by Ky Lehman
He reaches across the small table and grabs my hand, and rubs the pad of his thumb over fleshy space between my thumb and my index finger like he used to. “We all knew what was coming, and we all knew what we had to do, Rose,” he says with an eerie acceptance. “They did torture me, and they came very close to killing me, but thanks to Micah and Uncle Ari, I survived. And, thanks to Micah and Uncle Ari, I managed to find my way home, to you…to our boy…and to our people.”
I look up across the table into the kindest and loveliest of all faces. Now locked in each other’s gaze, I can see the warmth of his heart smouldering in the light of his eyes. I can hear the love in his words. I can feel the softness of his lips, the callouses on his hardworking hands, and his weight hovering over my body. I can taste the daily meals we shared and, at night, the saltiness of his skin. I can smell the fire heating our bed chamber and fragrant oils we used to anoint each other. As my body, heart and soul remembers, the tenderness we shared rears up and rushes over me in a mountainous wave, but instead of knocking to me off my feet and into unconsciousness, it raises me up out of my chair, so I can stand before him, hold him, touch him, marvel at him, weep over him and smother him with kisses of joy and thanks all over his mouth, face and neck. And in the wake of this monumental remembering and with all of my inhibitions long forgotten, I do.
As our lips meld together, my connection with this man, once my husband, always my first love, trickles forward from the past and begins to solidify in the present. As he holds me closer and presses himself into me I am aware that he feels it too: all that we once shared as two halves of the whole, living side by side, as perfect opposites.
Needing air, we force our mouths apart, but our desperate hold on each other remains tight. With my face buried in his chest and him nuzzling my scalp, as his shirt dries my tears and my hair dries his. For minutes we stand there, embracing the then, the now, and each other; feeling this loved, this safe, this sure, I am perfectly happy for time to stand still, or to go back two thousand years.
Breaking our contemplative silence, Josh whispers in my ear, “Our room,” as I feel his lips curve up in a smile. I blurt out a laugh. “But, I think it’s best if I go back to mine,” he adds, slowly releasing me from his hold.
Unwillingly, I bring my hungry arms back to my side, but he catches and holds my hands before I have the chance to step away. The touch of the other’s skin was only gone for an instant, but it seems he missed it too as we both stare at our joined hands, basking in the warmth. “So…you do have your own room,” I say, looking up at him with a smirk.
“Yeah, I do,” he answers with a sigh. “It’s here in the Rose Wing, from the top of the stairs, second door on the left,” he points out.
“Ah. So, you were in my room because…?”
“I was in our room because I remembered it was,” he explains. I nod acknowledging that when you’re in the middle of a remembering, it’s best to surrender and go with where it leads you, as mortifying as it may be. “And, I wanted to see you, on familiar ground,” he says with a small smile. “In future, I’ll only enter when I’m invited,” he chuckles, lightly squeezing my hands.
“Good to know,” I say, smiling and nodding.
He raises our laced fingers to his lips, lightly kisses the back of my hand and regretfully releases his hold. Dawdling towards the door, he asks over his shoulder, “See you at dinner?”
I look out past the ivory ruffles framing my window to see that the brightness of the day has lulled: that the sun is in descent and the waning moon on the rise, preparing to shine its mysterious light upon the earth.
“Sure. I’ll see you then,” I answer, more eagerly that I mean to.
He turns, answering me with a wide smile and a glint in his eye, which suddenly fades with what seems to be a mental jolt. After a short, strangely tense silence, he hangs his head and says into his chest, “You know, Mike was right. You do look like you did then, but fairer, and even more beautiful.”
He bows low, turns to open the door and closes it behind him, leaving me in the solitude I longed for just minutes ago; the loneliness of him leaving as real and as raw as our baby kicking in my womb, back when I believed that we had lost him, back when I feared that his light would never grace the world of man again.
xxXxx
The two hours since Josh since left my room have been spent lying on his side of my queen sized bed, staring out through muslin canopy at the stucco walls and the painted landscapes of the places I have lived in my twelve lifetimes before this one. My focus always returns to the very first and most simple of painting: of palms trees and the sandy banks lining the river of might and calm; of tragedy and blessings, remembering him, remembering me, remembering us.
I have been revisiting my life as Shoshanna in reverse, Benjamin Button style: from the wisdom of old age back through to the illustriousness of my childhood, believing it would be best to start my recollections at a time when my knowledge of Joshua was at its strongest. But in beginning at the end, my recollections started with the man we all left behind. With the flesh of my husband, our son, my father and my uncle having returned to the earth and their souls gone home, it was Micah who nursed me through my last breath.
Joshua, Micah, my father and my uncle were the four men who knew me for most of that life and knew me well. It was their relationships with me and their relationships with each other that taught me of brotherhood and the uncanny, devoted love of family, and that even though blood may be thicker than water, water is free flowing and universal.
Joshua was the eldest brother, older than his second brother, Micah, by one year. They had two younger brothers, Thomas and Matthias, and one younger sister, Julia, who was very well protected with her own little army of siblings she could command with a single cry.
My father, Eli, was the High Priest of our village, and was to Joshua and Micah what he was to the many children we grew up with: a spiritual teacher from early childhood. Ari, my father’s younger and only brother, also instructed the children, but in “worldly matters,” as he used to put it. My father and my uncle were our village’s go-to men – any questions about the ancients and their ways, the history of the world and our divine origins, my father had the answers to, and any requests financial, influential or political in nature, Uncle Ari had the knowledge and the resources for.
Like many children raised in the light, Joshua and Micah’s paths were made evident early on. Joshua quickly became an eager student of the spiritual, as well as my father’s prodigy. Uncle Ari honed in on Micah’s wide-eyed desire to experience all he could of the physical world and wasted no time taking him under his wing. Even though these pairs of age and youth were heading down different paths with those not of their blood, all were pleased that their brothers were walking in the light with a kindred spirit.
“Who is the richer brother?” Uncle Ari’s enthusiastic voice echoes through my memories. “The brother who provides the wood for the fire or the brother with the bellow stoking the embers?”
“That depends,” I said.
“On what, my little rosebud?” he asked, taken aback.
“What the fire was built for and why it should be kept burning,” I answer.
“Good girl,” he said laughing loud, picking me up and whizzing me around in a circle. “Good girl.”
My childhood as Shoshanna was a happy and carefree one. I was a cherished only child, but I was never alone, always surrounded by my cousins and the children in our village as we spent our day’s together working, learning, and playing. Even though it didn’t seem so at the time, my young life was evenly split between responsibly and pastime: I’d rise early and spend my mornings doing my household chores or the chores of the sick or the elderly in the village. During the day, I’d study under the Priests and Priestesses at the Temple. The afternoons I played away with friends, and in the evenings I ate with my family and the different people they invited to join us.
Joshua and Micah’s father,
Nathan, and their mother, Ruth, were our neighbours and good friends of my parents. They would visit with us often, and with Joshua and I so close in age, routinely brought together in our daily lives through our village chores, Temple classes and sharing the same friends, we were very familiar with each other, and always had lots to talk about on the nights his family would eat with mine.
Growing up as close as we did, everyone assumed that Joshua and I would marry. Even though my parents quickly silenced those who would start to tell the story, in fear it may have influenced the decision they always stressed was ours and ours alone, I already knew all about how the signs were there before Joshua and I were even born: how after two decades of trying to conceive a child without any success, my parents had nearly given up hope until they both dreamt on the same night that my mother would give birth to a sacred child carrying a red rose in her hand. As it turns out, my mother was newly pregnant, and eight months later, I was born and named Shoshanna after the rose of their dreams.
The story also goes that in the same month of my conception, a rose vine mysteriously started growing out of the ground by Nathan and Ruth’s front door. It climbed the wall, and in the months ahead, grew up and over the entry way, and, on the day their first son was born, the buds hanging from the vine opened and bloomed into roses of blood red, which was three days after I first arrived into the world.
Joshua and I were born in the same week, only seven doors from each other. We grew up together, learned together, played together, fought together, laughed together, lost together and prayed together; we learned from each other, toyed with each other, fought with each other, challenged each other and delighted in each other. And because of all that we shared, the bond between us was strong. He was what I knew. He was what I trusted. He was what I believed in. His gentle, masculine beauty filled my heart with love; his words with wonder; his actions with hope; his faith with strength. It was his earthly heart that filled mine with the light of home. We were always given the choice, but, at the time, there was none. Joshua was my home and my beloved.
Wanting to lay here longer, to spend more quiet time revisiting that unassuming life and the people in it, the lack of sunlight dimming my bedroom and the balmy afternoon breeze turned cool alerts me to the time: my phone confirming that I’ve only got a half an hour to get down to the Heart rooms for dinner.
I run for my en suite bathroom and shower and shave my legs in record time, twist my towel-dried hair up into a loose bun, throw on my pretty buttercream summer dress, my red ballet flats, some tinted moisturiser, some mascara and some lip gloss and sprint out the door, down the hallway to the curved staircase, descending two stairs at a time, then skidding across the tiled floor of the entrance hall towards the West corner, shimmying around Tallulah’s fountain disappearing behind the sand stone wall at her back, and running the length of another long hallway straight into the heart of the Castle, aptly named the Heart rooms: the first rooms Mike built all of those lifetimes ago when he was named Prince Michael of Avalon. These central chambers were once a fully functioning ancient residence, but since the days when my uncle was King of these lands, it has been where most of our family meals are prepared and eaten.
I burst into the dining room where, I am relieved to see, no one is sitting. But when I think on it for a second, I come to the panicky conclusion that dinner might have been cancelled because something very bad has happened: the last time being when we received word that Hitler was bombing London. But, when putting the melodrama aside, I realise it could be as simple as me getting my times mucked up.
I stick my head around the corner into the adjoining lounge room to see that no-one is in there either, but then my nose catches on to one of my all-time favourite smells, one that has always reminded me of home, infectious laughter and light hearted disagreements with loved ones from all over: from past and present, near and far, mortal and immortal, with the added bonus of a full belly and a restful night’s sleep.
Following the sweet and savoury lure of lamb, garlic, and rosemary roasting, I am soon standing in the entrance to the kitchen where I find Mum, my great aunt, Rydia, and my cousins, Roxanne and her twin brother, Malakai, chatting and stirring, chuckling and cooking.
“There she is!” Malakai calls out, dropping the potato he was peeling to stride over and say hello. The last time I saw this smiley, potbellied Irishman was when he came to Sky High for Mum and Nanna’s funeral. Partially turning out of our embrace, he asks my mum, “Still as smart as she is pretty?”
“Depends on the day,” she answers, winking in my direction.
“Could do with some more pepper,” I say, reaching and mussing up his now seventy-thirty ratio of grey-black locks.
“Cheeky bugger,” he grumbles, smoothing back his hair.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, walking over to greet Aunt Rydia and Rox.
Mid-hug, Rox cheekily asks me, “So, you seen Josh then?” in her broad highland accent I could listen to all day.
“You could say that,” I answer.
“And…?”
“Leave the poor girl alone!” Aunt Rydia scolds her forty-something daughter. The old girl may be looking frail, but her voice definitely doesn’t sound it. “This is not like that show you’re always watching…what is that show she’s always watching, Mal?”
“The Batchelor,” Malakai answers, rolling his eyes.
“And I’m sure Barty’s none too impressed about his wife ogling those young, rich, good looking sorts either…”
They continue to natter on, and I feel like not day has passed since I last saw them. Quality over quantity, I think of Georgie Pa saying. I miss him so much, the pangs are near painful.
Waiting for a pause in Rox’s double-dutch defence, I see my moment, and jump in and ask, “So, am I early then?”
“Early for what?” Malakai asks.
“Dinner.”
“No. Dinner is at seven.”
“But, I was told to be down here at six.”
“Dinner doesn’t cook itself, you know,” Aunt Rydia gruffly points out.
“Which means you’re already running behind,” Rox says, dropping three butternut pumpkins in my lap, “so you’d better get cracking.”
Three pumpkins. Based on their rather-have-too-much-than-not-enough rule, that’d be three pieces each, so I guesstimate that ten people are sitting down for tonight’s dinner.
Mum, Josh, Aunt Rydia, Rox, Mal, me… “Who else are we expecting for dinner?” I ask.
As Mum unthinkingly strings the beans, she answers, “Josh, Teddy,” I nod, remembering that Teddy was travelling with Josh and that the rest of the guys are coming later, “Zach-”
“Zach?” I rudely bark, and she frowns her disapproval at me. “I thought he was coming on a later flight with the rest of the band?”
“So did we, but he arrived shortly after Josh and Teddy did,” Mum says with a small shrug. “And Romey, Craig and Chip,” she adds as a warm smile spreads across her face.
“Aunt Romey, Uncle Craig, and Chip?!” I squeal in happy surprise, jumping to a stand. “How did they arrange to get here so quick?”
“You know your aunt and her wily ways,” Mum says, eyebrows raised. I roll my eyes - wily is not a word I would use to describe Aunt Romey - resourceful, efficient, stringent, anal maybe… “You know how she always overestimates how long things are going to take, how much things are going to cost,” rolling her hand motioning etcetera, etcetera, “so there are no surprises.”
“When did they get here?”
“About an hour ago. They’re up in their room.”
“Have you spoken to them?” I anxiously ask.
“Yes, I have. Georgie Pa is still behind closed doors and he is being closely monitored,” she says, already answering my next question.
“Is he OK?”
“He is…as expected,” Mum answers, trying to hide her grimace which confirms what I suspected: that he is smack bang in the middle of detox hell. Seeing my eyes fi
ll with helplessness and sorrow, she stands, hugs me and whispers in my ear, “What would Nanna say right now?” Answering her own riddle, she says, “Understand that the pain is evitable, and that the only way to get past it is to go through it.”
Mum is right. That is exactly what Nanna would say. With Chip being the only one of their trio I have direct access to, I desperately want to see him so I can hold him, Nanna and Georgie Pa close. “Can I go up and see them?” I ask.
“Let them get settled, Ren. You’ll see them at dinner,” she says, cupping my wet cheek in her hand and placing an understanding kiss on my forehead. I go to speak, but she beats me to it. “Yes, and Chip too.”
Thinking of our other dear furry friend, I eagerly put the question to everyone, “What about Benni Dhoo?”
“He has gone to be with his clan. We’ll see him at Clearing like we will everyone else,” Aunt Rydia says nonchalantly.
I’m sure I’m not the only one chomping at the bit to find out how the father/son reunion is coming along. And I hope Josh is up to dealing with tonight’s inquisition all on his own.
xxXxx
For starters, Bruschetta, one of my all-time favourites: crusty bread topped with the vine ripened tomatoes drizzled with the most virgin of olive oils and sprinklings of the sweetest basil. For main, roast lamb with all of the trimmings. For dessert, an apple pie filled with Granny Smith’s from the Orchard with the option of dollop of double-cream and/or a scoop of vanilla bean ice-cream followed by a selection of local cheeses and dried fruits, all washed down with one or multiple glasses of either the house Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Merlot, Aunt Rydia’s homemade lemonade or raspberry cordial, or some chilled spring water from the brook: every ingredient gracing our table was either born, reared, churned, planted, grown and harvested here on the Apple Isle.
Josh is seated across from me, but the entire meal we end up talking to everyone else but each other. Through the excited familial buzz and hum even the candlelight can’t soften, we touch base every now and then through a warm knowing smile that we both soon realise will have to be enough to hold us for the time being.
