I read the letter again today. I made a pilgrimage led by visions in the bottom of a bottle. It made a liar of me. She made a liar of me. When I came back to myself, I stood in the rain, beside the dismal roadside shrine. I wouldn’t drink again, I said. I wouldn’t read it again.
I grasped his wrist like a returning warrior and felt no pulse at all, but he was fine. Like he’d never had a heart at all. Like there was always some cold and foreign machine forcing blood through his arteries, every apology the frantic twitching of an animated corpse, every sign of remorse an uncomprehending facsimile. I hated him then, took back my forgiveness, my doubts. I kept the pill bottle, a tiny hollow shrine to my vindication
It is said travel will change you, broaden your horizons. She certainly came back changed; all charitable donations and volunteer work. I wondered what she had seen, when I found her staring at something a thousand yards away. When she sold her antique pinups and took up the violin. We never slept together again.
How dare that crow perch upon that fence? How dare it, who gave it the right? What vile impulse put it there to sit fat and black upon the wrought-iron like some monstrous tick? With it cawing in self-satisfaction as if it draws some sustenance from the deepening rot of our old home, I’d sooner see the place burn.
It was a small ceremony, but more of both sides turned up here than to our wedding. I shouldn’t be surprised. They only come alive for funerals, and then all the petty feuds rise up, carrion birds bickering over a meal. We were happy, not rich. I double check the sleeping pills in my purse between lying about investments and savings.
She was the sea on fire. Deep and dark, surface scintillating with heat and energy. She moved me and left me burned. Months later I washed up on some forsaken shore, scarred and struggling to breathe, reaching desperately for the rum and insisting it had been about more than sex.
She smiled, and then I heard her laugh over the low hum of motors as she got to her feet. Her mother was more bitter about it all than I was. ‘Of course she’s walking,’ she said, over a second glass of wine. ‘It’s machine assisted.’
No wonder it became easier to think ‘her mother’ rather than ‘my wife.’
That accursed clock again. Echoing, I swear, in spite of its small size and distant room. Maybe it’s the house. Something in the texture of night that amplifies it, strengthens it. Spreads its incessant carving of life from the bone into every corner of an empty home. I won’t stand for it any longer.
I sat very still in the kitchen for a long time afterwards. With tea. Or the last bottle of wine. I hardly remember now. I had to paint over the bloodstains I let them settle in for so long. I sat there until the sun disturbed me, the way the door slammed as he left echoing in my mind. I couldn’t blame him. It was too easy to imagine doing the same, in his shoes. Maybe that’s what he was thinking, too. No one went to the police in the end.
I looked back over the detritus of a life gone terribly awry. The tears and sleepless nights. The little treasons and lies. The petty cruelties and petty triumphs and every grudge I never let go. All the wounded hearts and tattered lives, and none worse than my own. And over all of it my father, looming like a shadow out of time.
I couldn’t scream. That was the worst part, I think. They didn’t stop me, no. I just couldn’t. Something in me strangled it before it left my mouth, turned it into a yawn. Pride, perhaps. I wouldn’t admit it had all become too much. So I stood in the midnight park and let the moonlight pour into my open mouth. Someone had called the police. I didn’t hear them arrive; someone was screaming too loud for me to hear them.
