Marianne

Glinting on the railing, Marianne’s ring rivaled the sun hung midway in a cloudless cerulean sky. Oliver Swenson squinted tired eyes and swirled half melted ice cubes in his bourbon while water rippled in opalescent veins of turquoise and sapphire before a lush mound of trees and brush. A real generic paradise. Not one mile away throngs of tourists clamored for a piece of shade in the heat, but in the small lagoon, all was quiet. Surrounded by a fortress wall of jagged volcanic rock, it was unspoiled. Clandestine. A honeymooner’s dream. The same as it was all those distant years ago when they were young and in love. Young and dumb was more like it. Still, they’d given it a good go. Thirty years and three kids later the island was the only thing unchanged. Lazy puddles of surf drifted ashore, washing the most delicate shells back to the ocean. Seagulls guffawed like Marianne’s laugh overhead. No, that was then, not now. Now it was silent. Too silent. Heavy with the silence of being completely alone on his perch.

In the lagoon below, a young couple chased across the rough jetty of stones. The man caught his mate in his arms while she laughed and struggled to keep her hair from covering her face. Marianne’s hair had blown in the wind back then. It caught in the soft breeze like feathery rolls of golden brown in the orange glow of sunset. And last night, too, when he gently brushed a whisp from her face with his thumb before saying goodbye.

The couple on the beach continued to play and cling to each other like the otters that sometimes warmed themselves on the sand. The first years it was easy to love with nothing ahead of them but hope and a blinding future. Then came the trials. Marianne’s increasing dissatisfaction with her changing body after the births of the children. The cliché temptation of his secretary. The fights when the recession hit and money got tight. In the end, she always forgave all his faults. A fact she never let him forget. Oliver took another gulp of burning sweetness. Palm trees swayed in the distance. Their green brushes swept a phantom scent of fresh cracked coconuts, hibiscus and suntan lotion through the air. Another remnant of Marianne imprinted on the island. It could linger there forever, but that wouldn’t fill the emptiness of the place. The island had changed, and he was the only one that knew it. He and Marianne. No matter how many times he’d come back, if he ever came back, she wouldn’t be there. How they’d managed the thirty years together he’d never understand.

A small brown bird landed on the side table. Some sort of Finch he supposed. It hopped to a wide bowled glass with a puddle of red residue at the bottom and paper umbrella still balanced off the rim. The bird cocked its head and stared at him with shiny black eyes as if it were about to speak.

Oliver swatted it away. “Better not drink that Friend, you’d probably stop your heart as little as you are.” He chuckled, remembering the filling on Marianne’s front tooth that always went a little pink when she drank strawberry margheritas. Every time they quarreled, and every time she began to question him, he’d picture that pink tooth and how ridiculous she looked, and he’d sneer to himself.

He studied the goo in the glass. Privately, he knew they’d both reached a point long ago where neither could stand the sight of the other. For years now they were not so much lovers, but something more akin to a slug on the bottom of a shoe; trailing slime long after it had been stepped on and crushed. And yet they’d managed to keep up the façade.

His attention returned to the beach and the verdant blurry haze of hillside behind it and the couple along the craggy rock. They’d taken an intermission from their necking to comb for shells along the lapping ocean. The woman stooped to pluck a large alabaster conch shell from the water. She placed it against her ear, smiling, her dark hair slick and wet slung between the lamellae on its side. Her partner pulled her close. For a moment Oliver wished he could go back to those temperate days of ignorance, but he had to admit he felt no remorse for how it had shaken out. It wasn’t what he was planning when he booked the vacation, at least that’s what he told himself. They’d visited the island nearly every year since their honeymoon. Still, if he was being honest, he’d fantasized a million times about life without Marianne. But now she’d gone for good and all that was left was the pressing quiet. That feeling of dysfunction when waiting for his ears to pop.

Oliver settled further into his recliner, stretched his arms behind his head and inhaled. Clouds were gathering, graying the sky and cooling the air. The once idyllic waves rose higher, slapping against the stones on the shoreline with all the inconsistency of his life with Marianne. The couple was gone. He sat up and studied the beach with strained vision. They had stepped away from the water and were walking inland, hands still clasped together. He could remember clearly the moment he fell in love with Marianne. The moment they fell out of love was harder to track down, harder still, the moment when feelings had turned from mutual contempt to disgust and outright hate. Likely, they were never so well matched in the first place, only he had been too drunk on infatuation to realize it.

The mounds of green behind the beach took on a sickly yellow hue in the eerie shade of the cloud covered sun; somehow turning them more vibrant and colorful. Colorful. That was the word most everyone used to describe her. Loud and effervescent and colorful. Teeming with the same life that packed the hillside in his view. But she had grated at his nerves from the moment they met. Her boisterous personality offended his solemn, measured nature, only she had been too charming and too beautiful to resist in those early days. He thought she’d settle as she matured. He was wrong. As their time together progressed, she only continued to beat more out of tune with his strict rhythm. Marianne wore her battle scars like clothing; what girlish guile she possessed faded through the years, replaced by a weathered, often tired woman who was wrinkled in places that had once been smooth, and sagging in the places she had once been firm. His wounds he held inside, and they had all but blackened his soul. He’d managed to retain much of his youthful appearance, but the same could not be said for his temperament. Years of combat with Marianne had seen to that. And still, he could never quite reign her in.

The waves along the shoreline smashed against the sand, driving the trinkets left behind by the young couple back out to sea. Driftwood and other things propelled to shore in their place. He took another sip and slid the ring from the railing, closing his fingers around it. Perhaps he had been too harsh in his discipline of her. Perhaps they had been nothing more than a pair of puppets destined to clash and blame and keep the cycle spinning. Too late to answer that now.

A red and white beach ball bounced past the couple. It bumped and rolled down to the sand where it rested against a large piece of debris newly bobbing along the shoreline. The couple chased after it. Oliver walked to the kitchen of his suite. He wouldn’t see the look of shock and horror he imagined smeared across their naive faces when they found her; ghastly white, bits seaweed and saturated hair matted to her head. He didn’t need to. The shrill scream echoed from the lagoon. Well, at least that stopped the silence from caving in his chest. He plunked Marianne’s ring down the sink drain and watched the black hole swallow it. They’d be at his door soon enough, and he had the role of the grieving husband to play.