At the Seams

Chapter 9: Day 1 - 11:41 am

Chapter 9: Day 1 – 11:41 am

Sam stands before his cheerful blue front door, remembering that he'd done the same that morning, certain if Mary didn’t open it, the universe would rip apart at the seams. Now, he wishes he'd waited, even if that means he'd still be motionless, oblivious to all that has transpired in his bedroom. Sam would stand here an eternity, turning to stone or dust, rather than find Mary as he had, soaking in her own sewage and horribly vacant.

Sam’s grief weaves the paralyzing spell anew, but then Jay ruffs softly just inside the door. The sound pulls Sam from his painful reverie and he opens the door, which he hadn't bothered to lock on his way out. Jay sits on the runner in the front hall, rising in anticipation when the door swings inward.

When she still owned a voice, Mary spouted on about Jay's intelligence and intuition; Sam humored her, mostly because he loved to hear her babble— about anything. He never bought into the honorary title of "Jung," though, not until this moment, for when Sam arrives without Mama, Jay drops his head and plunks his ass back to the carpet. Unable to face the dog’s disappointment, Sam walks through the French doors to his left into the mammoth living room where he and Mary used to watch movies and, when he was lucky, fornicate at odd angles on the massive burgundy sectional. At the far end of this room lives Mary’s office, indicated only where the boring cream walls give way to countless rows of bookshelves and the oak hardwood runs into a sea of rose-colored pile shag. It's the expensive stuff, but Sam still despises it.

Years ago, when Mary asked for the carpet, Sam put up only a token resistance. Mary pinned him with those hypnotic cocoa-colored orbs, with that gaze that demands seriousness and understanding even when she sounds silly, and said, "I need to work barefoot, baby. I think… I know that I want to be out there." Her eyes flicked to the huge picture window that sits opposite her desk, overlooking an ordinary front yard and neighborhood scene. Mary was not referring to what is right outside the window, though, so her gaze didn't linger long. Mary harbors a wild heart, on which she keeps close tabs, but which she also indulges in many small ways. Her eyes were back on his face, searching. "Barefoot on hardwood—ugh," she said, her freckled nose lifting in distaste. "But shag, especially in the morning when it's still cool, I squish it between my toes and it almost feels like grass!" Fairies danced in Mary’s eyes. Her nose wrinkled, this time tickled by her own daydream, that wondrous imagination of hers. "And rose, well, you know why I love that color," she murmured with her eyes on the floor. In the end, he caved. He would take a sharp stick in the eye, if it would make her happy, and rose-colored shag is pretty close to just that.

And anyway, disgusting pink carpet has its rewards. Mary loves pink of all shades but falls hard for rose. She had once confessed to Sam that she finds it a provocative, sensual color. He is certain this is why Mary, a deeply private person, sometimes wants to go heels in the house’s most public room, with its huge, unimpeded picture window. Pink shag, giant mauve sectional—this combination is like champagne and chocolate to Mary. Sam is simply a most willing and ecstatic passenger on those, her wildest rides.

He sits on the couch, catching a whiff of her smoky perfume in the air puffing from the cushions. Everywhere he turns, Mary waits like some unpleasant, impossible ghost to mug him. He gazes for a moment at the untidy piles of folders and bits of paper littering the surface of her scarred, ironwood writing desk. Methodical madness, Mary calls it. Sam calls it a mess. In the beginning of their relationship, he once made the grave mistake of trying to straighten her desk— folders in one pile, papers in another, bits and slips in a cute little basket painted to look like a Dobie, in honor of Jay. Cleaning her desk made perfect sense to him, but when Mary saw it, she hit the roof. Her tirade was so prolonged and unreasonable that, in the end, Sam barely kept from laughing. He got the gist, though. Keep his bloody meat hooks off her mess. It was hard at first, denying his urge to bring order to her little pink universe. Maintaining spatial optimization, Sam called it. Mary called it obsessive-compulsive and promised to have his hands if he didn't keep them to himself.