Closer to Sleep by Noelle Cristiano
It was the Summer of 2006, the streetlights followed your motorcycle down Third Avenue as I burrowed my face in the nook of your shoulder blades. We were magnetic. At parties our friends would crowd around us, pounding shot after injurious shot feigning our love induced nirvana. We would pass on advice, pretending we were much older than we were, as if we had a clue. You would let me drive your bike down the little road that led us to our spot, where we could see the promise of New York’s skyline. I always pressed too hard on the accelerator and slammed on the breaks, jolting our bodies back and forth. Your face would squirm, protective anger battling the desire to smile. You’d try to keep a real serious look on your face as you threatened to throw me over the fence and into the river if I ever did it again. You had the ability to make me feel like an adult and a child at the same time, free of inhabitations and expectations. I’d giggle and squeal that I couldn’t swim. I’d push away from you, dodging between the trunks of the canopying trees. You followed my laughter, pulling me into the safety net of your arms and throwing me over your shoulder. Running up to the fence, you’d pretend to try and toss me over. Instead you’d hold me tighter, letting my feet fall safely to the ground. We’d stand pressed up against each other, as if we couldn’t stand without the extra support. When the city’d come close to sleep, we skinned ourselves of our urban armor, taking refuge in the diamonds we found under suits of rock. And there with the stars projected across our faces we told each other the truth. We were completely lost.
I rolled onto you, straddling your broad stomach, letting my curly bob cascade around my reddening cheeks. You reached your hand up to lightly pull on one, like a ribbon it stretched out and sprung back into itself. A smile ran across your face, as if you’d discovered something truly wonderful.
“You know what I love about you, Hannah?” I had no idea. I leaned my face in and let my lips lightly rub against yours like the ends of a folded cloth. Your lips, I could’ve stared at them forever. To me they held safe all the answers to all the questions I’d ever have.
“What do you love about me?”
“What do you mean what do I love?! You should be asking me what I don’t love.” You sat up, wrapping my legs around you waist, holding me in front of you so you could see my face. So you could graze that soft Italian schnoz of yours against mine, so I could see all the way into your green-blue eyes, all the way into your world, and I did and it became mine.
I slowly make my way up the snowy maroon marble steps, funny – this day felt so different in my dreams. It seems so foolish now that I moved to L.A. to become an actress. I should have come home the second I realized I couldn’t do it without you, but you know me I always have to prove myself. I should have come home when I realized it was all a pipe dream, when the sleep was more rare than the pocket change, when the talent agents told me I was too fat to be a star, when I stopped eating, when my mother told me you were engaged, when I heard the hurricane warnings. But I was embarrassed, afraid even. I threw away the best four years of my life for nothing, literally nothing. I could’ve been so happy as a cop’s wife, your wife. I still dream about it, about you and the children we might have.
I can’t even remember that fight or maybe I don’t want to. My mother has not forgiven me, which makes it easier not to talk to her at all. Sometimes I think she loved you more than I did, though I don’t really believe anyone ever could. Do you remember how she’d bake us sugar cookies and leave us alone for hours at a time? How after a year she’d let you sleep on the couch and would laugh when she’d find us entangled in my bed by morning? Or how you said you’d wait for me?
The tall mahogany doors stand like soldiers at the entrance and I have no idea what I’m going to do when I get inside but I don’t take off my sunglasses. The church is overflowing with people that I used to know, hugging and gossiping about the hurricane, the death count. I turn my ear towards them as I look for a good seat, I’m hoping they’ll say my name, hoping someone will ask whatever happened to me. They don’t. I settle in the last pew as far away from the center aisle as possible. The wooden benches are just as unwelcoming as I remember; it’s been seven years since I’ve stepped inside a church. That’s the one thing my mother didn’t like about you, you’re religious influence on me- or lack there of.
In lieu of electricity, a thousand square white candles light the church. Bunches of red and white roses wrap around the alter. I zip up my jacket, the nerves and the cold don’t mix well for me. Your relatives part and sit down, and I see you standing there waiting. You always looked so handsome in a tux. Your brother whispers something in your ear and your laughter bounces off the marble walls and hits me like train. For the first time I realize I am wearing all black. You are beaming. I duck lower into the seat, clenching my jaw tight so I don’t give myself away. The music starts and a little girl begins to walk down the aisle. Her little white socks are folded at the ankles of her clumsy little feet. She stops and smiles, showing off the few teeth she has, as she reaches her hand into her white basket. She throws a handful of red rose petals into the air and they fall all around her each, one weighed down with happiness so heavy it could anchor the moon. Her curly red hair bounces as she walks a little too quickly down the aisle. She stops again and throws some more roses. I can’t help but think that we’d have a child about the same age if I stayed.
Your face lights up as it once had for me, and I know my successor is standing only a few feet away from me. I don’t- I can’t take my eyes off of you. It seems to take years for her to reach you and when she does you take her hand. She looks nothing like me, and somehow that makes it worse, as if you lied about all the things you looked for in a woman.
The priest steps forward. “Ladies and Gentlemen, today you are all witnessing a very special wedding. A wedding that not even Hurricane Sandy could stop. A wedding that still precedes, even with no light, no heat. The love shared between the people that stand before me is too great, too strong, to be blinded by this storm. For they know that it is in times like these that they must ban together. They know that they could not bear through this storm without each other, that they could not bear through life without each other.”
She squeezes your hand tight and maybe it’s the Jack (I’d practically hooked myself up to an IV when I found out), but she’s looking at the priest and I swear- I swear you are looking for me. There was a moment. A microscopic monumental moment in time, when you scanned this crowd. The priest asks if anyone has any objections and your eyes finally rest in mine. I grip the bench. Are you asking me to interject? Are you asking me to stand up? Can you see me? I can’t move. My throat feels dry and my mouth opens to speak but nothing comes out. And in my head I’m screaming “I never stopped loving you! I never stopped loving you!”
You kiss her. Like I never existed at all.
Your families jump up clapping and cheering at the top of their lungs. I stand up and start running. I run two blocks down to catch a cab in yet another sea of people who don’t notice me. I take the cab downtown to our spot. The park looks dark, even for a winter afternoon; a black hole, swallowing the past. Slowly I make my way down the old path. Between the snow-covered trees where I’d once spun, chin pointed to the sky, your warm lips tickled my virgin skin. The cement walkway is overcome with snow and dirt. Each square is more cracked than the last, until the path had reduced to a jigsaw puzzle of sidewalk floating in a sea of mud and slush. Tree after dying tree, branch after baron branch, the remaining leaves do not look as green as the years they had when they had been nourished by our laughter. I reach the clearing and my heart chokes, my lungs seize. The hurricane had tore up the small field of grass, ripped the swing set from its roots and tossed it aside. The metal fence that separates us from the water lay flat where the water had stampeded through. Yellow caution tape is hammocked from the posts that still stand.
I laugh as I realize this is exactly what my heart my look like from the inside. Mud and fresh snow ooze up the sides of my heels, gravity pulling me lower with each step towards fence. I kick off my heels, stepping onto the wire fence and onto the dark brown rocks that lead to the dark water. My toes, my arch, and then my heels, flatten against the cold stone. An angry scream clouds from my lips, my chest heaves and is painfully filled with cold air. I step closer to the water, as if to scold it, as if this was all its fault. As if the hurricane had been the firs one to destroy what I tore apart years ago. But it hadn’t it merely washed away the pieces. I looked to he skyline for its promise, but that too had been washed away. I step to the edge of the rock, my toes curling over the side for grip. I brush away the wispy hairs that block my vision, but the skyline is black, completely black. And from here the whole world looks just as dead.
“What’s in L.A that’s not here?” You threw a pebble into the water, a pit of sorrow bobbing in your throat. An opportunity, a chance. This wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped.
“If I ever wanna be an actress, I have to try my luck in California.”
“We live in New York, it’s the same thing.”
“No it’s not. Plus, I donno know, I wanna see what it’s like to live somewhere else.”
“So that’s it you’re just gonna move to Cali?”
“Well I was hoping you’d come with me-“
“What do you mean ‘how’?”
“I’m just supposed to drop out of the police academy and what? Find a job as a waiter somewhere?”
“You don’t even want to be a policeman!”
“You’re just doing it because-“
“Because I want to start a family with you. We can’t do that if we are living off tips from The Sunny Side fucking diner.”
“It’s just for a little while!”
“Do you hear yourself? Han’, you’re asking me to drop out of school, to leave my family behind, my life. I like it here. I don’t need to run around the world looking for answers, ok? Unlike you, I’m happy with what I have.”
“I’m very happy with what I have.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You know, I thought you’d want me to go after my dreams.”
“I do, but you don’t have to move across the country to do that.”
“What, you think I’m being selfish?”
“I didn’t say it, you did.”
“Well then maybe I should go by myself.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Like I said it’s only for a little while.”
“How long is a little while Hannah?”
“Break up with me. Come on, do it.”
“I don’t wanna- wait do you want to break up?”
“You’re the one whose leaving.”
“Listen I’d wait forever for you, but we both know once you get on that plane, you’re never comin’ back.”
“I’m sorry I can’t do this-“
“You know what, I’ll do it. Save myself the fuckin’ heartache.”
The wind picks up slapping me back to reality. My eyelashes, my hair, my coat, are all piled high with snow. I close my eyes, my right hand finally allowing itself to caress the engagement ring around my neck, the one you gave me so long ago. Funny, how where once there was so much, there now stands so little. Funny, how something can look the same for a thousand years, but if you look away for a second, one fucking second, it’s completely different. I pull down on the necklace, the chain falls like silly putty in my hands. I slip the ring back onto my finger. It’s a little big now that I’ve lost so much weight. I stepped down onto the next rock, careful not to slip on the fresh layer of snow. My feet were becoming as numb as my heart. I closed my eyes again and bent my knees. I fought the urge to believe we’d be together one day and took another step. My toes slipped, sending my right leg into the water followed by upper body. The rocks cut against the ankle of my left foot caught between them. My chest feels like blocks of ice are pressing against it, my lungs are running out of air. Through the dark water I see the shadow of my flailing arms. Like the ascension of my wasted soul, the last air bubbles find the surface. And just before I slipped away, I swear- I swear I heard you scream my name.
annaxmalina
