Juliet and Romeo

She laughs as the song comes on the radio and in that laugh he sees the girl she once was. He wants to be young again. To know her through the ages. To be with her and share his life with her. All of her. To know her from the very start and onwards, into an eternity which he could not bear if it was not for her, and a love he had not thought possible. Not for him. Not for them.

He supposes the song is a classic now, but he remembers when it was first played on older, crackling radios. Those radios were new back then, now they are obsolete. Replaced by newer, better models. Some dressed up to evoke thoughts and memories of an appropriated and bastardised history. Time was linear back then and people understood history far better than they do now. They understood and they got their place in the world. Now there are only fragments that can be used and abused until they break into smaller and smaller pieces. The world is shattered and no one seems to care. No one wants to fix it anymore.

As Romeo and Juliet plays, he feels the inexplicable sorrow of loss, but he smiles at Julie all the same. She is his Juliet and Romeo sounds so much better than Robert. He’s never been a Bob. Could never pull that one off. For a while he tried Rob on for size, but it wasn’t age appropriate and he just looked stupid wearing it. There is a tragedy in not having the right name. A tragedy that deepens with the knowledge that there is no name for who and what he is, or worse than that, that he has never found it within himself to go in search of that word and the meaning that it contains.

His elusive real name has walked upon his grave and brought with it the reality of their situation. The world they occupy is broken. They snatch moments together within secret fragments. They can have nothing more. If their secret got out, there would be hell to pay.

The lament of the song goes on and it wounds him all the more as the front man puts the whole car crash of two lives down to timing. It’s not you. It’s not even me. It’s that our timing sucked. We took a gamble on love, but we rolled the dice too soon.

Too late is how it feels to Robert. He gazes upon his true love and not for the first time does he wonder how he can feel such overwhelming love for her, and for that love to be a seed within the rotting corpse of a life gone badly wrong. Their moments of joy and intimacy are entombed in dread and despair. Which is real? Is any of it real?

The image of the grave lingers. Life goes on, and that movement will bring their love into direct contact with its nemesis. In the here and now, he feels oh so powerful. Julie is his life. Nothing else matters. But the cold light of day awaits and he fears that all this is, is a joke, and the joke is on him. The punchline of the joke is the shadow of a sledgehammer rising above his head. It is only a matter of time before he is crushed and no longer able to be the person he is here and now.

“What’s the matter, my love?”

Julie smiles kindly upon him. She is his sun and in her radiance he cannot deny her. His words are kind lies, she does not deserve the world beyond this one. She deserves far more. She deserves the happiness that they snatch for fleeting moments. She is better than that. He wishes he could give her more, but he does not know how. All he can do is protect her from the truth of the world and the truth of him, “nothing,” he lies, “this song has always got to me.”

Julie gives him a curious look, “it makes me happy,” she tells him.

He smiles at this. This is why he loves this woman. She is a counter to him. There is balance between them, and in that balance he sees a way of living that is whole and complete. He can be himself in the face of her contradiction. There is no malice or conflict in the way of her. She is a gentle challenge. She coaxes him out of hiding and encourages him to see more and be more. There is good in the world, if only he would see it. He sees it in her and that is enough. That tells him all he needs to know.

A question presents itself to him. Why would she find happiness in a song of lost love? He does not ask it. Asking such a thing would break the spell. He would be displaying his ignorance of her. Telling her that he does not know her and also that he finds her disagreeable. Skewering her with an inconsiderate slight. An accusation of how wrong she is.

He listens to the last seconds of the song and finds it to be beautiful as he hears it with her ears. Yes, beauty carries with it happiness and joy. Even so, he sees what else it brings. There is a message in beauty and that message is death. Nothing lasts. Beauty is a temporary impossibility. A dream that dared to show itself to the world but in doing so was corrupted and burnt away, so that the memory of it was a distortion of the fleeting perfection that dared to live.

He cups her face in his hands and holds her there. Looking into her eyes in an attempt to lose himself in her. He almost does. He thinks he could. But he holds back and anchors himself because it would not be fair for him to go first. They haven’t discussed this, but he knows it is the honourable thing to do. To stay and bear the pain of loss. That is the ultimate sacrifice and it is something he knows he can give. Something that would make his existence worthwhile in some small way.

She smiles uncertainly and he takes this as a welcome. He kisses her gently, brushing his lips against her as though she were a butterfly. The impossibility of her being breaks his heart and as the cracks appear his love flows out and there is nothing but this. Nothing but her. He holds her in his hands and their kissing becomes more insistent. He is dizzied by her. He knows he can lose himself in this sensation. This he knows is a fairground ride. Sweeping him up and taking him away. His eyes have closed and his hands are elsewhere. He is elsewhere. They take their time exploring each other and when it is done, they lay in each other’s arms and stare up at the ceiling as though it is not there, and they are in the tall grasses of a meadow instead of the cheap hotel they booked only the day before.

“That was wonderful,” she breathes the words out and the sound thrills him, but the undertow of those words is dangerous. 

Was.

It’s not only the past tense of their union. He resents her speaking at all. There are no words for what they have. Words only weigh heavily upon the fragility of a moment that may never be repeated. Their warring worlds do not want them here. They would not understand. They meet at the border of a conflict. They exist in no man’s land. One day soon this will all end. It will end before it ever began.

She moves in his arms. He wants to wrap her up all the more tightly and never let her go. He understands that there is a childish petulance to this, a toddlers violent want in the face of what is right and true. He will have to let her go soon enough and now he begins to suffer the torment of separation, even as he feels her against him, and wishes that he could be the beating of her heart, dwelling in her bosom until the very last pulse of life leaves her body.

Sitting up, she speaks again and now she shatters the illusion of their being together, “I’d better go.”

The terrible, inexorable gravity of the world is drawing her away from him. She is preparing to return to a place that is mislabelled as home. A prison. A fortress that denies him her love.

“I’d best go too,” he echoes her words and her movements. A stilted marionette doll being worked by a blind drunk puppeteer. He looks up at the strings that bind him to a fate that was never his, and sees how helpless he is. His hope is being strangled by strings he will never cut.

They leave the hotel room separately. He respects the care she takes with this arrangement, calls it something other than the paranoia that it is. All the same, he recognises her yielding and capitulating to a slavery that stunts the growth of her spirit. 

He wants to save her. There is that in him. A need that he knows is wrong. Something he built as a result of something that went bad in his life at a time when he was not keeping note of what was occurring. This compulsion is a part of him that he cannot bear to remove. It’s a part of them both now. There is no turning back, even as they betray their stolen moment and return to the lives he doubts they will ever forsake.

In the corridor, he sees her waiting at the lifts and cannot help but run to her. He slips his arms around her, regretting this impulsive act as she flinches from his touch, “run away with me,” he says quietly as he channels all his energy into their embrace.

“I can’t,” she says coldly, “you know I can’t.”

“There’s no such words as…” he begins.

“Please don’t,” she instructs him as the lift doors open.

She slips from his embrace and she remains with her back to him, head downcast in the reflection of the mirror as the mouth of the lift closes and she is swallowed down.

“I’m home!” he calls into the cold and inhospitable hallway of the house. 

There is no response, which is response enough. He knows she is there. In her bedroom. She is always there in her bedroom. This is always the starting point of their dreadful dance. He trudges to the kitchen and sighs as he checks the water level of the kettle, tops it up and switches it on. He brutally drowns the innocent tea bag with a teaspoon until it bleeds its essence out into the boiling water. The resilient bag resists his attempts to break it. He wishes he was made of such stern stuff.

“You went to see her again, didn’t you?”

His shoulders slump at the words. He wants this all to go away. He made a mistake, only he didn’t know it was a mistake until well after the fact. He acted in good faith and somehow his act was subverted into a hateful thing that he must pay for little by little and bit by bit. The error of his ways is devouring him from the feet up and watching his agonies with a detached interest.

He sighs again and feels the presence of his tears. Does not want to share them. Not here. Not like this. He cannot help but push back. Defiance shrunken and spineless and worse than futile. Another piece of him thrown into the pit of hungry mouths.

“She’s your Mum,” he says simply.

“She was my Mum,” she hisses with a venom that burns his back.

There is no counter to that. Logic will not suffice. Julie never ceased being Emma’s Mum, but belief is a powerful thing, especially when it is allied to hate.

“Want a cuppa?” he asks as he turns to face his daughter.

“No,” she says flatly, “what I want is for you to stop seeing that vile woman.”

Emma’s rage rolls over him and in its midst, he feels real fear. He is scared of his own daughter and what she might do. So scared that he can never voice his concerns for fear of making them real. It’s already all his fault. That much is clear. He is to blame. He was always to blame.

“I’m going up,” he tells Emma.

He steps forward and for one awful moment he thinks Emma will bar his way. He sees the vengeful look in her eyes and wonders just how far she would go. What she would do to stop him ever seeing Julie again.

Emma steps aside at the last minute and Robert gingerly steps past her, feeling the heat of her anger. Trying not to tremble in its presence. Doing his best not to allow his anger to meet hers. He doesn’t trust his own responses. There is no certainty to where his own pent up anger would take him, nor how that red misted escapade would end.

In his room he sits on a bed that is all emptiness and his heart sinks into the mattress and beyond. Somewhere just five miles away, he imagines Julie doing the same. Hopes that Miles never turns violent. But then the threat of violence is so much more effective a weapon. Miles, his little boy turned gaoler. Robert made and nurtured these children and built the prisons they now reside in, but he was absent in that making.

“It was only ever supposed to be a break,” he whispers to himself. 

He no longer remembers why there was ever a need for them to move away from each other. Something was wrong. That much was obvious, but it was never Julie. It was never him. It felt different back then.

Now this.

His phone rings.

His heart leaps at the sound of it. He lives for the call that will signal the end of his exile. Plucking the vibrating device from his pocket, he sees Miles name and his face scrunches up into consternation.

“It’s Mum,” says the boy, “you’d better come.”

“OK,” replies Robert. He is already on his feet and moving, “what’s happened?” he asks a phone that has returned to the afterlife.

The door of his former home is open. He moves through it swiftly. An economy of motion born of purpose and determination. Julie needs him. He needs to be with her as soon as he possibly can. Truth is, he should never have left her.

He strides up the stairs. Doesn’t bother with the ground floor. Somehow knows where she will be. On the landing, Miles is standing watch, with arms crossed. A funeral director conveying a sombre tone for the occasion. Neither of them speak. There is no need for that. Death has its own language.

Julie is laying sprawled across the bed. Her face slack. She looks younger, and in this state of escape, care free. Robert wishes he could remember the last time she looked like this in life. She is cold and unresponsive as he embraces her. He is back at the lift and reliving their final moment together. The lift did it’s work after all.

“You killed her,” Miles whispers from behind him.

It is then that Robert sees the bottle of pills and understands what Julie has done. He doesn’t blame her. He’s glad that she went first after all. He picks up the bottle and peers into it. There are pills inside. Julie only took half.

The next moment happens with a fluidity of its own. Robert doesn’t think. He tips his head back and dry swallows the remainder of the pills. There is nothing left for him in this life now, all that awaits him is a living hell.

Rolling onto his back he takes Julie’s hand in his. Turns his head towards the doorway. Miles’ silence providing a question that fades into the absence in the doorway. His head is spinning, and as he loses consciousness he understands that he’s made another mistake. He’s got it wrong again. He reaches for an answer, but it is dark and he is falling. His hand squeezes Julie’s and he fancies that she responds. His heart attempts to leap at that simple act, but it falls, never to rise again.

Less than five minutes later, Julie groans. She is groggy and her mouth is gummy. Lips numb. She feels the presence of her son in the doorway. Sees the look of triumph writ large across his face, “what did you do?” she says with a difficulty that confuses her.

Only then does she feel Robert’s cold hand in hers, and in the next moment she knows. She knows with a dread certainty. All of it is presented to her with a dark finality. She pushes herself up and looks down upon her husband and lover, “oh Robert, what have you done?”

“He did us all a favour and died,” Miles tells her with a clinical coldness that freezes her. 

It is then that she sees the pill bottle in Robert’s hand. She prizes it from his fingers and finding it empty, sniffs it as though she can draw enough poison into herself to follow him into the blessed release of death.

“Oh no, Mother,” smiles Miles, “you don’t get off that easily.”

Julie looks uncertainly at her son, but what she sees is something else entirely. As she registers the change, Emma joins her erstwhile brother, “we’re together now, Mother,” she says. But Julie has never heard the word mother said in a more alien way.