8 Hours Until Paradise

5:00 PM

The little scrap adorned with a pixel of some fruits felt heavy in my mouth. Not bitter. Rebecca across the hall said something about it being bitter. I don’t remember if it’s a good or bad thing. The paper sat for a second on my tongue, a little dry and unusual, but was gone by the time I reached the kitchen.

In my twenties, the idea of me taking drugs was unseemly. I was a stand up member of society. Not one who would win a Nobel Prize any day or would make a high school history book, but an accountant. I took part in living the way one should live. I worked odd labor jobs until school. That was interrupted, but a girl’s dad gave me a chance. Her hair bounced and twinkled like a dancer in the spotlight. My hair was stick straight, thin, and destined to fall out in twenty years; I do not know what she saw. Colette waltzed up to me one day, many many years ago, as I looked at the flowers in a florist’s shop and stated, “Buy me one and I’ll go to lunch with you.” I didn’t even notice her before her sore interruption. But a smile drifted up my face, warming my cheeks with a soft rosy glow of love. I nodded silently and she followed behind me as I brought a pink carnation to the counter. We went to a nice diner a door down. She got tea and pancakes for us to split. And that was that. Sometimes I wish we never split those damned pancakes. I cannot bring myself to eat pancakes anymore, nor many other things. I find myself to be tired, emotionally and physically, of living. Sometimes I wonder if that is how she felt. I wonder if she truly found that peace she seemed to be searching for.

We had two kids, Maryanne and Addison, or Addie, as she used to demand to be called. Addison was too formal for my lil’ drama queen. But now she is thirty-six and has her own kid with a lawyer a few hours south. Maryanne and I have not spoken since Thanksgiving three years ago. Colette had passed a week before.

Colette needed me. I needed her. She was my everything from the moment I met her. I didn’t know what to do when she decided she wanted to leave this world. I do not know what made her so tired or what made her feel so fragile. Until the day she left, I never felt old. We may have been far past our biological prime, but we still had so much time left and so many memories. She left our grandkids and our daughters and somehow they are mad at me. Maryanne swore I should’ve always seen she needed help, that this would happen. That her poor mood and bleak behavior were a warning sign.

I could always eventually cheer her up. It may have taken a few days or longer sometimes, but I couldn’t this time. I didn’t. I don’t know if I tried hard enough. I was fed up with her sitting stale with buzzing flickers of some neon people on the TV casting shadows on her face. She stole all the blankets and plates would pile up. I loved her. I did. But the one time I should’ve been there more than anything, I decided to not take her seriously. I was mad that she was seeing the world through this myopic lens of negativity.

Why did I do this? I kept asking myself. My youth was over. It isn’t my turn to be rowdy or wild anymore. Plus, that never was never really me. Colette and I met in California in the early seventies, if that answers any questions about her. She needed a ride back home after heading a few states away for band. When a girl like that leans over the hood of your car at a gas station? You say yes. While I drove, she wrote a bucket list in this notebook she had. Swearing, we were karmic and destined to finish them all. That we would and under no circumstance would there be a box left unchecked. We were kids, so most were silly looking back on it, but sweet. I hate myself for arguing some were unrealistic. She eventually scribbled those off the page and I’d give anything to see what was under those angry lines. I don’t remember too many of those anymore. But we went to the Grand Canyon and the Atlantic Ocean. We hitchhiked and partied together. We took our kids to Disney Land. We got married on the beach. We painted our kitchen cabinets yellow. The only thing I could buy to answer my question was Colette’s face. I promised her so much. The very least I could do in the last months or weeks or even days I have left is to keep a promise or two. I crumbled the soft, aged paper of the forty-year-old dinner napkin I had in my hands without even glancing at the notes on there. It felt like a tumor, the way it rested against my thigh, an infection stuck in my pocket.

I glanced towards the scattered papers, MRI scans, receipts, and bills on my coffee table. They are all stained from Sunday. I spilled my mug. It has gotten heavy nowadays. The mug is still tipped over. I couldn’t bring myself to clean it up. I cannot bring myself to do much anymore. The walls are all tan now; it’s a decent color, yet, not the best. Addison and Maryanne painted the whole place for us a while back as a gift. The floor squeaks as I shift my weight to grab the latest file. I stare at the black, oozing rot on the paper. I let myself go after Colette. She would be proud, though. I’m finally doing a few things I had promised her when we were young, with hearts as empty to the world as a new journal to a poet.

These last few years, since the passing of my dearest Colette, the world feels heavy. Much like she used to describe the few months before her accident. I feel the oxygen in the air sticking to me like flies stick to a horse. And the trees have lost their green even though it’s July. There is a puddle outside of our apartment complex that won’t dry up. And I can never bring myself to turn the lights on in my apartment. I guess at my age, I should expect myself to be this tired.

6:00 PM

What is that?

What is that sound?

“Mary Anne! Stop slamming your door!”

Wait.

Please go away.

Mary Anne isn’t here and the knocking likely isn’t and that shadow that has been staring at me for the last ten minutes isn’t real either, nor the wave of the walls nor the buzzing. The buzzing is not real. The buzzing is not real. The buzzing is not real the buzzing is not real the buzzing is no-

“Mr. Regdell! How are you hangin’?”

It is Rebecca. Rebecca Young. It is Rebecca from across the hall. Slowly, I rise from my chair and the world shifts from under me. I can feel the sun rising in Australia.

The door handle slips out of my hand. It resembled a mass of that playing dough the girls used to have. God if only I could figure out how to open this god damn-

“Isn’t your key under the mat? I’ve been watching the door handle bobble for like five minutes man, can I just let myself in?”

I try to orchestrate my brain to work in conjunction with my mouth but before I can agree, she is on my couch with my key in her hand.

7:00 PM

Rebecca has eyes much like Colette. They remind me of the pools of honey she would leave on the counter after making tea. Rebecca acts like Mary Anne, but I am yet to be on her bad side. They both happen to be stubborn, loud, and abrasive. In Rebecca’s case, what else comes with youth besides just that. I met Rebecca a long time ago when she was around twelve. Her and her mother moved across the street and after Colette and I experienced months of the mother’s screaming, we invited the girl over for dinner and she soon became a fixture in our home. I remember her playing with Addie’s old Barbies that just sat in a box in her closet after she moved away to that university in Pennsylvania.

She used to sit in the kitchen at the round table that used to be in the corner of the kitchen, near the windows, with them all set up in their plastic shoes and nylon skirts. The dolls would argue about each other’s boyfriends or friend drama. Colette would sit with her, silently stitching a new coat out of some scraps of fabric she found in the closet. As Rebecca got older, the barbies were passed to the vintage toy shop down the street to pay for a new chair in the living room, this gaudy velvet green piece, and her entertainment became boys, friends, and some activities I cannot approve of. But I loved her like a daughter.

Rebecca was a good kid. The only one who came around anymore after Colette. I was bored. I was alone. And she took care of me like I used to take care of her.

She’s the only one I told.

8:00 PM

The couch feels like marshmallows and Addie’s old bunny named Bonnet.

Everytime I look at the ceiling, I swear it is dripping onto me. I can see it. I swear it is.

“Mr. Regdell, how are you doing?” she interrupted while I slipped in between the cushions into a far memory of mine.

I watched Colette from the door as she sat at the piano in the office, playing some beautiful, improvised melody. The light from the window, even though it faced a brick wall, fell on her profile and graying hair, making her glow. My god, she was iridescent. I could never look away. She was beautiful. Not just looks, even though she was, in her youth and still is, a stunner, but in who she was.

“What do you think,” she chirped from slouched over the piano keys.

“Wonderful,” were the only words that came to my lips. Maybe I was describing the music, maybe her, I still don’t know.

“Not yet,” she stated. Even as we aged, her passion never did. It remained as green as Persephone. That’s who Colette was. Passionate. While she never liked living much, she was thrilled with everything life had to offer: music, art, theatre. Colette was everything I was not. Back in ’67, as soon as I saw her, I knew I wanted to spend every single moment I had left laughing with her, crying with her, protecting her, and with her.

But now I have more moments left, not many, but some, and she robbed me from spending those with her.

I can’t be angry at her. I knew she struggled. I knew she could feel her want to be here slipping away, and to be honest, I saw it too. Her eyes went from the color of a sun’s kiss to dull, uninterested, uninvested. I should’ve said something. I promised. I promised to be there and I did nothing. I didn’t think she would.

I knew.

I knew what would happen but I hoped she wouldn’t be as selfish as she was.

She wasn’t selfish, I regret saying that. She was just tired. So tired. So so tired. I’m so tired. I’m exhausted.

The couch spits me back out and I’m thrown back into an orange room with blinding yellow lights that buzz constantly. I can feel their hazey, sickly glow around me, sticking to the walls like a disease. I hate this room. I repainted it to get rid of the mural Colette had painted who knows how many years ago and now it reminds me of her even more.

I’m heavy with the weight of missing you, Colette. I- I can’t do this anymore but, but it isn’t much longer. There aren’t many days left. Those papers on the table say so. Maybe only a week, a month at most and I- I can’t wait. It went dark without you Colette and it wouldn’t stop raining. It rained and it rained and it rained every day without you. I know you would criticize me for the way I live. Without want, without love, without hope, but I can’t see anything past the day Mary Anne and I found you. I thought I had done enough for you and the girls. I thought I had shown you that the day I met you I found paradise. I thought you were happy with the world we had created, but no, I was never enough. I tried so hard and you didn't care. I was somehow too much when all I did was show you that I loved you. But I guess I was never what you wanted.

I was never what you wanted, was I?

“Huh?” Rebecca asked. I still don’t think my mind and mouth are working together yet. My tongue feels heavy. Maybe it will swell and strangle me.

9:00 PM

Rebecca had left for her boyfriend’s. And I sat. Sitting in this apartment alone, I felt her heavy on me, like a blanket suffocating my heart. It has been near fifteen years without her here but I still see her in the orange wallpaper in the kitchen with her bay window. She thought in colors and intangible ideas.

I sat staring at some picture Mary Anne had painted for me back when she was in art school. She had her mother’s talent. Addie had her mother’s temper. And they were both the best daughter’s I could have wished for. I just wish I was there more often for them or had corrected my mistakes earlier. Addie doesn’t see me much now. Mary Anne won’t see me.

I sat staring at the picture. The strokes of Mary Anne’s brush shifted and turned as I studied this painting for the first time. I was never the parent they needed. I was obsessed with providing for them and never thought about being there for them. I missed every first step, first word, first game, first dance performance. I didn’t just miss the firsts. I missed it all. I don’t know if I even spoke to my girls until around their sixth birthday. The paint shifted around my head, taunting me, mocking me for my failures. I’m sorry girls.

The walls began to breathe in rhythm with my aching heart.

10:00 PM

The floor felt like sand and my body like gelatin.

I inched my way down the hallway, past the office with the piano, past Addie and Mary Anne’s old rooms into mine. I stood staring at what my life had been boiled down to. Piles of papers, medical documents, and Colette’s old things. The box her wedding dress is in peaked out from under my bed and all of a sudden, Colette and I are dancing. Her blonde hair was curled perfectly behind her ears and her blue earrings sang as they knocked against the clips in her hair. I melted into her eyes and then onto the bed.

The papers on my bed swallowed me. Medical bills and treatment plans raced in front of my eyes as I could feel the bug in my brain pulsing as it ate me alive. I should’ve told the girls about the tumor.

The aged napkin fell out of my pocket and I stared at the empty boxes written in pink ink. Our bucket list. Unfolding the napkin, I stared at her handwriting. Colette wrote in the most wonderful cursive.

I promised her to go to the Grand Canyon. I promised her we would go horseback riding. I promised her that we would have a dog, a Cocker Spaniel. I promised we would attend a Fleetwood Mac concert and I promised her I’d finally agree to do LSD with her there. I also promised a son and a Porsche 917.

She was wild. I was not. She lived and I didn’t. I only survived.

We used to go on picnics where I’d watch her string dandelions together into a crown for the little girl we saw on the swings. She would tell me about her old boyfriend and the protests they would go to. Or about the time she got arrested in Portland. She told me all these wonderful stories, but at the time they scared me. She scared me, but in the best way.

I was a coward. I was afraid. I was afraid to commit to my responsibilities. I was afraid to show how much I cared. I didn’t show her or the girls. I thought I did by providing for them and bringing the food home to put on the table but I never provided my love.

I cheated Colette. She deserved a life where she could fulfill her wishes. She deserved someone to keep their promises. So here we are. I am staring at these words we wrote, hoping to find some remainder of her in my heart but I- I can’t remember what paradise felt like. The tears pooling in my eyes were oceans swallowing me, drowning me as they fell down my face.

11:00 PM

The walls breathed in synchrony with me and there I was, in the dark, swimming in my papers, tears, bills, and reminders of my dear Colette. I waded in the papers, trying to keep my neck above, trying not to be pulled under. I was Alice and she was my cake that seemingly was the cure but left me with a void too big. The papers lapped at my feet and arms, joking together about what fate I should meet. Their fluttering and crinkles mimicked laughter in my ears. I search for a light, I search for some place to rest, but I’ve been swimming for years at this point and I’ve grown tired.

What awaits me?

What will greet me?

Will I be met by the warm embrace of Colette or her stern stare or by an empty nothingness? Will the rot in my brain overcome me and leave me to the rats in the walls? Could I be found weeks after the day I journey off to find Colette? At my funeral, I am afraid I will have little to no attendees. I won't receive flowers on my grave on the anniversary but I guess it is karma. I was too mad at her for too long. Am I to only be dust and grass fertilizer? Am I destined to live through all this sorrow, heart ache, and isolation to only be alone yet again?

My thoughts, memories, and the papers cut deep into my skin as I attempted to sleep, but I laid there, curled up, sobbing.

12:00 AM

Suddenly, the color returns to the walls and I can see her dress draped over the rocking chair and Addie’s old sneakers in the closet. I soon feel the sticky glaze of the yellow lights and find myself clutching our list.

Her list.

I need to sleep. I can’t sleep despite how tired I am. Every time I close my eyes, I can see the veins in my eyelids pulsing against my corneas like the red river Addie told me about from Bible school. I am so tired. Am I always this tired? Have I always been this tired?

I know all that holds me is a thin, knit blanket but I swear I can feel the weight of her with me, on me. I miss her.

1:00 AM

I stare at the little piece of paper and throw it in the trash. I kept one promise. I loved her. I loved her as best I could. Damn did she tire me out, but I was never too tired. I do not believe that I can be faulted for loving too much. I turn to my side and close my eyes. Still, memories suffocate me. Maybe I am forever uneasy; possibly, I must pay penance of sorts. That thought brings me some peace. I can see myself resting soon. The walls have quieted down and I no longer am stuck within them and the photographs they wear. Though, I do hear Rebecca and her boyfriend fighting as he walks her up the stairs. It is faint like thoughts of Colette, at least for now. I wrap the knit blanket tighter, hoping to feel the shape of her again. Instead, I feel the presence of sleep. It creeps along through my toes and up to my eyes, and finally, I can rest.