C4 antho - Chamber Four

~110~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
been crying so hard her eyes were red. The clerk just stared
at me silently accusing. I hugged V. and told her I love her, I
never meant to leave her. On the way home I bought her an
ice cream, but it just made her shiver to eat it. A few blocks
later she got sick all over everything. Back home I cleaned
her up, but I was not as tender as I should have been. No
one knows what it’s like to fail every day at the thing that
comes so easily to everyone else.
The journal ended here. On December Fourth, Eric had
come to me with the news that Rebecca had left. I pressed
my palm against her careening script and remembered how,
at the park, she had sung just for Vera, how they’d shared
their private dance. I wished my touch could travel through
those pages to offer her some measure of peace. At the same
time, I wanted to be rid of her. I closed the notebook. I left
everything as I’d found it under the stairs.
When I got back to the apartment, the front door was
wide open. I rushed into the boys’ bedroom, where I’d left
them napping. I nearly fell to my knees to see them there,
unharmed. Sleep revealed the residual plumpness in Peter’s
face, but in the past few weeks, Joel’s body had assumed
lankier, more grownup proportions. For almost an hour, I
stood in the doorway and watched them sleep. I could not
stop drinking in their beauty, but I knew I had to wake them
or they’d be wild all night. Finally, I roused each one with a
kiss on his sweaty hair.
That night, Harry and I sat together and listened to
Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet. When the yearning second movement
came on, I took his hand. I always loved Harry’s hands:
their square, honest shape; the printer’s ink that ringed his
nails despite his daily washing with a pungent soap. I
moved closer and inhaled his scent: the cleaning solvents,
the metallic tinge from the type and slugs, the Schlitz beer he
drank after work.