ME, CINDERELLA?(60)

When will you go to visit your wife?

It was a beautiful spring day, only a few weeks before the semester was due to be over, and driving down to the academy he opened the windows and breathed in the fresh cool air. Normally he would have turned off of the main road to the academy to avoid passing the cemetery, but for some reason that day he didn’t; not a conscious decision, no, not at all. When his car passed by the cemetery he braked hard and pulled over to the curb. Sitting at the wheel, his throat choked with tension, and he willed himself to relax. He looked up to the front of the cemetery, and the open doors seemed to call him inside, the sun shining brightly above.

When will you go visit your wife?

He left the car at the curb and walked through the iron gate. The grass underneath his feet squished wetly with the dampness from the thawed winter frosts, and everything grew bright and green between the stone graves. In places where the caretaker had forgotten to mow tiny alyssum blossoms had taken hold and spread their white petals in the shade of gravestones. His feet took him quickly to the family plot, though he paused before opening the gate and walking over.

His mother had not wanted Clare buried in the same plot, but Eliot had insisted that she was just as much a part of the Herceg family as any other. They had only been married less than a year before she died. Before he killed her.

Drawing closer to the gravestone, Eliot blinked hard. The stone was surrounded by grass but right in front of Clare’s stone lay a small bouquet of white roses. He bent down and picked them up, brought them to his nose and inhaled. The smell was still fresh, the roses new and alive. His eyes turned to the gravestone, reading the words engraved there.

“Clare, oh Clare.” He fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the cold stone, his eyes closed. He began to talk, haltingly at first, in a low whisper that couldn’t be heard by any living soul.

“I miss you Clare. I see you—god, I see you every day, everywhere. It’s a beautiful day today. Sunny and cold, your perfect day. I’m sorry you can’t be here to see it. The ice is melting and the stream has come up in the back. I go out and sit there and think about you.

“The problem is going well. We just solved another specific case; this one was much harder, but I think I can generalize it—of course, don’t let me go on and on about math. You always let me go on for far too long. There’s someone helping me—”

Eliot breathed in deeply before continuing.

“She’s lovely. You told me that if anything happened to either of us, we should find happiness.”

Eliot’s voice shattered on the last word, and tears streamed down his cheeks. The guilt he carried inside of him flared up and made his skin burn with shame.

“I haven’t been happy, Clare. I haven’t. I haven’t ever let myself be happy. And I know—I know you would want me to let go, but I can’t. I just can’t. I miss you so much and I’m sorry I hurt you. I wish I could go back and live through it again. I would—”

He stopped. He thought of what he would say—that he would never have tried to woo her, never taken her away from her life and put her in a place where she would die so meaninglessly. But that wasn’t right. He couldn’t erase the past like that. Every beautiful moment spent with Clare taken away? No. No. He did not know what he wanted, but it was not that.

As he opened his eyes he realized his tears had stopped. His fingers moved over the letters of her name and he whispered to himself.

“You’re right, Clare. As always.”

There was nothing he could do now, nothing that would reverse the chain of motion that led to her death. There was only the here and now, a sunny day that she could not see. He looked down to the bouquet of roses. He had clutched the stems too tightly, and the thorns had pierced his hand. He opened his hand slowly, watching the beads of red appear in the punctures. He was alive, this proved it. The ache that shot through his hand as he flexed it open proved it. He breathed slowly and let the pain ride through his body, his palm throbbing with his heartbeat. Blood smeared the petals of the roses, red on white. They looked beautiful, like the hybrid varieties that bloomed at this time of the year in the gardens of his estate.

She would never come back, and he would have to keep on living.

He stood, and placed the blood-smeared roses on top of the stone carefully, smoothing the petals. He bent down to wipe his hand on the dew of the grass. The blades of grass were wet and cold, and his fingers grew chilly as he wiped his wounds clean. He pressed the tips of his fingers to his lips, then to the stone.

“Goodbye, Clare. I love you always.”