Noondarkly

-Dave, for the last five years, ever since you started working here, you have been setting aside the best looking groceries for me, and I know for a fact I had most of the time neglected your gesture… and yet, you never cease to be magnanimous. What is it that makes you so kind to me? –Mary stood with her groceries in front of Dave, whose image of Mary may have been just as false as hers had been of everything she had ever known.

-You don’t ask such questions, dear… you just take those juicy apples and carrots and now off with you… I hate to see you like that.

-Like what? –a flicker of a smile lurked behind her lips, ready to show itself.

-Like something even a cat might leave outside in the rain, to be honest with ya –Dave sadly smiled at her, a smile that froze her heart.

-It’s just age, Dave –she replied automatically, picking the basket up, trying in vain to hide the shaking of her hand.

-My ma is ninety years old, sweetheart, and she looks as happy as she was when she got her first kiss –Dave sighed, filling up a young girl’s bag with apples.

To that, she had no reply. A mere nod was the most she could do, and a grateful smile, forced out by necessity. Pretend. It was alright. Things were good. Only good things had been happening to her lately, after all.

Walking home, she stepped into the baby shop once again to purchase a few more of those ridiculously priced, although irresistibly cute baby clothes. Ever since Sara had popped the news, Mary had felt compelled to act like the surrogate mother to her friend’s unborn child. It was her best way to show Sara she cared, and Sara, in her delicate and understandably selfish condition, was oblivious to most things apart from her pregnancy. It was probably best, as Mary had no time to mope in Sara’s presence, and because she spent so much time in her friend’s presence, the melancholy times were reduced to solitary evenings and lately, an increasing number of sleepless nights.

Things were good, her consciousness stubbornly decided as she filled her lungs with the crisp winter air. Joseph had got the deal he had hankered for, Andy was growing into a placid, happy baby, Elaine was able to sleep more and more, Sara and Robert seemed to live their second honeymoon, after eight years of marriage…

A cat ran across the street before her, its coal-black fur softly shining in the foggy daylight. Her heart missed a beat as she looked after the four-legged creature, the sudden realization that she missed burying her face in the thick fur of Marshmallow bringing her spirits down before she could order herself to get a grip. She was gone, Marsh was gone, without a trace. They had looked for her in vain for days. The disappearance of Mary’s only companion would have been a fatal blow, had she not been busy congratulating Joseph, Sara, and expressing her feigned happiness at Eileen’s warm chattering. As it was, people around her had kept her alive until Marshmallow’s hurtful absence was mollified by time, until the day came when she could glance at the cat’s bowl and favourite rug without bursting into tears.

At the post office, she remembered Andrew and how he had apparently forgotten about her, on purpose, most likely. She deserved it. No decent man would have given her another shot at friendship, and she was ready to take all the blame. She watched the postman climb on his bike and cycle off with a bulging bag of deliveries tied to the metal frame. What if there was a letter for her, too, among those flat envelopes? So many envelopes in that bag… why not one for her, only one tiny envelope. But she knew too much time had passed since she sent him her plea, and she knew that there would be nothing else in her mailbox but bills and colourful adverts.

Her wrist hurt from the weight of her groceries, which fact stopped her from relishing the sight of a misty, quiet Bodeford on a Saturday morning. Her brain told her the winding little road, trimmed by pastel-hued houses and shops was a picturesque sight, but there was no jolt in her heart, no urge to remember it for later, no wish to put it on canvas. Why bother… such a waste of time, really. A waste of precious canvas, paint, and time. She could have used all that time, all those years wasted on useless art teaching kids something useful. It had been a conscious decision, and now she saw through it, and knew that giving up teaching, giving up probably her only real tie to the real world had transformed her way of thinking, and had turned the world into something untrue, something artistically spoilt and false, of which all her destructive choices had sprung. Know thy future, claimed a note on a billboard in front of her, with a ridiculous name and a phone number under it. She frowned at the obnoxiousness of the person who pretended to tell anyone’s future, when it was crystal clear that only one’s past could ever be known, understood only from the distance of countless years and painful experiences. She knew her past now, she saw her every step that had wronged her own life and the lives of those she had encountered; she would have been furious at the mockery of the higher powers who were giving her the knowledge only now, after she could do nothing about her life, but the several losses she had had to come to terms with were daily numbing her senses, and apart from tasks she was able to carry out mechanically, there was nothing she really cared about.

And yet, despite the comfort of her numbed silence, she subconsciously longed for human companionship. She hurried her steps to reach the Oxfam shop before the first drops of a quick shower reached her grey hair.

-Mary –Sara smiled from behind the counter, slim as ever, her baby not even showing. Her face was aglow, her eyes were shining, she was so painfully beautiful Mary had to stop for a moment to collect herself.

-Can you believe it’s raining again? It rained twenty minutes ago –she shook her head and placed her shopping in the corner, after which she walked behind the counter and gave Sara the hug both needed, for different reasons.

-Only a few more weeks and spring is here –Sara beamed, taking money and giving change to a customer. –That’s a lovely scarf, if I may say so, sir –she smiled at the elderly man with a gentlemanly moustache.

-My wife will hopefully appreciate it, too –he chuckled and touching his hat in an old-fashioned way that made Sara blush, left the shop with firm, slow steps.

-Did you see that? I thought they only existed in fairy-tales and movies of the fifties –Sara whispered with a happy sigh.

-What, old husbands?

-Gentlemen.

-Oh. Well, I sometimes feel Bodeford was left behind by time… we’re an obsolete place, really –Mary shrugged, looking around. –Have you sold all the latest acquisitions already?

-Yes! Incredible, isn’t it? A teacher with her teenage girls came in, all twenty-five of them, and they each did their homework diligently.

-Which was buying second-hand clothes? –Mary asked, incredulous.

Sara nodded.

-I overheard them telling each other that a family on Manley street needs new clothes, because the father was given the sack, and the kids are too young to sustain themselves –she said. –It’s wonderful what a really good, devoted teacher can do with a few open-minded kids.

Mary said nothing, but she was laughing inside. Her tears that she couldn’t cry any more manifested themselves in self-irony, and she absent-mindedly leafed through a thin book on Feng-Shui someone had left on the counter.

-Come on, let’s get you something nice –Sara continued. –There was a beige-coloured deux-piece somewhere, your size…

-What for, Sara? I don’t need any new clothes, in fact, I will be bringing in some of my old ones –Mary replied in a neutral tone.

-I insist you buy that thing if I have to steal your purse or pay for it myself –Sara tightened her lips. –You are not going to bury yourself before my eyes, you hear me?

-No need for that, my dear. Life takes its natural course –Mary smiled, leaving Sara desperate for a retort, but just then, a handful of customers entered the shop, making her busy for a while.

Which was fine with Mary. She walked around the shop, checking books and odd items people had donated for charity: letter knives, old wooden toys, spice racks, a small, possibly Victorian wash basin with a matching jug, even a photo album half torn in two along its ridge. Whoever donates old photos for charity, she wondered, looking through it carefully not to widen the tear any further. The photos were dated between 1875 and 1912. Her own mother had not yet been born at that time. Strangely rigid faces in strictly arranged Sunday clothes and neatly trimmed hairstyles looked blankly into her eyes as she tried to decipher who they were, and what their lives may have been. Had they had happiness in their lives, were there wasted choices, wrong decisions, hate or regret? As the was ready to close the album, one photo stood out among the rest, not because of its pose or the young man’s attire, which was similar to the rest of them, but his eyes. Large, sincere, dark. The look in his eyes was so familiar Mary had to quickly discard the album and turn her attention to something else, but the sense of longing washed over her so suddenly she couldn’t suppress a tear. Stealthily wiping it off, she walked along the bookshelf, her attention divided between the old piano that brought back more painful memories and the fragments of talk she overheard.

-…no one knew what to make of it, really. Such crimes don’t often happen in such a small place, after all.

-Right so –a white-haired lady nodded, thrilled and frightened at the same time. –What a dreadful thing for you to witness on your first time to the seaside.

-Well, things happen –the younger man, somewhere around his forties shrugged his broad shoulders. –The only reason I was slightly annoyed was that I missed my football match on TV.

-Did the police retain you for so long, then? –the lady enquired further, although the man was trying to leave.

-I waited there for two hours until all fingerprints were taken and all evidence was collected and my statement was written down in their report –he sighed, leaning over the counter, enjoying his share of five minute fame. –I overheard phonetalks and things said about the poor bastard, too. Apparently he had been a victim of jealousy.

-You don’t say! –the old lady gasped, and Mary caught Sara’s playful wink.

-But you wanna know the best part? –the man grinned and leaned closer to the old lady who was hardly alive from excitement. –He had been murdered by his… boyfriend.

There was a gasp in the shop, that of the old lady who mumbled something inaudibly and shuffled out as quick as her wobbly legs could take her. The man looked after her with a laugh, looking at Sara in derision.

-There’s nothing like shocking an old girl like that –he folded his plastic bag and was ready to go.

-Did you by any chance hear… a name, at the crime scene? While you were waiting?

He turned to Mary with surprise.

-I sure did. Jeffrey Whitehouse. I do hope he was no relative of yours, ma’am. Good day, ladies.

There were a few people in the shop, but with the click of the door, the noises stopped altogether. She saw them move, she saw Sara’s ashen face behind the counter, she noticed how her young friend was moving towards her.
Before she lost consciousness, the last thing she saw was not the face of her now dead husband, but the eyes of an old photograph, the eyes of someone she felt burning through her whole being.