Archive for » 2010 «
Well, for starters, you should visit the place that you never do- that’s the gym” he said, looking up from his wrinkled copy of “The Week”.
She stood there, the wet dish in her hand dripping soap suds onto her gloves into her sleeves.
“Well you asked,” he said, now getting pissed it was going to become an argument. She always had to do it, ask the question to which there was no right answer. And even if there was, she always found it so unconvincing or blatant. “Goddamn,” he mumbled and slammed down his magazine. “Here we go again.” As the tears started to roll down her face, it made him cringe more, somewhere inside.
In truth, he couldn’t bear to see her cry. Sometimes she used that as a weapon. But at that time, it just seemed that it did not matter to him much.
He walked to the TV, switched it on and shouted over a commercial for Baby wipes. This was all just a mistake. You want me to do, what you feel like doing, you want me to say, what you want to Hear. In truth, you just wanted a Dog, not a Husband.
She stared at the wall with glassy eyes. It just made him more angry.
Standing over the sink full of dishes, she touched the back of her hand to her forehead and turned away from him. He knew she was doing it so he couldn’t see her shiver and her eyes tearing.
It didn’t matter. He knew her well enough. Or that’s what he thought he did. He always had a way to look at life at a telescopic level, his rationality ruling over emotions or microcosm of feelings.
“Oh fuck this,” he said, knowing he’d never win. “What the hell am I supposed to say to you? How the hell do I get out of these ridiculous situations you set up? It’s like, all I want is some peace and quiet when I get home from work and you’re not happy unless there’s an argument.”
Next to his shoulder on a shelf was a Hummel figurine he’d bought her for their anniversary. He didn’t know why he threw it until after it shattered against the wall. He felt no better. He missed his whole life that he gave up and for what, he thought. He missed them all, his friends, his social life. His whole life hurt. It never stopped. Sometimes he could forget about it for a while. But it never went away completely. It left him helpless and hating the life that surrounded him.
She flinched at the sound of her breaking gift. It made him hate her more.
It was all about control. She was turning into a goddamned shrew and he was not going to be a mindless lump. He’d show her. He would not turn into a dog that she wanted for as her pet.
When she gasped, as if his words were punches, he knocked over the kitchenette table and she held her hands over her mouth.
He knew he would have to hit her if he stayed so he grabbed his car keys off the counter. Why the hell had he gotten married in the first place? It was the “buy the cow” scenario his best friend told him about that got him in to this mess. Now he was attached to someone who would never understand what he wanted in life and couldn’t help him get it.
It was a mistake. He’d fix it. There were people who understood him. There were things he enjoyed doing. There were things he resorted to for his escape.
He thought she would have hated it when he went there because he felt good there. She didn’t want him to do anything that made him happy.
He told her not to wait up for him. He told her she looked like a fucking scullery maid kneeling on the floor and crying, and what the hell did she think she was, Cinderella? And he was proud of himself for thinking of the analogy. At least one of the guys would find a way to laugh at that.
When he slammed the door and her sobbing faded behind the metal and wood what pissed him off most is he was sure she had no idea what a huge favor he was doing her by leaving.
He wanted to paint the colors of the sunset in the dancing rivers. With his father beside him, he felt like a superhero though he could not walk much with a virus in his legs. And his hands made up for that, for the fingers danced in the canvas when he was happy, stroked higher when he wanted to run or just laid still when he was tired.
He and Tom, his father, used to sit by the lake every evening or most of his days, otherwise marked by the stillness in his legs. He never had felt the earth on his toes, they said he was one of the lucky few who had to rest well for they have to make long journeys.
They used to sit by the dock down the lake. They counted the stars as they slowly emerged from the blankets of grey, orange, and purples. He wanted to capture each of that hue on his canvas, and take that moment with him forever. He would not have minded if the universe could have ended just then, for there is no where else he wanted to be and that was not a moment when he felt like a cripple. He would trail his numbed toes through the waters and watch the reflection of a dreamy sky in its ripples. He felt alive in his legs then and accepted and celebrated them in all its glory.
Tom used to get some tea and sometimes played his tune on the strings, making the evening more beautiful than ever. He used to think his father as a genius with nothing impossible for him. In his jacket, that Tom wore everyday for this occasion, he looked peaceful and content. The jacket belonged to his mother, Tom’s wife, who gave it to him before she slipped from this world. And with the jacket snugged on to Tom’s shoulders, it reminded him of the way she used to stand beside him with her soft tiny hands, as a blanket of comfort that he missed now so dearly.
Tom loved her much, guess, too much.. and no matter what he did to fix it, his eyes could never hid it and no matter how many times Tom and his son spent in the evening together, or how many sunsets came and went, his soul had left with hers and only a tiny piece remained, that piece belonged to his son and always would. Tom’s heart was in nothing that he did, except those evenings when he used to play his music by the ripples in the lake. That’s why he longed for them so, just to know Tom was at peace in this world, if only for a time. Tom had tried, he knew, to sort through the thoughts he had, but there was something changed in his mind, something had just died in him.
Tom’s gone now, and left him and everything and everyone behind, to be with his mother – the only place he truly belonged . He misses him, his songs, his jacket.The lake seems so lonely now, but every evening he still pulls through in his wheel chair down to dock, slips his socks off and soaks his toes in the lake. He trails his feet through the water lightly and pretends that he can see the reflection of Tom’ smiling face amidst that of the sunset’s.
He smiles as the wind blows gently across his cheek and he knows, by the way it picks the fallen leaves up and tosses them into the sky, that Tom is truly happy now.
They rested, celebrated, found each other all over again in a cheap motel room that seemed as surprised in the hues of pink and magenta of their shadows.
She leaned closer to the side of the bed, lazy with the darkness looming in the curtains of the room. He was spinning verbal menageries like the spider on the corner with its cobwebs of reason and imaginations. The words swirled with their cigarette smoke, dissolving in the rings of air, humidity and underlying innuendos, dancing across the hazy air like a perched dancer on an invisible boulevard.
He had been away all weekend and most of the time that spanned through it; she felt like she would burst in her own bubble of solitude and loneliness of chaos in her head. And now she sat here watching his theatrical montage of words and smoke mixing together.
He speaks in turquoise, cerulean, yellows… whiskey amber, and delectable embellishment, each breath laced with nicotine and lucid dreams. Every day is a void canvas and a new paint-brush of dynamite; somehow the paint always drips, and he lights the fire in her head, each day every day.
For him, it was not a matter of a ploy, or for his own catharsis. He was his own character, poised, comic, tragic and poignant, all at the same time… he is words with wonder coated in a fabulous thin candy shell.
And he has this lousy habit of making people fall in love with him.
He didn’t know about the weekend she’d had. He did not know that she had just lost her Enzo, her dog , her companion and the car was a reckless thing on that lousy Sunday Morning. Enzo was a hyperactive silly dog running across the streets, chasing squirrels dropping from the fall trees .All it took was a screech to bring her perfect world to an end.
He didn’t know how she thought she might be going crazy. How she had read that dogs are the best friends and people mourn their dog’s death more than the death of their peers or folks. How she had not eaten well ever since and was clinging on to her shards of reasoning, failed and discarded.
There was a quiet moment. Not an awkward silence – with him, these did not exist. The fan was louder than it seemed with chaos in her head. He stared quietly into the distance like he was tapping onto his thoughts from a distance, like he was thinking about something way smarter than anything she could ever understand. It was nice, this silence. And then he turned to her, out of nowhere, and said
“Look at you. You’re writhing in the crushing grip of reason.”
And he was right.
She hadn’t told him a damn thing, and he was right. He had a way of saying it that made it sound bigger than everything else in the room. He had an understanding that dissolved in the smoke of his cigarette, like he was not one of those making a mockery of their own words, like he understood that Enzo was gone and she never would play with him again. Like he was joking but he was not.
“So how do you suppose that it was so?”
She continued chasing the smoke clouds in her head and squirmed. There was no need to say anything further. He knew already.
He knew how scared she was.
What good is a conversation when the words have already been spoken in your minds?
It’s a huge waste of space. That’s what it is.
