Embroidered Memory

I fall in love with her every day.

I don’t relive it. I’m not trapped in time. There isn’t some kind of special Being guiding my steps. It’s just her. I see all the ways I fall in love with her. All the ways it would be glorious to find her, to see her for the first time. I allow myself to suspend reality; to stay within the canals of fantasy and let her come to life amongst the colour of dreams, amongst the routines and patterns of the day. There’s a small marigold that she has embroidered along the xylophone of her ribcage on whatever she’s wearing. Sometimes I catch a glimpse, sometimes I have to trust it’s there. If I’m lucky, I can feel the rough scar of it as I come close. I’m never quite sure when it’ll happen. But I do know, she’s never more beautiful than when I think of her.

•

It looms over him. Beautifully. Gothically; with dustings of shadows and hollows of cold careening up his skin, under his coat. There’s fog everywhere, lingering like frigid smoke. He’s holding a photograph in his hand. It’s creased and weathered; the edges soft from handling. There’s more memory etched in those black and white folds than in his own mind. In his palm, she sits curled over, hair blowing loose, skin freckled. He knows that her lips were pink. Her jacket too big: red corduroy, fleece collar. There was nothing else in the world that looked that beautiful. She’s smiling so infectiously, it’s as if she’s still moving. It really did capture the sway and the dance of her. He runs his thumb over the picture, sighs and puts it back in his wallet. The house is still looming over him. The ivy dark upon its walls. The dirt packed beneath his feet. The wind cold against his skin.

When he approaches the house, he stands at the door, waiting for it to open. Stonework and masonry blur around the edges as the house stretches on into the vaporous unknown. There’s a crunch behind him. Pebbles. Leaves. Nature succumbing. When he turns around, she is coming up the hill, hiking boots tight, ponytail high, eerie light hovering. The steam from her thermos curls into the overcast afternoon like a magician’s wake. It isn’t evening yet and she doesn’t look his way. She’s too busy walking. When the door creaks open, there’s a man there. He’s dressed in finery that seems to echo throughout the house. He is suit-clad. As he crosses the threshold into the warmth, he’s greeted courteously and pointed upstairs. His things are already hanging over the dark wood of the dresser. The light that permeates is underwater. It won’t rain, but it almost always feels like it could. That’s the threat. That’s the certainty. It looms.

•

He cuts a dapper figure in his uniform. His hair is short, cropped. His back is straighter and he waits at the bottom of the staircase. The room bright and warm, like living in a chandelier. The antithesis of the outside gloom. But without the hovering darkness, the room wouldn’t be so rich; one adds life to the other. There is a champagne flute tower waiting to have tinkling liquid cascade like streams. As the white-tie band starts to warm up, stretching their notes into the air in anticipatory promise, she ambles down the stairs and into his eye line. He smooths the sides of his combed hair. Oil coats his hands like cloying breath. She is the existence of the photograph in his back pocket. She is living colour. Autofocus. Her lips are red. Her hair is bouncy, pinned on one side to billow over her shoulders like cloud. Her dress has buttons that mould her figure. It is golden. Gliding towards him, she glimmers citrine. Smile wide and welcoming, he takes her manicured hand in his and delicately touches his inadequate lips to the soft skin of her. Her fingertips curl into his grasp. Blush blooms across her face, her freckles glittering. He pulls her to him and they dance, living off the gaze of each other. Thread scrapes lightly over his fingertips. They sway and rest in the rhythm of what they’re feeling. The music deepens as the entire band joins them in brass, base, skin and ivory.

Each time he gets to look at her, he sees her open up in front of him. He gets to impress his love upon her somehow and she always knows. He waits for the next meeting, the next moment, the next perhaps, so he can do it all over again.

•

As he walked across fields and bridges, tarmac and bramble to get here, to this gothic abode creviced in the hillsides, there had been a cavern of trees. He thinks of them now. When he walked under their arching canopy, bent to the will of the woods, he heard only bated silence. She came trudging through the forest towards him as if from nowhere. Angry. Dishevelled. Her hair askew, twigs snapped like chopsticks among her flaxen tresses, the red ribbon of her bonnet in a loose bow at her neck, mud coated the hem of her dress. The velvet green coat she wore was smeared with debris. She was grunting, frustrated; lacquered in sweat and fragranced rain. Mildew. It was a sweet aroma to him. When she noticed him, she had stopped, taken aback with smatterings of flush. Cordially, he approached her with a bow of his head. He felt the pull of his beige breeches, the stride of his leather knee boots and the tautness of his vest and coat and collar. Their hard, high edges had combed against his long sideburns. It was more rigid than he cared for or would have worn if it weren’t for this moorish terrain. He could have sworn he had heard violins swelling. When he stood before her, he had dared not utter words. To find her here, wandering alone under the wended branches, he was thankful. He could be near her; close the space between them, linger without the roving suspicions of chaperones. She had never moved. It was as if his presence enchanted her. Reciprocation. Intensity mounted when from his pocket, he had pulled a handkerchief to her face and drew his hand so close, he felt uneven breath escape her lips. With the permissive lowering of her eyes, he had wiped the flecks of dirt from her cheeks, never imagining they could be so creamy, so speckled. Fawn. He’d never been allowed this close. As the handkerchief fell away, he had felt more than saw her sigh. He caught her eye, wisps of hair wafting across her face. He had dared to lift his hand to touch her skin and she had held her breath and his gaze, as he licked his lips minutely in trepidation. Her stitching was coming undone. It was then that footsteps and dulled voices had begun to intrude into the recesses around them. But he had to; he caressed her face so delicately, so faintly, it was as if he was marking the hidden trails of her, so that when he was able to return, he wouldn’t get lost. But it was over too soon. When he had heard his name called, he stepped back, stiffer than before. He had torn his eyes away from all that he was desperate for. She had known it too.

•

He manages to get dressed and find his way back downstairs. He hears the scrape of chairs as the household prepares for more people. He’s looking forward to seeing everyone. They will end up in the library. They always do. A smile ruptures from him. The tie is being stubborn. He roams through a house he knows well, yet still feels fresh – unfamiliar nostalgia – until he finds a mirror. Even staring at himself, the garden stretching out in reflection, he can’t seem to pull the tie together. He’s never been very good at it. The collar of his blue shirt is turned up, rubbing the bottom of his earlobes. They’re still a little damp. He lets the tie hang loose around his neck, not only because he can’t remember how to do it, but because she’s behind him. He turns and crosses to the edge of the lawn where the grass grows long. Uninhabited. It waves quietly in the breeze of the glistening afternoon; where daisies pockmark the ground in rebellious swells; where nature scatters across the earthen floor; and where she sits on a flat, wide swing with her feet idle on the ground under the low branches of a colossal beech tree. Ruby red shoes are at the hollow base of the trunk, bright against the greenery. This time, her hair is pulled neatly at the nape of her neck, the long collar of her dress almost drops off her shoulders. The rest of the dress hangs in faded lilac. Her calves are bare but for her sheer stockings. He hopes she isn’t cold but she seems to whisper that she’s content, drifting back and forwards in a soft lullaby. A well-worn and comfortable smile consumes her face, her eyes reflective and inviting. He saunters slowly to her, hands in his pockets, drawn by her presence. Tilting her head in questioning, she pulls him down by the ends of his tie to crouch before her. His palms hold the cold metal chains of the swing on either side of her, locking her into the portrait of this moment. There is a gentle undulation; a fraction of movement from where she sits. She pulls his collar down, straightens the notch of his tie at his throat until her hand rests over his heart. It beats fast and wild. She closes her eyes to its familiar anthem before kissing his temple. The wind blows cold over the impression she leaves and he too closes his eyes as they sway. His hand covers her xylophone bouquet.

•

When he walks back inside and wanders through hallways and finds himself being reacquainted with what is already known. The tie hangs loose around his neck. Still. When he meanders to the end of the house, he pushes the thick oak door open. The light enters differently here. It knows what hallowed ground this is; who has claimed it. Her nails are long, coated in glossy black lacquer. They almost come to a point and there’s a long sleek cigarette filter poised between her fingers. Ebony. Jet. A curl of smoke faintly coils from the end it. She pulls the filter to her lips; the black consumes the image before his eyes. He focuses on the little details, the minutia. The rich texture of monochrome inhabits the space around her. White teeth peeking through dark lips. Pale hands that extend into the claws of a panther. Benign. As she inhales, the tip of the filter glows red as ash burns against the night of her. Through parted, pursed lips, she breathes out cauldron smoke, obscuring her face. Her lashes are turned down anyway. The wingback chair she sits in absorbs the fullness of her in shadow. Only her hair, draped white like the moon hovers around her. She doesn’t say a word. She is the film noir he always thought she could be. She plays a silent melody that permeates around her; the gentle tapping of drums, the velvet rich cascade of a saxophone, the confident glide of a piano. It draws him in and he aches, longing for the mystery of who she is. Yet he knows.

Behind him, the lights are turned on and the library comes to life. The chair is deeply worn and supple. Maroon, not black. It’s empty. The room, however, is not and he turns around to greet a smiling face. He matches it. It’s the reason he came.