by Quixotic
The night was already spent as Colin stood looking up at the stars. The night sky suddenly seemed nothing more than a jeweler’s cruel deception, brilliant diamond pinpoints against velvet behind glass; a promise never to be delivered. He sensed immeasurable distance and encroaching entropy. The cold night air stung his face, and he turned to go back inside. Looking for her was pointless anyway.
The near darkness of the apartment made hulking shadows out of stacked boxes, the catalogue of “mine and yours” neatly completed before his return home that evening. It was better this way, he mused; the ones who waited anticipating an argument were always puzzled and dismayed by his non-participation. Better they should go on their own, returning only to collect their belongings and exchange curt near pleasantries before getting on with the rest of their lives. Once they realized their future lay elsewhere, it really was the best course. And he always knew full well that realization would eventually come. Entropy lurked everywhere, but lived with him, in the darkened corners of the spaces he occupied, forever stealthy.
He’d done this many times before, whether it was a woman or a friend, or even, for that matter, an acquaintance or a job. His relationships extended to a certain point, and then, almost as if on some predetermined cue, imploded. Or exploded. Or hit an obstacle. The crash and burn would wreck the vehicle, and sometimes scar the other occupant, but he’d always been thrown clear. Like the luckiest passenger in a horrible accident, he’d crawl away from the wreckage having not even worn a seat belt, brushing himself off and ready to start anew. It was a trait he’d acquired early in life, and had carried with him always.
Slumping down into his easy chair, he switched on the lamp and settled in to read the note she had left. She was, after all, a literate, learned lady; the note would be interesting, and he owed her at least that much.
Colin,
I’ve tried hard to come to grips with the decision I’ve had to make, and I want you to know it wasn’t an easy one. After all the time and energy I’ve invested in this relationship, it was a cruel jolt to realize it had all been in vain. And I don’t mean that to sound harsh, but goddamn it, this is hard to put down. You’ve no doubt heard it all before; I can’t imagine I’m the first to say these things. But you haven’t heard my point of view, and I need to say it, even if it’s more for my sake than yours.
When we met, I was taken in by your humor, your sense of the absurd, your willingness to recognize the banality, the inanity of everyday life and yet try to overcome it, try to surpass it, try to remain somehow above it and yet still contribute something worthwhile despite the apparent futility of the effort. I fell in love with that part of you, that sense of worth, that sense of pride, that sense of being somebody for something. I wanted to be part of it, I wanted to contribute, I wanted to share.
It was much later when I realized you truly do hold yourself above it all. Above it all and above all else. Your life is held at an arm’s distance, always and at least. Your friendships are shallow and your deeper relationships progress only as far as you allow. When I first came to this, I thought I could help. I thought maybe I was the one who could reach you, whom you were waiting for. But even I, with more contact than most, having spent more time with you than most, could not reach you. There are places within most of us we don’t allow others into, but with you, Colin, there is no access at all.
And so I have to abandon the effort, for my own sake and sanity. I like you, Colin. I believe you’re a good person inside, but I’m absolutely exhausted at the effort of trying to reach you. May you find the strength to dismantle your tower before your soul dies alone inside.
There was a short addendum about when she’d come back to pick up the rest of her stuff. Colin was surprised to realize tears had slipped unbidden down his cheeks, speckling the note he still held. She was very perceptive, he thought, and had hit closer to home than others who had seen him at best as phony and manipulative and at worst as a cold uncaring bastard. He’d always been unaffected. But now . . .
Something in the shadows beyond the reach of the lamplight began to take form, drawing substance from the darkness itself and solidifying before Colin’s eyes. A theater screen – no, a small projector screen, like a pull-down screen on a tripod, but dark, almost non-reflective, as if made from beaten metal with a matte finish. He could barely see, his eyes still tearing, as faint shapes began to play across its surface like some grammar school filmstrip starting up. He strained his eyes and ears, but could hear nothing, and only dimly see.
On screen: Eerily silent, a tableau – four children, maybe six to nine years old, one obviously younger than the others and crying. As Colin watched, the image began to flicker dimly and move, but still silent, a home movie without a soundtrack. The older children were laughing, yelling, pointing, the youngest crying inconsolably. An adult, a woman, steps into frame and chases the older children away, then kneels down to comfort the crying child, speaking softly while drying tears. The child remains disconsolate, brushing away attempts to dry his tears. The woman, finally becoming impatient, takes the child’s face in her hands and speaks firmly to him, looking into his eyes. The child continues to cry, but answers through sobs too forceful to cut off. Although the screen is still silent, Colin finds himself mouthing the words as he watches: “I just want to be left alone!” On screen, the woman stands and leaves as the child continues to cry.
Darkness again, a slight flicker, and a new tableau appears – the backyard of a house, a small boy and a dog. As the images begin to move, the dog is seen to chase a ball thrown by the boy. There is no one else in frame. The boy, laughing, calls the dog’s name as it retrieves the ball. Colin, smiling through tears, says it out loud – “Duchess.” Jump cut on screen to the interior of the house as the same boy, older now and accompanied by an adult man, walks into frame and approaches a woman (the same from the earlier scene with the young boy, though also older now, apparently his mother). She is obviously distressed, and speaks a few short words before both the boy and the man start to cry. Colin, crying anew as he watches the silent film, again mouths the words he has not heard – “Duchess is dead.”
The screen fades and flickers again, but fails to settle. Colin almost doesn’t realize it is actually in a loop of jump-cut images and short scenes, and as he focuses, he sees that each features the small boy in some activity or other. There he is in the school playground, failing miserably at kickball; there – trying in vain to keep up in gym class; there – terrified and forced to speak in front of class at school; there – at his own birthday party with only family present. In each successive scene, the perspective shifts farther outward until the final still scene, in which the boy sits on his bed in what is obviously his own room, alone in a corner.
Fade, flicker, tableau: the boy is older now, college age; the lessons he has learned already forming deeply used ruts of behavior. He sits on the edge of a couch in a living room, nervously, across from a chair occupied by his mother as she sits watching television. As the scene begins it is obvious the boy has news for her, but she barely notes his presence, her attention focused on the television. The boy speaks, haltingly it seems, pausing often to seek some sign of reassurance. He is obviously asking something of great import, wrestling with some decision perhaps, for which he seeks advice. Slowly, painfully, he tears the words from his chest, knowing the decision he has already made will greatly affect the rest of his life, tears beginning to stream as he seeks assurance he is not making a mistake. His mother, eyes on the screen, glances casually at him and responds briefly before returning her attention to the screen. Colin, alone in the dark, hears the response although the screen remains silent: “Well, whatever you want.”
Fade, flicker, tableau – and repeat. The scenes are shorter now, and proceed in quick succession, still eerily silent, still vividly real. Colin knows the final line before each fade, before each close, before each addition in the deeply ingrained pattern relentlessly presented in mundane home-movie fashion, like faded sepia toned prints of memories never forgotten, but buried until excised by some obscure trigger. Images, faces, names, and places swarm on screen and in his head, a Pandora’s box of fossilized substrata exposed to air. In each scene, in each step, we see the boy as he grows older, grows into a man, but grows distant and aloof, determined, subconsciously perhaps, not to let such hurt, such pain, such rampant, unwanted emotion control him again. The scars of the young boy are not visible, the reactions no longer volatile, the emotional seat belt firmly in place.
Fade, flicker, tableau: An apartment interior, this apartment interior, as a man sits watching a screen. The screen has grown wide, enveloping the man watching, growing around and over like an observatory dome. Colin starts, jolted by the vision, and stares wildly around, but sees nothing but the hard, matte finish of the now darkened, still silent screen. Horrified, crying, he hurls himself at the nearest surface, but can find no purchase on the smooth, sloping wall. Scrabbling frantically around, he searches for an edge, a seam, some crack to exploit, but finds nothing. The smooth dome now encompasses the whole of his existence, walls sloping gently into floor and ceiling, a seamless cell.
Fade, flicker, tableau – all around him now, a montage of sights at once unimaginably distant and familiar. Still crying, now helpless, he settles down to watch some more, hoping, maybe, just maybe, if he watches closely, if he concentrates, he’ll see something good, maybe somebody who tried to help but was not allowed to do so, maybe something good that happened but was not acknowledged, maybe somebody who wanted to come in but was shut out. Something – some way to shed light on darkened depths, some way to heal invisible scars, some acknowledgement of the necessity of the normal pains of life. There has to be something, he thought, crying now just as inconsolably as the young boy in the first scene, something to redeem this sentence, some key to release. Something he could seize upon in order to be thrown clear.