Author's note: Autumn has always been a melancholic time to me. I hope you enjoy this equally melancholy, but hopeful tale. Words: 1500 690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtlepwRfGYM
Jules Pessoa hadn’t gone into the bonus room upstairs since his death--rather, since his late wife’s death.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd9g3OWgJc1
Delaine Pessoa had been a diminutive, quiet, and wisp-like woman with fair hair, invisible eyebrows, and the kind of large, gray, soulful eyes a person could get carelessly lost in. Otherwise unremarkable, she had flitted from room to room like she were on wires. Like a marionette puppeteered by a master, she could drop into a scene with poise and, before anyone could blink, she’d be jerked up and offstage with all the grace of a moth being sucked through an open car window on the highway… 690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhgxplXMNh5
Just as she could come and go without disturbing dust, Delaine had come into Jules’ life like those nostalgic smells you can’t quite place and, just like them, she’d gone out of his life before he could really, honestly get to know her.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgwMZ0i6RFy
They had been married for seven months. Seven months was enough time for Jules to come to believe they’d always be together; enough time to feel entrenched in a world where she would always exist; enough time to feel absolutely bereft of his sense of time and place once she was gone.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHRR5yQq3uu
At 23, Mister Pessoa was made a widower, but he felt like an old ghost.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGpcIV0lafe
Delaine had left in Summer and, by the onset of Fall, the house she had once floated through was a husk of what it had once been. Her husband had left the windows of the spread open, letting the curtains blow to and fro, dragging in and out across the sills as if the apartment itself were breathing for him like controlled life support. Leaves from the change of season were scattered all around the layout, concentrated against the walls and covered furniture where the constant breezes couldn’t touch them.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhnuWfpToR0
Jules himself sat on the edge of the made-up queen mattress in their master bedroom. He could have passed for a statuesque street performer, his breathing not even evident as he stared down at the open letter in his hands. He wished silently that he could unread it, but from the tear stains and over-creased fold lines, anyone could have guessed he’d read it a hundred times.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf7EaDrXcN0
He could have closed his eyes and relayed its contents by heart. Damn it all that he couldn’t empty his heart out into the commode and flush away everything he’d ever loved about this place once and for all.
Julius, [the letter read,]690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJkG1VFreDp
I know it was unexpected. I know it probably hurt you more in the end, but I couldn’t stop you from loving me. I couldn’t stop you from wishing for it all--and I didn’t want to stop you from dreaming. Most of all, I didn’t want pity in your eyes. I wanted to see that hope I wanted and got to live in; a hope that insists everyone must live forever.
Be gentle with yourself, Jules. I’ve left you a gift in the bonus room upstairs. That place was always my refuge away from it all. I hope it can be yours now… Keep being kind. Keep looking for all the good in things. Keep waving at strangers and over-tipping and leaving quarters on dryers in the laundromat and going to Shakespeare Workshops even though you’re a terrible actor… and don’t for a second ever fall out of love with the world.
Not like I did.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMA7iD0Vk7e
The letter closed like it always did. Yours forever, Delaine. The irony was never lost on Jules.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdAb2nTnFf0
Cancer would have killed her in a year, they said. She had decided that slipping into that sleepless kind of sleep with six syringes of morphine in her system was more acceptable than trying to stand against that perfect storm of life. 690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdPT2GyVYDx
He remembered the night in still images, like a story printed on cardstock cue cards. There was dinner and her insistence that she wasn’t hungry hovering in the back of his mind, followed like a projector slide by the image of her drinking her beer in such a way that he’d remarked offhandedly, “Easy, Del. It won’t be your last.” How she had smiled so sweetly at him when he had chuckled… Another picture followed, this one of the dark stairwell leading to the bonus room. He had been rubbing at his eyes in the dark, wobbling up the steps as he called out groggily, “Delaine? Del--I woke up on the couch… What happened at Soraya’s? Delaine?” The penultimate card was simply his hand on the bonus room door, pushing inward… 690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡivtcwGTrcW
The last cue card hovered in his mind’s eye: Delaine smiling over him when they first met, tucking a strand of white hair behind her ear as she bit her lip, asking politely in that smoky voice of hers, “Are you napping under a bus stop?”690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIAiknw3yXP
Jules folded the letter slowly and deliberately.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwuH3USOTy3
He stood up and let the faux vellum fall to the floor, joining the off-colored brown, gold, and red leaves. He left the room, his barefeet hissing across the chilly wood as he went to the stairwell and looked up into its dark recesses.
The man swallowed and took a step up into the gloom. Just like in his memories, before he knew it, he was at the door, pushing it inward.
The bonus room was still and quiet, its windows closed against the thrum of the Autumn wind and its rustling of a billion leaves, softly resonating like the ocean you could hear in a shell.
Jules choked on a weepy noise and took a step into his late wife’s sanctuary. All of her drawings still lined the walls. All her books still adorned their shelves. Her little projects and inventions and letter boxes were still haphazardly arranged like she’d return to them at any moment.
Jules let out a breath and took another step. There, in the chair where she had expired, was a small white box with a silver bow on top of it.
How it got there or when she had arranged such a thing, Jules would never find out. He gingerly reached out and took the small square in his hands. On the immediate inside, there was a note that read: Julius, I know it took more than a lifetime to walk up those stairs… Lifetimes are not easy things to spend, but I want you to spend yours without reservation on someoneelse who’s willing to do the same. Down payment for such a transaction isenclosed. Spend wisely. Delaine
Under the card was a ring box Jules was all too familiar with. He grit his teeth and closed his eyes. He looked about the room after a moment of reflection and found other things to look at. He closed the box and set it aside.
With a fervor, fueled by renewed purpose, Jules started parsing through Delaine’s things.
She hadn’t just disappeared. As he read passages in her voice, opened a book to find notes and highlights, and as he scanned over her various artworks and focuses… he knew without the shadow of a doubt that Delaine Pessoa had been dying for a long time. Jules didn’t blame her for things now… He knew he wouldn’t have done the same if he’d been in her shoes, but he understood why she had chosen to go instead of fighting to stay. It also meant that he hadn’t been her reaper.
He’d been the only one keeping her sane. She hadn’t wanted him to see her fall apart at the seams. She had wanted him to remember her just like he was remembering her now: beautiful, shy, mysterious, and filled with a creative vigor that only wanted to watch him dissect the world around them and then write stories about it.
She had been her best with him.
He knew deep down he would love again, just like she had realized. He knew she’d tried to do her known best. He knew her decision and her fate might have been premeditated, but it hadn’t been a romantic choice in her eyes.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxVllma0rrp
“Know that death is always near,” she had always said with that secret, sad smile. “Thankfully, your next beer is always closer.”690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjV6If58xpU
Are you napping under a bus stop? she had asked him.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsmlPABpiF8
No, Jules had replied, Just riding out the spins.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2pZninhEEO
As he immersed himself in those last material pieces of Delaine, he fell in love with her all over again… and he didn’t feel quite as insubstantial or incorporeal after all.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmfrnpAuHBk
Today was to be the day he rose from the dead.690Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxengDChruL
