Not This

I didn’t want it.

The envelope sat fat and heavy on the corner of my desk. I no longer had to open it to see the contents. I lost track of how many times I had picked it up and looked inside, hoping somehow this time would be different. It wasn’t. The contents remained, stolid and unchanging.

I didn’t want it. A small black notebook, a check, two photographs. Without conscious thought, my hand reached for the envelope, bringing it close to my face so the address blurred.

I straightened in the chair, and then slumped again. What did it matter anyway, good posture, diligence, effort?

My world turned gray three months ago, but I had been pushing through each day. The tiniest sliver of hope gleaming gold around the edges still. Extinguished three days ago when I emptied the mailbox. I’d heard the dull clank of the latch, my daily reminder to pause and eat lunch. The rhythms of working from home so carelessly established.

On days the postman was late, so was my lunch. Not that it mattered now. The mail still came, but I didn’t pause in my contemplation. I didn’t get up from my chair. I didn’t eat.

I looked at the envelope again, almost startled to find it in my hand. I found myself losing more time these days to memory. Drifting in a place dominated by soft brown eyes, long tanned legs, gentle laughter.

I peered at the postmark, one week ago, Wilmington, Delaware. I would have laughed at that, in a previous life. Of course, it was Delaware. I wondered if the person who inserted these items, put the address sticker on the front, dropped it at the local post office, had any idea what it would mean when I received it on the other end. I wondered if that person gave any thought to how my world would collapse, and I would lie sobbing on the floor for an unknowable length of time. I wondered if it had been only one person, or many, employees completing a mindless task before going home to their families.

Family. That was a pain that penetrated the fog. A word that had meant something, once. A word that meant laughter and snuggles, before it meant slammed doors and screaming. Should I have been different? Loved more, loved less? People say hindsight is 20/20, but that’s not true. You don’t get to know if anything would be different if you were different. You can never know what might have been, only what is.

I emptied the envelope on my desk. The contents spilling across the bare surface. My computer was the first thing smashed in a rage. Rage against what, I don’t know. God, fate, myself…you.

I didn’t want it. The check. The notebook. The two photographs. I picked up the check first. Each item a laceration in its own way. The standard check from an insurance company, oversize with a perforated edge, impersonal, uncaring. My name on the pay to line. A random string of letters and numbers in the memo field, your insurance policy number. The amount of $20,000. Black letters on a white background. I moved the check in the light to see the watermark. As if I thought a changing perspective could change anything about this reality. I remember the day we signed the papers on the policy. $20,000 had seemed like so much then. It was nothing. I didn’t care. I didn’t want it. How could someone put a price on your smile or your wit? On the mornings when I would wake you and you’d regale me with yet another wild dream you’d had? The check could have been twenty trillion dollars and it still would have been nothing. I tore it in half. The sound of ripping paper the sound of my rending heart. Each tear creating smaller and smaller pieces until they drifted from my hands like snow. I watched them flutter to the ground and contemplated the remaining items. The photographs. The notebook.

My hands seemed to crawl toward the pictures of their own accord. God, I missed your face. I tried not to remember the way you’d looked at me the day you left. Your eyes slammed shut against me, spittle flying from your angry mouth. “You will never understand!” The last words I will ever hear you say. I should have gone after you. I should have chased your car backing out of the driveway to say “I do! I do understand!” I know the pain of desires unrequited, dreams deferred, hopes withered. Instead I turned away and let the door slam.

I picked up the picture on top, your passport photo. How it once made us laugh. Taken the day after we spent a week at the beach. The tan of your skin and dark interior of the passport office combining to immortalize you a color never once achieved. Every time we traveled and watched the agent do a double take, our eyes would meet and skitter away to avoid releasing our laughter, knowing we would not be able to recover it.

Drops of water fell on the photo, tears I didn’t realize I was crying, my constant companion. I set it down reverently and picked up the second. I had vomited the first time I saw it, and the second, and the third. Repeated viewings had reduced the reaction to violent retching and a mouth full of bile. The lack of food in my stomach likely assisting that abatement. At first glance, the second photo was only a pile of smoldering rubble. You had to want to see the arm protruding from beneath two stones in the lower left corner. A long-fingered delicate hand that almost seemed to be reaching for something. You had to look closer still to see the bracelet. A gift for your birthday two years ago. Sentimental instead of practical. One day I was walking past a Tiffany’s and remembered your youthful fascination with their ID bracelets. You were no more than four at the time, but the memory leapt upon me, as full of clarity as if it happened yesterday instead of decades ago. I went in and bought a simple silver bracelet with a small diamond in the corner. Your initials engraved on top and on the inside our words, language of our shared existence, “I love you most.” You scoffed when you unwrapped the package, but I saw it on your wrist the following day, and every day after. Until my final view, gleaming from a picture I never ever wanted to see. Authorities used the bracelet to identify you, but were unable to return it. “Misplaced in evidence,” they said. “Turn up eventually,” they said. I don’t think I wanted it anyway. As broken as I already was, I would have shattered completely seeing it separate from you. Existing when you no longer did.

When the accident happened, three months ago, there had still been a chance. You weren’t yet identified. It was possible you checked out early. You had been traveling abroad. Staying in a cheap hotel. Your circumstances lessened by my refusal to lend you money. There was a fire. No one quite sure how it started. Authorities not interested in yet another accident. I know how deep you slept. I know something woke you. I don’t know if you tried to escape, or were already trapped. I don’t know how the end found you.

I drop the picture and reach toward the notebook, one of many I saw you carry over the years. A repository of reminders, to-do lists, phone numbers of strangers you hoped might become friends. I had seen one with you always, a constant in your busy days. This one charred at the edges. I’m still not sure how it wasn’t completely burned. The man I spoke with said it was found under you. Your body curled around it as if you were trying to protect it, as I had always curled around you. I picked it up, pages falling open to your last entry, the spine broken by my attempt to tear it apart, undo the past. A page with crooked words scrawled in soot “I love you most.”