling with tears as he spoke of their past and she took his hand in her own. Their eyes locked for a moment, a look Belle had seen many times before. It was a look of love that no one but them could quite understand and Belle sat back against the couch, not wanting to push them to continue. It was comforting to see them like this, in their most vulnerable moments. The gaze broke between them and John turned back to Belle, grinning.
“Your mother was stubborn, not that anything has changed. But as stubborn as she was, she was a saving grace. We did a lot of searching in West Virginia; that is where we went to find out about my past. There was one night though that everything changed. I was about to shower, when the phone rang. I ran out to get it and your mother was standing there watching me from behind.”
“His shirt fell from his shoulder,” Marlena continued, quietly. “I saw the tattoo and I thought that he was Stefano. There were memories, signs, things like that that led me to think that, aside from the tattoo, of course. I had really started to fall for him. He was gorgeous,” she blushed, “but he was so innocent. And when I thought he was Stefano, I hated myself. I was falling in love with someone who I thought had hurt my family. After he kissed me the first time, I smacked him.”
“The first kiss I could ever remember and I get hit in the face,” John said, shaking his head. “I didn’t think I wanted her after that.”
Belle laughed. “So what happened?”
“Well, we were water rafting. That was a nightmare!” John replied, rolling his eyes. “Your mother got knocked unconscious and not to mention soaking wet. So I had to take off my shirt to give it to her. Seeing her in my clothes though, it melted my heart. It made me feel as if she was mine and I knew in that moment I had truly fallen in love with her. I had always known, but it was then that I knew I needed her, that even with no past, she would give me all I needed, all that mattered.”
“John reminded me a lot of Roman. At first I thought it was because I missed Roman a lot. I had never felt feelings for another man after he had died and with your father, I tried to make myself believe that I was just projecting what I missed about Roman onto John. I soon realized it wasn’t my imagination, however. John began to order the same things as Roman. He started to talk like him and we even fought about the same things, the kind of things Roman and I would always fight about. And then one day, in the middle of the afternoon, I found a briefcase.”
Belle stared at her parents, bewilderment written all over her face. “What are you talking about? What was in it?”
Both Marlena and John smiled. She held out her right hand to him and he took it willingly, their hands locking as if the next moment in the timeline of their life would join them together; and it did. It was the beginning of forever.
“Something that was about to change the lives we thought we knew. It was a briefcase from the surgeon who had done reconstruction on my face. Inside there was a picture of what I looked like before my surgery. Marlena found it. There was a picture of Roman. When your mother told me, I was in complete shock. The fact that this woman who I had fallen in love with was my wife, was astonishing to me. But I guess we found what we came for. We found out who I was.”
Marlena looked at John, her hand caressing his cheek. She spoke more to her husband than her daughter, although Belle was not one to mind. It touched her heart to see her parents like this and she leaned back on the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest.
“When John and I returned home, it was the most comfortable thing in the world. It was like this all new familiar feeling but the same as well. Making love,” Marlena blushed, “was different. There seemed to be so much more passion and I realized that I loved your father more than I had ever loved anyone. Even though we thought he was Roman, I loved him more than ever. While we were trying to get your father’s memory to come back to him of his life as Roman-“
“We fell more and more in love,” John finished. “A short time after I came back however, tragedy hit.”
“Was it Stefano?” Belle asked with curiosity.
“No. Your mother got a call that one of her patients was out on a ledge. Marlena went and tried to help. She tried to climb out there with her patient but she fell.”
Belle gasped, her eyes wide as she gazed at her mother. “Was it bad?”
John, who had been focusing on his daughter, turned to Marlena. His eyes soft, his voice tender, he ruffled his finger against her cheek. “She was in a coma. I was devastated,” he whispered. “I thought I was going to love her forever and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to deal with the fact that I might have lost her forever. I sat by her bed day and night, hoping and praying she would come around. I was on my way out of her room when she called my name.” John smiled in remembrance, pulling his wife closer. “It was the sweetest words I ever could have heard. Roman. So plain, so simple, but coming from Marlena, so beautiful. That was one of the happiest moments of my life, the moment she woke up.”
“Wow, it sounds so much like a love story,” Belle breathed.
Marlena laughed. “Your father tried to make it that way. He came back that night wearing a tuxedo, carrying champagne. He proposed to me that night. We planned to get married again in a perfect ceremony. And it was.”
John looked at Marlena, smiling widely. “Think I can talk about the honeymoon?” He winked.
“Um, no thanks,” Belle responded. “I’m not really interested in your love life, you know? So what happened next?”
“I guess the next important event would be Orpheus, huh?” Marlena said quietly.
John stroked her hair tenderly, placing a delicate kiss upon her forehead. “Doc, if you don’t want to get into it-“
“No,” she cut him off, “it’s fine. It was hardly the worst thing we have been through. And it’s important to the past.”
She looked at Belle, standing up to stretch her legs. She walked over to the table stand, pouring herself a glass of water. She took a long drink before continuing, walking to the window to avoid any contact. Both John and Belle watched her, intrigued by her sudden change, curious by her near future actions.
“Before Roman died, he worked in the ISA. Orpheus worked with him and while on a case, Orpheus’ wife came to warn them of any danger. Roman, thinking it was the enemy, shot and killed his wife. He wanted revenge, so he kidnapped me, faking my death. After a lot of sorrid events, your father found out I was alive and so he came after me. He went to an airfield where my plane was scheduled to leave and-and he watched the plane blow up,” Marlena said softly.
“Oh my God, Dad, that must have been horrible.”
John stood up, walking to where Marlena stood, her back to him. He wrapped his arms around her waist, letting his head settle between the crevice of her neck and the soft texture of her hair. His breath tickled her neck as he spoke, her body relaxing in his arms.
“It was worse,” he said quietly. “Marlena was everything to me. Waking up beside her, falling asleep next to her, it was all I had ever needed, ever wanted. When I thought she was dead before, I never had time to let it sink in, but I did this time. I thought I would die, I wanted to die,” he emphasized. “I didn’t know how to live without her, breathe without her. I figured with her dead, I would soon die too. I tried though. For Sami, for Eric, for Carrie. With each new day, I guess I just learned to live.”
“You both are so strong,” Belle replied with admiration. “Mom, how did you escape?”
Marlena turned, staring at her daughter, tears building up once more. As her life flashed before her eyes, she felt an overpowering wave of emotion wash over her, no longer holding the tears back.
“Oh, Belle,” she whispered, covering her hand with the back of her hand, before swiping at her tears.
Unable to suppress any feelings, she quickly walked to her youngest child, wrapping her arms tightly around her. Belle smiled up at her father, who stood behind them, reassuring her mother.
“Mom, we can stop if you want.”
Marlena released herself, shrugging off the toll her emotions had taken on her. “No, I’m all right. Anyway, I awake one day and I found myself in a small hut on an island. I managed to get myself onto a plane and found my way back to Salem. And then the night I got back, I went to the docks …”
The Jarlena Journal 