An Unwanted Shade of Grey Read online

  “See,” I said, “that must be nice.” He drank again.

  “It was, it really was.” He took that long, hard earned look across the world again, then came back and handed me the bottle. “Not the same any longer. Now, the silence... The silences, they kill me. It’s no longer that she doesn’t need to speak, it’s that... now she has nothing to say.”

  “Her heart’s broken,” I said, “but she’ll heal, she’ll be better.” I handed the bottle back to him. He shook his head slowly, ripped a corner off the label of the bottle.

  “No,” he said with a heavy authority in his voice, “she won’t. She... From now on, she will be the mother of a dead child. I will be the one who planted the seed, set the wheels in motion, made her a mother only to have it ripped away.”

  “But, David, you didn’t...” I started to say but then had no idea how to finish. He didn’t what? Know? Plan it? Of course not, but did that make it any less horrible? Did that make his wife any less sad? Did that make him any less... right? He looked at me.

  “Thank you,” he said and we were silent again. The day rolled by us slowly, and we had come to the end of the bottle. Neither of us was excessively drunk, and we were both relaxed.

  “Is he afraid of the silence?” he said after a while.

  “Yes, he’s afraid that I’ll... vanish if he doesn’t keep me there with words or... with touches.” He thought about this for a moment.

  “Would you?”

  “Would I what?” He looked at me again, his eyes solemn.

  “Would you vanish?” The question threw me. I thought about it for a minute.

  “Yes,” I said at last, “I believe I would.”

  “Because ..., ” he asked, just one word, and it hung between us on the rays of the retreating sun.

  “Because,” I thought. “Because I don’t know if I want to be there in the first place.” He nodded, he understood. I expected him to protest the marriage, to advise me away.

  “Good,” he said, “that’s good, then. Don’t allow the silences to happen. Keep them out now so that you don’t have to deal with the pain, the confusion and the stomach-churning horror when they change. Keep the words coming. Fill all the empty air with words and words and words. That way, you’ll never vanish, he’ll feel safe, and you will have... a marriage.”

  ***

  I sat on Aaron’s couch drinking a glass of wine as he cleaned up the dinner dishes. He was a good cook, and we had just had a fine meal. I played the conversation I'd had with David over in my head. A marriage, he had said, like it was a thing to carry around. Like it was...

  “That weight tied to the grey woman’s insides, dragging her to the grave,” I said out loud. Aaron walked into the room.

  “What grey woman,” he asked. “What are you talking about?” I drank off the wine.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said as casually as I could, “just a waking nightmare I had at the market a while back. Just a terrifying image that has drilled its way into my brain and won’t allow me a moment's peace.” He tilted his head like a dog listening to Mozart.

  “Oh, well,” he said and then rubbed his hands together like a cartoon crook ready for a caper, “shall we...” He tipped his head toward the stairs, “upstairs?” I nodded and stood. He walked ahead of me, eager, and was halfway up the stairs when I stopped him.

  “Let’s not,” I said, refilling my wine glass instead. He came down a few steps but still held the high ground. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Maybe we shouldn’t... until, you know, until we’re married.” He came down one more step. “I mean, if it’s truly illegal in the eyes of God, maybe we should take this time before the wedding, abstain and... and go into the marriage purified.”

  He sat down on the step. He looked up the stairs and then back at me. I felt terrible. I could see the confusion on his face, the struggle he was dealing with internally, but frankly, I just wasn’t in the mood for his stuttering, clumsy attempts at sex.

  “What do you think?” I asked. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and his body sank into itself slightly.

  “I think, that I really want to bend you over my desk, you know.” He shrugged.

  “All right,” I said, not having much fight in me. I downed my wine and headed for the stairs.

  “But,” he said, standing and coming down to meet me, “you’re right. You are right. We should take this time, think, examine our hearts and then, when we stand before him at the altar... we will be pure and ready.” He hugged me. “Thank you for being so wonderful.” I hugged him back.

  “Oh Aaron, I’m not that wonderful, believe me.”

  ***

  I went to the cemetery three days in a row and stood by my father’s grave. I was hoping to see David. On the third day, I did. He was alone.

  “Where’s Jeannie,” I said as I approached him. He didn’t look up from his son’s grave.

  “Denver. She’s with her sister. She went to... figure things out.” After a moment, he finally looked up at me. “How’s your father?”

  “Um... still dead,” I said, and he shrugged.

  “Right, right, sorry, my mind is...” He made a twirling gesture around his head and let it soar away into the sky. “You didn’t happen to bring a bottle of scotch with you, did you?” I showed him my empty hands. “No, course not.”

  “We could go somewhere,” I said, “maybe get a drink.”

  “Have a proper date,” he said in a strange English accent then, he shook his head, trying to make it go away. “Sorry... sorry... I’m just... Yes, let’s go somewhere and… drink something.”

  ***

  We sat at the bar in the Side Door, a bar I liked that was not too far from the cemetery. After his second drink, he started to loosen up and talk.

  “I’m not sad that she’s gone,” he said. “I mean, I know she will probably want a divorce. I know that’s what she’s gone off to figure out but... I’m not sorry.” He sipped his third drink and played with the swizzle stick, not looking at me. “That makes me a horrible person, doesn’t it?”

  “No, it certainly does not.” Maybe it did, but I didn’t think he was horrible. I thought he was gutted and lost. Anything he felt – anything that wasn’t the will to just lay down and die – seemed just fine to me. “I don’t know,” he said and sipped. “How’s things with your upcoming marriage?” he asked after a moment.

  “Good. We stopped having sex.”

  “Oh, good. So did we. Right after Jeremy died we just... stopped.” He was silent for a moment. “It’s good you stopped now, because that way it won’t seem awkward when you just don’t have sex any longer.” He sipped. I knew he was joking, and in a dark and painful way dealing with his own issues, but it was hard to hear for some reason.

  “That’s a little close to home,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting that.” He turned to me, and I could see the surprise and the shame in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking today. I’m just letting everything come out. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, accepting my small absolution.

  “It’s just that... I’ve tried and done and worked and listened and fought and...” He rubbed his clenched fist over the top of the bar like he was trying to erase the past four months as if they were written on the wood in front of him. “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t do it, you know. I mean, I miss him too. I miss... I hurt, but I don’t blame her. I don’t... turn away from her. I don’t,” he said, and he continued to erase. Then, the tears came. I watched as they flooded his eyes and ran down his cheeks.

  “I don’t,” he continued to mumble, bubbles forming at the corners of his mouth, tears dripping on the bar. I put my arms around him, pulled his face to my chest and held him. At first, his hand stayed on the bar, his fist still erasing, slowly, purposefully, rubbing out the time passed, the pain, the images. Then, his arms were around me, clinging to me as if I was life itself. His tears subsided, and I put my hand under his chin, then raised his
face to look in his eyes. Then, I kissed him.

  In the living room of my apartment, I slowly unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his smooth, bare chest. I moved around his body, kissing his shoulders, his back, the base of his neck. He stood, still, allowing me. When I kissed around his naked torso, I returned to his chest and touched it lightly. I looked up at him, and he leaned down and kissed my lips. It was a tentative, gentle kiss.

  “I haven’t ever kissed another woman,” he began to say but stopped himself.

  He took my face in his hands, and he kissed me deeply, strongly. He took my shirt off of me over my head and touched me. His fingers were like a school boy’s, exploring ground he never had seen before. It was sad and sweet and made us both cry. We kissed through the salt of tears and the need to move past them.

  I took his hand and brought him upstairs. We undressed each other and lay naked on the bed. I liked touching his body. I liked the way he looked into my eyes. After some time of just touching, kissing and being together, he eased me onto my back.

  “It’s okay, we don’t have to,” I assured him. He shook his head.

  “I want to. I need to.”

  I understood and guided him and wrapped my legs around him. Slowly he lowered his body onto mine. It was grace and sorrow. It was life fighting hard to ignore, to expel death.

  It was the sweetest feeling I had ever experienced. I could feel myself coming close, and I bit my lip. I didn’t want to cry out. I didn’t want to make sound. The moment seemed sacred and beautiful, and I didn’t want to spoil it. The feeling was beautifully long and drawn out and so very, very good. He kissed me and kept moving slowly and gently.

  At last, he found his own release. He shook, his muscles tensing, but he too stayed quiet. Then he sank his weight on me, and it felt good. I held him, and he made no attempt to rise or leave his position. Entwined together, we fell asleep.

  ***

  When I awoke, I was in the bed alone. David sat in a chair across the room. He was dressed, his face calm, his eyes bright. I sat up and looked at him. I didn’t cover my body because I didn’t feel the need or the desire to.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you. Actually, I enjoyed watching you sleep, I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, not at all. I’m just glad you’re still here.” He smiled and then came to the bed and sat down on the edge. He touched my face, and I felt a warmth flood through me. A calm came over me. It was all very clear to me. “You’re not going to stay, are you?”

  “No,” he said, still touching my face. “I have to go.” I nodded, understanding. Then he looked at me softly. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Because you seemed sad,” I said, answering the question that he hadn’t asked, “and you looked lost, alone and... sexy. I wanted to. I needed to. That’s why.” He smiled and stopped touching my face.

  “Well, thank you, I appreciate that. Of course, that wasn’t the question I was going to ask, but it’s good to know.”

  “Oh. Well then, what was the question?”

  “Why are you getting married?”

  I lay back on the pillows and looked at him. I thought for a moment and then I said, “Have you ever found yourself standing in the aisle at the local market looking at a woman in her eighties, hunched, grey, not just her hair but her flesh, her life? She shuffles along with some invisible weight tied to her insides, pulling her, wrestling her day in and day out, toward the grave...”

  When I finished the story, when I confessed my fear of being that woman, I took his hand in mine and kissed it, thankful that I was finally able to get it all out. “I don’t want to be that lonely old, grey woman,” I said. He touched my face again and smiled.

  “How do you know that woman isn’t going home to a husband she never really loved? Maybe she’s so angry, so grey, because she wasted all her bright colors on someone who didn’t deserve them, appreciate them? Maybe he saw the world in black and white and she, well, she gave up on finding someone who would appreciate the colors and she just... quit. Maybe she’s angry with herself.” He leaned down and kissed me so gently, so sweetly. “Are you really ready to just give up?”

  ***

  I called Aaron after David had left, after we had said goodbye, and I knew, somehow, I would most likely never see him again. I pulled on a pair of panties and a sweatshirt and was sitting in the kitchen drinking a glass of wine when Aaron came in.

  “Hey,” he said, “how come you’re not dressed?” He came around the table to kiss me, and I turned my head. “Lanie,” he said, “what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Actually, everything is kind of right. Sit down Aaron.” He did, and I poured him a glass of wine.

  “Aaron, I just made love with another man. I will never do it again. I will never see him again. I met him at the cemetery when I went to tell my father I was getting married. He’s a good man. He and his wife just lost their only child. He’s... Well, he’s a little lost, too. Anyway... He needed me. I needed him. I’m so sorry I did it. I am sorry if it hurts you but...” I stopped. He was staring at me. He said nothing for a long time.

  “Aaron,” I said finally, breaking the silence. “What are you thinking?”

  “You said... that you made love,” he said quietly and only then did I realize that I had.

  “I did.”

  He was quiet again. He reached out and took up his wine glass, tilted it back and drank it all off. I motioned toward the bottle, and he waved me off.

  “Do you want to marry me,” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh,” he said. Silent again. “Do you love me?”

  “No.”

  “OK,” he said and stood up, dazed, shaky and started to leave. He turned to me before he left. “Why did you say yes?”

  “I said yes, because I don’t want to be grey.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know, and that’s okay.”

  ***

  I told my father that I wasn’t getting married. He didn’t seem to mind. As I walked out of the cemetery, I saw David walking down the hill toward the grave. I smiled at him, and he nodded. He had a small cowboy hat in his hand. He stopped and looked up the hill. I followed his gaze and saw his wife sitting in the front seat of their car.

  “That’s a handsome hat,” I said to him and he stopped. He turned to me and fingered the brim of the hat. He looked down the hill to the grave and then back up to the car.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just... I’m trying.”

  I nodded and walked up the hill to my car. As I passed his car, I looked inside and his wife, hunched and weeping in the front seat, looked out at me through distant, dead eyes.

  Her skin was grey.

  ***