His face had turned into the visage of another man, one that Cynthia was only faintly acquainted with. He was the guy who shuffled past her in the morning on the way to the toilet to wash his face and brush away the morning breath, but not on her account. She would instinctively move over to the side when he approached, allowing him more room in the narrow hallway lined with pictures of her son Florian: a horrible name but her husband had insisted on continuing the legacy of his own father.
The man, who was named Lukas, was wearing the faded maroon robe she bought him for his thirty-fourth birthday. If he had remembered that she had bought it for him he would surely have cast it aside by now, or given it away with all her favorite pumps to the Goodwill as a tax write-off. He looked down at the floor when she approached, wearing her own maroon robe, one that incidentally matched the one that hung loosely around Lukas' groggy body. She caught a whiff of an unfamiliar scent that clung ever so gently to his graying hair.
It wasn't a musky scent, more like a combination of floral and citrus. Not a perfume that she wore. He must be having an affair with someone new this time, as Tammy was an avid wearer of Red and nothing else. They didn't acknowledge each other's presence when they passed; this momentary was as intimate as they ever got. The hallway bathroom shut loudly, echoing off the faded blue tiles that Lukas had laid abruptly, leaving a few ungrouted. Cynthia stood in the hallway for a moment, looking at the closed bathroom door and realized that she hadn't been in Lukas' bathroom for years. She couldn't even tell a guest where the extra toilet paper was kept, if anyone ever came to visit. His was the hall bathroom and hers was the master bathroom, twice as large to accommodate her rollers, hair dryers, make-up, manicure and pedicure set: all the overpriced accessories that made her into a 'woman.'¯
She thought of four months ago when she had found Lukas in her own bathroom. She had been startled, her brain taking a moment to realize that it was not an intruder, just her husband. He had been sniffing her favorite perfume, Glittering Gold, and the caps were off her Amirage and Ysatis. He glanced at her with that blank stare that had slowly replaced a look of longing over the past twenty-three years of marriage.
'What perfume is this?'¯ He had the confused demeanor of a man shopping for his new girlfriend in a lingerie store: a bit awkward but trying to conceal his inadequacies by avoiding direct eye contact.
'It's Glittering Gold. You gave it to me for my forty-second birthday.'¯ He had shaken his head slowly, the cloud of recognition slowly creeping into his memory. The bottle was almost dry, only if you looked close enough could you tell that there were two sprays left. It was so expensive that she was saving it for a special occasion - if one were ever to arise.
Lukas had put his nose up to the bottle, with the gold-plated depressor button and the frosted gold-lined glass, and sprayed two squirts. He stuck his nose in it, then fanned his face a bit and let out a monstrous sneeze. He wiped his nose on a dry washcloth that was hanging over the bathroom basin, then brushed passed Cynthia as she rushed over to where the fragrance had just escaped, hoping that some of the particles floating in the air would cling to the edges of her collar or hair. Tomorrow was Valentine's Day, and she had this faint and unbelievable inkling that maybe Lukas was looking for a gift ' for her. She sat on the edge of the tub, next to the defiled washcloth that she hastily threw into the garbage can next to the toilet.
The next evening, Lukas didn't come home. She hadn't known until the morning when she passed his bedroom and noticed that it was empty. She went to the kitchen to make coffee and found that the pot was cold. Lukas always awoke promptly at 6:30 and never began any part of his daily routine until he had drunk at least two cups, slowly, while staring out the kitchen window. He always made exactly two cups of coffee, never more, even though she drank one cup with extra sugar every morning as she had for the past twenty-three.
She had sat down at the kitchen table, a rounded two-seater that Lukas had insisted they purchase after Florian moved out of the house. Lukas complained that the antique table that sat four took up too much space.
'It's only you and me now,'¯ had been his reason.
That was the only thing he had said to her when she came home to find the table gone, locked up in the storage shed out back with all the other unmentionables that they couldn't fit into this congested, 1,500 square foot house ' overcrowded with two people and their memories of twenty-three years.
She had placed her favorite mug on the rounded glass table top, sipped the freshly brewer coffee and took a bite of her cinnamon raisin toast. She chewed slowly as she looked down at the saucer in front of her; it was a part of a set she had bought in an antique store in Grodig, a tiny village outside of Salzberg, the only time she had gone home with Lukas to visit his family in Austria. She had met his brother and mother ' a quiet, round yet strong-looking woman with a bright face and withered hands. She had been so friendly to her, even though Cynthia didn't speak any German and his mother spoke nothing but. His mother baked all day and every morning there would be a table full of freshly sliced meats, cheeses, fruit, granola and yogurt. Her name was Stana, but Lukas insisted that Cynthia call her Mrs. Weinrich.
The saucer. The saucer was bone china with blue etching around the rim, and had a tiny smiling sheep placed right in the middle. She had always loved sheep. Lukas had said they were ugly, and forbade her from buying it, which of course made her want them even more. Even now, looking at the saucer made her smile, which was such a rarity these days that it was the only thing that kept her from smashing it against the wall.
On the table in front of her, on top of the water bill and a Pizza Hut coupon, she had noticed a tiny red heart-shaped box of chocolates. She hated chocolate and Lukas knew this. Or at least he used to know this. She picked up the box and fingered it roughly. The Eckerd's $2.99 price tag was still on the cover. There was a space to fill in the to and from names, but he had left them both blank.
Lukas had come home later that evening, with no explanation, in a bit of a jolly mood and smelling faintly of Glittering Gold.
**************************************
The bathroom door opened, and Lukas, freshly shaven and wearing a towel around his waist, stepped out of the bathroom and almost ran into Cynthia, who snapped back into the moment.
'What the hell are you doing?'¯ His German accent had faded a bit over the twenty-five years he had been in the States, but when he was annoyed it would intensify, like an angry exclamation mark.
Cynthia stepped aside and let the stranger pass.
She waited for him to leave. He had an early morning meeting, something to do with the third round of lay-offs. She listened to the garage door close with a bitter whine, then snuck down the hall to his bathroom. When she opened to door she found it was stark white. It looked as if it had been recently painted; in fact, it still had that freshly painted smell. She had been bugging Lukas for the past year to paint the garage door since it was a different shade of gray than the rest of the house. He had said that he couldn't paint; he had some sort of strange allergy that made it difficult for him to breathe.
There were three glass shelves above the toilet that looked perfectly aligned - mounted with precision. On the middle shelf, the cologne he had always worn, Drakar, stood behind a bottle shaped like a man's chest and torso. She picked it up and read the brand ' Pierre Cardin. When had he switched cologne? There was a half-empty torso bottle and a new one, unopened, waiting as backup. There was a toothbrush holder for four, with only his in it, a comb for his thinning hair, a bottle of high-shine spray gel that only accentuated his bald spot. A fine layer of dust covered the empty top and bottom shelves. Why had he mounted three shelves if he was only in need of one? And why, when she begged him to install a set of three shelves in her own bathroom, had he purchased one of those cheap white plastic ones from Wal-Mart and drilled it into the wall sloppily, leaving uneven sores in the peeling yellow wallpaper?
Why does he hate me, she thought.
The sink had been wiped down with bleach and had a glossy shine to it, and the mirror had only a few splashes from the sink on it that had left a dull film. The soap dispenser was almost full, and had a single strand of pink liquid that had dribbled from the nozzle and left a tiny kiss on the porcelain. His shower shoes, red flip flops he insisted on wearing during any bathing experience, were strategically placed next to the shower and had tiny pools of water on them that had not yet evaporated. His white towel ' the one he had worn draped around his waist ' hung over the navy blue shower curtain with the gold suns on it that she had bought on sale over five years ago. He had hated it instantly.
There was a tiny wooden table in the corner that was adorned with a knit doily that his mother had sent him for Christmas many years ago, and it served as a bed for three framed photographs: an old black and white snapshot of Lukas' father holding his three-year-old son in his massive arms, one of their son Florian in his football jersey when he was a sophomore, and ' in a silver frame that had been engraved 'To mom and dad on their twentieth wedding anniversary'¯ ' was a picture of their Beagle, Mork. Lukas had given her away to the pound the day after Florian had left for college.
Cynthia remembered when Florian had given them that frame; it was the first expensive present he had been able to afford after he had gotten a job at the Jewel Osco Pharmacy. He had gone through the trouble of finding their old wedding picture and having it restored, and when he presented it to them, Cynthia had hugged Florian for his sweetness, and then felt a stinging in her stomach at the thought that this charming young boy had been fathered by a man who, she suspected, had married her only to become an American.
She grabbed his toothbrush. It was such a swift movement that it knocked over the toothbrush holder and it plummeted to the tile, echoing in her head and feeling like nails in her skull. She threw it in the toilet, then flushed. She jerked her arm up and, like a bird stretching its wings to fly, swatted the contents of the second shelf and watched as the two torsos and the Drakar bottle joined the toothbrush holder on the floor. The carcasses shattered and a piece splattered up, leaving a bright red welt on Cynthia's naked leg.
She opened the medicine cabinet and began throwing everything she found into the toilet: store brand aspirin, a travel sewing kit, a bottle of Gillette shaving cream. What missed the toilet hit the floor and left dings in the cheap tile - tile she hated. She picked up the plunger hiding in the corner and, as hard as she could, brought it crashing down on top of the glass shelves, which shattered and sprayed fragments of glass all over the bathroom, like angry rain.
She stood and looked n the mirror, at the mad woman glaring back at her. She was bleeding in several places, and her thick black hair had spilled out of her clip and looked like frantic knots of chaos. Her eyes were red behind her wire-rimmed glasses.
Cynthia closed the door behind her. She stepped into the hallway that seemed to have narrowed in the ten minutes that she had spent examining his bathroom. In only six steps she was in the living room. This damn house was so small ' too small ' for even two people. They had bought It when they were so much younger and poorer, and even after both of their careers had taken off they had never upsized. Lukas had argued that they didn't need anything that cost more money.
From under the coffee table, she grabbed their crumbling photo albums. A set of three was forest green and embroidered with the labels, The Honeymoon, Starting Out, and Growing Old Together. How disgustingly obnoxious to give a couple photo albums labeled with phrases for the stages of their relationship. It would have been more accurately put if they had been labeled The Entrapment, The Deception, and The Burning Hatred.
She tore them open and began flipping through them, the tears already burning like acid in her eyes. Her fingers fumbled with the plastic coverings that protected the photographs that hadn't been looked through in years. She pulled each one from the sticky backings, some tearing, and began separating them into two disarrayed piles on either side of her. The pictures of her son growing up, all those precious stages, went in the pile to her left. Anything with even the back of Lukas' head in it went into the other pile, the Lukas one. She began flipping faster and faster. When she had finished gutting the albums, she threw them against the wall, one knocking over a glass lamp that shattered on the floor.
She turned to the pile on the right, the Lukas one, and began separating the memories.
Their first date.
He had taken her to a park and then for ice cream, and there was a picture of Lukas with a nervous, goofy grin and a drippy chocolate cone in front of his face.
Their trip to England.
They stood in front of Big Ben, Lukas with his arm around her shoulder and Cynthia squinting from the sun.
The two of them at Florian's soccer game, the one where he blocked a key play from the opposing team and they won the regional championship.
All these went into a separate pile.
In a different pile she placed a snapshot taken at his company's New Year's Eve party. Cynthia held a half-empty glass of Merlot and stood with a forced smile as Lukas, ignoring her, talked to his boss about golfing. There was a photo of Lukas and Florian on the beach, smiling into the camera. It was from their last family trip together - a drive to Indiana where they had taken Florian to swim in Lake Michigan and Lukas had yelled at her the whole time for forgetting to put the lights on a timer to ward off thieves. Two Christmases ago, Lukas had flown home to see his family in Austria. He had taken only Florian, explaining to Cynthia that he wanted to bond with his son and she would only interfere. She had spent Christmas with her friend Teri and her boyfriend, and they had taken a picture of her on their sofa, passed out after emptying an entire bottle of Chardonnay. Although Lukas wasn't in the picture, it was a photo about him.
She continued sorting until every picture in the Lukas pile had been catalogued and divided. She looked at the two opposing forces. The Happy pile seemed so small compared to the Painful one, and she looked slowly from one to the other, contemplating. She noticed her maroon robe, which had fallen open, was saturated at the bottom next to her left leg. When she rubbed the flesh her fingers came away bright crimson.
Happy. Painful.
She stood and walked over to the gas fireplace and turned on the flame. She was momentarily entranced by the flickering blue as it rose, and wondered what it would be like to kiss fire. She moved back to the two piles and stared down at them, contemplating'¦contemplating'¦
At first she scooped up a handful of Pain, then dropped them and watched them scatter. She grabbed instead the Happy moments, those deceptive times that made her think he was in love with her. She hurried to the flames and tossed them in. Big Ben burned in front of her'¦the ice cream melted and so did Lukas' serpentine grin.
