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.