Someone I loved once gave me
A box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
That this, too, was a gift.
- Mary Oliver, "The Uses of Sorrow"
Always the withholding, the denying, the refusing to share. "He keeps to himself" is said about him, but it's not true. He keeps from himself. Won't let himself do or be anything more than is required.
Won't let himself be.
{he swallows}
The amber swirl of liquid heat begins to loosen the stones, all that tension starting to spill through, finding cracks, chinks in the masonry.
{another swallow}
She will expect something from him, and not just wine. Certain presumptions arise with an invitation like that. Not only what she seeks with her asking but what he seeks in accepting.
Should have said no, should have withheld.
She'll be hoping for a (gift) (word) (touch) (sign).
But how can she know he is utterly without? How can she not know, after all this time? How can he give her or not give her a ( )?
Should have said no.
{another swallow}
Darkness coming out of its corner now, billowing, threatening to envelop him. Sometimes he submits and gives himself to it, to wake up shivering and nauseous with no recollection of how he came to be pressing his forehead against the bowl of the toilet. Other times—this time—he meets it, brandishing a Memory, shining and bright. Val, perfect Val, their marriage like sunlight, brilliant, and warm as courage. He keeps them polished, these Memories. Keeps them honed to a lethal edge. He needs them. Managed to reach manhood without having to learn basic survival, and he's paying for that now.
{drains the glass}
He can't explain this to her. How (he wants her but) every touch, every look, rusts the blades. She makes him neglect the whetstone and then he becomes lost when the darkness comes, terror like a dead thing weighing him down, he's powerless against its crush. It is a Leviathan, his darkness. It can swallow him whole as it did when Val died, and he festered in its acid and bile for years until at last he found a way to craft these weapons, these gleaming Memories. These perfect Memories.
With the darkness in retreat, it is safe to sleep. He lies on his back, bathed in the soft glow from the lamp. Doesn't really need the light, his bed is where the power of the Memories is strongest. But like a fearful toddler, some nights he needs reassurance. Eyes closed now, relaxing . . .
Then there's a tug at his heart, a hungry urchin needing, always needing, holding out a thin hand. He knows this child and knows the danger it presents. Consider Laura it asks, Please consider her. It touches him where he doesn't want to be touched, stirring heat and desire into his blood in a poisonous mix. It's bad this time, he's already starting to twitch and swell, and there behind the urchin he sees the darkness, pushing the small waif into him, leering at his weakness. He lunges from the bed and barely makes it to the bathroom, retching the arousal out of his system and feeling miserable in his small victory. Wipes a blade until it shines.
Should have said no.
{hot}
{sweating}
{too hot}
The bedsheet clings to his legs, wrapping like a parasitic vine. Asleep, he has no defense against the darkness.
No weapons.
Val is there with him, and they're both young, still fresh-faced, as though not yet fully formed. He reads the newspaper, calmly turning pages of sports scores and human-interest stories. The type is unreadable to his sleeping eyes, yet he knows what the stories say. So quiet and peaceful.
Too quiet, for a household that includes a four-year-old and a baby. He puts down the paper, alarm overtaking him. Val doesn't seem to notice. He sprints to the kids' room, flings open the door.
{heat and horror}
Lyn is screaming, her mouth a wide bowl of terror, her eyes squeezed shut. How could he not have heard that? The baby is on the floor, skin flushed red with heat, and over it a large tiger stands, almost protectively.
Lapping, lapping (huge tongue).
{Tiger!}
{fevered flesh}
No life in the limp body he holds (sobbing).
He let a predator into his own house, into his babies' room.
{How could he?}
A keening sound awakens him and he realizes it comes from his own throat. The dream (vivid) will keep sleep away. Peeling the sticky sheet from his body, he makes his way to the kitchen for some water.
(tongue thick and dry from brandy—too much or not enough?)
Not the first time for that dream. Once before, when the kids really were that young. And a week before that, the other dream (vivid).
(still remembers)
He and Val at home, doing things (not together). Suddenly, water rising, shifting the house, lifting it, raging waters pulling it away. Swept from its foundations, the house is battered along the tumbling crest. Beaten by the current, the house begins to rend, tearing apart in the middle, him on one side, her on the other.
(not together)
In seconds, the two halves are separated by the foaming water, too far to leap, too dangerous. In panic, he shouts to her: Where are the kids?
The roar of the water nearly drowns her helpless words:
I don't know.
He sets his teeth. He understood the dreams when they came. They'd had rows, terrible rows, blistering rows. About him working too many hours, never there for her. About her becoming too friendly with the bloke next door and neglecting the kids.
(flood: her fault, she should know where the kids are)
(tiger: his fault, he's married to her, not his job)
Pours himself one and sits in the front room.
(tiger in the bedroom)
(his safe place)
{he swallows}
A slim volume on the table, a book of poems Hathaway gave him, which means he can learn from it even with his mind closed. (Poems!) Evidence, by Mary Oliver. He went to school with a Mary Oliver, but Hathaway assured him this one was an American.
(evidence)
Title like a legal treatise (or a study course for coppers).
He thumbs through the pages idly until a word flies out:
{nightmare}
He reads right from the middle of the poem:
Memory: a golden bowl, or a basement without light.
For which reason the nightmare comes with its
painful story and says: you need to know this.
(Why, Tiger? Why now? The kids are grown and the marriage over. What is this predator?)
(Memories)
He and Val had gotten through it. After the dream of the tiger, he'd sat her down and they'd had a long talk (tears, apologies, hugs). But he knows they'd come close to it. Had talked about it, even.
{Divorce}
He has to admit, it hadn't been a perfect marriage. There had been times he preferred the cantankerous company of Morse, and put in as much overtime as he could. Didn't want to be a (husband) (father). He'd told himself he was doing it for the money, to help the family finances, and that Morse needed him to be there.
{lies}
{another swallow}
{Lies!}
Darkness all around him now, he hasn't been watching for it. He reaches out, grasping for his Memories. But they crumble: they're rust and flakes of corroded pot metal. Can't hold an edge, can't protect him.
His weapons are gone; he is without light.
{drains the glass, pours another, swallows it}
A tug: the urchin is back. But this time, it gives, rather than asks:
Your Memories have never protected you. They are killing you.
It's wrong, of course. Without the Memories, he has only the vast blackness.
Embrace your nightmare; let it teach you.
(The darkness waits.)
He ties a lifeline to the brandy bottle and lets himself explore, tentative; studies the darkness as he would a crime scene (detached). It's gigantic: endless, as far as he can tell. Curiously warm. Tasting of salt and sweat, blood and sex. A touch of scent, the one Val wore. And the smell of (rain?) (earth?)
It's my own grief, he tells the urchin.
The child nods, once.
I know the smell, the taste; I can see her, not with a false golden glow but as she was: my partner, my Wife.
The child looks up as though reading a sign posted above his head. And why, do you think, is it so huge?
He thinks a long time before he's certain of his answer. Because that's how much we loved each other.
The child smiles serenely and speaks again. Darkness could not devour you then; together you were too much for it. You welcomed nightfall as a friend.
(Together)
Without her, all alone. No defense.
(alone)
The urchin shakes its head, and he is surprised to see it is a young adult: less insistent, less needy. Its eyes meet his, pure and unflinching (both of them).
I am your Sorrow. And now, at last, you are letting me mature. Yet, we will walk together until you find love and once again become too large for grief to swallow.
It turns away and vanishes.
Should have said no?
He returns to his bed, unafraid (switches off the lamp).
Said yes.
{No tiger}
{Yes!}
Tomorrow night, there will be no more darkness.