Marble
Helen lay down on the cold marble. She could feel the heat of her body
leaving her, being sucked into the porous marble through her cheeks, her
shoulders, her belly. Her bra shielded her breasts, but if she stretched
her neck out, she could touch the cold marble with her chin and throat to her
chest. Pressing her palms and arms down, she closed her eyes and felt the
hangover slowly dissipate through her temples.
It was short relief. The night before crept back into her mind’s eye
through the haze. The monument of freedom which gave her temporary relief
wasn’t pulling her anguish out of her like it did heat, and she shivered.
She turned her head, cooling her other cheek and temple, and wondered if
she had left a hole in the collective heart of her family how he had left a
hole in her heart.
She sighed deeply. Now her ear was cupped against the grey marble, and
she could hear her heart pounding through her veins. Her mind wandered
back through old memories, and settled on a day years before when she had first
met him. With each pulse, she
stepped forward through time: the afternoon they spent flirting at a
coffee shop, the day she ran into him at the lake, the girl she saw him with
and couldn’t figure out if it was his sister. Then, a month later, they
ran into each other again. And he asked her out.
She was skipping quickly now. Their first date. Their first fight.
Summer evenings that took forever to lapse into night. And when
winter came, the purgatory their relationship seemed to hang in, neither moving
forward or back. But her mind kept moving, and eventually the thread
snapped, and she was alone again.
Helen pushed herself up to turn her head to the other side, and her back
unclenched. She had been afraid to see him for so long, and then, on a
night when she had been stood up, he bumped into her. Her poor liver that
night.
Her toes curled. There wasn’t as much pain about it anymore. It was
more of a meditation. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the sky was
blue, cloudless. Her nose told her the lilacs were in bloom. Wherever he
was he saw these things, too. As did her new love.
It seemed too much, that there could be two people that she could have a chance
to love, and yet she was lying on a slab of cold marble in the late morning,
head pounding, limbs aching, and so many things she needed to do.
This was ridiculous, she thought, pulling herself up. She bit her thumb, her
mother would be calling any minute now. She would go home and find a
message waiting for her, news of how her father was, what her brother had done.
Finally, in a halting voice, her mother would tell her what work was
like, and she’d slowly and deliberately finish with a request that she come
home soon.
But she had so much to do.