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//|\\ brian huba \\|//

"The Golden Mile"

It seems certain memories grow more profound as the years slip past a man, while others fade quietly into a forgotten catacomb of the mind.

Now, nearly twenty years later, I can recall seeing her for the first time as easily as my just completed thought&ldots;

I was twenty-one. I called a dry June and a one-room flat my own. They were all a degree and the years it took to earn it had left me.

At college I studied to be a doctor. I dreamt of tall, white walls filled with sharp degrees and long names. I would look large and honest behind an ominous oak desk. Proudly I would prance beneath a loud white lab coat. Science was logic, unchangeable knowledge.

It was power.

I would be power.

Saving lives was the lord’s work. A duty I could proudly call my own.

I spent much of those four years with my nose buried in oversized books and my hand buried in undersized pockets. Its natural to assume years pledged to college are the most meaningful a person will ever spend, but I have trouble recalling even a single experience that could deem them such. Most memory of that time is cloudy and incomplete, like an early morning dream that fits no earthly order.

Now, a full moon past forty, only a degree in Biology that sits unevenly in its frame serves as evidence of that period in my life.

After graduation the months grew hot and I grew hungry. Big ideas and even bigger dreams still filled my head, but only empty promises filled my wallet pocket.

Soon after the medical admissions test proved unwilling. I failed it twice that same summer.

It was a warm August night. I sat awake until the small hours of the morning. The darkness was thick and sticky. I wanted to move but was crippled by exhaustion. That night proved longer and sadder then all the ones I had known before it. Life had found me. Fading dreams flowed through me like a dose of dry air.

I would never be smart.

I would never be rich.

I would never be a doctor.

Reluctantly I accepted an entry-level position with a large downtown marketing firm. All I knew about the place was the help wanted sign that filled the front window. The job replaced those otherwise empty hours of the day. The compensation was a rate I considered fair.

The months moved quickly then, quicker then I ever thought they could. Autumn days were spent buried in monthly earning indexes. Nights soon found hops and tonics a suitable replacement. My belly was full and my shoes were sharp. Affairs with woman began to pile up like trophies atop my mental mantelpiece. Big ideas and even bigger dreams seemed more easily forgotten between the legs of a Friday night fling. With one hand wrapped around dirty, green persuasion and the other around its prize, I was certainly among friends. Days were long and work was hard, but I drank my nights like a tall glass of independence.

Winter arrived older and angrier then the one before it. The new season invited cold days and endless nights. It was always dark. I woke with it and slept despite it. That March would prove a tireless lion, a conqueror of countless lamb. I worked until I drank, then drank until I fucked.

I had forgotten myself. Lost all direction beneath deep, white layers of winter. I knew it then, but never cared. I was a man, a great man. I stood tall, talked proud and fucked long. My head was huge and my belt was loose, filled with the naive faces of forgotten strangers. For the first time my life made no sense, and I loved it. I made sales numbers dance and women sing. Tequila slid across my throat like wind across a sheet of ice. I grew blinder as the days grew longer. I cared about nothing and was firmly fixed upon it. For the first time I was young. I had a job, several in fact, and I loved them all.

It was March twenty-first, a sunny Friday afternoon. The wind was crisp but the air was clean, filled with the stench of spring’s rebirth. Only the most resilient traces of winter remained. Most evidence of the season had sunk quickly inside the earth like a flooding ship at sea.

It was March twenty-first. I remember the day for several reasons. It was the day I was given light. It was the first time blue eyes danced and blonde hair invited me to join.

It was the afternoon I found my life, although I had no idea I was looking.

Her name was Carey Leigh. She had been hired earlier in the week but was not allowed to begin until that same Friday. She was described as having a young body that offered an even younger face. A face fit for corruption.

My patience had certainly proven better then my politics. News of Carey Leigh arose little interest in me, although I was sure such a promise could not harbor any sizable amount of foresight or confidence. She would surely fit nicely atop my mantelpiece, tucked tightly inside the dusty draws of regret.

I ate lunch. Chicken, boneless on a bun with soggy fries. I never ate meat during lent. I was religious. It was Friday.

A full belly and an empty desk left me bored. I glided casually toward a small room where some employees took lunch or read the morning paper. I poured myself a cup of coffee. I needed energy. A small mirror smiled at me, I smiled back. My hair was unusually neat, my shirt grabbed tightly at my shoulders, complimenting my every curve and bulge.

I cut through the lobby. My patience and my politics were working against me. I never knew where I was going or what I would find, but I headed toward her anyway.

As I moved closer to the small office where Carey worked, I felt for the next hole in my already loosened belt. My coffee was warm and my words were ready. I leaned against the door and entered the room.

Blinding light on a low horizon proved afternoon’s arrival. Powerful rays poured inside the room like a yellow river. Carey was a small, pink collection of flesh against the dull white walls behind her.

She felt me coming, I was sure of it much like a person senses an oncoming storm when dark clouds fill the horizon.

She glanced up slowly. Her long blonde hair was lost in the afternoon rays. Her soft, high cheeks glowed loudly against its glare.

The sun was hers.

The room was hers.

“Hello,” she said kindly before returning herself to a pile of paperwork.

The room was filled with light.

I moved toward her. She grew more attractive with every step. She looked up again. Wide blue eyes found ones of green.

I had never seen eyes so blue. I wanted to look away but couldn’t. My body no longer belonged to me.

I could feel them cut through me, read my thoughts like words on a page.

She leaned over her desk and pulled her eyes slowly across me.

I stood like a sculpture on display. I modeled a shy smile as she took me in.

“That’s a nice belt you where,” she said, before resting back against her chair.

I remained silent.

Was she mocking me?

Had she so easily seen my intentions?

“It matches your shoes almost perfectly,” She said, grinning wide between every word.

Her confidence had disarmed me. I had to respond quickly. I searched for the words that would paint me secure, but only warm, black coffee served a willing brush across my neatly pressed, button down canvas.

I stood in silence as coffee burned little black holes in my chest.

Carey giggled, trying to muffle her amusement with an incapable hand.

I retreated quickly, dressed in wet, brown humiliation. A smile filled my face. Ready words and matching belts proved useless.

My tall step and steady hand had been stolen by a stranger.

I hid behind my stain, wore it like a badge. I was a new man, a man unable to hold his drink in the presence of a woman. The warm stinging coffee sank inside me, crashed over me like a long, brown wave of rebirth. I slowly began to like the idea of sharing my mirror with Carey Leigh, even if a warm reflection was all she could offer. A life alone suddenly seemed too lonely to live.

On that crisp March afternoon, big ideas and even bigger dreams were painted blonde and blue. Perhaps I should have yielded to her initial rejections, (which were offered with great regularity then) allowed for a quiet defeat. But my focus was uncompromising. I would stretch my youth and determination around this enigma. I would prove tireless against my newest passion

It was now spring, a fair spring, giving hints of the ensuing season. I battled with my soft riddle, searching with eager eyes for its answer. Each day brought with it a new promise, each night a new angle. I was twenty-two then. I was aging quickly, but aging with a reason.

III

In the month that followed, I grew more engrossed with the pursuit of Carey Leigh. Like a cat chasing long shadows my fruitless efforts left me only dizzy and more confused. The proud talk I once called my own had been quickly reduced to a whisper in the face of such inadequacy. My dance of desperation carried on for some time with out warrant or reward, leaving only a sore set of feet and a matching ego as evidence of my efforts.

I had been swiftly humbled, but continued to wear my brown stained shirt like the armor of a battle ready warrior. The perplexing wordplays and clever inquisitions, I had since perfected, continued to roll off Carey like rain across a tin roof. She had a proud Catholic way and a quick Irish tongue. Carey Leigh was an unbreakable code. She giggled softly when I approached, then louder when I left. She wore my unfulfilled adoration like a hat, a hat that fit more firmly with each new day.

I once wore a belt, wore it proudly in fact. It now occupied the darkest corner of my closet. My crowded mantelpiece once riddled with accolades was now barren.

I had forgotten myself for a second time. I was now a poet and Carey Leigh was my muse. As the afternoon breeze paved the May ground green, I would approach, armed with a nervous tongue and rhyming word. Most days she was tucked behind towers of cash receipts and purchase orders that had claimed real estate atop her small desk. I would wrap around her like a circle of lights, running a silent eye across her body.

“Interesting weather were having,” I’d say when the silence grew awkward. I would hope conversation served fitting reason to retrace my steps. Carey would smile from the far side of her mouth before driving a hand across the exposed length of her bare thigh.

“Same as it was yesterday,” she’d say leaning slightly across her tall, paper buildings. With my hidden hand, I would rest a folded page of paper atop her highest tower.

“It’s nearly four-o’clock. I’ve been waiting all day for my poem,” Carey would say behind a smile of warm receipt.

“Its not smart to keep a lady on the edge of her seat, especially after lunch. Don’t you know better boy?”

I knew better, but said nothing, only stood there dressed in silence, like an actor searching for a cue.

I would remain without breath as her sharply pointed blue eyes worked themselves across my verse. A red hue would fill her yellow cheeks. I would be thanked with a smile and a nervous tug against the blonde hair that rested gently against her narrow shoulder. When finished, Carey would neatly refold the page and place inside her purse.

I liked her more everyday then. I felt brilliant crafting words for her. My work was received with a nervous apprehension, but I sensed they had found harbor deep inside of her. Never once did I propose dinner or dancing then. It seemed unnecessary. I would reach her with another approach, one without such offers or reminders of my own insecurity.

It would soon be summer. Each day was greener and longer then the one before it. I continued to write and comment on the weather. Both were warmer as June fully set in. I had quietly made sizable advances. But any promise remained buried inside Carey, a combination for which only she held the key. But I was twenty-two and determined.

I felt good. I knew the winter cold was behind me, had almost forgotten it ever existed.

Summer arrived. It was planned. The reward of warmness was finally cast upon me. It was the early hours of a day in late June. I had talked with Carey for nearly ten hours that night, realizing the range of emotion such a lengthy exchange catered for. As the morning sun peeked an anxious eye from behind the horizon, Carey’s cautious tone had been replaced by one of reception. Her steadfast relent had finally perished with the passing night.

I wanted to dance. Sore feet now felt strong.

Brown shirts now gleamed with victory’s white.

I forgot about belts soon after. They seemed unnecessary. Once loose pants now fit firmly beneath a belly fed by contentment.

My mantelpiece was hers.

During that time, we abstained from excessive physical contact. It mattered little. Sharing a room with Carey proved more stimulating then any sex I had ever engaged in. She was fragile and untested, like a flower that blooms cautiously in spring. I nourished her with a soft touch and an endless shower of personal tokens and elaborate gifts. As often as I could, I composed her poems and short verses that she still received with a shy smile and nervous tug against her fairer shade of summer blonde.

That winter was warmer then the one that came before it. I began to forget seasons entirely. It seemed like that same June would never end, just carry on forever like an echo in space.

After a year with Carey, I had forgotten anything that defined me before her.

My muse had become my reason.

Soon after I took employment with a near by marketing and sales firm, attending to affairs of a higher nature. My duties invited me into management and called for a substantial increase in compensation.

That March I turned twenty-three. One day later Carey was twenty-one. We vacationed. My reason had little to do with advancing age, although on the heels of such coincidence, I imagined Carey assumed a direct relation. With three months of my new salary tucked inside one pocket and a pair of plane tickets in the other, my nerves were tight and my words were guarded.

We chose a hotel called “The Eden Roc”. It was a large resort that occupied the high side of Miami’s “Golden Mile.”

We arrived on a warm Sunday morning. Our eager dispositions made for good company. The Eden Roc was taller and whiter then I had ever imagined it would be. The sky above and the ocean behind looked small as they struggled to wrap around its ominous walls. The dark mahogany rooms smelt of the wet salt and old money they were built upon. The place was certainly above our means, but I hoped that thought would soon be forgotten in a sea of Dorados and Twangarita.

The suite was long and bright. A crisp breeze danced across the room, massaging my skin as it moved through me. The room tasted of the Atlantic, filling the walls and floor with the sweet breath of salt water and beach sand. Carey had already left to exploit the remainder of the afternoon. The short sun would prove hers. She would chase it red and full behind the horizon until only darkness remained.

I retreated to the bar, where setting suns and afternoons could be quickly forgotten.

Most mornings were slow extensions of long, warm slumbers. Beneath layers of bed sheets and diligently designed quilts, we shielded ourselves from the frosty effects of indoor air.

Inside my arms, Carey’s torso was easily lost. Only her head, which rested contently against my shoulder, was evidence of her presence. I would spend the early parts of those days silently intoxicating myself with the natural scent of her still unkempt hair. It was a stimulation I indulged in with great regularity. Occasionally we forgot the motivation needed to carry us beyond the bedroom. It never seemed a point of bother. I was fully content applying my self to a day filled with nothing. It was an activity that suited me just fine.

Other afternoons were spent drowning our dispositions in tall bar glasses, beneath an even taller sun. Afterwards we would navigate a sloppy course toward a nearby restaurant. Carey would order the largest lobster on the menu, but fully spend herself on cocktails and side salad. She would laugh with vigor bigger then us both as the waiter removed her full plate and the substance of my once full wallet.

“Let’s dance,” she said, stumbling toward the first offering of open space, swaying unevenly against the beat.

It was Tuesday.

I sternly objected, in the same fashion I had attempted when ordering entrees. Soon though I realized the next foot I put down would be one meant for tapping wood.

After paving a path of belligerence atop the dance floor, we retreated to the beach. Tripping across the cold sand with no design or reason, Carey would scream incoherent phrases and laugh mockingly against the blue night. Teetering with the tide, she was an uncalculated figment of blackness before folding like a flimsy tent caught in a windstorm. I would greet her falling frame with still able arms and rest her gently against the blanket of beach sand.

Wide legs and opened insides found me.

The waves were tall and loud. I buried my face in warm, wet blackness. My tongue moved quickly, up and down, back and forth. It cut like a shovel through seaweed. Flesh wrapped around my hairline. Squeezing and moaning, wetness was all around me.

The waves were quiet now.

I dug my knees against the beach and buried my hands against Carey’s soft backside. Back and forth, up and down, again and again. Moaning, screaming, lifting.

Darkness was all around me.

I dug further inside. My tongue danced across new valleys. I dug and rocked, pulling and grabbing against anything warm and soft.

Violent rocks.

Deafening screams.

Face full of wetness.

Silence.

The waves were tall and loud again.

Only sand and water for nearly an hour.

Silence broke. Her words crept towards me like a slow, South Atlantic breeze.

“Tell me a story,” Carey asked softly, fixing her sights on the Wednesday morning horizon.

“What shall it be about?”

“Surprise me.”

Her voice would stumble across the words with a loose, uncaring step.

Heavy blue eyes rested upon ones of green.

Those eyes. They hypnotized me, dancing like little black ovals atop floors of ivory. I was a man without vision before them. They cut through darkness and found light, I now knew light. I never again wanted to walk without her eyes guiding me.

That was my story.

She was my story.

I had known it since the moment I found her, since brown coffee left me hot and humiliated. I could never before formulate the words, but now I would. The words would pour off me like an ocean. I would tell Carey Leigh a story.

I turned, but she had forgotten me. Trading my tale for a beachside slumber. I rose slowly and slung her body over one shoulder, and a pair of small black sandals across the other. We moved in step with the rising sun. The darkness soon surrendered to the morning. It brought light. I now knew light.

Our last night in Florida was a warm, dry Saturday. Carey wore a light colored skirt and a white tank top, under a tan slip on with three-quarter length sleeves. She always wore sleeves. A small scar on her right arm proved her cause for self-consciousness. I simply figured some things, were never meant to be shared. Whatever dwelled inside her arm would remain silent forever.

The arm was hers.

The secret was hers.

We dined together at a small restaurant that overlooked a narrow stream. A footbridge connected the two plots of earth divided by the unnamed vessel of water.

We ate a quiet meal. After refusing dessert and paying the bill, I invited Carey to walk. As we neared the small footbridge, I took her hand in mine. I glanced down quickly toward her naked fingers. Carey never wore jewelry, but I hoped she would soon see reason to.

“I wrote you a poem,” I said slowly handing her a folded sheet of paper.

“It's about time. You should never keep a girl anticipating, especially after dinner.” Carey always responded the same way when I rested a collection of verse in her hand. She leaned against the rail and began to read. As that familiar hue found its way to her face, and her ever-ready hand felt for a clump of uncommitted hair, I rested my left knee against the floor of the footbridge.

Armed with only a small diamond ring and a nervous disposition I proposed marriage to Carey Leigh.

Her face began to well as the poem slid from her grip and fell slowly to the water below. Wetness found blush and chartered an orange path across soft red cheeks. Blue eyes spilled over her nose and chin before greeting the inside of her neck.

Carey nodded slowly and lifted her naked acceptance toward me. I removed the diamond from its small black box and placed it slowly around her unsteadied finger.

I remember walking with Carey across that bridge, a lifetime together waiting on the other side. Every detail of that night seems to grow only more profound in my memory, despite the mounting years that remove me from it.

It was a decision lacking all logic. I was once a man defined by this, convinced I would never activate on impulse alone. But I had somehow forgotten all that. I no longer cared much for sensibility, it seemed out of my character now. I was a wedding planner, a man fixed on his own future. I stood on the brink of an endless summer. Never again would I walk alone.

A year later we married. A veil of restraint Carey had once worn was now replaced by one of white. Beneath it her blue eyes fluttered as I vowed a lifetime of devotion, a promise not to ever again wear belts.

We returned for a week in Florida to honeymoon. I made love to Carey for the first time, in that same room, only a few feet away from our footbridge. I moved inside her slowly, paying close attention to every inch of her body on several specific occasions. We made love only twice that week. Carey seemed cold and uncomfortable in such compromising activity. Afterwards, I would hold her tightly in my arms. It was then she seemed content. Warmth would return to her, filling the room as it mixed with reemerging silence.

Shortly after we returned home, it was discovered Carey was unable to bear children. It mattered little. How could a man long for something he has never known, and a woman, for things she’s not meant to have? We hardly spoke about it. Carey seemed more content to simply forget the whole subject. I never brought it up again.

We purchased a small home, properly tucked against the corner of a quiet street. It was a raised ranch painted white, with a small front yard tailored for two. The house reminded Carey of her own as a child, and the thought of inhabiting it fully pleased her. I had always been obtuse to such affairs, suited best for signing checks and shaking hands. It was a home that could offer only a modest lifestyle, the type that seemed to fit us firmly.

When the yard was tall and green I would mow away all aspirations at height and freedom. Carey would spend her afternoons in the garden planting and picking the long, fat flowers that filed it.

When the yard was white we enjoyed it more. Stormy winter hours were spent constructing a man of snow, and a woman to keep him sharp. Together they were a family. Carey called them “the Whites.” But the Whites never had children. The picture seemed full enough without them. But some nights when sleep deceived me, I quietly wondered if Mr. White would be happier if the yard offered enough snow for another.

They don't need children, they’re happiest with themselves.

Days at work continued to serve as stale preludes to nights alone with Carey. Five years soon became ten, then just as quickly fifteen. They seemed to pass more swiftly through that period, but my devotion to her remained untested by the hand of time. Our visits with the Whites grew shorter every year, until they were just a cold, cloudy blur. The silent thoughts they inspired were soon dismissed just as quickly.

It was our fifteenth wedding anniversary. I was thirty-nine, Carey was thirty-seven. We wrestled with the idea of renewing our vows but assumed the future would offer it ample opportunity.

It was decided a return to “The Golden Mile” seemed of fitting order. For a week we would re-borrow the clothes of our youth, dance upon their beaches and drink from their fountain. It was a place that rested so fondly in our past, a time we were eager to revisit.

We arrived on a Sunday, and battled quickly to reclaim our former figures. It was only a few days after arrival when we realized our war with time would be waged with little success. Instead our mornings were spent together in bed, hung over from a day of slow walks and long meals. Nights filled with excessive drinking and dancing now seemed unappealing, despite efforts to recapture its allure.

The arms that once engulfed Carey’s small frame easily, now struggled to hold her with a force cruelly compromised by time. She would rest her head against my now narrowed shoulders, as I leaned my nose against her soft bed of hair. Those early morning hours would pass like seconds when holding Carey’s warm body against mine. I often imagined us dying like that, drifting to heaven together, without ever knowing the difference.

After lunch, Carey would bathe for hours beneath the long afternoon sun. Her skin still gleamed like a newly printed penny. Her hair would fall like pedals from a flower against the blanket of beach sand. I would run a wandering eye across her and smile, turning away before she felt the weight of my stare upon her. Despite attempts at the contrary, my displays of adoration were detected with great regularity. Carey would respond by slowly running a wet hand across the full length of her sun-blocked leg, before grinning shyly through the far side of her mouth.

“The weather is quite nice over here,” she said before submitting to full-scale laughter.

It was Thursday.

My humility had always generated contentment within my wife. I was sure she would spoil herself with this power for the duration of her days. Even if youth had now eluded us, I would remain a willing pawn to her playful teasing, surrender the upper hand without mounting a single defense.

Soon after, I returned my attention toward the crashing tide, allowing the soothing sounds of the cresting waves to send me off to sleep.

The rain fell with unrelenting force throughout our last day. The horizon was dark as the setting sun went unnoticed behind a low wall of cloud clusters. We cut quietly through the evening air, heading north for an early dinner. I had composed a poem for Carey, my first in several months, which I planned on presenting later that same night.

After our meal, I removed the work from my breast pocket and rested it upon her empty dessert plate.

“Your becoming more prompt in advancing age,” she said before quickly pulling the page off the table. Without saying another word, Carey took the poem and began to unfold it, glancing toward me with a look of rehearsed surprise.

Leaning back in her chair, she studied the verse with the same inquisition of a high school English teacher. I waited in heightened anticipation for the gentle tug and rosy hue that confirmed her approval.

It came quickly.

“It was beautiful,” she said before refolding the sheet and placing it softly in her purse, like an infant to a cradle. As I watched her small fingers work, I became overwhelmed with sadness. With a touch as soft as hers, it seemed unfair she would never know motherhood.

After ordering dessert and paying the bill we left. Before that night, I had never once ordered dessert, rarely even spoke of it. Seemed unnecessary to want more, when our stomachs were already so full. But I ordered anyway. I thought of Mr. White, poor Mr. White.

The air had chilled considerably by the time we reemerged from the restaurant. I placed my sport-jacket across Carey’s shoulders and pulled her close to me. She had not worn sleeves all week, and was more easily victimized by even the slightest breeze. At the smallest hint of discomfort, I would wrap myself around her, shielding away the elements. I considered it my highest duty to forever act as Carey’s sleeves, never allowing a moment of unrest.

Her arm was now mine.

Her secret was close behind.

We ventured through the night, attending to no particular direction. The nearby tide was crashing unmercifully against the beach, achieving higher power with each new offering. We walked further inland, now heading subconsciously toward the footbridge that had been silently calling us all week.

Upon arrival, a presence past our own was soon realized. The restless spirits of our youth had been waiting fifteen years for our return. The bridge had aged gracefully and seemed pose to continue its war against time. I slowly moved to one knee and reached for Carey’s hand. She laughed and turned away. Her hair was tossed about against the unrelenting breeze. A soft rain had begun to fall again. I gently jerked my wife’s body against mine, pressing my face firmly against her stomach. Playfully I raised her shirt and placed my lips against the bare skin of her belly. She laughed and returned the top across her waistline. As the thin material repositioned itself, I noticed thinning evidence of my recently eaten dessert tattooed across her mid section. I choose not to tell her, I would let it rest until later that night.

Carey removed my poem from her purse and walked toward the rail. I followed, unsure of the action that would ensue. She held it high, nearly surrendering it to the breeze before pulling it back against her chest. Leaning over the rail, she released it, watching to assure its safe arrival to the water below.

“They will be forever linked in time,” She said, before stepping off the rail.

I said nothing.

The rain fell with increasing fortitude now.

A threatening sky above was the unmistakable prelude to an oncoming storm. Quietly we turned and reluctantly began the wet walk back to our hotel room.

That night we made love. My wife seemed unrecognizably natural in my arms. The movements of her body were that of a stranger. Once timid bedroom eyes rested upon me with intent confidence and sheer control. It was a brand of lovemaking I had assumed would only be realized in my most splendid dreams.

The rain pounded relentlessly outside as we chartered onward into the darkness.

I was inside her. Up and down she moved. Violently she whipped herself across my body, pulling me around the room like a puppet. I danced to her every beat. She slid past me like a river. Narrow thighs dug against me. Fingernails like switchblades.

I was blinded by blackness.

Everything was black.

Moans cut through it. Carey cut through it.

My body was hers.

The night was hers.

After fifteen years, I was greeted with capabilities Carey had secretly possessed the whole time.

Why had she deceived me so intentionally?

Why had she allowed me to foster foolish beliefs in my own self-dominance?

We carried on through the night. The rain was heavier now, louder, pounding the ground with cruel force. I grew increasingly content with my helplessness, as my wife continued without rest or falter.

Soon after morning broke, Carey rolled against me and finally drifted to sleep. Resting silently, her naked body seemed small and delicate, incapable of such strength and control. I ran my eye across her one last time and smiled, before surrendering myself to a much-needed rest.

Her secret was mine.

We had engaged in a level of lovemaking that was never meant for us to realize.

I knew it soon after.

For a moment in time, medical certainty escaped us, and physical impossibilities perished.

We had come simply to revisit Eden Roc, but instead stole a greedy bite from the forbidden fruit.

VII

“Simple human error,” was the reason. But it was hardly simple and certainly not human. Carey was pregnant, a month now.

My wife had proved science a foolish formula.

The office was large and bright, plastered with sharp degrees and long names. But his face seemed small and dark, tucked neatly behind an ominous oak desk. The man spoke slowly. His words were riddled with uncertainty.

“Sometimes these things just happen,” he said polishing a picture of his own family with the sleeve of a loud white lab coat.

“You told us she could never bear, it was a complete impossibility.”

“In cases like the one before us, the lords will reigns supreme. We our merely contractors of his cause, just as capable of human oversight.”

“Are you only religious when it suites you doctor?”

“I don’t like to think so!”

His words snapped across me like a whip.

I noticed a small crucifix adorning the far wall. I was angry. Seemed unfair to blame his mistake on a power past our own. I stomped my fist, flinging profane phrases at him. But he calmly returned my gestures with the unquestionable reality.

I was masking my fear with anger. Carey did the same with silence.

We left soon after. My fear had raged around the place long enough. When it was proven pointless, I abandoned my revolutionary tone. I reached for Carey’s hand as we approached the doorway, but she pulled away, silently, never saying a word.

As Carey’s cycle progressed, so to did her discomfort. Her small body seemed awkward and incapable of such a grueling detail. Although painted with a permanent smile, I continued to foster thoughts of puzzlement regarding this pregnancy, and the means upon which it was realized.

The months past quickly then, almost blinding. At night I would pull her close to me, trying in vain to shoulder a share of her burden. Her soft blonde hair was now stiff and heavy against my nose, her skin hard and dry.

Age had found my yellow rose and leaned on her like a cruel winter frost.

That same long June I had come to know was now over. Once again I knew seasons.

My advances were unwelcome. She would slowly roll away, finding solace in long sleeve shirts, burying herself behind valleys of pillow and mountains of quilt. Contentment no longer dwelled in my arms.

Soon after I fully lost interest in sleep. At night I would hang myself in the darkness, watching my wife spread around the room, like sand across a desert. Our bedroom was cold and dark now. Winter had fully arrived.

I pined away with little success then. I wanted to write my wife a poem, craft my frustration into gentle wordplay. But the pen was heavy in my hand. Blankness sat where words once danced.

The silence was deafening now. I was a helpless spectator to my own creation. By the end of the eighth month, Carey could hardly hold herself upright. I remained anxious, but was paralyzed by fear. Our case was given full professional assurance, but I no longer harbored trust for the men that offered such promises.

Carey remained silent. Anger ran out of her, clinging itself against the bile that coated the toilet bowl with each new mornings arrival.

After painting the bathrooms chrome white, Carey began to cry.

It was a cold Saturday.

I wanted to move toward her, but the hallway carpet hindered my step. It was the first time I had ever heard my wife surrender to this type of display.

I was numb.

“How could I let this happen?”

She said it again and again until the words melted together like long cries and moans.

Her anger was internal. I knew it then. My words or my arms could do nothing against it. She was carrying something more then she could handle, something more then a child. It rested upon her, changed her, left her crying in a pile of her own vomit. I knew it then. I knew her silence. It moved through me like my own breath, it was now my own. I was pulled to the floor, my cheeks were moist, silent cries filled me, dancing around the hallways filling my life with it.

The next day Carey began to labor, a month premature. We raced toward the hospital as the afternoon slowly surrendered to the night. Nothing was said. Uncertainty still paralyzed us both. Her hand was swelled and sweaty, I could barely take a grip to it. Beneath a loose, plaid pullover, her belly screamed again and again, cutting across the heavy silence like a rusty unused razor.

Green shirts moved around us in large, loud packs, filling my ears with big words and fast tongues. Scenarios were thrown at me like heaps of mud, phrased in ways that held no ration or order. I longed for one slow moment with my wife. A return to times defined by long dinners and short poetic verse.

I clang to her like a dog to a bone as we raced toward some unknown destination. Glancing toward her fingers, I noticed they were nude. A firmly fitting wedding band could no longer be worn around such swelled fingers. Her blue eyes were buried beneath a sweaty mountain of red flesh and soaked through blonde locks. Her belly screamed louder, louder now, screams one on top of the other. Carey’s small body had served harbor for eight long months, but seemed incapable of another moment.

Then, in unexplainable fashion, the chaos ceased and only perfect silence remained. I was alone with Carey. An open window behind her served proof of the setting sun. Its yellow rays were blinding against the white walls that lined the hospital hallways.

I ran my hand across her soaked through hair, but never said a word. My motion was received with no visible response, but I knew she felt me there, the same way she had felt me fifteen years earlier. I buried my nose against her wet bed of hair and whispered softly inside her ear. Even now, I have trouble recalling my own words. Perhaps a man more easily forgets himself during times of such heightened intoxication.

It was my own words that deceived me, rolling with elusive ease across my lips. I only knew silence then, it was now my own.

Silence was all I had left.

Soon after, Carey was pulled away to an uninviting room filled with loud doctors and even louder lights. It was a place where “touchy situations” were attended to, a place where I was not granted admittance. As she glanced meekly toward me, a feeling of heavy emptiness filled the pit of my stomach. The rays of the setting sun rested brightly upon her.

The Sun was hers.

She had chased it full and red behind the horizon.

She was a child again, that same twenty year-old girl who had painted big ideas blonde and even bigger dreams blue. She was my Carey again, if only for that final fleeting moment.

That was the last time I ever saw Carey Leigh. On a warm evening in June, when I was thirty-nine years old, the first passion of my life left me, giving birth to my second.

We defied the laws of reason that day, science had never known such a foolish hour.

It was Sunday.

The cause of death was “unforeseen complications caused by an untimely birth,” but I knew the real reasons. Carey Leigh was as much my wife as she was a woman never meant to know motherhood. I don’t recall crying that day, seems unlikely I ever did. It was too late for tears.

I often imagined we would grow old and useless together, laughing at the other every step of the way. For years this thought served as my only reason to continue, a reason that has now been replaced by another. It seems I can never clearly remember those final eight months. A man feels more content if he’s allowed to forget his greatest time of helplessness.

But I can’t allow for uselessness now. It ranks highly as a trait of undesirability within a father. The same arms that once held Carey so tightly now must do the same for a newly born baby girl.

Every time I close my eyes and allow for a few moments of rest, Carey meets me. She is blonde and blue, brimming with youth and energy. Even in my dreams she is still an unsolvable riddle, the code I can never fully crack. I see her for the first time every night, buried beneath the setting sun, battling playfully with a whipping South Beach breeze, or leaning her small head quietly against my shoulder. Some nights she talks, other nights she teases.

“I wrote you a poem,” I say. She responds the same way every time, but I still do love to watch her dance.

“Tell me a story,” she demands in that same loose tone. I try, but can never find the words.

“Don’t you know better boy?”

I bury my face in warm, wet darkness. My tongue moves quickly up and down, back and forth.

“The weather is just fine over here.”

I remove the diamond from its small black box and place it slowly around her unsteadied finger.

“I call them the Whites. The Whites don’t need children. They’re happiest with themselves.”

Leaning over the rail she releases it, watching to assure its safe arrival to the water below.

“They will be forever linked in time.”

The rain pounds relentlessly outside as we charter onward into the darkness.

Every dream ends the same. Her blue eyes begin to dance and blonde hair invites me to join. I lean in slowly, but she’s gone before I get there. I am greeted by darkness and the loud cries of a newborn that cut through it.

Slowly I stumble to relieve my daughter. I move past a closet where my belt still hangs, then past my mantelpiece, the resting place of a ghost, before entering the nursery where she impatiently waits. I lean across the cradle and pull my daughters body into mine. Those familiar blue eyes flutter as her determined tears cease. She is evidence of a period in my life now gone, but assurance that it will live on forever. As I gently rock her to sleep I try to tell a good story, but I only know one. When I realize the heavy breath of a slumber against my neck, contentment fills my empty heart. Each night I gently call her name against the darkness, “Carey Leigh, Carey Leigh”. Then there is light. I like light.

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