The Widow Next Door
I digress, though. Because the point is, 312 Bristol Lane doesn’t look like one of those annoyingly sappy movies. The couple feels real to me. They feel genuine, even in the happy moments. I don’t begrudge them these moments.
Jane and Alex keep raking leaves, right through my existential crisis over sappy movies and predictable plots. I refocus, studying them, looking at their subtle cues as I rock, Amos in my lap.
Alex has got short sleeves on, the rake in his hand. Jane’s in a lightweight sweater, her hair up in a ponytail. She’s sitting on the steps, chatting away animatedly. I sort of want to open the window, to get some air and to hear what they’re talking about, but I think it would be a little obvious. Plus, I’d probably just get cold in a minute or two, and I don’t want to disturb Amos. He’s all cosy, purring gently. His feet are even moving as he dreams.
The pile of leaves is getting bigger and bigger. Alex’s back is to me, but I can tell by his posture he’s relaxed, despite the work. She’s talking away. She talks with her hands. Did I used to be a hand talker when I had the energy? When I had someone to talk to?
I can’t remember. So many things I can’t remember now, it makes me feel sad. How do those moments slip away? The little moments, the little details, are like fleeting feathers on the breeze. I so desperately try to cling to them, if for no other reason than to say I can, but in truth, I can’t. Time stomps forward, leaving our memories in the ashy dirt. We can’t hold on to everything, not all of the big things and especially not the little things. Sometimes the loss of the little things hurts worse.
Now don’t go feeling sorry for yourself, you old coot, I think to myself. No need to get all down in the dumps. It won’t change anything anyway. You’ve got plenty to be thankful for.
Still, the quietude of the house can wear on a person. Talking to Amos just isn’t the same. He’s lovely, don’t get me wrong. But he doesn’t talk back. Sometimes the silence in the house is deafening. It’s enough to make me want to scream … but who would hear it?
The pointlessness is sometimes the difficulty of ageing, especially when you’re alone. No cat can fill that void or tackle that internal dilemma.
I’ve got other forms of social interaction, of course. I go to church on Sunday mornings when I feel up to it and when it isn’t bad weather. These eyes don’t work very well in the rain or when it’s foggy, after all. Still, I step into the little church down the road now and again, sitting in the back pew where I used to sit at the stage in my life I needed God or something to soothe the internal wounds festering, bubbling and oozing. In truth, if I look hard, they’re still there. I guess that’s why I still go to Mass once in a while, when I can. The fire and brimstone speeches are extreme, but who am I to say what’s right or wrong?
They also send a little shiver down my spine, all the talk about eternal damnation and forgiveness. I fiddle with my fingers during these sermons, asking the question so many do but so few truly understand: Will I be saved? Forgiven? Will I make it to heaven, or will my shattered soul spend eternity paying for my sins?
After all this time, I still don’t know the answer. Maybe I don’t want to know the answer, in truth. I don’t know if a few Sunday Masses now and then can check off a box, can mitigate my wrongdoings. But it can’t hurt.
Plus, if nothing else, Sundays get me out of this tomb of a house, out of the interminable chill of being alone.
After Mass, I say hello to a few of the ladies and even go downstairs for coffee once in a while. They don’t really know me, which is okay. I’d probably forget their names anyway. I’m fine with being on the edges.
I also have my trips to the grocery store, Mark’s Mart. There’s a nice boy there who not only rings up my purchases but also loads my grocery bags in the car. He’s a young fellow, too young really to be talking to an old lady like me. His smile, his kind words, they give me something to look forward to. Best of all, he knows exactly how the groceries need to be packed – chicken in its own bag, toiletries in a brown bag, Amos’s cat food in a plastic bag. I have my system, and he doesn’t mess with it. I respect that.
I’ve come to learn, though, it’s the small, ordinary interactions you miss most when you’re alone. The silence of the house at any given moment, the only sound my breathing. The fact there’s no one to tell about the hilarious crisp commercial you just saw or to call out to when an adorable squirrel is eating on the feeder. The seemingly unimportant times, the little joys of daily life are lost when you don’t have anyone to share them with.
Nevertheless, I promised myself years ago I wouldn’t let that appreciation disappear. I vowed I’d cling to the positives. That’s what he’d want, after all. That’s what I need to do.
No matter how much I swear to myself I’ll keep living, keep being thankful, it’s not easy. I’d be lying if I said it was. It’s not just the silence; it’s the lack of companionship that makes me crazy.
It’s him. It’s the fact he’s not here.
I miss him. In spite of everything, I know deep down we were soulmates. How could I not miss him?
I miss our breakfasts of pancakes on Sundays when he would talk about the shocking news stories in the paper. I miss his kisses, miss the way he would wrap an arm around me as he passed by. I miss our Saturday morning drives to nowhere in particular. I miss our movie marathons on the sofa, our apple sauce with mini marshmallows on top just for fun. I miss having someone to bake for, someone to share everything with. I miss the way he didn’t give up on me even when I was falling apart, how his shoulder was there even when I didn’t realise I wanted or needed it.
It’s true, there was a time in our marriage when things weren’t good. There was a large span of time when I didn’t appreciate what we had. There were a lot of missed moments because I was – well, who I am.
I can’t apologise for that. But I can apologise for not understanding what I had to lose. And it turns out, I had a lot to lose. The barren rooms surrounding me underscore this fact. I lost in the end, lost so much, and now I’m here, sweltering in the realisation that I didn’t win.
I couldn’t win, after all.
But before all the bad times, there were good times too. There were the moments when we first met, the moments of happiness. I know now there were beautiful times. I can see them now. I wish I’d seen them more clearly then. I wonder if he saw them for what they were, right up to the end. I wonder if he appreciated them, even when it was his time to go.
We were happy once. It’s been so long, it’s easy to forget that we were happy.
I think about that now, the good times, the quietness stirring feelings of regret. It is not the regret of him being gone that bothers me as much as the regret of lost time. Such is the plight of humanity, I guess. We don’t realise what’s important until it’s way too late, until the time has evaporated. Then, when we have time to appreciate what matters most, we’re alone, incapable of making up for those moments from our youth.
‘That’s enough,’ I announce aloud to snap myself out of my sadness. I decided years ago that attitude is a choice. I try not to let myself sulk for too long. Once you start sulking, you’re done for. What good will that do? There’s no denying that what happened plagues me, haunts me, ravages me. But I have to maintain some semblance of existence, which means I have to cling to the positives.
I have to. There’s no choice.
And right now, 312 Bristol Lane is helping me ignore – or maybe avoid – the past. Their love story is helping me see what could be, what’s left.
I return my attention to them. They’re still raking leaves, the pile sky-high now. She’s laughing, stretching out her long legs in the sunshine, leaning back with her face towards the great blue, contentedness radiating from her soft grin.
This is what Saturday mornings should be about.
I smile as I watch him, clearly feeling mischievous, kick up a pile of leaves at her. The dirty, dingy leaves fall onto her, clinging on to her clothes. One even lands in her hair. She screams, a shriek of irritation and glee simultaneously. It’s so loud, I can hear remnants of it through the window. I tap my fingers on my rocking chair, completely enthralled as she leaps to her feet and races after him, poking him, tickling him, even hitting at him as he laughs. He dashes through their front yard and a chase around the property ensues. They run like children on the first day of summer break, her laughter still heard as he begs her to stop.
After a few laps, they are both panting. He pauses, leaning on his knees, out of breath. A once-familiar warmth surges within me from witnessing their connection, a love I can sense from over here.
A beautiful love.
Then, in the front yard, right on the lawn, he pulls her in to him, smack against his chest. They kiss, a sweet kiss turning passionate. He pulls her tighter, and she rests her chin on his shoulder. They sway a little, and eventually he pulls back, twirling her as they dance in the pile of leaves.
It’s a magical moment, a moment way better than my television movies. It’s a real moment.
They stand for a while in the leaves until the moment fades. Then, he saunters to the garage for the leaf bags, and she stands, wrapping her arms around herself, smiling at nothing but the feelings left behind.
It’s my favourite moment since they’ve moved in. It’s an everyday kind of moment, but it’s the sort of moment that I’d give anything to have again.
I sit watching them swirl in joy, a pure kind of joy, as he returns with the leaf bag. They swoop down, scooping up leaves together, laughing despite the chore at hand. She playfully tosses a leaf here or there at him, and one sticks in his hair. Watching them in this simple moment, I feel like I could sit here all day, wrapped up in the splendid happiness of who they are together.
But before I can inhale peacefully at the sight, I clutch my head. A sharp pain radiates from the centre out, a piercing sensation that stabs into every nerve in my head. I squint my eyes shut, the throbbing pain ripping my brain apart, making it hard to think.
My hand massages my scalp, but it’s no use. The migraine is back and I can think of nothing else.
When the agony eventually subsides, a dull roar still echoing in my head, I open my eyes to look over at 312 Bristol Lane, hoping there’s still a moment to be seen.
But they are gone, presumably back into their cocoon of happiness, their home, and their love.
I rub my head once more, glancing back into my own living room. The house silently screams of coldness, of emptiness, and of something missing.
Chapter 4
I meticulously turn my gold band as I stare at the photograph on top of the stony, dusty fireplace. Amos is asleep on the sofa. I reach out a hand gingerly, almost afraid to touch the glass, afraid if my fingers make contact with it, the fact he’s gone will be real.
Time eases the pain and shock of his death, but it doesn’t take away the burdens of loneliness and loss. It doesn’t make it easier.
For the fourth time today, I touch the chilling glass, eyeing the black and white photograph with both sadness and a smile. In the picture, we’re looking at each other, love radiating even without colour. There’s a rose bush behind us. I can still see the vibrant reds within the murky grey. One of my delicate hands shoves back the itchy veil from my ravishing curls. He’s staring at me as if he wants to devour me, and, if I remember correctly, I think he did want to, judging from the words he was whispering in my ear right after the camera flashed.
It makes me blush just thinking of it.
We were so young, so naive, so in love. I was so happy then.
Time was hard on us, as it is to so many. Still, this picture has always sat on this fireplace, a symbol of that perfect day. Each time I’ve seen it over the years, it’s been like a connection to the past. It’s a relic of the love we once had – the carefree, roses-in-the-background kind of love, where starry-eyed lovers think nothing could ever tear them apart.
‘So long ago,’ I say out loud to the picture, feeling in some ways like that moment was yesterday and in some ways like it was two hundred years ago instead of sixty-seven.
My hands shaking, I squeeze the photograph as if I can clutch on to us, on to the people in the picture. My mind wraps itself around the memories, good and bad, and my chest heaves with the realisation of all that’s happened. I’m suddenly desperate to hold on to what I see, and before I can stop myself, I’m squeezing harder and harder. I squeeze until my hand vibrates from the effort. I squeeze until I hear a punchy crack, the glass snapping right in the middle, the line weaving down my body in the photograph, marring the perfect, smiling woman.
I set the cracked memento back down, my hand finding the edge of the mantel now. I stare at my handiwork, the cracks now giving it a new feeling. I don’t know why, but it suits the picture. The imperfections make it better. My finger traces the cracked glass for a moment, and I marvel in the pattern, in the new texture, and in the picture that is still very much the same but also a little bit different.
I study the faces I know so well but that somehow seem so distant from me. The glass shifts slightly, leaving part of the picture uncovered. It will fall prey to the elements, to the air of life around it. It’s not protected anymore.
Gazing at the photo, I am bombarded with thoughts and ideas, a dull roar making me tired. I listen to the words, trying to home in on the ones to pay attention to, wondering how I got here. Wondering if I could’ve ever imagined how it would all turn out.
I couldn’t have. I would have never known how things would rotate and swirl, spinning into a cacophony of chaos as we drudged through the years. I didn’t understand it, even then, how actions have consequences. Or maybe I just didn’t want to understand it.
I certainly had experiences. Looking at the eyes of the woman in the photograph, I see what so many didn’t.
I see what he didn’t.
I see the secrets of a haunted past, of consequences not yet uncovered, of the havoc my actions would reap covered up with a charming smile.
Life flies by. That’s the cliché all old people say to the young, but it’s so damn true. One minute, you’re standing by the rose bushes on your wedding day, wondering what beautiful things life will greet you with. The next, your frail, shaking hand is touching the glass of the past, staring into eyes and skin you don’t even recognise anymore, wondering how it all came to pass.
I wipe the single tear that streams down my cheek, and I exhale.
‘I miss you,’ I say into the crisp October air, wishing like in the movies, a voice could whisper back. But it doesn’t. I’m alone, all alone, as usual. There will be no anniversary card from him today. There will be no red roses, no sweet embrace to remind me I’m not alone in this crazy world. Instead, there will be me, Amos and an endless day of nothingness, which has become our tradition.
It doesn’t do to dwell on the past. I know that. I know I have to keep going. Sighing, I lay the photo flat on the mantel, the cracked glass now face down. I tear myself away. I step on the creaking floorboard in the living room as I make my way to my only sanctuary – the rocking chair. I plunk my body down, suddenly regretting the dress slacks and blouse I put on. I don’t know what I was thinking this morning when I painstakingly got dressed. It’s Wednesday. I have nowhere to be today. It’s not grocery shopping day or doctor’s appointment day. It’s just a stay-at-home Wednesday, even if it is my wedding anniversary. I guess it just seemed respectful to put some effort in. In some crazy part of my mind, I suppose I thought maybe he could see me from wherever he is. It’s nuts, I know. But putting on those soft pink slacks and matching blouse made me feel like I was appreciating what today was. It just didn’t feel right sitting in my robe.
Nonetheless, as the pants cut into my flesh uncomfortably, I wish I’d stayed in my nightclothes. If you’re going to stay home alone, you may as well be comfortable.
That’s what conclusion I’ve come to, anyway, even though my mother liked to tell me in my youth that beauty was pain. Sometimes now I think beauty might be overrated … then again, maybe it’s just a result of my unhappiness when I see the pallid skin in the mirror, the fried, grey hair. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking that beauty no longer counts, the corpse-like figure who peers back at me far from a thing of beauty.
Out of my peripheral vision, the heavy door to my right, in the centre of the back wall, calls me. Most days, I don’t look at it, the barricade efficiently doing its job. The brass doorknob hasn’t had fingerprints on it for so long, I don’t even know if it would turn.
In some ways, I’d like to think it wouldn’t. I’d like to think it’s rusted shut, shielding me from what’s just beyond the threshold.
A tear comes to my eye as I try to ignore it, try not to look at the door that hasn’t been opened in so long, that won’t be opened.
Even without looking at it, though, I can see it as if I’m staring at it. I can feel the smooth wood, the stain on it almost tacky. I can feel the imperfections and details, their pattern memorised by my creaky old fingers, which still remember every knot, every rough spot on that door, every detail. I glance down at my fingers as they do a dance on the rocking chair, recalling the shape of the doorknob and its chilling feel on my fingertips.
I take a deep breath, the pain in my chest swelling as I try to push the thought aside.
I’ve become a master at ignoring it. I walk past that door every day. I see it every day. Yet, a piece of me doesn’t see it, doesn’t notice it. It’s been blacked out.
Why today? Why now? Why does it have to come creeping in, to make me feel even worse?
I shudder, saying out loud, ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it. That’s enough.’ I hold my head, take a deep breath and open my eyes.
There. All’s better now.
I rock slowly, my head against the wooden headrest. Amos meows, jumping in the window this time to look out with me. He stares at a robin perched on the picket fence as I study the two-storey across the street. The bird looks so out of place against the rotting leaves. A bird like that belongs in the perfect white snow, a crimson marvel in a sea of plainness.
It flaps and drifts upward and away, landing on the spouting of 312 Bristol Lane.
I smile as I look at the perfect bricks, the adorable little window at the top, the shining windows in the front. It’s such a lovely house, made even lovelier by the fact there’s a couple there now, a couple I get to study.
I rock in my chair for a while, staring at the house, wondering where they are. The car is gone, and the house is so empty. I realise I’m so lost without them. It’s odd being on Bristol Lane all alone yet again. I really don’t know how I used to survive when they weren’t over there. What did I do with myself? It feels like a lifetime ago.
My mind drifts back, and I think about how not so long ago, the house was always empty, the creaky sign in the front yard begging someone to move in. It felt like ages and ages that 312 Bristol Lane was abandoned, desolate, and lonely. Just like me.
I furrow my brow, massaging my forehead with my thumb and forefinger. Before Bristol Lane, before the empty months, someone lived there. I know they did. I remember there was a couple there for a while, a short while. I remember they left in a hurry on a day not unlike today. Was it last year? Two years ago? Was it October they left or was it summer? Everything’s messed up in my head, and I can’t seem to set it straight. What happened to them? Why did they leave so quickly? My memory fails me.
But sitting here by myself with nothing to watch, I challenge myself to remember. It’s good to push the mind. I shake my head, trying to recall, searching the inner recesses of my brain for faces and names and details. My head starts to ache from the process, but I can’t let it go.
Who were they? I can’t believe my memory is so hazy. It frustrates me, causing me to rock a little faster, to rub my head a little bit harder.
Think. Remember.
Images come to mind of a couple, a black-haired woman with very tanned skin and an exotic look about her. I see her fuzzily in my mind, the details of her face blurred. She was lean and lanky, but in a model sort of way. She was married, her husband a rather large man. I remember thinking he didn’t need any pie. I do know that much.
I recall images of them moving in, angrily yelling in the front lawn. There were no sweet kisses. There was no laughter. They were miserable over there from the beginning. I remember feeling like they didn’t deserve a house as grand as 312 Bristol Lane.
I remember sitting here thinking I wished they would just move out, even on day one.
Still, I don’t remember the ins and outs of their lives or the details of what they were all about. What did they do all day? What interactions did I witness? I can’t really recall. It’s hell to get old, for the mind to start to fade. It’s crazy what we remember and what we forget.
I rock for a bit more, staring at the house, still trying to jog my memory, but it’s not really working. It’s like I can’t remember a time the sunshine-yellow woman didn’t live next door. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to remember a time when she didn’t. I like them. They bring energy to the street.
The longer I think, though, the more anxious I get. I feel a bit like my skin is crawling, the prickling of the hairs on my arms making me uneasy. I may not remember the last couple so well, but I do get this sense of dread, of heaviness.
And even though I can’t remember the details, I do get one overwhelming vibe from my jaunt down memory lane: I don’t think I liked them very much.
In fact, the more I stare at the house, the more I’m certain of it. I didn’t like them at all, especially her. That dark, luscious hair didn’t fool me. She was beautiful on the outside, I know that. But she wasn’t a good person.
She was nosy. That’s it. I remember. She was so, so nosy. Always looking at me, perusing me like I was some kind of person to keep an eye on. The nerve of her. I’ve lived here so long, and this young thing moved in and thought she could take over the lane. She thought she could be rude, could get in my business. She was always glaring at me, always staring. And not in a neighbourly way or a curious way. It was in a way that told me she didn’t like me.
There were no afternoon teas with that one. There were no sweet gestures or pies or kind exchanges. There were just nosy stares and questions about what I was doing. There was no neighbourly love, I remember now.
I was so glad when they left. Surprised but glad. Did they leave in the middle of the night? I think they did. If my memory serves me correctly, which in fairness it doesn’t always, I think one morning I got up and the couple from 312 Bristol Lane were gone. They must’ve packed their belongings in the night and left like some scoundrels disappearing under the cover of darkness.
I knew she shouldn’t be trusted from day one. And I was right.
I guess none of it really matters now, though, in truth. Because those neighbours weren’t even important. The new people in 312 Bristol Lane are all that matters. I’m glad the other couple left so early. These two suit me so much better.
Still, I wonder what happened to them, the old neighbours. Where are they now? Is life working out as they planned?
I’ve lived long enough to know that life has a way of working out differently, no matter who you are. And now, the couple across the street get a chance to live out their story here, me bearing witness. I hope they get it right. I hope they make the story a good one. I hope they don’t turn out to be scoundrels. I hope with all my heart they find the life they want.