The Color of Home: A Novel

by Rich Marcello

  “Exactly.” She sprayed on an ample dose of perfume. Peppermint and lemon filled the room, the city, the state. “I need to mark the territory.”

  He moved a step closer to her, reached out, and ran his finger down a red ribbon. “What?”

  “You look happy.”

  “I am.” He wrapped his arm around Rachel, and they made their way to Sassa’s restaurant arm in arm. Portland. He could see why Sassa adored the place. An artist’s city with charm and good restaurants. Small enough to connect. Small enough to know people by their first names. Small enough to raise a family.

  “What do you think of the city?” he asked.

  “Quaint. A little small, man. Boxes me in.”

  The Green Angel—bohemian, organic, packed—exactly as he’d imagined it. Sassa greeted and seated them at their reserved table. She immediately served them finger food and local organic beer. She’d prepared a special menu the night before and stepped them through each course, highlighting key ingredients. Curried coconut soup with lemongrass. Porcini dumplings with a side of red cabbage, apples, and blueberries. Raw chocolate seven-layer cake with raspberry sauce, whipped cream, and tangerine slices. All of his favorite ingredients. After some chitchat, she left them to prepare the first course.

  Over a couple of hours, they savored the ambrosial, rainbow-colored meal. It matched Rachel’s outfit. The combination of taste, color, and smell elevated him, as if he’d ingested a new super drug. Or a good batch of ayahuasca. Or an aphrodisiac. Rachel glowed, echoed, reflected, like she knew he was riding a wave in a pool she’d created. After dessert, Sassa joined them for coffee and tea. She’d done well with the place. She seemed confident, at ease, in her element.

  “That was a great meal, man. Food is trust,” Rachel said.

  “It was excellent. Thank you,” Nick said.

  Sassa glanced over at Nick, as if she were pointing out the red thread between them.

  Could Rachel see the thread? Did that even matter anymore?

  Rachel pulled on a strand of African beads. Then another. “Nick gave up on the road that your parents died when you were young. I didn’t sync up until then that the two of you have loss in common.”

  “Are you close with your family?” Sassa asked.

  “I grew up right outside of Cleveland. Large family. I try to swoop in a few times a year. Nick tagged along last month.”

  “They aren’t big on musicians,” Nick said.

  “The black sheep of the family.”

  “I’m so surprised to hear that.”

  “I know. Go figure.”

  He sipped his cappuccino. “The coffee here is amazing.”

  “I called Joe.” When Sassa took over the restaurant, one of the first things she did was install a La Pavoni four-spout espresso machine identical to the one at Joe’s. Overkill for a restaurant her size, but she had to have a piece of New York in Portland.

  “Back to family. My parents are fixed in my mind,” Sassa said.

  “What do you mean?” Rachel asked.

  “I never saw them change with time and experience.”

  “Same with my dad,” Nick said.

  “Impossible for us mere mortals to compete,” Rachel said.

  Rachel had caught him off guard. Why did she say that? She didn’t have loss in her history; how could she possibly understand? Or was it that she didn’t like the fact that Sassa did? “What do you mean?”

  “As lovers, we have our ups and downs. When we rock, our movements deepen us. When we burn out, our movements pull us apart and we have to work hard to come together again.”

  “And? I’m not following.”

  “With your father, love is idealized, static, always perfect. No one can compete.”

  Sassa nodded. “Sugar on an open wound is the same as salt.”

  “Jimi Hendrix was a fantastic guitar player for sure, Nick, but death made him a rock-and-roll god. Impossible to compete with a god.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  • • •

  The next day, Sassa suggested a short morning trip to the Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth. First lit in 1791, the lighthouse stood 100 feet above the water atop the edge of a cliff. When lit, the lighthouse beacon could be seen for twenty-four miles, and had guided ships home for well over 200 years. Nick and Rachel had never seen a real lighthouse before, so both jumped at Sassa’s suggestion.

  When they arrived at the Head Light, Rachel grabbed Nick’s hand and pulled him out of the car. Invigorated by the combination of crisp salt air, sea mist, and breaking waves, she dragged him toward the cliffs about 100 yards to the right of the main building. At the cliff edge, overlooking the Atlantic, Rachel said, “It’s beautiful here, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.”

  A rock formation another fifty yards away created a rock island, beginning a few feet from the coast and extending out a long way into the ocean. The ocean spray from the waves danced off the rocks. Water jazz.

  “I’m heading out to the island. Want to come?” Rachel said.

  “No thanks. Not my thing. The water is ice cold this time of year.”

  “Okay. Be right back.”

  Sassa caught up to them just as Rachel was leaving.

  Rachel hopped over the fence and slowly made her way down the cliff rocks toward the island. Fifteen minutes later, she reached the launch point, leapt onto the nearest rock, and treaded out to the tip of the island. Cold ocean spray drenched her clothing as she danced and played air guitar on a flat rock that doubled as a stage. She screamed something back to Nick but he couldn’t hear her. She was completely in the moment; it came to her so easily.

  “Good dancer,” Sassa said.

  “First I’ve seen of it.”

  “She likes risk.”

  “And new experiences.”

  Sometime later, Rachel waved her hands above her head and pointed toward Nick. She sprang from rock to rock as she made her way back toward the mainland with larger and larger jumps. It was as if she was trying to fly, as if she had never accepted the limitations of gravity, as if she were a juggernaut, her heart too big for this world.

  About halfway back, she leapt onto a jagged rock. Her ankle buckled and she lost her footing. She tried to regain her balance as she tumbled toward the water, but smacked her head on another rock. Seconds later, she plunged into the forty-one-degree water.

  “Oh shit, she fell. Call 9-1-1.” Nick jumped the fence, lumbered down the cliff to the island, and closed the gap. Twenty minutes later, on the edge of the closest rock, he extended his hand. Too far. He shouted to Sassa, who had followed behind him, “Hold my feet.”

  On her knees, she clamped down on his ankles and anchored him as he entered the water.

  Freezing waves. Barely moving. A cut on her head. Bleeding. In full extension, he was still two feet from her. “Everything is going to be okay. I’m almost there.” He only had a few minutes. He had to move faster. He hollered to Sassa to stretch a little farther, but she couldn’t adjust without losing him. Pulling himself back up to her, he removed his belt, wrapped one end around his ankle, then gave the other end to her. He extended himself back in the water as far as possible, Sassa his only connection to land.

  Snagging Rachel with his arm, he pulled her into his body. Heavy. No longer moving. The peppermint and lemon had been replaced with sea water. Pulling on the belt, he reeled them both back to the rock.

  With Sassa’s help, he lifted her out of the water. She lay unconscious on a flat rock. Breathing?

  Sassa, who had trained in CPR in high school, tilted her head back. A rescue breath. Chest compressions. Repeat. Nothing.

  The paramedics showed up within minutes. After a flurry of activity failed to revive her, they rushed her into the ambulance. Nick jumped in with her, but a paramedic gently backed him down, and directed him to follow the ambulance to the hospital. Shivering, he entered the passenger side of Sassa’s car. He reached over and clutched her hand. They shadowed
the ambulance to the hospital in silence.

  • • •

  The official cause of death, drowning accelerated by hypothermia, rang in Nick’s ears until he went numb, barely able to make out the doctor’s full explanation.

  “Submerged in freezing water . . . twenty minutes, the exposure was enough to kill her. The statistics . . . misleading, as they suggest that someone in good health . . . survive for up to an hour in forty-degree water . . . frantic movements to reach the rocks accelerated her heat loss. Her hands . . . useless . . . she froze, unable to move against the waves . . . Rachel was pronounced dead at 11:34 a.m.”

  Twenty-four years old.

  In the lobby of the emergency room, he paced back and forth, hands in his pockets, looking at speckled grayish linoleum square tiles. When had the world settled for so little color? It wasn’t natural.

  Sassa stopped him and pulled him close. “There was nothing else you could have done.” She held him for a long time.

  “I need to make a call.” He gently kissed her on the forehead and pushed off. At a quiet spot just outside the sliding emergency doors, he called Rachel’s parents and broke the news. Calm, matter of fact, as if he had just watched a movie and had relayed the plot to a stranger, he answered all of their questions in great detail. He reassured them that he would make all of the arrangements and send Rachel’s body to Cleveland.

  He stayed with Sassa in her apartment that night. She took the pillows from her bed and placed them on the living room floor against the sofa. After he settled, she covered him with a blanket. She put another blanket over herself and joined him. Curled up against him, she stayed still for a long time. Eventually, she flicked on SportsCenter.

  “I’m so sorry, Nick. I should have never invited you here. None of this would have happened if . . .”

  “What happened was an accident. We did everything we could.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I’m heading to New York tomorrow to get Rachel’s belongings. Then I’ll drive to Cleveland for the funeral.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “I need to do this myself, Sassa. But thank you for offering.”

  “When will I see you again?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “If there’s anything I can do, please call me. I’ll drop everything and come right away.”

  “I’ll phone you when I get back from Cleveland.”

  How where the Knicks doing?

  • • •

  Nick returned to New York in the morning and gathered a few of Rachel’s belongings. He kept her Santa Cruz guitar, all of their pictures, and her army boots. Cramming a few things into his rental car, the ones he thought her parents would want, he motored to Rachel’s family home. On the way down, he thought about his father.

  His dad’s funeral and wake had lasted three days. During most of that time, he either remained in his room alone, replaying what had happened, or helped people build his father’s larger-than-life memory pedestal, which loomed, well before it was done, painting shadows.

  In his childhood bedroom on the first day of the wake, he had obsessed about loopholes to undo what had happened to his father. Lying on his bed, he stared at the ceiling and said, “I should have done more. . . . I wasn’t strong enough. I shrank in those first moments after you collapsed. . . . Maybe if I knew CPR. I want to see the body. . . . They made a mistake. If anyone can come back, you can.”

  Later, in one fluid move, he had vaulted up from the bed and punched his right fist, with his father’s much-too-large high school ring hanging from his index finger, through the wall. For a few seconds, the pain in his hand counterbalanced the pain in the rest of his body. Fuck. The ring had slipped off his finger and had somehow lodged behind the wallboard

  He flung open his bedroom door and darted past relatives toward the tool bench. In the garage, he picked up a sledgehammer, hung it over his right shoulder, then raced back up the stairs. Back in his room, he had locked the door behind him. He tossed on his headphones and blasted “Kashmir” to drown out calls from concerned family members. He smashed the sledgehammer into the wall in rhythm until only the studs remained.

  “Death is the only thing I can’t fix,” he said. Robert Plant sang until Nick found his father’s ring in the pile of debris. Sweating profusely, sobbing, he collapsed on the floor and slipped the ring back onto his index finger. The ceiling fan hummed above him. Pulverized drywall dusted the air, and bandaged his bloody hand.

  He glanced at the clock on his nightstand. Four hours until the wake. Springing up from the floor, he loaded his multi-CD changer with music to fill the gap. Sgt. Pepper, Led Zeppelin III, Ani DiFranco’s first four CDs, Ten, Elliott Smith in Heatmiser (before he became famous), early Leonard Cohen, Radiohead. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” played. His father had introduced the album to him a decade earlier.

  “There will never be another Beatles, Nick,” his dad had said.

  “Why?”

  “Talent and timing.”

  Hours later, he approached his father’s coffin with dread. He knelt down in front of the casket head down, careful not to look in. He raised his head slowly and scanned inside. The man, with pale white skin, too much makeup, hands folded and draped with rosary beads, didn’t look anything like his dad, except for his clothes.

  His dad’s favorite weekend outfit consisted of tan Bermuda shorts, a black polo shirt, and sandals. Even though it was the dead of winter, his mom had decided to bury him in his real clothes, the clothes he’d loved during his life. Next to the body was his dad’s baseball glove, the one he had used to play catch with Nick. He hesitated. He scanned the room. He lifted the glove out of the casket, then hurried out to the car, where he hid it in the trunk.

  Later in the reception line, he helped construct the pedestal. Your dad said it’s too hard to act differently at work and at home. None of us were that smart. Your dad said to be yourself and make sure, no matter what, that you laughed a lot. Your Dad smacked a 500-foot, walk-off home run in the county championship game. Your Dad was the best card player in the county. Your Dad. Your Dad. Your Dad. After what seemed like hundreds of conversations with mourners, all with their own gold nugget about his dad, the pedestal fully materialized. Standing in the shadow, he thought he heard his father say, “The only way home is through.”

  On the last day of the funeral, Nick had stood at the gravesite holding his mother’s hand. Some men lowered the casket into the ground. He followed his mother’s lead and threw dirt on top of the casket. What a horrible ritual. Later, after everyone had left the house, he sat hunched over the kitchen table, his mother seated next to him, sipping a Diet Pepsi for the first time.

  “This soda is awful,” he said.

  “Are you okay?” his mom asked.

  “Everyone is gone.”

  “I know.”

  He downed the rest of his soda with one swig. Against the table, he squashed the can into a flying saucer with the palm of his hand. “I need to go outside for a minute. Be right back.”

  He wandered out into the woods behind his house, a pocketknife in hand, on a mission. About five hundred yards into the woods, he found a suitable oak tree. He opened the pocketknife and cut a large piece of bark off of the tree to scar it. Carefully, he placed the bark next to the tree, daring it back into place. Nothing. Fuck it. He trekked back to his house.

  “Do you have any paper and a pen?” he asked his mother, still at the kitchen table.

  She scrounged around until she found both.

  He snatched the items from her and went to his room, locking the door behind him. At his desk, he waited until he sensed something, at first nondescript. After a few minutes, he named it “The Pool of Infinite Sadness.” The desk sank into the pool all the way up to writing level. He picked up his pen, dipped it in, watched the concentric circles radiate out through the pool. “A Piece of Bark.” All of his sadness had to go somewhere.

  I g
o

  into the woods

  behind my house

  searching

  for a tree

  my age.

  I cut from it

  a large piece

  of bark

  in your memory.

  I know the tree is

  in great pain now,

  as I am.

  It has lost

  its beauty

  its armor

  and is vulnerable.

  I will visit this place often

  to watch the tree

  heal,

  to grieve for

  what I have done

  and

  what I have lost.

  • • •

  The day after he returned from Rachel’s funeral, he called Sassa from his apartment. “I’m going to leave New York for a while. I don’t know where I’m headed, somewhere west. I’ve arranged for one of my employees to take over the studio until I get back.” He started to shake, as if he was out in the snow, as if Sassa, Rachel, had never been anything more than snowdrifts.

  “I understand.”

  “I’m going underground. I’ll have limited phone access while I’m away. Use my email address in case of emergency.”

  “Okay. If there’s anything else I can do, please let me know. I’m so sorry for everything.”

  “I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.”

  The shaking stopped. He would survive. That’s what he was best at. He had to make his father proud, make Rachel proud, make Sassa proud. With one suitcase, his laptop, and Rachel’s guitar, he hailed a cab to Kennedy Airport.

  PART 4

  CHAPTER 15

  Nick stepped into Kennedy Airport. Where to go? He singled out Alaska Airlines and approached their ticket counter. He chatted with a sympathetic-looking agent, a plain, brown-haired girl in her twenties with a smile like Rachel’s. She helped him narrow his destination to Boise, Idaho, or Billings, Montana. Less populated, closer to the Canadian border, and colder, Billings struck him as the better of the two. He purchased a one-way ticket.