Velvet Verbosity

There was a part I, II, and III posted here of this short story, but here I’ve knitted it together, added an ending and edited a bit. Things are always a work in process.
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She read the love letter she had written to him just hours before. She felt nothing. Less than nothing. She read the words again, intently willing herself to feel something. Regret, preferably hatred, anything to reassure her that she was still capable of emotion. Nothing.

My dearest love,

The letter began earnestly. It had been her hand (had it not?) that had written those words. She peered at her handwriting, coolly examining the words that formed sentences and stacked into paragraphs down the page, and wondered at them. Wondered how she could be so indifferent to her own professions of love. Was she a liar after all?

She did believe these words written in her own delicate, careful hand, yet they did not move her. Her heart remained a dead, flat, smooth stone inside her ribs. In her mind’s eye, she poked at it like a curious child, turning it over with a stick and examining the underside for any signs of life. Even some strange and alien life would be welcome. Perhaps something ugly, something grotesque and hideously pale, squirming against the intrusion. She hoped, but her hope was nothing more than a hushed, feeble spark.

I long for your return, to rest inside the circle of your strong embrace.

She thought of this picture of the two of them embracing. He was an extraordinarily beautiful man, fine-boned with honey coloured skin and hair, perfectly proportioned and strong. An image of his naked form, graceful and powerful, floated in front of her. She tried to see his face too, to remember clearly his eyes shot through with sparkling light and mischief, but she could not. Above his strong shoulders was nothing but a dark fog that stubbornly and lazily refused to part.

So it was like that then, she thought.

Yes, it was like that. Her head would not allow what might involve her heart. He was not so long gone as that. Only a week since his hands had last cupped her face and he had bent his head down to kiss her. Only a week since his slender, warm hands had held hers. A week since their heads had touched on the pillow.

A week in a life isn’t such a long time, but much can happen in a week. Hell, lives changed on a dime. One week was more than enough time to lose love, to change a mind, to discover lies, for a heart to die. Enough time, it seemed, for reality to become a receding memory that itself faded as silently and unnoticed as shadows at dusk.

I call you my love because that is what you have become for me…my love. If I hold no other promise to you, I shall never break the promise to cherish your life always.

Was it possible, she wondered, to cherish a life one did not really know? She knew the promise itself had become a lie now. Yet, to hold that promise, now more than ever, against the force of hatred, or worse, ambivalence, was important. It was vital. Michael had taught her that much.

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She heard the geese returning. There was one clear moment, as she lay in bed, where there was no other sound but their calls. She felt her mind open up, relax, and she remembered again that it seemed somehow crucial that she get away from suburban life. The sound of cars was killing her slowly.

She had yet to receive a response to the letter. She hadn’t expected one. Surely he had felt the dead weight of the words underneath the message. Still, his silence annoyed her. Now they were engaged in the dance of avoidance. Little of importance passed between them these days. There were valid excuses of course. It wasn’t the time to talk, the distance was too great, the cost too high. Yes, yes, she would nod on the other end of the phone, but she knew this was another lie they told to comfort themselves, to breathe and exist. He concerned himself with important matters such as money, and she concerned herself with urgent matters such as children. They were fine, just fine without each other. Laughter still broke over them, and the sun still shone on their two separate faces. People could go on for a very long time in this way, never daring to touch what could break them completely.

She couldn’t help but to think of Doris Lessing’s famous short story, To Room 19. The story pushed itself into her brain, tossing things about, wrecking her neat logic. She once talked about the story over coffee, years ago when she had first read it, and was swiftly told that Virginia Woolf’s original was much better. Trouble is, she never liked Woolf. Never liked the plodding story lines. She particularly loathed Mrs. Dalloway. She knew her feminist literary friends thought her a fool, and she used to care a great deal about being liked. Now, she didn’t much care.

She didn’t need a room of her own if her mind was her own.

Her morning ritual unfolded precisely and without her conscious effort. Cleansing, brushing, dressing, eating. She felt his steps on the outside stairs almost before she heard them. She swallowed carefully as the door opened.

There. My God, I do love you.

They looked at each other, he in the doorway with bags in hand and that peculiar extra layer of travel written into his body, she rigid in front of a half-eaten breakfast. All the slow movements of the long days past were shed in one violent tremor that ripped through Val’s body. She stood up, trembling and swallowing, moving to him as he, at once, was moved by the same force and stepped, in three long strides, across the floor to meet her.

A moment. A moment of frail doubt lingered and they hesitated, breathing skin to skin, but not touching.

“I’m afraid to touch you,” he said in answer to the space still between them.

“Why?”

Across his face moved the emotions he had refused over the last two weeks. She watched the flicker and flash of this silent movie playing over his features, until it slowed and faded out. He folded her into his arms then, the air between them heaved out by force. He buried his face into her hair, into her shoulder and neck, inhaling the mingled scents of soap and skin and sunlight he found there.