Sacre Coeur - snippet

Somewhere between refilling the bird feeder and gathering up a towel for her shower, she found that she was collecting things.

She looked down at what she clutched to her body.  Michael’s CD case, filled with his music (hers was in the Rodeo).  The last half pack of his cigarettes that she’d found tucked behind the laundry detergent, the remnant of an old habit dying hard.  The little piece of driftwood that he’d been carving into a bird.  A pair of his socks, mated unconsciously.  There was a hole beginning in one heel.

She let them fall on to the table.  The dryer buzzer broke her out of her reverie.  What was she doing here?

She took the clean load out of the dryer and began to load the washer.  Halfway down the hamper her fingers met a familiar fabric.  She pulled it out.  Michael’s corduroy shirt. She remembered the last time he’d worn it, sitting across the table from her at breakfast.  They’d laughed over something stupid she found in the newspaper. 

She brought the shirt to her face.  Oh, God.. it still had the smell of him.  She held it up, pressed her face to the fabric where it draped over her forearms.  With her eyes closed she could almost imagine him there.  Her face there in that sacred place, that safe place in the crook of his shoulder, there where it was soft.  The corduroy ridges soft and substantial beneath her cheek.  And suddenly she was calling his name, holding the shirt to herself, breathing him in again and again.

An hour later she woke, curled on the floor of the laundry room, back against the washer, the shirt clasped against her chest and pillowing her face.  She pulled off her clothes and stood there naked, nipples shivering in the chilly room.  The ache in her chest was a black hole; soon it would turn her inside out and she would cease to exist. 

She slipped the corduroy shirt on, pulling it close around her, and it was as if he were there, somehow.  The relief was immediate.  She pulled the too-long arms around her body, as if he were holding her.  The shirt was magic.  The shirt was a drug, filling her with numbness where there had been pain.

She pulled out the rest of his clothes from the hamper, desperate to find more of him.  When she had a small armload she went back to the bedroom.  Within moments she’d emptied his drawers, stripped his side of the closet, until a small mountain filled the bed.  She burrowed into the familiar items like a small animal, until she could reach out and touch every important item, until she was surrounded by him.  She slept again, the pain crashing around her like surf.

When she woke again it was dark outside.