Love on the Dark Side

It was a simple thing, opening a door that she had opened a million times before. So why did the knob seem to burn in her hand, and why did the door open so slowly, like it was just as afraid of her as she was of it?

There were his jeans on the floor, his shoes right beside them. There was his book and that was on the floor, too. A bookmark held the place where he had stopped reading. A pair of glasses rested on the bedside table, in front of the little sound machine that mimicked ocean waves. The quilt was thrown back and the pillows were rumpled. There was an indentation where he had laid his head.

Alison flinched violently at the sight of that, as if an invisible hand had risen up to strike her.

She had expected the bed to be the worst. The bed where they had read books while lying in companionable silence, his hand occasionally brushing across her arm in a gesture of marital contentment. The bed where they had made love during long and lazy days and even longer nights. The bed where their whole marriage had been played out, in arguments or in lovemaking, in one way or another, for the last ten years.

Alison sat carefully on the edge of the bed, as if it might leap up and swallow her. She waited out the earthquake that didn’t come. Wind rattled the branches of the big oak tree against the windows. A cold front was coming through and, by the time night rolled around, it would be snowing. There would be four inches, maybe more, or so the forecast said. Matthew always loved winter. She remembered when they would lie in bed and watch the first snowflakes together.

This was nothing but a bed. This was nothing but their house.

Hers. Not theirs, not any more.

A month ago, her husband had gone for a walk in the fallen leaves. It was his favourite time of year, right before the first of the snow fell. It was his favourite time of day, right before the sun went down and the moon went up.

It was a simple walk down a simple road that no one ever travelled – but that day, someone did. Someone was travelling that road at a speed fuelled by one too many drinks, a kid who shouldn’t have been drinking and maybe shouldn’t even have been driving in the first place. And that kid certainly shouldn’t have been driving that big SUV, the one that was too big for her to keep under control.

The SUV wrapped itself around the tree, an old maple whose leaves were all but gone. Alison’s husband had seen it all. She could imagine the horror on his face, the paralysis of watching it happen, then the sudden break into a run, the determination to help.

During the time between life and death, Matthew had done everything he could do to save that girl. That’s why he was in the SUV with her when the engine caught fire, and that is why he stayed there too long.

It was just like him to do that, so many people had said to her at the visitation and at the funeral and in the days beyond, as if it was something that would bring her a measure of comfort. It was his nature, they said. It was just like him to give all of himself for someone else.

Alison’s husband died a hero.

But that didn’t change the fact that he had died.

Alison blinked at the sudden tears. Here it was, surely – here was the tsunami of pain. She held tight to the edge of the bed and focused all her energies on her heart, listened to it pound within her body, not going too fast, not yet . . .

If she didn’t fall apart, did that mean she didn’t care enough?

There across the hallway was the open door to the bathroom. Alison walked to the door and looked in. The light wasn’t on – Matthew was always good at conserving energy, it was one of the things he harped on until Alison wanted to tell him to shove it – and the winter sunlight came through the skylight, as if showcasing everything for her to see.

Matthew’s razor was right there on the edge of the sink. There were little black stubs of hair all over the white porcelain. She stared at them for a very long time.

His toothbrush was there. The bristles were dry. The toothpaste tube was squeezed out of shape in the middle, twisted into the shape of his hand. Another tube sat beside that one, neatly rolled from the bottom. Years of marriage had taught them that, while some things had possible compromise, other things were just best accepted.

But he had died on her. Where was the compromise in that?

‘Liar,’ she said out loud. Her voice echoed, the only answer she was going to get. The fury rose up within her, two steps ahead of the guilt. How could she be angry with him? This was the man who had given the last measure of himself in an effort to save the life of someone else. He made the front page of the national newspapers. Complete strangers mourned him. How could she not see him the way everyone else saw him?

But he hadn’t left everyone else. He had left her.

Alison picked up the toothpaste tube. Her fingers almost fit in the places where his fingers had squeezed. She thought about his hands. He was obsessive about his nails. He kept them clean and clipped and tended with a nail buffer that was grey on one side and pink on the other. He made such a strange picture, his broad shoulders resting back in the chair, his strong hands wielding something so dainty and feminine.

She dropped the toothpaste tube into the trash can. There was nothing else in there, and it looked lonely at the bottom of the wicker basket. She picked up the straight razor, the one that frightened her when she watched him use it, but, sure enough, he never cut himself. Not once. Not a single drop of blood.

She dropped the razor into the trash can. It bounced once and landed neatly beside the toothpaste tube. The sunlight found it and dazzled in starbursts along the sharp edge.

She opened the medicine cabinet. There was the aspirin. She had never been able to take aspirin, but he took them three at a time, sometimes four. She often imagined his blood thinning out to nothing, growing lighter as it pumped through his veins, until there was nothing but the outline of cells in something as clear as water.

The aspirin rattled as she dropped the bottle into the trash.

The toothbrush, the one with the neon colours that looked so out of place. The soap he used, the sandalwood stuff that dried her skin, but made his feel smooth as silk. The shaving soap and the mug and the brush, the old-fashioned way he did things, it all went into the trash can, sometimes with a thud, sometimes with a crash.

She didn’t realise she was crying until her tears fell on the prescription bottle of Valium, the one that was out of date by five years, the one his doctor had given him after the death of his mother. Matthew had sworn he didn’t need them and there they had stayed in the cabinet, but when she looked at the bottle now she realised most of the Valium were missing.

Matthew was with his mother now, and Alison was the one who needed the Valium.

She spun on the balls of her feet. She flung the bottle into the hallway as hard as she could. It bounced on the hardwood floor and skittered across it, then found the steps and clicked on exactly five of them until it hit the carpet at the bottom. The silence inside the house echoed even with the sound of the wind picking up outside.

Alison slammed the door of the medicine cabinet. Light flashed in the mirror and it shook in the frame, but did not shatter. She swept the cologne off the back of the sink, his cologne, the expensive bottle she had purchased at Macy’s less than a year ago. It shattered in the porcelain sink and the scent filled her nose, reminding her of him, overwhelming her.

The tears came harder then, hard enough to run down her cheeks and scald her pale skin. If it was from the unbearable strength of his cologne or from the pain, there they were. She was glad, in some dull and joyless way, that she was finally crying. Not a tear here and there, but really crying, after all this time.

‘And there you have it,’ she intoned, and the sound of her own voice in the empty space was spooky as hell. She turned to look behind her, then chastised herself for being a sissy. This was her house now, not theirs any more, because there wasn’t a couple to be reckoned with. Her name was the only one that mattered so far as the bank was concerned, and she had damn well better get used to the empty house and the echoes that weren’t his, but hers.

Alison.

She froze in the hallway and looked down the staircase. The bottle of Valium lay at the bottom of it, looking up at her like some single accusing eye. She took two steps towards the stairs and then stopped again, listening for something. Anything. The only thing that finally came to her was the winter wind and then the steady click of the grandfather clock in the dining room, a sound so steady that it might as well have been her own heartbeat.

‘I am going crazy,’ she said. ‘That’s why I can’t grieve. I’m going crazy instead.’

She turned back to look at the bedroom. Everything was just as it was before. She wiped the tears from her eyes and willed more to fall, but none did. Her tear ducts were again dry as a bone when they should have been working overtime. The guilt was almost as overwhelming as the scent of his cologne from the bathroom.

She walked through the unforgiving sunlight and looked down into the sink. The cologne bottle was in a half-dozen pieces. She picked up little shards of green glass with careful fingers and dropped them into the wastebasket. Then she turned on the water and washed the majority of the cologne down the drain. The scent was still in the air.

She turned the water off and looked at the sink. There were drops on the side, high on the edges where the water didn’t normally reach. She dipped her finger into one and sniffed. Yes, it was cologne. She put it on her wrists, on her throat, behind her ears. The scent of Matthew surrounded her.

She started to cry again, but it was a quiet and gentle cry, not the sobbing hysterics she thought she needed. She turned on the water again, used the closest washcloth to sweep out the sink and tidied everything up again.

Alison.

This time she turned with a small scream, sure there was someone in the hallway looking at her, certain there was someone in the house. She stood stock-still and waited. There was nothing again, nothing at all. She stood there for what seemed like an eternity, afraid to move, lest she miss some little sound that would give away the fact that there was an intruder in the house. She was aware of the grandfather clock, the ticking of it from down the staircase and down the hallway and around the corner, and she wondered, if she could hear that, why couldn’t she hear someone breathing?

The logic of it relaxed her, and she stepped towards the door again. She looked out into the hallway. The sun had reached that point Matthew always loved the most, when it found the half-moon windows in the top of the house and spilt light through them in shafts that were so strong they looked almost solid. The light danced across the floor and dust motes danced in the beams, reminding her of how long it had been since she had been in the house. Avoidance had seemed the right thing to do, but looking at those shafts now she wondered if she had waited too long, if Matthew’s memory had somehow evaporated during those long weeks she slept in her old bedroom at her mother’s home, afraid of the memories this house would hold.

I missed you.

Alison stared at the sunlight and waited. The fine little hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she broke out into goosebumps, the same way she always did when Matthew kissed that sweet spot right underneath her ear. She listened and heard nothing and decided she really was going crazy, bonkers, bound for the funny farm, one brick short of a load, not playing with a full deck . . .

Stop it, BeeBop.

Alison was suddenly dizzy. She groped for the wall and leant against it. The voice was shocking but the words were so astounding that she couldn’t utter a single sound in response. No one called her BeeBop; no one even knew that name existed. Not her best friend or her mother or her sister or anyone else.

No one but her husband.

She took deep breaths and looked down the staircase. There was the bottle of Valium. She had thrown it. It had bounced down the stairs. She had thrown it and it was there and so all this had to be in her head, right? She was awake and not dreaming.

You’re awake, BeeBop.

She shook her head against the wall. It was cool against her forehead. A breeze picked up and ran over her skin, pulled her hair away from her face, made those goosebumps happen again, only this time they happened everywhere, the way they used to when Matthew had her good and riled up and then blew his warm breath into the sweet cove of her ear.

But she was in her house, the home that was built to last, and there wasn’t a draft. This house was built tight – tight as a virgin in church, Matthew had once said, and laughed out loud at the way she blushed.

There was no breeze. There couldn’t be a breeze.

‘I am imagining things into existence because I want them to be so,’ she said out loud.

This isn’t real?

The breeze was there again, this time moving across her midsection, just the way Matthew’s hand used to do. He would ride his fingers across her belly, right where it started to curve out a bit. It was the sweetest spot, he would say, perfect for his hand.

Her knees went weak and her legs threatened to spill her on to the floor. Before they could, she braced both hands on the wall and breathed deep. She took in great lungfuls of air, and all of it was tinged with the scent of his cologne. She turned from the wall and staggered into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed just as black shadows began to cross her vision.

Stay with me, BeeBop.

The voice was sharp. It was enough to get through the lazy blackness that was creeping up like water over a lens. She spread her knees and dropped her head, trying to get it lower than her heart. She took deep breaths, counting as she went, holding each for a few seconds and then letting them go. The darkness began to recede.

Good girl.

The breeze came again, this time over the back of her neck and down her spine, like fingertips across her skin. She felt them even through the sweater she wore. She sat up slowly and looked over at the window. It was closed, locked down tight, and the wind was blowing around what had to be snow flurries, even though the sun was still shining.

The breeze was warm.

Alison closed her eyes and sat there on the bed where they had made love so many times, the bed that held so many memories, and waited. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, but suddenly it didn’t seem to matter so much as the fact that she should wait, that she should just give herself over to whatever it was that was in this house or maybe even just in her head. She knew what she felt even if her logical mind railed against it. If she was going crazy, well, so be it. And, after the hellish weeks since Matthew died, who would blame her?

You’re not going crazy. You knew I would be here.

Alison flinched at the honesty of it and opened her mouth to protest, but the insanity of that struck her and she clapped her mouth shut. That voice knew everything about her whether she wanted it to or not. Why attempt to lie to a ghost?

A ghost?

Alison bit down her on her lip. She tasted blood. She dug her nails into her own palms. The pain was vivid and fresh, flowering up through her arms. She moaned and opened her eyes. There was nothing there but the feeling was there, it was definitely there . . .

You knew, BeeBop.

Yes, she supposed she did. She knew there would be memories and maybe even some sort of message waiting for her, some final goodbye. Perhaps it would have been in the form of a quick handwritten note that she had missed that fateful afternoon, or a page in a book he had turned down, or a rose he had bought for her and put in a vase, one that would have long since turned brown but a surprise nonetheless. There would be some kind of sign. She believed in such things.

But she never expected, even in her most comforting daydreams, to find him in the house.

‘Why did you do it?’ she asked aloud.

There was silence that stretched forever, and she began to doubt that he was there, after all.

You aren’t asking why I did it. You’re asking why it turned out the way it did. I can answer the first question, but no one can answer the second. It is what it is.

She closed her eyes again, this time to hold back the rising flood of tears. Here it was, the grief that she had known was coming, but now that it was here she wasn’t prepared for it, not at all.

Then the breeze was back, touching the back of her hand, caressing her palm, kissing slowly on that sweet spot right in the centre of it. It travelled up her arm and found the inside of her elbow, teased lovingly there before moving up to her shoulder and trailing across her collarbone.

Cry later. Not right now.

The flash of anger was sudden and choking. Cry later? Why the fuck was he OK with letting her cry at all?

Then there was the breeze – no, more than that, because there was heaviness to it, a weight that hadn’t been there before. The touch slid down the centre of her chest and suddenly a button on her sweater popped open. And then she knew what he wanted.

The anger spilt away like the cologne down the sink. She laughed out loud. The sound was melodic in the empty space of the bedroom. It felt foreign, and she realised it had been weeks since she had laughed.

The laughter filled up the space and suddenly it seemed as though he was there, not just a presence but a real physical being. It seemed as though he had drifted through whatever veil there was separating this world from the next. His touch slid down her chest and her hands joined his. She opened a few buttons but he got most of them himself. The breeze touched her lips and her laughter settled into a sigh.

‘You’re here,’ she said.

Don’t think. Just feel. Feel me, Alison.

She didn’t open her eyes. She lay back on the bed and then he was above her. The breeze wasn’t so much fluid any more as it was solid, and there was heat – so much heat! Matthew had always been warm as a furnace. During the summer, they slept in the bed without touching, because his body was always too hot, but during the winter she cuddled up to him. The heat was there now, as unmistakably real as the bed beneath her.

‘I feel you,’ she said.

He chuckled and the sound seemed to settle right between her thighs.

She lifted her hips. Her slacks slid off with a whisper, and her panties followed that, with a bit of a fumble at her ankles to get them free. She threw her arms up above her head. Hands settled on her thighs and gently pushed until she lay open for him.

The first touch was undeniable. There was no mistaking that for a breeze, or a whisper, or a breath of air. That was Matthew’s tongue, and he was using it in all the ways only he knew. He licked around her lips with feather-light touches and then delved deeper, swirling his tongue but not going inside, making her want him deeper. Then he flicked at her clit, not quite touching it, but moving close enough that she arched her back and growled deep in her throat.

He chuckled again, and this time his tongue made a slow trip from the tip of her clit all the way down to her ass – firm, solid, not yielding in the least, even when she struggled against the intensity. It had been too long since she had felt him and, now that she was, she couldn’t help but respond with every fibre of her being. She wanted more even as the feelings threatened to consume her.

It’s just as good as always, BeeBop.

The breath from his words shimmered over her. She arched under them. Every nerve was alive and waiting. His tongue came back up and this time he delved deeper, almost reaching inside her. She spread her legs wider for him and he moaned in approval. His tongue moved in lazy circles, reaching farther and farther, until she was holding her breath in anticipation. She knew what he would do.

His tongue swept up then, riding hard on her clit. He pressed on the little sensitive nub and she burst into an orgasm that was so sweet she could almost taste it. She pushed against him and he pushed right back, keeping up the pressure, making it last. Finally, she collapsed and drew her knees up to her chest and rolled over to her side, almost as if she could hold it all in.

‘Matthew,’ she said.

Yes.

‘You’re here.’

The smile came through in his words. Oh, yes.

She smiled right back, and slowly rolled over on to her belly.

‘Just how here are you?’

Matthew’s chuckle ran over her skin. The heat of him was against her back and the heat of something else was against her thigh. She wiggled back against him and his touch found her hair, then he was pulling gently, pulling her head back while she whimpered a single word.

‘Please . . .’

You always did like it this way. More than any other way.

‘So did you.’

It struck her that she was speaking in the past tense, and the grief threatened to rise up inside her like a tidal wave. But before it could that heat of him was pressing into the wetness of her, and she cried out as he slid into the place that was still reserved only for him. The hiss of his breath told her how much he liked it. The grief gave way before the thrusting of his body into hers. His words were in her ear and his hands were all over her, blankets of warmth sliding up and down her arms and her back, and that hardness was so deep inside that it took her breath away.

I’ve waited all this time. Aren’t you glad you came back?

Alison smiled against the quilt. Matthew was always cocky about sex. He was the best lover she had ever had, and she had once made the mistake of telling him so.

‘Your ego is bigger than your dick,’ she said, and his laughter was both a sound in her ears and a wind against her shoulder. She got up on her knees. Then she had to brace herself on the bed because he was fucking her from behind, pummelling her from behind, slamming into her. She moved lower, meeting his thrusts until he hit that one certain spot that always did it for her. She gasped when she felt it and he chuckled breathlessly.

There’s the spot, honey. You get tighter around my dick when I hit it.

She stayed as still as she could and let him pound away at that little spot. Her hands dug into the quilt. Her teeth ground down so hard her jaw would hurt later. Then her mouth fell open and her hands went weak. Now he was caressing that spot with the head of his cock, and she knew that feeling – that was the way he moved when he was going to come. She waited, rode it with him, until he pushed deep and called out, a long and low sound of relief and release.

Alison . . .

The flood inside her was more than real. For a moment she was transported back to when things were perfect, when they were happily married and he was still there with her, waking up beside her every morning. She could believe for a moment that she would turn around when he withdrew from her and he would be right there, his hair damp against his forehead, his eyes glassy with pleasure, a goofy smile on his face.

Then the weight pushed her down on the bed. Her knees went out from under her. The wetness crept out and stained the bedclothes. She wrapped her arms around the pillow, the one that had the indentation of his head still in it.

The grief came then. It was unimaginable, a pain that ripped from the centre of her and made her feel as though her whole body would come apart, not just her heart. She screamed into the pillow and, even though the weight was there and the voice was in her ear, she couldn’t stop.

The sun set an hour later. The house had gone dark. The wind had died down outside, and there was the sound of sleet pinging against the windows. Her throat was sore from the screaming and her eyes hurt from the tears. Her whole body felt like she had been dealt a dozen good whacks with an out-of-control baseball bat.

But the hand on her back was soothing and constant.

‘Matthew?’

Yes.

She listened to the sound and thought again that she might be going crazy.

You wanted a sign. How did I do?

She nodded against the quilt. One more sob came out, and then she was silent, thinking over the question that had been burning in her mind since the moment she realised he was really there.

‘How long can you stay?’

There was a very long silence. Something was missing. As she lay there and listened to the rhythm of their breathing, she realised that the grandfather clock was no longer ticking.

I’m here right now.

It was enough. She turned in the bed and, though she couldn’t see him, she knew he was there. Under the cover of darkness, it was all the same, just like he had never left.

In the morning, the snow had covered the world, including the skylight. Even so, the vision in the bathroom mirror was clear enough. She saw the marks on her throat and her breasts, the marks left by the eagerness of his lips. There was no mistake as to what they were, and how they got there.

She touched them and, though her eyes were red and bright with tears, her lips were smiling.