That evening Mika notices a change. I tell her. She laughs, kisses me and says best to keep my dark side hidden where it is most attractive; masked beneath smiles. Sometimes she would stroke a truth without seeing its teeth.
There are no parachutes in love. No soft landings.. When you fall, either way, you do so absolutely. Mika says love has blurred edges but I disagree, for me it is framed with sharp black lines. You are in the cage or out, it's black or white, no greying echoes.
In the man lives the boy. Until this week I thought him dead but no, he merely skulked back into the depths, waiting. Now the blood of jealousy is running through me and he has returned. She has gone, Mika. It shows in her face, the long silences between us, her over attention when she suddenly remembers. She is distracted, balancing me with another.
Last month, Mika and I were walking in the park when a cloudless, clear night began to close in. We often shared night skies together, feeling small and human and connected. She said it brings out the poet inside her. That night however something was missing, I knew it as soon as I looked up. The sky was dead, empty. I turned to Mika but she said nothing, her face holding its usual awe, and I understood. Mika and I were no longer looking in the same direction. She saw a lively night sky, whilst I could no longer see the stars, only the blank spaces between them.
In bed later I felt a familiar taut anger scraping the inner surface of my skin, breaching the pores, seeping out to shout at the world to go screw itself. That's where he surfaced, not in my brain but all through my body, like a pernicious disease. He remains there, each day scraping away more of the man you see.
After, came the mirrors. The loss was as gradual as when I found my sight through Mika. My lines softened, blurred, as if my reflection had somehow moved to the very edge of my vision, yet everything else remained sharp around it. I understood the journey ahead and the final inexorable destination arrived within days. Today, I am faceless again.
Let's return to the knife. The one laying in my lap. I know what he wants, the boy. The mirror, the knife, the blankness. He wants to play.
Mika will be home soon. She will carry a cake for my birthday, as she always does. She'll smile, throw off her shoes, possibly say how the cold feels damper here than in Japan.
I'll cry, tell her I have lost my face again, ask her to stand with me in this mirror, as she did before. I'll stand behind, say I want to take it slowly, have her to lean on.
She will not see everything. She will see the mirror, herself, beautiful and delicate within it, my reflection tall behind her, my face, my speckled-brown eye, my flaws within. She'll sense movement, see my hands swooping like swans in flight, knife blade arching through the air. She will see those things but she won't see the most important thing of all. She won't see the boy.
When she is gone, I will sit in the room's shadows, slice my wrists and cry, as I once did for Okie. Little Okie, who failed to respond to my love.
Eventually you will come. I know you will. You'll see the knife, the blood, Mika spread out neatly on the carpet, my body bled out and slumped in the chair. You'll find this note and think you understand, think you see it all.
But look up and into the mirror above the fireplace. Look deep.
He'll be there. The boy.
But you won't see him. No one can.
END
BENEATH THE FOLDS
When his world changed, Archie Middleman was sitting quietly on a garden bench thinking about petunias. The sun bathed his face, a breeze cooled his skin, a bird-feeder in the tree above swung gently under the force of a departing sparrow. A brief heaven for a weary gardener. As he looked up at the flight of the bird the summer sky exploded filling the air with bright vanilla light and a soft familiar two-word greeting fell like an axe through his skull.
"Hello, Archie."
It came from the trees. He turned instinctively. Standing next to a twisted trunk was a woman, her face shadowed by branches above. His rational brain denied it, but the pores of his skin knew the truth and as his eyes adjusted to the poor light, lingering doubts were dispersed.
When you see a ghost, you freeze or you run. This is how it is supposed to work, it happens in movies and books. But perhaps this doesn't apply on sunny afternoons in English gardens. Archie's heart stopped mid-beat and waited, poised.
"Mary?" Archie's voice, a whisper.
"Yes, Archie. It is time we spoke again." Her voice sounded strong, firm.
He stood up. They were two yards apart, the old bench the only barrier between. He was dreaming, he knew this now, his unconscious mind suddenly conjuring her up in some kind of treacherous beautiful coup.
She spoke again. "Ought to close your mouth. Catch flies."
For a vision created from his unconscious mind she appeared remarkably physical. Mary moved forward, rounded the bench and kissed Archie on the cheek. Her lips were dry but lingered beyond their touch.
"May I sit here next to you, Archie?" her hand swept out from her side, her palm open pointing towards the bench. Archie stood and stared, too afraid to speak or move. Her voice held the spring it had in her youth.
"I'll take your silence as a yes," she continued, sweeping her hand under herself to smooth her dress as she sat. "Please, Archie, sit here with me, I promise not to bite and we need to talk." Her tone, gentle but firm.
Archie sat, his eyes never leaving hers and a silence fell whilst they gazed at each other, their eyes flitting over every line of the faces they knew so well. He remembered everything about her; she had been pretty, strong spirited, full of girlish joie de vivre, and there stood no doubt. The woman now sitting within touching distance was the same young woman he fell in love with more than forty summers before.
He had no idea how or why she was here, but it was beautiful.
Beautiful, except for one troubling problem. It was impossible.
"I expect you're wondering if I am really here." Mary moved her mouth exactly as she had before, the left corner dropping slightly lower than the right, making her look like she was about to smile every word. She moved her head slightly forward and looked deep into Archie's eyes. "If our positions were reversed I'd be panicking."
Archie shook his head. It untied his tongue. "I always wondered if you would come back, Mary. For years, I was certain you would."
Mary smiled. It lit the space around her. "Guilt plays inside you, but for once you'll have to accept something illogical to that scientific, straight-line, brain of yours. I am here. I'm real. Look, I can even touch you." She put her hand on Archie's bare forearm and stroked. The electricity froze the air. "And I'm here, because you wanted me to be. You want the answer to your question. You always have."
Archie pressed his hands on the bench to steady himself to stand. They seemed to pass through the wood and he remained sitting. Mary was still speaking.
"I think right now you see me as I was when you loved me most. Young and watered-down pretty. That is what you want to remember, it always has been."
Archie shook his head again. "Your beauty definitely wasn't watered-down Mary, it was vibrant. The more days we spent together, the more beautiful you became."
Mary smiled again, but this time it held a coldness. "Yet, that is not how I sit here and see you today, Archie. No, I see the man of our last moments together. The man who one quiet night delicately, politely almost, leant over me in my sleep and snuffed out my breath."
If Archie's heart had been beating at that moment, it would have stopped. His chest felt hollow, his throat tight as a sinew. He looked down at the grass, his eyes moist. Mary watched him, gaze firm, then turned towards the rosebush sheltering beneath the yew trees. Archie had planted it soon after Mary had died. The petals were pink with dashes of white and the heads, small and compact when closed, were radiant when in bloom. The thorns on the stalks were sharp but masked by the beauty of the flower.
She turned back to Archie, her eyes lighter. "So you have your answer, Archie. I know." S
he paused, contemplating her next words. "Do you remember the night?"
Archie's lips were tight as he answered. "I don't want to remember that."
"Oh, but it was beautiful."
"Beautiful? Beautiful? It dragged my heart from my chest. I died with you."
Mary tilted her head to one side, a dog listening to a noise for the first time. "Oh come now, Archie, we both know the truth, know what was inside your heart…"
"No, it was so painful. For both of us. I lost you."
"You wanted it all to end, Archie. That night, that moment. Wanted me gone."
"No…"
She lifted her hand, put her finger softly on Archie's lips. "In my last moments I didn't know what was happening. My mind was foggy, I thought I was dreaming, then drowning somehow in my sleep. Something heavy was pressing on my face, crushing my nose and I couldn't breathe. I panicked, struggled, fought for life in some dark mist until my chest was bursting with fire, but then suddenly I understood, knew that was the end. And within all the pain I accepted it. A few seconds of agony and then no more life, no more indignity, nothing left for me to surrender."
Archie bent forward, put his hands to his face. His mind was ablaze and he didn't know how to bring it back under control. Mary, watching him intently, continued in the same flat tone. "I know why you did it, Archie. Know why you wanted it all to end. I would watch your face whilst you washed me, the indignity in your eyes, see the mask you wore to distance yourself. I was slowly wasting towards death, we both knew it."
"I didn't want you to suffer any more." Simple, toneless words.
"That was part of your heart, yes. The face of it." Mary put a hand on his stooped shoulders. "But you didn't ask me, Archie. You didn't ask. You should have done that."
Archie looked up from his hands. "You don't understand, I prayed you wouldn't know, thought I could gently put you at rest, then lay down beside you. But you woke and fought. You woke up." He looked into Mary's eyes. "I hated you for that."
They sat silently for a minute, Mary's legs swinging lightly, the last words hanging over them. Then Mary spoke. "Don't seek forgiveness, Archie, please don't. I'm not here to smooth your guilt, I came here to answer your question. You called me."
Archie studied Mary's face. He didn't understand and didn't want to speak. A spear of sun broke through the trees and cast a flickering light on the grass beyond the bench, shadowing the rest of the world in a peaceful, still haze.
Mary looked away, her face softened, her lips moved lightly. "Our last breath is the longest, it goes on beyond the point those living give up on the dying. After you took the pillow from my face and looked down at me, you cried. I know that. You cried for me, perhaps for us both. I watched you from somewhere above, saw you lie down beside me. It was only then I understood what you had done, how I had gone." Mary's eyes were looking deep into Archie's. "There are no secrets from the dead."
Beneath his hands Archie began to weep. His shoulders shook, gently at first then with more force until his entire body juddered. Mary put her hand gently on his back and stroked him, a mother to a child. She waited until his sobs calmed to ripples. He pulled his hands away from his face, but stayed staring at the grass, his eyes moist.
He wanted to speak, wanted her to know. "It's your hands, Mary. At night I close my eyes and I see them." Archie took a deep breath. "When I first pressed the cushion down on you, they flailed in the air, claws hunting in the dark until they found my chest, digging in deep, trying to prise me off, drawing blood. But…near the end…when your fight was lost they dropped to the bed and your fingers stroked at the cover more in gentle ecstasy than pain. Behind my eyelids I still see the bedcover filling your grip, just as it did when we made love many years before."
Mary looked away. For the first time there was uncertainty on her face. "The ending wasn't wrong, Archie. It was tragic, yes, but it was also beautiful." She slid her hand into his. "I said goodbye to you, Archie. did you know that? In those final seconds I told you I loved you, screamed it out, shouted goodbye. Or perhaps the words only fell silently because my voice was no longer in me."
Archie's breath wavered. It fell shallow in his chest and his throat choked as only faint air passed his lips. A numbness flowed through his body and his eyes distanced themselves from the world. Mary's face grew soft. She knew this breath. She slid her hand into his. "Think of a special moment we had together, Archie."
With a mounting pain in his chest Archie moved to stand but legs were not obeying and he remained rooted to the seat. His mind and his body felt disconnected. He moved his mouth to speak but as he did so the bench and trees around him melted away, people, hazy, appeared, dancing talking laughing, music flitted on the air, walls rose, a stage, a singer, beautiful and exotic, stood behind a microphone with a song poised on her lips – a song Archie knew before it began – La Vie En Rose.
Mary was the first to speak. "Club Monaco. Our place, our song. You can hear it."
"Yes and your dress," his eyes swept over her, "you wore it that night."
"Yes, I did." Mary smiled. "At the end of the night we danced together on the balcony, Archie. I know you remember."
"Yes, in the pouring rain. Just you and I."
"You said the sky still wanted us to dance."
A smile creased his face." I guess I was young and daft."
Mary stood up, her dress slipping seductively over her young figure. She held her hand out towards him. "We have the music, the dance floor, we can imagine the rain."
Archie rose, took her hand, pulled her body into his and led with long-forgotten steps. They moved with ease, feet sliding over polished floor. As they danced the world surrounding closed in, white veils rising around them like sheets in the wind, with folds turning in on themselves, closer, until the wispy tendrils enveloped their bodies and they became the last two people in the world.
"You haven't come back from anywhere have you Mary?" Archie, whispering.
"No Archie. Our last breath is the longest. It belongs only to the dying."
Archie felt the weight of Mary's body melting from his arms, heard her whisper goodbye. He moved his mouth to speak, to form the words to tell Mary he loved her, to shout it out loud, but no sound emerged from his lips.
His voice was no longer in him.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends