There was the beginning.
They met one hot July: she, an easy tangle of long limps and blunt-cut locks that seemed to absorb shine from the dullest light; he, with the sweet, dark good looks that fathers warn against and mothers swoon over. They began an uneasy courtship - he was not as strong as he looked, and she was more dominating than she let on. They also lived in a time where women were beginning to see marriage as choice, not duty, and there were times she was convinced that she would never marry. But they did, at last, at a small garden ceremony; she wore no veil, only flowers in her hair, and he wore a frank, satisfied smile that their wedding photo would forever seal.
Two years later they had a child, a girl they named Alecia, or Lexi for short. His work was firmly in the shade of his father's success, and maintaining it took effort, rather than genius. Her work was between her writing and Lexi, and of the former they seldom discussed. He knew parts of her despaired because she wasn't published, but it wasn't a despair he truly comprehended. Do you want to be famous? He'd asked her once, early into their marriage, where her manuscript came back from the publishers, with a brisk, practiced note of apology. And she had only muttered something vague about how writing was her only means to be her. What was that supposed to mean? He didn't know. He only knew there were times she expected him to take over - Lexi, the house, and the other humdrum routines that life could not dispense with - while she locked herself in her study, writing into all hours of the night, writing until her eyes fogged over with fatigue and frustration, writing to the point she could not be touched, not by him, not by Lexi, not by the honest, solid world he thought they had built together.
But for most parts it was a good marriage. He was by nature a patient, nurturing man, and he could never see her as anything but innocent and entrancing. Even her tempers, her moodswings, her 'spells' - they could not soothe the swelling of his heart everytime he saw her smile. Lexi they both loved, but he sensed that her love for Lexi was fair and measured, and had none of the fierceness and impulse he remembered of his own mother. She had a sense of what maternal instinct was, but could not seem to apply it. If it troubled him he never said a word, knowing that she was special, different, and could not be judged like other women.
Even in their intimacy she was able to detach a part of herself, a secret space that he knew existed, but could not breach. If only I didn't know, he had said to her once, after one of their fights. If only I didn't know there are secret parts of you that I could never share, if I were like John or George or Adam who only see their wives as wives - perhaps I would never be unhappy. But you do know, she said, calmer now, her eyes deep like the sea, unfathomable. I do know. And it tortures me when I allow myself to be tortured. He was at his most vulnerable where they were together. This he knew. But his love for her, for Lexi - that was his antidote. His poison was being allowed to only love her on her terms.
The years blurred from one to the next. She finally published a slim volume of short stories, and he was overjoyed by her success. Then the reviews came in, like wayward children who found their way home only to hurt you. The stories, while prettily penned, struck only one note - that of unsubtle tragedy, written to milk the readers for commonplace emotions, said one reviewer. Well-written enough, but the author brought neither perspective nor depth, freshness nor excitment, said another. But surely you didn't expect all the reviews to be great, he gently coaxed. Her answer was the slam of her study room door. Mummy's upset, he told Lexi, who was turning ten in a couple of months. She's always upset, Lexi replied, eyes shadowed with hurt. Why can't she be like other mummys? Now you're just being rude, he said sternly, but his daughter's childish truth hit home.
One night he came home late. His business trip had ended a day earlier, and he was looking forward to seeing Lexi and his wife after ten days away. The house was dark when he walked in, but he saw that the kitchen light was on. He walked towards the kitchen, and as he got nearer, he heard the clink of glasses and laughter. Hers, and Petra's. He frowned, felt the bile of unhappiness rise up from his gut. Petra was a burlesque dancer, and he could not think of a more disturbing influence to have around the house, especially with Lexi. You can be such a bigot, she'd said, her eyes flashing with anger, when he first voiced his concern. And you need to be more of a mother, he'd replied, his voice colder than they both ever remembered. But despite his objections, her friendship with Petra thrived, and he knew this was another instance where her terms would be met, if not obeyed.
Now, he stood outside his kitchen, feeling like a thief in his home, a voyeur, prying into a world that was not his own. She and Petra, sharing a bottle of wine. She and Petra, eyes locked and lingering, laughing in perfect rhythm, her dark hair striking against Petra's light features. She and Petra. When was the last time she was so happy in his presence? She had become a hard-eyed whirlwind, obsessed with writing and publishing, making him and Lexi feel like they were only second best to her ambitions, and here she was, in their home, looking happier and more relaxed than she had ever been. There was a moment of dumb understanding, and then he turned to go.
Did you ever love me? He asked her, as she was packing up the remnants of her life. Lexi he'd sent to his sister's; she did not need to see her own mother leaving them, abandoning her. She gave her long, sad sigh. I thought I did. But you didn't? He needed to know. She was leaving him, but his heart still swell for her. I do love you. But not in the way that would compel passion. I can't explain this, but with you I can only be half the writer I know I am. With you I am the wife and the mother - or I am supposed to be - and all these years I have been torn by guilt and anger and the sense of failure. She stopped and turned to him, a glimmer of that old tenderness surging into her eyes. That's the space you couldn't reach, you see. You never gave me a chance to, he said sadly. It's not like that - it's something you could either see immediately or you don't. She turned away, body wrecked with sobs. And Petra could? His own tears came quick and hot. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. But love is fluid - it comes and it goes and it cannot be reasoned with. I'm sorry. That was her final eulogy, to the death of the good, solid world he thought he had built for them.
And that was the end.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
You Know That Morning
They said I was dead. It wasn’t something that I immediately understood – they didn’t tell me, you see – they merely said it. A statement of necessity, if you will: my life suddenly was concluded with the sentence time of death…
I.
You know that morning? The morning that joined all other mornings in its dismal ordinariness: I woke up and you were gone, and I was thinking how we never talk anymore, and how we’d let our days fold in on us like a puzzle no longer worth solving. I had become a wife – not just yours – but one of many, like a store-bought commodity shelved for practical reasons. I had become a wife you wake up to so you could leave, and the space between us – in bed, while we were out, under the guise of perfect happiness – was growing and growing, consuming us.
Now. Now I’m trying to remember all our other mornings. Before this. Before the car – was it a car, could have been a van, maybe – crashed into mine. I recall that sound, something splintering, something loud, but perhaps it was just my heart breaking, breaking because I knew, I know, I would never have the chance to tell you. I love you, I’m sorry, we’re having a baby.
But my perspectives are warped, unclear, ribboned with fog. I see surgeons in green masks, working like insects – on me? Splotches of red on their great green gowns, forming peculiar patterns, like maps of continents drowned by time. This could have been a scene out of a TV show, couldn’t it? Or a movie. We used to love movies, our Saturday matinee dates at the theatre. I remember you in a jacket that smelt like orange tobacco, and how warm your hands were in the cool dark theatre. Phantom pain – can the heart hurt after it’s stopped beating? The forgotten algebra of our love, now looking like numbers that no longer add up.
Spent firework, dried of sparks. The dark beckons.
II.
You know that morning? My first morning away from all that I knew. My mind raced to make all the connections – how it would have been for me, back home, not here, not in this other place, with its quaintness, its quiet, its trees and houses and lanes forking into nameless hills. I was born to be in a city, you see, even thought we weren’t born into one. Nourished by the heartbeat of urban life and complacent in the anonymity afforded by big-city living, I was awkward and out of my element in the house, your house, which seemed walled in by solitude. The city was my world. It was always awake, attentive, accessible: stores stay open, entertainment is round-the-clock, and I always had somewhere to go.
But then you fell ill. Your voice had sounded so small, so weak, over the phone – ‘The doctor said I don’t have long…’
And with that your death sentence became mine. Suddenly all that I knew was left behind – ‘please come to me’, you pleaded, barter trading my loyalty to you for my life – ‘because you can always go back’ you said, all too conscious your dwindling hours, knowing I could not ignore that, or you. ‘Because we belong together’ you declared when I finally met you, your voice dreamy and calm, while I tried not to notice how gaunt you’d gone, how sickly. ‘Just like when we were kids,’ you muttered one night, your feet like slabs of ice against mine under the sheets – ‘You love me, don’t you?’ you asked suddenly one afternoon, looking across the room at me while I cut up little pieces of bread for you.
Of course I love you. You’re my sister, my twin – the other half of my existence. It’s just that I belong to the city. You don’t – never did. But you knew I was suffering everyday, silently, letting your sickness and your demands and the mind-numbing quiet eat up my insides. ‘I promise I’ll come and see you every week’ I said, while I was packing, your yellow eyes haunting me, tearing into me – ‘I bought enough food to last you until Friday, I’ll come spend the weekend; I could even bring Macy, you’d like her’ – the words tumbled out, I was guilty, but yet my freedom seemed to be the only thing I really cared about at that moment – ‘You know I love you’ – my final declaration, truthful, but glib; your yellow eyes filled with tears.
‘One last drink’ – you said gently, handing me a glass of wine. You only drank Sancerre, before you got ill, because it was our ‘thing’, our tradition – was it Carlucci’s? That little Italian restaurant three streets away from the old church, where you used to run to whenever you were sad. I was packed, nearly ready to leave, my heart tumultuous with the thought of returning home. ‘How do you feel’ – I asked, sipping the wine, feeling like a thief – what have I stolen from you? ‘Like this is all wrong,’ you acknowledged, your hand in mine, gripping with feeble force, sitting very close to me, your body as thin as a twig. What have you stolen from me? I love you, so much – but why does it always feel like you’re constricting me, suffocating me – too much love? You never wanted me to move away, never liked any of my girlfriends, but yet you had always been so angelic, never saying the wrong things, always patient, always loving. ‘I’m sorry’ I said, feeling the guilt escalate, searing me – my god, it was starting to turn into a physical feeling now, my throat was closing around my airways, and I couldn’t breathe. What was happening, Lou?
My vision swam. You leaned in close for an embrace – ‘twins stay together, Lewis’ – you whispered, and you smiled, but I only felt the petering of my heart, and how weak I was, how weak we both were.
And then your voice – thin and dreamy and otherworldly – sped me towards the blinding fold of the dark.
III.
You know that morning? The last morning of my life - how different it turned out to be from the last morning of yours. Yours, and Ian's. One minute you were posing for photographs, picture-perfect in the Spain sunshine: I imagine the pixels might have even captured that salt-sea air, that summery nonchalence holiday-makers are so familiar with. And the next minute? Nature intervened, and the wave swept you both off in a brutal beat of blue. I remember dropping the camera, screaming out your name, screaming for Ian, for somebody, for God - but even as I threw myself into the sea, arms striking against the cold and current, I knew: dead, both of you, lost to me forever.
How long did the search take? It could have been ten minutes, or two hours, or a day. Nothing registered except the blank wash of acid - in my eyes, my lungs, my gut. The search party wore the parched, grim looks of people who dealt too frequently with tragedy. I called out your names, again and again, until my voice gave out.
They found you, eventually, both of you. The ridgid immobile bodies - could they really have belonged to my wife and son?
I couldn't face you in death. I recall your eyes: troubled eyes on an ernest, elfin face, that sort that would only grow weary, never old. Ian had your eyes. You called him your old soul; at seven his eyes carried a certain look of wisdom - unsullied, but unsurprised, as though he'd been here a thousand times before. I recall the moment he was born, screaming, a bloody, vigorous reality of our love - did I tell you how much I love you? Our marriage had endured the different places it could go: the impulses, the boredom, the sacred moments that can bind two people like none other. I recall the times I was too afraid to let on just how much you meant to me, how loving two people as husband and father was nothing like what Hallmark cards said it would be - it was violent, primal, untenable.
Afterwards: there was only the silence. I didn't have the strength to put away your things, so the house remained exactly as it was. The everyday things of your life, Ian's books and clothes and toys, sitting there like dolls on display, waiting waiting waiting. I didn't have strength to cope with the grief of others around me, so I refused to see them. I didn't have the will to work, to wash, to eat, even - days bled quietly into nights, and suddenly I found myself sitting at the edge of the tub, a razor blade in my hand.
The moment blinded me with its clarity. I was going to do this, this deed, and then it would be all over. I laughed at the absurdity of the moment - such a cliché, so much like a movie. This would be my last act, literally, and because I could no longer feel, there wasn't any pain. The crimson rush into the tub reminded me of raspberry sauce - Ian's favourite ice-cream topping, and the colour of the dress you worn on our first date.
I'm sorry I'm late. Daddy's coming, Ian. I felt the pull of eternity, and I fell with the ease of a sleeping child.
I.
You know that morning? The morning that joined all other mornings in its dismal ordinariness: I woke up and you were gone, and I was thinking how we never talk anymore, and how we’d let our days fold in on us like a puzzle no longer worth solving. I had become a wife – not just yours – but one of many, like a store-bought commodity shelved for practical reasons. I had become a wife you wake up to so you could leave, and the space between us – in bed, while we were out, under the guise of perfect happiness – was growing and growing, consuming us.
Now. Now I’m trying to remember all our other mornings. Before this. Before the car – was it a car, could have been a van, maybe – crashed into mine. I recall that sound, something splintering, something loud, but perhaps it was just my heart breaking, breaking because I knew, I know, I would never have the chance to tell you. I love you, I’m sorry, we’re having a baby.
But my perspectives are warped, unclear, ribboned with fog. I see surgeons in green masks, working like insects – on me? Splotches of red on their great green gowns, forming peculiar patterns, like maps of continents drowned by time. This could have been a scene out of a TV show, couldn’t it? Or a movie. We used to love movies, our Saturday matinee dates at the theatre. I remember you in a jacket that smelt like orange tobacco, and how warm your hands were in the cool dark theatre. Phantom pain – can the heart hurt after it’s stopped beating? The forgotten algebra of our love, now looking like numbers that no longer add up.
Spent firework, dried of sparks. The dark beckons.
II.
You know that morning? My first morning away from all that I knew. My mind raced to make all the connections – how it would have been for me, back home, not here, not in this other place, with its quaintness, its quiet, its trees and houses and lanes forking into nameless hills. I was born to be in a city, you see, even thought we weren’t born into one. Nourished by the heartbeat of urban life and complacent in the anonymity afforded by big-city living, I was awkward and out of my element in the house, your house, which seemed walled in by solitude. The city was my world. It was always awake, attentive, accessible: stores stay open, entertainment is round-the-clock, and I always had somewhere to go.
But then you fell ill. Your voice had sounded so small, so weak, over the phone – ‘The doctor said I don’t have long…’
And with that your death sentence became mine. Suddenly all that I knew was left behind – ‘please come to me’, you pleaded, barter trading my loyalty to you for my life – ‘because you can always go back’ you said, all too conscious your dwindling hours, knowing I could not ignore that, or you. ‘Because we belong together’ you declared when I finally met you, your voice dreamy and calm, while I tried not to notice how gaunt you’d gone, how sickly. ‘Just like when we were kids,’ you muttered one night, your feet like slabs of ice against mine under the sheets – ‘You love me, don’t you?’ you asked suddenly one afternoon, looking across the room at me while I cut up little pieces of bread for you.
Of course I love you. You’re my sister, my twin – the other half of my existence. It’s just that I belong to the city. You don’t – never did. But you knew I was suffering everyday, silently, letting your sickness and your demands and the mind-numbing quiet eat up my insides. ‘I promise I’ll come and see you every week’ I said, while I was packing, your yellow eyes haunting me, tearing into me – ‘I bought enough food to last you until Friday, I’ll come spend the weekend; I could even bring Macy, you’d like her’ – the words tumbled out, I was guilty, but yet my freedom seemed to be the only thing I really cared about at that moment – ‘You know I love you’ – my final declaration, truthful, but glib; your yellow eyes filled with tears.
‘One last drink’ – you said gently, handing me a glass of wine. You only drank Sancerre, before you got ill, because it was our ‘thing’, our tradition – was it Carlucci’s? That little Italian restaurant three streets away from the old church, where you used to run to whenever you were sad. I was packed, nearly ready to leave, my heart tumultuous with the thought of returning home. ‘How do you feel’ – I asked, sipping the wine, feeling like a thief – what have I stolen from you? ‘Like this is all wrong,’ you acknowledged, your hand in mine, gripping with feeble force, sitting very close to me, your body as thin as a twig. What have you stolen from me? I love you, so much – but why does it always feel like you’re constricting me, suffocating me – too much love? You never wanted me to move away, never liked any of my girlfriends, but yet you had always been so angelic, never saying the wrong things, always patient, always loving. ‘I’m sorry’ I said, feeling the guilt escalate, searing me – my god, it was starting to turn into a physical feeling now, my throat was closing around my airways, and I couldn’t breathe. What was happening, Lou?
My vision swam. You leaned in close for an embrace – ‘twins stay together, Lewis’ – you whispered, and you smiled, but I only felt the petering of my heart, and how weak I was, how weak we both were.
And then your voice – thin and dreamy and otherworldly – sped me towards the blinding fold of the dark.
III.
You know that morning? The last morning of my life - how different it turned out to be from the last morning of yours. Yours, and Ian's. One minute you were posing for photographs, picture-perfect in the Spain sunshine: I imagine the pixels might have even captured that salt-sea air, that summery nonchalence holiday-makers are so familiar with. And the next minute? Nature intervened, and the wave swept you both off in a brutal beat of blue. I remember dropping the camera, screaming out your name, screaming for Ian, for somebody, for God - but even as I threw myself into the sea, arms striking against the cold and current, I knew: dead, both of you, lost to me forever.
How long did the search take? It could have been ten minutes, or two hours, or a day. Nothing registered except the blank wash of acid - in my eyes, my lungs, my gut. The search party wore the parched, grim looks of people who dealt too frequently with tragedy. I called out your names, again and again, until my voice gave out.
They found you, eventually, both of you. The ridgid immobile bodies - could they really have belonged to my wife and son?
I couldn't face you in death. I recall your eyes: troubled eyes on an ernest, elfin face, that sort that would only grow weary, never old. Ian had your eyes. You called him your old soul; at seven his eyes carried a certain look of wisdom - unsullied, but unsurprised, as though he'd been here a thousand times before. I recall the moment he was born, screaming, a bloody, vigorous reality of our love - did I tell you how much I love you? Our marriage had endured the different places it could go: the impulses, the boredom, the sacred moments that can bind two people like none other. I recall the times I was too afraid to let on just how much you meant to me, how loving two people as husband and father was nothing like what Hallmark cards said it would be - it was violent, primal, untenable.
Afterwards: there was only the silence. I didn't have the strength to put away your things, so the house remained exactly as it was. The everyday things of your life, Ian's books and clothes and toys, sitting there like dolls on display, waiting waiting waiting. I didn't have strength to cope with the grief of others around me, so I refused to see them. I didn't have the will to work, to wash, to eat, even - days bled quietly into nights, and suddenly I found myself sitting at the edge of the tub, a razor blade in my hand.
The moment blinded me with its clarity. I was going to do this, this deed, and then it would be all over. I laughed at the absurdity of the moment - such a cliché, so much like a movie. This would be my last act, literally, and because I could no longer feel, there wasn't any pain. The crimson rush into the tub reminded me of raspberry sauce - Ian's favourite ice-cream topping, and the colour of the dress you worn on our first date.
I'm sorry I'm late. Daddy's coming, Ian. I felt the pull of eternity, and I fell with the ease of a sleeping child.
Epilogue
I am the story that will never fit in. I am the story that needs a vacation spot, that has taken time off from my 9-to-5 search for the meaning of life. I am the story that gets poured into a coffee cup and is left forgotten, cooled by memory and a ten o’clock stupor. I am the story that is desperate to be written, an advertisement for the writer whose mind is a junkyard of sweet-sad chaos. I am the story that lives in the prop-box in a theatre staging morality plays. I am a story leaving on a one-way ticket. I am the story that you see in subway graffiti and random scrawls on park benches. I am the story about a boy, a girl, about the space in between a boy and a girl. I am the story doomed to spend the rest of my life in jackets that don’t quite fit me, that will never quite fit me. I am the story without meaning or mechanics; my soul is out-of-print. I am the story that could cry, and love, and bleed. I am the story that has no title, no past-or-present, and no consequence. I am the story hidden under your bed, beyond your dreams, in the palm of your lover. I am the story of a truncated reality, unseamed by time. I am the story – I am the stories – still waiting to be written.
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