Erin Lodes

Before reading this story, you might want to read the previous blog post, which gives you this story’s backstory! Hope you enjoy!

Counterpoint

When Christine hears the knock on her front door, she assumes it’s someone lost. Tourists do that around here, wandering until they see a sign of civilization to offer them salvation. She can’t think of another person who would have reason to come see her on a Saturday night. She sets down the dough she is kneading and, wiping flour off her hands onto her apron, she goes to open the door, her bare feet padding silently across the wooden floor. When the door creaks open, her hand tightens on the knob for strength to keep her standing. She had been wrong.

“Daniel.” The name escapes her mouth like a stone falling into water, making a splash she isn’t ready for. Christine cannot fathom what has brought him here, here to her small cottage by the sea, so far away from the city streets he lives for. His large frame fills the doorway as he takes a step closer, light from outside silhouetting his edges. She remembers the first time she had opened a door to him.

~~~

There was a knock on the door to the coffee shop, where she was finishing the muffins for today. It was only 7 AM, and they weren’t open for another hour. Looking through the glass she saw him, a tall man with dark hair. He was shivering in the rain, but smiling as she cracked the door to tell him they weren’t open yet.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Christine.”

“Daniel.” He held out his hand to shake, and when her hand disappeared inside his warm palm and strong fingers, held with all the reverence of a beach stone by the sand, she knew she was going to let him inside out of the cold.

~~~

She pulls out of the memory, noticing the differences between it and the man standing awkwardly on her threshold, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. There are lines around his eyes and mouth, rougher edges, and the more she looks at him, the more she thinks she hadn’t been wrong at all. He still looks lost.

It isn’t the same person, she reminds herself, not on either side of the door.

“I asked about you in town. Marcie told me you were living here.” He says it as if it’s an explanation but it’s a poor excuse and they both know it. Still, she lets him follow her into the kitchen, looking at his windswept hair and wondering if it has collected salt from the ocean air. Her fingers want to investigate, want to discover if she can find the individual crystals and separate them from the strands, the way she had painstakingly separated herself from him.

“How’s your mother? Is her arthritis still getting worse?” she asks, going back to working the dough for bread she is making.

“She’s doing all right. Arthritis is still bad but she’s on these new meds that seem to be helping.” He takes another step towards her and her chest tightens as she feels him in this room in a way she has forgotten. How overwhelming the height of his body and the breadth of his shoulders can be, how he always seems too large for the space they occupy together. When she’d met him it had been one of the things she’d loved, how he’d made her feel safe, like being covered by beach sand. She struggles to shake the feeling, taking a deep breath to prove to herself that she still can.

“Well that’s good,” she says. “You’ll tell her I say hello?”

“How is the coffee shop?” he asks, going to the window to look out at the rippling green and the blue of the ocean water. He can’t look at her for too long; it pulls at something he thought he’d long since buried.

“It’s good. I might even take over the bakery in a few years, Betty might retire.” Daniel nods his head, watching as rain drops begin to hit the window pane. His finger reaches out to trace a lonely drop sliding down the glass, inevitably descending towards the puddle collecting along the ledge. He can almost feel the soothing coolness of it on his skin, but the pane of glass holds him at a breath’s distance. Long moments of silence follow, and although Christine’s ears can pick up the crash of waves against the beach, a steady sound below the patter of rain, all Daniel hears is their breath, his first and hers following. It had always seemed that way, as if she was an answer to a question he hadn’t known he was asking. He turns towards her, his eyes following the familiar curve of her neck, her head bent down over the kitchen counter, focused on her task. He watches her fingers, gentle but firm, molding the dough, pushing and pulling.

~~~

He had only come here for a vacation, a few weeks at a B&B just up the street from where she worked. He leaned against the wall, a coffee mug solid in his hands, watching her fingers mold bread into shape. Last night she had let him kiss her for the first time. He could still feel the warm softness of her mouth beneath his, the way her body had so easily fit into his arms, the same way her hand had the first day they’d met. He couldn’t help but be reminded of the way dough seemed to listen to her fingers. Just watching her made him want to take her body between his hands and feel her respond to his own.

She was an ocean breeze, and he wanted nothing but to turn his face towards her, breathe her in, fill his lungs with the scent of her, the life of her. He was leaving for the city tomorrow and all he wanted to say was, “Come with me.”

~~~

Daniel wants to reach out and take her hand, watch his skin whiten with the flour dust on her fingers. He hadn’t asked her to come with him that day. He had regretted it every day for four months, lonely weeks filled with letters and phone calls that seemed like nothing but stones thrown into an ocean of space between them. Then he had come back to this place, this village on the edge of the world, and when he’d left again he’d taken her with him.

He pulls his eyes away from her, looking around the small kitchen, the small cottage she had made her home.

“How long have you lived here?” he asks her. The apartment they’d lived in together had been three times the size of this place. Still, it seems to suit her; simple furniture that looks almost hand-crafted, wooden floors and walls. He can’t help but reach out to touch the wall beside him, as if by touching where she lives he might be able to feel her again.

“I moved in when I came back here.”

Over a year then, he thinks, the pads of his fingers pressed against the solid coolness. Almost a year and a half. He turns back to the window, his hand falling, feeling heavy. His eyes find her bare feet, the dirtiness of them, dark smudges on pale skin. He isn’t sure how he’d never noticed before that she never wore shoes, as if the earth might swallow her at any moment, as if she was inviting it to. He clenches his hands by his sides tightly, resisting the urge to reach out and hold onto her, keep her, save her. Always he’d had this urge to hold on to her so she wouldn’t drift away. She shifts her weight from one foot to another and he loosens his fists, sighing. It hadn’t worked in the end. She had still slipped through his fingers like water.

“Chris…” he says and her hands still. It has been so long since anyone has said her name that way.

~~~

“Chris… come here,” he said, his voice brushing her skin like the breeze. She felt a warmth rise up inside her at the way he said her name. Held in his mouth the way she would hold seawater in cupped hands, carefully, because it was precious, and because it might seep through her fingers. He had said her name that way when he’d asked her to come live with him in the city. And she had, like trapped salt water held between his palms, felt like she had no choice but to go with him.

Now she took his hand, letting him hold her up to the sunlight to see through her for the first time, letting him explore her ragged edges with his fingertips. The next morning she’d had bruises from where he’d held onto her so tightly.

~~~

She turns to look at him, meeting his eyes, the color of the ocean on a sunny day. She says nothing and he runs a hand through his hair, opening his mouth and closing it again. His hands reach out towards her and then fall back to his sides. She can’t help but warm at the sight, his movements so like the ebb and flow of the ocean waters she loves. He’d never understood her when she’d tried to tell him why he reminded her of the sea. Christine presses back against the counter as he takes another step towards her, drawing strength from the wood. It was only later, after drowning in him, that she realized he wasn’t like the sea at all.

“Chris, what happened?”

She stiffens; he had come for answers. He had always been like that, wanting the concrete so he could stand on top of it, and from the greater height see clearer. Christine had never been able to explain the way she stood on the earth, explain how the earth moved, growing and falling, softening with rain, hardening with sun. She had sunk her hands into it, holding up the crumbling, ever-changing movement of it, trying to tell him it was only solid at first glance. She does it again, holding up the only bits she can manage to hang onto.

“I left.” They are two small words that hide more truth than they reveal, and her answer cuts him because he already knows it. It is a wound already inflicted, a knife already stuck into his side, and she has just pulled it out, the handle the top of the “I” and the tip the sharp bottom of the “t” that ended it all. I left. Fresh pain rushes into the hole that she has opened to the air, and both of them hear it in his sharp intake of breath.

~~~

He had come home to find her gone. She hadn’t had that many things, the apartment did not look empty, but as soon as he walked in the door he felt it. Something off, something wrong. As if the sounds of traffic had suddenly ceased. The hollow aching silence of what should have been, so subtle he hadn’t known how it would rip the earth from underneath him.

The note was on their bed. I’m sorry Daniel, it had read. I love you but I had to leave. Please forgive me. Inside the envelope was the engagement ring he’d proposed with only a week ago. She had said yes.

~~~

Her hands, covered in flour, reach as if to apply pressure to the wound she has reopened. “I’m sorry.” She stops before she touches him, not knowing if either of them can handle the contact, handle the blood on her hands.

He collapses down into a heavy wooden chair, leaning on the old oak table, his head in his hands. “Just tell me why.”

She goes to the window, turning away from him, and as she speaks he has trouble separating her voice from the sounds of the water outside. “Do we have to go through this again?”

“Again?” Anger creeps into his tone and she presses a palm against the coolness of the glass. “Christine you never told me anything. I waited. Days, weeks, months. And nothing but that note? After three years? Is that all I deserve?” He stands again, restless, pacing in a space too small for him.

“I told you why, you just never listened.” And even as she says it she senses the half truths laced into the words. Not placed there on purpose, but there nonetheless.

“I didn’t what? What are you -” Daniel stops himself, closing his eyes, thinking that the quiet here is too damn silent. He takes a breath, “Please Chris.”

She can’t turn to look at him, feeling the salt water in her eyes begin to sting. “I don’t belong there.” The words drop like rain to the ground, and although her earth soaks them up, his concrete resists their soothing kiss.

“Yes you do,” he protests, his hands gesturing as if to cut the air between them. “You were fine in the city, you made friends, you loved the bookstore around the corner, the bakery down the street, the plants you kept on our balcony.” He hesitates, looking at her to find courage or truth. “You loved me.” The whispered words are torn from his lips but the ragged edge they leave appears on her skin. She doesn’t deny it, and he walks closer, turning her gently so he can see her face. It is worn with sadness, pulling at her the way tides change the shoreline.

~~~

He was gone, having drinks with friends, so Christine was alone in their apartment when the storm hit. It rattled the windows and beat on the walls. She closed her eyes, smiling, and listened for it on the roof. It happened when she realized they were too many stories down to hear rain pound its music out. At first she didn’t know why she felt so much like running. She paced back and forth, pulling at her hair, searching the apartment for what was wrong. Pulling at books on shelves, going through cupboards, upending couch cushions. Still she couldn’t find it. She couldn’t breathe.

In desperation she went to the balcony, opening the sliding door and standing in the full force of the rain. She spread her arms wide, palms facing upwards to catch it, mouth open to drink. Her bones were full of water before she felt a sense of calm again. That was when she stopped lying to herself, when she acknowledged the something missing that had been making her insides itch. That was when she knew she couldn’t stay.

~~~

“We were good together weren’t we?” he asks, his tone wavering, both certain and uncertain.

They are both thinking back, remembering. They had been good together. Very different from one another, like the earth is from the moon, but still good. It had seemed for a while as if one could not exist in the same way without the other, as if they were as good as they would ever be when they were together. He had taught her how to drive a car, operate the satellite TV, introduced her to all the latest movies. She had convinced him to walk barefoot in the park, to let the rain fall on his tongue, to leave the air conditioning off and the windows open.

They had danced as orbiting bodies, moving in harmony with one another, separate but together. They moved closer and closer, their gravitational pulls trying to knock the other off balance. Daniel, so used to bending nature to his will, had been so sure he would succeed. Christine, content to watch, to listen, to move with the waves, had been the first to realize it would never work.

As always, Daniel snaps out of his memories before her. He had always been the quicker of the two to demand a solution, to work towards a fix.

“Did I do something wrong? Didn’t I-” he gets up and places himself in front of her so she has to meet his eyes. Reaching out, he cups her face, running his thumb over the familiar span of her cheekbone. “Didn’t I love you enough?”

“Yes! Yes of course you did! I know how much you loved me.. It’s all I ever wanted.” Her lips tremble and all he wants is to make them stop. “I just… I realized I needed more.”

“More? More what?” He latches onto this, sure if she can give him something to hold onto, a task or a number or an event, he can use it like a lasso to pull her back to him.

“Nothing. Not more of something… not something you can give, just… more.”

His hands open and close like gates, and she remembers passing through them so many times. Leaving the world on the other side of the wall and walking into his. And she can’t quite pinpoint the time when all she had done was grip the gate like prison bars, staring back at what she’d left.

“Christine you can’t do this to me. You can’t just disappear without an explanation after–” He clenches his teeth together, unable to let the words out into the air. After you said you wanted to be my wife. “I deserve more. I deserve –”

She breaks then, a dam that finally had too much. The words pour out of her: “I left because I hate the mole behind your left ear, because I love the freckle in front of your right ear, because we’re not enough for each other, because we’re too much for each other, because I’ve never loved anyone and couldn’t start with you no matter how badly I tried, because I fell in love with you so much it scared me and I had to run away, because I missed who I’d been, because I didn’t think I could be anything else but that, and because I knew I could… because I had to leave.” She presses a hand to her ribs beneath her heart, taking a breath before looking up to meet his eyes.

“Choose your answer,” she tells him, knowing they might both drown.

“For Christ’s sake! I hate it when you pull this shit Chris, you know that!” His hands pull at his hair, and she wonders if he feels the salt from the ocean spray.

“I’m sorry! I don’t know what you want from me!” He has backed her into a corner and her hands search the wooden walls for answers or for strength.

“The truth!”

“I don’t have it! Not the way you want it!” No one had ever been able to make her angry the way he could. It’s been so long since Christine has felt the heat of it, a brand threatening to permanently mark her.

“What the hell are you talking about? The truth is the truth Christine! Just tell me!”

“You don’t understand! You never understood!” She screams it at him, inches from his face, and he flinches back, his anger faltering at her accusation. Pushing past him she goes to the window, throwing it open, allowing the cold air and rain to rush in. “It’s like asking me for a piece of the wind Daniel… I just… I can’t give it to you… I don’t have it.”

Their heavy breathing competes with the sound of rain and the tide outside. Long minutes pass as they look at each other, infinities of words and of nothing lost and found in their gaze. When he slowly closes the distance between them, Christine stays where she is. She covers her face with her hands, unable to look at the ragged pain in his eyes. He reaches up and gently takes her hands away, his fingers soft and asking. She’s forgotten they’re covered in flour, and they leave white powder on her eyelashes, her mouth. He wipes tears off her cheek with his thumb and she realizes she is crying.

“I’m sorry,” is all she can give him.

She lets him touch the contours of her face, hoping he will feel the truth etched there. She wants to smell the sound of the ocean and touch the height of the mountains. She wants to feel colors and see sounds. She wants to find the truth and wrap it in a box so she can give it to him as a present with a big shiny bow and a card that says she is sorry. But she can’t find the present, so all she can give him is the empty box and the card with an apology that feels insignificant in the absence of what is supposed to be beneath the wrapping paper.

He finishes tracing her list with his fingertips and meets her eyes.

“Daniel…” She holds out her hand to him, a closed fist, and slowly opens her curled fingers to reveal the absence of an answer to the question he is asking. Taking what isn’t there, he shoves it into his pocket, knowing he will have it tattooed onto his arm later, to carry with him always. She watches him walk out the door wondering what he’d taken, but wondering even more what she had given.

~~~

She felt the words rise up inside her like water beginning to surge over the rocks. All the times he had said it to her over the past year, she had never said it back, and he had told her he was okay with that. She looked at his eyes, the color of the sea on a sunny day, and whispered, “I love you,” against his mouth.

~~~

When she left, the reasons had been solid, steady, like a door she’d pushed through. But somehow she can’t remember its color or shape, and she can’t stop wondering if she ever really knew.