Perri O'Shaughnessy - Sinister Shorts

No longer.

Now she waited for him, and he felt her waiting like a cable car slipped off the track on Powell Street, going downhill and coming at him. He would show up in the taxi, pay the man, get out, and wave at her face in the window. He would try not to look, but he would feel the onslaught of her need. He saw it coming, and he was paralyzed in its face. He would be flattened, reduced to a blot of blood in the dirt between the tracks.

As he paid too much for the taxi, he steeled himself for the charge, turned, and smiled at the pale moon-face that glowed like a headlight.

For a long time after the accident, he had believed Clea would get better. Her doctors told them there was hope that she would improve over time.

They lied.

Hurting, he watched the changes reduce her. Her skin, once a lovely pink, drained and tinged to blue. The cantering of her mind-they had taken so much pleasure in the evenings together talking by the fire, entertaining each other with tales of their days and the people that mesmerized them like the characters in her films-ceased. Conversations drifted away, sabotaged by a narcotized mind. She slogged behind him now like a snail, leaving a sticky trail of regret for what was, and what would never again be.

Where before, Clea held his heart in her hands, his worshipful attendance on her after the accident had subtly altered the balance of power and thrown the weight of their lives entirely upon him. He toiled in the world, she stayed home. He brought whatever life there was to this house which would otherwise fall rank with decay as a deserted shack. Once upon a time, she could inspire a frenzy of lust with a brush of eyelash upon cheek. Now when her eyelashes brushed her cheek, he felt only relief. Would she fall asleep early? Could he, just this once, sit in his study and read the newspaper, like a normal man in a normal house?

So over time, he who swore eternal love faltered. Grated to shreds with emotion on a day when she had cried inconsolably for two solid hours, he decided to tackle the issue coldly. Like a scientist collecting data, for the past few weeks he had observed his reactions and Clea's; he graphed them, and now he had reached a conclusion.

His feelings had altered, inexorably. His perfect wife had become his gothic madwoman in the attic. Her tiny moans worked on him like screams in a horror movie, making him jump. No matter how well he kept the elements of his life separate, smiling through his days in the city, stronger by the minute in his business, every day when he came home, she shambled from the background into the foreground and choked the screen with her colossal presence.

He hated her.

However, the more he considered, the more he wanted to preserve the idea of them as they used to be. Clea must never know what the graph showed, its remorseless descent. That would break her heart. She deserved love, and he would continue to make her believe in it as a tip of the hat to their past shared happiness.

If along the way the effort had become exhausting, if, in spite of his best efforts, cracks had appeared in his facade, well, he was human. He had seen her tilt the angle of her head at the sight of the new model, for instance. He had seen her moment of uncertainty, and his pity welled at the sight.

As he pulled his keys from his pocket and opened the front door to the claustrophobic miasma of antiseptic, bleach, and sick, he promised himself he would renew his efforts to keep her happy. Later tonight, after she fell into her usual drugged stupor, he would give her a last chance. He would examine the emotional graph one last time, inspecting his heart for dishonor. He would convince himself that killing her was by far the best solution to her problem, and she would die securely in the warm bosom of their love.

Sad, things coming to this. If only he hadn't taken on the role of white knight. He was ill-suited to the position, he knew now.

Right after the accident, Clea had wanted to die. As soon as she had regained some mobility, she tried to overdose on pills, then tried to drown herself in the low laundry sink, holding her head underwater until she passed out and he had found her. She cried nonstop. She tore at her hair. She screamed at him. She hurled herself to the floor, and one time, tried to roll herself down the stairs. After that, they kept her on the first floor. When she couldn't do it herself, she begged him to help her die. Fortunately, or so he thought at the time, she hadn't done any real damage to herself. These incidents, coming during the full flush of his savior complex, made him feel protective. He had thrown all his energy into making her feel cherished so that she would never consider such a thing again.

Stupidity. Clea had been right. She foresaw the bitter ending before he did.

They could not continue like this. He hated the man she now made of him. He hated their life together. But what other life was there for her without him? He had taken the truth away from her. The lie she lived rendered her unfit to participate in these painful deliberations. As he had several times before, he pictured telling her the truth, that he didn't love her. A vision of her face hearing the news flashed before him. This repulsive image filled him with businesslike energy. He would decide what constituted a merciful future for both of them.

He cleared his throat, the better to inject false joviality. “Clea,” he said. “Darling.” He leaned over to kiss her lips, still soft, closing his nose against the smell of her, the dirty-hair smell the nurse had not managed to eradicate, the smell of ointments, emollients, and chemicals, with no aesthetics, no pleasures for a man with an educated nose.

The sight of Claude outside made Clea's heart pound shallow and fast. With him, came pressure. When he leaned down to kiss her, she felt afresh the wheelchair, the indignities of the day, her pain, her fears. She breathed harder, her asthmatic lungs contracting with her emotions. He floated in on a wave of fresh air, smiled, and made her wonder at his horrific tenacity. When had his love become such a burden?

He loved her so much and he so depended on her. Even in her immediate hysteria after the accident, she recognized that she had to protect Claude. Claude was squeamish in a way a woman never would be. He found earthly things squalid. He read the newspaper for its politics and sports, skipping over headlines of mayhem and crime. Everyday domestic demands puzzled him, laundry, dishes, cleaning. They didn't fit in to the picture he had of life, a kind of impressionistic bliss, removed from drudgery. Really, it was lucky, his father leaving him the shop. Perfume sugarcoated his world, keeping it sweet the way he needed it.

Unfortunately, Claude was more figurehead than businessman. The shop operated at a loss, and she did all of its business even now, figuring the accounts, writing his letters, signing paperwork in his name, covering his debts. She never publicly acknowledged his failures. In fact, she collaborated with him on his public pose as a success. She didn't mind. She felt useful in this one regard, and it did help keep Claude happy.

Soon after her injury, after recovering her spirit, she decided to stake out his arrival home from work with unwavering loyalty. She owed him that, even though many days, waiting endless minutes, often in pain, plastering a grin on her face at the sight of him while screeching inside, her daily waits for his return from work had become as much ordeal as tradition. He seemed to love the formal reception, saying once, “I feel so cherished,” and another time, “You are everything to me.”

Clea appreciated his devotion and knew she needed to show an equal commitment, but she wasn't foolish. They would never regain the closeness they had lost. They weren't two peas in a pod anymore. She lived in one, in an arid, harsh garden. He flourished nearby, in another universe where there was shade and moisture. She depended on him for nourishment, for things as basic as water.