"We've been here before," she says.
"Of course," he replies. "We live here."
"No, not here. Not physically here in the bedroom, in the house. I mean this. You and me. We've been here."
"Hold my hand," he says. "Look in my eyes. I am telling you that we live here."
"You don't understand," she says.
He draws her closer, their eyes, their mouths now inches apart. "This is our bedroom. Here. This is our home. We live in this house, this two-story house," he says. "We live on this street with trees and barking dogs and trash cans. We live in this town with people and buildings and traffic. We live in this world. Together, I mean. You and me in this world."
"Yes, in this world," she says. "Here. In this town with a river down the middle and a train that goes underground. In this street with a crossing guard on the corner. This house with two stories."
He caresses her neck and her cheek. They kiss and they undress and they make love on the bed and they sleep.
In the morning there is coffee and a shower, no breakfast and work. In the day there are text messages and an e-mail. That night there is dinner and television and wine and in the bedroom there is a feeling and there are assurances and again there is love.
rollsworth, i really enjoyed reading this, thank you :)
ReplyDeletethank you dick robots. i really enjoyed you really enjoying it.
DeleteI really, really like this one...I sense clearly that it's framed as a love story but I can't help recalling the absence of my grandmother's gist of presence as Alzheimer's began to permeate her brain; in slow, deep steps she began to lose herself and as a result I lost her as well and I loved her dearly, I still do though she's some years gone from me now. But I would stop by regularly on my way home from work, and the first day I knew something was wrong was when I found her feeding birds in the driveway in her good dress instead of the plain, worn house dress she always wore when she was home. I asked her, “have you been out today? Someone pick you up”? Blankly she smiled back at me and slowly she drawled a gently confused " ...?no," and I knew something was up. I pointed at her Band-Aid; I made a connection of my own in my still-working brain: "Did you get your Coumadin levels checked?"
ReplyDeleteShe looked down at the Band-Aid, touched it carefully with her worn and wrinkled fingers as if it were fragile then she looked at me, back in herself now and proclaimed "yes, I did. I went by taxi the'safternoon." And she said it just like that, always did with her slight French accent braided with her New England accent: "the’safternoon' …hell, I probably do too. Then a few days later she put her big cat in a handled-shopping bag and came by taxi to my house, and I knew the gig was up. My pop was still alive then, but had moved to Florida, terminally ill himself, but still the head of our family, and I told “we’re gonna hafta do something with Grammy, she’s losing it, pop.” When he asked me what I meant by ‘losing it’ all I had to say was “Alzheimer’s,” and he knew. Not long after she was in a home, this once proud but barely educated woman who’d worked hard all her life to provide for her family and help pops buy their little house on the dead-end, a house I spent some time in taking care of pops who at that point, at 92, couldn’t live alone any more. Ornery old curmudgeon, I was the only person besides my pop he’d let inside his little house…sigh. So thank you, for that wonderful story, it worked perfectly and did exactly what a story should do: it engaged me, it infiltrated and saturated me; it caused my agile brain to scuttle up some old pleasant (and not so pleasant) memories—all the things a good story should do. So again, thanks for sharing it.
wow thanks
Deletei hear we are mirrored on the moon.
ReplyDeleteI am almost 100% sure the moon is not real
Delete