Reconciliation at Cost
By
Chris Cherry
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PUBLISHED BY:
Reconciliation at Cost
Copyright © 2012-15 by Chris Cherry
Originally written in 2012
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Reconciliation at Cost
She sat in the high-backed chair with composure that was a lie, necessary and unavoidable. It was not possible to make eye contact. People chose public places for difficult conversations, hoping that the presence of others will act as rein and censure. This never worked for her. She chose badly when she agreed to the cafe—closed in, walled, no good escape plan.
The pier came to mind as soon as he walked inside the walls. It took five minutes of fidgets, shredded napkins and spilled beverage before she found courage to change venue. Now she walked, head down, without words, an eloquent slouch. Dirty, monotonous sidewalk transformed into a fascinating melange of archaeology. She could navigate her walk by the sound of the people passing her, by the presence of barriers and cars and signals without looking at them, echo-locating like a bat.
All the unspoken words of her existence were like ephemera. Words littered the sidewalk. Words covered the stanchions that .0pretended to guard the line's integrity at the book signing—his book signing. Words filled the parking lot where she sat for an hour debating the wisdom of not ignoring her alarm clock. Words chased the door of her apartment closed when she left. Words opened her mind before her eyes opened as she waked. Words winding walls around and inside more walls.
It was a labyrinth that made the people in it unreal, golems acting through someone else's play. She watched her insides war at obviated agency, threatening to smash the little clay constructs. They would cry with a sound of porcelain rubbing against porcelain. Worse than chalkboards meeting fingernails. Worse than the thought of opening the flood gate? Too much anger tripped in un-eager spaces. Trapped. She meant trapped. Claustrophobic and simmering with undiscovered rage, her life was a kiln that only made broken things.
The feeling of being trapped inside a list of obligations and expectations that burned behind her eyes, in her lungs with wet heat, drove her to write but never publish. Nobody understood this better than her family, and forgave her less for it. She hadn't spoken to any of them for so long that the sub-sectioned paragraph dedicated to familial obligatory considerations had been archived off the page. Now, with this new contact, the world had to be re-ordered, and diligently re-grayed.
Joanne worked at the cafe. It's mediocrity suited her low-profile sensibility and need for a predictable environment. The people who came there wanted coffee, and their conversations were inane and undemanding. Everything extraneous was removed from her life until little more than frame remained. Context was the whole of content—which was just fine with her.
But her gray, carefully ordered world was shot through with color when he called the cafe—who gave him the number?—and said that he would like to see her after the book signing.
“Not possible,” had been her first response. “Well, perhaps for a few minutes at the end of my shift,” her second. “But we'll meet here.” Had Steve really asked her a second time?
She wanted the meeting to happen at the end of the day, punctuated by the storefront's metal gate pulled tight on a forced expulsion. She loved its chain and gear clanking, aluminum cum WD-40 slide crash that chased away the lingering malingering languishing dragged out replays of unimaginative small talk so she could stop pretending to be in love with their words. It seemed cruel to do that to him.
Her brother...she hadn't seen him, or heard his voice, for three years. Three years—enough time for him to leave behind the more nebulous Writer for the official, published Author. It was his, now, in perpetuity. She could be happy for him.
It had surprised her, his picture with caption in a discarded Book Times Review, left next to three dirty coffee mugs. Something small and vital had loosed into this knowledge, had given her space to breathe and lit the gray with a soft white warmth. He was alive. He was published. It was decadent and right, this feeling, silk in a cashmere glove. The expectations of the world were fulfilled. Obligations were weighty, sitting on the shoulders until all the oxygen was pushed out. She had relaxed inside the walls for four entire days after reading “Steve Pearce, Author.” Until he called.
She wasn't shaking. She wouldn't shake. This was decided.
Small details were determined and allotted space and time, all appropriately. Grayed out. Venues were selected and set in place. Grayed out. Life could be careful and controlled if you worked hard enough. She had given herself a sufficiency of time to think about what it meant to allow a family member back in. Partially grayed out.
A family member...her family...not so different from other families. She was the anomaly, the black sheep, too different to find proper boxing into “more like this side” or “the other side” of the family. Anxiety had been as normative for her by age of six as crayola art for other first graders. Burdens of obligation, guilt, conscience, got mixed up with triggers of fear and walls and absence of air. They called it “disorder.” It had seemed part of her forever.
Breathe. The taste of air and metal, seeping into lungs and open, open, as oxygen made her brain feel big again.
It had been winter, that last time they spoke. No. It had been cold. She couldn't remember the month. He had been her favorite. She didn't care that it wasn't polite to have favorites. He was hers—an older brother who had watched over and protected her, sheltered her from kids who mocked her strangeness and tried to steal her toys, knew just the right jokes to soften the walls that were always closing in.
Then there was cancer. First dad's, and then his.
His cancer. Steve has cancer. Mother had told her before Steve could, despite knowing that it would be better for him to break the news. Mother wanted to give away some of the pain she felt at losing a husband, and then, possibly, a son. She made a word-knife and slashed her daughter with it. This wasn't unique or unusual. This was normal. Normal, normal, gray, normal. Everybody hurts the ones they love. Grayed out.
His voice had been kind on the phone, that cold day, all the usual generosity and nonchalance. “Hey, Kitten. I have two new jokes for you. One of them doesn't involve a life-threatening illness.”
“Kitten” because it was kinder than “scared-y cat”. He was the only one who had always been kind to her, without expecting that kindness to change who she was. “Did you know that apples, properly stored, y'know, in a dark cool cellar, can last for a whole year? It's true. I read it on a doctor's bathroom wall in Surinam, behind a rather filthy wall poster. But I guess I should have paid more attention to that eating one a day blah blah doctors stay away etcetera, cos... well. I know Mom told you. I'm really sorry, Kitten.”
All the walls shut tight doors closed. No. The phone in her hand. She couldn't figure out how it worked. He was still talking. Could she come to the hospital where he was having surgery? Would she stay with him for the first week of his chemo, before he got really sick? He didn't expect her to stick around when the poison stole away his color and hair and turned him a rancid shade of yellow brown. No, he wouldn't do that to her. Of course not.
She had agreed. But they both knew she was lying. She moved out of state the next day.
Three years.
Her job schedule kept her from going to the signing. This is what she told herself as she counted the cups she served and the minutes that remained. Then, as natura
lly as the sun resting on the city skyline, he was there. The door framed him, tall and lean, back-lit like a super hero. He stepped out of shadow, not hairless, but lighter. Face, kind. Eyes, calm and tear-free.
The cafe had been the worst. The walk to the pier a tiny margin of better. They would run out of sidewalk soon. Now she must address the veneer of composure and decide how far she would venture from it. She let herself see him, all of him, his ease and contentment, the way feet touched ground with as little sound as possible. His knack of finding the special air molecules that offered least resistance to his passage. A face that was always composed or smiling. The boy who became the man that she once trusted more than anyone else. He was still the same person who had been there for her before disease had tried to change him, and failed. She remembered the ocean surrounding them, and tried to let go.
Breathe. Two sets of hands in jean pockets.
“Our shoulders still slope at the same angle.” The words left her lips before she had time to think about them. He smiled. She smiled back, a little, mostly with her eyes.
“I've missed you, Kitten.”
“I've missed you, Bro.”
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END
Thank you for taking the time to read my short fiction. Please take a moment to leave a comment at the site from which you downloaded. You may also contact me at https://www.facebook.com/ChrisCherryAuthor
Author’s note on the cover art:
Title “Rabbit on the Playground”
By Chris Cherry, 2010
Media: Digital Photography