Pure Bliss

She heard the sound of the car pulling out of the driveway, then the house was quiet and still. He had gone to work. Sandy caught the faint smell of the coffee in her cup as she stood over the kitchen sink and stared into her snow-covered back yard. She was trembling. Her arms still ached where he had grabbed her minutes before. He had flown into another fit over…what was it this time? The gas in the car? Or was it the laundry? Whatever he claimed the reason was, Sandy knew the truth. It had been three years since it had happened, and they did love each other – they had been inseparable since high school - but despite his claims that he could put it all in the past, it still loomed over their lives like a shadow. She had been so terrified when he shoved her against the wall that she hadn’t heard a word he was screaming at her.

The tears came then. The old maple with the big, low branch, the forty-year-old veteran in her postage stamp sized suburban back yard, began to blur from the bottom up and Sarah saw something. There, sitting on the low branch, lone and solitary, was a large, black owl. She wiped the tears away and looked again, but the owl had disappeared.

The original plan had been that once Tim had gotten his big promotion, they would move to suburbia and settle in, to start a family, but that hadn’t worked. Instead, the time they had lived there together had felt to Sandy like one long drawn-out awkward office party where you nursed a drink at a corner table and just couldn’t leave because the boss kept making toasts. She felt so alone among those people, and Tim’s hours got longer and longer, even getting to the point where he would call to say that he was ‘pulling an all-nighter’ at work, which only magnified her loneliness and insecurity

Then the phone calls had started; mysterious calls that Tim would take in the other room, strange calls that Sandy would answer only to be met with silence on the other end. And then, in a stupid, senseless, horrible moment of weakness, Sandy had made things much worse. It was mistake that she couldn’t take back, a mistake that had led to Tim admitting that he had had an affair as well. Sandra knew, in her heart of hearts, that at that moment, it was over between them. But she clung to the life she knew; they both did. She loved Tim desperately and had been with him for so long that she found the prospect of life without him terrifying. With emotions running high that night, both had made tearful promises to pick up the pieces and move on together.

In the months that followed, their lives turned grey. Quiet dinners precluded nights spent lying beside one another in their bed, staring at the dark ceiling. Tim’s resentment slowly turned to anger; her sadness turned to depression.

She almost left the first day he hit her. Almost. It was only once, she told herself. It was her temper that made him do it, she told herself. There was no mark, she told herself. He had left for three days that time. When he came home, he acted as though nothing happened. Sandy waited for an opportunity to talk, but it never came. She didn’t want to disturb still waters and left it alone and their lives went on.

The day that Sandy mentioned moving to the country with the dogs, the change in Tim was instant. He was like a little kid. Sandy watched him get busy around the house, painting and fixing it up for the sale. He was affectionate, attentive and kind. Sandy drank it up as if she had been walking through a desert for a year. A new beginning was here for both, it seemed. There was a nagging uncertainty in the back of her mind, but she chose to ignore it.

It was around that time that Sandy had started having the dreams. She had always had vivid dreams, even as a child. They often seemed to build on one other, extending the story from a previous night, but now they all seemed to be the same. An owl, always there with her, sometimes in her line of vision, sometimes just a feeling. And then there was the old woman. Sandy could barely remember the old lady upon waking, like a sepia tone snapshot, slightly out of focus. In her last, and most memorable dream, the little old woman had stood in a heavy dress, with dark worn-in shoes, and she had a lightly soiled apron tied around her slight frame. Her thick, slightly disheveled hair was pulled back into a bun, and she stared down from a veranda with a hard, cold expression. Behind her and to the right, not five feet away, sat the owl. The old woman’s stern gaze was mirrored in its large round eyes as it too, looked down on Sandy.

It was a strange feeling, but at the time Sandy felt - somehow knew - that they were there for her, to watch over her, to guide her through the next leg of her journey, whatever that journey might be.

Sandy loved being outdoors and had always escaped to the woods every chance she could get. The forest around her new home smelled of pine needles, cool and crisp, even on warm days. Ever since she had been a little girl, she had dreamed of moving to an old house in a small town. She wanted the freedom that came with living in the country, without the constant noise and movement of living in a city. She and Tim had chosen the perfect place.

Sandy and Tim had moved to the country, leaving the pressures of the city behind in exchange for pure bliss, and for the first year, that is exactly what it had been. Long morning walks with her dogs in the woods, sipping coffee by the river. It seemed as if she had finally been given that second chance she wished for. She felt like she was home again. The house had been built in 1861 by a logging tycoon. It was known by the local townspeople as “the big yellow house” or “Mary Tale’s house”. The house had been abandoned 10 years earlier when Mary had fallen down the basement steps. She had died instantly.

Shortly after they had arrived, people had begun popping in with welcoming gifts and stories. Sandy learned about Mary’s sad story from bits here and there.

Mary had been adopted as a young girl almost a hundred years ago, by the rich logging family who owned the yellow house. She had been orphaned; an illness had swept through her family and killed both her parents and three of her young siblings. The remaining children had been separated and sent to work for families in the area. Mary’s job at the big yellow house had been to cook bread and clean. She lived in the house almost her whole life.

On quiet mornings, Sandy would walk around her new home and run her hands along the wood doors and the old walls, thinking of how different, how ‘warm’ everything felt here compared to the cold, sterile feeling she felt in their house back in the city. She smiled, wondering if Mary had ever hummed while she cleaned, like Sandy did.

Sandy imagined that the cracks and crevices in the dark wooden doors could tell stories. She thought of how many hands had passed over these antique handles. The old pine floors of the house had long since lost their shine but were still beautiful in their imperfection. Many of the rooms still had old thick wallpaper, some with tiny pink flowers, others with bright, golden patterns. Sandy knew they would have to update the house at some point, but not today. Even now, one year in, she knew that the house still needed a mountain of work. She loved to sit in various rooms and wonder what secrets lay hidden behind the old lathe and plaster or in the stone walls of the old basement.

In the first year, Tim and Sandy took long walks with their dogs and marveled at the tall trees as they looked straight up to the sky. They walked down to the river that their property backed onto and sat; Sandy nestled in Tim’s arms as they watched the sun set over the ripples in the water. Then after dusk the fireflies would come out, and they would talk about their plans for the property. Sandy drank in the country air; let it fill her lungs. Back then she felt as if she could finally breathe.

Now, two years later, the shadow that had loomed over their marriage so long ago had returned; this time with a vengeance.

Weeks passed like molasses on a cold day. Tim was regularly irritated and quick to temper. On his bad days the air in the room would seem to tighten and darken. When Sandy tried to ask him what was bothering him, he would fly into a rage and storm off. At first, he was gone for a few hours at a time and would come home calmer and apologetic. As time passed, his rages became more unpredictable. He would be upset by the dogs lying in his path, by crumbs on the counter or by a phone call. His started to leave the house at random times, and his absences became longer.

Sandy started to steer clear of Tim while he was home. She threw herself into her future gardening plans for the property. Mary’s beautiful rich gardens were all but gone and all that was left were overgrown flower beds dotting the fields and hiding in weeds. Sandy tackled them one flower bed at a time. She found being outside in the sun and working with the earth calmed her. As she dug through the weeds, she found some old, hidden birdhouses. Some looked as though a child had made them while other were more intricate, stunning pieces. Sandy’s favorite was a little house that had been built to look like the yellow house. It had a small figure standing in front of it that must have been carved to look like Mary. All the paint had come off it and it needed some repairs which Sandy took to with a refreshed devotion. She placed the birdhouses, one by one around the garden and placed the small yellow house beside her favorite chair. The birds started coming back and Sandy found herself waking early in the morning to take her coffee out to the gardens just to listen to the bird songs.

One summer evening Sandy was sitting on her chair which she had placed in front of the flower bed she would start the next day. She was examining the bed and mentally sorting through the seedlings she had, to picture which would go where. She sat and listened to the bird song turn to crickets and she watched the moon come up while the sun went to bed. Sandy was lost in thought when she heard a crack in the trees behind her. She turned quickly to see what it was but in the dim light she couldn’t see anything. It was time to go home. When she got up to walk back to the house, she heard the hoot from well beyond the treeline. It was the first time she had ever heard an owl, but there was no mistaking it; a ‘who-who—whoooo” trill that sounded from deep under the forest canopy, out of site. She looked closer and could just make out the outline of the large, solitary bird perched high in a tree. She was mesmerized. As she watched, the hairs on Sandy’s arms stood on end. Tim had been gone for two days, and that night as she climbed into bed alone, she was calm and felt a quiet strength in herself.

He had left the day before after a fight they had at their favourite spot on the farm that they called the lookout. The spot was at the high point on the property hidden at the very back in the woods. The trees were mostly maples at this part of the farm and the air was filled with the rich scent of hundreds of years of leaf decay. The leaves were starting their dance of changing colours and falling to the ground. All along the path there were bright spots of yellow and orange. At the top was a small old platform of greying wood with a rickety railing that looked out over the hills beyond. There were some memories of years passed around the platform. A broken plant pot sat at one corner and an ancient wooden box that was disintegrating into the ground.

“I think we should fix this railing up, don’t you think?” Sandy said to Tim.

“You mean me, right?” Tim responded. Sandy could see his shoulders tense under his plaid flannel shirt.

“What?”

“You heard me,” said Tim as he slowly turned to face her. “You want me to fix it. It never stops with you. There’s always something. Why can’t you just leave it alone!” Tim yelled these last words in her face. He had stormed away and Sandy let him go. When she got back to the house, she found a mug she had given him broken on the floor and Tim was gone.

Sandy was at one of the local towns one day running errands. She was walking down the quaint main street. It looked the same as it might have fifty years ago with hand painted store signs, the smell of fresh baked bread wafting out onto the street and people greeting each other as they met often stopping to chat. The opposite of the business of the city. Just passed the flower shop was one of Sandy’s favorite thrift stores. Hanging in the window was a beautiful silver necklace with an intricately carved owl pendant. Sandy was not a big jewellery person but was drawn to this striking piece. She went in to find Marguerite sitting in her usual spot behind the desk.

Marguerite was a tiny robust woman who was ageless and always had a quick smile and a twinkle in her eye. She has long pure white hair that she wore in braids. She was a regular volunteer at the thrift store and the two had become fast friends. They talked about books and knitting and the yellow house. Marguerite knew Mary when Marguerite was just a child. She told Sandy stories of Mary baking delicious tarts and cookies for the local children who would come and spend afternoons playing in Mary’s large flower gardens, eating sweets and drinking water out of the old well in the corner. It was well known that if someone was in trouble, they could always go to Mary for help. She was sadly missed when she died.

“Marguerite, what can you tell me about that beautiful owl necklace hanging in the window?” Sandy asked.

“Oh, yes, that is a beauty,” said Marguerite. “I thought of you as soon as I saw it. No one seems to know where it came from,” Marguerite said with a little smile.

Sandy bought the necklace and put it on right away. It was heavier than Sandy had thought, and the metal was warm against her skin. The two women said their goodbyes and Sandy left to walk home at the edge of town.

Over that summer, Sandy gained strength through her garden and her new friendships. She looked forward to her dreams of Mary and the Owl. They seemed to lend her strength and ground her. The dreams almost became part of her as she carried them in her thoughts during the day as well. Sandy has noticed a new intensity in the dreams as though the silent friends needed her to know something. This didn’t trouble her as she was skilled at focusing on the positive and gleaning over the negative.

It was nearing the end of the summer and Sandy looked amazing from all her work in the garden. Her arms were tanned and strong. Her face was tanned and fresh and her hair shone in the sun. Despite her troubled marriage, she was happy. She worked in the gardens every morning and looked forward to her walks into town to run errands and visit with Marguerite at the thrift store. The two would sit and have tea and a treat Sandy had picked up at the bakery. Marguerite loved sharing stories of her childhood with Sandy and could talk for hours.

One cool fall day, Tim was home and he invited Sandy out for a walk. He had a warm smile and held out Sandy’s favourite sweater to her. It was later in the afternoon and there was a little chill in the air. They walked up to the point and sat in silence watching the sun begin its descent into the ocean of trees. Late afternoon light made the oranges and yellows of the trees brighter and more alive. The forest seemed to move like waves as the sunlight moved across it and a gentle breeze moved the tall tops.

“This is nice,” Sandy said with a sigh.

Tim smiled at her.

“I’m going to fix that railing,” Tim said with a grin.

“That would be great. I was thinking I could help and we could add a little…” Sandy cut off and instantly regretted her words. Tim’s face clouded.

“Its okay,” he said quietly, “I can do it on my own.”

“Of course you can,” said Sandy. She was feeling a mix of irritation and something else. Fear?

“It will never change,” Tim said quietly. “You will never be happy. Why can’t you just be happy?” By now Tim had stood up and was leaning over Sandy. His face looked pained; his eyes were crazed. Yes, it was fear she felt. Sandy stood up and took step back. Her actions seem to stoke Tim’s rage. He moved so quickly she couldn’t react. He grabbed her by her arm and raised his hand to strike. Sandy closed her eyes and thought of Mary.

It was over in an instant. Sandy heard the sound of large wings moving the air near her head. She opened her eyes just in time to see the owl fly at Tim. Tim stumbled back and hit the railing. It crumbled under his weight, and he went over the edge. Everything went quiet. Sandy just stood for a moment in shock. She felt her body relax a bit and wrapped her sweater tighter around her body. She looked around to see the owl, but it was nowhere. She walked slowly to the edge of the platform and looked over to see Tim’s body twisted into a grotesque position amongst the boulders at the bottom of the hill.

Sandy’s gardens were the talk to the town. She was older now with white streaked hair that she wore in braids and a few lines on her face. She now had two new dogs and she started volunteering at the thrift store in town after Marguerite passed away.

Sandy listened to the sound of birds singing and children laughing outside. She took a fresh batch of cookies out of the oven and placed them on the tray with lemonade and a stack of little cups. She walked out onto her porch and rang her lunch triangle. A group of children from town came running and laughing out of her gardens towards her. They all sat at her feet for their snacks, and she began one her magical stories about old Mary.