Morning Rituals
by Antheros
Part of The Third Foursome Moresome Challenge
Photo (c) Copyright 2006 John Nemeth. All Rights Reserved.
Ah. There they were. Late, which was unusual. Or so I thought to myself after all the years we'd been nodding at each other and exchanging morning greetings.
Their easy friendship was something I looked forward to each morning. They'd order breakfast and then without words they would each grab a slice of toast and offer it to their partner.
This time I could see her eyes and they twinkled with inner amusement when she noticed my fascinated stare.
I blushed when she winked and deliberately bit into the toast he offered her.
I couldn't stop my smile.
But, I couldn't help wondering: Five years I'd been an observer of their ritual--and I didn't even know their names.
Would I ever know the story behind their morning toast?
I spent the rest of yesterday thinking about them. I still could feel my cheeks burning; burning too was my mind, with the sight of their complicity--in a time that love has forsaken me, it increasingly felt like a bodkin piercing my heart. At night, arriving to the empty apartment, I felt the urge to jump out of the window. I lay in the dark, feeling like a forgotten ragged cloth that nobody would ever care for.
I cried.
If I had had any strength left in me, I might have called David and begged him, like I have done so many times before, to come to see me. I wished all night that he would, even though the rest of rationality left in my body screamed against him. Men!
The following morning my eyes were swollen and tender. I had a quick shower and picked my largest pair of sunglasses. The spring outside felt alien; the sky was blue and cloudless, but the day was still too cold in the shadow. I didn't want to see the couple again, not that morning. For all the years I've been living here, seeing them every morning has been a source of respite, a certainty that there would be eventually someone for me, a man with whom I would share breakfasts for ever, being the envy of young girls seeking their own soul mates.
That morning I became twenty-nine years old. The last of the twos, Balzac just around the corner. I should've known. The birthdays that I longed for in my childhood, that I couldn't wait for to add another year when I was a teenager, later became a score of my failure. Twenty-nine, single, never married, a dozen failed relationships lying in my past; two of them left scars that haven't healed properly.
Through the large restaurant windows, cleaned at 6 am by a more unfortunate poor soul than I am, I could easily see them. He was looking outside, in another direction, distraught as ever, and she is looking at him. They must have had just arrived, the table still empty. Soon it would have his cup of coffee, her cup of tea, the toasts with butter and jelly. She spread the butter for him, she spread the jelly for her. They did it with striking concentration. Surgeons saving lives aren't that meticulous.
The street was busy with the morning movement. People going to work, like I was myself. I didn't want to go to work, but life is so much doing things we don't want to. That was my exact thought, seeing the bright day reflection imposed on the view of the restaurant. Suddenly the crowd made me lonely--suddenly, shockingly, I, who always felt at home in crowds--, an abandoned soul flying among thousands of other strangers.
I said to myself that it was foolish to skip breakfast because of them. They're just an old couple, nothing more, and I was just sad because it was my birthday and I had nobody to celebrate with. "I should sit, drink the large cup of coffee that helps me endure my morning, and go on," I thought. That night Melinda, Jean and I would go out, and I'd get drunk and sleep with a new and strange man, one who will not care for me in the morning more than I will care for him.
I sat, lost in my thoughts, drinking the black coffee.
"May I sit here, my dear?" I heard. I started to mumble "yes," wondering if I was too late because the restaurant hardly ever filled up at that time of the morning; but looking up, I saw the old lady. Her white hair was still marked by gray strands, just the opposite of my own hair; but I pull the occasional gray strand out in front of the mirror when I catch them. Her eyes were clear, blue, deep.
"You look sad today, dear. Are you all right?" Her husband wasn't with her. I looked around, trying to find him, and she seemed to notice it.
"He went for a walk," she continued. "I told him I was tired today. I'm sorry for yesterday, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I suppose I'm too old for winks, am I not?" I was at loss for words. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," I muttered.
"What is wrong?" she asked me.
"Nothing." She seemed a good listener. We've been seeing each other for years, I felt as if I knew her. "I'm just lonely," I added.
"I see. Problems with a boyfriend?"
"Lack of a boyfriend," I replied, with a sneer. "Lack of anybody."
"Oh. Don't worry about that, dear. He will come."
"I don't think so. Not like you and your husband." She nodded, silently. Then I just had to ask her; it was stronger than myself, and the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. "How can you be so happy with him? How many years have you been together, and you still do that toast thing every single day? How can you keep a marriage like that, and I can't even have a boyfriend?"
She smiled, sadly and compassionately.
"Are you looking for a love like ours? Oh, dear." She paused, thinking. Her gaze felt on her hands on the table, beautiful old hands of paper thin skin. "To be in love can hurt much more than to be alone, my dear. Much, much more."
It was then that she told me her story.
We were young when Marv and I met. I think I was married already; he is sure I wasn't. It doesn't matter. We had mutual friends, and if I wasn't married I was certainly already engaged to Paul. There was no love at first sight, no passion at all. We were slightly alike and nothing more, and we only met when we were with our mutual friends. I was happy and in love with Paul. Marv could have been anybody in the world, and I still would only have cared for Paul.
Not that Marv noticed me and was immediately taken, oh, no. It wasn't like that. We felt no attraction to each other, and we had no reason to feel so. We lost touch, after I married--we were never in touch, actually, we used to run into each other in parties or gatherings. And I didn't notice when Marv was gone.
Paul and I married and had two children. It hurts me to talk of them, to think of them, and I think of them every day of my life. I loved them. I was a good mother, I didn't have a job, I cooked, I educated them, I gave them manners and helped with their homework--they were bright, they didn't need much help at all.
Paul... Paul was never bad. He never hit me, as far as I know he never cheated on me, he didn't drink, he even brought me flowers on our wedding anniversaries. I didn't feel very happy with my life, however; for a long time I didn't even know it. I just went on, the daily routine of children and house and husband, everyday, over and over again. There was not much time to think. And not having much time to think was bad for me. I needed to think, to create, to feel new things. I was slowly dying on the inside, so slowly that I didn't even realize.
I met Marv again by this time. Julie was fourteen, Adrian eleven. We loved them. We ran into him at a dinner party. I didn't recognize Marv at first. I hadn't seen him in more than ten years, he was changed. He had lost any trace of youth in his face; last time I had seen him, he still had boyish traces. Now he was a man at his prime; handsome and confident.
He came to talk to me. To us, Paul was with me, and he was the one who recognized Marv. We said hello to each other, said those usual phrases of how long it had been since we last met. Marv told us what had happened in his life. His initial job at a bank, leaving for an odd opportunity at an publicity agency. He left it, unhappy, months later, and spent some time unemployed. He came back to the stock market and had been working there ever since, a reasonably successful broker--and, at the time when yuppies were starting to boom.
I can't explain how it happened. Marv was married too. He had no children, he didn't want any. His wife wanted children desperately. She was in love with him. Actually, more than in love with him, she needed him like one needs air.
We started to run into each other again. I was bored with my life, I wanted to go out, everyday if possible. I wanted to escape from the nothingness that I had become, just another woman lost to the world, in her position of mother and wife.
I cried in those days, a lot. Hidden, when the children were at school and Paul was working. I cried in my bed, my head firmly buried in my pillow; even though nobody was home, I didn't want to make any noise. Sometimes I cried all morning, and then I pretended I was fine. I didn't know what to do, dear. I had a wonderful life; how could I be unhappy?
I think I was clinically depressed back then. I could have easily taken some pills, doctors were prescribing them like water in those days. But I didn't want pills, and I didn't need them. All I needed was love.
I ran into Marv one day, after we started meeting again in occasional dinner parties. We just bumped on the street, one of those coincidences that happen even in a city as big as New York. It was about lunch time, and he invited me to lunch. I, of course, accepted.
It was easy. So easy; the way we clicked, the flowing conversation during lunch, making me wonder how I could have missed someone so remarkably like me, for so long. We shared interests, we shared ideas and ideals, we shared desires and tastes. He wanted to see India, he wanted to live in a quiet place by the sea... We began to see each other, very innocently at first. He came with his wife to dinner at my place, or we went to their place, or we went to restaurants. Marv and Paul were never best friends, but they liked each other. Marv's wife was not too boring, I could cope with her. But the conversation was inevitably carried by me and Marv.
The change, how it happened quickly. I didn't know that I was in love with him. It just slipped my mind, somehow. After all, how can a mother and wife in her late thirties fall in love with someone else? Or fall in love, period. Falling in love is for teenagers and young women, who still have not lived enough. So I didn't know. I didn't know until, at a boring party, Marv and I escaped for a moment to talk alone, and he kissed me.
Oh, dear. Just the memory of that kiss makes me... In the duration of a kiss I realized I was in love, deeply in love, like I had never been before. It was the first crush I had, at fourteen, my first boyfriend at sixteen, the love I felt for Paul, everything together and at once, and the touch of his tongue... I didn't ask him anything, after we parted lips. I didn't say a word. He had enticed me. I would have done anything he asked me. I would have run away with him to hell, if he had just taken my hand and led the way.
I don't remember what happened in the following days. I barely remember what happened at the party; I think we just came back inside, not saying a word to each other. Then we started to meet. I wanted to say no. The first time we saw each other, I was resolute to say no, to say that I was married, that it was wrong, that I didn't want him. I rehearsed a speech. Yet, when we met face to face, neither of us spoke. We just stared. For what seemed a long time, we just stared at each other.
`It's useless to try to deny it,' he whispered to me. I was paralyzed. I felt I was in a dream. Nothing seemed real. His kiss didn't seem real, going to a bed with him seemed a fantastic tale that couldn't happen in reality.
Was it the loneliness of all married women? Or was it just me, incapable of finding my will in the world that I had picked for me, in the world that, whether I liked or not, was my own? To seek Love, my dear, is the fate of the sensitive, to be carried for our whole lives. If found, we worry every day about its loss--for one day, even it love itself won't wear down, even if it is infinite and unbounded, the whims of life will take it away: misfortunes, a turn of the Wheel of Fortune, the inescapable death.
We started meeting each other whenever we could. Any time, any place. At mornings, before he went to work. We met for lunch, he missed a couple of afternoon hours. My excuses began to be less and less plausible. I just left everything and went to meet him.
He asked me to move with him, one afternoon. We had met for a quickie in lunch--I'm not shocking you, am I, dear? I was once your age, you know--and it extended through the afternoon, neither of us wanting to go. I said yes. I didn't need to think. I couldn't live without him.
I arrived home late, Paul was already there. He knew. It was impossible to deny, to pretend otherwise. That moment, clutching the door knob in my hand to keep my balance, my head twirled, thinking for the first time since it had all begun. To leave a family, a husband that I loved--in spite of the sameness of marriage and the lack of passion--, to leave my son and daughter for ever, in a split second like that, for a man... How could I? Yet Marv was more to me than anybody else had ever been. It was not lust, no; it was perfect. Everything. Everything.
To be torn between two possibilities, both of them good and attractive, and yet knowing that choosing one closes the doors for the other, for ever, how much it hurts. Dear, there is no right choice.
`I'm in love', I said, but there was almost no voice coming out of my throat. Paul was pale. `I thought it was just an affair,' he muttered. Then I realized that my decision was already taken. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, my legs were shaking a little. `I'm sorry,' I said. `I'm sorry,' I repeated, over and over again, like a prayer that could somehow save me.
It didn't. I didn't take anything from the house. Not even a pair of panties or a toothbrush. I walked out and left, carrying nothing but my bag and the clothes I was wearing, the blouse with a small tear that Marv had made that very day, pulling them off my body.
I walked around, the city blocks all looking the same. I called Marv at his office, but he had left. I didn't want to call his house. We had arranged to leave together the next day. My soul was shred in pieces, my life thrown away in half a minute; I was fearing that Marv could not carry it through, leave his wife and take me, and then I would have nobody in the world. That evening, checking into a cheap hotel that I would not event entered otherwise, spending the night unable to sleep, crying my eyes out, I felt what hell must feel like. What I'll live for the rest of my eternity, just for spending a short lifetime with a man I loved.
Every day, I think of it. I think about how much I must have hurt Paul, and the children. I'm not religious anymore, I couldn't be if I wanted. But I believe that there is something after this life, and that we have to pay for our sins. And a sin, to me, is not what some people say it is a sin. It's not what a book says, just because a book says. A sin is any action that hurts another person. I'm a sinner. Do you seek love, my dear? I hurt all the persons I loved in the world, for one single man.
I only found Marv the next day. I was a wreck, destroyed, regretful, depressed. He took me into his arms, hid my head on his shoulder, and held me until my tears had dried. We moved together. Nothing mattered, as long as he was by my side. My husband tried to take me back. Marv's wife tried suicide. We were outcasted by our circle of friends. Nothing mattered. I had Marv, I had the love of my life. I spent my days getting ready for him; I woke up and made him breakfast, I was ready for him when he arrived in the evenings. We were dumb lovers together, everything was perfect, everything was good. We could stay home, eat out, see a play, the surroundings were irrelevant. We lived for each other. We lived to be together, we lived to hold each other on the street, to make love whenever desire struck us. I, dear, lived love in its most pure form. Nobody can have loved more than I did; it's impossible. I loved him in my every breath, in my every movement. He was in my head all the time. And he loved me back.
"Tell me about the toast," I asked, curious.
"The toast?" she asked back, not understanding.
"That thing you do with the toasts, every morning."
She opened her eyes, surprised.
"Oh, dear. The story is far from finished, yet. The man you see with me everyday is not Marv. He's Paul."
It was my turn to be surprised.
"Paul?"
"Yes. Marv died." Her eyes dwindled, the spark that had been present dying. "We were together for almost five years. Car accident." Her eyes started to form drops of water, the tears ready to fall. "He liked speed. He wasn't reckless, but he wasn't careful enough. He died." She silenced, and it was as if life had left her body. She was silent for a long while, before continuing the narrative.
I didn't want to live anymore. I was in shock, and I didn't move all day long. I stayed in bed. My two best friends helped me, they came over and fed me. I was a robot, I did whatever they made me do. They brought to the living room, I went and would stay there until one of them came back and took me back to my bedroom, at night. I didn't feel anything, except a void in my being that could not be quenched. I felt that there was hole in my abdomen, that I had my soul amputated. I couldn't even cry.
It was... I don't know. Three months afterwards? He knocked. I didn't bother to answer. I didn't answer the door anymore; Julie and Christie had keys. He knocked, again and again. I didn't even hear it. Then he was in front of me. Paul, who I hadn't seen since that day I left him, standing in front of me. He was older, more than the five years that had slipped by; ten, perhaps. I must have looked even worse, a limp and soul less body. I thought he was a ghost, at first.
"Are you all right?" he asked me.
"Don't gloat," I replied. "I'm paying for what I've done to you."
He sat by my side. I don't remember that afternoon very well. He came back, a week later, and then he started to come by. My children never came. They never forgave me; even now, they are cold to me. I don't blame them. I was awful to them.
He said he still loved me. It was one afternoon, when the world was quiet and our conversation was paused and slow. He said that, somehow, he had never been able to let me go. Even during his anger and deception, he still thought of me now and then, and he hated himself for it.
You asked me about the toast. There was one morning, the first night we slept together again. We woke up, and we made love. It was strange and natural, a first time and a routine, a betrayal and a come back, all together. Afterwards, we were hungry. It was the first morning I was actually hungry and wanted a breakfast. The first thing we found was a bag of old bread. I made toasts, we found butter and a glass of jelly that Christie or Julie must have bought for me. `You don't like jelly,' he said, remembering my taste. He handled me the toast that he had spread out butter onto. `But I still like it,' he told me. I made a toast with jelly for him.
She grinned, her eyes lost in the distance, deep in that memory.
"Love is a strange thing. It never leaves us to rest. Not having it makes us lonely and empty; having it makes our souls burn and our minds twirl, we can't think, we can't eat. We stop being rational, we want to be owned." Then, looking at me, she concluded. "And we're happy. At what cost? But we're happy." She looked outside; he was waiting for her, basking in the warm sun. "And you hardly think that it will someday end, for one reason or another."
She stood up, slowly. Maybe she flinched.
"I must go, my child. Love will come to you. Wait for it; but you'll never be ready for it."
She walked out of the restaurant, and I watched them go away, walking slowly, hand to hand, enjoying another spring day that would never come back.
Afterword
Writing the story was an interesting exercise. Finding a way to fit the toasts into the story was challenging, and I went through many different ideas before I finally realized that the couple were old people, not young. From them on the structure of the story was decided; how the narrator meets them and how she finds out about the toast. It's my impression that the resulting story isn't exactly in the Antheros style--I hardly think I would ever have written something like it if it wasn't for the Foursome--but it doesn't escape the touch of sadness and darkness that I often shed into my works; the narrator, the old lady's tale. Only much later the idea of the twist occurred to me; my idea was, at first, to leave the old lady live her entire life with Marv, living her love and guilt and expecting her version of hell. I even wrote a few paragraphs of this version, before throwing them away for the current version. Maybe this final version suits my current mood more, maybe it's more lifelike, even suffering from what I think is one of the most awful cliches of writing: killing a character. I ask forgiveness for this little sin, because Life is giving and taking away, and living should be about enjoying the things we have today, and not seeking the things we would like to have tomorrow, or grieving for the ones we had yesterday.
Thank you, Stasya, for hosting the challenge.
(c) Copyright 2006 by Antheros <antheros a t gmail dot com> All Rights Reserved