supplicium post mortem

She first saw him on the stoop on her way out of the party. The streets were narrow, deserted, like London. The party had been tedious.

“Oh,” he said.

“Are you going up?” she asked.

He stood, flustered, grinding out a cigarette with his dress shoe. “I don’t think so.”

Her head spun, possibly from a sinus infection, possibly because he looked like a young Daniel Day-Lewis and sounded like a Public School boy once removed. “Can’t say I blame you.” She met his eye with uncharacteristic nerve and then stepped off the stoop into the blowing snow.

“You look like a schoolgirl,” he said with a slight smile. “Are you sure you’re old enough to be knocking about on your own?”

She didn’t move, but shoved her hands deep into her pockets. “Quite sure.” The wind cut through her tights and made her wish she was wearing trousers. “What’s your name?”

He turned up his collar and joined her in the street. “James. James Mercer.”

“That was the name of my third grade teacher.”

“Oh, yes?” He came alongside her and began to walk. “How old’s that, then?”

“Eight.”

He buttoned the top of his coat. “You haven’t changed much, then.”

She glowered at the cobblestones. “Do you make a habit of chatting up girls in foreign cities and calling them immature?”

“Who says this is a foreign city?”

“Do you live here?”

He suppressed a smile. “Do you?”

She surveyed the empty street. “Listen,” she said, “it was great meeting you, James, but this is my train.” She gestured with her head to the red ball a block away.

“Closed, I wager.”

She inhaled and nodded: “Goodnight.” And strode quickly away from him.

“Wait. Please?”

She did not befriend strange men. She didn’t befriend strangers period. But his voice hit her chest somewhere like memory, as if she had known it, or would know it. She turned, but kept her distance. The snow swirled around him under the streetlamp.

“I’m an idiot,” he said. “Give me another chance.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Please.”

Her eyes stung, suddenly. She wasn’t feeling well. She belonged in bed, alone.

He craned his neck to see behind her. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

“It’s too late for coffee.”

“Chocolate, then.” He nodded at some florescent light down the block. Her stomach growled. Her chin was going numb in the cold. She shrugged and then strode towards the coffee shop. He caught her up at the door, held it for her, and before she could unwrap herself, he’d ordered two hot chocolates and was hanging up her coat. She threw herself into a booth and placed her bag firmly beside her. He slipped into the seat across.

“Now,” he said, his voice more chocolaty than any chocolate possible, “what’s this all about?” His irises were green with flecks of brown in them. Her throat ached. Her eyes started streaming.

“That wasn’t my teacher’s name,” she sobbed.

He put his hands on the table, palms up, and smiled. “It isn’t mine, either.”

---

What is Secret Saturday? My wildcard, like Haron’s, was Third Grade Teacher.

It’s a thrill to have so many great writers joining in this first week. A big welcome to all of them. Check out their pieces!

• Haron
• Emma Jane
• Scarlett
• Nettagyrl

This has been a ropey weekend full of too much of my mother, too much nausea-inducing grief, and the strong desire to be dead. The weather has been made-to-order, cool, sunny, dry, lush. I brought the dogs up to my mom’s house (a.k.a. the house with the pink “whack me” pyjamas) and there was plenty of activity: attending a neighbor’s cookout (tiresome), buying plants and pots at 50% off (awesome), cooking (e.g. blueberry cobbler), watching stuff (Le Tour, Wimbledon, Johnny Depp’s Dillinger flick), hiking with the dogs (once getting lost and having to bushwhack), taking her wicked poodle out on the bike, trimming back her wisteria, and generally being fussed over and over-controlled by her.

Also, as she told me the story of her elderly friend who told the hospital their diagnosis wasn’t good enough and thus eventually got life-saving treatment for her husband, I spiralled off into a silent panicked freak-out. Because when they told me M was dead, I just stood there, trembling. I did not scream and raise the roof and say “That’s not good enough,” and demand to see their superiors and threaten to sue and insist they go back in there and revive him or transfer him somewhere that would. All this, I realized, he would have done for me. I did ask them if they were sure he was really dead, since he was still warm, but they told me yes, they were very sure, and I accepted this. He would have raised even Hell to bring me back, but I meekly accepted what I was told. Did I do this because I always suspected deep down that happiness wasn’t mine, that a huge tragedy would smite me because it always does when things are good? If I had known then what killed him (aortic aneurysm), I would have screamed and yelled and threatened and made their existence a misery until they sucked the blood out of the sac around his heart, put him on life support, and got someone in to fix it. Now, though, I can’t do this. I can never ever do this as long as I live. His body is ashes in the columbarium, and nothing can bring him back. I failed to stop the permanent ruination of his life and my own. And thus I want to go buy a bunch of sleeping pills and eat them. Really.

I am not doing this, however, because I believe it’s a sin, perhaps the only sin I’m unwilling to commit. And by sin I mean an active, willful rejection of and separation from God. So, to my atheist friends who silently wish I would get over my God delusion, know that God is the only reason I have not killed myself.

Today I drove by the house we were thinking of buying when he died last year. Someone else owns it now. We don’t. We aren’t raising our first child there. All the good things we were working to make happen are off the menu, for us, for me.

I’ve been reaching out a little bit to people in the tgi world (otherwise known as “The Scene”). I’m planning to go to the SSNY party next weekend, which will be the first event I’ve attended (save a brunch, with M, about ten years ago, hosted by a different organization). So, if you are going to the same party, find me and say hi! By all accounts, this is a nice group of people whose focus is old-fashioned spanking, which is pretty much my style. Reading Radagast’s recent posts about the nuances of communication with people in the scene (here and here) awakened all my social anxieties and insecurities. I think that at heart I believe that no-one decent would ever find me appealing and want to play with me. Certainly the only person who could ever love me is dead.

I’m sorry—I really am—for all of the depressing self-pity in this blog. I try to hold most of it in. I am certain it is unappealing to read. I wouldn’t want to read it. However, maybe there is someone who finds, or will find it helpful, for some reason. They say widowhood is the club you never wanted to join. I was not supposed to be this person. But since I am, friends (I can call you friends, can’t I, if you’ve read this far?), this is my dispatch from the edge. You don’t need to come here yourselves. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. And what you need to know is this: Love your people while you have them. Love them. Love them. Nothing else matters very much.