Damsel in the Red Dress

Nebulous Gray

Steam rises from the weathered gray ceramic mug bathing my face in the essence of flor de jamaica, and pre-grated ginger rescued from the dark recesses of my fridge. Billie Holiday is warbling from the radio, forever set to that one 'oldie but a goodie' station Mrs. Moon got me hooked on. I stir in more and more honey. There's a poem about this, I think.

I watch the window, running with rivers of woman-made dew - aftermath of the puff of steam pressing its feverish face against the glass. The gray clouds are spreading themselves thin and dissipating in the early sunshine to unveil a vibrant indigo sky. Outside everything is glitteringly cold and damp, but the hail has stopped.

My phone shakes itself awake on the counter, with a hiss like a rattlesnake that someone made a phone ringer. They get stranger every year. Kattar's still sending cloyingly optimistic texts after every surgery, pretty sure he'll be discharged by the end of the month.

I sip my tea, which is too hot, and I don't care, as my tongue turns to leather. Billie Holiday weeps to the melody, almost cliche with pathos. Good morning headache. I needed two shots of tequila to be able to answer my texts this morning.

The driver's widow wants to pay for the car.

Several of the nurses recognize Kattar from some behind-the-scenes content, the music video-making film, for some new boyband's title track, that broke the internet a month back.

It's not going to hail again.

I have to get out today.

It's been over a week since my release from the hospital but it's the first time the weather has permitted me to go out on my wild goose chase, in search of beauty.

It's too cold for this, and I'd rather do anything else but face the weather - run the risk of running into someone who will want to stop and talk - but I have to find him something.

There's nothing beautiful in my apartment.

*

Buttoning my ugly trenchcoat up to my chin I make my way down the stairs, shove my unwashed hair under the knitted cap with the silly pompom that Kattar's mom made me last Christmas, and pick my way through my messy living room toward the door. My dusty easel leans precariously against the rainbow-stained coffee table, frozen in a state of impending collapse. Like a freeze frame, or a trashy, modern still life, plastic wrappers from cheap snack cakes and styrofoam cups of dirty water are littered beside plastic palettes crusty with oil pastel, and squoozed tubes of acrylic paint with ant waists.

The wind chews into my legs the second I open the door - clawing at my face until it's burning with cold. Despite the jacket, two layers of tights, and wool pants, I'm already freezing, and every part of me wants to go back in, and close the door, and cease to pretend to try to exist, for a few moments more, at least.

I coerce myself off the front stoop with the promise that I'll only go as far as the mailbox. Just the mailbox. I can do that. I can also see my neighbor, Mrs. Maywinn staring through her bay window, and I cross my fingers that she won't decide to come over and give me 'a talking to.' I'm well aware that my part of the sidewalk has yet to be shoveled, and the HOA has rules about that.

Still.

The driveway is short, but precariously slick, with patches of an amalgamated sort of frosty black ice, camouflaging on the asphalt. I decide to walk through the yard before I can decide to turn back and cancel the whole endeavor on the grounds of something this easy to deal with.

My mailbox stands vampirish, with icicle fangs at its mouth, and a long line of jagged, smaller teeth in the space between. They don't come off easily, and I have to knock against them a few times before I manage to break the seal and pry the box open. A mountain of paper lies on the inside, pressing against the roof of its metallic cage. I have to take my gloves off to try and work a finger into the back corner and slide the letters out without shredding them completely. The envelope on the top I instantly identify as my check from the Prescioso Vegerra Foundation. The thin paper pouch is emblazoned with a printed recreation of a watercolor elephant, green and gold, and the words, "congratulations" in Times New Roman, 18 point font. I put my gloves back on, and close the mailbox, quickly scanning the empty street for that "something beautiful," I'm supposed to send to Kattar.

There's nothing out of the ordinary, nothing exceptional, as far as the eye can see. Nearly all of my neighbor's houses are gaudy with Christmas decorations and an inflatable Santa Claus, reindeer and all, billows across the street in Maywinn's yard, but these things are all laughable, boarding on tragic.

Defeated, I settle on the mailbox. Still glistening with icicles, drooling long beads of icy water into the clean snow no one has trampled, just yet. I already broke most of them, so it looks like the monster is missing teeth. Still, it'll do. I crouch despite the protests from the back of my legs and find the angle where the sunlight turns the water into gemstones. Gaea's glitter. When the hues come through in blues and lavender, I snap the picture, then quickly turn on my heel, and go back inside.

*

I open the check first, with its letter in tow, and toss them both, unread on the coffee table. Making room for my aching body on the crowded couch, I shove half a dozen three-ring binders unceremoniously onto the floor and settle myself gently in the space they vacated.

"Alright. A promise is a promise." I free the frozen phone from my pants pocket and warm the glass against my cheek until it becomes responsive. The lock screen still glitches twice, refusing to acknowledge my password, and I wait for it to reset, staring at the ugly picture of himself that Kattar set as my lock screen a few months ago, when I was stupid enough to fall asleep with my phone unlocked.

He has his hair pulled up into a messy cross between a bun and a ponytail, his teeth bared like a hissing house cat. I can see myself in the background, my head propped up on the arm of the sofa - the shadow of my hair giving me the illusion of a neckbeard.

Kattar has asked me a thousand times why I haven't changed this screensaver yet. And I'll hem-and-haw, say he got me fair and square, so I'll suffer the prank until the turn of the year, but the truth is, the picture isn't half as ugly as he thinks.

I open the messaging app and text him the icicles without any context. Then I stare at the screen and wait.

I know there's a good chance he won't be able to reply anytime soon. I also know I have no intention of finding anything 'better' to do with my day. I try to ignore the way my heart flips when in a few seconds, the status changes to let me know he's online.

"This is what you found today?"

I smirk a little to myself, swirling the tea in my mug, and wait a moment, before replying:

"They're the icicles on my mailbox. The check from the Award came today. They sent a letter too, but I haven't read it yet."

20 seconds.

"Maybe they want you to be a featured artist for their Christmas showcase. I just got through watching the livestream from the one they did last year. Your paintings are better."

I grimace, even though I know he can't see, me, and reply quickly, "I'm not in the mood for any kind of showcase."

I can feel the pause. The conjuring of happy thoughts as I constantly try to quell his magic-

"It's still a month off. You never know how you'll be feeling then."

I hardly know how I'm feeling right now.

My soul stirs in my chest like an undulating tide, the emotions rolling over each other. This is so far from the lowest I've ever been I could almost call it normal. But every feeling seems tinged a shade of sick. It doesn't make sense, that I could get used to this so quick - but already, we begin falling back into Routine.

Kattar's mom texted me this morning about helping her clean his apartment in preparation for his release from the hospital. She's getting some friends to make meals to load his freezer until he can care for himself again. She's gotten in contact with the insurance. She hasn't once mentioned that this was all my fault. Every time she says my name it still sounds like she loves me.

Is this reality? Or am I just day-dreaming a broken best-case scenario where the pain is so nebulous, I almost start to feel like I'm crazy - because everyone else has already decided to go back to 'okay' - while I'm still trying to wrap my head around what just happened, still shattering a little bit, just trying not to make things worse, bleeding on their parade.

Maybe I have no 'okay' to go back to.