Work Text:
As she was done with collecting her supplies, Grace stood straight and squared her shoulders. Breathing in a brisk lungful, she allowed herself the simple pleasure to stand still and appreciate the moment. It was a clear day, the weather nice and generous. Her morning session of painting in the park was delightfully productive. The new proposal she had found in her email inbox in the morning offered a project that looked both financially interesting and creatively appealing at first sight, and she felt rather enthusiastic about hearing more about it as soon as possible. Life was beautiful, and Grace was giddy to live it to the fullest.
For that matter, there was just one more thing that could turn what had been a pretty great day into a positively awesome one.
She checked her phone: no word from Harold so far. He’d left the home at dawn, when Grace was still asleep. It could’ve been nice to have lunch together somewhere lovely, but alas; apparently not today.
…Ah, but he had mentioned it yesterday, hadn’t he? Something about an urgent project meeting demanding his personal presence, which might require him to go off the grid and would last for God only knows how long, he’d been explaining apologetically — and, as Grace thought, rather unhappy with himself.
Oh well. Harold working long hours was nothing new, even though lately his schedule seemed to become much less tight, which both of them had been gladly taking advantage of. Grace could tolerate a bit of waiting, no problem. She was patient enough.
A gentle smile hid in the corners of her lips as her fingertips tapped at the tiny keyboard, typing a text and vivifying it with a flock of elaborate ASCII emoticons, kissy lips and sparky hearts. Aaand sent! Whenever that pesky meeting would be over, her message would be waiting to cheer Harold up.
She headed home to drop off her art supplies and gather a few things before going out again to carry on with daily routines. Running some errands, doing some shopping. Eating out on her own. When she returned home, long past noon though it was, she still hadn’t heard back from Harold, and now, that was beginning to bother her just a little. Just how long could even the most important business meeting possibly last? Grace wondered in vexation as she plopped down on the couch and picked up ARTnews magazine from the coffee table. She flipped through pages, found the place she’d stopped last time but found it hard to focus on reading. She put the magazine down. Then, on a whim, she turned on the TV.
The alarming visuals from the urgent news seized her with an instinctive sense of dread before her other senses could catch up and figure out what was going on. The local views. The Island ferry. The wreckage and the yellow tapes. There was—an explosion? A suicide bomber… Oh, God! A terrorist attack. In this city? Again?!
People were hurt. And killed. Reportedly, a lot.
The anchor’s voice muffled into a distance, as if she went underwater. A disturbing combination of white on crimson red poured over the screen, announcing a casualty hotline for people concerned about their relatives, but Grace was already fumbling with speed-dial. She waited and prayed for Harold to answer, and she waited and waited, but all she got was an automated response.
“The number you have dialed is not available at present,” a dull recorded voice kept saying on repeat. “Please try again later.” Again, and again, and again.
*
It was a book, of all things. In the middle of the organized chaos of the makeshift emergency care area where she stood, dismayed and distraught, still not entirely sure what she was looking for, it was the book that caught her eye. That distinctive cover design, that vibrant combination of colors—they were imprinted into her memory forever.
Why ever are you here, poor little thing, Grace thought, stricken by a fit of erratic compassion. And then, a beat: Oh no. Oh good Lord, no. Please… please, please. No!
A lump of apprehension in her throat, she picked the book up. Once neat and shiny baby-blue, the cloth-bound hardcover now looked nicked, warped, stained with soot. She opened the cover. Leafed through the damp pages. The ground beneath her feet swayed.
It was, without a shadow of a doubt, their special book. There was no reason to believe there could exist another copy so peculiarly mutilated. She held it tight and hugged it close, as though the wrecked ream of wet paper could somehow mend the chasm of terror that deepened in her chest with every heartbeat.
The pungent smells of blood and antiseptic stung her eyes, blurring the vision; or else it might have been that she was crying. Moving with purpose, Grace strode between the rows of cots and IV poles and white screen dividers. She didn’t notice the tears running down her face; just that all the people she peered into—hurt, maimed and confused, each one suffering their own pain—all those faces were no more but blurry impressions, bereft of features she could tell dearly familiar. None of those were of the one man she was looking for. None of them relevant to her woe.
She rummaged through the rest of the recovered belongings, probed, inspected. She found a torn overcoat that looked and felt like it could have been one of Harold’s. She was not sure.
…It couldn’t be Harold’s, could it?
She dared not but hope.
*
The commute back home didn’t leave a trace in her memory.
She slept very little, cried a lot. Then came the numbness.
She tried his number many, many more times. To no avail.
Harold returned none of her calls.
*
She struggled to find the words to define her emotions, to articulate the shape of her heartache. It seemed important. A visualist first and foremost, she nevertheless kept noticing herself falling back on the most basic, intuitive cliché, and was morosely perplexed that she kept finding them lacking.
Shocked? That, she most certainly was. Devastated? She wouldn’t say… not yet?
She felt befogged. Suspended. Hanging in a dark, remote place, ungrounded and disconnected from the rest of the world.
Lost.
The loss of a loved one. What a crippling, disorienting development.
Impossible to believe.
Unacceptable.
What did it mean—for Grace, personally? This gaping wound in the canvas of her reality, how was she supposed to deal with it? Live with it? Fix it? Despair coiled around her bones, raw and visceral, yet any words to name and outline it rang flat and inadequate.
Maybe it was a delay in exposure.
A skipped heartbeat pending a tad too long—the last moment of calm, before the gravest implications of those words would descend upon her with their full, ground-shaking, overwhelming, crushing force.
The revelation loomed around her, great and tragic. Imminent in its proximity, it promised to engulf and devour her whole.
*
The search was declared over. No more bodies were recovered.
She could have filed a missing persons report. She should have. It would’ve been a logical and reasonable action to take.
She didn’t.
Under the circumstances, Grace later reasoned to herself, it seemed just so desperately redundant. Only too late did it occur to her that no one had even bothered to inform her of the possibility.
The media coverage of the ferry bombing tapered off faster than she expected. The absence of news brought a sense of relief as strong as a sense of betrayal.
*
She couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact.
Much as her grasp of the ongoing life around her was creeping back, this one was taking its time to take hold in her perception. Part of the process, Grace thought distantly. Must be a normal part of the naturally flowing process.
Except that nothing about it was natural or normal. What it felt like was unreal and impossible, an entirely abstract conception, and she could not understand.
That Harold. Harold was—
No. No, she couldn’t. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, her voice trapped in her throat. An incredulous hesitation coupled with an instinctive aversion stalled Grace every time she tried to say the words—even if not aloud, even within the confines of a padded-walled room that her exhausted mind had become.
It just felt wrong. The shape of this wording, unnatural. The meaning, slipping away, evading her ability to comprehend. Not even the finality of the loss, but the idea.
The idea in itself. The very idea that Harold…
That she’d never see him again? Never hear his voice? Never bask in the sunshine of his little soft-eyed smile, his radiant grin that lit up his whole face and lightened Grace’s heart. That she would never see him listen to her with undivided attention, his gaze aglow with gentle wonderment and awe. That there wouldn’t be another time to talk, to laugh; to take delight in shared silence… To touch each other, hold each other. To shiver at the soft purr of his baritone murmuring unfailingly courteous playful intimations in her ear, them fitting together in perfect harmony, eagerly vulnerable, breathless… The sweetest feeling of homecoming in his embrace—a joy she’d lived without for so very long.
Inversely, lapsing into reminiscence took as little effort as breathing. It was an idle, serene evening, its uneventfulness imbued with the bland comfort of their affectionate proximity. Their cozy loveseat. The warming weight of Harold’s arms around her. The featherlight pecks of Harold’s lips to the crown of her head. The soothing roundness of his cushiony tummy, its gentle rise and fall beneath her resting palm. The pliant softness of his skin she had been nuzzling into, inhaling his scent, embracing the graze of his sideburn hairs against her forehead, growing relaxed and drowsy under the lulling cadence of his voice. They relished their time sitting together and cuddling, making out at a quiet, leisurely pace until they kissed goodnight and parted for a good night’s sleep.
Had this been their last time together? In the most final, irrevocable sense?
That just could not be real.
It made no sense. How could it? What an absurdity! Harold, dead? Those words had no business being placed together in such a manner.
Her mind refused to process it. Her heart refused to accept.
*
In the nocturnal darkness of the bedroom, Grace lay awake.
Closing her eyes did not mean falling asleep instantaneously, only more thoughts of Harold. More rumination, still more heartache. So she continued to stare at the pallid square of her phone screen, waiting for either fatigue or engrossment to take over, trying to catch up on an online novella she had started reading in what felt like eons ago; another lifetime entirely. The story was compelling enough. A relationship drama that thrived on people afraid to trust each other with their hearts, deceived by each other’s inability to communicate their true feelings. Hopefully the author had been planning ahead; it looked like they’d planted a chance for their characters to stop acting stupid and overcome their hurts, make things right for themselves in the end…
Her eyes felt gritty. A heavy, tight feeling was building up in her chest: as if sand was filling her lungs and choking up her windpipe, her veins clogging up and swelling with grief. Then something in her broke. A fat, hot tear burned down her cheek. Another one followed by.
The phone slipped out from her hand. Grace rolled over in bed, reached out for a pillow, curled up around it. She buried her face in the soft linen that no longer held Harold’s scent and wept until she cried herself to sleep.
*
Why him?
Once manifested, the question hung in the air. The angry, disturbing question Grace could not address to any private person, any civil or spiritual authority. And God Almighty, was it so terribly unbearable!
Why did it have to be Harold? Why not someone else? The fiancé of someone else?
How could life (fate? God’s providence?) be so unfair to him? So cruel to her?
Such a terrible, meaningless death. He didn’t deserve to die. And she… She did nothing wrong, nothing evil, to be so brutally robbed of her happiness.
So, why?
Grace recognized the selfishness behind her repining, the blasphemous insolence of it. It only saddened her more, plunged her deeper into the vortex of acute loneliness and despair.
*
September petered out in a murky daze. Creative processes shut down in a slump, which Grace had valiantly tried to overcome but mostly failed. Days dragged on, merging into one.
When the doldrums became unbearable, Grace attempted to retreat into housework. There were chores she’d been putting off, then ignoring. A little manual cleaning, she reasoned, might do some good for her headspace as well.
A huge lapse in judgment on her part, it proved to be.
Keeping her hands busy left her thoughts to roam unbridled, and all too soon it led to pondering the day when they discussed their plans on shared housing arrangements. Harold had probed tentatively: if she’d been willing to consider moving; her thoughts on his intent to rent or maybe buy a new house in a different neighborhood. Grace had a lot to say on that matter—about being fond of her own place and not being a fan of moving, about how she would’ve been so uneager to leave behind the picturesque historic district, the ever busy park that started right across her windows, and then more practical reasons tied with her established ways of work, her studio set up so bright and open, with its high ceilings and just the ideal kind of natural lighting… He’d payed diligent heed to all she said, and bobbed his head once in a slow, thoughtful nod. And then he’d smiled at her, and he’d concurred. He had accepted all her reasons, trite and sensible and petty… and her clumsy hand-waving invitation to maybe just move in? To live with her? Just like that! Oh God. That must’ve been such an awkward, bumbling speech… And before long, he had moved in with her. For two individuals who met when they were not young anymore, both bearers of resemblant ingrained experience of habitual solitude, it truly was a marvel how little time and compromise they’d taken to adjust and thrive in a harmonious, well-balanced coexistence…
Grace doggedly walked the floors, mop and duster in hand, forcing herself to focus on her surroundings rather than on intrusive recollections. She bitterly noted how the atmosphere had changed. How her lovely, homey place had gotten unbearably estranged and daunting.
Harold’s shoes in the shoe rack. Harold’s toiletries in the bathroom. A newly-started book, abandoned on his nightstand. A set of nifty colored porcelain, his most recent addition to the eclectic assembly of mugs and teaware on the shelves in the living room. Harold’s things, the little mundane traces of habitat, waylaying her here, there, everywhere… Without Harold. Without him, it suddenly felt like too big and vast a place. Too empty for Grace alone.
Sorting through the jumble of advertisements and pamphlets that had imperceptibly piled up on the console table, Grace caught a glimpse of an art gallery brochure. She pulled it out, the design staggeringly familiar. A pair of tickets slipped out from the inside. Her hand flew up to her mouth, the dusting glove forgotten.
Of course. How could she—
Ugh. How indeed.
They were going to attend this new exhibition together, she and Harold. She had been so looking forward to this date.
Throwing away the expired tickets felt like scraping off the crust to split a healing wound anew. The find threw her for a loop for the rest of the day.
*
How unfortunate that Harold was so painfully camera-shy. He hadn’t kept any old pictures of himself that he could’ve shown her. More often than not, he’d managed to deflect her attempts to persuade him into some frolics in a photo booth.
If only she had been more forethoughtful. More selfish.
She wished she’d asked him more… coaxed him more often.
She was left with so few photos of them together.
*
With no unambiguous clues about Harold’s fate—no concrete proof of his morbid finality—Grace found herself stuck in a limbo of internal contradiction; a flimsy counterpoise between fierce hope and desperate denial.
Hope.
Faith.
The two bore not much difference all in all, Grace brooded wearily. Leaning on the railing, she frowned against the cold breeze as she peered blindly into the black water below.
But what if.
What if it wasn’t true after all? There still was– There could have been a chance. A possibility of a miracle…
Hadn’t God blessed her with a miracle once? The way one Harold Martin had entered her life, what was he if not a miracle incarnate?
Being an illustrator was a lonesome business. Much of her time Grace spent inside her own head. Professional contacts and volunteer work aside, her personal circle of close friends was abysmally limited, her social life virtually nonexistent. And wasn’t it, in a certain sense, ironic? The artistry of evoking a curiosity about even the most trivial subject… To create art, one had to be observant and perceptive, adept in watching things, in rendering the essence of emotion. With her keen eye for subtlety and nuance, trained out of necessity as a child, Grace could read people, see through smoke and mirrors. Not like that percipience ever helped her with human connection.
At her age Grace had, by and large, made peace with being single. Once, still in college, a do-gooder busybody classmate of hers had bullied Grace into a couple of blind dates; an excruciatingly awkward experience that ultimately went nowhere. Since then, she’d learnt to foster her priorities, to set boundaries. She’d come to terms with her deficiency, which made her unfit for a breezy, uncommitted kind of casual carnality that everyone else seemed so eager to practice, or at least thirstily desired.
Thankfully, being “married to your career” in the artistic community didn’t quite carry the usual load of pejorative connotations.
And yet.
There was still that indefinable longing. The wistful doubt if she was missing out on something, something special. What would it feel like—to click with another person, to connect, to weave an emotional bond that perhaps, some day, could possibly grow into… something else? Something more? Something different? That was her pie in the sky. In the absence of any relevant points of reference, Grace never expanded her daydreams any further.
And then, Harold.
As though out of thin air, he appeared before her, an enigma with a bashful, adorable smile, and gingerly offered his unseasonable gift.
He turned out a surprisingly comfortable person to be around. His interest in her work felt genuine, his commentary imaginative and thoughtful. Not a whiff of condescension or predatory intent. Somehow subtly, organically, he blended into the natural landscape of her existence, tinting it warmer and brighter with his mere presence. He had been kind and generous, and so, so patient with her. Hardly pushy, never ever demanding. As they navigated the ambiguities, unshielded the weaknesses and habituated the prosaic human imperfections of each other, as they discovered—together—the mysteries of romance and relationship, he always, always treated her with care and tenderness, with such reverent respect. Grace had the privilege to move and take all at her own pace.
…What if she was too quick to jump to a conclusion. What if her worst-case assumption was a terrible mistake. What if—
A gust of wind roughed up into her face and made her hair a mess. Grace shivered. Raking her hair straight, she blinked off the moisture from her lashes and turned her back to the river to reach into her handbag for a handkerchief.
Enough with what ifs.
This needed to stop. Keep holding onto phantoms like she did, that would pave a sure way to insanity.
*
All necessary arrangements and preparations were made. The obituary and the public announcement of the memorial service were drawn up and put out.
Untethered and disoriented by sudden jolts of recurring awareness, time and time again, Grace kept reminding herself that in circumstances such as hers, the pressure of work ought to have better been appreciated. As a freelancer, it was just as clear to her that she was obliged to uphold a certain level of dutiful engagement. Artistic block and whatnot notwithstanding, her livelihood would not just procure itself.
The distraction of a back-and-forth correspondence with a client meant her staying afloat. It kept her from spinning out adrift into the darkness.
*
Grace hoped that the memorial ceremony would make her feel better. That’s what the ritual was supposed to do, wasn’t it? To help the bereaved ones come to terms with the unacceptable, to give them a sense of closure. A chance to honor and pay tribute to the departed, to share the sorrow of loss, the joy in memories of a life well lived, greatly loved. A farewell weep. A fancied parting kiss.
It only made her feel worse.
And no, she couldn’t point to any negligence in the service itself. An elderly cleric diligently recited the necessary blessings, lent a kind ear to her tearful lamentations and even offered words of personal sympathy despite the chill of early winter in the air. Grace was truly grateful to him.
To turn up and find herself the only mourner, however…
Grace wasn’t prepared for that. She hadn’t expected that no one else would come to say goodbye; hadn’t expected that it would crush her so hard. Either no one knew, or no one cared. Which reasoning was more disheartening?
She knew that Harold had no living relatives. Her own family ties were long and sorely severed. Introducing each other to friends and colleagues never occurred as a necessity. Grace completely understood and empathized with his reticence about flaunting their relationship to outsiders; didn’t see it as something to worry about. They were kindred spirits in that regard as well.
Why, they were happy! They had each other and they didn’t need anyone else. Just she and Harold: her dearest friend, the joy of her heart. The one and only true love of her life.
No wonder that, getting cozy and snug in the cocoon of her most cherished person’s affections, Grace had allowed herself to forget about caring to connect with a wider range of people. And now, the sobering consequences of their blissful isolation were coming down on her.
Harold. Oh Harold. No kin, no friends… no longer a chance to build his own lovely little family unit. (With her.)
Not a single person showed up to mourn with Grace. No one came to envelop her in a comforting hug, to share her anguish, to ease the shattering weight of her unspent, unclaimable love.
(No one was sorry for her loss.)
Grace sniffled. The priest was long gone, the cold started to creep under her clothes. She dabbed at her eyes with a clumsy gloved hand, bent down to lay flowers and stepped back to take in the view of her poor darling’s final resting place. Harold didn’t share even her perfunctory habit of faith, but no doubt he would have appreciated the thought she put in the attributes. The understated elegance of a simple wooden cross. The laconic plaque. The delicate white tulips, her final declaration of their undying, perfect love. Lying there on the frozen ground, they looked fragile and so painfully lonely.
It was time to go.
Her fingers touched the engraved name one last time. Walking away from the secluded nook of the churchyard into the busy street, her heart was sore and heavy with yet unconscious understanding that she would never come back here for a visit.
That place was fake. There was no real grave. There was no casket with a body buried there.
*
Time passed. Months. Seasons.
Spring came around the corner, but not for her; and not for him.
Never for him anymore.
Let it go, let it go. Why couldn’t she just let it go?
Why would she want to?
*
If only she had seen.
The thought came and went and recurred, each time inevitably sending Grace into a bout of guilty shame and confusion.
If she had seen Harold’s… corpse… then maybe she might’ve actually been able to cope better. It might’ve made it easier to let go of that insidious, inane illusion which still abided in some hinky recess of her psyche.
The Hudson River deprived her of even that palliative simulacrum of solace.
She used to love New York’s waterfronts. The fluidity of color and light, the poetic contrasts between the skyline and the buildings and the water made them an excellent place for outdoor painting practice, while the endless flow of tourists and residents made for a passable substitute for human company. And then a very real and special companionship entered her life—and her fondness for the promenade and pier parks grew and evolved based on reasons of entirely different nature.
Grace couldn’t stand seeing any of those places anymore.
The city riverscapes, which used to fascinate and lift up, to inspire her, had morphed into a minefield of bitter recollections and, Grace had come to realize with no small deal of dismay, an unsparing test to her poise and her creative prowess.
When working en plein air, she sought to bring out the beauty in the mundane. Capture the fleeting moment, embellish it with her own subjective impression. Now, she looked at the glitter of the water surface, deceptively benign, and she was sinking. Hovering before her mind’s eye was a nauseous vortex of gruesome fabrications: the eroded, lifeless body of her dear sweetheart, the signs of demise contorting his lovely, familiar features. The damage done—by the explosion? by water? …By goddamned fish?!
She loathed those thoughts. Her own wild imaginativeness mortified her. She hoped—oh, with the fervency of a prayer she hoped—that, by all things good and merciful, it had at least been quick. It broke her heart to just think about the pain and terror Harold might’ve suffered for too long.
There was, however, no need to exacerbate her own misery. Grace forsook any and all riverside open-air locations she used to frequent: a wise and sensible decision.
So she thought.
So she told herself.
And there was no use in wallowing in made-up horrors either. Unless she had seen Harold—his remains—with her own eyes, she was reluctant in becoming entirely sure that all was truly over. However hellish images her mind was able to conjure, she needed to witness it with her own eyes: a testimony to the irrevocable.
Until then, though?
He might be “gone”... as in, away, somewhere else. The possibilities were endless!
Maybe the impact was not fatal. Maybe the elements were merciful. Maybe he woke up disoriented, scared. The shock might’ve led to a severe trauma response: memory loss, mental confusion… Maybe he fled. Maybe somewhere, far away, her sweet beloved might still be breathing. Somehow, against all odds, he might still be…
A wilful self-deception; so what? What harm could come from that?
No one would know. No one would judge her in her grief.
Her wishful thinking would not bring her Harold back.
Grace could accept that. If only for her own selfish consolation, she could pretend she believed.
*
A haunting balm, his luscious visage would recur:
In her memory
though the memories tend to erode over time, painted steadily over with fresh impressions
In her dreams
though the stress, and the pills, and the lack of night’s sleep made it hard to depend on primordial wellsprings
A whiff of balmy wind, a glimpse across the corner of her eye. Always, always on her mind. On the worn leaves of old, filled out sketchbooks. On that long-dried canvas
(when she would steel her heart to take a look…)
*
Not that one. No. Not that one either.
Ah. There it was.
In her studio upstairs, Grace emerged from the adjacent storage closet where she kept her materials and art supplies as well as unframed finished pieces. In her hands was a covered medium-sized canvas. She placed it gently on an easel, crossed her arms in a self-soothing hug, and hovered motionless, considering.
Nostalgia was not among the habits Grace cared to cultivate in herself. Most of her childhood memories got lost in transit; not many of the youthful ones she deemed worth revisiting willingly. What was the point of dwelling on the past when there was always something new, intriguing and exciting ahead? Even her happiest memories of the last four years…
Especially those memories.
After the initial blank dazedness was gone, she’d set herself up to avoid them, on purpose. She just… She was not sure she was strong enough? If she looked back and faced the constellation of felicities left behind, if she beheld the sheer scope of what she was now missing... Grace dreaded that the amended reality she’d worked to raise up around that gaping absence would crumble and collapse, and suck her under. She didn’t think that she would be able to take it and withstand it.
Except the other day, she dreamed of Harold again. Only this time, her dream was not the usual dreary, suffocating nightmare variety. They were together. He talked to her. He made her laugh. His was a presence Grace perceived with all her senses.
Wasn’t that a cue enough? A gentle nudge from the heavens…
For what it’s worth, now must’ve been just the time. Time to be brave and take the step out of the protracted liminality she had imposed upon herself.
Another exploration was awaiting. And possibly, a new lesson to learn. Grace braced herself with a deep breath and carefully removed the protective sheets.
There he sat. Captured forever in her painting. Having just roughly sketched an airy outline of the leafless park in the background, her brush had lingered fondly on features and details Grace treasured most dearly. She still couldn’t help but notice that indeed, her skills in facial portraiture had been lacking in refinement; that she could’ve done a better job with edges and contrast—
Oh brain, shut up, for mercy’s sake!
It didn’t matter. And she didn’t really care.
Harold was there.
His precious face, lit in the golden hue of morning sun. His mesmerizing little smile. The play of light and shadow in the creases of the waistcoat gave nice emphasis to the plump swell of his belly. The deep burgundy of his tie stood out like a guiding line, directing the viewer’s gaze right to the sky-blue volume he had placed pointedly on display in his lap... Oh good heavens! And just to think that she had no idea at the moment!
The moment so beautiful, so precious.
And Grace, much as she’d fancied that she wouldn’t stand to look—Grace couldn’t tear her dewy gaze away.
Her painted Harold, so tranquil and undisturbed. (‘So leisurely,’ his voice intoned, fond and distinct, so lifelike inside her head.) He had been an exemplary model that day, Grace recalled. Strong posture, no fidgeting. She’d teased his serious demeanor trying to mask her own odd spell of emotion. The butterflies were batting their tiny wings inside her chest as she’d anticipated the exposure and excitement to hear his word of appraisal, and Harold had maintained his enigmatic sphinx-like calm with just a hint of humble joy lurking in the crinkles at the corners of his mouth.
What was he thinking at the time? Was he envisioning the upcoming momentous scene? Was his heart fluttering with anticipation? Quivering with anxiety? There were no signals that she could recall, no signs that were noteworthy to suggest…
She saw them now, with a remote, retrospective kind of fresh eyes clarity. The way he sat, slightly turned as though on standby, ready to stand up and close the distance in one deft, fluid motion. The way he watched her—peered from the canvas back at her, just so focused, so intent. Filled with such carefully masked expectation.
But—surely no? How could even the tiniest bug of doubt worm its way into his brilliant head that she could answer anything but yes?
She never asked. She didn’t see the need. She trusted him, trusted in him. They were in love and they loved each other, committed to each other, and they had a whole lifelong journey waiting ahead of them—a broad, thrilling vista of discovery. Adventures to live and memories to build along, the magic marvels of their mellow sensuous synergy to explore. Their promised mutual devotion, the caring benevolence of belonging. The blessing and compassion in growing old together, side by side…
And all of that, and so, so much more—now the prospects of the past. Their past, once so perfect. Discontinued.
Harold had always been kind and compassionate, Grace thought ruefully. He would have been so sad to see her like this, wretched and pathetic, still stuck in her perpetual misery because of him. There, in her painting, he stood out solid, firmly grounded, the center of balance amidst the ethereal openness that faded into fuzzy rosy nothingness. Without judging, chiding, pitying, or condemning…
Her thoughts drifted back to her dream: to the soaring bliss of a deep, profound comfort she experienced while it lasted; to the long forgotten sense of peace of mind that, as it happened, had taken root, and grown… and now appeared to stay with her.
And she thought that, perhaps, this was what coming around was supposed to feel like.
She missed her perished fiancé just as much. The loss still hurt. But as she stood there fascinated, scarcely aware of herself caressing the side edge of the painting, Grace found herself ensconcing into a new understanding: that the sharp shards of her despair had dulled, and that the burden on her heart had lost a few substantial measures. Its leaden weight had transmuted, ever so subtly, into the poignant blend of fondness, longing… and acceptance.
Gone were the numbing, forlorn grips of grief. Like a brittle wood frog thawing from its frozen oblivion, she was no longer about to shatter at the touch. She finally felt ready to try and make the meaning out of experience.
What she and Harold had together, their love that was surpassing any dream… It was real. It was beautiful.
And it was still with her; alive within her.
She remembered.
*
*
*
The notification that popped up with a jingle on her phone screen surprised her—Grace didn’t recall the online photo archive service she’d been using for years ever doing anything like this. Then again, there had been a lot of things that she’d fallen behind on over the past year or so. Could be a recent feature update? She tapped the notification to check it out, and what she saw almost took her breath away.
A snapshot from days gone by.
Taken not by her, obviously. It must’ve been Harold, holding the camera at arm’s length. Did he take the picture with her phone? But when? And how— Ah. Well. That made no difference now. That mystery was bound to remain unsolved. Grace pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized their garments and ran through the dates and events in her mind, trying to locate the scene on the timeline of her memories, until she identified the strange-looking flare in the background as a beam of beacon light cutting through the surrounding darkness.
Their Italian holiday.
A fleeting, intimate moment that wasn’t supposed to be preserved, let alone put out on display. Her kittenish pose, the goofy smooch and Harold’s pleased, wide grin; their silly faces, carefree and tanned and likely flushed with wine, dramatically illuminated by the camera’s flash.
Poor light, low resolution. Pure happiness.
She had to scale the image up to print it out. Taken on a shoddy phone cam, it turned up predictably blurry, but Grace adored it all the same. The fuzzy shapes made her think of a sfumato painting.
For reasons that she couldn’t quite spell out, something about putting her flawed, throwback-memory gem of a photo in a brand-new frame didn’t sit right with her. Grace turned over to antique shops, thrift stores, flea markets. She discarded the glam, the sleek, the ornate; those gave the feeling of incongruity. But when her eye fell on a shabby-looking wooden frame, she knew instantly that she had found exactly what she was looking for. The distressed texture fitted in with the style of her interior seamlessly, although that was not the crucial selling point. This frame told a story. If viewed from close up, the naked timber bled through the battered coating. Grace could see that in those nicks, scuffs, and dented wear along the edges, there was a story of hurt, perseverance—and ultimately, survival.
Sitting on top of a tall stack of books so as to always stay in sight from anywhere in the room, it was her daily reminder; a glimpse of unworldly support. The warm, light shade of green paint worked really nice to set off the almost tenebrist contrast. It also complemented the oversaturated reddish cast that her and Harold’s faces acquired on the print, evoking a sense of balance and equanimity.
The pedestal on which she placed the frame consisted of large-format art books, albums of the Italian Renaissance paintings. A fluky confluence—subconsciously inadvertent at best. Grace hadn’t picked up on it until one day, while straightening the perch, her eyes had lingered on the spines, and it just clicked.
Had Harold seen it, Grace thought wistfully, he would undoubtedly have regarded and appreciated such a befitting artistic similitude.
But maybe ‘he’ already had?
Wasn’t it said that the spirit knows no boundaries? That our dead loved ones are still there, somewhere around us. Grace shrugged and sighed softly, smiling a sad, dreamy smile. A most puerile thought, of course… But still. That would’ve been so transcendently romantic.
