After we went to bed

There was something a little bit quiet about Mary-Ellen and something a tad unusual about her face – a look not commonly there. For a woman normally vibrant and carefree and brightly loquacious, she was strangely somber, perhaps even anxious. She simply sat at the table and stared at her coffee.

“Hey, dear? What’s up?”

She turned her eyes to me slowly and gave me the suggestion of a shrug.

“You’re not usually this quiet,” I went on. “Something must be up.”

“Nothing,” she murmured.

I began to worry. Something must be seriously bothering her. She simply wasn’t Mary-Ellen being this quiet. Were it me, it wouldn’t be remarkable. I’m moody. But Mary-Ellen?

No, something was not right in the universe.

I decided to prod.

“Come on, something must be bothering you. You’re never like this. You’re always flitting around the house in a stream of giggles. This morose lethargy is not like you.”

An irritated expression passed over her face. “‘Morose lethargy’? Quit writing what you say.”

“I’m a writer. It’s what I do.”

“Yeah, but no one talks like that.”

This was even more unusual than I had thought. While others often complain about my conversations being halting and deliberate, that I was writing and editing what I said rather than just talking, Mary-Ellen never did. Actually, she was my greatest supporter. Not only was she proud of my being a writer, she thought I was the greatest writer alive – even if the money I rarely saw contradicted that belief.

At least, she use to feel that way. Had something changed?

Menopause? I had heard about that but wasn’t sure when it kicked in. Mary-Ellen was 42, four years younger than me. Was this the “change of life,” as my mother had referred to her own period of hot flashes?

I made a mental note to google menopause.

“Come on, Mary-Ellen. I can tell something’s wrong. Why not just tell me what’s up? It’s probably nothing. You know, people make things bigger in their heads than they are in reality. Tell me what it is.”

The normally shiny, cheerful Mary-Ellen looked at me a long moment without any expression in her face. Then a slow, joyless smile stretched across her face. “Don’t ask,” she said. “You shouldn’t ask.”

Unfortunately, saying to me, “Don’t ask,” was a way to ensure I would ask, and keep asking until I got an answer. After twelve years of marriage, she knew that. But maybe she hadn’t considered that. I can’t be sure.

Did she say that because she wanted me to? So that it would come out, finally, and she could say later it was because I had insisted?

It’s difficult for me to ascribe that kind of thinking to Mary-Ellen. It wasn’t her character. But then, this sobered, serious Mary-Ellen was out of character too.

“I’m asking,” I prodded. “Tell me. I want to know. Hey, I want to help. Tell me.”

“No … ,” she muttered, turning away.

“Come on,” I insisted. “You can’t just suddenly become a different person without any explanation. Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

She looked back at me and her eyes widened slightly as if she had just realized something.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “People can become different. A person can change without explanation. No reason. Just – done. I know.”

“Now you’re being cryptic. How do you know?”

“It happened to me. I changed. I didn’t ask to. I wasn’t expecting it. But I did. I’m just not sure when it happened.” She began speaking as if to herself, not to me. “When did it happen? Had I already changed and it was only last night I realized it? Or was it then, in that moment, that I changed?”

I was getting frustrated now. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Listen, what changed? What are you talking about? Forget about the when, tell me the what.”

“Love,” she said, talking to me again. “Love changed.”

“Love? What changed about love? Is the Oxford Dictionary now spelling it l-u-v?”

She sighed, then told me. “It was last night, just after we went to bed. I was lying there staring at the ceiling and the way the starlight from outside makes small glowing lines as it comes through the curtains.

“I suddenly knew I didn’t love you. Not anymore. But I didn’t know if it happened in that moment or whether I had only just realized something that had been true for a while. And I thought maybe it was just a strange night feeling that would be gone in the morning. But when I woke up today it was the same. Love was gone.”

Tears began to glisten her eyes. “It’s gone and there’s nothing in its place but questions. Was it ever there? I thought so. Once. But I don’t know now. And if it wasn’t ever there, what was it that had been there? Anything?”

I’ll give Mary-Ellen this – she can be articulate when she wants to be. Too much so, I think. Well, she had certainly answered my question. She had definitely explained why she was so different that morning.

But as with certain kinds of questions, its answer just created more questions.

The chatty Mary-Ellen, the bright Mary-Ellen, the laughing Mary-Ellen … who had that been? If not a Mary-Ellen in love, was that simply a show for me, or perhaps for herself, so the truth would stay in the street outside?

Did I love Mary-Ellen? Or had I merely loved the idea of a woman in love with me?

What was true?

And what would happen to us now?

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

A ghost story notion with too much exposition

It was raining for the 28th straight day and everything, even birthday parties, felt funereal. As this was a funeral, of sorts, there was a sense of excess to the occasion.

The mourners arrived just in time dressed as clowns. Trent scratched his head, sighed and said, “That’s all they could get? Clowns?”

Flo shrugged. “You’ve got to remember,” she said. “You’re not dead.”

“They don’t know that!” Trent sounded peevish.

“Listen, paperwork’s the only reason they’re doing this. They don’t know whether you’re dead or not. They don’t know you. No one does. Anyone who ever did forgot about you. And so …”

She made a presentation kind of gesture in Trent’s direction and said, “Ta-da! The ghost that ain’t actually dead.”

With a gloomy voice, Trent added, “The dead man who isn’t dead but might as well be.”

With a reassuring smile, Flo said, “Ah, you’re not the first. I doubt you’ll be the last. Anyway, the point is they wouldn’t even be doing this if that woman hadn’t been so finicky with her paperwork.”

A wispy Mr. Franks stepped up behind them, seemingly from nowhere.

“Strange business, that. Reminds me of my wife. Sort of thing she’d do. She was always very fussy. Very particular. What I don’t get is the secretary.”

“Yeah. That is weird,” Trent agreed. “She didn’t know me. No one knew me.”

Flo just rolled her eyes. “It’s not that hard to understand. She’s just a nice girl who wanted to do something nice for someone. Besides, it makes her paperwork look a bit more … oh, I don’t know. Legitimate, I guess. I use to work in an office. I know about these things.”

“She may get into trouble though,” Mr Franks speculated. “Using city funds.

"Good God, look at those clowns. The rain’s making their make-up run. Geez … now that’s depressing. Speaking of which … Trent. Have you noticed anything different in the last day or two? Felt anything?”

Trent frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you seem different to me. Flo?”

“Yes, he’s a bit more … more … oh my! I know what it is!”

Confused, Trent asked, “What?”

“Solid,” Flo said.

“Solid?”

“Solid,” Mr. Franks said.

The clowns began moving away. The brief, somewhat formal ceremony, had ended. There was a sense of haste to their movements.

The rain was still falling.

“How could I be getting more solid? That makes no sense.”

“Fading out of the world without actually dying … that makes sense?” Flo asked, sensibly.

“Yeah, but how? How’s this happening?” Trent was flustered. It had taken him three weeks to get use to being dead without actually being dead. To be possibly coming back to the living, something neither desired nor undesired but rather something he had not really considered, was confounding.

Mr. Franks tried to explain. “It’s all guesswork, Trent. But I’d say someone, maybe that secretary who set this up … maybe the little awareness she has of you is enough to start bringing you back.

“I mean, we’re just guessing here, but weren’t we assuming that’s how all this happened? You’d been living alone for so long, hadn’t been in touch with anyone for years, life forgot you existed. And so you didn’t.”

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories