If Only, 2007

Usually, it’s the light that pries her eyes open, streaming gold and uncaring through the blinds that close off her bedroom. But this afternoon, she’d fallen asleep on the sofa, aching back braced against the leather cushions, feet propped on his old footstool. Today, it’s the dark that’s woken her. That, and the empty silence of the house, louder than any alarm.

“Charlie?” She calls, feeling her heart slap her ribs like a moth’s wings slap glass after someone upends a bowl to trap it. Where is he? Has he gone and left her all alone? Did she leave the screen door ajar, when she opened it to air out the kitchen?

After a moment, Charlie appears in the doorway. He regards her solemnly with huge, questioning brown eyes, then wags his tail and bounds over to the sofa. He won’t climb up on it - not anymore. The cushions must still carry some scent of him, though she’s attacked them repeatedly with cleaners and sprays and all manner of wishes.

She’s glad she doesn’t have Charlie’s bloodhound nose. As it is, she imagines the rot spreading behind the paneling on the walls, eating away her last safe place. And the germs, lurking like little terrorists in the backs of cupboards, waiting only for the right moment to invade her sacred places and blacken them with disease. But if she can’t see them, or smell them, she can convince herself they’re not there. Sometimes.

She glances at the far end of the couch, where his head rested on the chocolate leather that day. Maybe she should clean it again. Just to be sure. But right now, in the quiet darkness of an August night, she can’t bear to touch it. It was hard enough to sit on this side, where only his sock-clad feet had been lying.

She never refers to him by his name, even in her deepest moments of grief. Why should she? She’d never called him by it while he was alive. Then, when the days were shortened by laughter, when the sun didn’t shine so accusingly on flawed chocolate leather, she’d called him ‘Honey’, or ‘Dear’. Those had been his true names, names given in love. Now, she can only think of him as him. In rare moments of conversation – with her hairdresser, or the teller at the bank – she says ‘my husband’.

Any woman can have a husband. Like ‘bird’, or ‘cat’, it’s a generic term. A safe term. Not personal at all.

Charlie butts her knee with his head, leaving a trail of saliva across her red pants. “Are you hungry?” she asks, scratching in his favorite spot behind his ear. “Should I cook you dinner?” Charlie’s overjoyed ‘yes!’ is a broad sweep of his whipcord tail. She’s glad he’s here with her. He’s taken his place; now, he’s the one she cooks for, cleans for, takes care of. Without Charlie, she might just curl up on the feet-side of this old couch, stare at the wallpaper he pasted over the paneling, and never move again.

Funny, that she has to search for things to do now. Before, it always seemed that the thread of time was knotted in a hundred places, shortened and impeded by mundane things like washing dishes and scrubbing toilets. Now, the knots are all unraveled, and life flows by as smooth and slow as hot taffy poured from the pan, a thin and ever-lengthening stream. Now, she frets over little things that had never seemed important before, and fears everything – like the germs in the cupboards, who must still be there even though she’s washed the corners with bleach a hundred times. She’s like the moth under the glass, flapping uselessly, wearing herself out.

But, she reasons, she has Charlie to think of. And what would he do if she got sick, and she couldn’t take care of him? He’d leave her too - and she’d be all alone, rotting away from the inside like a rusty old soup can, full of little devouring things.

To be safe, she bleaches the floors, too. Charlie eats off them sometimes, despite her fevered admonitions.

Later, running from sleep, she wanders the house on slippered feet. She’s changed out of the pants Charlie drooled over, but laundry day is tomorrow, and the clean pants don’t match her shirt. It doesn’t matter. There’s no one to see her, no one to criticize. No one to laugh fondly at her disheveled state.

Flicking off the kitchen light, she peeks around the French doors into the living room. The couch sits on a pile of moonlight, raised up off the shag carpet like a throne, or a bier. Her eyes close, but not before she sees him again, hands dangling like broken wings, silver hair fluttering in the night breeze, eyes gaping over an slack mouth.

His heart was broken, the doctors said, and it had been for a long time. It had simply given out that day, like the engine in an old car. There was nothing she could have done, they said.

But if only she had been here – to feed him dinner, to chafe his blue-veined hands while they watched old movies on the television – maybe his heart would not have broken. Maybe her love would have healed it over like a scabbed knee, and he would have been alright. If only she hadn’t gone out, that day! It was a selfish thing she’d done, to leave the paradise of their home for the dingy streets of the city, just because she’d wanted new shoes.

She’s never worn the shoes. They’re sitting in the box, still, on a shelf in her closet, but she wouldn’t dream of returning them. She opens the box, sometimes, and stares at the shiny red heels, the sharp, pointed toes, and wonders why she thought they were worth it.

He would have liked them, though, she was sure. He’d always loved her in red.

When she opens her eyes again, the couch is just a couch, a lifeless construct of cushions and seams and stuffing. Charlie is snoring contentedly on the rug, tail flapping against the ottoman as he dreams dog-dreams of bones and birds and bright blue scent-trails that lead over rainbows. To Charlie, wishes are wishes, and dreams are dreams, and neither of them are complicated by such terrible words as ‘if only’.

She eases around him, her only charge, fearful of waking him, envying his peace. Lowers herself carefully onto the cushion at the head-end of the couch, where she has never yet dared to sit. Sinks her face into the leather, wondering if Death is even now crawling up her nose. She deserves no better, after all.

Her first breath is punishment, and fear makes it heavier than a hundred stones. Her lungs expand, contract. She is still alive.

And when her lungs expand again, it’s not death and decay she smells. No – she smells sunshine and days in the garden, cologne and his favorite soap. Years of conversation; words traded like coins over cups of black coffee, each more valuable than the last. And his hair – his silky silver hair, perfumed with sweat or shampoo, that she’d so loved to run her fingers through.

She smells a life lived, and a life loved. Not the destination, but the journey. And what a wonderful journey it was. Forty-six years, they shared; thousands upon thousands of days, all punctuated with their own little joys and sadnesses. How has she forgotten? Have all those precious moments been boiled away by bleach and fear and drawn shades?

No, she vows, rubbing a damp cheek on chocolate leather. He was more than that. I was more than that, because of him.

At last, dreams come and carry her away. They sweep her like dust before a broom, until she settles in a sunlit place where his name was Jim, and hers was Anna, and she vowed forever in an ivory dress.

Back to Samples