He doesn’t need to go to the windows that offer a view from the back of the building. It’s there, too, creeping closer and closer every day.
“Nothing will be fine. Look at it.” He jabs his finger toward the window. “Look at it.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t have to. I know what’s there.”
A tiny jingle-jingle drifts through the air, drawing his eyes down. A child is riding a tricycle in the street, pedaling in wide, disconsolate circles. A young mother stands off to one side with her arms wrapped around herself in a cocoon of make-believe solace.
Joshua closes the curtains and lights a cigarette, the smoke forming a halo around his head. Maddie’s eyes narrow in disapproval. It doesn’t matter, he almost says, but he holds his words inside. The little bell rings out again and disappears without an echo.
Maddie might not be afraid anymore, but he’s afraid enough for the both of them.
§
“Come to bed,” Maddie whispers.
He doesn’t want to sleep (What if it comes during the night, freezing them in place in their bed?), but he slips beneath the blankets and curls his fingers around hers.
Once her breathing turns soft and even, Joshua climbs out of bed and leaves the apartment, locking the door behind him out of habit, not need. The streets are deserted, the silence absolute, and the pavement swallows up the sound of his passage.
He steps to the edge of the real city and gazes across the street, a once busy street that held shoppers, cars, taxis, a choking miasma of need and want and must have now. The air smells of apples turned sour and old perfume, but underneath, it holds the musty scent of cardboard boxes filled to bursting with old paper and ancient memories. He shivers, although the air isn’t cold.
The sidewalk and most of the street is still real, still concrete and asphalt. He steps off the curb, takes two steps closer to the buildings, and stops in front of what used to be an office. Turning his body to the side, he stares down the street, at the line where real meets unreal. The buildings, depleted of their natural colors, are all one-dimensional and flat.
From the corner of his eye, he sees a woman dressed in a long black coat and white gloves, with a tiny hat balanced on the back of her head. She nods in his direction and continues walking. Joshua follows her, keeping a safe distance from the other world, until she comes to a stop, twenty feet down the street. “My children came here,” she says. “They wanted to see. That’s my daughter.” She points to a woman with short hair and earrings dangling to her shoulder. “My baby girl.”
“No, don’t touch her,” he cries, but he’s too late, her hand is already reaching. The sepia pulls her in, expanding all the while to fit her into the tableau. In an eye blink, her coat turns mahogany and her skin a shade of parchment; her face wears sorrow mixed with expectation. Joshua backs away. The street has turned half grey, half walnut brown.
He runs all the way back, back to the apartment, back to Maddie, safe and real and warm in their bed.
§
They sit in the kitchen with the curtains shut and drink lukewarm tea and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After, he pretends to read while Maddie rummages around in their spare bedroom. When something crashes to the floor, he turns the book over on the table and finds her sitting on the floor surrounded by a tangle of forgotten things on her lap, an old lamp on its side behind her.
“What are you doing?”
She glances up, bright eyed, and smiles. “Remember the rose you made for me? On our first date?”
“The one I made from the napkin?”
“Yes.” She holds up a battered and stained scrap of paper that resembles a squashed pumpkin with a long stem, not a rose. “I want to have it with me when it happens.”
He sits on the floor and cups his hands around hers, the misshapen flower in the center of their grip. The night he gave it to her, he knew he wanted to spend his forever by her side. But not like this. Never like this.
“Maddie?”
“What?”
He tries to find the words, but a lump sits in his throat instead. When he finally chokes it down, he shakes his head, afraid he’ll say everything wrong.
§
He goes outside again the next night and stands in the quiet. A clock above one of the building doors stands frozen at 11:15. He walks down to the woman in the dark coat. Her watch shows 2:23.
Time stopped, and the world stopped with it, he thinks.
He looks down at his own watch; the second hand ticks away the time. His time hasn’t stopped yet, but it’s close. When he leaves, his cheeks are wet with tears, tears he doesn’t remember crying.
§
Two nights later, he returns and sits on the curb with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. A wave of anger coils up from the inside, all scarlet and laced with thorns.
When Maddie sits next to him, his shout of surprise fills the air for one quick moment before it vanishes away. She slips her hand in his. “You shouldn’t be afraid. Maybe there’s life inside,” she whispers. “And maybe we’re just seeing the echoes.”
“There aren’t any echoes.”
“Not on this side, no, but who knows what’s on the other side.”
“Maddie, there’s nothing. Can’t you see that?”
“If you’re so afraid of it, why do you come here every night?”
He sits up straight. She smiles.
“I’m keeping an eye on it, that’s all,” he finally says.
“But why? It will come for us soon enough.” She squeezes his hand. “Then we’ll know.”
He grabs her shoulders and gives her a shake. “What’s happened to you? How can you be so damn calm?”
She takes his hands away one by one and presses a kiss to each palm in turn, her mouth warm against his skin. “I can’t,” she says in a small, quiet voice.
He bites back a sound halfway between a groan and a laugh. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I know you don’t understand, but I can’t be angry. I can’t be afraid anymore.” Her voice breaks; she takes a deep breath. “I know it won’t do any good, and if I start crying, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop. I pray every night that this is all a mistake, that everything will be fine in the morning.” She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “It hurts too much to be afraid. It’s better this way. Trust me.”
“Oh, God, Maddie.” He pulls her close.
She trembles in his arms, then pushes him gently away. “Let’s go home.”
“I’m scared, I’m so scared—”
She puts a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”
They make love long into the night and fall asleep with their legs entwined.
§
He wakes alone. He knows as soon as his eyes open; the weight of the apartment has changed, lifted, the trapped exhalation belonging only to one, not two.
No, oh, no. Please let me be wrong. She wouldn’t leave me. Not like this. Not now.
She left a note, her handwriting spidery and thin, on a small scrap of paper lying in the center of the kitchen table, one edge held in place with the salt shaker, a silly ceramic pig they’d found at a yard sale.
Joshua,
I’m sorry. I couldn’t wait any longer, and I knew if I told you, you’d try to stop me. I believe that when it’s all over, we will be together again. Instead of saying goodbye, I will say until then. I love you.
Always and ever,
Maddie
§
He crumbles the note into a ball and throws it against the wall. Bites back a shriek. No, maybe he isn’t too late. He flees from the apartment, not bothering to lock the door, and runs along the edge of the world where flat meets real, calling out her name, knowing she can’t hear, but calling anyway. Tears pour down his cheeks, and the hurt turns every heartbeat to pain. He can’t believe she’s gone. He refuses to believe she’s left him like this.
Then he skids to a halt. There. His Maddie. Standing with a small
smile on her face and the paper rose held in one hand. Her other hand is extended, palm up, beckoning him closer. He steps as close as he dares.
“Why did you leave me? Oh, Maddie, why didn’t you wait?”
He thinks about the paper flower, the way she’d tipped her head back and laughed when he’d presented it, feeling foolish, but right. The way her fingers curved around his own.
And the tears won’t stop; he can’t make them stop. He cries until his throat aches, until his eyes are swollen and the world is a blur.
I would’ve gone with you, if you’d asked me to. If only you’d asked. It isn’t better this way. Not for me.
§
When he wakes the next morning, the buildings across the street are captured in russet and amber. He steps outside. The sidewalk in front of his building and most of the street is still safe. Still the color of real. Not the color of past.
He can no longer see Maddie, but he knows she is there.
Somewhere.
He hopes she isn’t afraid. He hopes she isn’t in pain.
§
A loud rumble of thunder wakes him from a deep sleep. Fat drops of grey are falling from the sliver of sky, dark clouds roiling in the small space.
He sits at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, listening to the storm cry its rage. After a time, he takes a napkin, folding it by memory, his hands sure and careful. When he finishes the first rose, he makes another and then another, until a dozen paper roses lay on the table. He leaves them there and fumbles his way back to bed, pulling the covers over his head to keep out the sound of the storm.
I’ll see you tomorrow, Maddie. Tomorrow. Even if you don’t know I’m there.
§
In the morning, rain still falls, but of a gentler sort, and mud spatters the street. Joshua drinks the last of the tea. It tastes like tears on his tongue.
He gathers the roses and ties them together with a purple ribbon, Maddie’s favorite color. The soft coconut smell of her hair lingers in the apartment. He breathes it in, willing it to memory. Holding the roses against his chest, he traces his fingers over their wedding photograph and says goodbye to all the things they bought together.
Then he hears a shout, not of dismay, but wonder. With heavy steps, he walks to the window.
The rain has washed everything clean, and the mud isn’t mud at all, but a mix of umber and sienna. All the colors have been stripped away, leaving behind a stark landscape of black, white, and grey.
He holds his breath as a woman approaches one of the black and white buildings and disappears around the side. He sinks to his knees when she returns. “You have to see this,” she cries out, her voice rising up over the buildings. “Everyone, please, please, come and see!”
Several people emerge from buildings on the real side of the world, people he vaguely remembers from the time before, people he passed on the sidewalk or almost bumped into at the corner coffee shop. They all follow the woman, their voices trailing behind in syllabic streamers of anticipation.
Joshua races from the apartment and staggers across the street. All around him stands a forest of paper dolls and thin scraps of buildings, the fronts and backs pressed up against each other, the interiors locked away, tucked inside like flowers pressed between pages of a book.
He runs again until he finds her, motionless and still.
Ignoring the voices of those running in circles around him, shouting out ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ and ‘what nows’ (he doesn’t care about any of their questions. He doesn’t need reasons.), he touches Maddie’s face. Her skin, the texture of good paper, warms beneath his palm. He clenches a fist to his chest. His heart hurts in a place he didn’t know existed.
“I wish,” he says, his voice thick. “I wish you’d held on just a little longer.”
He swallows his sorrow. He will not leave her in the street. He can’t. She belongs at home, with him, not here, and with gentle arms, he lifts her up. The weight is wrong, all wrong, but it will be better soon. He knows it will.
Careful not to bump her on the door or the walls, he carries her into their apartment, puts her in their bed, and tucks the covers around her shoulders, ignoring the way the sheet clings to flat lines and angles instead of curves. He sets the paper roses on the nightstand so she’ll see them
if
when she wakes and sits on the floor beside the bed.
“Everything will be okay,” he whispers. “I know it will.”
As the sun moves across the room, his back aches and his stomach growls, but he’s afraid she’ll fade away into nothing if he moves. If he were a painter, maybe he’d know how to bring her colors back, but all he can do is hold still and hope.
When the room turns to shadow, he climbs into bed. Imagines he can hear a tiny, tiny breath forming deep in her lungs, waiting to emerge, waiting to push her back to real.
“Please come back, Maddie. Please come back to me. You’re all I have.”
He falls asleep with tears in his eyes, one hand curled under his cheek and the other holding her hand, dreaming of paper cuts and maybes and time.
Grey in the Gauge
of His Storm
Pattern:
Every lining has a cloud, be it a worn spot, a mended seam, or an unraveled thread. They are neither perfect nor impenetrable, no matter how much we wish it so. People will tell you that damage makes the fabric stronger.
It depends on the damage.
Ease:
After the storm has passed, I look down at my arm, just above the elbow. The new tear in the lacework of my lining is small. I pull myself up from the floor and sit on the sofa, breathing hard. I feel as if I’m made of dandelion fluff, as if one puff will blow me into a million pieces, but this feeling, this small weakness, will pass.
I hear a cabinet open and close and wipe the last trace of tears from my eyes. Alan comes back holding a needle in his hand, but he doesn’t meet my gaze, doesn’t say a word, as he plucks a strand from his own lining without flinching, threads the needle, and stretches out my arm.
I turn my head away. The first stitch is always the worst, but this pain is different. This pain links us together even more. I stare at the wall, at a photograph of the two of us taken a few weeks after we met. Our hands are clasped, our shoulders touching, and I can see a hint of the tempest hidden in his eyes, but it isn’t his fault. I must have said or done something.
I know better now. Tonight was a mistake. A stupid mistake.
He finishes, puts the needle aside, and strokes his fingers over the new repair. He’s skilled. The stitches are barely visible; it will be easy to hide. And it doesn’t hurt much.
Not this time.
His hand moves up; he traces my lower lip, then he cups my jaw. “I love you,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“I love you, too.”
He pulls me to him, hard against his chest. His lips crush mine. Maybe tonight we’ll love everything away and the needle and thread will be a thing of the past.
§
His lining is burlap. Rough and strong. I trace it with my fingers when he sleeps. There are repairs here and there, but I don’t know if he fixed them himself or if someone else’s hand wielded the needle.
I asked him once. I won’t ever do it again.
Give:
At work, I answer the phone, make client appointments, and deliver messages, but I watch the clock. I can’t help it. The hours seem to drag, even when the office is busy.
At the end of the day, I rush home into Alan’s arms; when he kisses me, I feel as if time has stopped. For us. For love.
I am lucky, so lucky.
§
Renee is sitting in the back of the coffee shop, her mouth turned down, checking her watch.
“I thought you were going to stand me up like the last time,” she says.
I feel my cheeks warm. I’d forgotten about that. Alan and I had been talking, and I’d lost track of the time.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not a big deal. You’re here now.”
As always, her lining is shimmery. Perfect. It matches the light in her eyes. When we first met in high school, she held mine up to the light, didn’t laugh at the worn edges, the threadbare center. She didn’t ask how, but I told her anyway. We’ve always told each other everything.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages,” she says.
“I know, I’m sorry. We’ve been busy.”
She gives a small nod. She talks about her job. I tell her about the restaurant where Alan and I went last weekend. She raves about a book she recently read. I mention a new movie Alan and I want to see. We both order second cups of coffee. I scratch my arm, lifting my sleeve, and her eyes follow the motion. Her brow creases.
“What happened?”
I pull my arm back and manage a smile. “It’s nothing. I’m clumsy, you know that.”
“You’ve never been clumsy before.”
She stares at me for so long, I feel like I’m withering. Then she looks away, and a strange hush hangs over the table. Eventually we fill it, but our voices hold a strange weight. Maybe we just don’t have that much in common anymore.
Tack:
We call in sick and spend all day in bed. He makes breakfast. I make lunch. We watch movies and, in between, make love.
“I love you,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ve loved you since the first minute I saw you. I knew you were the one. You are everything to me. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
“You’ll never lose me,” I say.
“Promise me. Promise you’ll never leave me.”
“I promise.”
And I mean it. He is my everything, too. We make love again. My thighs ache; my heart aches even more. This is real. This is love. It’s supposed to hurt.
Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Voices Book 3) Page 17