In the other painting there was a city quite similar to it. Only there was no light but one candle. A dwindling flame blown back and forth in a landscape of wind, rain, and sleet. Fire, not flowers, crawled up from the dirt and down from the sky and had begun to devour the tree planted at the center of the city. Weak branches hung shamefully with no fruit and no leaves to call its own. Stripped naked, its sickly roots were barely able to clutch the earth it called home. The city was painted black. Esther never understood why until tonight. Until this very moment. But something else immediately drew her to it. A red moon hung fixed in the night sky, completing the lamenting scenery. How like this dark painting she had become, the former existing now as only a dream.
Esther took off her robe and chose a new dress from the closet. It was one worn by one of her favorite actresses. The dress was more than a hundred years old. The twentieth century was a luring, free time. Less than a blink. At any rate, this prized and delicate outfit was just the flawless piece she believed was sewn for an evening like tonight. Jacob was already suited to match her. He rather enjoyed dressing up, far more than she did. He took pride in his countenance and the way he carried himself among his peers, but he deeply cherished dressing up for her, on occasions like this. But tonight, she was not smiling. She could not smile. Instead, she was trembling and sad.
Esther studied the ancient statues she had acquired over the years as if she were looking at them as newborns. They stood erect at separate corners of the spacious room. Each piece provided an illusion of safety, like they’d protect her if an evil had ever dared to wander in. The statues were set atop Brazilian cherry hardwood floors and neighbored by a spinning globe, a desk Jacob used prominently for writing, and a wine case that scaled from foot to ceiling. These were among the many appetites her inviting fortress catered to.
“We don’t need a bed chamber this grandiose.” Jacob was now whispering into her thoughts. A younger version of him. The past returned in such an abrupt way now and then. “Let’s travel instead, see the world.”
“You’ve already seen the world,” she had argued. “We both have.”
“Then we’ll see it again, with new eyes. It changes every time. You know my work robs me of enjoying any trip completely when I am alone. But when I’m with you, it’ll be different.”
They went on travels. And more travels. They vacationed in Greece, dined in Japan, were adored in Ecuador. But Esther still got her bed chamber, just as she’d wanted it to be.
“A home is more than four walls, darling,” she’d eventually convinced him. “And what good, I pray you, is a home without a place of wonder and serenity? We’re not blind. We’re not tasteless creatures with no connection to our home. I want this room to be unique. I want it to rival the thrones of Olympus.”
“Come now,” Jacob said. “Let us not fall back into that, please. I admire your tastes, and you shall have what you wish. But you and I both know the Greek and Roman civilizations, for all their wisdom and war, got the story wrong after all.”
“Yes, so unfortunate for all those souls. Your cousin has quite the silver tongue, doesn’t he? He had his fun with them, certainly, he did.”
“Not as much fun as he had with the Egyptians. Or with Asia Minor. Gullible bunch they were. Depraved and quite filthy too.”
Esther pressed her palms against the plastic globe, recounting their conversations. The pattern of their words, the weight of each thought. Again and again, Jacob had warned her to leave these memories in the past. They would only hurt her and him if she remembered long enough, he’d claimed. Perhaps he was right. He had always feared that tonight would invite more pain than she was ready for, more than was necessary. As her fingertips slid over each continent, each womb of water, each mountain range location, her mind tripped on poor sentiments. She’d visited them all, hadn’t she? There was nothing left to see. No cloud could let slip a drop of rain that her nose could not embrace and recognize by name. What wall did she not climb? What sea did she not trespass? What cliff had her feet not rehearsed a thousand and one times?
With sad lips, Esther kissed the earth, as if she would never kiss it again. Her fingernails slid against the soft surface once more. She kissed it a second time. And then a third. Still, she did not feel complete. Bits of her wardrobe remained undone. Her shoulder held up some of the silk from the dress. It fell so gently over her cool skin. Her ringless hands, plain and full of years, no longer could embrace the plastic world. She leaned up rigidly, her posture now fixed like that of her collected statues.
“Come dine with me, cupcake,” Jacob said. “I have prepared this meal for two.”
“You know I don’t like to eat that,” she lied. She couldn’t tell him that her appetite was gone, much like her desire to fake happiness. “You enjoy the meal, darling.”
“Don’t be silly. This is our last night in the city. Our last night in this home. Spend some time away from that room, won’t you? I miss you.”
She could tell he meant every word. It had been many heartbeats since he’d been so loving and cheerful. Esther closed her eyes, knowing full well the consequences of such a desperate crime. It wasn’t long before tears were running down her cheek.
“Are you all right?”
She sniffled, wiping the cold tears away. It was her frailty spilling out of her, she was sure. As if at any second she’d shatter into a million pieces on the shiny, auburn floor. Esther’s eyes wandered to the clock. She imagined its hands getting jammed, each finger eventually spinning in reverse. But she wasn’t strong enough to make it so. Not anymore. The fear of something terrible drawing closer made her wish to turn the clocks back, if only for tonight. Why couldn’t it be so? Why couldn’t she? After all, clocks were not made for sleep any more than coffins were. But midnight was coming. Less than two hours now.
“Esther, please join me for supper. I had hoped to actually enjoy this feast with someone.”
“With someone?”
“With you, of course. Please, my beautiful, join me. Our moments together are short. And the meat is getting cold. It gets so rough when it’s cold.”
“I’ll be out in a short while, darling. A very short while.” Esther fixed the dress to her frame. She noticed how thin her body was becoming. She was a skeleton after all, wasn’t she? In a matter of moments, her stomach had decreased in size. Her breasts were now little more than shrunken stones—stiff, depleted of the vitality she had grown used to. Once fountains of youth; now streams of woe. She rubbed them each individually underneath the fabric, then together. Sadness formed the lump in her throat and created the gray at the back of her eyes. Still, she zippered the side of her dress, feeling every malnourished rib protrude through the thin, pink curtain. Her skin could hardly hide the cage any longer.
Esther searched for the next four and half minutes for her heels. The black ones Jacob had bought for her when they met. She hoped her feet had not swollen or diminished in size. At long length, they appeared, as lost things often do. She hadn’t remembered leaving them underneath the bed frame, but there they were, as if hidden, waiting for her. Had it been so long since this bed chamber had seen a night of romance? Had her body truly forgotten the motions of passion? What a careless lover. What a selfish, careless lover she had become.
Esther reached for the heels and slipped her foot gently inside. “Like magic,” she smiled, this time briefly hopeful for the events she hoped might come before she would have to say goodbye to this place. She prayed Jacob would still have her.
The matching earrings she would wear would bring out her dull eyes. She hoped. Her hair she left discontented. Unruly, yet somehow messy with purpose. Across her shoulders, she could feel some of the loose strands, her natural blonde threads abandoning the rest of her full mane. Some of the strands were not strong enough to hold onto her. Some had come apart from the others, fallen into her hand to bleach white almost immediately. She could not slow it.
“Not yet,” she begged, as her gaze wande
red once more into the mirror. She let every dead strand float to the floor. Crooked lines sank into her cheeks and made a new home. Fresh wrinkles cracked beside her eyes. The world called them crow’s feet; she swore they were demons. Esther felt them as they formed, like neglected demon infants from a tired womb. She tilted up her chin and saw the creases in her throat, a neck un-forsaken by gravity’s greedy toll.
Esther’s eyes fell to her music box then, in order to keep her thoughts from running off. The music box held secret most of her jewelry. It didn’t bother her at all that the device wasn’t designed for such a purpose, wasn’t built to exist as anything other than to whisper a soft tune at a moment when she needed to hear it most. What mattered was that it was beautiful. It could sing her a melody and it could issue forth gold and silver, the most precious metals men could fashion. This box held her fortune, a trinket more true than any poem, more breathtakingly unique than any creature. And it was capable of taking away the age of a looming and unkind night. Perhaps this little thing, with all of its mystery, would let her be young again. Perhaps it would let her stay, golden. Esther reached into her music box to the soft moans of a pleasant tune. The rhythm swam into her mind and existed now with the memories she should’ve let go of as Jacob had told her to.
But she couldn’t.
“So very pretty,” she acknowledged, putting on a bracelet and then two long necklaces. It was not a night for diamonds or rubies; it was a night for pearls. Pearls outlined in gold and silver. They hung from her neck as effortlessly as the day she had acquired them. The music was a soothing hum, such a sweet sound. She looked once more at the clock as she closed the music box. One last wandering into the mirror, one last scare. There was no more light in the room. Nightfall had come.
Esther wandered into the adjacent lounge room, trying not to come across senselessly lethargic. Jacob had some candles set up on the coffee table, where they often watched the world through a television screen. None of the candles were lit yet, and Jacob was getting a pair of chilled glasses, previously unused, from the freezer in the kitchen.
“You look lovely, Esther,” he said. She was wondering where the cupcake title had run off to, but she was thankful for its abandonment at the moment. Her eyes studied his arched but broad shoulders, that tapered back, and tall legs. His demeanor looked unshakable. After so many years, she was still attracted to him.
The artificial recess lights in the kitchen reflected much of his hair as gray. Walking toward her from the kitchen, he lost his grip on one of the glasses. The shattering on the floor seemed to jolt through her entire body. Every noise seemed more intense, more dangerous. She didn’t like it.
“Didn’t mean to startle you. I’m sorry, Esther.” He said it like he had a reason to apologize. A few years ago, a few months, even a week ago, she might have given him a dose or two of sass because of his clumsiness, but there was no use in that. She swallowed hard, watching his worn, bent fingers struggle to pick up the pieces from the tile in the foyer. He’d never had to live with arthritis before tonight. His hands seemed almost like a drawing, a miserable sketch by some starving artist she didn’t care to remember. Improperly crooked and misshapen knuckles jutted out in rebellious ways, folds of skin climbing on top of cracking wrinkles. Esther motioned to get up and help him clean the glass, but he angrily told her to stay seated. He could do it. What he couldn’t do was keep his muscles still or his wrists from shaking. The symptom was easy to recognize. Parkinson’s or something terrible like it. People had endured entire lives with such a curse. Never did she truly believe such a malignance would come for him.
“You’re so strong, Jacob,” she said in spite of his slow movement.
“There’s that smile,” he replied, scooping up the mess and dumping it into the trash bin. “I thought…it would not come out…tonight.”
He was speaking slowly, as if his mouth had forgotten the language they had adopted as their own before moving here. Esther immediately wished she could take back all of the unkind things she had said to him earlier. She shouldn’t have abused her moments with tainted words. Souls were created to love. She loved him, really. And to see him wear so quickly was second only to torture.
“We are going to celebrate,” he said, his left hand nudging into his lower back. “My stars, I never thought it would hit us so quickly.”
“But it has, darling. Tell you the truth, I’m not sure what there is left for us to celebrate.”
“Each other. For now, we have each other.” He handed her the chilled glass and kissed her cheek, returning to the kitchen to get a plain one for himself. His slow, soft footsteps carried him back to her minutes later with a glass, a dusty bottle of wine under his arm, and a steaming pot.
“I really should help you.”
“You are helping me, Esther. Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”
“My ears are quite greedy, Jacob. You know this. Even if I’ve heard it a thousand times, they would still long for one more.”
“Then that’s what they’ll get,” he coughed, some drivel spilling over his lip. He made it to the table before the dusty wine bottle slipped from under his arm. Placing the items in front of him, he said, “You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.”
“Oh, Jacob. Thank you. I suppose someone still believes in second chances.”
“Of course,” he responded kindly, opening the bottle of wine and pouring them both a glass. “Shall we offer a toast?”
“To what?” Esther asked.
“For one last night. For the world that once was.”
“I suppose,” Esther said, inwardly prepared to recant it. She took her glass and raised it, waiting for Jacob to speak.
“Here, on the eve of our last night, I offer this toast. To Esther, please forgive me for never making you my bride. But I hope you know that in my soul, if it is true that I possess one at all, you are there. I war and love and tolerate you,” he said, cracking a grin. “My love, my hope for this day.”
“Oh, Jacob, I do not feel as hopeful or as grateful as you do. I knew this day would arrive. Like a blink, my life has spread itself before me. And I am not content. Instead I am grieved and weathered by this unjust conclusion. The Rider comes for us now. It is not as I wish it to be. It is unfair! What reason, then, is there for me to celebrate and accept it as a joy or a celebration? Jacob, have we not fulfilled our purpose?”
He nodded slowly, his face aging more every time her eyes lingered there upon it.
“Then why do I feel such sorrow? Where is our happy ending?”
“I am happy. For the first time, I can rest. I can find sleep when I shut my eyes.”
The television droned behind their voices. It spoke of fire spilling from the skies. Earthquakes divided parts of the country. A tsunami had flooded the coastlines.
“Look, Esther. The world is not what we remember. Such a cancer it has become. Tired and old and ready.”
“I’m not ready,” she spat.
“Have peace, my love.”
“Peace?” she yelled, placing her glass onto the coffee table and walking toward the window. She vehemently pulled open the thick curtains and pointed to the mayhem out in the city. “There is no peace, not here or anywhere.” The heat from outside was too powerful for her to stand beside the window for long.
“Esther, we have always known that this night would come.”
She held her arms together, hoping for some warmth to reside. “Then why don’t I feel safe? Why don’t I feel…”
“In control?” he offered. “We are not anymore. The Rider has come for the others already. My cousin suffered only briefly. Our nieces hurt only for a moment.”
“But then what? What, Jacob? What will happen then to us?”
“I do not know. But we do not govern such things.”
“We can fight him. We can end this tyranny. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair for him to decide our fates.”
“We decided our fates long ago,” Jacob
returned solemnly. “Or is that a memory you have forgotten?”
Esther gave no reply.
“We were given a choice, and we all chose our paths.”
“Never have I seen so much torment and suffering.” The window lit with a fire that dropped from the heavens. The adjacent building had already caught and the flames were spreading along the rooftops and balconies, where a mother had lost grip of her infant son. Esther dared not watch the child descend.
“Do not look any more, Esther. We cannot change any of it.”
“Shouldn’t you go attend to them? Where will they go?”
“No more work. They are not mine to take anymore.”
“But those people are in pain. How can you say that?” she exclaimed, drawing closer once more to the table. “Who will guide them to the meadows? Who will usher the others to their tombs?”
“My strengths have slipped from me now. Things have changed. Don’t you see? Control was always an illusion. An illusion we chose instead of the truth.” Jacob sipped his glass of wine, realizing he would not share the toast with his love. “It is okay to feel fear, Esther. No one could have prepared enough for this night.”
“We are not evil, Jacob. We are not dogs! Why, then, will we be judged like dogs?”
“Who is to say such things? Who can know the heart of…?”
“Don’t say his name! Don’t speak his foul name!”
Jacob sat down, leaned back on the davenport. “I accepted my path already. We have lived a full life. Many starless nights like this one.”
“No, none like this. I, Jacob, I will write a new ending. I can still change our fates. I know I can.”
“You cannot. I have tried. Nothing will work. Come to this reality, please. I wish to dine with you.” Jacob opened the pot and stirred the stew inside. His nostrils welcomed a full stream of flavor. “The flesh will taste delightful, I’m sure. These children have been cooking since dawn. Tonight can still be special. For us. Eat with me. Drink with me. The world of men never much cared for us anyhow. We were a face for their spite and hatred. I am weary.”
Intrigue (Stories of Suspense) Page 8
