Ghost Woman

There is a painting in the sunroom, hasty strokes of grey, white and blue.  Splatters.  Deliberate and unintended - as though the artist might have been so enthralled by his subject that it was impossible to focus properly, if one assumed (because she could only assume) that painting required strict focus.

The woman, Ida, is no longer considered young.  Not even middle-aged – which, in her mind, is still young.  She stops to stare at the painting every day before her afternoon vodka (splash of lemon). 

Another woman, barely noticeable, begins to emerge if you stare at the painting long enough.  Low, bare back fading into downy white.  Long arms.  Hands lost in a spillage of pale hair that vanishes in the white.

The man had called it an abstract, brought it home one Sunday afternoon – said he’d found it at a corner sale and just had to put it up where the sun swept in like long brushes painting it again.

She’d asked (because she didn’t really know, only heard it somewhere once) whether it might fade against direct sunlight.  He’d tilted his head as if considering, and then said: Yes, probably – but I want it here anyway.

Here. 

Where they had their breakfast and dinner.   Where he liked to sit and contemplate.  Where he smoked his cigars.

The man is gone now, and his name is not important (he would want to be remembered without the name).  When he was alive - and not alive in the way he was before death – he’d been Ida’s husband.  But he would have wanted to be remembered without the title.

Not a husband or a name.  Simply a man.  An entire world. 

To her.

In the beginning, it was quiet.  Quiet stares from behind thick, yellowing books.  Quiet whispers about this one and that one. Bodies fading into other bodies and things - while they remained.

She asks for a name, and he gives it. 

She is surprised. She says: That one?  That name?

He waits, wondering if it will change things, push things one way or another as the name has always done.  But Ida isn’t like that.  She doesn’t care about material things, or gossip.  It’s the slow, deep smile that spreads across his face like embers bursting into flames, eyes like the Hinatuan River.

He says: Just a name.  Not part of them anymore.

She doesn’t ask why. 

Shadowed corners in upscale bars.   Hazy city lights in the background.  He likes to examine her face when she speaks, and she usually speaks quickly, saying any thought that comes to mind.  He admires it.  I’ve never done that.  He always pauses before speaking, gathering thoughts and words carefully.  Lyrics.  A poet, a painter (sometimes), a singer on a rooftop with an old guitar. 

He is gentle with her, as if she might break.  Fingers tracing the spot between her breasts, soft lips hovering in waves upon her neck.  A patience she doesn’t have, doesn’t want.

He wrote a song for her, he says.  Plays it on a thrift-store keyboard. Something of a midnight bus – and hearts that turn to dust.  A sad song.  A song that quivers and aches like veined, arthritic hands.  Lived hands. 

And for the tiniest moment, she thinks: Not really for me.

He isn’t like others with the name.  The others are sturdy brick walls against endless, shining lights.  Reflectors.  He shrinks from attention, hates it, rarely goes out without glasses and hats, but he doesn’t need glasses and hats because they’ve long stopped looking.  He hates that too.

He never cries in front of her – no, nothing like that, could never do that - but she imagines he sometimes cries in windowless rooms, in closets.  He speaks of things she can’t understand – space beyond space, alternate worlds; leaves and how they float before landing, never staying – even after.  Like us.

What does that mean?  She doesn’t know. She is like a child, and the world is a mystery. A slate.

She follows his words, letting them lead her to a dizzying, comfortable fog.  Like rain drumming at a window.  She tells him it’s love, that she’s never felt anything like it.  She looks for him always – on subways, in nameless parks he’d never be.  His solemn carved face.  You’re there, even when you’re not. 

I like that, he says.  Love is good.

But he never says he loves her back.

They get married in a courthouse, jeans and shades of white.  

A single photographer, a small magazine, congratulating them as they leave, asking how they met. 

He doesn’t answer, but she does, wanting to scream it for the world: In a library.  Imagine that? 

The photographer smiles at her, but turns back to him: Does your father know you eloped?

No answer.  He pulls her close, away from the stranger.

The photographer speaks again, trails after them: Was there a prenup?

Intrusive.  The nerve! 

Also, exciting.

They decide she will move into his apartment.  Of course, because she has a shared studio and he lives in a co-op as big as a house. 

She fills a few drawers, places pictures onto ledges and walls, hoping to muffle the echoes.  Family now.  Her name now.   

At the deep-mahogany desk, he picks up a photo of himself.  She took it.  Framed it.  In the photo, he appears to be mid-sentence, not looking at the camera.  The night is rising behind him like soft smoke from a chimney. 

This is a good one, he says.  It fits. 

She is glad, tries to appear a natural wife.  Their home. 

But none of it comes natural to her.  Not the way the rooms open into other rooms, or the endless books in the endless library.  Easy to get lost.  Easy to be separated, and she wants him to be close. Always.

Now, as his wife, she pretends to understand his outré commentary – has to, because why would he marry her? She wants to be more than a willing listener, a part of it.  But she isn’t like him.  She sees things as they are.  A tree-stump.  A few dirty leaves.  And isn’t this what he desires?  Someone different.  Someone regular.  To balance him out?

She puts flowers in the bedroom.  Lilies.  Their scent fills the room, and she hopes it will pull him in.  Remind him of her – of them, together.

He pauses in front of some pictures she placed on the wide chest-of-drawers.  Too posed, he says.  A picture should transport or transgress. 

He picks one up - her favorite, the two of them like tourists in the middle of Times Square. 

It’s no different, he says, than a pair of Louboutin’s in a brilliant store window.  Desired, maybe.  But unworn.  Useless.

She goes into the kitchen and wipes her eyes, her hands on the Beluga vodka.  A habit beginning to form.  A drink only in the evenings.  Then, more often.

He joins, saying he likes it when her face relaxes.   Sometimes, you just need a rest. 

They find a new place away from the city, hidden by trees.  A house.  In the mornings, the air rushes up their noses and into their mouths, snapping at their skin.  Pinked cheeks.

A book on the teakwood table.  Thick, smooth cover – a shaded woman with pale hair.  Ida asks what it’s about.  He says: You should read it and find out.

She thinks he doesn’t know what it’s about. 

He takes the book and heads for the mahogany desk, which is upstairs now.  She imagines he will draw or paint or write all that he is thinking.  Instead of sharing it with her.

He’s good at what he does – the art and whatnot - but he isn’t exceptional.  He seems to know this.  Sometimes, he sinks into corners and asks if she understands what it means to be just on the cusp of greatness.

She doesn’t.

I need them, he says.  And it’s the first time he speaks of them, like this.  None of this would be without them.

She tries to reassure him: Not true.  I would be without them.

But he looks away, out the window at the vast grey sky.  And she wonders: Wouldn’t I?

She finally meets them in a restaurant back in the city.  He’s tired of the stark country, like someone naked all the time (eventually, what do you see?).  He buys her a black dress that shimmers when she moves.  She wears plum lipstick and curls the ends of her hair. 

He laughs across a table of carefully ironed white, a jeweled candle-lamp spraying specks across his face.  They are back to firsts, and she indulges, feeling flirty and light, her finger circling the palm of his hand. 

Then, his face changes and he stands.  A smaller man.  A timid man.

His father has appeared, is towering over them, blustery grey hair, a joker smile.  She is surprised how much they look alike in person.  In pictures, in magazines, the father looks nothing like him. 

More people come over, are surrounding the table, gathering to see who she is. 

My wife, he says. Ida.

And there is laughter, hands on shoulders – sparkling hands – and talk about getting together.  She is alarmed at how easily he sinks into somebody else.  But it doesn’t seem like somebody else.  It seems like the person he’s supposed to be.

A woman with pale hair – the palest hair one might ever see, white, perhaps, but brimming with such youth in the face that white doesn’t seem like the right color - is standing in front of him, wiping something from his mouth with long, quick fingers.  Scarlet, ribbon lips.

There is a familiarity between them.  She’s sure of it.  There is something in the air.  Something heavy.

Ida thinks she is seeing things, the way his eyes don’t leave the woman, even when his mother, plump and pearled, comes to talk to him. 

Isn’t that just his way? 

His body moves into the other body, a reflex.  Natural.

Finally, another man – a tall man with a moustache – approaches, putting his arm around the woman, and she leans against his shoulder.  Ida exhales – not realizing she’d been holding her breath.  A husband.  The woman has a husband - and they seem to be fond of each other. 

Later, when the group has gone, he is quivering ever so slightly.  He is drained from being the other man.  Or this man.  Or maybe something else?

She asks him why he loves her – a wrong time to ask, a desperate question.

He looks at her curiously.  I’m not sure, he says, if it’s love.

He says he won’t see them again. 

They take something from me, he says.  Something special.

She wonders if maybe it’s the opposite.  Not that they take, but that he seeks something special without them.  And fails.

They return to the country where he’s bored, but it’s better than running into them.  She finds a recipe and makes crisp roast duck.  She pours them vodka in tall glasses.  Bored together.  Drunk together.

She doesn’t think about love.  About what they feel and don’t feel.  She tells herself marriage is a balancing act.  One can’t always spill things out, rush to get answers.  But didn’t he like that about her?

One can’t always take things so literally.  He isn’t a literal person anyway.

She doesn’t get pregnant, and he’s glad, doesn’t think he can have children anyway.  She wonders why he believes this but doesn’t ask.  Too many questions will darken the eyes, cause him to disappear into never-ending projects.

Theirs is a lazy life, an easy life, because of the money.  She no longer works.  He dabbles with this and that.  Not as much as he did in the city.  Sometimes, he’s like an old man, toying with things in the shed, slicing wood while wearing a winter jacket.  A regular guy. 

The hours stretch into days.  They make love in every room of the house.  She wants him to slap her, squeeze her neck with his fingers.  He won’t.  He tells her to be careful.  Once you go there, you can’t go back.

She tells herself she wants a child but believes it’s only because there’s nothing else to do.  They can travel, but they don’t.  He’s become more frugal than he used to be.  Looking at prices of toilet paper and milk.  She laughs when he does this, commenting on the extravagance of everything else.  But he doesn’t find it funny. 

Their money.  Not mine.  Are you ready for a life without their money?

But she’s always known that life.  She thinks he would be happier in that life.  But he remains somewhere in between.  With her.

He likes to get drunk in the sunroom by the painting.   She finds him looking at it the way one might look at a newborn baby.  With fear.  Unequivocal love.

She sometimes wonders if he painted it himself.

Then, she thinks: No, he saw it while driving and was compelled to pull over and buy it at any cost.

When he’s drunk, she likes to ask questions. 

There was a lady once, with hair like in the painting.  Who was she?

Huh?

The lady from the restaurant.  Remember – when I met them?

He says he doesn’t remember. 

Yes – of course you do.  The lady with long, white hair.  You were talking to her. 

Oh, Bonnie. 

Yes.  Yes – Bonnie.  How do you know her?

Friend of the family. 

For a long time?

Yes. I’ve known her since childhood.

Were you very close?

He retreats, and she doesn’t push.

Sometimes she wonders if she should leave him.  But he is thoughtful.  He remembers that she likes chocolate; that she likes the sound of rain.  So, he picks up chocolate clusters whenever he sees them.  He always opens the window when it rains.

After the lines have deepened in her face, he asks about her dreams.  He tells her he’s sorry he never asked before and wants to hear them.  It’s never too late.

She tells him her dreams have been realized. 

I never had the talent you had, she says.  Never passionate about that kind of stuff.

Oh, he says.  He’s disappointed. 

He is wearing faded jeans and a flannel shirt.  His face is weathered but still appealing.  He looks nothing like the city boy he used to be, not even in the eyes.  His wedding ring is sunken into his skin.

She wants to tell him that she dreamed of being an equestrian, or a ballet dancer.  He wants to hear that she is something other than she is.  Perhaps he wants to believe he didn’t settle.

It sounds old-fashioned, she says, but I just wanted to find someone to spend my life with. I wanted to share moments – wherever those moments led - with someone I loved.

Love.  She hasn’t said the word in a long time.

He doesn’t react.  He’s already moving away from her – to the sunroom.  He is bored with her answer, the way he was bored of her pictures.

It isn’t cruel, though.  And she understands this.  It’s just the way he is.  And isn’t it refreshing?  To always know where one stands?

She stays behind with her thoughts, with herself.  Certainly, she would have liked to have a job of sorts - something to get up for every day.  Something to come home from with a fresh mind.  He never told her not to get a job.  No, nothing like that at all.  She just didn’t.  And neither did he.  Money, money, money.

He forgets what he is saying mid-sentence.  Sometimes, he halts in the middle of a room, as if someone hit pause on a television set.  She suggests they go somewhere – Dublin or Madrid.  Away from this place and its moments.

But he isn’t interested in traveling.  Besides, he says, I don’t like planes (she never knew this).  People aren’t supposed to fly.

They sit on separate sides of the room.  She watches him often, the way he taps his fingers against his mouth when he reads.  In the evenings, they come together.  That part has always been easy.

The father dies of a heart attack.  The newspaper says it happened in Gozo, that he toppled over.

The newspaper slips from his hands, and he retreats to the spare room with a bottle of vodka.  She finds him asleep on the floor and covers him with a blanket, shuts off the light.  She worries that this will push him over the edge, that he will lose himself for good. 

In the morning, he is freshly shaven, pulling up the blinds.  He says they must go to the funeral, and she agrees.  But she wonders: Will it help or hurt - to see them?

They step out one morning to a collection of people.  Cameras.  Microphones shoved in their faces. 

She feels the beating of her heart like a hammer.  Someone grabs her arm, and she turns to a woman with a bursting face, a purpose.

When was the last time he saw his father? the woman asks.

She’s not sure she’s supposed to answer – that he wants her to answer - but she does anyway because the woman is so alive, and her attention is completely on Ida.  There’s been no relationship.

Will Bonnie be at the funeral?

Ida watches the woman’s face, a soft guileful smile.  What?

Will she be there?

Ida stops moving.  He is ahead, by the car.  Who’s Bonnie? she asks, wanting more.

Others begin walking toward her because they aren’t getting anything from him. 

Ida feels the breath being sucked out of her.  She thinks about the news articles.  The stories she read.  Never anything about Bonnie. 

Right?

He comes back to grab her hand, lead her to the car. 

They drive away with the windows open, the woman with the purpose disappearing behind them.

She doesn’t tell him about the question and doesn’t ask him questions herself.  She has learned to compartmentalize her thoughts.  To push things into corners.   

She won’t read the newspapers tomorrow – about the family, or the aging black sheep.  She won’t read about the homely wife – or the woman named Bonnie. 

Instead, she reaches for his hand.  She is trembling.  He is not.  There was a time when this was normal for him: the photographers; the chase. 

She thinks: He hates the chase but will always need it. 

That’s why he chose me.

He is sick, barely able to use his fingers.  He has stopped talking.

She sits beside him and reads but doesn’t know if he likes it.  She places straws in his mouth until he requires a feeding tube.  His eyes go back and forth and up and down, and she asks the nurse if he’s in distress.  The nurse says, Maybe a little.  I’ll give him a shot.

No, she says, no more shots. 

She tells them to move him into the sunroom by the Painting.  They don’t understand.  The sun, they say, is too bright during the day.  But she insists. 

When they do, his blood pressure goes down, and his face relaxes.

Like a drunk in need of a rest.

She sits beside him and places her hand on his shoulder.

He seems to come alive for a moment.  He struggles to say something, and she leans close to listen.

What is it? she asks.  You can do it.

It comes out a gurgling mess, but she hears it: You. Always.

She smiles to herself.

She knows the words are not for her, but she takes them anyway – lets them blanket over her.

She doesn’t tell the nurse he has spoken.  She knows he’ll never speak again.