Everydaystranger

The house is hot and the briefest flutter of wind sneaks in through all of the open windows, making its way illicitly in the house when it’s not supposed to. My eyes snap open at the feel of the wind and I rub my eyes, rubbing out the allergies. I sit up and slide my feet over the side of the bed. I open the bedroom door and go out to the landing.

“I wasn’t going to come here any more.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“There was a bump along the way and I got held up. How are you?”

I sit down. “I’m fine. Someone sent me a package of photos of you a few weeks ago. You and I, many years ago. I’m not sure when, the photos weren’t dated, but maybe 15, 16 years ago.”

“What did we look like?”

“We were young.”

“What did I look like?”

“You looked like you were alive.”

“I was, then.”

“I know,” I sigh.

He looks over at me, that sideways glance through his enviable thick lashes. “You’ve changed. You’re older, and you look a lot thinner.”

“There’s no such thing as too thin though, really, is there?”

“I don’t know about that, Buddy.”

I smile at that. That name, that familiar pet name, nearly forgotten in the holes in my memory.

“I am older,” I say with a rueful smile. “Maybe I’ve lived past my sell by date.”

“At least you kept on living.”

“Yeah, about that – when exactly do you actually pass on in death? I’m just wondering because I’m thinking your death is way past its due date. I’m thinking your death and rebirth is the longest project plan I’ve ever come across, I just want to know what I’m up against here.”

“I don’t know what happened there, no. I was…hell I just have no idea, you know?”

“I don’t know. But it’s ok. I guess in some ways it’s nice to see you again. Again again, I mean, considering I got those photos a few weeks ago.”

“Were you surprised by them? What did you think when you saw them?” he asked quietly.

“I thought yours was a life wasted,” I say bluntly. I slap my hand over my mouth. “Oh, fuck, sorry. I said that without thinking. I’m sorry, I don’t think I meant that.”

“I think you did.”

I pause, thinking before speaking this time. “You were fairly extraordinary, you know. I just think you could’ve touched a lot more lives than you did before you died.”

“Maybe I touched the ones I needed to.”

“Maybe,” I acknowledge.

We sit there and I fold up my knees, tucking my hands under the folds. He looks around the freshly painted hallway at the dozens of photos on the wall.

“You’ve been everywhere,” he breathes, looking at photos of Iceland, of Santorini, of Australian diving boats and South Beach lifeguard huts. He takes in the family photos, too. “Your son looks like you.”

“I think so too.”

“Particularly in the eyes.”

“Yup. I think I’m the only one who thinks that.”

“Do you like it? Being a mom?”

I smile. “You know what? It’s one of the best things in the whole wide world.”

“I could never see you as a parent, but I guess I can now.”

“It’s funny though, it also fills you with fear. I never feared death but now I do – what happens if I die before they can start to remember me? And even more so I am filled with fear for them. No one ever tells you how fearful you become. Every news story makes my heart bleed out through the pores in my feet with fear. I would die without my lovely family, if anything happened to the children, any of them, or Alastair parts of me would break and I would rot to death with loss. Fear, you know?”

He looks at me, pausing, weighing something up. “You’re getting married.”

“Yes.”

“Are you happy?”

I lay my head on the crook of my arms, still tucked under my knees. “No. It’s not happy, it’s not as simple as that. It’s different, it’s better than happy – it’s like a contentment that I can feel in every part of me. People say contentment is a bad thing but to me it feels like a bath. A big giant warm bath that you can stay in forever because the water never gets tepid. A big giant warm bath made for me, with fingers and toes that never go white and a heart that’s flushed out the fear and has only light.”

“And so this is you? This is really you?”

I smile. “This is really me. This is years-of-therapy-me, this is I’ve-let-go-and-moved-on me, this is calm, this is love, this is family, this is a place and a feeling that I am so happy to be in. Honest. And if in the next years I run the twins to swimming lessons and attend school fêtes and continue to work and continue to write and continue to love and continue to work on this pain in the ass house…well then it will all have been for something. I will have been for something. I have four children that I love like a house on fire and a man who I know has my back. Christ, listen to me – I’m like a walking advertisement for psychotropic drugs or something. Life’s not perfect but I love the bones of it, you know?”

“Happily ever after, then.”

“No. More like life. This is life. I am finally living. I think I took my first breath in the recent years and have been weaning off the gills ever since.”

“Maybe your life will be a life wasted, too.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I touched the people that I needed to.”

“Touché.”

We sit in silence, and I hear the silent movements of babies shifting in cots, of a cat coming in the flap downstairs, of the deep sleep sigh of the dog in his bed.

“And me? What of me?” he asks.

“You’re tucked up inside somewhere. You’re a part of me, or maybe I am who I am because of the people I’ve loved, and you’re in that group.”

“Do you think about me daily?” he asks quietly.

“Not anymore,” I say honestly. “You’re a light that once was. We always remember the light, even if over time we don’t turn it on all the time.”

He smiles. “I always liked your honesty.”

“I always liked your bravery.”

“Is your life perfect, then?”

“No. Whose life is? My life, though, has a degree of pulchritude which knocks my breath out. Eyes that sparkle when they’re happy, and I love when they’re happy. The curve of a toddler’s shoulders which still smells gorgeously of lingering baby days. A house riddled with imperfections but with a spirit that I can’t believe. I’m still screwed up, but at least I’m finally me.”

“Have you forgotten who you were?” he asks softly.

“Never,” I saw swiftly. “Every incarnation of me is imprinted with who I was before. And the cocoon is gone, now. This is it. Every part that came before is part of what made me who I am, right or wrong.”

“I never thought that I would see you content.”

“I never thought that, either.”

He nods and smiles in a soft way that reaches up to the corner of his eyes. “Take care, ok Buddy?”

“I will do,” I reply. I feel enormous sadness and yet absolutely right about this. “It’s kind of you to check on me, but you don’t have to do it any more. I’m ok. I’ll be ok.”

He stands, and starts to head down the stairs. He stops and turns to me, his eyes level with mine. “Will I be forgotten?”

“You’re the kind of person that’s impossible to forget,” I reassure with a smile.

He nods and turns to go downstairs. “Sometimes I miss what’s gone. In my mind you’ll always be young and angry and redheaded and beautiful and lost. But I honestly hope the rest of your life is what you need and hope it to be.”

“Thank you. I mean it,” I say with a calm that surprises me. “And in my mind you’ll always be smiling and cheeky and aloof and tilting at windmills.” We take a moment looking at each other, and when I smile a bit his lips echo the smile. “I’ll see you, Kim.”

“No you won’t, Buddy,” he replies, vanishing at the foot of the stairs, “and that’s the hell of it.”

-S.