Deep Breaths of the Inanimate
Death came early to her poppies. Yet, with each new season she is always surprised by their swift demise. Crimson petals take flight on the wind that has overthrown the stillness. Taking aim straight through her flower garden, knocking over empty potting plants and altering posture-perfect sunflowers and hollyhocks. Simone takes refuge inside, sitting her living room sipping her wine, which had become uncomfortable to enjoy while relaxing in the gusty open air.
The landscape hangs above the unused fireplace which presently serves as an ornamental piece. Her city, like many, have forbidden the use of wood-burning stoves and fireplaces, declaring they don’t abide with the new strict emission standards. It saddens her because she always dreamed of having a hearth. It was the number one reason she bought this home, but soon after, the law passed. Now she can only observe it and long for what could have been Grandfather laws do not apply.
The painting has been in her possession for what seems time without end. She doesn’t cherish it and often it hurts her when her eyes rest upon it. He gave it to her as a gift what seems a thousand years ago. When they were in love – whatever that was or wasn’t. She must admit, at the time, she was touched by his gesture. The painting is abstract. The middle and lower foreground are layered with large whisps of wide yellow brush strokes, which progress all the way to the bottom of the canvas. A hint of purple exposes itself at the bottom edge of the painting as if peek-a-booing behind yellow hues. The upper portion of the painting hosts large horizontal bands of both solid and broken colors: deep purple, orange, and repeated yellow overlapping the image, which has the semblance of a train with blue sky and a hint of what seems to be a cloud in the top periphery.
He painted it way back, when he was still in art school, when he planned to pursue painting seriously, although he didn’t stick with it. After years of struggle, without procuring the ‘right’ gallery and with both feet planted firmly in the poorhouse, he gave it up and became a stockbroker. Did a complete about-face. She heard that he is successful. Now he can purchase whatever he likes, within reason obviously.
They have no further communication, yet she follows him on social media. Just to know what he’s up to. She does it with all her former lovers and rivals. Doesn’t everyone? She can’t seem to get rid of the painting. It protects its territory sternly guarding with nostalgia and sentiment. It still connects her to him by hanging on her wall. She considered, countless times, throwing it in the trash. Nevertheless, each time she removed it from its place of prominence she became more solitary and adrift. He was the last man who had meant anything to her. How does that happen? It was years ago in another life. She would have been open for another, but another never showed up. Now she wants to free herself from the paining, but it has a hold on her that she can’t control. Demanding her forever focus and devotion.
Clair isn’t at all sure why she’s held on to this vintage brass lighter. It was given by a former lover who lived in Europe. She doesn’t even know if he’s still walking this earth. He’s not on a single slice of social media, not even a photograph of him out there exists. The lighter’s brass body must be filled with lighter fluid, which is nearly impossible to procure these days. She doesn’t even smoke anymore. But she loved him passionately, as hard as one can. When she strokes its smooth sides, she sees herself in his Oslo flat with its high ceilings and soft blowing linen curtains gently blowing to present stunning views of the sea. Music and hip friends hover all around him. There was something about his perfection that drew her to him. There was attraction for sure, yet the kindness and respect he bestowed upon her were what won her heart in the end. All the travelling they had done for month upon month. Keeping his flat as their home base. She was certain he would ask her to stay and she would have. Throwing her university degree to the wayside to begin a new life on foreign soil, but unable to speak the language, which would complicate her chances. Digital nomads were historically decades away.
She probably would have had to clean houses like other foreign immigrants. Putting herself further down the pipeline just to look at his face another day. Clair wonders if he had asked her to stay, would she have regretted her choice at some distant point in that particular future. Now she’ll never know. But when she slides her fingers along the vintage brass vessel, she knows she would have taken that chance. He stopped writing and sending music compilation cassettes a few months after she returned home. She got a job in her studied field, yet her attention was always elsewhere. In trains travelling from one foreign city to another. Cafés and clubs that she so long ago frequented and intimately remembers stepping out on cobblestone streets and admiring shuttered windows on historical buildings. The chorus of international tongues that rode on the evening air. Sometimes when she’s in one of her moods, she considers setting the house on fire. Burning up every memory that demands her attention. She would do it with this very lighter, which lives in a box deep within one of her cupboards and is rarely caressed or coddled.
Rosemary stares at the replica Bauhaus clock that stopped working for what seems a century ago. It is stuck in an instant of time as she is with it. It was a present from a former German lover. An industrial designer whom she met while travelling many moons ago. He was impressed by her taste and wide knowledge of culture and art. Why shouldn’t she know about enriching things? After all, she studied art history and was planning an internship with a leading museum back then. She brought the clock back from her last trip to see him. It is simple in design with bright colors: bright yellow, black, blue, and red with an elegant numerical font and a single hand. It divides the day into three eight-hour time periods defined for sleep, work, and leisure. Its intention is meant to inspire one to find a work-life balance. It is a complete circle with sections of color exquisitely symmetrical in execution.
It worked perfectly immediately after she installed it in her apartment. Nevertheless, it made her miss all the moments in real time that she was away from him. That quiet advancing beat of time. They tried to do the long-distance thing, but that fizzled-out soon after her return. He met another woman and that was that. The clock was built in the tradition of skilled German craftsmanship, yet it stopped working simultaneously with their breakup. The single hand is suspended in the leisure time zone. As if sleep and work are of no concern. Everything that followed was rooted in dreams and paychecks. The day-to-day, with few rewards and banal routines.
The inanimate howl unspoken words that burrow into many a heart and won’t be hushed nor abandoned. They remain fixed as permanent wardens of the lifeblood. Holding on by remembrance. And only abiding to time’s uncompromising grip.
© Susan E. Lloy
Susan E. Lloy is the author of three short story collections, But When We Look Closer (2017), Vita (2019) and Nothing Comes Back (2023). She has just completed her fourth collection, Only Six Stars at Night. Lloy lives in Montreal. Visit her website at susanlloy.com.
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