Based on the song Man of a Thousand Faces by Regina Spektor. I don't own the song or Eclare, naturally.
Enjoy.
The man of a thousand faces
Sits down at the table
She never would have let me leave the house without a coat on.
But she isn't here to stop me now.
I never liked this damn cafe. I tried to. It served its purpose in most respects but the environment was always wrong, always off. The ins and outs were noisy and the servers always jaded and rude. It wasn't truly a cafe, more like a free-for-all. I chose to grin and bear it out of the preference of my friends. And luckily, that only lasted through high school.
My knees feel like there's pebbles rocking around in my joints as I ease myself up the small step leading to The Dot. It's still as snotty and adolescent looking as it was years ago, perhaps more so.
Or maybe I'm just a bitter old bastard.
She always told me I could have done without the chip on my shoulder, one "the size of an entire continent", she would tease me. But I never argued; she was right. I had the whole damn universe on my shoulders most of the time. Unless I was with her. That was when all of the tension ebbed away, leaving behind her vanilla perfume and every little facet of her that I loved.
Love. Past tense still doesn't feel right.
The bell above the door chimes noisily and I don't bother to hide my grimace. The sound reverberates in my eardrums and I feel as though someone might as well be scraping the inside of my brain, shoving the residue out my ears. I hate cheery noises. Anything that forces me from my thoughts is unwelcome.
It's hard to say how I even found myself here. One moment, I had my face buried in one of her floral dresses, (which admittedly had been soaked with my own lonely, desperate tears. Pathetic.) and the next, I was halfway to The Dot in my jeans, slippers, and a light sweatshirt. I never know how I get myself places anymore. I just get there at a certain point. It's surviving one moment to the next; begrudgingly, at that.
I've always pondered the possibility that I was losing my mind, as though it could be a progressive thing over the past sixty some odd years. There were instances for sure where my grip on reality was barely tangible. Times when it merely fluttered about in my hand, never truly locked between my fingers. Between sixteen and eighteen, I was very much in that place. And again, between thirty and thirty five. It always passes, and somehow I regained my sense of self, as well as my sanity. She always brought me back. Her tempered grace and gentle touches worked through the cobwebs. She'd always remind me that although I was very much human – a condition I've never been fond of – I was also extremely capable of rising above the bullshit in my head.
But lately, I know it to be true. I lose gaps of time. I find myself brushing my teeth without any toothpaste. I start making eggs but then burn them, realizing I hadn't been paying much attention to the whole cooking process. I read the same page of the same book fifty times over without so much as batting an eyelash. I scribble words in a motion that doesn't produce any literate language, at least none that I personally speak. My musings aren't witty or even thought-provoking anymore. I'm just...regurgitating my vacant thoughts onto paper for this one-man audience. I retired years ago but even if I wanted to return to my glory days, I couldn't. My muse is gone.
I'm lost without her.
Always have been.
Always will be.
"Good evening, sir." the less than jovial worker greets me, to which I offer a curt, clipped grunt.
She would never let me regard someone that way, instead jabbing me in the side until I became a more friendly, personable version of myself. But her specter can't convince me to coax out a side of myself that only existed while she was around. It doesn't have a place within me anymore, without her.
"We close in a half hour, just so you know." he tells me, to which I nod quickly. They could be open for another fifteen minutes, I don't even care. It's not like I consciously made my way here. And I doubt I'll consciously make my way back, either.
"Do you sell coffee here?" I ask.
The boy looks at me, bewildered. He must truly think I'm senile. I might be. It's hard to tell.
"O-of course we do, sir-"
"Good coffee, I mean." I emphasize, challenging him.
At this he pauses and I grin. I do enjoy giving him a hard time. I enjoy giving anyone a hard time, especially now that I can without her smiling apologetically and swatting at my arm.
But I can still feel her gentle swing, if I think about it long enough.
Relenting, I sit down at a table right next to the window. "Just, a cup of coffee, please. Black."
Relief floods his features and he nods, not bothering to scribble it down in his notepad and instead just going off to make it.
If she were here, she'd be blushing a bit right now, a rosy red tinting her cheeks in the aftermath of my hassling with the server. And I'd be grinning widely across the table at her, reaching my hand across and encasing hers. It would quell her incessant worrying. She was always worrying. About me, about others. Always caring far more than most other people did.
God, if I could hold her hand...
I remember when we would come here to edit each others papers, but it would always turn into a series of nervous, stolen glances and discreet kisses. I'd always ache to kiss her longer, but she'd get so self-conscious in public- always cared what every other goddamn creature on the planet thought. Eventually she moved past that but the mentality was always there, just buried with my influence and encouragement.
"Eli!" she'd squeal as she withdrew from me, my tongue pressing against her parted lips, attempting to slip through.
"What?" I'd grin back, feigning complete innocence, but I always knew what I was doing.
She'd rub her cheeks but nothing could undo the blush, thankfully. God, I reveled in it whenever possible. "We're in public."
"And?" I'd muse back, earning a roll of her eyes. Those big, blue eyes. No one else had those eyes. No one on Earth, no one anywhere, I'm convinced.
"You never listen." I remember her saying, her voice exuding some kind of authority, as though she was reprimanding me when in truth, the smile on her face betrayed her real feelings on the matter.
All it would take was one very carefully phrased taunt to get her revved up again,"Maybe you should make me listen then,"
And then she'd kiss me, drawing out my tongue without my making the first move.
The best girl I've ever kissed, hands down. Those kisses only got better with time, too.
His words are quiet like stains are
On a table cloth washed in a river
Stains that are trying to cover, for each other
Or at least blend in with the pattern
"Sir, your coffee."
I turn my head and there the boy is, placing the cup down before me. I breathe in the scent and feel relieved. Coffee is one of the few small pleasures of still being alive.
"Thanks, kid. Seriously." I mutter gratefully, feeling a bit of her kindness seeping into my bones, mending all of the sick and twisted already living there. The coffee's steam tickles my nose but I wish it was her – her breath fanning out on my face as I kiss her gently.
With a nod he retires back to the counter, leaving me alone again.
Alone, with her memory sitting in front of me, of course. A ghost of her company to keep me from coming unhinged in the middle of an abandoned cafe. How pathetic.
If she were here, she would have gotten a cup of tea. No, an iced coffee. Shit, or would it have been the tea? It depended on the day, the season, and her mood. All three factors decided it. My favorite days were tea days. Even if I hated the drink myself, I loved when she drank it. And I loved the residual flavor on her lips when she'd kiss me, like a little haunt of the sweetened drink. I never minded it from her.
She always dumped so much sugar in. Her sweet tooth knew no bounds and gave no fucks. I wondered how she could sip it without making a face, but she'd always say the same about my coffee.
"So bitter tasting." she'd gripe, though her tongue wasn't the one relishing the flavor.
"It fits me, no?"
"Not my Eli."
No, not her Eli.
I can't help but hate myself from my core to all of my extremities when I think of the times I nearly lost her. Or did, but managed to somehow get her back. One shouldn't be awarded so many chances in their lifetime yet I was when it came to her. After the first time, I was sure I'd lost her for good. Time had taken its toll, and God knows she was better off without me. I had been convinced of the fact from the start. But not her.
Everyone told her, "That Eli Goldsworthy is going to put you in an early grave, Clare." "That boy is no good for you." "How can you be with someone who differs so greatly from you in terms of values? How could you ever consider raising a family with someone like that?"
I listened to them berate me, silently holding my own composure and praying to every false deity out there that she would never believe them; that they'd never have a hand in sculpting Clare's opinion of me. Even when we were married, there was always one person who had a gripe against me. More often than not, her mother.
Either Clare wore blinders and tuned out the rest when it came to me, or she knew they were right and persisted with our relationship anyway. I've never been able to fully figure out which, because I know I tested her patience and kindness on more than one occasion.
I just had to make sure she would stay – that she was all in. Losing her the first time had marred and wrecked me and while I can't pin the blame on her for it, I can say it forever shaped my insecurities when it came to us. Even at forty, I was always wondering if one day some other more charming, capable, and stable man would sweep her off her feet. Forty years old, with three children. I was still concerned over it. That kind of thing never leaves you.
Good is better than perfect
Scrub til your fingers are bleeding
I stir my coffee aimlessly, only to watch it swirl in front of me. I'm so barren and bored without her. So dreadfully stuck in a stasis that entails no purpose or deeper meaning. For a writer, I can't think of a worse fate.
Our youngest daughter came by to check on me about a week back. Lucille is the spitting image of her mother, so much that it nearly shocked me to see her at the door. The bouncing curls, the bright, loving blue eyes. There's so much of her in Lucy. In Ryan I see plenty of myself, coupled with her short stature, and in Isaac I see an even mixture of us. He managed to pick up my love for theatre somehow, a fact I've always been grateful for.
But Lucy, she stood at my door and hugged me as if I even deserved the affection, after how much I'd pushed her away after the funeral. Looking at her was a gradual torture; my heart strings being snipped individually, one by one with each glance. So much like her mother. So forgiving and content to comfort.
God, it killed me.
We talked about her schooling, how much she was enjoying her art program. Lucy was the wild card; involving herself with ceramics and 2D art from a young age. As soon as we put an easel before her, just as a toy, she got to work. She never stopped creating from there. Clare and I have never been artists, and "Auntie Imogen" as she was coined, fancied herself the creator of such a talent. But I like to think it was innate. Wherever it derived from, it was from Lucy and Lucy alone.
She told me about a boy she met, one who sounds far too much like myself when I was her age. Reckless, passionate, all too willing to ditch class to hang out with her at any available moment.
She told me she was in love. And unlike other parents who might try to dissuade her of the fact, I knew better than to do that. I fell for her mother the moment my tires crunched over her wire frame glasses. No one can help when they feel such a thing and even if she does end up being wrong, who am I to chide her for it? Everyone thought I was wrong all along. But I knew better. Her and I always knew better.
Before she left, I couldn't help but admire the cross hanging around her neck, the same one her mother wore for her entire life before she passed. It was as though she'd known for years after Lucy's birth that it would one day be passed down to her.
And I'm crying for things that
I tell others to do without crying
Lucy didn't know what to do when I broke down for the first time since burying her. She didn't know if it was a manic depressive swing, or if I was suffering from something far less manageable than that – uninhibited emotion. Something medication can't quell or ease within me. My children have always known about my condition and to make things easier, she referred to them as my "quiet days".
"Daddy needs a lot of peace and space today to feel better, okay?" she'd tell them, and I'd hear through the crack of the door in our bedroom.
"It's a quiet day?" Isaac or Ryan would ask, concern and compassion coloring their tone that made me grateful to be a father. To have such wonderful kids that just got it. They weren't going to be like all of the other unfeeling, detached assholes in the world. Not our kids.
"It is. Now let's work on making him a card for when he's feeling better, okay?" she'd coax them, and soon after their excited feet would trample down the staircase, readying themselves to make me a construction paper card, complete with messy Elmer's glue and glitter.
She was such a good mother. She had it in her to nurture, I'd always known it.
I'll never forget how she looked when she was pregnant. She didn't just glow; I was convinced that she stole the sun from up in the sky and harbored it within herself. Such a simplistic grace and warmth was exuded from her during those nine month periods. It made me love her even more, if such a thing was possible at the time.
I couldn't get enough of it, so much that I begged her to let us have one more. Just one more little one, hopefully a girl since she wanted one so badly. Ryan and Isaac were perfect, but I knew how badly Clare wanted that experience of having a little girl. Lucy was her little princess.
Now with Ryan married, Isaac working in the city at his own theatre company and Lucy at university, I can't help but wonder what good I am. I feel antique. I feel like someone needs to dust me off and auction me to the highest bidder, so I can sit idly in someone's home occupying space.
It all makes me wonder when my number will be up. When I'll be spit out of the universe and stamped "return to sender", whoever the hell the sender might have been. If anyone at all.
I believe in an afterlife only since she passed. Only so she's not floating out there, all alone, in some abysmal, endless vortex. If she believes in a higher power, then that's where I want her. Safe in the arms of whatever solace her cross necklace brought her all of those years. Even if I never understood it, clearly she did.
And if she is there, then I hope whatever "God" exists takes mercy on my wretched soul and lets me be with her. Living without her is painful enough. The only time my atheism has ever hurt me is when I ponder the idea of spending eternity in nothingness after my death without her. I can't think of a greater form of torture for myself and in a way, I'm almost expecting it to come into fruition. I don't deserve much better.
But now I'm getting far too introspective and distraught for my own good. And my coffee is getting cold.
Being here makes me wish I could call up Adam and see how he's doing...but then I remember that isn't possible. Cancer took half of the people I used to know. It took Adam. It took Cece. It nearly took Fiona but she fought back with a vengeance.
It took my Clare.
For all my stoicism built up over the years and every safeguard I've created, for every attempt I've made to drain myself of tears so I'd never cry again, everything is proven faulty in the face of her absence. I'm an empty shell. I'm null and void. I don't even have a home inside my heart anymore without that girl. In the story of our life, all I can do now is rip out my favorite passages and stuff them in every pocket I have, burying them selfishly for myself. Those are all I have left.
He used to go to his favorite bookstores
And rip out his favorite pages
And stuff them into his breast pocket
Pushing the coffee away from me, I slide it to the opposite side of the table. My thirst was never even there, and I have no problem paying for coffee that truly served its purpose as a distraction for as long as it could.
My eyes flicker to the window, the bright moon hovering just over The Dot. It's not glaring down at me, judging me for my weakness and the way the tears tumble down my wrinkled face when I think of her. It's not scrutinizing me or worrying if I'm about to break. It's gentle and almost cruelly beautiful, a sight that would warm even the most chilled and frozen of hearts.
As the waiter comes back, I look at him and I know he's taken aback by my forlorn expression, the forced quality present as the corners of my lips turn up. The weight of the world is back on my shoulders and I'm all alone to carry it myself. I've never been more scared in my life.
"It's on the house." he says simply, patting my back as he leaves me be. I haven't been so grateful for small acts of kindness such as this in a long time.
After rubbing my eyes raw, I force myself up from the chair, excusing myself from the familiar establishment for what feels like the last time. It's saying goodbye to an old friend, in many ways. Bittersweet. More sweet than bitter, surprisingly.
Once the cold wind is hitting me again, I wish more than ever for the feel of her tiny hand encased I mine.
"The stars are out."
"What's your wish?"
"If I say it out loud, it won't come true."
"How cheesy would it be if I said that...mine already has?"
I can't help but look up at the big moon, watching my every movement. I can't help but feel like it might be her, letting all of the stars twinkle in the sky just to let me know, I'm not nearly as alone as I feel. I never have been with her by my side.
I know her. I always have. I've known Clare Goldsworthy, Clare Edwards better than any other human in my life. I've written her into every one of my scripts and every last page of my novels. My life's work has been a meager but honest attempt to draw her up in my words.
And to be frank, I wouldn't have chosen to spend all of my days any other way if given the chance. I lived a life fulfilled. I'm forever changed by her. Out of the thousand and one faces I could have worn, they all would have been masks.
But the genuine one she always knew is the one staring back up at the moon, waving goodbye before I head on home.
And he eats a small lump of sugar
And smiles at the moon like he knows her.