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Candles

Jordan Blum

    It started again on her 71st birthday, after she woke up with the sun and read her reminders and showered and brushed and treated and combed and dried and tied and wiped and patted and sprayed and perfected. She rifled through two jewelry boxes until she found the immaculate emerald brooch, which she pinned onto her pink, fluffy blouse, and then stared into the mirror with a bittersweet grin, remembering how Seymour used to call her “First Lady Agatha” whenever she wore it.
    Downstairs, foulness permeated from the freezer inside the garage; it seeped into every corner of the kitchen and laundry room and clashed with the perfume that radiated from her skin. She’d left the door open the previous night, and a pile of nibbled lunchmeats, apples, and holiday jelly candies lay on the ground. A plate of lox and cucumbers rested on the second self; in its center was a dead mouse.
    “Arthur will clean this up when the family gets here, I’m sure,” she said to the corroded elephant lamp beside her feet.
    It was a gift given to Arthur on his 8th birthday, when they had taken him to see Starless and Bible Black, a drive-in sci-fi popcorn flick. They’d always meant to replace it, but somehow the years were dissolved by smaller moments.
    She took her vitamins with a gulp of water and headed toward the mailbox outside. A garden of dying poppies and orange daylilies lay beneath it, surrounding a chipped greeting sign that read: “Goren Today, Gone Tomorrow. Enter with joy and bid adieu to sorrow.”Usually the Merlick’s dog, Lehto, would circle her feet as she approached the curb, but he was nowhere to be found. She opened the flap gleefully, expecting to see a pile of elaborate cards, each decorated with precision and distinctness to express the affection of the giver. Instead, she found only a flyer for a used car sale and the newest circular from the neighborhood market. She peered inside for nearly a minute, as if her cataracts were playing tricks with the light, before retreating.
    Laying by the lamp in the living room were her medications, which she devoured along with soup, tea, and half of a tuna sandwich as commercials interrupted game shows on Channel 53. Every three weeks, following childhood recollections and cognitive exercises, her psychiatrist would tell her the term as he wrote off another script, but she would never try to remember it. “I went this long without knowing it. Who wants to bother now?” she yawned to Groucho Marx, who was lighting another cigar behind the vintage television screen.
    Occasionally she would attend meetings for diseases she didn’t have or place herself subtly in the background as families photographed themselves. Once, when she was 19 and still dating Leonard, she left her phone number on a discarded napkin at a dance hall, only to be harassed by a pervert until dawn a week later. As with all of her ex-boyfriends, she would write to Leonard sparsely for months after their relationship ended and her marriage began. Rarely would they ever reply, which only compelled her to try again with more desperation. The fact that Seymour never knew made her feel relieved and normal rather than guilty.
    She awoke in the darkness, smiling at the transparent snapshots of a dream that was slipping away. The timers were set to turn off most of the electronics shortly past 7 p.m., when the commotion of the day usually ended and the serenity of night set in. She looked around at the emptiness, clinging to the smell of familiar cologne that still lingered in her subconscious, abandoned and hollow. There was no message from Arthur on the answering machine.
    Sadly, she reflected as she sat at the dining room table, there would be no celebrations to prepare and clean up anymore. No streamers to hang; no cakes to create; no relatives to regale; no robotic airplanes or slick new watches to wrap. Gone were the skinned knees to kiss and the broken hearts to mend; time no longer had room for burnt roasts or insincere banter with the other wives at corporate gatherings. There was no need to take the grandchildren clothes shopping again. There would only be silence now.
     Inside the china closet, she found a shopping bag from Bradley’ nestled between the Lenox teapots. She poured out nearly two dozen numbered candles and sorted them in sequential order, from 1 to 22 and then from 26 to 27, remembering the time Arthur had to move back home because he lost his sales job. She smelled each wick and studied the patterns of melted wax. Finally, she lit them all, cherishing their warmth and color and memories, before blowing them out and heading upstairs.
     There was no need to wash up, no reason to scrape or trim or dry or spray or cover or do anything at all. She simply stared into the bathroom mirror, wondering if and when her appendages would disappear, too. Eventually, she made her way into the bed, shivering and suddenly intimidated by its enormousness. For a moment, she swore she heard Seymour coming up the stairs, carrying French vanilla cocoa and his clarinet to help her fall asleep. She wondered how much longer she’d have to wait before experiencing that again. Most of all, she wondered how she became estranged from God so easily.

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