rectified

Rectified explores what seem to be the innocuous differences that would make one person’s heaven another person’s hell

Rectified is a short story in GÖTHIQUE click here to buy

“Sugarplum! Love – are you alright?”

“Wha. . . what happened? Whit, what happened?”

“Oh, Love, you blacked out for a minute. Well, more like a few seconds. Still. . .”

“My head. . .”

“Shush now. Here, have a drink of water. It’s got to be the heat. The humidity. Air is like soup. . .”

“I . . .  I don’t know. . .”

“And you’ve got to be hungry. You’re running on empty. I’ve told you; you’ve been pushing yourself too hard. Harder than what’s. . .”

“I know. Good for me. But I love my work. . .  But forget about that. I’m still a bit dizzy. And my stomach. I feel like. . .”

“Okay, okay, Sugarplum. . .”

“Please, Whit, don’t call me. . .”

Before I could finish, I threw up into the dampened handkerchief Whit had just used to wipe my brow. What had been in my depleted system to purge, I couldn’t even think, but I somehow managed to feel better, having done so.

My husband hovered over me, practically clucking, the attentive mother hen he had always tended to be.

While my sides ached, my head tried to aright itself. I cast a reconnoitrive glance around me. Nothing seemed amiss, though there was the slightest abstracted quality to the room, in part, due to my wooziness from what I assumed was a fainting spell (the first one I had ever experienced), in part due to the sallow cast of the morning light, as filtered through the bank of low, rolling clouds coming in from the southwest. It seemed, the atmosphere, the air pressure itself, was shifting. The light-headedness was, in fact, not that unpleasant, all things considered. It lent my inner, still heedful self a veiled distancing from my immediate surroundings, which, however nice they were, included in that moment someone hovering over me like a doting vulture – a someone for whom, truth be told, I held quite minimal regard.

The setting was this: my husband and I were spending a few weeks alone at our summer house, a lakeside lodge situated a few hours from the city. The rustic, three-season room in which we found ourselves was a vast, windowed space that spanned the backside of what served now as a most comfortable second home, what Whit presumed we would eventually retire to full-time. The house was rather in the middle of nowhere, and I for one appreciated its relative isolation for my own, somewhat selfishly introspective reasons. Away from the hustle and bustle of city life, I had been able to quietly ponder all that had needed consideration, my emotional plate having been far too full for quite some time. Whit, so different from me in so many ways, had never been anything but a glib braggart about our real estate acquisition. He persisted in telling everyone of the ‘campestral hinterlands’ where he enjoyed “roughing it,” I suppose his way to insert a modicum of false modesty into our most comfortable situation by pointing out the bucolic datedness of our second residence, which he (far too often) referred to as his alone. The house was, yes, an extravagance, but a solid investment. Having come into our possession furnished and “as is,” most everything was original, inside and out, which lent a timelessness to the place.

Seated where I was on the floor, on a hooked rug the shape of a lily pad no less, the ceiling fans rotating overhead appeared miles away, their pace languid, their effect inconsequential. Islands of overstuffed furniture dotted the room, providing also the cushioned perch upon which Whit had lit to administer aid to his ill-taken partner. Right in front of me – I could have rested my chin on its edge – stood a coffee table laden with stacks of books and magazines, which appeared to neither have been read nor changed out in a decade. Their faded covers aided to the sense of perenniality which pervaded the house. My nose was but a few inches from one such stack; I noted how they smelled faintly of age and lake water.

Whit, easing himself off the loveseat, positioned himself rather gallantly with one knee on the ground, his left arm wrapped proprietarily around me, although I was quite stable where I sat. He grimaced as he held the wet cloth close to my face – too close – gingerly seeking to contain its noxious contents while yet keeping them right under my nose. His demonstrative attentiveness had brought his face barely two inches from mine, though I would have to assume, he was feeling the same off-put way about me in my less than agreeable condition. I winced, discerning Whit’s halitosis over my own sour breath. His condition – I always wondered it had something to do with all the herbal supplements Whit swore by – had plagued him from the get-go, which I had in our first years together relegated to the temporary, the ‘fixable’. In this moment, he was oblivious to my wincing, wholly occupied by his mothering and muttered platitudes, which I, but for that god-awful “Sugarplum,” hardly registered.

“Here, here. . .” he continued, laying the damp cloth onto the morning paper and grabbing a linen napkin from the breakfast tray.

I pushed the wad of stiff fabric away from my face, which Whit was pressing against my mouth as if in a preemptive, catch-all measure. I was done being sick, and he was only making it hard for me to draw a next breath.

“Love, do I need to call for someone? Should I take you into town, or go with you to the . . .?”

“No, no, Whit. I’m fine. Stop, stop, would you?”

“Alright. . .”

“Give me a second. . .”

“Very well. . .”

Give me a minute. Give me a mile. Give me a day, or a week, a month; give me a year. Give me the rest of my life, back to me. . .  

A sheaf of divorce papers I had secreted away in the corner hutch, out of sight and unbeknownst to Whit. I had filed for a dissolution of marriage last week, and today was the day I had designated as being the one where I would give him the paperwork and break the news, try to talk things out with him, help guide him to some compatible place of understanding I wondered he might be heading towards as well, for all his innocent ministrations of the present moment. Today was the day for my official second step – my appointment with the lawyer and the filing having been step number one – on a reclamation of life I knew I needed to retake for my own sake, to simply be able to keep on breathing. I had been slowly suffocating for some time, my commitment to our waning relationship having been for years incrementally depleted. And though his affair – a stupid, brief thing following a career crisis nearly as damaging – was now a distant part of his past, our past, his subsequent overreach and apologetic dutifulness, not to mention his half-hearted displays of sexual attentiveness, were only part of an ever-growing repertoire of irritating shortcomings I could no longer put up with. They were part of a worn-out realm no world of comfort, no lake house setting, could override.

I had to make this ending happen if I was to continue to simply live.

Yes, it was nearly killing me to be with him. Pretense had worn paper thin to the point of breaking. Our wedded tapestry, you could say, had been laid bare by circumstance, and the undeniable, fundamental disconnects I could no longer ignore had made of our fabric a scrap of wet tissue, about to tear.

I was also at a point where I was ready to give up everything to make this thing happen; and so, I would be the nobler and wiser one, and take this first, crucial step for us both.

My generous filing had no stipulations whatsoever, the plan being to walk away with little more than the wardrobe I had pared down to a manageable, packable size, plus the few thousand I had saved up over the last few years, which no one – meaning Whit – had ever missed. The funds were intended to get me ‘out of there,’ transport me somewhere ‘far away.’ Though I had not yet decided where exactly my ‘far away’ would be, I had resolved I would go far enough to eliminate any chance of random encounters with their forced civilities, far away enough to prevent the crossing of small-world paths by way of workaday or social situations. This would, I rationalized, freely permit Whit his own fresh start, which I suspected he would launch before the pillows had even cooled off. I wanted to know nothing of his next chapters, but nor did I want him to know about mine. I did not care what would comprise Whit’s new life; I only wanted desperately to be able to put our old one fully behind me, and re-start mine.

In the more immediate picture, I also wanted to not endure another night in the same bed with Whit, not wanting to hear his voice anymore, either. He had this simpering, overly sweet tone he was inclined to use with me, which had come to only irritate me. Moreover, he was possessed of an ever-present vocal turn that hinted of question marks, which I suspected we both knew was borne of the half-buried, disparate realities we had each slogged through, all collecting as the hubris of our twenty-plus, long years together. First, there had been the collapse, and then the lawsuits. It had now been nine years, almost to the day, since the disclosure and our horrible fallout wrought by his betrayal; eight years since we had bought the lodge (with the thought this place would be  one of healing), and seven since the ardently advised re-commitment ceremony, which had kept us on a stalwart but ever more numbing uphill climb, up and out of the trenches we had dug ourselves into. So much, too much, tugged at each one of us, each in our own way.

It was time now to end the quiet nightmare and move on. Time to reap what was left to harvest by way of this last act of sincerity, time to allow myself to come back to life and seek out who I yet hoped to become as middle age loomed. Time to to be me on my own. Me, yes, me.

With a sideways glance, I surveyed the hutch in its corner. I noted ornate the tassel, hanging as it always did, from the key in its ivory escutcheon. A faint film of dust dulled the cabinet’s top surface. Like everything else in the house, the hutch appeared to have stood undisturbed for months, this being our first time out since the turn of the year. Lucky for me, I suppose, Whit was apathetic towards things not intimately related to him. I could have had a general store of forbidden sundries hidden in every pigeonhole of that hutch, which he would never even think to seek out. And were he to open any compartment of the hutch, he would not give a moment’s pause to whatever he might see stored in there, including any fat, legal-sized envelope he might encounter. In Whit’s peculiarly restorative world, to overlook and to ignore, was to enjoy, and to trust.

Passing out or feeling unwell would not deter me. I would present Whit with the papers today no matter how I felt. But later. I would do it later. I needed to re-group. I had waited interminable years for this day; I could wait a few more hours.

“Here, Love. I’ve poured your tea afresh. How about some toast? With butter? Honey? Jam?” 

We ate breakfast in relative silence. I let Whit take my subdued demeanor as some kind of weakened state. In actuality, I was counting minutes. I was formulating introductory sentences to the explanation I still felt I owed him.

Lunchtime. I would do this by lunchtime.

†††

Near noon now. Whit and I had spent the remainder of the morning in the three-season room, him reading and clearing his throat repeatedly, like he always did – he had maintained for years, it was allergies – and me, trying to focus on a manuscript I was editing, trying hard not to be annoyed by his unconscious cacophony, which I resented for his never having pursued its medical resolution. Still on the first chapter, having repeatedly read – well, mindlessly skimmed – the first few pages, I found myself looking for a sign (ridiculous, I know, but still), some indication from the cosmos, that now was the time to broach the subject, allow the words to find their way into my mouth so I could launch the conversation that would help us across the chasm. It was almost like the sheer anticipation to actually create a more official division between us was holding me back. I think I feared Whit trying to pull me back – and winning. I feared his hurting, sure, but more than that, I feared him intellectualizing the fallout and then spinning it as a positive. We had both become too adept at faking our prolonged denouement, which in effect had served us both as a sort of trap.

“Whit, I need to. . .”

“What was that, Love?” His eyes lifted from the page.

“Whit, could you put your papers down a minute? We’ve got to. . .”

Before I could complete that critical, first sentence, my husband’s gaze shifted away from me, lured away by something behind me, off in the distance, which had caused his eyes to grow wide with something – fear? While I could see the lake from where I was sitting, Whit’s view, what lay behind me, was of the fields to the west of our property, a sea of pale green that stretched to the horizon’s edge.

“Did you see anything in the forecast today?” Whit interrupted me, his eyes affixed on the distance.

“Uh. . . no; I. . .” I had not been paying attention to, well, anything.

“Well, Love, there’s something brewing out there, and it’s looking mighty angry. Look!” He pointed emphatically. I could tell, Whit was neither kidding nor trying to sidetrack me. Why would he do that, anyway? He had no idea what I was about to tell him. I was quite sure of that. . .  

I turned around on the sofa; there was no denying the foreboding mass of clouds, several miles out, right about where the fields met with the quickly narrowing sliver of a yellowing sky. The front grew visibly – larger, darker, and more ominous as its rain line, a distinct curtain of gray, approached. I could see the clouds’ roiling, could feel as much as hear the odd, pressurized quieting that precedes any powerful storm.

Whit had just begun to rifle through the newspaper, looking for the weather forecast for substantiation of the obvious, when from far-off the tornado sirens were deployed. Their wailing chorus soared across the land, beating the storm to further inform us of what was fast becoming evident. At that moment, the rain line crossed over the house, bringing hail with it. Ice like pea gravel struck the seamed metal roof of the sunroom with a deafening percussivity.

I could barely hear Whit as he yelled over the din.

“Honey!” he sputtered, folding the newspaper in a compulsive gesture of orderliness. “Bad weather indicated for today! Hadn’t we better. . .”

The sirens cycled through, their howl pitching up and over and erasing whatever it was he was trying to say.

But I was once more deep into my ruminations, far down the familiar path of my imaginary exit. I could hardly steer my attention back into the room, or the voice of the one person I did not want to be isolated with, let alone for the duration of a dramatic natural event as this was fast proving to be.

Whatever it was Whit kept trying to say, my attention, now turned, stayed outside with the elements.

I watched as an angry swath of clouds swelled at its underside, then erupted. Caught by a vortex, a misty, gray funnel began to spiral downward, reaching long-fingered for the terrain. Pitch black the moment it hit the ground, the tornado gorged on the rich soil as it tore through the field, fueled as if with a monstrous hunger for the tidy plow lines, as if with a desire to destroy the farmers’ handiwork.

I watched as the tornado intensified, grew in stature, in girth. It lost its ribbon-like elegance, took on the pedantic, triangular heft of a real beast. The storm was morbidly statuesque, and I was fascinated. I wanted to run out to meet it. I wanted to reach out and feel the force of its turbulence.

Whit’s voice shattered my moribund reverie. I was surprised to see his delicate hand on the sleeve of my cardigan, those small, smooth fingers of his tugging on the knit, insisting on my attention but oddly devoid of panic.

“Sweetie! Love!” he cried, “We should get ourselves to the cellar!”

What overtook me in that next instant, I cannot justify, nor do I wish to try and explain it, but it was as if all pretense of matrimonial civility in me had been sucked out of my soul and lifted up into that storm. In that same moment, I realized, the looming tornado was my sign, my longed-for missive, an illustrative mandate from a most wicked Mother Nature herself, calling me to arms, to expose my absolute truth, no matter the cost.

Level it all.

“You go!” I yelled back, yanking my sleeve away, breaking off Whit’s latest grab at care and concern. “You go!” I repeated, “Take care of yourself and I will take care of me! Now go on; let me stay here!”

And I meant it. I had just made my proclamation, an unexpectedly crass prologue to step number two.

Let me go!

“Darling! Come on! Don’t be ridiculous! Sugarplum, let’s get ourselves downstairs!”

The urgency in Whit’s voice had escalated, which was understandable, given the approach of the storm, the wind’s howling, the windows’ rattling.

“Stop calling me ‘Sugarplum’!” was my only response. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

Whit just didn’t get it. Despite all those degrees and all the money he made, I had often thought of him as oddly dense, suspected it had as much to do with a fundamental stubbornness, which to date had served him only too well. His perpetual show of being righteous and right had been a strategic charade, a working mensch virtue that had indeed facilitated his career climb – and not just once, but both times. For me, that aspect of Whit had long run its course, and I realized in that moment, I had almost come to hate the man I had once loved – or had believed I had loved. Not only that, but that I had perhaps come to this point a long time ago, but been loathe, as most any marital partner would be, to admit as much. Such is the toxicity of falsehood within the paradigms of forced devotion. It can erupt as rage.

“You go downstairs!” I cried over the bedlam. The hail had passed, but the rain pelted unrelentingly, falling nearly sideways in the onslaught. The floor at the far end of the room was already drenched, the rain having pushed through the screens of the windows neither one of us had seen fit to close in time.

I at least had enough wherewithal and practical knowledge to assess the storm’s immediate path. “That tornado isn’t even going to make it to our property. Look!” It was my turn to point emphatically. “It’s going to follow the vale and stay on the other side of the lake! You go on downstairs if you want. Go! I want to stay up here and watch! And I’ll,” I huffed with exasperation, “get the windows!”

“Well, if that isn’t the stupidest thing I ever. . .” Whit fussed as he crossed the room and began throwing the latches of the storm windows, his shoes squelching on the wet floor. “Well, alright. . .   If you insist on witnessing the show, then I am going to stay up here with you, Sugarplum!”

And then Whit did what he undoubtedly expected me to expect of him: he planted himself on the davenport next to me and put his arms around me. What – to protect me? Comfort me? Witness Nature’s spectacle with me as if it were our divine apparition? It was such an unwanted show of needless chivalry and unity, I wanted only to recoil, push him off of me. I longed to be free from his insufferable embraces. I wanted to run out the door, across the field, and catch up with the tornado as it took its inevitable turn along the valley. I longed to let it consume me. Take me with you!

The day was half over, and the one thing that needed to occur, had not yet taken place. It might now never take place. Today was to be the first day of the rest of my life. It had to be that!

I would do this by bedtime. I exhaled.

Whit stroked my hair as he held me. I remained motionless, gritting my teeth, my eyes traveling lockstep with the storm, willing it on, alternately wishing it to change course and come back to strike us where we sat, like a pair of stooges in our huge, lovely room, with the roar of the rain and the wind in our ears, encapsulating us by some kind of circumstantial default.

†††

The tornado passed on, and soon enough, it dissipated and receded back into clouds, which still hung heavy but now benignly so. Its waning had left the air imbued with that interesting calm where ions and the sudden quiet might make for any other couple caught up in such a violent visitation a memorable spell of relief, perhaps even joy.

Whit, at least, seemed elated.

Before he leapt up to launch into exclamations of wonderment laced with self-congratulatory bravado, Whit slapped upon my lips a wet kiss he no doubt fancied as passionate and spontaneous. I lifted the thick sleeve of my cardigan to wipe my mouth like a child, licking the rough fabric in a symbolic gesture of erasure, against the repulsive intrusion of his tongue. I never, ever, ever wanted to endure another kiss from him again. His kisses, never that “good” to begin with, were now downright stomach-turning.

“Sugarplum. . .   Love! Oh my God, Darling!” he kept on and on, “That was amazing! Miracle of Nature! What did we just witness? Oh my gosh, oh my golly!” Whit went on and on.

Dear me. So, was this to have been some bonding event between the two of us? The cosmos hadn’t been messaging me; the cosmos was mocking me.

Whit fell to his knees before me. He took my hands in his.

“Sugarplum! Can you believe what we just lived through? Together? I mean, what does something like this mean? For you and me?” he implored, squeezing my hands, “Yes! Here is what it means: The universe is showing us – you and me – its grand design. It is saying, you and I were meant to serve witness the storm together. See? The signs point to how right it is, that we have managed to come this far! And, that we now – together – must continue forward, together. We were meant to be together!”

Always such grand statements. Was he convincing himself by way of his own effusiveness or so mulishly infatuated in the drama of the moment as to not remember the myriad inklings of soul-baring troubles I know each one of us had been hinting at for years?

Was his tone-deafness just another aspect of the unfortunate constructs of our relationship? Was it wishful thinking on his part? Or was he just afraid, after having re-committed so many years ago, of losing out in the end once everything was at last said and done?

†††

We had no power. Lines were no doubt down everywhere, and the roads were most likely impassable. Whit – foolishly, if you ask me – ventured out in the car to survey the damage but returned within minutes. He could not even reach the main road due to downed trees. I could see evidence of massive damage from the windows. Our terrace and lawn were littered with all manner of debris, even parts of some sort of signage, which had ridden the storm winds who knows how far. Red and white shards pierced the groundcover, as did an angry, thorny array of splintered limbs from nearby trees. It was a mine field out there. Best to stay put, I had to admit.

The wake of the storm had left the area cooled and damp. I swear, though the days were still growing longer, it felt as if autumn had suddenly descended upon us, wiped away the summer in the space of a few seconds.

The divorce papers still lay untouched in the hutch drawer. I could think of nothing else but those papers. I could see them in my mind, there, in the dark, little space, signed and stamped and ready to go. Uselessly so.

†††

Whit built a small fire in the living room’s tiled hearth as evening fell. He proposed we even sleep in there, camp out, if you will, to enjoy the light and the warmth. The furniture arrangement made that a practical decision, for we could be separated by logical placement. I could arrange my pillow and quilts on one divan, so to situate my head as far away from Whit’s as was possible, to both minimize the intimacy and the snoring I would have to listen to for yet another night, alongside his dreamtime muttering and sputtering. Whit had always boasted that he slept like a rock. Lucky him, I would think to myself. For me, it had been two decades of nudging and tickling, later prodding and pushing, night after night of disrupted, intermittent spells of sleep. Whit denied vehemently any breathing issues. He would laugh out loud, become angry with me no less, when I told him he often quit breathing altogether. That was always the worst – to lie there, waiting for the choking sounds to break into snorts to announce he had resumed the intake of breath, though with no small amount of grunting and coughing. I had once broached the topic of separate bedrooms, but Whit had exploded over my proposal, accusing me of making an incremental divorce ploy, and that married couples not only should share a bed, but that if they loved each other, they would even enjoy such as these Pickwickian bouts of airless and fitful sleep – and that it was in actuality a measure of love, to keep slumbering watch over the other. In retrospect, I would concur, that the absence of loving support I came to feel after countless nights of poor sleep was indeed symptomatic of our situation. That he presumed I ought to enjoy his laborious snorefests perhaps epitomized his ego-infused shortsightedness.

I had come to understand, the falling out in a stunted partnership is a sum reached by way of myriad, otherwise inconsequential maths:

1,2,3. I wanted out. I wanted out. I wanted out.

However, before any blessed spell of sleep might lay its claim upon me, perhaps steal for me a dream or two that upon waking I could recall from which I could take solace, there was still an evening ahead of us and an important task at hand. Perhaps the evening would be a shorter one than usual, thanks to the premature darkness, but it would still be something of an endurance test. There was an odd endlessness in the prospect, for the way the day to this point was merging with the gloom of a long, quiet night. I could almost feel the weight of the heavens pressing down upon the house, as if we had been placed inside some sort of inverted glass bowl, a god-scaled enclosure, like a colossal snow globe, or a cheese dome a mile in diameter. I felt trapped. . .  

†††

. . . I wax poetic on my ruminations. They embody the futility in which I am bogged down, about to sink fully under. It is, according to my watch, not even eight o’clock.

Whit proposes we ‘make a lovely night out of this,’ and has prepared a light meal of bread, cheeses, assorted dried and pickled fruits, and wine. He is in a festive mood. As if there were something to celebrate.

“Love, here. For you. To us!” he proposes a toast.

Before I can think about it, I have dutifully struck my wineglass to his, but say nothing in return. It takes a moment, but I muster and begin afresh, “Look, Whit. There was something we needed to talk about. . .”

“I know, I know, Love,” he says, “there is much we need to talk about. But Sugarplum, there is something I need to tell you, too.”

“Whit! Please! Would you please, for the love of. . .”

“Sorry, sorry,” he continues, benevolent indulgence rendering his voice too thick, too syrupy.

The fire crackles in the hearth.

Despite the deluge of just a few hours ago, the wood Whit has brought in ignites readily. Flames dance picturesquely, set the living room aglow. Even the embers seem to spark on cue, in response to his words. When Whit pauses and I stay silent, unable to think how to respond, their crisp patter fills the momentary voids. A minute, erratic drumbeat. . .  

The wine, per the label, is a good one. I taste not a thing. It may as well be colored water.

My conviction, my desire to finally state my case, takes on a tinge of desperation. Purpose is now edged with panic. How is it, that I – never one for loss of words, lack of temerity – have been unable to complete a single sentence on the one topic that needs to be broached? I am nowhere near making my self-imposed deadline. One scene progression to the next has so far only resulted in yet another stage being set for yet another awkward and forced romantic interlude. And all of it points to re-bonding, to appreciative acknowledgment, serves like emotion-evoking glue from which no soul with any iota of good conscience can seek escape.

I take another sip.

“Golly, this is good stuff. One of our very favorites, right, Sugarplum?” Whit holds the glass up, studies the garnet light-play. “Just think,” he pauses, sighs. “Imagine for a moment, this is all there is, Love. You and me, and this place we have so lovingly made into a home together; a quality glass of wine, quiet time unbroken, no deadlines looming, no distractions, just you and me. . .”

I need to get the paperwork. Now. 

I take one of the brass candlesticks from a grouping Whit has arranged on the table and make my way back to the three-season room. I know the space, the hutch, so well, I need little to no light to find a clear path through it, and for my hand to find the key, turn the lock, pull open the drawer.

I hold up the candle to see better inside the drawer. The paperwork is there, of course, as I expected it. Untouched, as I expected that, too. I extract the envelope, slide it into my sweater pocket.

To be compelled to inject a piece of most unfortunate reality into an evening better situated for Waldenesque poets and their romantic partners must be the cosmos now just testing me. Having fun at my expense, at my dour intent, the selfish reasoning behind my motives and my plan.

I am merely a human who was hurt, who is at one with the hurt, and the only thing I can do to exorcise the residual pain is to leave behind all its participants: One, he who “never meant to hurt me,” and two, me, the unwilling recipient of all that incidental pain, the one who had been convinced by self and others they could shelve the whole, hideous lot and stow it in the past. Chapters like that hold insidious half-lives; their toxicity ever hovers, in at least my atmosphere. They fester and render the essential distorted, even deformed. All I wish now is to rescue what is left of me and go. No rewards for time served, no consolation prize for honourable adaptiveness. It is no longer a contest, as I don’t care who won back then, nor who wins now.

I am calling a draw.

And so, I re-enter the living room, replace the candlestick with its mates, take my wine glass and down its non-descript contents.

Whit smiles knowingly and with satisfaction and refills my glass. He is adept with bottles of wine; pulls corks with panache, pours deftly, never spills a drop. Between the two of us, we have consumed more than our fair share, especially in more recent years, whilst in each other’s ever more wearying company. Wine is an elegant numbing device. It smooths many an edge from within its proprietary loveliness. How convenient. I have always suspected, Whit, who is much taller than I, has poured more than generously over the years with intention. To shut me down just a little, effectively sedate me? An inner voice chides me, points out how paranoid I am and shame on me. Makes me wonder, all those three a.m. spells of wakefulness, with my system trying to recalibrate itself from all those hefty pours, which would leave me lying there, wide awake and with temples throbbing, forced to listen to the incessant rattling of the undisturbed, sonorous journeys through dreamland by a calculating other. . .

Or, is he deliberately trying to screw me up only to scratch further away at my subconscious defenses by way of base irritations? Have my walls been that obvious, that easy to breach?

Have I become as intolerable to him as he has become to me?

And thus, I circle back to where I started. I am doing this for the both of us. For his sake as much as mine. That I am not in love with someone I committed to once upon a time is one thing. That I no longer see an erstwhile prince in an ordinary human is another. I too acknowledge my own deficits, my own ordinariness. But that I am on the cusp of being completely repulsed by one to whom I find myself still connected to at the close of this day of all days, is a different issue entirely. I fancy I can actually see the line I am about to cross. I cannot put this off any longer.

My heart racing, I assume an air of what I hope passes for nonchalance. I take my place on the settee, tuck my feet under me in what I hope is a disarming pose. I wish to suggest ease in the moment. I open the envelope; my hands still shake. I am readying myself to finally say what needs to be said, and I suppose the adrenaline must do its thing.

“Sugarplum,” Whit interrupts my train of thought and imminent presentation. “Sugarplum, wait. There is something I need to tell you,” he begins again.

The fire in the hearth crackles its friendly refrain.

The brie is melting – just the way I have always loved it. The butter in its crock glistens.

Whit starts in again. I stay quiet, allow his persistence to grant me a few seconds to calm myself.

“Love, we have come so far; so very, very far. You and me. We have weathered so much and learned so much. And Sugarplum, I have never loved you as much as I do now. And I thank you. I am so very, very grateful for what we have, and for you. I adore you. You are the one. As I have always said, we were meant to be. . .”

“. . . meant to be. . .” I echo robotically.

“. . . but there is something that happened. Today. This is going to sound terribly strange, but hear me out.”

“What on earth, Whit?”

“Here, have a sip. Want a fig?”

“Yes. I mean, no. No, thank you. Look. I have something I need to speak with you about. It’s not. . .”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. This has to be cleared up first. Something has to be cleared up. But it’s going to be okay, Sugarplum. That, I can promise you. So, stop. Hear me out.”

“Whit, what are you saying? You aren’t making any sense. . .”

As I speak, attempting an inkling of pushback, I begin to extract the paperwork from the envelope. I am balancing my wineglass on my knee as I have a habit of doing, and so the laying out of the documents is hindered. Somehow, I know I must move something, anything along. It must be past nine by now, and soon going on ten, but the evening doesn’t really have any pacing. It might as well be an interlude in an otherwise endless chain of hours at home, alone, with him. Just him and me, alone and together, for what is starting to feel like a suggestion of forever. What a nightmarish concept. I strike the ideation from my mind just as soon as it appears on the dim horizons of my comprehension.

“Honey, this morning, you had a fainting spell. . .”

“Yes. . . ?”

“You had just kind of passed out, but you came to, right? You felt alright after that? Tell me you felt okay. That you feel okay now.”

“Yes, yes. I felt fine. I mean, after a bit. And yes, I feel fine now.”

“And that colossal storm we witnessed today; that was amazing, wasn’t it? I mean, frightening, but all things considered, it was like seeing the hand of God, wasn’t it? Frightening but awe-inspiring, yes?”

I don’t know how I am supposed to answer.

I had seen the storm as something unique to me and my predicament. I had seen aspects of myself in that storm. I had wanted to see myself at one with the storm, had wished it could have swept me up inside it.

I remembered what it did to that little girl from Kansas. But I was not seeking a way home. I longed for winds of change to engulf me, cast me up, out, and away. To some isolated island, or a foreign city. . .   I needed to be gone. . .  

But no magical, happy universe is out there, poised to assist me. I need to take my destiny in hand, and find the courage to present the documents, place them into Whit’s hands, and to say the words. We are over.

“Whit, Whit!” My voice pitches, cracks. “Stop it! I can’t. . .   I can’t. . .”

He has no idea.

I swear, it seems Whit is coming from not just another angle, but from some other dimension. His reality is not mine. We are two people who have never been so close yet so far apart, as to represent polar opposite marks on a compass that could never find True North, ever again.

“Sugarplum, it’s alright!” Whit cuts in. “I promise you! What we are sharing now, in this moment, is ours forever! You and me – we need never, ever be apart again, and I will spend the rest of my – our – eternity to show you how much I love you! And, you have now all the time in the universe to really and truly understand that what we have is what is right for the both of us!”

“Whit!” I am now screaming back at him, confused by his inflection, his extreme phrasing, sentiments far better suited for old Hollywood, or some Wagnerian resolution. I hold out the paperwork, am shaking it in his face. “Please, just take these! Take a look! I have to do this. I am sorry, but I have to do this now!”

Whit finally takes the documents from me. He opens them up, reads in silence. His face falls but remains composed, unreadable.

“Well. . . ?” is all my faltering mind can come up with.

“Well, Love, I had no idea you could write like this.”

An icy cold wave descends over me, lands at my feet, takes my gut with it. Nausea twists through me. It is done. At last.

When I look up again, Whit is still seated in that rocking chair of his, this creaking, oaken contraption he had insisted ‘we’ needed. His glass of wine is in one hand, the paperwork is on his lap. He is tugging at his left ear in the way he does when caught off guard and unsure of himself. Oh, I pray he doesn’t resort to tears.

“What do you mean, ‘like this’?” I venture feebly.

“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean’?” Whit asks, holding up the sheets of paper. “This! It’s beautiful. You’re a real poet, and I didn’t even know it!” He chuckles, perceives his quip as clever. “And I mean it! I am so sorry I have never supported your creative drive! Had I known, behind all that technical writing you produce, there was an artiste in waiting. . .

“But everything is alright, Sugarplum! Now I know and now I understand. And yes, I forgive you. Truly. I guess, I would have to say, I am almost glad you did what you did, given the, er, reality of things as they are now. None of it matters anymore anyway, Love. Your eloquent, sad verses here, we can cast to nostalgia, to our mutual memory. We have an eternity to enjoy now the happiness, the life, we worked so hard to build, to re-build. And everything will be better than ever before. That is what I have been trying to say. . .”

He is forgiving me?

“No, Whit. This isn’t right. . .   This doesn’t make any. . .”

“Yes, it does, my love. It does. As I was saying, that spell of unconsciousness you suffered wasn’t exactly what it appeared to be. I needed to have a way to introduce you to this. . . this here. . . our, um. . . well, I guess we can just call it our heaven. . .”

The rest of me falls to the floor, deflated, my soul cold-pressed and turned to mush by the crush of congealed love – and ominous confusion.

I then watch as I let go of my wine glass. Its contents spill all over the cheeseboard. The wine spreads to the table’s edge, begins to drip onto the rug.

Deathly fear has taken hold of me, as does a surge of displaced energy. I lurch off the sofa, dizzy, just as I had felt this morning. I stumble towards the kitchen door.

Am I in search of a dishtowel or butcher knife? Oddly, it seems both have capabilities I could put to good use. . . including on myself. . .  

The kitchen is in near complete darkness but for the borrowed illumination from the fireplace and candles in the living room, which cast sidelong stripes of soft gold into the galley. Wooden cupboards, which we had painted a milky white, reflect the paltry light, allow me easy enough passage to the sink – and to the butcher block worktable where the knives are stored.

My eyes adjust quickly, my pupils already being dilated due to the absence of any electrical lighting. With the cabinetry as pale backdrop, I begin to discern a humanoid form that has come into soft focus as I stand there. I wonder if my eyes and my mind are playing tricks on me. The being, about my size, appears to be seated on a stool near the stove. It is somehow made of shadows that have swirled slowly and gathered, much like that storm, to form a vague but familiar solid. I am reminded of the tornado, and how it had sprung from the loins of the clouds and molded itself into a solid, of sorts. The figure – slender, somewhat hunched over – appears in silhouetted outline, like some slightly abstracted human in a modernist painting. But for two gold-colored pinpricks wavering upon the oval plain of its face, its countenance is flattened out and featureless. These small lights are lined up and symmetrical, suggesting they are aimed straight at me. But like a pair of exhausted fireflies, the ‘eyes’ are dull, have no capacity to cast any illumination. The pinpricks simply behold me, motionlessly, as if contemplating me. Odd, but the being manages to remind me of me.

A voice breaks free from the center of its face. I am not afraid. I think it is because, wherever it is coming from, it is my voice.

Behold, Sugarplum, what you have here is all there is.

I am of no consequence. I am just a messenger, sent to clarify your situation.

What you have here – this and nothing more – with That One in there is all there is now. You two have this place, this house, and that is it. There is nothing else. Nothing beyond these walls. We disseminated a scenario to you both earlier today in a way we thought you might both comprehend the cleansing finality of your situation, which we need you to understand is final and unbreachable.

And you. You are here under these circumstances by way of That One. Him. In there.

For you see, it was YOU at the wheel.

No one here knows to what extent you willed it, intended it for either one of yourselves, nor whether you did it for – to – yourself or not, nor if you even knew what was – is – the real and true state of your heart. Or your mind. Or why you did what you did. So, meantime, it has been decided, it is by HIS wishes – not yours – that we will abide, and this, your joint here and now, is to be based on what to That One matters, and how He – not you – would want to spend His eternal hereafter.

Lucky for you, He wants to spend it with you.

For better or worse. Be it forever more, if necessary.

You two.

Together.

Are we understood?

Decipher what it actually was – is – in your innermost conscience, and your reward – or consequence – will be yours and yours alone to enjoy – or suffer through – on your own. Consider your options carefully; prices can be paid in many ways.

We are thinking, your yearning for freedom and what you perceive to be autonomy will guide you adequately enough to whatever afterlife is your ultimate and authentic destiny.

Heaven, Hell – it’s all relative.

At the very least, come to terms with your truest motivations, and you will be spared spending eternity with one for whom you at best hold an unimpeachable ambivalence. Compromise, and you can still learn to make do. If that seems a punishment, that is on you.

Ironic, isn’t it, that evidence now bears, He in His rather selfish way does indeed love you.

He truly believes He wants to be with you.

I am amused; but then, I have seen far, far worse.

Be consoled by that.

One can get used to much, much worse. . .  

As the being concludes what I now know is my afterlife briefing, it begins to fade. It is like watching soot lifting from an old chimney flue. The humanoid form smudges at its perimeters and breaks apart, wafts into thin air. It is soon completely disappeared, and the dormant kitchen is magically rendered back to the tidy and undisturbed, faintly lit room it began as – and from all appearances, will remain.

Any attempt on my part to respond or protest goes wholly unrealized. It seems, I have even lost my right to a voice. I was only able to listen in complete passivity as my sentencing was made known to my failing spiritedness.

Evidently, my potential for guilt for something I may never put into words outweighs – whether I wish it or not – Whit’s prior transgressions, as to the substance of our marriage commitment, and now, evidently, our afterlife as a couple. We had, yes, shared equally in our post-traumatic laissez-faire of the heart, each from our own, self-stunting perspectives. But because of something I had done – may have done, mind you – it had fallen to Whit to issue by strength of his core consciousness the edict by which I, we, now as one – co-joined so help me – would be made to go forward, just as we had in life.

No, strike that. In death.

Is this what they mean when they talk of Purgatory as a half-life? Is this a sort of Hell?

And would this be an eternal forever, or just some relative span of forever, given the unfathomable limitlessness of eternity? A set of months, or years? Perhaps some somewhat predictable increment; say, a second twenty-year span? You know, an eye for an eye sort of premise?

How I longed to have asked the shadowy visitor this question, for it might have granted me an iota of hope, that there might be a humanly documentable and finite price to pay, leaving us to then go our own ways, even in death.

But as I have noted, I lost the privilege to ask any questions. And just as the shadowy entity dissipated to become yet another, unfortunate memory, all I can do is add that to my tally and turn to go back into the living room. Better to try shucking the nightmare and instead seek to brace myself with the fortitude it will require, to figure out how to fake it, as they say, ‘to make it’ – for my sake. Well, both our sakes.

Back in the living room, when I see the table, with its picked-over charcuterie board, its empty bread platter, its bowl with just a smattering of figs, peppers, and nuts, and the absence of any spilled wine whatsoever, I realize, I am glimpsing through a nasty, little crevice of my whatever-this-is into Whit’s heaven, and what he is making of it.

And then I see this:

Whit had some minutes ago set his wine glass aside, was rocking in his chair, gazing idly at the fire in the hearth and picking his teeth with a pinkie fingernail, one grown long for just this purpose. An amateur classical guitarist, having remained bereft of both time and talent, Whit had some time ago come up with the bizarre notion, to keep one fingernail grown-out and filed to a point for, if not musical performance, such as these miscellaneous, personal, um, “hygienic” activities. Stomach-turning.

He is momentarily engrossed in dislodging residual caraway seeds from the bread he had judiciously sliced and buttered for the both of us, and in my absence consumed. His version of a romantic repast for two.

Upon my return from the kitchen, Whit breaks from his studious revelry to let fall his eyes upon me in that telltale way of his as I cross in front of him. At this point, I have determined to acquiesce to the cosmos’s final joke on me, and to commence with the eternal as I now understand it; for starters, by simply reclaiming my customary spot on the settee.

But Whit has other ideas.

My husband rises from that infernally quaint throne of his and takes the few steps required to place himself squarely in front of me, just as I am about to settle in, nice and cozy, to make ready for the first of what is – so help me – destined to be an endless string of innumerable evenings alone with him. When Whit next lets fall his right hand to the top button of his trousers to undo it, and when I see the unmistakable rise of fabric that makes instantly evident what else has been rectified in this custom-made afterlife of his, I know, by recollection of the fumbling and bumbling I had accommodated – endured – all those years with him, that this would now also be a part of the otherworldly dimension over which he, obviously, presides.

. . . in which I am nothing more than a prisoner participant, here to contend with what – or who – will be coming next. . .