Ashes and Rain
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Paris. City of lights. Couples on romantic walks. Holding hands in sidewalk cafés. Loving, longing glances. Gently promising smiles. I think of my wife. Paris reminds me of how we once were. I should have brought Judy along. This trip – Paris – might have healed us.
A handful of coins go into a fountain. A wish follows them. Three business meetings are canceled. My flight rescheduled. An early surprise homecoming. Hope for renewal.
During the flight, I spend hours rehearsing things I want to say to her. At the airport, I buy a dozen overpriced roses. Anticipation during the drive home. A quick honk of the horn and flash of the high beams as I arrive.
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I find her in the kitchen making dinner. Warm and welcoming aromas fill the house. As if expecting me. But she isn’t. She’s on edge. Asks me to go outside. Get wood to make a fire. It’s April. The house isn’t chilly. She’s insistent. Pushes me towards the door. I stumble over my bags. We have an argument. It gets loud. Then louder. Robert, whose been hiding in the powder room, comes to her rescue.
He’s an echo from her past. Two lovers caught by his wife. She issues an ultimatum. He chooses to stay married. Breaks it off. Gives Judy an expensive sweater. A consolation prize. She never wears it.
I explode with rage. “What the hell’s going on? This is our home, not some whorehouse.” We are yelling at each other. She gets loud. Abusive. Lashes out.
Robert’s divorce is final. He and my wife have ‘rediscovered’ each other. She professes her love. Says they were meant to be together. Has forgiven him.
Robert seems undisturbed by the violence of her assault. Only later do I realize that he understands her in a way I haven’t. He’s looking forward to the time when violence turns into wild passion. So, he watches and waits.
They leave together in her car. Rushing to some motel room. I can see her. Wild with lust. Screaming. Moaning. Urging him on. Like she once had been with me.
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The next morning, she comes back. Tells me it’s over. Wants a divorce. Marrying me was an impetuous response to her breakup with Robert. I’m the reason it went so wrong. Never tried to understand her. She loves Robert. And he wants her back. Nothing will keep them apart. I don’t argue.
Ten days later, the papers are signed. No-fault, they call it. Incompatibility.
The final day comes. The last of her belongings are loaded. No goodbyes. I stand on the porch, watch the car fade into the darkness and rain. Robert sitting beside her. She’s driving.
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A silence settles in. Time seems to stop. Numb, I drop into the rocker. Stare at the rain. Light a cigar. Take a long draw. Let it out slowly. Trying to relax. It doesn’t work. Rage builds up inside. A need to lash out. But there’s no one. Nothing but the rain and darkness. Then comes desperation. Alone. Abandoned. Inadequate. Stupid. One after another they wash over me. I’m not sure what I feel. Shame at another failure? Resignation? Rage at being deceived? Relief that it’s finally over? An ache deep inside seems to drift among them. All cradled inside a brutal finality.
A dog howls. Gusting wind drives the chilling rain onto the porch. Lightning strikes close by. The yard lights up. “Strike two,” I mutter. Darkness returns. Then a loud clap of thunder. Its force slams against my body.
A spasm shakes my body. I begin to sob. A sharp convulsive weeping. My foolishness, stupidity, and shattered dreams overtake me. “How can someone live that way?” I ask the darkness. “How can she treat people like that? Treat me like that?” The rain offers no response.
Tears come on hard. A sharp, violent attack. I slam my fists down, over and over, hitting the hardwood arms of the rocker. My face drops into open hands. When I take them away, I see they are bleeding. It seems appropriate. I walk into the storm. The wind tears at my clothes. Rain lashes at my face. Something shudders deep within me. I hold out my hands. Let the rain take the blood. Soaked to the skin, I retreat to the porch, wrap the cuts in a handkerchief and fall back into the rocker.
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Time passes. The rain slows, then storms back. The fever within me breaks. Tears pass abruptly. Like a seizure, they come on hard, then drift away. I wipe my face. Take a deep breath. The silence of the empty house behind me settles in like suffocating fog.
I start to replay it in my mind. Seeking the time where I should have known. Should have stopped it from happening.
Judy and I met when she was on the rebound from Robert Act One. “That relationship is over,” she told me. “The biggest mistake of my life. Nothing more to talk about. An affair with a married man? How could I have been so stupid?”
We didn’t talk about it again, and that shaped our way of being together. She never said. I never asked. Told myself I was honoring her privacy. What happened before me was her business.
It hadn’t always been bad. There were good times early on. When we were dating, she was a passionate lover. Wild and inventive. Affectionate in public without clinging. Sensitive to my needs and open about hers. A caring companion. I was the love of her life; the man she’d been waiting for.
Like most second timers, I was determined to make it work. The shame of one divorce was enough. Besides, hadn’t I learned from the experience? Wasn’t I better as a loving husband? As a friend and life companion?
When she moved in, she was considerate and compromising about her things. The heat remained. She walked around the apartment half dressed. Made advances. Tantalizing suggestions. Was very vocal when we made love. When I proposed, so casually, in the kitchen, she pressed against me, said “yes”, and whispered lovingly that we would spend the rest of our lives together in perfect happiness.
The courtship lasted three months. The wedding was in a church that neither of us had ever attended, nor would ever enter again. I paid for it. Her parents were disinterested. The minister knew neither of us. My best man was concerned I was moving too fast. Her maid of honor was neither maid nor had much honor. The woman got drunk at the reception and attempted to seduce my now-wife’s younger brother.
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Things fell apart during the honeymoon. A cruise of the Greek islands. Two days in Athens, then seven cruising the Cyclades. Athens set the tone. She became moody. Sex was uninspired. Public shows of affection brought cool responses.
The second night in Athens I arranged a lavish dinner at an expensive restaurant. Carefully selected the table. Told the staff we were on our honeymoon.
The evening was a disaster. She was distant. Criticizing. The service was slow. The lights too dim. Food not up to her standards. No conversation went beyond her disappointments. As we left the restaurant, she didn’t thank me. Just said she was tired and looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep.
We boarded the ship at Piraeus on what turned out to be a cruise to hell. She became, in turns, distant – criticizing – bitchy. The first night out, she was passive during sex. As if begrudgingly delivering on an obligation. Afterwards, silent, and moody. No public shows of affection, no suggestive whispers, no inviting glances. Each morning she dressed quickly and left the cabin. She rebuffed my attempts to be romantic. Avoided questions about why things had changed.
Three days into the cruise, I realized that she didn’t want to be there, or with me. The morning we anchored in the harbor of Santorini, we went our separate ways. Said she wanted to explore on her own. Needed space. Left the ship before I did. No plans to meet for lunch. Back on the ship she was unresponsive to my questions about her day.
Later, during an argument in the cabin, she told me how she’d found a ‘young stud’ on the beach and went home with him. She described their sexual adventures in detail. Each word a weapon aimed at me. Each glare an assault. I went numb at the thought it had happened less than a week after our wedding.
After Santorini, we slept in separate beds. Continued doing so when we got home. She became more distant. Angrier and abusive. I suggested a marriage counselor. She refused. Finally, I said, maybe we’d made a mistake. The marriage was not working. Maybe we should call it quits. That unsettled her. “No,” she almost shouted. “I’ve just had a rough time adjusting to being married.” Begged for one more chance.
It was better for a couple weeks. It wasn’t good, but it didn’t hurt as much, or as often. It also didn’t last. The indifference and abusiveness returned. She began spending time with ‘friends’. Then came the stay-over nights. Not even a sick friend excuse. Just, “I won’t be home tonight.” I realized later that those weeks had been spent arranging another lifeboat. Robert.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A friend suggested she was addicted to sinning. “Maybe only the illicit turns her on,” he said. “I have a friend whose younger brother is like that. If it isn’t a sin, he isn’t interested. They caught him trying to have sex with a neighbor’s daughter. She was eleven. He nineteen. No sense of morality or shame. With him, it’s all about breaking taboos. They sent him to a shrink who diagnosed him with some mental disorder with a long Latin name. Said it was addiction to sinning. Sounds a lot like what happened to you. After you got married, you were no longer forbidden fruit. The hunt was over. You’re just another notch on her belt. It isn’t sinning anymore.”
As he talked, it became clear. First, I was a lifeboat. Then the Eden Apple to be devoured voraciously. A means of temporarily satiating her addiction. Finally, an inconvenience standing in the way of her cravings. Maybe Robert suffered from the same disease. Two addicts using each other to get a fix. Or maybe he’s a dealer who has her number.
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I give the cigar to the rain. Go into the house. Change into dry clothes. Wander from room to room. Memories of better times mocking me. Here, the wild sex in the kitchen. There, the long, loving talks on the sofa. Here where her chair used to be. There a blank space which once held her favorite picture. Closets, once full to overflowing with her clothes, now empty. The smell of her deodorant in her bathroom. Her hair in the sink. A partially used packet of birth control pills left behind. Probably on purpose. “Robert’s about to be trapped,” I think with some satisfaction. “She’s not going to let him get away a second time without shoving the knife in deeper. A revenge that would trap him for life. And for her, a lifetime of sinning.”
In her bedroom, I find the sweater Robert gave her. Take it to the fireplace in the living room. Burn it. Something of the smell seems comforting. On the mantle is a photograph from our wedding. She took the silver frame. A gift from an old friend of mine. Dagger deeper. Tears briefly return as I stare at the radiant smiles. “The beginning of the ending,” I mutter and toss it into the fire. Watch until the ashes go dark. Then sit on the sofa, staring at the blank TV screen that had become our shared oasis from each other.
I go to the kitchen, a place of shared meals, and late-night conversations. We used to cook together. Had Robert helped prepare that last meal? Opening the fridge, I find a half-empty bottle of stale champagne in the back of the shelf. Part of their intended after dinner activities, I suppose. I pour it down the drain.
I find it hard to stay in the house. Grab a bottle of whisky, a glass, a bag of pretzels, and head for the porch. Sit in the rocker. Settle back, gently rocking. Take a long swallow of whisky. It claws its way down. Then comes the warmth I always appreciate.
Memories start to play like a movie reel, each now tainted with the knowledge of her deceit. I recall good times we shared. The laughter, the late-night conversations, morning smiles, plans for a future together. The excitement of exploration and dating. Each now arrives with a raw edge.
I had willingly played her fool. Induced by the most meaningless of all things. Any two people can get together and screw their brains out. Each treating the other as an instrument of gratification. The shallowness of it cuts into me. My shallowness.
As the rain slows to a gentle shower, I begin to see our marriage for what it had truly been. A sad dance that birthed a wasteland of broken promises, unmet expectations, and unspoken needs. Self-imposed blindness to the signs, the emotional distance, and the futility of half-hearted attempts to salvage something that could never have become anything. Life didn’t drain out of it. There was never any in it.
Then comes the thought. She’s no longer my problem. Her life is hers to live. If I want to make something new out of life, I have to see to my own demons. And I have to start by flushing away any echo of Judy. The damage has been done. There will be no more of it. If there ever was a page that needed turning, this is it.
“There has to be more to life,” I think. “More to my life. More of what I really need out of it.” The thought stops me. I know what I crave, but always avoid. A committed relationship that brings a deeper kind of intimacy. I always picked women who would never insist on such a commitment. Would never offer it. It was a price I’d never been willing to pay. I wonder if … But that thought is too hard. I let the wind carry it away.
I had always clung to companionship, even when it no longer brought joy. Played my assigned role. Took pain as payment for my cowardice. Remained steadfastly committed to what always turned out to be a farce played out in quick time.
It’s so simple, now that I look back on it. Just another farce in quick time. Now divorced, her old lover became both the forbidden fruit. He could provide the sinning she craved. Her plan was to feed him food I paid for, in a kitchen we had renovated together, then take him to our bed. The anticipation must have been intense. The sinning exquisite. There for the taking. Only to be pushed suddenly out of reach.
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After a while, I begin to relax. The hard knot in my stomach eases a little. The end, while painful, is also a form of liberation. I am free of something that had never been genuine, from a purgatory fired by my own indifference. One that had held me captive in a cycle of longing, frustration, and disappointment. Leaving me with a hollowness inside. The constant companion ever the backdrop of my life.
Can’t bring myself to go back into the house. I spend the night in the rocker. Wrapped in a blanket. Sipping whisky and remembering. The rain departs. Stars appear. The moon picks her way through a tangle of clouds. Around two in the morning, a meteor shower streaks across the sky. Falling stars leaving the last traces of the billions of years they had wandered the universe. A brief, intense light, then oblivion. Gone, as if they had never existed.
Around four-thirty, the birds begin their morning chorus. Their songs bring about a change in me. I’ve been on a hard journey, bouncing between regret and relief. Now I begin to see things differently. These small bits of life erupting with song. Welcoming the returning of the light. As if for the first time in all eternity. A mocking bird joins me on the porch. Apparently oblivious to my presence, begins to sing. One song after another. Mimicking first the starling. Then the robin. Then the warbler. Finished with his repertory, he flies into the rising light without so much as a glance in my direction.
I go inside, collect the ashes of the photo and sweater. Put them in an urn. Add the birth control package and seal it with candle wax. Place the urn on the fireplace mantel. Go into the kitchen and make coffee. A comforting routine. The divorce papers lay on the counter. But now they are just papers. Of no further concern.
Outside, I sip coffee. The sun is shining. A cool morning breeze brings the sweet smell of wet grass. I step off the porch.
© Earl Smith
First published in Still Here magazine
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