lingering

He tries hard not to look at the empty bed as he comes into the bedroom to change his clothes. He slept in yesterday’s clothes again. On the couch again, too. He never could sleep very well when she went away on trips with her sister or for work. He always spent the first night on the couch, preferring to fall asleep while forcing himself to stay up late watching anything and everything on television.

After that first night he would move back into the bedroom and reluctantly crawl into the empty bed and drift off to sleep feeling incomplete. He always stayed on his own side of the bed even though she wasn’t there.

One time he had inadvertently drifted across the invisible median that separated his side and her side of the bed (her side was slightly larger; though, he was much bigger than her) and awoke to find his head buried in her pillow. It was the lingering scent of her floral/citrus shampoo and the faint odor of sweat that had awakened him. He was unable to get back to sleep after that.

This time, when she had gone, he did not allow himself to go back into the bedroom to sleep in their bed alone. He was afraid not of smelling her on the pillow, but of not smelling her at all. He was afraid that her scent may be fading, and he just couldn’t handle that.

As he pulls his shirt off and tosses it into the hamper next to the dresser he catches a glimpse of the bed reflected in the mirror. He can see the sheet lying slightly askew, still in the position in which they landed the last time she threw them aside and crawled out of bed. Her pillow still carries the faint impression from where her head had lain that last night.

He was certain that if he ran across the room and jumped on the bed and thrust his face into her pillow he would be able to inhale the rich scent of her as if she had only just left. For the tiniest fraction of a second his muscles tense with the anticipation of the movement, but relax again as he restrains himself.

He looks away from the mirror and crosses the room into the bathroom. The cold tile against his bare feet is a welcome shock, snapping him from his private reverie back into the present moment. He reaches into the shower stall and turns the hot tap on full blast to give the water time to heat up.

He removes his pants and then his underwear and leaves them lying in the middle of the bathroom floor just the way she always hated. He can almost hear her voice telling him to pick up after himself. A small, half smile turns the corner of his mouth upward for a moment. A second later all traces of the smile are gone and he is rigid with instinctual fear.

He is certain that he just heard her voice from the other room. His eyes dart randomly around as he strains at the edge of perception to hear the sound of her voice. He ignores the building the steam and humidity  as the scalding hot water continues to cascade from the shower head and down into the porcelain bathtub. The sound is continuous but rhythmic. It is the sound of laughter and of crying. It is from within this sound that he heard her voice.

He used to do that all the time, before she left. He would turn on the shower then think that she had said something to him and have to ask her what she said. She always said that he heard voices in the rain. He relaxed prepared to take his shower. He carefully reached into the steaming shower and turned up the cold water to take some of the edge off the heat. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the vanity mirror that hung above the sink. He froze.

He saw something written in the steam on the mirror. The letters looked foreign to him. They did not spell out anything, but rather seemed to be a random arrangement of letters. He turned away from the shower and looked closer at the letters. He could see then that they looked strange because they were written backwards.

He was never any good at puzzles or riddles. She was the one who enjoyed brain teasers and crosswords; though, she always tried to get him to figure something out in clues rather than tell him straight out. He turned away from the mirror and back towards the bedroom. He could see himself reflected in the mirror above the dresser, naked and shrouded in the steam of the bathroom. Over his shoulder he could just make out the message written in steam, but now it appeared normal.

It said, “I love you always and all ways.”

It was too much for him to accept. He dropped to his knees and started crying great heaving sobs. Every day for the past year he had gone through this same ritual. He would spend the night on the couch and then shower in their bathroom, trying desperately not to look at the bed where she used to sleep. Never, in all that time had he ever noticed the mirror. Never before had he seen that message, her final message to him.

One year ago today, while away from home with her sister and while he slept on the couch in her abscence, she was killed in a violent car crash. Since that day he has not been able to bear the thought of sleeping in their bed knowing that she will never again join him. He has longed to touch where her body had lain, and to smell her lingering scent, but he has resisted the urge every day.

Until now.

He quickly rises to his feet and walks into the bedroom. For the first time in a year, he looks at her vacant side of the bed directly. Still weeping, he lowers himself down into her side of the bed a pushes his face into her pillow.

He can still smell the faint scent of her floral/citric shampoo and the subtle odor of sweat, lingering.

~ by jaekido on August 20, 2008.