Two Loves

Chapter 9

CYMBELINE

"Isaac! I am home!" I cy as soon as I enter the apartment and throw my keys into the bowl on the cupboard.

No response. "Isaac?!"

Oh no, I think with a small glimpse of remorse, he is probably pouting and swearing to not speak a word with me until I apologize for those goddamn flowers.

He can be so childish sometimes.

"Isaac?!" I get out of my jacket and hang it up. Ada gave it back to me on her doorstep - and in my imagination, it still carries her scent.

And yes, I am so foolish to bury my nose in it and try to catch this smell of peonies and wax and warm wood she carries.

Isaac is not in the living room - but the framed pictures on the old piano have been taken away. With a frown I put them back as they were. When I see the family picture, I hesitate for a second. The things I said to Ada come back to my mind as I see the face of my mother behind the glass.

It was the last family photography we took. Isaac and I are around fourteen - he a lanky little boy with hair that was straightened and combed into a centre parting for the photo, with a pale face and a look as if he was equally afraid and fascinated by the camera. His hands are folded behind his back, in an attempt to look more like Father, who is standing behind him, a good-looking tall man with piercing eyes and my brown hair. The bottom half of his face is hidden behind a full beard, otherwise one could see how much his sharp jaw resembles mine. He is looking proud, one hand behind his back, the other intertwined with my mothers. I remember that he put on his best suit for the picture, and that he told everyone how proudly he would show this photography to his colleagues.

Well, he never got the chance.

My mother is the only one who is smiling openly on the picture. That was her nature - she always had a laugh on her lips and a joke in her eyes. Her raven black hair - the hair Isaac inherited - is curled around her head. She just told a joke to make all of us smile for the photographer, I see it in the dimples on her cheeks. Despite that, she looks thin - perhaps it's the corset, but also her hands are meagre and white, one of them placed on my shoulder. Not only to show pride and motherly affection, but also to keep me from running away again.

I shake when I see myself in this past-enchanted looking-glass.

Dear God, how much I have changed!
The face of the Cym in the picture is pale and grumpy, the absolute disapproval written in the knitting of her brows. I hated the dress I had to wear for the picture - as I hated all dresses. This one was of a light blue, I remember, though the sepia colours hide that. My hair - oh dear, I still had long hair! - was combed and braided together in a girly style that was supposed to make me look charming and sweet. The pins were scratching me the whole time.

I have the face of a bad-tempered, unhappy and unstandable lass in her boarding school vacation, that has been yearning to cry over everything for weeks, but now, at home, suddenly has to discover that nothing is different here, that she still has to wear dresses and hide her words and fulfill expectations, and that the uneasiness, this underlying feeling like pain or longing that she felt inside since she entered the boarding school was not homesickness, but something else - a sickness for another home she has not found yet.

My eyes are dark and tired, and express a defiance and absolute discontent with the whole world that I have to take a second to recognize myself in this masquerade that now seems so surreal to me.