Anyone looking would have thought they were as different as night and day.
They would have to look much closer, understand everything, to see the similarities. The dark sharp eyes set in a face that smiled easily and often; the light clear gentle eyes that had seen far too much.
Both of them arriving at the same place, here, and leaving finally together. Driving into the distance, down a dark and nameless road.
ORPHEUS
I’ve brought you flowers, he told her, roses as red as the sunset the night we met, and I’ve brought you chocolates and wine and everything you asked for, and she smiled, just like he’d wanted her to she smiled, but it was just for a second and it was gone, like embers glowing in a stirred fire, and it wasn’t enough. Nothing he’d brought was enough.
And he held her close, and stroked her hair, and talked to her and read to her, late into the night, and kept the candles lit. And none of that was enough. Her eyes were still rimmed red from crying, red like the roses left forgotten on the kitchen counter. She didn’t look up at him, not once, not the whole time. Every sigh from her lips was like a knife at his throat. Her eyes burned tired and angry, and his were just dull and tired. And he tried and kept trying and none of it was enough. Just like the night before and the night before that, and onward back a thousand thousand nights.
I’m cold, she said, accusing, and he apologized and got up to close the window.
Outside the window the sky was on fire, and stretched out to an infinite horizon were a million million other damned souls, huddled against the burning cold and filling all of Hell with the sound of their cries and screams.
And all of it escaped his notice as he shut the window and went back across the room, slipped back into bed, and cradled his arms around his wife as she faced the wall and wept.
I need some more time, he told the phone, I’m sorry, I’ll be back in the office soon. My wife is still sick. She needs to be looked after. He put the phone back down, and he’d long since stopped noticing that there was never a voice on the other end to question or protest. He just knew that he needed to make that call every day; it’s what was done.
He walked back into the bedroom with the simple breakfast he’d made her on a tray, the single strongest survivor of last night’s roses, the only one that hadn’t wilted completely, in a bud vase on the tray to give it some color, and he asked her, how are you feeling?
And she didn’t answer him. That was all right, he was used to that; she never answered him, not the first time.
She took the tray, barely a nod for a thank you, and started slowly to eat.
How you feeling? You doing any better?
Sometimes she answered the second time. Sometimes he at least got a shrug. Today he got a word; No, she told him.
He nodded, brushed a dirty strand of hair out of her eyes. I’m sorry, he told her.
Is this all there is for breakfast?
His heart sank. It’s all I could find, he told her.
Oh, she said, and kept eating. Are you going to go shopping today? We need groceries.
Yeah, I can, if you need me to, he said, and he steeled himself for his next question, knowing her answer would be no; Will you come with me to the store? You feel up to it?
No, she said. I still feel awful.
Okay, he said, thinking (but not daring to say), it seems like you get sick all the time, now. He patted her hand.
And he asked if there was anything he could bring her from the store, and she named things, simple little things that she wanted, and he wrote them down and would carry those words like scripture, hoping that he would finally bring her something that would make her happy, that would make her laugh.
He got dressed and left, umbrella whipping in the wind, trying to remember the last time she had ever left this place, dimly suspecting but never quite realizing that she never had.
“Excuse me — ”
The voice caught his attention like a bullet in the leg. He turned and looked at her, actually open-mouthed amazed. When was the last time — ?
“Excuse me — I’m sorry, can I talk to you a minute … ?”
— the last time anyone besides Kathy had actually spoken to him? “Wh — ”
“It’s actually kind of important.” And she smiled. Smiled apologetically. It was a small and simple smile, but it was one that didn’t die.
Didn’t he used to know someone who smiled like that?
He stared at her. He couldn’t help it. Stood and stared in the middle of the aisle, his cart blocking the way for the impatient and plodding people around him. He had a box in his hand, cake mix — his hand had frozen in mid-motion over the cart when he first saw her, and now his arm just hung limp, the box forgotten in his hand.
“I’m sorry — ” Even without Kathy it was so easy for those words to be the first to rush to his lips — “Have we — do I know you?”
“Do you?” Her eyes scoured his face, searching for something. He wasn’t sure if she ever found it.
“I’m sorry.” Those words again. “If we’ve met, I can’t remember where I know you from.”
“It’s okay,” she told him, “but please, I really do need to talk to you.”
“I — can’t, I have to — ” He gestured helplessly, noticing what he was holding. “I have a cake to make, I have too much to — I’m sorry.” He was only just starting to notice how often he said it and he was only just starting to hate himself for saying it. Especially for saying it to this (no, don’t think it, don’t look) beautiful woman. She seemed — nice, he thought lamely, unable to think of a better way to put it; noticing, but not being able to put words to the fact, that she shined, here. That she stood out from her dull and distant surroundings, like everything else here had been left out in the damning sun to fade and she was still wet and clean and new-made. She smelled of somewhere where there were flowers and fresh fields, and she was close enough now, just close enough, for him to have caught the scent of her ….
He searched for the right words and couldn’t find them, could only give her “I’m sorry” again as he dropped the cake mix into the cart and shoved the cart past her and through the crowds and out the door, forgetting entirely to pay for it all and it didn’t matter, because everything here already belonged to him. Everything belonged to him to give to her, and none of it would ever be enough.
She caught up to him in the parking lot. “Listen, please, just for a minute? I’ve come a really long way to — ”
“Look, whoever you are, I can’t just — ”
“Hope.”
“What?”
“My name. Hope.” She smiled again, shrugged, like it was her own private joke, a little indulgence.
“Hope. I’m sorry, I don’t have any time to talk, I’ve got to get — ”
“— to get home to your wife,” she said with him, echoing his words. “I know. But do you really have to?”
“Well, yes, actually,” he said, loading groceries into the car. “She’s very sick. She needs me to take care of her.”
Hope nodded slowly. “Does she.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I dunno.” She looked at him, and she was still smiling. Like her smile was a candle that never went out. “What are you trying to hear?”
A heartbeat passed as they just looked at each other, as something more than recognition passed between them. But he pulled away. “I’m sorry. You seem very nice, but I can’t.”
She caught his arm. It was the first time her composure broke, and her smile nearly slipped. “Please,” she said, and all her desperation shone bright through, like exposed bone, in that one word. “Can’t I take you — somewhere? Where we can just talk? Away from all this?”
“Away from all what?”
She looked around, shaking her head. “You really don’t know.”
“No, I suppose I don’t.” He closed the trunk, took out his keys, and got in his car without another word and drove away, and even tho
ugh he couldn’t quite shake the image of her eyes bright and helpless in his rear-view mirror, he had still nearly forgotten their conversation — nearly forgotten her — by the time he got home.
His shopping had been interrupted, and so there were things he had forgotten. Things that had been important to Kathy even though they wouldn’t have helped; forgotten things written on the list of commandments that was crumpled and useless abandoned in his pocket.
She was angry; she was often angry, and it was the only time she ever really looked alive. He was always a little terrified and in awe of her when it happened, and he was this time; but even as he ducked and covered his face to keep the shards from his eyes as the bud vase hit the wall, it gave him a stunted kind of hope. When she was this awake and alive and screaming, at least she cared about something.
Why are you doing this to me? she screamed at him. Don’t you care? Don’t you give a shit? I didn’t ask for much, did I? Can’t you remember anything? And on and on it went, word after word like machine gun fire.
And on and on until she went to bed, exhausted and sobbing, and slammed the door against him, shutting him out, exiling him to sleep on the couch. He couldn’t bring himself to do it; he slept instead curled up shivering on the floor outside her door.
The next day he made the call, as always. I need some more time, I’m sorry, I’ll be back in the office soon, my wife is still sick. And he busied himself with the day’s tasks.
There was the debris from last night’s argument (no, that’s not right, some dim and distant part of him said; it’s not an argument if you don’t fight back, it’s not an argument if you just stand there and take it), all of that needed to be cleaned up — the bud vase, three shattered dishes, blue and white, their wedding pattern. There was the picture she’d knocked off the wall, a print of a painting she’d always liked, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe; that needed to be hung back up and straightened until it was just perfect.
(if only that noise would stop)
And then there were dishes to wash, the laundry to do. He was never quite sure how she managed to dirty so many dishes, or wear so many clothes if she never went anywhere, but she did, and it all needed to be done. And he couldn’t expect her to help. Oh, no. Not with her sick all the time. Not in her condition.
No. No. Don’t get angry. It’s not going to do her any good.
(Then what, the same small voice asked, will do her any good?)
The glass he was holding broke in his hand. He hadn’t realized he was gripping it so tight.
It was only then that he noticed that the phone was ringing. And he realized that it had been ringing for quite some time.
The office — ? He grabbed the phone, other hand still bleeding.
“Look, I’m sorry, I said I won’t be in today — ”
Two small words, too small and quiet for him to hear until he really listened.
“It’s Hope.”
Who? he nearly asked, but instead he said, “The girl from — ”
“Yes, the girl from the store.” He could hear her smiling.
“How did you get my number — ?”
“Is it important?”
“No …. ”
“Because I can make something up if it is.”
And he smiled. Trying to remember the last time anyone had made him smile.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked him.
“Ummm.” He tried to keep his hand over the sink, watched the blood drip down into the soapy, dirty water. Distantly, he knew he needed to bandage his hand, but all he could think was, I really need to finish these dishes. “Not really.”
“Please, I’m going to ask again. Can we meet somewhere? And just talk?”
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea …. ”
“Please. I don’t have much time — ”
“Well, I don’t either, I — ”
“I can only see you three times.”
And he stopped. Everything in the apartment seemed hushed and still; even the steady dripping of blood stemmed itself at those words. He was caught by them, frozen in place, not just because she sounded so urgent, but because something about the words had seemed so familiar to him. Damned familiar.
“I — Yes. All right.”
She said something else, two more small words.
“What? I can barely hear you.”
“I said, thank you.”
“This is a terrible connection. Are you calling long distance?”
She laughed. “You have no idea.”
“So. Where?”
“Can we go get lunch somewhere?”
“I don’t — I shouldn’t be gone that long.”
“ … All right. How about the — the park, near the store? Can you meet me there?”
“Yes. Okay.”
“Promise me.”
It seemed an odd thing to ask, but he said, “It’s a promise. I’ll come talk to you. I promise.”
“When?”
He wanted to put her off, tell her, not tonight, maybe this weekend? — but was caught again by the familiar edge to her voice, the urgency in her tone. “Now?”
“Thank you.” This time he heard her say it. “Oh, God, thank you.”
He didn’t know what to say next, not even how to say goodbye, so after a moment’s awkward silence, he hung up.
Turned, to see the open doorway, his wife standing, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, eyes burning into him. Who was that? she asked him, Just now, on the phone?
No one, he said, thinking, Hope.
Don’t give me that. I heard you. Going to go off and meet her somewhere. So that’s how it is.
Please, I’m sorry — it isn’t what you think —
Yeah, she said. I bet.
He reached for her, but she slammed the door shut again. He stood there a moment longer, arm still outstretched, trying to think of the right words to say, the right thing to reassure her. A single moment of clarity told him that nothing would.
He balanced the promise he had just made against wanting to try all the same, and the promise somehow won. He grabbed his coat and was out the door before he could change his mind.
She was waiting when he reached the park. It wasn’t much of a park, he knew, and he hated to think that he had kept her there long, waiting and cold on a cement bench alongside a cement path wrapped around a cement pond. He sat down and looked at her, and said, “Hi.”
“This is Hell,” she told him, without preamble.
He knew what she meant; he actually did, he had known this himself once, but his mind rejected the idea, let him be puzzled —
“What is?”
“No, I mean — all of this. Literally. You’re in Hell.”
He paused, looking out over the water, watching the miniature waves the wind made as it skimmed the surface. “You’re a very strange girl,” he said finally.
She laughed, genuinely delighted. “I’ve been told that,” she said. “But I’m serious.”
“Yes. Yes, I can see you are.” He still didn’t look at her, almost afraid that if he saw her shining again, saw how gray the world around her was, he would believe what she was saying. “But this — this can’t be Hell.”
“No? What were you expecting?”
“I don’t — ”
“Fire and brimstone? Little demons poking you with pitchforks? Like in the cartoons?”
He smiled again. “I suppose not.”
“Hell isn’t like that. It doesn’t have to be. Your own life can be hell enough, if you don’t see any way out of it. Any next step to take.”
He nodded slowly, starting to see, but not wanting to. “Still. I’m not dead. You’re not dead. This can’t be — ”
“Remember the people in the store? Each one of them looking as lost and sad as you. Not a single smile, no one talking, no laughter.”
“Yes, but — ” That’s normal, he thought, isn’t it?
“When was the last time,” she asked him, “tha
t you heard a bird singing? Or saw children playing? Or saw a sunset?”
“Well, I can’t — ”
“Or heard music? Do you even remember music? When was the last time you saw a tree? Or even a single blade of grass?”
(I don’t know)
“What? I can’t hear you — ”
“I said, I don’t know!”
She stood, held a hand out to him. “Come on. Walk with me. Find me one single flower. And I will believe that this isn’t Hell, and I will wear the flower in my hair.” She smiled and smiled. “I’ll wear it all the way back to Heaven.”
“What … who are you?”
“You know already.”
“Are you — ” He felt stupid saying it: “Are you an angel?”
She laughed. “No. No, of course not. No more than you are. There are no angels.”
“Then who — ”
“You know already. Hope.”
There was nothing he could say to that, so he didn’t say anything.
He finally asked, “If I am in Hell … why tell me?”
“Because you don’t have to be here.”
“I don’t.”
“No.” She paused, took a deep breath, sat back down. “This isn’t your hell.”
“Then whose — ” But he knew. “Kathy’s.”
“Yes. You can walk out of here any time you want.”
He stood up. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Please, don’t go!”
“Look,” he said, “I agreed to come out here, I agreed to talk to you. I came, we talked. I’m going home now.”
“That’s just it, it’s not your home! Please just listen,” she said, rising, a hand on his arm again. “I don’t want to have wasted this chance, I can only see you one more time — ”
“I know,” he said, not knowing how he knew she was right about that, how he knew that was solid fact, “but look, don’t bother, all right?”
This time she was left speechless, and he walked away. Went home to his wife, who wasn’t saying a word to him, but who soaked up all his apologies and attentions all the same, took all his love and swallowed it whole.
Slices Page 11