Absolution

She cracked the ice tray with her thumbs. It was a jarring sound. Her focus brought inward, she reached for the glass tumbler. She looked at the splintered cubes, the way they had fractured into delicate slivers. In front of her was a cloudy, murky mess of water, solidified into something hard and cold. There was a longing for it to be pristine, a frozen moment like the first time their eyes met. Her heart wilted under the weight, not of the memory, but of her sunken reality. He proffered many words, and they had sustained her, the way he grouped them carefully into phrases of adoration and concern. She was needed. Desired. Appreciated. She was in love.

He didn’t present a classic handsomeness. His was a boyish charm that had been blunted by a life of stress and doubt. His eyes belied a heaviness as if the whole of his face might collapse around them, and his smile was brief, eclipsed by the fear that onlookers would be prone to judgment. He projected a wavering confidence until he met Delilah. She had been apt to overlook his imperfections, to see him in the way he wanted to be seen. It was a freeing gesture. She craved his masculinity, both gentle and vulnerable. There were bunched minutes that would find them together, talking in open, public spaces. She felt connected to the lilt of his voice, the soft Southern drawl reminiscent of home. His musings made her smile and laugh, and they drew closer. She focused on his strong hands. Couldn’t he see that she wanted him to touch her?

She was jolted out of her reverie by the quiet. It was an unnatural state, which she had become accustomed to the past several months. She listened for the clinking sound as she dropped the cubes one by one into the glass. They clung to the dampness on her hand. With a sturdy ease, she poured the freshly brewed tea. The ice was reproving, a popping sound as the heat stole away its frigid center. At that moment, she sighed. It wasn’t a light emanation, but rather a choking breath of air, holding back a torrent of emptiness. She raised the glass to her pursed lips. In the hesitation, she knew that the summer would be wrought with its earthly burdens: humidity, mosquitoes and the wailing cry of the cicadas. It was all going to break her. There was no escape.

Delilah sat down in front of her easel in the staid parlor. There was a heaviness as if everything was covered with an unseen dust. She had forgiven him. The betrayal had hit her squarely, a shocking surprise that had formed ripple effects, her calendar upended without warning. She was no longer able to call, text or see him. Without those conversations, his utterances that kept her spirit buoyed, she collapsed into despair.

She picked up the slender handle of the paintbrush, dabbing the fine bristles in the paint. Against the canvas, she transferred the red goopiness with harsh, ardent strokes. It was a forced gesture, intent with release. She selected the black next, laden in its humility and loss. Her aim, to smudge out the vibrance with the darkest void. It was a failed attempt to rid herself of her thoughts. Leaning back in her chair, she could hear the cacophony of their past words, a repetitive cycling of lost moments.

“I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of?” she asked imploringly. It never occurred to her to be fearful.

“I’m afraid of falling for you.”

She could recall his eyes and how they held the depth of his sadness, knowing he was within and without, a prisoner to a fate that claimed him in youth.

She added in the anger of yellow. A solid brushstroke.

***

During their last meeting, she stopped him in retreat.

“Do you still want this?”

Turning back, he looked at her, a regret steeped in melancholy. He shook his head in the affirmative, the pensive sorrow welling in his eyes.

“Pray about it,” he offered, as if a primordial force might be able to right the many wrongs.

She nodded. She didn’t understand that everything was already past them. The deceit was set in motion, and the angels had fled.

With strewn brushstrokes, she flicked grey paint into the corners. Blighting out hope was her robotic inclination, the duty to exist.

***

Sipping on her cool refreshment, she sorted through the poignant memories and the callousness in which it had come crashing down. She hated herself for the wasted hours, the words that never took shape into meaning. She still ached for his touch, the co-mingling of skin and desire. The energy started to rise in her chest, a slow, upward creeping that propelled her thoughts into racing form. The instinct was to follow the kinetic flow. She wanted to run, and run, and run farther. Faster. She remained stationary.

Thoughts of him kissing that woman plagued her. Not his wife, but the “other” other girl. The hurt surged, and she threw the palette of colors against the unfinished painting. She cracked. Fractured. She yearned to melt into nothingness. Envious, she watched the ice cubes dissolve, a slow re-morphing.

She heard that he patched things with his wife. It wasn’t a perfect union, but a union, nonetheless. He tried to shield Delilah from his misdeeds, but the townsfolk bantered around the details of the sordid tryst. Unbeknownst to them, she was the missing element of the shapeshifting triangle. Her tears were silent. No one suspected.

The daily focus was concentration on movement, one foot, followed by the other until it blended into a fog of hazy days and languishing months. That fateful summer where the unraveling started gave way to autumn’s crispness. Winter blustered with brevity and spring unfurled its new life with robust shades of green. And then the misery of the cicadas returned, and Delilah cried. She had determined the kiss was inconsequential, but she could not fathom why she wasn’t enough. The wound would not heal, despite the desperate pleadings for an understanding. He was nowhere to be found. A ghost. A dream. An infinite loss.

She was no longer of use or need. The abandonment was suffocating. She often wondered if he gave consideration as to how things would feel in reverse. Could he live with the same, gaping hole in his psyche, if she had betrayed him and then vanished? Did he always take advantage of people’s kindnesses? She worried that there were signs she had ignored. A one-sided love is the perfect mirror.

Perhaps, if she had been brave enough to kiss him, then the rest of this disordered mess would never have transpired. She blamed herself for the inaction. She wanted to ride the waves of time backward to that place where they were confidants and friends, where she knew she meant something to him. The present confusion was an unbalanced, ceaseless hurt.

Never suspecting that it would end was the hardest truth to reconcile. It was over before it started. A promise forgotten. Happiness unrealized. Despite the lies, even the ones exerted by omission, and the willful, crafted deceit, she longed for him. She wondered if he thought of her in the still night, those hours serving a refrain from the cicada’s gentle mourning. She wanted him to remember her attributes before her broken resolve. Free-spirited, genuine and smiling. Yes, a golden smile.

She lashed out in anger when she could no longer carry the burden of her heart. She needed him to feel the depth of her suffering. It was done anonymously, discreetly, but he would know. With trembling fingers, she sent the text to his wife.

“You’re not the only one he cheated on…”

Silence louder than words and a reflection left in ruins.

Her unseeing glance followed the room, resting on the incomplete painting. The colors merged into a muddiness. Time would be the messenger of truth.

She bent her head in a posture of surrender. The bottom of her glass stared back at her. Everything had disappeared, the days innumerable, leading to this point. She prayed for absolution from the gods, the angels, and the one man whom she would always need.

Closing her eyes, she imagined the feel of his breath on her skin, a soulmate desired, a sacred place out of reach. Raising her head, there was a realization that summer would continue onward, unmoved in its woeful harmony. She accepted her fate.