The Color of Home: A Novel

by Rich Marcello

“Ah. I bet your body aches because the truth is trying to get out.”

  “Really?”

  “I let my pain hone me down until all that was left was exposed and vulnerable. Then a strange thing happened. Somehow, I let go of all expectations. Magically, the pain lifted, and I ended up marrying my true love.”

  “I wish I could do that.”

  “You can. As long as you don’t get hooked on something to lessen the pain. Mine was work.”

  “I know that one . . . and a couple of others.” She liked Ashoka. He’d found whole a long time ago and had radiated out love all around him. He had the grandchildren to prove it. When right in the middle of being hooked, it’s hard to see clearly. Passion or addiction? Love or lust? Hope or truth? But there is a big difference. Nick had alluded to that long ago, but it took a stranger on a boat with two beautiful grandchildren in a sharp-hearted town to convince her.

  “Things will work out. Be vulnerable and let go of your expectations.”

  “Your wife is very lucky.”

  “Ha, tell her that.”

  “I’m glad I came over.”

  “Want to go for a swim?”

  “Sure.”

  They jumped in the water and played catch with the girls.

  • • •

  The next day Sassa wept in bed most of the day with the curtains drawn and the lights off. Occasionally, she got up and circled the room in one direction, then the other. Her body ached, especially in her back and neck. She was convinced she would be in pain for the rest of her life. Ashoka didn’t know what he was talking about.

  • • •

  On her last day in Coeur d’Alene, Sassa made her way out onto the lake. In the middle, she killed the engines. The air smelled fresh, ambrosia warmed by the sun and perfumed by the water. The waves stirred, reflecting light in a fractal dance. Was that what Nick meant about her eyes? The waves bounced off the boat, causing it to rock to and fro, causing her to surrender, to let go, to fall asleep.

  A noise snapped her out of a dream about moving to Paris and studying French cooking with Joel Robuchon. A fish jumping? A woman in cement shoes? The water around the boat stilled, revealing nothing. Calmly, she reached for a journal Nick had given her years earlier. Still mostly empty, she took it with her almost everywhere, waiting for the invisible ink to materialize. A little sleepy, she turned to a fresh page.

  FAMILY. When I was young, I connected through simple things. We worked. We loved. We ate. We danced. Then death locked it all up, made it somehow inaccessible. After that, I lost myself on the path of least resistance for a long time. Drugs. Men. I shriveled instead of blossoming. I forgot what Mom taught me. Until Nick came along.

  NICK. I loved him as openly as I could that first year, but I was scared by big love, by truth without masks. We were two halves, but not two wholes. I know now what I didn’t know then—there was really no choice but to start our separate and together journey.

  CAMBRIDGE. Three months alone to think, to remember, to finds pieces I lost along the way. I made peace with my father, my mother, and my sister. I forgave myself for living, and forgave them for dying. I stopped acting out, at least for a time. And then Brayden came along. What a good man. He’s gentle and kind and compassionate. He taught me a great deal without any strings attached. I love him. Always will. And Chloe was like a sister. I love her. Always will. They are chosen family.

  MATT AND MYRINA. They’re going to make it fifty years. They showed me that love really is workable. And that work is love and community. They showed me that it’s possible to have it all as long as you don’t get caught up, as long as you don’t bow to the many gods of numb for too long.

  WORK. The Green Angel in Portand. That was what I had loved. The size. The city. The community. If I had known then, I would have stayed there, stayed small, stayed humble. FoodNation. Too much money, growth, and profit. Too much vegetarian cookbook fame. Those things are so seductive, but don’t really matter in the end. They were lines crossed. Now that I know, I can pull back.

  RACHEL. She was good for Nick. That’s hard to admit, but true. I even liked her when we met in New York. But in Portland, in death, she changed everything. I needed Nick to pick me when she was still alive. I can’t be second choice. Once she died, there was no way to know, no way for him to show me who he would have chosen down the road. She’s on her own pedestal now, a beautiful one built from songs, right next to Nick’s dad. And she always will be. When I heard Songs of Love and Loss a month ago, I numbed, I acted out. For a full month! The worst bout I’ve had since college. I can’t believe I fired that chef. There was too much work, too much Vicodin, too much sex with strangers. Too much, period. Maybe those things, all my different ways of numbing, were the ultimate lines crossed. Once you go the first time, it’s easier to go again. The last time with Noah really scared me. I had to go cold turkey. If only there was a way now for Nick to show what he would have done, who he would have chosen. But there isn’t.

  She tossed the journal on the deck and dove off the back of the boat. She swam out a long way from the boat, a long way from anything. For a moment, before swimming back, she wondered if she could stay there forever.

  NICK. He was the catalyst for everything. He started me down this path toward truth with no masks, toward becoming whole. He is my true love. He always will be. But from the beginning, I knew one of us might end up with a different partner. I guess that was the risk we had to take to find our way to whole, to home. I must admit I didn’t think it would be him. He loves Rachel. He will always love Rachel. I will forever love him, but I’m letting him go. I can’t be second choice. I hope that he finds another love down the road that makes him as happy as I did once, as Rachel did until her death.

  WHOLE. Whole was about two halves in the beginning, but that wasn’t enough for me. It’s not enough for anyone, really, though you’d never know it in the world we live in. There were so many years wandering down the wrong path, so much learned by doing so, so much forgiven. Or maybe there is no wrong path. Maybe it’s all part of the way toward whole. And what is whole? In the end, it came down to one simple act—I learned to love, honestly, openly, directly, without masks . . . myself.

  She put down her pen and reread what she’d written. The pain in her body lifted, as if an invisible full-body cast of jagged metal had been cut away. She dove off the boat and floated for a long time.

  • • •

  Sassa set foot in her home for the first time in a month. Immediately, she turned on the cell phone she’d left behind and found hundreds of voicemail messages. Scanning down the list, she noticed multiple messages from Brayden. She phoned him. “It’s me. I just got your message. I’ve been out of town. What’s up?”

  “I thought you might want to talk about Nick after his performance on Conan.”

  “Not much to say. He loves Rachel.”

  “That’s all you got out of it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’ve talked with a lot of people, men and women, about the performance. All of the women wanted to know about you. Hell, they wanted to be you. And all of the men, including me, admired Nick’s perseverance. He loves you.”

  “The song was about Rachel, not me.”

  “The first song, yes, but not the second song.”

  “What second song? I switched the television off after the first song.”

  “Oh my, what a Romeo and Juliet moment! You need to get a copy of the entire performance right away and watch it.”

  “There are two songs?”

  Sassa found Nick’s entire performance on YouTube right after she hung up. She made herself sit through another performance of “Love,” which confirmed her original decision to move on. Then she trembled through “When Light Passes Through.” A house on North Lake. Red summer dress. Safe, healed, blessed. Love of my life. You are not alone. As we grow old. What a song.

  She sobbed for a long time, yet resolved to do nothing rash. She wouldn’t call Nick and
tell him she had watched his performance. She wouldn’t tell him how she felt about the song. And she certainly wouldn’t tell him that she’d changed her mind and wanted him back. She would do none of those things, at least not until she let her feelings settle for a few days. What was a few more days after so many years?

  Her resolve lasted until the middle of the night, when a dream woke her. In the dream, her sister, still alive and much older, looked like their mother. She was rocking in a painted wooden chair on the porch at their Mackinac Island summer hotel. Nick had driven all the way from New York to see her and ask her for advice. “Is there anything I can do to get Sassa back?” Nick asked. “No,” her sister replied. “She has a mind of her own and it’s closed. All she cares about is work, Vicodin, and sex with foreigners. She’ll die alone. There’s nothing you can do. Let go and find someone new, someone more like Rachel.” In a pool of sweat, sheets and blankets in a tangle, Sassa reached for her phone. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” Nick replied warmly.

  “I saw you on Conan. I watched the whole thing for the first time tonight.”

  “I hoped you’d see it.”

  “Can you come over now?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She found one of Nick’s old Beatles T-shirts, tossed it on, and paced back and forth in front of the mirror. She didn’t brush her hair, and didn’t put on any make-up. By the time Nick buzzed, their years of searching, of steps forward and backward, of trying to deny what they had, were over. She let him in, gave him a long, deep hug, and let her lips touch his for a second before she whispered, “I opened a bottle of wine, an Amarone.”

  He glanced at the coffee table. “The same Amarone we had when we first met, I see.”

  “It seemed right.” She took his hand and led him to the sofa. She poured the Amarone.

  “I’m glad you called.”

  “Quite the show you put on. Playing both songs with the interview in between.”

  “I didn’t hear from you last month, so I figured you probably didn’t see it. Either that or you hated the song.”

  “You really got to me.”

  “Good.”

  “It must have taken a long time to come up with that plan.”

  “It was more of an accident. I planned to only play “When Light Passes Through,” but another guest cancelled, so I got to do both.”

  “I needed to see all of it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gotten through.”

  “The universe, I guess.”

  “I loved the song.”

  “It turned out okay.”

  “More than okay. I believe you now, Nick. I’m not sure why I needed to see you perform both songs, but I did. All I know is that I understand now where you’ve been, and I think you were telling me the truth about coming home.”

  “I’m sure that every convoluted thing that happened during the past five years moved us toward this place.”

  “Do you want to go into my bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  They made their way, slowly, arm in arm, to Sassa’s bed. There, they held each other for a long time, fingers and legs intertwined. They didn’t speak. Joy and sadness passed between them freely, through their bodies, their eyes, their fingertips. She understood him as never before, as someone whole joined with her by choice and commitment. Without expectation, wholeness guided her as they made love. It was unlike anything she’d experienced before. An endless amount of love flowed out of her and carried them higher, over a steep wall that neither of them had been able to scale previously. Who knew that the ultimate leap was inward.

  “How do you feel?” he asked afterward.

  “Whole. How about you?”

  “Home.”

  “You know, I’ve been whole the entire time. I just couldn’t see it until recently. There were too many clouds in the way, too many old patterns.”

  “Same for me.”

  “Was she there with us?”

  “No. She’ll be with me on occasion elsewhere, but never with us here. We made this place together, and only we can be here.”

  “I feel like I should thank her.”

  “I have.”

  Hours later, when the first light poured across their faces, he nestled against her shoulder, gently stroking her stomach, and wept. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “For what?”

  “It was so difficult to get here.”

  “No need for that. We made it back to each other. Everything is going to be okay.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Nick flipped over onto his back and opened his eyes. Sassa, propped up on one arm, contently watching him sleep, met his gaze with a smile. She stroked his whorls with graceful movements up and down the side of his head, pausing on occasion to caress the back of his ear. The bedroom pulsed. Each object, composed from billions of granules activated by the morning sun, danced an imperceptible dance. So this was home.

  “Do you believe this has happened before?” she asked.

  “Opening my eyes to you?”

  “We overcame a lot to get to this place.”

  She was right about that. There were many points along the way where doubt almost won. The one-year break-up. The first time he heard about Brayden. Rachel’s death. The cabin. Songs of Love and Loss. But, in the end, it didn’t. “I’m sure it’s happened before.”

  “How come no one talks about this place?”

  “Finding a distant home scares people.”

  “Like swimming out into the ocean looking for land when you can only see water.”

  “And you’ve gone too far to turn around.”

  Staring out the window, adrift in the city’s concrete, glass, and steel, she didn’t come back to him for a long time. He loved when she searched for shiny new things. Sometimes a new idea. Sometimes a new place. Sometimes a new recipe or dance move or gentle caress. He was never sure what she would find and that was somehow better.

  “A lot happened in the middle,” she said.

  “It did.”

  “We need to paint a picture. If we take things for granted, everything we’ve gone through might end up wasted.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “We need to put what we’ve learned into practice.”

  “Just look at our past several months.”

  “We’ve been riding a wave. It won’t last forever.” She pulled the extra blanket from the base of the bed up over her shoulders until only one side of her face, flush against the pillow, remained visible. She smiled.

  There were so many looks, so many ways she could take his breath away. Infinite, really. Under the covers, he reached out and pulled her toward him. He loved the warmth and the smell of their bodies together under the sheets. Like nothing else. He kissed her; there would be no planning today.

  “You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “Let’s go dancing, but first . . .”

  “I’m serious, Nick. I want to talk more now.”

  “Let’s go dancing this afternoon. We can talk about painting pictures later. Give me a chance to think.”

  “Sometimes I want to punch you.”

  “That’s a good start.”

  • • •

  Nick devoted their subway ride to the dance studio to mulling over their earlier conversation. They’d devoured years searching for home, and now that they’d found it, how could they make sure they thrived? How could they create a future reassured by everything they’d gone through? How could they stay happy? Sassa was onto something: they had to practice for the rest of their lives. They would never finish.

  “Hi, guys. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Shall I queue up the regular list?” Adrienne asked.

  “No, surprise us.”

  They positioned themselves on the dance floor and waited. They had the entire studio to themselves. Sassa kicked off her sandals. She was wearing a yellow sleeveless dress that matched both her hair and the light pouring in through the windows. J
ust beautiful. Like Yoko, she was in the sun.

  “You’re deep in thought,” she said.

  “Still processing.”

  “Let’s move for a bit and see if we can shake something loose.”

  Sade’s “By Your Side” started, and Nick slow-danced Sassa around the studio. The music carried him off until his thoughts evaporated, and he lost himself in movement, in touch, in her eyes. After moving straight through the playlist, sweating and happy, they collapsed on the floor, and leaned up against the wall. Through the mirrored ceiling, the reflected auras around each of them seemed to touch.

  “We do need to paint our picture,” he said.

  She smiled. “I like it when you come around.”

  “We do some of our best work here.” He reached over and interlaced his hand with hers. “I’m sorry I didn’t get it this morning. I’ve invested so much time trying to find this place.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m ready now.”

  She nodded. She crossed her legs under her and straightened up. “Here goes. Without a picture, I’m worried that stuff might trip us up.”

  “And pictures are static.”

  “Right. What we need is more like a movie.”

  “And in most movies, so much is unspoken.”

  “Don’t.”

  He smiled. “Just playing. Sorry. Go on.”

  “We need scenes, guidelines, where everything is said out loud.”

  Truth said out loud. When he summed up everything they’d gone through, that’s what had taken them home. That’s what would keep things from clogging up in the future. Truth: Omega-3 for the soul. Connection guaranteed. He would print a few T-shirts.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Let’s name the scenes.”

  “You start.”

  “The honesty scene, where there’s honesty between us no matter what,” he said. He ran his fingers down her sweat-covered forearm.

  “Are you having fun?”

  “Finger painting.” Her skin. Smooth. Like the finish on his Martin. Like nylon strings on a Spanish guitar. Like hope realized.