The Color of Home: A Novel

Copyright © 2013 by Rich Marcello

Langdon Street Press

322 1
^st
Avenue North, Fifth Floor

Minneapolis, MN 55401

612.436.3954

www.LangdonStreetPress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN:
978-1-62652-370-8

“When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.”

—Rudolf Bahro

When Nick met Sassa, he was pulled in by an unusual light in her eyes, old and familiar, a beacon and a badge for those deft enough to notice—the color of home.

“You have great eyes.”

“Thank you.”

“They’re sweet and sad. And guiding. And proud.” He glanced at her empty cup. “More tea?”

“Sure, especially if that gets us off this topic. Surprise me.”

“Be right back.” Nick unwound his lanky body, stood, stacked Sassa’s cup on top of his, and ambled across Joe’s Artful Coffee toward one of the baristas. On the way, he stopped at a waste and recycle station, and as he unloaded their cups and spoons, mind-walked the previous hour. Sassa had stepped into the café largely unknown. A friend of one of his employees. His first ever blind date. Dressed in sixties vintage clothing—a royal blue mini-dress with a black jacket, a black fedora, a black pearl necklace, and black leather boots up to her knees—she had arrived from a safer era. She was a chef. A Michigan grad. A New Yorker for half a decade. And at twenty-eight, a year younger than he was. Early in their conversation, a flicker in her eyes conveyed the sweetest sadness, the deepest loss. And from that alone, he’d drawn an unrooted conclusion—like a character in an Ingmar Bergman movie, she didn’t have much emotional time left and, without help, would soon fade into that hopeless place, one he’d imagined in black and white CinemaScope all of his adult life.

At the counter, he picked up six different tea jars and sniffed each. Pointing to one on the end, the one that smelled of lavender and rose hips, he said, “I’ll have a large tea and a cappuccino with two shots of espresso.”

As he waited, a photo on the side wall of the John and Yoko bed-in caught his attention. In an intensely sunlit room, they sat on a mattress with their legs crossed. Two handwritten signs, “Hair Peace” and “Bed Peace”, were pasted above them on the windows. A Schwinn bike rested directly in front of them. Nowadays, did anyone get that much sun?

He looked over and studied Sassa Vikander thumb-typing on her phone. Her long, straight blonde hair draped her shoulders and danced on the tabletop like two expertly controlled marionettes. Her creamy white skin framed her smile perfectly, and her eyes reflected fractal blue, so much so that he pictured strangers stopping in their tracks to stare, compelled by the color and movement. Only the second Nordic goddess he’d ever seen.

“Excuse me, sir. Your drinks are ready.”

Nick turned around and rested his palms flat on the counter. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Do you watch foreign movies, you know, the deep ones, like Ingmar Bergman’s?”

“Nah. I like romantic comedies. You?”

“Yeah. Way too many.” He picked up his drinks, nodded, then balanced his way back outside to the table. On the way, he scanned the Greenwich Village café, which bustled with conversation that spring morning. With open floor-to-ceiling front windows and outside tables full, the café extended to the end of the Thirteenth Street sidewalk, where Sassa sat waiting. As he gently placed her tea on the round tabletop, a warm breeze washed over him like water caressing a stone. “Here you go. Extra strong Gyokuro Imperial Green Tea.”

She took a sip. “This one is really good.” After a few more, she put her cup down, stroked the handle a few times, moved her mouth as if to say something, but checked herself and stared at the sidewalk instead. A short moment later, when she turned back to him, she clearly had a more measured response. “I’ve been thinking about our earlier conversation. Have you used that line about eyes before?”

“First time.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really?”

He did know; he’d just kept the real reason to himself. But now that she suspected more, he had to do better, before she struck the game-over bell. Even though he hardly knew her, even though his chest was in a vice-grip, that much was clear. He took a deep breath, then said, “There was such sadness, such loss in your eyes. I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to save you.”

Her face blanked. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a Chick-in-Shell Pez dispenser, which she repeatedly flicked, stacking Pez on the table until they fell over. Then, starting again, she stacked two side-by-side pillars even higher, before intentionally toppling them. Pez strewn like pieces on a
Risk
board, she said, “Let’s recap. So now I know you’re attracted to me, my eyes remind you of loss, and you’re good at picking tea. When do you get to the original stuff?”

“You’ve heard this before?”

“Most of it.” She twirled a Pez with her thumb and index finger for a long moment before popping it in her mouth. Reaching for her tea with both hands, she smiled into her teacup, put the cup back down, lifted it again, took a sip. Cup to mouth, she asked, “You like words, don’t you?”

“Life’s all about words and ideas.”

“Sadly.”

“What do you mean?

“Really? This might go south.”

“Where do you want it to go?”

“North.”

Her phone buzzed and she picked it up to read a text message. As she chatted, he looped uncomfortably. What did she mean by north? Where was it? How could they go there? He didn’t have a clue, and he couldn’t shed his discomfort, but instead of closing down, instead of pulling back, instead of deflecting, he leaned in. That was a first.

“Sorry,” she said, setting down the phone.

“No problem. Maybe we should shift gears and talk more about our backgrounds?”

“Good idea.”

“Okay, I’ll start. Why a chef?”

“Love. An Italian grandmother taught me to cook while I was in college. It stuck, I guess. That’s why I went to cooking school after I landed in New York, and eventually ended up at Diposto. Why did you end up starting studiomusicians-dot-com?”

“Love. And I thought the timing was right for an online recording studio.”

“It sounds like you were right about that.”

“After many years of hard work, yes.”

“What came first, the songwriting or the poetry?”

“Poetry, but only by a little.” Nick sipped his cappuccino, and drifted back to the night that changed everything, the one when he wrote his first poem. Who could have known then it would lead to the Village Cinema, to
Persona
? And who could have known
Persona
, a decade later, would lead to this moment? “Your favorite movie?”

“I’m not sure I have a favorite, but I like
Me and You and Everyone We Know
a lot. And yours?”

“
Persona
. Ingmar Bergman.”

“Aren’t Bergman movies depressing? Why do you like it?”

He picked up his spoon and stirred his coffee until it whirlpooled, then reversed direction until the whirlpool followed his lead. “I was numb, so I gathered feelings.
Persona
helped me learn to feel again.”

“‘Gathered feelings’? What does that mean?”

“They were like scripts. I used them when I needed a certain emotional response.”

Sassa pushed her chair back and crossed one leg over the other. Interlacing her hands, she draped them over her knee, quickly tapping her thumbs like they were drum sticks, and she was playing the drum solo from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Solo complete, she said, “But you didn’t feel anything yourself?”

“Something like that. I was frozen. The scripts were my pretend thaw.”

“Scripts sound appealing. Can I borrow some?”

“They don’t seem necessary around you.” What a reversal. After years where he withheld as much information as possible from his former girlfriends, where he used scripts often and to his advantage, he’d flipped with Sassa to openly sharing, to scriptless, to intuiting deeply. How did that happen so fast? And why? And would she eventually return the favor? “I want to come back to your eyes for a second if you don’t mind. There’s much more there than sadness and loss. I also see strength. You’re strong, though your strength might be better described as perseverance. You don’t give up. You’ve tried to fix a problem for a long time and you haven’t been able to sort things out. You’re hoping you’ll get there someday, though my hunch is your hope is starting to dwindle. That, more than anything else, scares you. If I’m right, I hope in some small way I can help you.”

Her eyes widened slightly and the corners of her lips barely turned upward, coloring her face red, like he’d at least gotten part of his theory right, like she’d unintentionally given him an inside glimpse before the deflectors kicked in. This was good.

“Wow. Strength. Perseverance. I don’t give up. I’ve won the emotional jackpot. Have you thought about a career as a therapist?”

“Go with the flow for a bit. Trust me.”

“Much too early for that, but I’ll play for now. What do you think you’re . . . sorry, I’m trying to fix?” she asked.

“Your sadness? Or is it numbness?”

“What do you think?”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?”

Her eyes dulled and she stared off at nothing, twirling a strand of her hair for a time. Eventually, she said, “I don’t know if you’re right. You sound pretty sure of yourself after only an hour, but I don’t trust words. You need to show me.”

Show her; she was right about that. But how? He needed a gesture, something physical, clever, something he’d never done before, something that showed her the connection that he was sure existed between them. Phone home? When was the last time he’d seen that movie? Reaching across the table, he held his finger up like E.T. and slowly pressed it against hers. For a second, a spark, a current passed between them, until he pulled away and recovered his finger on the table. While looking down at his finger, he said, “I don’t know what happened to you, but my hunch is there are places where we overlap. Maybe we can figure out the overlap together?”

“Too soon to tell.”

“I hope so. One more thing. I believe in congruence between words and body language.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not really. I say what’s on my mind and my body language mirrors what I say. I’m hoping you’re interested in acting the same way, and that we can use that to explore the overlap.”

Her phone beeped. Plucking it off the table, she read another message. “Just a second.” Smiling, she started typing something, sent it, got an immediate response, typed something else, then rested her phone back on the table. “Sorry. Congruence. What an interesting idea. We’ll have to talk about that more sometime.”

They would talk more sometime. She’d thrown him a bone, but she wasn’t going to stick around past their next date unless he figured out a way to get through. Words didn’t work. Ideas didn’t work. But there were unseen places where they overlapped and he’d never experienced that before. Maybe that would be the way in.

After a restless night of replaying his entire conversation with Sassa, Nick found himself again waiting for her the next morning at Joe’s. Each table seemed blocked off as patrons sat with opened copies of the
Times
. Street percussion from cars, trucks, delivery boys, and pedestrians blended with Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” which blared through the café sound system, causing him to tap his foot in rhythm. With his laptop open to his company’s website, he admired Sassa from a corner table as she breezed into the café wearing jeans, a Nirvana
Nevermind
T-shirt, and black Keds. Both of her arms were adorned with antique gold bracelets, and a matching gold necklace with black beads interspersed along its length dangled from her neck. What a beautiful combination. When she arrived at the table, he said, “Nice look.”

Smiling, she fixed a stray hair behind her ear before closing his laptop and sitting down. “I wanted to match you. Were you working?”

“Yes.” For most of his twenties, he’d worked nonstop to build his business into something substantial, rarely taking time for anything else. And while building, he’d worn similar clothing every day: a Beatles T-shirt, jeans, and sandals. One of every Beatles T-shirt style filled his closet, along with twenty pairs of the same Levi’s jeans, and five pairs of the same Birkenstock sandals, which he wore even in the middle of winter. Pointing at his T-shirt right below the “Strawberry Fields” artwork, he said, “I’m a few years behind you musically. Sometimes I think I was born into the wrong generation.”

“The
White Album
is my favorite,” she said.

“Mine too.”

“How many Beatles T-shirts do you have? ”

“Lots.”

“Can you get me that same tea?”

“I’ll order. Be right back.”

As he waited for the coffee and tea, he purchased the
Times,
folded it under his arm and repeatedly questioned her small gesture. She’d taken the time to dress down for him. It showed movement, interest, right? And she liked the Beatles. Maybe that was another positive sign? Still, he stood on shaky ground. This would be their last date unless there was further movement. He didn’t have a clue where to take the conversation, only that he had to go for it in some way he’d never done before. A few minutes later, back at the table, he served Sassa her new favorite tea.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I didn’t sleep well. Do you want a section?”

“Why not.” For a few minutes, she paged through the
Times
business section without reading a single story, like she was off in her own private think-space, formulating something unrelated. When she finished, she folded the paper neatly, put it down on the empty chair next to her, leaned over the table with her hands folded in prayer position, and said, “Want to know what I thought about when I went home last night?”

“Sure.”

“You’re way ahead of me. I’m just looking to have a good time with a cute guy for a while.”

“Cute?”

“Yes, Nick, you do have that going for you.”

“Thank you.” At 6’4”, and thin, with shoulder length Jim-Morrison-like hair, he’d always done okay with women, even though he tended to smile rarely and intellectualize often. They’d called him all sorts of things over the years—intelligent, creative, distant, aloof, intense, arrogant—but when was the last time someone had called him ‘cute’? A long time ago. Maybe high school junior year? Somehow, she’d taken him back there, and he liked it.

Grabbing his spoon, Sassa fiddled with it, tossing it from hand to hand like she was playing hot potato. Then, balancing the spoon on one finger, she glided it over the table until it fell on his hand. Reaching over, she patted the place where the spoon hit. “Sorry.”

“No harm done.”

“Let’s finish our drinks and get out of here. It’s a beautiful day for a walk.”

A short time later, they were strolling down Bleecker street. The spring sun, warmer than usual, bathed the downtown, exposing equal parts beauty and disfigurement. The street, covered with potholes, cracks, and temporary steel metal plates, was in such disrepair that vehicles had no choice but to bounce forward. Two young women, striking enough to be models and dressed in the finest clothing, passed by Sassa and nodded.

As Nick walked, something deeper, with undercurrents worth riding, stirred in him. At first, he wasn’t sure. But as they passed storefront after storefront, slowly, he came to a decision. He had to tell her about his dad. Why was that? In the past, his father rarely came up in conversation, and then, only when directly asked. That strategy had served him well for over a decade, but with Sassa, he had to do better; he had to be up front. He stopped, turned toward her, loosely crossed his arms, and said, “My father died when I was seventeen.”

“I’m so sorry, Nick. How?”

“Heart attack. That’s why I started writing poetry. My first poem was about him. An outlet, I guess.” He looked at the cracks on the sidewalk and traced the longest one until it ended. “Do you think a single point in time can define you?”

“That’s an interesting topic.”

“Why?”

“Just is.” She wove her arm around his, and gently tugged him back into the walk. After a block of silence, a block of apparent contemplation, one in which she rubbed his arm the whole time, she asked, “Can I read your poetry sometime?”

“Really? Why?”

“I want to read the one about your dad. No pressure. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay. Soon. There’s more than one about him.” Actually, there were many, though he’d never shared any of them, written or otherwise, with anyone. His chest tightened at the thought, but his arms also tingled with some strange positive energy which must have emanated from her, and his heartbeat stepped up a notch as her scent, even in the open air, pressed its way in with hints of jasmine, rose, and orange.

Then a strange thing happened: he flooded with ideas, snippets of love song lyrics, based on words she’d said or he’d thought about her.
Tried so long to make things right. Not sure I’ll ever make it through. Too much weight.
And in that moment, right after he tucked a few lyrics away, he knew—she was his muse. How did that happen? And so soon? With her at his side, he could become the songwriter, the poet he’d longed to be for years. Of course she needed to see his poems. Or better yet, hear them. And as soon as possible. He took a deep breath. And another. “I can recite one now if you want.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so. I’ve never done one out loud, but I want you to hear it. This one is called ‘Christmas.’”

“I don’t like holidays anymore.”

“Me neither. Here goes. Christmas. Today, years after memories have faded, they sharpen again, splinter further. The puzzle seems enormous, sprouting new pieces, blurred images, rumbled sounds partially dissolved, muffled in tears waiting.”

“Nice.”

“Then a gift, a familiar guide from someplace deep inside, calls. I hear my father laughing at the Christmas dinner table years ago. My mother, young and beautiful, smiling as he pours her a glass of wine.”

As Sassa walked, listened, she rolled a black bead on her gold necklace between her fingers, like the necklace had meaning, like she was conjuring. “We drank red wine in our house every night at dinner.”

“We did too. Next verse. With this image, I realize this is just another holiday passing. While there is rejoicing with family, with friends, there is also inventory-taking of loved ones lost.”

He wrapped his arm around her hip and pulled her close. The rest of the people, the cars, the city hum, faded until only her smell, her touch, remained. Walking like that, in a city of millions, joined in an impossible-to-define way, was nirvana-like. Maybe, over the coming months, they should walk the whole city together? Eventually, he asked, “Is the necklace special?”

“No. Just something I picked up at a vintage shop.”

“Ah. I’ll keep going. Last verse. The same cycle of mourning and relief repeats every year, though the waves don’t seem as large, as long, with time. A friend once told me all loss is the same after the first one. He is right.”

“You’re right.”

On Thursday, Nick opened his apartment door halfway and nodded Sassa in. She’d come over to watch
Persona
. At 700 square feet, the apartment consisted of a combined living room and kitchen with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto Charles Street, and a small bedroom barely larger than the queen-size bed it contained. Furnished with two mid-century modern chairs, a sofa and a dining room table that doubled as a desk, all acquired from a secondhand shop in his hometown of Denville, New Jersey, he’d made the place his own. Two old, frayed, red Heriz rugs covered the hardwood floors, each worn in multiple spots to the point where little color remained. The bookcases, filled equally with books and CDs, lined one complete wall of the living room. Multiple guitars stood on stands throughout the room. A small LED flat-screen television was positioned on the wall opposite the sofa, and displayed the
Persona
DVD home page. “Hey Jude” played in the background.

“Nice place. Expensive?”

“Cheap. A friend of my dad’s cut me a deal.”

“Before we get started, let me freshen up.”

“First door on the right.”

“Be right back.”

The first time he’d seen
Persona
was much different.

Freshman year, Nick skipped his morning classes at Columbia and plodded more than a hundred blocks from campus to see the first showing of
Persona
at the Village Cinema. Once there, he settled in the row behind an older man two seats to his right. The two of them had the theatre to themselves. The patina of the place drew him in; the smell of popcorn melding with spilled soda, crushed candy, and who-knows-what-else was just right. Diet Pepsi in hand, he watched previews, and waited anxiously for the feature to start.

The opening sequence of
Persona
rolled across the screen. Disjointed images and atonal music transported him. An erect penis, a cartoon, a tarantula, the crucifixion, a boy, all flashed before him in black and white. They woke him up, seemingly from a dream, leaving him more alert than he’d been in a long time. Who was that boy? What had he lost? He pushed back in his theater seat and straightened up. He parked his drink on the floor.

The camera zoomed in on Liv Ullmann’s face and stayed there for over a minute. Her face: the entire human condition, somehow holding boundless sadness and hope. She hovered in front of him, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. A true Nordic goddess.

Later, Liv’s character, Elisabet was on the beach with Alma wearing dark and light hats. What an image. On the island, they created a place of light. And dark. A compartment. Elisabet studied Alma as if she were preparing for a part in a play, gathering in her feelings so she could use them when needed. So many beautiful truths within each of them. Why did they keep their most vivid ones hidden?

Later, the women’s faces merged into one—the most poetic film image Nick had ever seen. Could any one human see another completely and not fall apart?

After the film ended, Nick remained in his seat. He stroked the blue velvet on the arm of his chair with his finger. Nothing he’d experienced, in or out of a movie theater, compared to
Persona
. Shaking, tears welled up until he willed them back down. After the lights came on, he stayed in the theatre for a long time.

He was like Liv’s Elisabet.

In the dark, safe, he’d gathered feelings without saying a word. He’d learned about intimacy without the real risk of revealing anything about himself. He’d banked emotional scripts for future use. Life since his dad’s death had consisted of distant and dishonest relationships. How could he trust again? How could he be trusted? Could he let down his guard and enter into emotionally intimate relationships that were deep into things?

Back in his dorm room that night, he sprawled at his desk, opened his economics book, and began working on his midterm paper. The euphoria from the afterglow of
Persona
permeated his writing as he whistled “Hey Jude.”

As “Hey Jude” faded in the apartment, Sassa joined Nick on the sofa. They both slid off their shoes and put their bare feet up on the coffee table. He offered her freshly made popcorn and a glass of wine. Minutes into the movie, she reached over and took his hand. Only a short way into hand-holding, he convinced himself he could stay on that sofa, watching
Persona
with Sassa, forever. As the movie progressed, they remained transfixed, on occasion squeezing each other's hand, feeding each other popcorn or rubbing feet. When the final image faded, Nick glanced over to get Sassa’s reaction; tears streamed down her face.

“What did you think?” he asked.

“There’s too much betrayal,” she said. “Elisabet isn’t honest.”

“True. What I love about the movie is that Elisabet and Alma try to pierce through each other’s veil.”

“They do for a bit.”

“They couldn’t handle what they uncovered.”

“Liv Ullmann has the most expressive face I’ve ever seen.” Sassa pulled Nick’s arm across her legs and began tickling it slowly from his palm all the way up to his bicep. His hair moved in one direction, then the other, as if the tips of her fingers were magnetic. She did this for a long time, the whole time apparently deep in thought. Finally, resting her head on his shoulder, she asked, “Do you think two people can walk through life together and each know the complete truth about the other?”

“Yes.”

“You really think it’s possible for two people to connect without any masks?”

“It depends on what we do with the fear.”

“It doesn’t go away.”

“No, but it may get in the way less and less.”

A few days later, Nick arranged to meet Sassa uptown at Luca’s for dinner at eight o’clock. He arrived early and, out of habit, waited for her outside the restaurant. He had a thing about being on time and had been disappointed that she’d been a few minutes late for their earlier dates. As he waited, he recalled his college internship at a hi-tech company where his boss, a forty-something Portuguese woman with thick, streaming black hair, black eyes, and dark brown skin, had schooled him on tardiness. “Being late is a form of violence. Everyone’s time at the company is just as valuable as yours.” At first, upset by her choice of words, he’d pushed back. But soon after, he accepted that she was right. From that day on, he never arrived late for a meeting, not even by a minute.