Stone Heart

It is one of those days after the equinox, after the children have gone back to work and the grandchildren are back in school, after the vacation houses have been shut up, the swimsuits washed and stored, and the sandals lost to the back of the closet. It is after that but before Halloween. It is before the leaves let go their color and then their grip. Before the night sky brings the whispered promise of snow. It is in the grey gully between summer and the blushing reformation of autumn.

It is no particular fall day and I am out of sorts.

What a peculiar expression. Out of sorts. It’ s not like being out of sorts is something one can simply adjust or even adjust around. Like I am out of sugar and will borrow from my neighbor, or I am out of paperclips and will have to scavenge or make do with staples or bobby pins until the next time one of us goes out. It’s not even like I’m out of patience and will now go soak in a long hot bubble bath until I regain my composure, rest my agitated self, restock and am ready again to deal with you.

I am at the sink, peeling a tangerine, when you wheel down the hall. I separate the crescents of fruit, a deep blood orange, and spread the splintered globe across a small ceramic plate. The plate is glazed the color of the Pacific the afternoon of a coming storm-deep jade green. It is a green that should be, but isn’t, the color of the eyes of frogs. I have made seven such plates, each one the different color of an ocean or a sea we have sailed. This plate of the Pacific is from our honeymoon so many years ago, in Fiji where you first taught me how to handle a catamaran, and I learned for myself the wonders of putting my hands and mouth on your body.

I killed a snake this morning, just off the back deck. That used to be your job. ridding the property of snakes·. We both know that you never killed them, merely scooped them with a hoe or the rake handle into a bucket and took them down to the tree line. Away from the house and the shrieks of grandchildren who have grown up in the city. Once I saw you pick up a bull snake with your gloved hand and slither it into the big bucket, the one I use to gather potatoes in the autumn, after the first hard frost has laid the land bare. Or at least I choose to remember that it was your gloved hand for I want to be like you with the snakes and I don’t see how I could ever get to bare hand on dry scale.

I killed the snake through no fault of its own. No, the fault is all mine. I hall thought to lift it, a largish garter snake, into the bucket with a hoe. I should have turned the hoe to use the handle.  I wish I hadn’t flinched at the sudden shifting weight. I like to think, I like to hope, that next time-for there will be a next time for me and the snakes-that next time I won’t whip the snake into the bucket, catching its head neatly between the bucket handle and the hoe blade and-Marie Antoinette-decapitated snake.

The kitchen counter under the window is low, dropped down six months ago, before you came home in the chair, dropped down to where you can wheel directly up, slip the wheels and your lap into the new knee hole, and it is as if you are  standing at the counter, chopping onions, grating lemon zest, grinding flax seed with the side of the second best knife. It is as if you are standing with me. We haven’t had the stove lowered-not yet-and we might not. It has never been the cooking itself that you loved-the frying, the sauteing, the boiling, the melting but the part before. We used to call it kitchen foreplay.

I stand at the counter, now waist high, and you wheel across the cold hickory floor. Cold to me, that is, my bare feet on the wood. It is all the same to you now. Your feet will never be cold again.

You wheel up, select a crescent of tangerine from the plate of the ocean, and slither it into your mouth. Or so it seems, that you slither it in, for I am not in a forgiving mood.

I lean back against the island in the center of the kitchen. “I hate it when you do that.” For a moment, I’m not sure I’ve spoken, the words felt like a hiss.

Another tangerine slice finds your fingers, your lips and your teeth. You lick the sticky juice from your thumb. “What’s that?” you ask. You haven’t even looked at me. I wonder if you will ever look at me again the way you used to. I am older now, and tired, but you never seem to notice. You would look at me and I would feel the wind in my hair, the deck of a boat beneath my feet.

“When you take me for granted.” There. I feel like spitting. Why didn’t I say don’t go?

You nod once, then lift another tangerine piece from the plate. You have not offered to share. You have a heart of stone, like a peach or an under ripe apricot. “When I take you for granite?”

You think you are being funny. I could reach out and run my fingers through your hair. A year ago it was just starting to grey around the temples. Now it is more white than black. White like snow that hasn’t started to fall. Your arms are as strong as they ever were. Even in the chair, you could still lift me, still hold me.

“No,” I say. I could touch you, but I don’t.

“Ah,” you say. Your eyes are still the stark blue of winter sky, cobalt like the name in the furnace. I know, because I see them when you look out the window. I have never tried to make a plate that color.

I know you get it, but I am not willing to let it go. “How do you know that tangerine wasn’t for me? What makes you think it was for you?”

You turn your back and for a moment I wonder if I have hurt you, caught and pinched your heart. I turn away and busy myself, rubbing my finger over an imaginary stain on the stove. I did not turn away from the snake this morning because the truth is it was only wounded. Severely, mortally wounded, but not cleanly beheaded. No. That took deliberate action. A sharp strike to the already bloody wound then my full booted weight on the hoe to finish the job already so badly botched. I am close to tears. Damn you.

I hear your wheels on the hardwood floor. Grey rubber, a single grit of sand. It’s impossible to keep the wheels clean-or the floor undamaged-now that you go out again. We’ll have to get the floors refinished some time. Not carpeted, because it’s too hard on the chair. But refinished. I am unwilling to put down linoleum although we have been told that it’s best. Linoleum is easy under the wheels and easy to clean. But not so easy on the eyes.

I remember how warm your hands are, even in the dark of winter. And how cold your feet can be. It’s not that your feet will never be cold again; it’s just that I will know and you will not. You will never teel that again, and I fear I will never stop feeling it. Why did you go?

The wheels grind over the wood again and you clear your throat.

The sharp scent of citrus fills the kitchen like summer sunshine. You offer me a single perfect orange, peeled and quartered and divided again, arching across the steely blue of the Atlantic after the storm. We spent the summer the children were ten and eight sailing off the Cape, on the little ketch as often as we were on the shore. Before our oldest went to college, we spent the summer in the Caribbean, out to the Bitter End on the far tip of Virgin Gorda and back on the forty-eight foot schooner. And one fall in the San Juan Islands. That boat was a sloop, its crab-crusher hull good for the calm and protected waters of the Channel. I have made plates for all those waters. I will never make a plate for the Black Sea- it may as well be the Dead Sea for me. I have never been there. And you nearly did not come back. If I had gone, if I had not chosen that one single time to stay, it might have been different.

 I take up a segment of orange. It is lush and perfect. Perfect, for I do not like tangerines. I think of the pigment it will take to match the color of your eyes.