Funny how a week's worth of old-fashioned romance can overshadow a week's worth of unsolicited memories. Have you missed me? Did you wonder what was going on between flower deliveries and following trails of paper hearts all over the house?
I didn't, for once. It's been a nice diversion, a welcome deflection for some of the rougher patches of the week, patches that show the wear and tear best on this tarnished kingdom.
I procrastinated just a bit too long in one place. I refused to acknowledge the other thing altogether, and overall let's just say we've enjoyed playing pretend happily married totally normal couple, even though neither of us is ordinary, and oh, boy, where do I begin?
Oh, I know. This goddamned picture. I'll start here.
The real test of the week was Cole's former employer calling to very gently and politely ask me if and when I was coming to collect the rest of Cole's things and that there was some tax paperwork to pick up, because, yeah, I get to file for dead people too.
Loch and some of the other guys had packed up his works and put it all in storage for me so that the company could have his office again. Loch had warned me that I might want his help when I collect the things, but Loch is busy now, working and not able to just drop everything and fly back here to help me clear out this stuff on my timeclock, so I knew I would have to do it. I showed up with PJ and his jeep and Cole's coworkers all hugged me and asked about the kids and I swear to God every last one of them watched me out of the corners of their eyes as we all took padded and draped pieces and boxes of things downstairs.
I had a final look around and Cole's boss handed me an envelope that had been passed around back in July, a collection taken for the kids, to help out. He had wanted to give it to me when I came in but I never did and suddenly here I was, thinner and older and more frail and yet tentatively happy and relieved to be out of the shadow of the talented genius we all watched thrive here.
There were thousands of dollars in the envelope. I don't know what to do with it.
And when PJ unloaded the final box into the basement I went down with scissors and I opened everything. I looked through pictures of the kids that he kept at work, lunch receipts, doodles and sweaters he had left behind. I saw pieces he had started at home and took to work to finish. Storyboards. Paintings. Scenes. Portraits of people he didn't know, faces from inside his head. An entire career packed up mid-stride because he had fully expected to go to work on that Monday morning. A closet full of valuable finished and unfinished works from a formidable artist.
A framed photograph of us that I have never seen before. Big. 14 inches across, framed beautifully. It was from an old photoshoot I did for him many long years ago when he briefly dabbled in professional photography.
I was standing in front of a fountain, the pavement was wet and the trees were full of red and orange leaves, heavy branches weighing low over the path I stood on. I'm wearing a long delicate pink tutu, toe shoes and a pale pink knitted wrap sweater. My hair had tiny braids here and there amongst these huge curls everywhere that had been woven with leaves like a crown and I was standing with my back to the camera, hands behind me holding a huge maple leaf while Cole stood beside me, back to the camera also with his face bent toward me as if he was sharing a secret with me. I believe he was telling me how to pose. I never saw it before, his former assistant must have taken it, testing the light or God knows what. I only saw the finished product in which I was sitting alone on the edge of the fountain. It was in an advertising campaign later that year and I have a copy of the final picture that was used for it. I always thought I never looked like me in that photograph.
I look exactly like me in this photo.
And here I am.
It was as if I was looking in a mirror. I brought it upstairs and looked at it longer and I left it leaning against the wall in the upstairs hall.
Because as Cole's widow I'm in a weird place and I can't find anyone to identify with.
He didn't die a hero. He didn't die with a full life behind him, his memories golden as a loving husband. He died with restraining orders and lawyers and people protecting his beloved wife from him, people supervising his visits with his own flesh and blood, his name destroyed over a mistake he made in loving me too much, his reputation saved only by my hand because right up until this point I have always fought to keep his personal life far removed from his career, from his talented hands as an artist. So that people would not feel guilty as they admired his work, the legacy that has provided my children with secure futures and me with peace of mind. He died violently, horribly, and without a final chance to talk to us, without getting his words out and I still can't reconcile any of it. I'm obsessed with his death. If you look on my nightstand there's a copy of his bulletin from the service, and two books, stories about widows, because even in fiction at least I can think to myself, someone knows how I feel. Lisey's Story and Thorn. They are horror novels, naturally. Pulp-fiction trash, just like Bridget.
I can't help but be horrified that he's dead. Dead is final. It's not as if it's some big event and then you wait the appropriate time and move forward. I have moved forward but he is still dead. He is cremated and long gone. I don't know how to feel because no one ever wrote a book on how you're supposed to feel when you're relieved that someone is dead but confused because you still miss them. Because you do still love them, you can't help it.
I've come to a place where I think that the monster that lived inside Cole ate him up, that he never meant to surrender to that monster but it happened anyway and he could keep it hidden to save face and I would love him and then he would let it out and I would be afraid of him. Somehow in between the fright shows and the dark nights, he wanted me to feel safe and he knew that safety wouldn't come from within. It would only come from without.
And now I have this photograph. Which throws everything out the window. I don't have the letter he wrote to me before he tried to commit suicide because I ripped it up and let it alight from my fingers and scatter over the grass, blown in fragments through the neighborhood, landing in branches and grass and concrete, the words on the page eventually blurred by the rain as it poured down on my world. I will never have that back and I will forever wish I knew what he wrote. Most days I hope it said Fuck you, whore. Some days I hope it said I loved you.
I didn't think I would still feel alone.
I don't exactly know how long Jacob has to be beside me before he takes Cole's place as my comfort. And I don't know how long it will be before I stop looking to Jacob as if he is a parent in charge of me who is going to make everything okay because that's what I'm used to but it isn't what I want but I will never be tough enough to have control of him. I know I'm not making sense.
And I feel like a dog who continues to lick the hand of it's abuser and it won't stop.
Because I was only ever strong enough to pretend. Still. Standing still and standing here I have to wonder if that's all I'll ever do.
I would say...I would say right now I think that the high is gone but reality stays behind. I had expected to find a painting of myself, having been that unfaithful muse but instead I found what feels harsher somehow.
Jacob suggested we ship the picture to Cole's parents so that they could have it but I'm keeping it. And a new argument is born. God help me.
