CREMAINS
by Sandra Rector
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Sandra Rector
Cover Design by Lisa Sardan
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CREMAINS
by
SandraRector
To Blossom, Manny was her god. She knew it was wrong to feel that way about somebody, but she couldn’t help herself. In her mind, they had the perfect marriage, were completely open and honest with each other, and besides being lovers, Manny was her best friend. So it came as a terrible shock to her when Manny confessed that he was having an affair with a woman at work.
He told her on a Saturday night in November. The temperature had dropped to 30 degrees and Manny had made a fire in the fireplace. The sky outside was a pure indigo blue and the trees at the front of their house were empty except for a few, already dead leaves, the kind that manage to hang on throughout the entire winter.
A mixture of pain and fury flashed through her entire body. At first Blossom couldn't look at him. It was as if her eyes couldn't see anything except some vague thing off to the right. Furious, she snatched the birthday card from the fireplace mantel that he’d given her just two days ago. "I hate you,” she said ripping it up and throwing the tiny pieces into the fire. She then rushed to the mantle, grabbed the huge birthday bouquet of pink roses in the crystal vase on the mantle, rushed into the kitchen and pitched the vase and flowers into the waste basket.
"Leave. Go away," she said, tears streaming down her face. "Now. Get away from me. I never want to see your face again.”
Manny sat on the green velveteen davenport and did not move. He looked like a little boy who’d been caught shoplifting a pack of cigarettes, which made Blossom even angrier. Unable to bear to be in the same room with him, Blossom tore off to the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the toilet sobbing, leaning over the sink, her head in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” Manny said through the door. "I'm so sorry, Blossom."
Blossom did not reply. Finally able to control herself somewhat and at the same time, desperate to understand what had happened, she came out of the bathroom, returned to the living room and sat down on one end of the dark green, down filled sofa. Manny sat down on the other end, facing her, their favorite position for talking over the events of the day, the reason they’d chosen such an expensive sofa in the first place. The room felt unnaturally hot and dry.
“Tell me about her,” Blossom said, her tone flat.
“She’s mean and sarcastic and she smokes,” Manny said.
“What’s good about her,” Blossom asked. She felt an unexplainable sickness in her whole body overtake her but was desperate to know all the details.
“She’s smart, she’s strong, she’s artistic. She has an art degree.”
“Does she paint?”
“No.”
“Does she make pots?”
“No.”
“Is her house pretty, artistic?”
“No.”
“Her clothes?”
“No, she wears brown khakis and white blouses mostly.”
So much for artistic, she thought feeling a kind of sick satisfaction.
As she pumped him, she found out more. Her name was Shirley. She’d lived for 17 years with an alcoholic who’d cheated on her, then left her for another woman. She’d stayed with her husband for so long, Manny said, because she didn’t think anybody else would want her.
So much for strong or smart.
"I'm sorry," he said again.
Hearing him speak fueled Blossom’s rage. She wanted to hurt him, make him suffer, feel what she was feeling. Unable to contain herself, she kicked him. He made no move to fight back, just sat numb, like a robot, taking whatever she handed out.
Unable to bear the sight of him, she left him there, grabbed her nightgown from the bedroom and changed her clothes in the bathroom, not wanting him to see her naked ever again. She went to bed, pulled the covers up to her chin and lay there, wide awake, seething, her body stiff like a clenched fist.
Manny climbed in beside her shortly afterwards. With him in bed next to her, Blossom felt like the room had become much too small. Even the air felt wrong. Unable to bear lying next to him, she got out of bed and stomped off to sleep on the sofa.
A few minutes later, Manny came in and said she could have the bed, that he would sleep downstairs.
“I don’t care what you do,” Blossom said coldly. “Just stay away from me.”
Defeated, he went downstairs to the extra bedroom and she returned to their bed. She felt heavy and sluggish and unable to sleep. She was sure that everything wonderful in her life was now over forever.
The next morning, Blossom told him he had to leave, then stood by as Manny called his brother to tell him that he and Blossom were splitting up and to ask if he could stay with him for awhile until he could find a place of his own. He must have agreed as Manny began to pack his things. Feeling as though her very bones were chilled, Blossom left so she wouldn't be there when his brother arrived.
“I love you,” he said right before she left. “I want to stay married, and stop keeping so many shameful secrets, but I can’t seem to help myself sometimes.”
Blossom didn’t reply, just slammed out of the house and got in her car. Having no destination in mind, she drove along Minnehaha Parkway, the old neighborhood where she and Manny had their very first apartment. She realized how much she must have known but couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge. During the past few months, Manny was always working and when he was at home, he seemed detached. Often she would have to tell him something twice, even three times, before she could break through the fog that seemed to surround him. It never occurred to her that he might be having an affair. At that thought, a fresh flood of tears overwhelmed her all over again. Barely able to see because of her tears, she pulled over to the side of the road and parked.
When she had calmed down enough to drive again, she drove back home, sure that Manny would be gone by this time. But his brother’s truck was still parked out front. In the same kind of terrible emotional pain she felt when she discovered her beloved sister had died, she turned around and this time drove along the river road all the way to the bridge. The river road which overlooked the Mississippi River, normally filled with joggers and people pushing strollers, was empty and bleak. All the trees, that had been so beautiful only a short time ago, looked to her like black skeletons. Finally, she felt enough time had passed and drove home. This time the truck was gone.
She walked through the front door tentatively, not knowing what to expect. Inside, everything that had belonged to Manny seemed to be gone. The house felt like all the air he’d taken up only a short while ago had departed leaving a huge void. Strangest of all was the amazing fact that she could still stand, walk, and talk even when her whole world had come crashing to an end.
In the days that followed, Blossom, normally a somewhat overweight, big boned woman with big, healthy appetites, a woman who had always loved to cook and bake, stopped cooking and eating. Everything tasted like sawdust to her and when she did eat something like a piece of toast, the food had trouble sliding past the huge lump in her throat. One day she began to cough. Gradually she grew worse.
Manny called her every day, a long time habit he couldn’t seem to break. Sometimes she would talk to him because she still had a lot of questions about the affair, sometimes she would just hang up on him. When he called now, she could barely answer the phone for coughing.
“I’m coming over to take you to the doctor,” he said.
Whatever,” she said and hung up the phone, glad to get back under the warm covers of their bed.
Manny arrived a short time later and insisted on taking her to the urgent care center near their home. Blossom, too weak to fight back, complied.
“You have pneumonia,” the doctor, a man so young, he looked like he was still in his teens, said as he looked at her chest x-ray. He prescribed antibiotics and sent her home. Back at home, Manny didn’t want to leave her, but Blossom insisted.
As soon as he was gone, Blossom went back to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. All she could think about was Manny. He’d always been such a good husband and such a good father to their only child, Albin, now grown and the very picture of Manny.
But then her mind obsessively went back to the affair. How could he? How was it even possible? He had come home every night right after work, called her every day on his lunch hour and they had continued to make love just like always.
She asked him about this when he called. He said it had gone on during their lunch hour and during the day when they were both involved in a project at work and spent long hours alone in the same room and driving to client sites together. After talking to him, although she was feeling better physically, she was still so depressed she couldn't seem to do anything except stare into space.
Sunday morning was bitterly cold with a sharp wind blowing little white dots of snow that looked like soap flakes. She woke up to the phone ringing. Sleepily, she picked it up. It was Manny.
“I’m coming over to shovel you out,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up before she could protest.
He appeared moments later, dressed in his heavy down coat and winter hunting boots. He didn’t say anything, just grabbed the shovel from the back porch and went to work. She could hear his shovel scraping on the walk from the bedroom. She forced herself to get up, take a shower and dress. When Manny finished, he came inside, stomping snow. Blossom made a pot of coffee and they talked.
“I still don’t understand,” she said. “I thought we were happy.”
“We were happy,” he said. “I don’t know what happened myself.” He looked down at his hands. “I loved you when I was at home and I loved her when I was at work. It was like I had two separate lives. I even told her to get a boyfriend, someone of her own. She did and that’s good because I want to stay married to you for the rest of my life.” As he spoke, his mouth was twisted in a grotesque grimace as he fought back tears. “I just want to come back home. Please Blossom.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but they had been married for 25 years, and didn't that mean something too and so she let him move back in. But then because his secret was too big to keep, he wound up admitting that he’d called Shirley twice and had lunch with her.
Tired of being half crazy with the pain of it all, she once again told him to leave, go back to his brother’s house. He cried and begged her to let him stay, promising he would break it off this time for sure. She let him stay, but it was only when he quit his job, found another one in an all male office, and sought therapy, that she began to believe in him again.
In some strange way she was glad for the affair, because Manny was a better, more loving husband than he’d ever been before. To reassure her he was being faithful, he checked in several times each day to let her know where he was. He had even begun to help her around the house, putting the dishes away from the dishwasher, cleaning the bathroom and even doing the laundry.
To prove how much he loved her, he had a tattoo artist draw a red heart on his left arm with a rose for love and a green leaf for growth with Blossom's name in big letters in the center. For their anniversary, he gave her a gold heart on a chain with earrings to match to remind her of his love. Slowly their lives returned to normal.
Then everything changed again.
On a hot, steamy Saturday in July, when rain kept threatening, Manny, who had been planting a cutting garden for Blossom, came into the kitchen, bathed in sweat. He complained of chest pains. His normal ruddy complexion was as white as school paste. Before he could say anything more, he fell to the kitchen floor.
Blossom dialed 911 and screamed for them to please hurry. Hours seemed to drag by but it was really only minutes as she held Manny’s hand and beseeched God to save him.
An ambulance finally arrived and two young men dressed in blue showed up. Blossom stood by, wringing her hands and mouthing frantic prayers for Manny. The two men used a portable defibrillator to try to shock his heart back into its normal rhythm. When after several attempts, they admitted it wasn't working, placed him in the ambulance and drove him and Blossom, who refused to leave Manny's side, to the hospital.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” Blossom cried over and over as she sat beside him in the ambulance.
But her words were to no avail. Manny was gone.
At the hospital, Blossom, numb with shock, sat with Manny’s body and talked to him because she'd heard that a person's hearing was the last thing to die. She told him how much she loved him and how glad she was that she had been his wife. A short time later, two rather stocky men dressed in dark suits from Washington-MacReady, the funeral home which she’d chosen came to take him away. Not wishing to see this, she left, called a cab and went home.
Back at home, she called her son Albin who said he would catch the next flight and be home sometime tomorrow. She then called everyone else they knew. She was surprised at herself, how she could go through the motions and not cry even when the people she called broke down. She even called Manny’s girlfriend to tell her and was thankful when her answering machine picked up and she could leave a message instead of actually having to talk to her.
That night, alone in her bed, she felt more alone than she could ever remember. She was relieved when the light went from black to gray to pale yellow and she could finally get up and begin the business of planning Manny’s funeral.
Her first appointment of the day was with the funeral director, a tall, imposing woman named Flo whose blond hair was sprayed so stiffly that it looked like a helmet. With Flo’s help, Blossom chose a simple rental casket from a book of pictures. Manny always said he wanted to be cremated. She was surprised at how much it cost to rent a casket to be used only once and then only for a short time, but she was too upset and confused to protest. She also chose a flower arrangement from a book and helped Flo write the obituary notice. Flo also gave her instructions for choosing pictures for Manny's memorial video and reminded her to bring the clothes she wanted him buried in.
"We try to make it as easy as possible for the bereaved,” Flo said with a practiced smile when Blossom stood up to leave. Blossom was too exhausted mentally by this time to reply.
On a gloomy day with no sunshine at all, Blossom, along with Albin holding her arm, saw Manny in the casket for the first time. When Blossom was able to make herself look, she was shocked to see him lying there. She reached down to touch Manny’s hand. It felt cold and hard and rough. She peeked beneath the cheap satin curtain separating the bottom half of him and saw an orange tag around his big toe like he was for sale. His feet were bare too. Had she forgotten to send along stockings and shoes? She worried that his feet would get cold and spoke her fears out loud to her son.
“Dad’s not feeling anything,” Albin said. “His spirit has gone on."
Blossom was comforted by Albin’s words and managed to hold herself together at the wake as she greeted all the people who had come to say goodbye to Manny. Thankfully, the ex-girlfriend stayed away.
The funeral over, Blossom was left to face the rest of her life. At first, she was like a sleepwalker. The smallest tasks seemed extremely difficult like mowing the lawn or taking in the car to have the oil changed. She soon discovered that Manny had only a small life insurance policy and if she were to live decently at all, she would have to get a job. She figured that what she knew best was waiting on people as she’d done it most of her life. Discouraged but determined, after several attempts where she was told each time that she needed some experience, she filled out an employment application for Chez Tulips, an exclusive restaurant serving French bistro food and to her surprise, she was hired.
Only at Chez Tulips was she able to come out of her fog. She enjoyed talking to her customers, loved discussing food with them and being busy helped her forget. Nighttimes Blossom, who seldom had more than a beer, began to add some whiskey to her Cokes just so she could get some sleep at night.
One Sunday afternoon in late September, there was a light rain which made all the trees on the boulevard stand out in green relief. Blossom watched out the window and could see the rain literally pass overhead and continue on its way. When the sun came out again, she had a moment of clarity. She would sell the house and buy a condo. With the proceeds from the house, she figured, she would be able to completely pay up a condo, and without a house payment, she could stop pinching pennies so hard. But before she did anything, she would have to clean and prepare the house.
And so one cool day when the leaves on the sugar maple in the back yard had turned a bright read, the air was just a bit crisp, and smelled dry and musty, yet sweet and fresh at the same time, Blossom began. She started in the garage. The garage was Manny’s special hangout and had always been a terrible mess.
As she was wrestling with some old boxes which were high up, one fell down and burst open. Out slid a pile of Playboy, Penthouse and other magazines with naked women on the cover. Shocked, she picked one up, thumbed through it and was repulsed at what she saw. Naked women in every kind of position, some even showing their bare crotches. Manny enjoyed looking at this? Why? Suddenly she felt chilled. The garage seemed darker to her than usual, as though starved for light. Her misery was so acute, she felt like she’d been stabbed in the stomach. She had always thought of their sex life as a sacred union and thought Manny did too. But there was nothing sacred about what she saw.
What a fool she’d been to love such a man. How could she have been so blind? First an affair and now this. Anger at herself for being a stupid fool to trust him again swept through her. Besides herself with rage at Manny all over again, she snatched the magazines and pitched them into the trash can with all her might. They landed with a clump. Even more upset and angry, she she raced downstairs to the basement, slammed open the lid of the freezer, grabbed the Cremains box and lobbed it into a nearby garbage can.
The top burst open.
Manny's ashes spewed out of the box and into the garbage can.
“Oh my God, I’ve thrown Manny away,” she cried. Shocked and sorry, she pawed through the dryer lint, banana peels and pop cans with her bare hands searching for his ashes. She picked out a bone fragment and held it in her hand with a mixture of revulsion and sadness. Shivering inwardly, her mind a mass of confusion, she carefully placed the bone fragment back in the box before returning to search for more ashes.
But no matter how hard she tried, little bits of Manny would always remain in the garbage. It just wasn't possible to get it all.
Somewhat calmer now, she gave up, emptied the garbage can into a white plastic kitchen bag and took it upstairs to the garage then returned to the garage and made herself go back to work. She was sorting through piles of papers when she found another box, this one held love letters she’d received from Manny when he was in the army stationed in Germany. Curious, she untied the blue ribbon holding them together and began to read.
“My dearest. I love you so much, you’re all I can think about,” began one. “I live for the day when I can return home and you will be in my arms again," he said in another and in yet another, he wrote, "I miss you so much it actually hurts."
This was her Manny too. Sentimental, romantic, generous, a wonderful husband and father in so many ways. The Manny she had loved was as real as the other Manny. She glanced through a few more of his letters then placed them in the garbage along with the magazines.
Thinking about it all, she realized she hadn't been so perfect either. Seven years after they were married, she had a not so little flirtation with their next door neighbor Tom, a corporate tax attorney who had an office at home. His wife, a nurse, worked the late shift. He used to call Blossom up sometimes when he knew Manny was out of town and his wife was at work. Blossom found his interest flattering and didn’t discourage him. They never had sex but their conversation could get pretty steamy at times. Luckily his work took him to another state and he and his family moved before they could take it further. It was just luck that kept her from being involved in a full blown affair. So little bits of her were in the garbage too.
Feeling more tired now than she could ever remember, she carried the bag out to the trash can where it would be picked up on Wednesday, then went upstairs to take a nap.
End
About the author
Sandra Rector has been making up stories since she discovered at age five that you could cut out the people in catalogs, add flannel to their backs and they would stick to a piece of flannel glued to a piece of cardboard. In her long career she has also written articles, essays and poems and sold them to such places as The Washington Post, Cooking Light, East West and many others.
This story came from someone who kept her deceased husband's Cremains in the freezer, a fact which I found fascinating and still do.
Discover other titles by Samdra Rector at Smashwords.com
Evaleen the Queen: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/63557
Rupert Time-- http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/81607
Mother's Day http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/80861