The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (16 page)

“You see, the saddest thing of all is even He has begun to forget the details. And as He forgets, things change and go away. Right now they’re only small things—certain smells, forgetting to give this child arms, that man his freedom when he deserves it. Some of us who work for God don’t know where we come from or if we are even doing the right thing. All we do know is, His condition is becoming worse and something must be done quickly. “When He sees your pictures, He is reminded of things, and sometimes even becomes His old self again. We can work with Him then. But without your work, when we can’t show Him pictures of Himself, images He once created, or words He spoke, then He is only an old man with a failing memory. And when His memory is gone, there will be nothing left.”

I don’t go to the Café Bremen any more. I had a strange experience there that soured me on the place. A few days after I last met with Thursday, I was in the café drawing the pig, the Rock of Gibraltar and the ancient Spanish coin he had requested.

Having just finished the coin, I looked up and saw Herr Ritter watching me closely from his place behind the counter. Too closely. I have to be careful about who I let see my drawings. Thursday said there are a great many around who would like nothing more than for a certain memory to disappear forever.

T
HE WEATHER WAS NOT
fair. For days since it happened, since the terrible phone call when she told him in a dead voice she had decided to stay where she was and wasn’t coming back, the weather had not been fair. For almost two weeks the days were a mirror-reflection of the frightening state of his mind. The mornings started out too sunny, or else too stormy, then changed in an hour to the other, then swung back and forth all day between rain and shine so one never knew what would be next. Which meant there was one less place to hide.

Part of him thought the best thing to do was keep busy. Take walks, go to the movies, put the dog in the car and drive places they hadn’t gone before. But outside or busy, there was this damned weather or his damned thoughts in between that showed there’s no safe place. Everything will haunt you, all the storms will find you, everything will remind you she’s gone.

He went to a cowboy movie but ten minutes after it started, began to weep. Luckily there were few people in the theatre so he only put a hand over his eyes and let the tears fall. What was she doing while he cried? Was she falling in love in her red and white summer dress that was his favourite? Summer had just begun down there. Was she working in the garden she had so proudly described in an earlier letter? This was a ghastly part of the torture he meted out on himself: in his mind he took bits and pieces of what she had said or written before and slid them together into vivid, awful collages of pain and loss; he pictured her in that dress, barefoot, digging in this new garden at twilight. Then from behind, being greeted by the new someone she had so carefully and vaguely alluded to in their last conversation. “Is it only that, or have you met someone new?” She hesitated and then said half coyly, “There’s someone I like to talk to, but you have to understand, it’s completely different.” He imagined her straightening up slowly because she had hurt her back as a teenager. She had the most prominent backbone he had ever seen. Turning and smiling that wonderful broad smile at this new man, she would drop the tool she was using and brush off her hands. She had been waiting for him. He had come for her all dressed up. She didn’t know whether she liked his cologne. She was very picky about colognes, but if they stayed together, after a while she would tell him she didn’t care for it. It was time to change and go out for dinner, perhaps to a party. She said she was constantly going to parties now, doing things she had never done in her life. That was the heart of it—everything was so different there and new and she laughed all the time. He had owned that smile for years but no longer did.

The last time they spoke she had said, “I love you dearly, but—” Dearly. Such an ugly little word, a word that diminished him and their years together down to nothing. Grandmothers, ministers, and greeting cards all used “dearly”. Now she did too when she thought about him.

The dog was always happy to go out, which was good. But dogs are like that. Wake them in the middle of the night and say it’s time for an hour’s walk or a big dinner and they’re ready. But even the dog ... From the moment it saw her for the first time, it loved her more than anything on earth. Much more than him. It would have jumped off a cliff, then somehow sprouted wings and flown back if she had told it to. When she was gone, it dashed up to any woman on the street who looked even vaguely like her and howled its delight. And when it actually saw her, the dog went mad. Thank God he didn’t have to tell it she wouldn’t be around any more. Thank God it still ran up to women on the street with the highest hopes but never seemed fazed for long when it wasn’t her because next time, next time it would have to be.

He was not a superstitious man but these days he made deals with the gods. He now carried a polished green stone in his pocket she had bought for him years ago in the Burlington Arcade on a trip to London. If three things arrived at once that all reminded him of her, that meant he could hope. A white car like hers passed, driven by a woman with lots of hair like hers. On the car, a bumpersticker said “I love Canada”. She was Canadian. Three things all at once. Wasn’t something trying to tell him something? Could he hope? On that trip to London, she had bought a cheap cable-knit cardigan at Marks & Spencer that she adored and wore around the apartment all year long. After that last deadly conversation, he’d rushed to the closet to see if she had left it on its hook and was thrilled to see it was still there.

He had bought a new car. It was so sleek and full of high-tech gadgets that he nicknamed it “Terminator”. When he got in and pressed a button, the steering wheel and driver’s seat automatically adjusted to his body. There were buttons for person one and two. He had chosen person two but now there was no person one. Months ago, when ordering it, he had real pleasure imagining her chauffeuring the two of them around. More and more she had been doing the driving and he liked that. Now it was only the dog in the passenger’s seat, silent and all white.

“Would you like to drive?”

On hearing his voice it turned to him, then turned back to look out of the window.

Of course, the town was haunted. There was virtually nowhere to go or look or be without being reminded of her and their days together. Driving down the street he tried to love the feel of his magnificent new automobile, but there was the store where she bought her lingerie, the restaurant where they’d had that awful meal and, worst of all, the café where they’d actually met the first time. That was too painful and he had to look away. He looked away from it every day driving to work. Every day since her call he’d had to pass the place where it had all begun with such hope and excitement. Why couldn’t buildings disappear when relationships did? Everything go away all at once so there was no trace of anything, no tangible proof that anything ever existed. That would be so much easier and better.

There they had walked, there he’d driven her on the bicycle, there she cajoled him into buying her french fries on a cold winter night. Memories like a paper cut, so deep, quick and unexpected that there was no way to guard against them.

He had lost twenty pounds. That was something. For several years he’d talked about losing some weight, so here he was with droopy pants and his belt taken up two notches. That was something, wasn’t it? A little perk in this bad time?

What had she lost? What went through her mind these days? What tore him was that he feared it was very little. Years together, but then he had heard absolutely nothing from her since that last dead talk. Was this the same woman he had known so long? Or had distance and new circumstances changed her so quickly and hugely that, even if she were to come back, she would be unrecognizable? Was he praying for the return of the same woman? He knew nothing. No, that’s not true: he knew he was dying, but she seemed to have effortlessly disconnected herself from him and waved bye-bye with what appeared to be the blithest, quickest gesture in the world.

He drove to the river. They had their spot out there too, and the dog was always in heaven when it could be with them and run around at the same time. But this time when he opened the door and clapped the animal to hop out, it came slowly. The sky was dark again. The dog seemed to know rain was near. Despite all its enthusiasm, it hated bad weather. She told a funny story about walking one evening in the rain for hours while the dog tried to hide in every doorway they passed.

So there they are, the thinner man with his white dog and the wind blowing and the clouds the purple of children’s lollipops. They walk and walk. The wind is gusting, the dog runs full speed towards nothing but happiness, the man wears the blue baseball cap she gave him and stuffs his hands deep in his pockets.

He stops when he sees on the other side of an inlet a lone fisherman who’s braved the elements today to come out here and try his luck. No one else is around. On one side the man with the dog, on the other the man with the fishing lines. The man with the dog thinks, if the other looks up, I will wave at him. There will be luck if he waves back. Somehow that will mean everything. If I can get him to wave back, then my life will change and she will come back and we will face this thing the way it should be faced.

So he waits while the other man tends his fishing pole. The dog is jumping around in grass so vividly green in the lowering skies.

“Look up, will you?” He says it out loud, but the fisherman stays at his work. “Come on, come on. Just look up once. I’ll wave as hard as I can. You’ll have to wave back. I’ll make you.”

The fisherman turns away and bends down to his tackle-box. He stays like that a long time, his back to the other. The dog is calm now, sitting on the grass and looking at the water. The wind’s begun to gust hard, the clouds are thicker and have stopped moving. His hands are cold so he puts them up under his armpits, but ready if he needs them. He’s waiting for the fisherman to turn around, even though he knows this whole thing is ridiculous and pathetic. To think something as small as a wave could change the line of his life back to what he has been praying for. But he stands there nevertheless, waiting to wave.

What else is there to do?

S
O FAR, THE ONLY
luck Paul Domenica had ever had was in going to hell. So far. So far, all it had turned out to be was useless white corridors, not unlike Los Angeles International Airport (where Paul had worked when he was alive). There were even moving sidewalks with signs above them that warned you to hold on to the black rubber rail when you stepped on.

His guide was a woman named Ms Baker, who smiled a lot and kept nodding her head at nothing in particular. She wore a little white plastic name-badge on her shirt.

“I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times before, Ms Baker, but it sure ain’t what I thought it’d be!”

She nodded and hefted the bundle of papers she held to her chest like a studious high school girl.

“Yes, it’s always quite a shock. People do the strangest things when they arrive. I could tell you stories that ... well, I could tell you stories!

“Did you have a chance to look over the brochures?”

Paul looked at the red, yellow and blue folders under his arm and smiled. “Yep, and I’ve already decided. I already know.”

“So soon? Wonderful! That’s another thing I could tell you about, Paul. We give people what we honestly feel is ample time to decide, but they all seem so ... hmmm ... unsure.”

“Ms Baker, I know exactly what you mean! When I was working as a waiter, you know? You couldn’t get a straight answer out of half of them. Fries or hash browns with your eggs? You’d think I was selling them life insurance or something! French fries or hash browns! What happened to them when they had to buy a new car or something!”

“Or name their children?” Ms Baker chuckled.

“Or buy a house?” Paul joined her laughter, and it echoed up and around them in the endless white space that seemed to go on, well, forever. Forever. What an amazing word. He’d never thought much about things like that before, but man, he was thinking about them now. White corridors, Ms Baker ... Forever.

Here he was, Paul Domenica, travelling down the white throat of hell without the slightest idea of where he was going. Not that it made much difference. He had all the time in the world. That thought made him laugh, and Ms Baker looked happily at him.

“It’s true, Paul. You do have all the time in the world. Relax, take it easy. We’ll be there in a jif.”

Now that was something; they could read your mind! They could actually read minds.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes, Paul. Whatever you like. Within reason, that is.” She winked at him.

“How do you do that? Read minds? Can I ask that?”

“Yeees, that’s nothing at all.” She took a little pencil out of her pocket. “Now this is some kind of gizmo, Paul. Here, take it.”

He took it. Immediately he was careening down the middle of Ms Baker’s mind. She was thinking about tropical fish, doughnuts, what it would be like to sleep with Paul.

Although he wasn’t ordinarily a shy man, Paul shoved the pencil back as if it were on fire. He couldn’t meet the woman’s eyes.

“Oh now, Paul, don’t get embarrassed. It’s just our way here. I read your mind before and saw all sorts of lovely, terrible things, but that’s the way it is. Who cares what anyone’s thinking now? It doesn’t matter any more! Sex, taxes ... It’s all over, Paul. It’s another thing you’ll have to get used to. You will. Ah, here we are—Room 3112.”

Paul looked at the door and didn’t see any number, but the woman pointed her finger at it and it swung smoothly open.

“Go right on in.”

He stepped into a pale blue room that was full of modern aluminium and leather furniture. There were nice pictures on the walls: sunsets, boats at sea, a Norman Rockwell print of a kid getting a haircut.