Of Gray Cigars and Green Pearls

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Chapter 1

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For the first time since I returned I felt this sense of validation, of the confirmation that what had happened five years ago was real. It didn’t hit me like a brick wall, or a belt to the face. It was gradual, like a curtain rising. A five year intermission whence I had slept- or sat still, eyes now closed when I thought they had been open, staring at the black curtain in front of me. No movement, a standstill where I waited for the show to begin- for my life to start back up.

Returning to the West was a transition that I had been excited for; the things that were home were so close I could almost hear the children’s laughter out in the streets, feel the snow falling on my head. The smell of a home-cooked meal in my mother’s kitchen. It felt different, wrong- almost. And it was.

I had taken back so many steps- back to the days when my father disagreed with the bond business and my mother begged me to stay with her turkey dinners. It had been tempting, but I hadn’t graduated from New Haven to stay home in the slower pace of things. New York seemed like a dream, a city where I could begin my own life with my own family.

The new life had halted soon after I moved, and the family never existed. Neither did it when I moved back to the West. Too busy, I told my mother over and over again.

“When are you going to find a wife, hmm, Nick?” My mother said, her unique voice- which had a way of sticking inside your head long after she’d spoken- penetrating the once quiet afternoon.

I’d dropped the book I’d been reading to look up at her with a passive gaze. What she had said drew me over the edge, irritated me- almost. Why did she always have to bring it up- every time I did not have to think about her annoyances at the failures of my life?

“Mother,” I breathed, “Please, I’m busy.”

“I can see that,” and she waved her hand at me, telling me to “kindly” place my feet off the sofa so she could sit beside me, “But I want to talk to you.”

“Please, mother,” I said, again, removing my feet in her haste. But she motioned with her light green eyes to close the book. Again, with a small sigh, I shut the book and placed it on the finely carved coffee table.

“Now,” she began, as she patted her brown bob down softly, her last two fingers hovering in the air, “I know you didn’t do very well with those last two girls I brought to the house, but there’s this lovely other girl that just moved to town…” She stared me down suddenly, after I had raised an eyebrow at her in scrutiny, “She just went through a terrible divorce…”

“Divorce?” I repeated, and then tried to hide my interest, “Really.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, “And it’s just awful that she has to go through it al alone.”

“Mo-…”

“Before you say anything else,” she said, lifting a dainty, manicured index finger up to my lips, “I want to tell you she is very sweet and not only that- but beautiful. And not only that, but she plays in…”

“All right- all right,” I interrupted, standing up- unable to take her words any longer, “I will be here when she arrives. Will that please you, mother?”

She smiled, eyes alight with the golden afternoon sun, “Yes, yes it will. Now, be a dear and go buy some fresh bread from the bakery in town. Only the freshest, understand?”

And so it was the end of that. I didn’t return in time to see the divorced woman and listen to her problems, to give her my shoulder to cry on. When I returned with the warm loaves of bread my mother snatched it from my hands and slapped it on top of my head. Not only wasn’t I there as the comforting host, but neither was the bread that she had planned to serve for dinner.

So I sat there until midnight eating the cold, stale bread- broken, cold, stale bread, thinking of what I had done wrong that evening- like the little boy I had been years before being punished for not eating my peas. Degrading, yes. Irritating, yes. Worth it, yes. My mother didn’t speak to me about if for the next few weeks.

And I didn’t have to meet that girl- that woman again for another two years.

It was then that I decided that this life- measured by each step I took, by each second that ticked away at the slowest pace of a day, would not be enough. There was this serene quality that I had vanquished as my own when I’d returned for the first time. It was different, it was peaceful. But it contained the drone of a ticking clock, of the second hand dipping down to six and then back to twelve every comatose second to minute to hour…to day…

I gathered the important necessities, toiletries, a few days’ worth of clothing, papers, pens- work I would need to do over the train ride, and then dumped it all into a small, bag of luggage. It took all my strength to step outside of my house again. Like a ship with it’s propellers bent, the dark sea stretching on for miles before it without mercy. Stay home, it told the ship, but the ship was not meant to stay harbored forever, in that hazy, gray mist of nothingness. The sea was vast, yes, but it was calling, with its wide, gaping mouth and dark, stormy, blue eyes. With or without a broken and bent propeller, left for the shop to fix but abandoned in the process, I would force myself out into the sea. Willingly or not, delighted or not, I just had to.

In front of me, the train whistled, calling shrilly, drowning out all the voices, all the people on the platform, all my thoughts. The attendant waved, crisp black uniform swallowing all light before him, bits of the gold buttons decorating his shirt front glinting like tiny, blinking eyes. I smiled at him, at the golden eyes, at the darkness ahead. It smiled, and swallowed me whole.

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Thank you to all those who read and reviewed. Hope you enjoyed this super short chapter. I wasn’t meaning to update until later, but I just couldn’t resist. That’s mainly why the chapter is so short. Anyway, hope you r&r and stay posted.

xblux