Never-Ending October

A spider is crawling slowly, tentatively, along the hearth, thin black legs against the red brick illuminated uncertainly by the log fire. I should scream and call for Daniel, or at least pull my feet off the floor and tuck the soft throw tightly around me. But I don’t. I marvel at my own lack of reaction, and at the thought that screaming would be terribly unfitting in this space. This calm, quiet, beautiful place.

“Why aren’t you out there?” I ask the spider. I think of the white cobwebs I spotted this morning, spread on top of our hedges, like harbingers of the snow that should soon be here. The days have been cool, and yellow and rusty leaves have been blanketing the paths around the village since I arrived.

A steaming cup appears in front of me.

“Chamomile,” Daniel says. I didn’t hear him come.

I look up and can’t help but smile so wide, I’m afraid I’ll get smile wrinkles as big as my face. I told him so once, and he said that he would always love my smile, wrinkles or not. And I… I will always love him. I think. My heart says yes, but my head sometimes whispers, too good to be true. Is it?

Freeing my arms from the throw, I take the teacup he’s offering. I blow lightly and take a sip, enjoying the warmth of the tea. 

“There is a spider,” I remember, and look toward the hearth. The spider has reached the corner of the hearth and stopped, undecided about where to go next.

 “Ah,” Daniel says. “He’ll be fine outside.”

He picks it up with thumb and index finger, like I would a ladybug, and walks to the back door. A breath of cool air rushes in and makes the flames dance faster, then the door closes again with a shy creak. I watch Daniel in wonder. I don’t know why grabbing a spider is not repulsive, or why freeing it in the garden is better than smashing it with a slipper, but I am learning to like his ways. Maybe his mind works differently because he is an artist, and that’s why I like the way he sees the world. Or maybe I like it because I’m in love. That, of course, could have a lot to do with it.

I drink my tea and watch Daniel walk back quietly. He sits on the floor and hugs my knees, resting his head on my lap. 

“You are my angel,” he says.

And you are mine, I want to say, though I know it would sound cheesy. But hasn’t he been that for me, ever since we met back in the loud and crazy part of the world? 

I can see it in the playfulness of the fire, like a film projection on a glowing screen. Me, waiting for the elevator that ran along the outside of the hotel, camera hanging around my neck, eager to get panoramic shots from the top. The small crowd pushing me with it, and me getting out of the way at the last second, fiddling with the camera as if I had just thought of something interesting to photograph. Then doing the same thing for the next time the elevator came, and the next. And out of the blue, a thin young man asking me, “Are you afraid of heights?” I wasn’t, and I said so. He apologized and offered to accompany me on the next elevator ride, if that's what I wanted to do. “It’s complicated,” I said stupidly, as if I was describing a relationship. My relationship with elevators. Especially an outside one, that let you see how far you were going and how fast, as you went up. He snuck his arm around mine and I followed him naturally, as if I had been waiting for him all along. We rode the elevator together, and I wasn’t sure if my heart beat faster because of the ride or because of him.

“Come with me,” Daniel says and stands up, as I finish my tea. He walks to the back door and brings my yellow garden boots. “I’ll keep you warm,” he adds, guessing my thoughts, and I don’t dare think of anything else.

I wrap myself in the throw and follow him. Down the three small steps into the backyard, the night meets us like a grand host. The yard feels bigger than during the day, the hills taller, the sky closer. It rained on and off all day, but in the evening it stopped. I thought the sky would have cleared by now and Daniel would show me the stars. But it’s still cloudy and instead of making me look up, he spins me to face the beech-covered hill. The forest that was rusty-red a few hours ago, now seems to be catching on fire. It is the moon rising over the hill, a round, marigold moon. It slowly ascends behind the trees, casting its radiance through the thick of trunks and limbs. 

A rustle and a scurry in the wet leaves startles me, and I cling to Daniel. 

“A fox,” he smiles. “Harmless.” 

How does he know it’s a fox? But if I can tell in the dark that he is smiling, I guess he can tell in the dark that it’s a fox.

“Are you afraid?” he asks.

“No,” I say eagerly, and feel wrong for lying. “Not of foxes,” I add, and that’s closer to the truth.

“Don’t they say that love drives out all fear?” he asks. Before I can think of an answer, he kisses me.

***

“You’re safe, I’m here.”

I am curled in Daniel’s arms and he’s rocking me back and forth, like I am a child. I hug him tight and sob into his shirt.

“Same dream?” he asks. “The elevator?” and I whimper, “Yes.”

I was on an elevator again. I waited for it to get up to my floor, but instead of stopping there, it kept going. On and on, to the last floor, past it, past the top of the building, and away into nothingness, from whence I could not return.

“You’re safe,” Daniel whispers again, and I drift back to sleep.

***

 I wake up to the patter of rain mixed with low piano notes. The “Moonlight” sonata, one of the few pieces I can name. It’s so fitting, Beethoven might as well have called it the “October” sonata.

I find Daniel in his favorite armchair listening to the music, with a sketch pad next to him, page blank. Two cups of tea await on the side table, neither touched. He’s been waiting for me.

“When did you get up?” I ask.

“Just after dawn,” he says, and I have no idea what that means. With the shorter days, is that six in the morning? Seven?

I sit in the chair next to him, sipping my tea. Delicate steam curls out of the cup. He must have just brewed it. How did he know to time it so well? I am still getting used to having no clocks in the house, no wall to glance at and quickly calculate how long since breakfast or how long until dinner. It’s a strange life, doing what you need when you need to, and what you want when you want to, no schedule at all.

“What is this place?” I wonder out loud, marveling more at Daniel than at the house.

“It’s where you belong,” he says. It sounds like a line from a scary book. Like something a deranged criminal would say to his victim, before adding maniacally, “forever!” 

“You’re not going to kill me, are you?” I laugh softly.

He looks at me with surprise, “Kill? No, not kill you. Give you life.”

I must be in a funny mood, because I come back with a “Too late, my Mom already gave me life.”

There is a brief silence. I am sorry about the whole exchange. I can’t figure out why I go from perfectly comfortable to totally awkward sometimes. But Daniel knows about my parents. And while others would be quiet not knowing what to say, or mumble “Sorry” as a way out, he puts down his tea and looks at me.

“Tell me about your Mom,” he says gently. And I do. I tell him about Mom and Dad, about the jokes and the laughter, about the singing, about the trips, about the stories, about the visits to my grandparents.

“Oh goodness,” I gasp. “It is so strange, but do you think this is why I’ve been having these nightmares?”

He’s been sketching while I was talking, but now he stops and fixes me with a curious stare.

“When we visited my grandparents,” I say breathlessly, “we always played a little game, where I would race Mom and Dad. They would take the elevator, and I would take the stairs, and see who gets to my grandparents’ door first. They lived on the second floor, so I usually won, what with Mom and Dad waiting for the elevator, and probably fiddling with the buttons to give me enough of a head start. One day, when we entered the building I ran ahead as usual, only to see the elevator waiting on the ground floor. I thought, why not? I got in, and I had never been on an elevator alone before. Before I could press the button for the second floor, the elevator took off by itself. I was so light that the elevator didn’t register that there was someone in it, and it got called to an upper floor, so off it went as if it was empty. I was terrified. I kept pressing the button for the second floor, even after I knew it passed, and I watched the floors go by and I counted: third, fourth, fifth. Eventually it stopped and a stranger stepped in. I don’t know what she said, probably something kind because I was crying. Of course next thing I knew I was back on the ground floor and ran into my Mom’s arms. I was not hurt, but I was frightened to death.”

I finish the story and can’t believe that I might have just uncovered the reason why I’ve had the same nightmare since childhood.

“Did you go back to your grandparents after that?” Daniel asks.

“Of course.”

“And did you keep racing to their doorstep?”

“Absolutely,” I say and lose myself in the happy side of the memory.

A light scraping sound comes from the pencil working on the sketchpad. In a few strokes, Daniel finishes and flips the pad toward me. A shiver betrays my surprise. There, drawn in broad, elongated lines, is a child holding hands with two adults, facing away, heading toward a building. No doubt this is me holding Mom’s and Dad’s hands, heading to my grandparents’, and although you can’t see our faces, joy is radiating from the drawing. I am skipping, and they are ever so slightly turned toward me, talking to me. I trace my finger gently over the silhouettes, over the frame of the building. How did Daniel get their figures just the right stature, the details in the building’s facade, Mom’s purse hanging on her arm…

“You loved them so much, I thought…”

Daniel doesn’t finish his sentence. I could jump out of my seat and hug him right now, and cry with gratitude that he put this memory down on paper for me. It’s like he went back in time and took a picture of my childhood. I put the drawing down, afraid that if I don’t, I’ll pull it so tight to my chest that I’ll crease it and ruin it. I look at Daniel with a trembling smile, while tears roll down my cheeks.

***

Sitting on the wide ledge of the bay window with my favorite throw, I am trying to read. I am not sure if it’s still morning and the day hasn’t gotten all its strength, or if the day has come and gone and we’re heading into evening. Either way, there is just a dim, milky light coming in. If I went outside, I could probably touch it, and strings of it would wrap around me like a spider web you walked into without seeing it.

“It’s just fog,” I hear Daniel behind me and realize I’ve been staring out into the white nothingness for a while.

“It feels like it’s been October forever,” I say.

“Nothing is forever,” he says, and I scrunch myself under the throw to make room for him.

“Not even love?” I ask.

“Ah,” he starts philosophically, sitting down. “Nothing in this world is forever. But love is not of this world.”

Aren’t we here, in this world, aren’t we in love, I want to ask. 

“What are you afraid of?” he says.

I shake my head. “Nothing. I didn’t even have the nightmare last night, see?”

He reaches for my hand. “What did you dream of?”

I remember now, and I think it’s funny at first, but then I find it strange.

“I was driving, and the car wouldn’t stop. Not like going to crash, fast. The breaks worked, they slowed down the car. But the car was stubborn. It kept rolling, slowly. No matter how hard I jammed my foot on the break, it wouldn’t stop.”

“Let it go,” Daniel says, and his voice sounds almost sad. 

I am confused. Let go of what? It was just a dream.

“It’s never just a dream,” he says.

***

Last night I dreamt about being in the rolling car again, the car that wouldn't stop. Not even a scary dream, just senseless and annoying. I want a night without any dreams at all. I am tired of dreams, and tired of Daniel asking me what they mean and what I am afraid of. I have everything I want, I am not scared and I don’t need to let go of anything.

The coziness of the house feels suddenly suffocating. I grab my coat, slip into my yellow garden boots, and stuff a hat on my head for good measure, then go out into the yard. The creaky door startles me, like a guard dog that growls just enough to let you know he’s watching.

I step into the milky light of the morning and keep walking. I will find a spot in the garden to sit down and meditate like wisemen do in movies, and I shall find whatever I need to find or let go of whatever I need to let go. If there is such a thing. 

I look down at my feet. The ground is soggy, and under layers of leaves there is nothing but wet, cold mud. I don’t actually want to sit in that. I want to see the sun. I am tired of this never-ending October, of the fog, and of the moisture that seeps from the air straight into my bones. 

A sheep’s bleat almost makes me laugh. A good reminder that there is normal life somewhere in this village. I don’t know what it is about the perfect life in this cottage that suddenly has me mad, and I’m sure that getting mad is in the opposite direction of love, but here I am.

“Hey.”

I turn around to the sound of Daniel’s voice. He looks like a charcoal drawing, a dark silhouette against a background of white mist. My first reaction is guilt over getting upset over nothing, when he’s been so good to me. My next is to fall into his arms and tell him how tired I am of this quiet blank where nothing happens. Both last a fraction of a second. I don’t need him to forgive my feelings, or to comfort me because of them. 

“I had enough of this,” I say with a defiant voice that I barely recognize as my own. There is a glint in his eye and a smirk at the corner of his lips: So? “I need to leave.” 

“Are you scared of something?” he asks. 

“Of nothing.”

“Of me?”

I shake my head instead of saying “no”. Not because I am unsure of it, but because I am so absolutely sure, I don’t need to say it. “I am tired of holding back,” I say.

“Then come with me. I never wanted you to hold back on anything. Are you ready?”

Out of nowhere, his long arms are around me, holding me tight.

“Yes,” I say without knowing exactly what he is asking, but not caring. I push on my tiptoes and wish I heard something prettier than the squelchy noise from my boots. No matter. I press my lips to Daniel’s, daringly. It’s a kiss that lasts longer than the never-ending October, that makes me dizzy and cold, then warm again. The wind is swishing and I feel weightless in Daniel’s arms. 

When I open my eyes, I see his radiant face gleaming in the sun, and I have to blink to get used to the blinding light around us. The sky above is so blue, and below… below us is the fog we left behind. This can’t be real, but it is, and I just hold on to Daniel in perfect bliss.

“I love you,” I tell him for the first time.

Somewhere, far below, the blanket of mist parts just enough for me to get a glimpse of our cottage. There on the ground, in the middle of the backyard, lies a small heap from which peek the soles of a pair of yellow garden boots.