Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is far more difficult. Moreover, managing the tides and phases of love and still trusting that it is all real is a feat which is underappreciated by society at large. The mind boggles at people who have remained together for thirty or fifty or sixty years when one is feeling self-congratulatory at having loved someone for nearly seven.
It gets easier and yet more difficult with time. It is easier to trust and love someone in whom one has already invested trust, love, and time. With time, the feeling that everything is about to come crashing down ceases being quite so prevalent and eventually disappears.
One does, however, grow tired of her inability to fold the damned towels properly.
Growing more and more intimate with her foibles and verbal ticks and coming to the slow realisation that she is probably never going to change, ever, does give one pause. The uncomfortable truth that she is not the only purveyor of habits, ticks, and foibles in this relationship, and for whatever blessed reason, she tolerates and loves them all, requesting no changes…well, that gives one more than pause.
The ever present knowledge that I do not deserve her and that she has the patience of ten thousand saints sat at the back of my mind for years. That lack of trust caused more than one—more than ten—fights, and they were all my fault, and she loves me still.
And so when we are sitting together on the couch, in each other’s quiet company, we are sitting there with it all: her inability to properly fold towels, my ridiculous temper, her need to get into the outside lane miles ahead of our exit, and my utter hypocrisy on all matters domestic. We also sit with her crooked smile while she is watching me do my make-up, the way I adore how she looks as she is going to sleep, the way she supports every damned thing I do whether it is wise or not, and how I could listen to her talk for hours. We are there, and we have ourselves, and we will always have that.
And that may well be what love is, truly.
BLUE CLEAR SKY
When one stands in the exact middle of the span of Tower Bridge, one may look down through the inch and a half gap between the bascules at the rippling surface of the River Thames. On a sunny day in late July, I gazed at the Thames, watching the light play off of the small waves, and fell in love with the woman who later consented to be my wife, who was going about her morning routine five thousand miles distant.
The revelation startled me; I never meant to fall in love with her. As of the morning when I left my hostel in Greenwich, I had twice been in love and managed a relationship with neither of those women, and then engaged in several attempts to love which always ended in disappointment at best. In order to save myself further trouble, I held every intention of keeping amicable company with her until we inevitably parted ways with no attachment. Now came the question: would sad things come in threes, or would the third time be the charm?
She had kindly consented to take me to the airport for the trip to Europe I had coincidentally scheduled shortly after meeting her. I thanked her with a kiss and went on my way. We spent a lot of time that month messaging each other, and I got very little sleep between talking to her late into the night and enjoying my time in Europe during the day.
I began to notice, though, that as I walked around medieval cathedrals and early modern streets, that she crept into my thoughts far more than one might consider reasonable for a casual dating arrangement. In Wales, the sunset reminded me of the spectrum of colour in which her dark eyes erupt when the light shines just so. At the top of the Kölner Dom, I swore I could smell her scent on the breeze blowing in off of the countryside, and back in London, every woman with long dark hair was briefly her. My brain conjured her slender frame next to me on the occasions on which I slept.
Once it came time for me to leave, I was simultaneously loathe to leave Europe behind and yet could not wait to see this woman whom I had met a scarce two months prior. The anticipation built within me as I flew over the north Atlantic, watching the cartoon of the airplane approach ever closer to the coast of Newfoundland. By the final approach, I barely felt the fatigue of having travelled for the past twelve hours. Upon landing, I fidgeted in my seat until the seatbelt sign went off, pulled my luggage from the overhead bin, and fairly bolted from the plane before anyone else quite managed to stand up.
I jogged the whole way out to the public area of the airport, and there she stood, smiling the smile which had attracted me to her at the outset. I sprinted into her arms and buried my face in her neck, and for the first time in my adult life, I realised that I was home.
EVERYONE HAS A ROOT
I am not sure when she realised—if she ever did—that we were in love. It took me ages myself, and it was years later, when I regaled my wife with the tale, that she looked at me with disbelief and said, “You know you two were girlfriends, right? Because you were.”
Oh. Well, no. But now that one mentions it, yes.
When calamity befell me that fall, it was to her that I ran, and when I wanted to be around someone—anyone—that someone was always her. In retrospect, I am not sure how I did not notice.
I slept over with her nearly every night, curled up behind her in the full-sized bed that came with those furnished student apartments in a posture I later realised amounted to spooning her like a lover. This habit of sleeping lasted for months, and once it stopped, I did not sleep so well for more than four years. One morning, as I was making my way out of the fog of my dreams, I felt her come lay down behind me, already showered and dressed. Her long dark hair was damp and had retained some of the warmth of the shower, and she smelled of steam and mint. She hugged me around my waist and left the lightest of kisses on my cheekbone. I pretended to be asleep and enjoyed it.
I probably ought have noticed at that point, but I had never been in love and the thought of being in love with her, of all people, had never crossed my mind. After a few minutes, she shifted a bit and I feigned waking up, and she pulled away. I dropped her off at the physics building as I did most mornings and went about my day.
A month later, she told me, as we lay in her bed drifting off to sleep, that I was the best friend she had ever had. I probably ought have noticed at that point.
At least once per week in the late evening, I walked from the physics building to the coffee shop half a mile away to get her an iced macchiato. The temperatures that December were, for once, consistently around freezing after sunset. I probably ought have noticed at that point.
I finally noticed when, one evening in late January, after a party to which I had been her designated driver, we were curled up in her bed as was habit by now, and she was mildly upset about something that I do not remember, and I kissed her, lightly, in reassurance that all was not lost, on the cheek.
The next I knew, her lips were on mine and it was magical. After a brief “Oh, this is different,” all thought fled my brain other than how wonderful a kisser she was, and how thoroughly and simply happy I was in those moments, and how I could lie there, possibly forever, and just kiss her.
That feeling of deepest contentment became the standard. Only two women since have met that standard, and for ages I feared no one ever would.
THE BLACKSMITH
In spite of her nerves, Helena, Lady Wiltshire, felt that she had managed to acquit herself well during the service. The strange new church and liturgy set her on edge throughout, and she clutched at her silken handkerchief. It took all of her will to not wring it between her hands. That would call far too much attention to herself, and at her wedding, her mother had made it quite clear that she was to avoid doing anything at all which might call attention to herself.
As they stood to leave the church, Robert, her husband of two weeks, graced her with a tight smile as he offered her his arm. Helena gratefully took it, knowing that she would not have it for long. Last week, as soon as they left the church and entered into the sunlight, Robert loosed his grip upon her arm and walked silently away to speak to some men dressed all in black. Helena had spent an in
terminable amount of time cowering next to a wall while the villagers ignored her, blessed be the Virgin.
Just as last week, the moment the sun shone onto her dark hair and relieved her of the chill which had settled upon her in the stone chapel, Robert slipped out of her grasp and strode with purpose and speed toward the small assembly of sombre, hatted men. As he did so, Helena noticed to her horror that her handkerchief had caught on his sleeve just well enough to tear it from her grasp. She felt as though it hung in the air for a moment to scold her. It fluttered to the stone walkway some distance away.
She stood rooted to the spot, soaking in the horror of her error. That handkerchief was one of the last gifts bestowed upon her by her father just before his death. She could not very well leave it there, but if she made to fetch it up, someone would surely notice her ineptitude, and then people would talk, and then Robert would be embarrassed that he had married such a foolish young woman.
Defeated, she turned away from the handkerchief and started for her corner, hoping to hide her grief, or at least make it so that it was not noticeable to anyone nearby. She had nearly made it there when her fear was realised.
“Milady?”
Helena froze. She was the only woman here to whom that appellation could possibly be addressed, and now, of course, she had foolishly reacted to the voice so she could not pretend she had not heard. She breathed in deeply and straightened her posture, and with all of the dignity she could muster, she turned to answer the enquiry.
As Helena opened her mouth to speak, her breath caught in her throat. The voice belonged to a woman whose long blonde hair did not so much reflect the sunlight, but instead produced its own. Her dark doublet and trousers left no doubt as to her femininity, and yet, Helena thought, she was as handsome as any young man in the village. A chill ran through her as she struggled for the words to respond to the hail of this angelic apparition. A simple “Hello” might suffice.
The woman smiled and gallantly ignored Helena’s flustered muteness. She approached, the silken handkerchief in hand, and held it out to Helena with a bow.
“Milady. You dropped this.” She spoke quietly, with no trace of mockery.
Helena stammered a thank you as she gazed into bright green eyes, and as she reached to take the bit of silk, her hand brushed the woman’s.
Helena felt as though she had been struck. Her hand, acting on its own, remained frozen to the woman’s deceptively soft skin. She felt her breath leave her, and soon realised that she was staring rudely at this woman, though she could not possibly imagine why. Finally, she noticed that the woman was smiling faintly at her.
“My name, milady, is Katharine Palmer. I am the village blacksmith. It is lovely to make your acquaintance.”
The woman—Katharine Palmer—Helena corrected herself, bent and swiftly left a kiss on Helena’s hand, leaving the handkerchief as she did so. Helena stared at her hand, her skin buzzing pleasantly. When she finally found the wherewithal to look up, Katharine Palmer had disappeared.
THE BEE CHARMER
“Oh, my tiny kitten. You will be okay.”
The tiny kitten in question was actually a fourteen pound squirming ball of sadness and disapproval. I struggled to hold her in my lap as I sat on the sofa in the exam room. She made short work of escaping and immediately discovered how to slither her way under the sofa where she continued her new profession of yowling piteously.
I continued to make attempts at sympathy with her—which she of course ignored—and waited for the veterinarian to appear. The last time we were here, the vet informed me that my tiny kitten is in fact on the cusp of being a senior cat, and that changes to her diet and care would need to be made.
How did that happen? My sister called me one day and asked me if I would prefer a black cat with a tail, or a white cat without a tail. I told her black with a tail because that would match my décor. I met my kitten when she was twelve weeks old, only slightly longer than my hand, and light enough that she almost did not exist. It was love at first sight.
The next day, my tiny kitten may have been rethinking her love for me because I proceeded to put her in a car and drive three hours from my sister’s house to my own, and discovered that day that size is not relevant to the volume of a cat’s voice, and that no, she is never going to calm down and stop yowling as long as she is in the car.
It did not take long for her to grow up, eventually achieving a length of about thirty inches—with her tail—and a stature of just over three hands high. Her face never lost that kitten look, though. For seven years, she has been there to comfort me with her presence and injure me by running across my face at five in the morning.
All of this I kept in mind as I sat on the glazed concrete floor of the exam room. She remained under the sofa, but ceased yowling. I put my hand under the sofa and felt her nuzzle it, then lay her head on it as though I were her pillow.
The vet came in; all tests were negative.
ASHLEY MACKLER-PATERNOSTRO
Ashley Mackler-Paternostro is the author of The Milestone Tapes, and the Amazon Best-Selling novel In The After. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois with her husband and their three dogs.
HIM, HE, US AND WE
My fingers fall on the page effortlessly though it’s kept between entries from before and after. Yet it would seem that the words I wrote harness a proclivity all their own. They are as natural a beginning as any other, as if the moment I wrote them, willed them to be, my life had truly begun. They are romantic, drooling thoughts scribbled in my wine-tipsy, dangerously slanted handwriting. I’d written them after our fifth date. That night we had dined; five courses of butter-rich food, clinking glasses, moony eyes, and slippery conversation. It had been delicious. Not just the meal, but the night, and the man himself—he’d been delicious company.
He’d left me at my doorstep with a long goodbye. Our eyelashes catching snowflakes, my cheeks pinked by the wintery winds. It was then that we’d kissed for the first time. He’d lavished me with his kisses as though they were exotic gems; my neck, my earlobe, my mouth, the tips of my fingers when they were cold. Every inch of my exposed skin was susceptible to his soft seduction.
I had needed to write those words that night, half-drunk as I was, needed to give them life lest they consume me whole. Reading them now, I remember everything so clearly, but mostly I recall the feelings that billowed up inside me, strangled in my throat, snatched my breath. The silly school girl he’d cultured me to become had done just as school girls do, I’d written my named tied together with his and lassoed with an extravagant heart.
Those words. That heart. They were things that had once had the bareness enough to startle me and later they held a truth simple enough to bring me comfort. As if knowing from the start was a sign of good fortune, a sign of good things to come.
In truth, I hadn’t known him then, back in a place and time when those erratic, helplessly hopeful thoughts pooled themselves onto the paper. I’d thought that would come later. That in time I’d know the intricacies of this man who dined with me, who warmed me with kisses on a cold night in the middle of a city with an electric heartbeat. But him, the nuts and bolts of his life, the clockwork precision of his soul, the things that, in times of less mattered most, those things I’d never learned.
He’d kept secrets all along. Dark, gnawing omissions. His sort of lies go bone deep. Sometimes I catch myself running my thumb against the sharp edge of the platinum band that encircles my marital finger, cold and nicked after a well-lived life and I realize it has become a small yet impossibly heavy shackle. And those secrets he kept? They are moths. Our marriage is merely a cotton sheath, a veil. I am certain that we are riddled in the aftermath, chewed up, left with gaping holes.
The truth of him comes to me now like a terminal cancer, married six years, growing silently the entire time, taking lives — his, mine, ours. They masticate me in the quiet, endless hours I spend alone.
Her, the girl from that page, wi
th her silly childish wishes and drunken heart, she wants her husband back. The man she met. The him from her journal. The man both she and I married. The man she and I had once trusted so implicitly. I want for the voices I hear to quiet themselves down, for the moths of our marriage to flutter away from the licking flames of betrayal. I want him to patch the holes with the promises he’ll keep. I want the words she, who didn’t know better, once wrote to be true. For that he and him to be real, so the us and we can be real, too.
What I want is things that can never, ever be.
0500
She studied him from the edge of the bed where she sat, her hands clasped tightly together in a prayer knot. Those hands had been a flock of birds. Restless and flighty. Ten fumbling fingers from the moment she’d awoke to the dark, the alarm bleating into the stillness of their room, stirring them both from their uneasy sleeps.
He’d showered first. Left the bathroom a steamy tunnel that smelled of his soap and shampoo. The tiles under her finger tips were damp and cool. She pressed her head against them and cried as the water beat against her bare back and ran down her legs. Cried until the hot water ran out and she was left to do her own soaping and shampooing under a tepid spray.
Now she watched as his hands smoothed his jacket, straightened his collar, picked at invisible lint on the material that lay against his strong, able shoulders. His was hair cropped close, clean and neat, the curls she’d love to run her fingers through had been discarded at a barber shop on the corner of West and Vine for fifteen dollars and a tip. His face, freshly shaven, revealed the sharp cleft of his chin she loved to nibble on softly while she hovered above him. He had trimmed away at himself the night before, leaving clippings which littered the sink and floor. She’d swept them up the best she could, but she was sure she hadn’t gotten them all. They’d soon become little parts of himself he’d left behind for her to find someday when she scrubbed at the basin or the floor.
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