Under Purple Sheets

by Coco Houston

  It is dark. Brad sits down beside me. It feels unbelievable that this time last night we were in our majestic little hotel room with all the elaborate trimmings; how that seemed in comparison to this to be a million miles away. The light streaming from the open kitchen door makes a pale pink path across the grass, where all the cherry blossoms still lay. Nobody speaks a word as we sit together under the moon. Time passes, still I say nothing but others are talking. My friends tell me I will never be able to look at the cherry blossoms ever again or think of my cherished presents of yesterday without remembering this night too. They are right, as you walk the past walks with you. I am feeling cold; stone cold right to my heart, yet smelling him beside brings me no warmth inside. The scent of his aftershave I know so well. I wear it sometimes when he is with her. I take the bottle he kept here, I put it on when I feel lonely; it comforts me, making me feel he is close by. “Another time, another place,” my friends continue. I look at this statue of a man who sits beside me staring in the dark; he is a silhouette of my Brad.

  “You had better go,” I say, just hoping that he would before I dissolved in tears.

  “I better,” he replies as he stands up. He doesn’t look at me. “I love you, Coco,” he tells me with the saddest tone I have ever heard in his voice.

  “So long, Blake.” My voice is full of all the hurt in the world. Brad leaves. I close the door. I just sit, not drinking the cup of freezing cold coffee still in my hand. I don’t think I even know how to anymore. His ghost is everywhere. I see his fucking ghost everywhere in my house. He is my shadow. My shadow left me. How does that happen? I ask the friends in my head. No answer is given.

  They don’t know. I don’t know. I function yet malfunction, and then I don’t even know anymore what it is that I don’t know. The black shadow that now stands beside me is hurt. Hurt follows me. I have no peace inside, no friend in calm; my new best friend tonight now is Diazepam. I fling a load of them down my throat. I talk to the broom on the wall. Soon the pills take effect as I begin to float in a world free of confusion; the kitchen clock is now starting to lie too, it is not midnight surely. The three little faces of my dogs look up at me, they look distorted. I don’t even remember if I fed them tonight. The broom doesn’t answer me when I ask it if I did.

  “Where is Brad, broom?” I ask curiously, slurring my words. Still no fucking answer. Maybe I need to sew my shadow back on like Wendy does for Peter Pan, I suggest desperately. No reply. Nobody is talking to me tonight now, not even the friends in my head. Fuck them all. Darkness appears, then oblivion as I fall into a deep sleep.

  The next few days are absolute hell. Now because Brad’s wife knows about affair, she has been made to face the truth about her marriage, she can no longer hide behind denial. She has threatened Brad that he will lose his step granddaughters if he doesn’t give me up, and she demands that happens right NOW. She tells him that it isn’t love he feels for me, it is just lust. She is in a state of acute desperation, placing pictures of these grandchildren in the jeep, trying to emotionally blackmail him to stay with her, Brad just laughs at this performance. Brad however has all of this to deal with as well as trying to hold us together although he makes it clear I mean more too him than them as he really loves me. I am forced to face the reality of this mess, at the same time being reminded by my hidden friends that I have broken my religious beliefs and committed adultery. Even if we take religion out of it, I’ve still been doing something immoral. Not giving a fuck because I can use confession to be forgiven and make myself feel better when it suits me or by crossing myself back over again to my religion of witchcraft. I cheat, making the best of them all, by using everything to my own advantage. Protestant and Catholic religions but mostly my witchcraft. My mind is just racing with millions of these unreasonable yet understandable thoughts, which I feel I can’t handle anymore.

  “You reap what you sow, madam,” these words come back to me, they are heard in my head constantly being repeated by so-called friends; they’re truth is haunting me.

  Brad told me a few days back he is leaving her and coming to stay with me. He arrives back at the house tonight in just as much of a mess as I am… he now tells me that he is not coming, he’s staying with his wife, he can’t afford to lose his financial stability the marriage provides. He doesn’t want to lose me either, but he doesn’t know what choice there is. He explains that he’s also scared I don’t want him now all the secret excitement of the affair has been removed, so I may quickly get bored then hurt him, so if he leaves her now, then I finish with him, in the end he can be left with nobody and nothing. Aw! Get away with you, Brad looking after Brad! I agree with my friends here, and I wish they would on my behalf speak out and hunt him to fuck away from me right now but nobody hears them talking but me. Isn’t that the case with us all? I confirm to myself. We only hear our own friends in our heads but we don’t hear what anybody else’s friends in their heads had to say.

  This results in a massive argument with me screaming and crying at Brad, resulting in him shouting back at the top of his voice. The argument only ended when (as Brad had enraged me so much) I lifted my hand, slapping him hard across his face, knocking him backwards against the chair. (“Ha-ha,” my friends say.)

  I am shocked in disbelief that I’d just hit him. I had never hit anyone like that before. As I sit down on my floor crying, holding my head in shame, I apologise profusely but I’m not that sorry, not really. (“Don’t be!” I hear. “He deserves it, do it again, hit him again, Coco,” they say to me, encouraging me to fight when I am at my weakest.) Brad is also all apologetic, stressing that he never meant to hurt me either. He doesn’t want to give me up altogether (fucking sweet of him); he just wants me to wait a little while for him. He expects me bear with him to let the dust settle on the battleground, he tells me. Promising me that everything will be all right again very soon. Oh! Really, for whom? Him. After some discussion, Brad says he will take me out tonight for a while in the jeep later on, whereupon we can talk some more. I agreed. Unknown to me though, he’s decided that he should take me to meet his mother, so he can show her exactly who I am and show her what his wife is making him give up, then afterwards he has intended to spend the night with me – just for now anyway as is his plan. Brad’s mother had known there had been something going on for a while. She’d quizzed Brad many times in the past. Brad is having a carry on; she would tell this story to all who would listen. She told Brad she heard about him at the bus stop when she wasn’t even out the house. We just used to laugh about it… we weren’t laughing now. No one is laughing now. My usually tanned face is pale and lifeless, my long dark hair just hanging limp, as to my clothes, well a crumpled mess. Brad gets up to go, I don’t even acknowledge him, I don’t answer him when he says, “Goodbye, I love you and I’ll be back down soon.” He goes out the house, and I hear him close the door. My friends in my head answer Brad. They shout after him, “Fuck off you!” I have no heart or energy for casting a spell. To hurt to care enough.

  I wish I was away in a place similar to Kansas City living in a log cabin that would be carried up into the sky by a tornado. It would then fall with bang in my magical make believe city of The Land of Cherry, just like in the old film of Oz. I could go up a purple cherry tree road with all the pink cherry coloured little dwarfs called Cherrykins, with the Witches’ broom, the Black cat and the little walking cauldron pot to see if the Wizard of Cherry could make all this love nonsense shit go away. If the Wizard of Cherry couldn’t help me sort out this mess of a stupid love affair or free me from the pain I’m in because of it, who the fuck would? Then perhaps he could just give the broom a new handle, give the cat another nine lives and the cauldron pot a new base as his little arse has been burnt out with my spells. Or he could make some arrangements for me instead, to go to stay in a chocolate factory. I could eat chocolate smothered in coloured candy all day, sing and play with the little people who are made out of wooden spoons as we make sweets hidden in a wor
ld of fantasy. “Oh yes!” my friends in my head say, “Either one of those suggestions I would consider to be a great idea so let’s go up the Cherry Tree Road and over by Unicorn Town to see The Wizard of Cherry City, to see if he can help you all in your self-pity? Fuck off Coco! You’re a powerful witch deal with your own shit.” I think maybe, just maybe if I go upstairs to my closet, I could fuck off through those doors and go out the back of it to Coco Kingdom. Right here and now that is the best answer. “The land of white cocaine! Go to my altar, cast a spell to turn black witches’ salt into pure white drug of snow, open the closet doors, open the wall behind, then through the holes I go. Now that is leaving in style Coco!”

  Brad comes back for me; I have sorted myself out to go with him in the jeep. He drives out of town, so I ask where we’re going as I can see he’s heading for his hometown. He tells me he’s taking me to meet his mother, and then to the place he buried his dead father’s ashes. (“Very strange behaviour,” my friends tell me.) With tears in Brad’s eyes, I’m introduced to his mother; she is an adorable elderly woman who is very happy to finally meet me. Brad explains the situation to his mother, including the reason he has brought me to meet her, which is to show her how much he loves me and what his wife, whom he referred to as The Crow, is trying to make him give up with financial black mail. Nobody laughs at the expression on his face as he calls her The Crow as he is deadly serious in his pursuit of telling everyone there he wants to be with me because we love each other very much. His mum is very understanding. I have coffee with her as we sit talking for a while. She tells me how Brad has been so miserable for years in the house over the road with Craw Heed (slang for crow head). This time we all laugh. Then she goes on saying everybody knows he shouldn’t have married her ever in the first place. Now with Brad openly agreeing with them about this, it is much too little too late. She is glad at last that her son has found some happiness, which was all due to him loving me. She hopes that we can get everything sorted out; she hopes and prays we end up together. His sister from England is staying there on holiday, and she thought we had sorted it all out and that we were going to be together and that was why I’d been brought to the house tonight. She is now going fucking nuts that Brad has brought me to meet them and say hello but also at the same time to say goodbye. This she couldn’t comprehend, no fucking wonder, it made no sense to anybody but Brad as he was under the impression now that he was still intending to stay with his wife then I was off. A decision I had not yet made, as after all it was just an affair I had wanted with him in the first place, but Crow was making him choose.

  That night we go back to my house, we just snuggle up on the sofa. It’s clear to us both this is a very sad night, so we push that to the back of our minds to try to enjoy our time together. Brad decides to leave early at six a.m. Before he goes back to her, he turns to me, taking me in his arms, kissing me hard then soft. He needs me; in fact, I need him too, more than he knows. He makes love to me with such intensity it feels amazing, yet the entire time I can’t stop the tears from falling. As he comes inside me, I grip his ass, and then pull him by the hair, holding him tightly in close to me, but I can’t cum… not this time. Afterwards he cuddles me into his chest; tiny rivers run through the hair on it as my tears, flowing furiously, continue to fall. It becomes finally very clear to me that we both knew this day would come; now he needs to leave. “Goodbye, Brad Blake. So long, Brad Blake, so long.” I hear the voices in my head wish him farewell.

  Then all I can hear are soft music notes in my head, the sound of my Grandmother’s music box, like tiny tinkling wind chimes, to those little notes in a sing song tune, keeping in time with its melody, these words are silently added, “He loves me? He loves me not? He made himself my world then he just forgot!” The voices in my head sing on and on. It is all I hear for hours, a beautiful voice singing to me, “He loves me? He loves me not?” now I am just numb.

  Sometime later that morning Brad’s statement comes back to me. It’s Brad’s voice I hear now. My friends must’ve finally gone to sleep for a while. He repeats himself over and over saying,

  “I thought I was a man’s man, Coco, down in the mines from a young age. A miner. I thought I was strong, a big hard man. Yet here I am, I can’t even tell my wife, who is very much aware of the fact I don’t love her, that I am leaving her to be with the woman I do love,” Brad tells me this, through his pathetic whimpering, in my head, I can still picture his sorrowful face.

  I just sit alone with his words ripping through me like knife… a rusty knife, tearing me apart, leaving an infected wound behind. I am broken and don’t know what to do. How am I going to deal with this? How am I going to be able to continue to work with him, being in the same building as me? I ask myself, hopelessly searching to find some guidance from somewhere, anywhere, my craft or the world or perhaps advice from the devil himself. “Perhaps the answer is blowing in the wind,” my pals say. This is the last thing I hear before falling into a drunken sleep. The wine is my comfort, my hero in a bottle or two, my attitude is cheers to the lot of you who are out there having affairs, Fucking hope it works out for ya all!

  10th April

  Horrid long day. I’m hung over with the alcohol. I walk around in the house wearing dark sunglasses with pyjamas, Ugg boots and my hair all over the ship. Where the fuck is Brad today, I wonder. Just at that he phones, it’s late afternoon. He will pick me up tonight, I am informed. I get dressed, wearing a dark green chunky jumper; the colour is stunning on me. I get into the jeep; he wants to talk.

  “I’m listening,” I say, looking over at him as he drives towards the beach.

  “I am going to Canada in the morning for a month,” he says, not even glancing over, he keeps his eyes on the road.

  “Let me out this jeep! NOW!” He keeps driving. “Stop this FUCKING JEEP! I WANT OUT!” I scream. He keeps going. I’m not doing this tonight, I’m not hearing this. We arrive at the beach with both of us shouting, me shrieking and very distraught at what is happening. I beg him to stay. He roars at me: “I’m going!” He then pleaded with me to wait for him.

  “WAIT FOR YOU? YOU WANT ME TO FUCKING WAIT FOR YOU? WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS!” I rage hysterical even louder.

  He is; the expression on his face tells me he is before he answers. “Yes, yes, I am,” telling me that he is very serious about it, and he loves me more than ever. Bullshit! I ask stupidly if she is going with him; he says no, he is going on his own. He needs space to sort out his head. He needs space, fucking class.

  Oh! I see it all very clearly now, her plan is to send him away to her sister in Canada, hoping I will go with someone else in his absence. Or he would come to his senses, as she put it, when we are apart, trying to get him to change his mind about loving and wanting to be with me. She is praying he would realise that he had made a mistake in going with me, then stay with her. This scenario was set up to split us up. Yet, he is conforming to her wishes, he is leaving me. Her plan is already beginning to work.

  “You need to go to Canada to think things over and decide what you’re going to do about us?” I ask him sarcastically.

  “No, Coco, I want to be with you. I love you so much, Coco, I don’t need to go to Canada to know that,” he replies tearfully. I looked out at the waves. I’ve sat here a million times in the past with Brad. Him begging me to go out with him as the waves rolled in. Him coming in his pants, kissing me on our very first date, promising to love me forever as the waves rolled in. Now tonight as the waves hit the sand, he is telling me he is leaving me to go to Canada and begging me to wait for him to return. How dare those fucking waves just roll in to the sand as normal when my world is falling apart! (“The sky coming down on your head, Coco,” my friends in my head say as they torment me, laughing.) There is no point in arguing anymore. FUCK HIM! I think. His mind made up to go, mine made up not to wait.

  “Take me home,” is all I say. He drives me home crying. I can see that he is agitate
d, I sit in total shock, nobody speaks a word, and you can cut through the atmosphere with a knife. On arriving back at my house in the car, he leans over to me and frantically pulls at my sleeve, taking a piece of green fluff off my jumper and puts it in his wallet; he is taking it with him as well as my thongs (the ones he kept the very first time we made love) inside his jacket pocket. With huge tears rolling down his sad face, he keeps on saying how beautiful I am and asking himself how he can leave me. I kiss Brad once on the lips, and then I sit back, offering him my hand for him to shake his goodbye. He refuses to take it. Casually, I get out of the jeep.

  “So long, Blake,” I smile at him through the falling tears.

  “COCO! I LOVE YOU!” are the last words I hear as I close the door. I am aware of him watching me walk away, I don’t look back. As I turn the key in my door, I hear the jeep leave; next I hear Brad peep the horn as the jeep leaves the street. Brad left me. He left me to go to Canada.