If you'd like, just read it for fun. ♥
Red Wine, Jacques and I
The landlord has called in a psychic for me. He is such a nice man; he knows I am afraid to leave the apartment and delivers the paper to just right outside my door. Then when Samuel is too busy with his new girlfriend he will occasionally bring my groceries for me. What a kind man! When Samuel was young, he did not need me to leave the house either. He always encouraged me to stay indoors and rest. It is such a pity I never see him anymore.
I stand in the kitchen after speaking through the door with the landlord and cut strawberries into thin vertical slices. Red juice soaks into the cutting board. I place three strawberries on a plate for myself, and three on a plate for Jacques.
“You know,” I say at the table, “I used to have a son named Jacques.” I lick the strawberry juice from my thumb but it tastes like salty iron.
“Oh?” One of Jacques’ faint eyebrows arches, a cat stretching in the sunlight. “Was he at all like myself?”
“He was very young.”
“My dear, you’re hurt.” His eyebrows cross. They are where all his expression is, not his beautiful jaw line or crisp eyes. “Have I been hurt?”
Jacques is standing, his arms straight out at his sides. His palms face me. When I check under the table to see his feet, they are folded one on top of the other. “I don’t see any hurt,” I tell him. He nods and thanks me. He is such a sweet man. Samuel would very much like him, but he always refuses to meet my son and hides when he comes to visit. I know I am not the only one who can see Jacques. If only he would appear to others!
“A psychic is coming tomorrow.”
“Oh?” He searches through drawers in the kitchen. “You need a small bandage, chère.”
“Yes. I want her to meet you. The landlord called. Maybe you can meet him, too? Wouldn’t that be nice?”
In the afternoon, Jacques always serves me wine. I know he has been thinking about the psychic but he would never tell me directly.
“Marie, how do you suppose you’d fancy to die, if one were allowed to choose?”
I sip the dark tinted wine. “Why, I think I would want to fly. Don’t you think a life would be complete if you could fly once? Then it wouldn’t matter if you were to die.” I wonder if the even first great navigatoress died flying. “I could be like her.”
Jacques nods. “If I were to die, I would want to have been on fire.”
“Why is that?”
“It would look quite stunning.”
I do not quite have the whim to tell him he is already dead, as he tries to look at his reflection in the wine but cannot see the smallest glimpse of himself. When we are finished he helps me with washing the glasses; he dries them and stores them away for the next afternoon. Today he drops one, the poor dear, and when he steps aside the glass cuts the bottom of his foot.
“No, no—!” he says. Jacques’ eyebrows rise in alert at the smallest scratch. He runs into the bathroom without even waiting for me to put down the dish sponge. As he goes his hat flies off, that fancy hat, the one that matches his shirt and vest. Jacques has incredible style, and always wears those long sleeves whatever the temperature. He does not get hot, and he never sweats.
I walk past old pictures of Samuel on my way, and enter to find him sitting on the edge of the bathtub cradling his foot. When I rub the alcoholic peroxide across his skin one little cotton ball is not enough. A petite pile accumulates in the waste bin.
“I wish I could feel it,” Jacques says. He has always claimed he cannot feel a thing. One day the landlord helped me answer what it might be. It was neurological, I think he said. It was something about nerves. Jacques understood when I told him and still dislikes speaking of it.
“I don’t think you do, when it has to do with this alcohol.”
“I wish I could feel the cotton, or…”
Why doesn’t he say more? This man may drive me crazy.
“There we go,” I say like I used to tell Samuel after applying a bandage. “We match now.” I show Jacques my thumb. He smiles at me, gorgeous, it is not so bad.
When the psychic comes, she steps on my newspaper to get in. Jacques thinks this means she is a horrid lady, and he hides underneath my bed at the sight of her.
I think it might be Samuel’s birthday today, but I do not have a chance to call him now that this woman is standing in my living room. The landlord, too, but he is a nice man and wouldn’t mind a lady calling her son. I can practically see the gaudy getup of a psychic woman draped over her shoulders. She is normal in appearance. What a strange thing, for a psychic. She won’t hold her hands up or close her eyes to connect to the other side. Why won’t she do anything she is supposed to? I hold out my hand and tap my finger up and down, up and down, like I am hitting a button, but she doesn’t understand.
She walks into the bedroom. Jacques is under the bed and he looks frightening, the way his face is pale and his expression so scared.
“In here,” states the psychic. The landlord looks on. He goes to open one of the blinds in the corner.
“It is too dark in here,” as the dust springs up around him.
It was just yesterday I vacuumed, wasn’t it, Jacques? The dust collects so quickly here. Jacques? He has disappeared in the sunlight. The space underneath the hospital bed is not enough darkness for him. The carpet is too dry and frail to hide within.
“I feel a presence, very dangerous. There is an overwhelming sense of pain, and hurt.”
No, no, she is speaking all wrong. Jacques has no pain. I tap the air with both my fingers now, two arms outstretched. The landlord takes my shoulder and presses down, down.
“Right around here,” says the psychic, finally gesturing into the air, “here is the energy.” She is standing by the closet, facing away from Jacques. I sit on the bed. Maybe she will not find him then. “This! –oh, I feel so sad now. It’s just, desperation, and—and loss.”
She turns around and looks at Jacques. No, she is looking at me. “You shouldn’t stay here. Bad energy.” She nods and shudders and leaves into the other room with the landlord.
I lean my head over the edge of the bed. “Jacques! Jacques?” I am not the only one whispering. The landlord is speaking softly to the woman out in my living room. Both look concerned. “I am so sorry,” I say to the landlord, “this just didn’t work out the way I wanted! Would you like a coke?” I open the fridge and the psychic decides she does not want one. Her face is contorted, repulsive, like an old Asian demon, and her vest jingles as she turns away.
“Thank you for the generous offer,” the landlord says hastily – he is such a gentleman! – looking disappointed, “but I must go, as well. There is business to attend to, but I will get back to you.”
Business to attend to, ho! It is the afternoon, and time for wine.
We are down to a quarter glass when Jacques and I hear the day’s second knock on the door. The landlord is standing in the peephole, wearing something different than before. He calls to me. He tells me it took longer than expected but he has some news, and will I let him in?
Of course I will let him in, because he is such a nice man. Oh, but look at the dusty streaks on the floor, and I mopped only yesterday.
“With due respect sir, I might ask you to stay outside if you don’t really need to come in.” He considers it, really, and does what I say—can you imagine that, a man asking me for advice? Jacques is usually the only one who needs me anymore. I am flattered the landlord thinks so highly of me.
In the peephole, he draws his hand back over his scalp. I consider letting him in, just for thinking so well of me, but he is already speaking. “Now, you heard what the psychic said yesterday,” he says, “and I’m worried about you. I don’t want you in a place with, uh—” the first two fingers of his hand make a twitching gesture, forming small hooks—“bad energy. Okay? I think you, I mean because of this you should consider relocating. I know a very nice place; it’s where my mother lives right now—”
I know what he means. I used to live there, until they let me move here with my bed from the place itself.
And then I found Jacques! He was sitting in the kitchen, looking for his reflection, telling me it was misery when one was attached to a bit of furniture such as an apartment. But I always knew ghosts stayed where they belonged.
I will stay where I belong, too!
“Can’t do that!” I tell the landlord so he knows I am walking away from the door, to finish my wine. I try and call Samuel. He does not answer.
Jacques says he thinks Samuel already knows.
I say it’s ridiculous, to want to take someone from their house. I can hear the landlord asking through the door again. I want to stay with Jacques. He stays with me in the world.
I hear hammering on the door, tak, tak, tap. “Will you let me in?” a voice asks. It is a very kind voice but I do not recognize it.
I am busy trying to call Samuel. I have not been able to reach him for a long time.
Always, I ask Jacques, because he seems to know, “Where is my son?”
He never answers.
Jacques has become very quiet. He looks older, now. His beautiful, smooth neck has a strange blue tint in one section.
I will never tell him, because he will be afraid it is a serious hurt he cannot feel, one that will slowly kill him without him even knowing.
“They can’t make me leave you,” I tell him instead.
“Are you alright in there? Please open the door!” says a voice. It is panicked but sounds very kind.
We are all out of strawberries. There are no more. For the longest time we have had strawberries in the morning and wine in the afternoon, but now Jacques is pouring wine into two glasses and it is still the morning.
“Chère,” he says, the blue around his eyes making him look sad. “A toast to you.”
“What are we toasting, Jacques?”
“We are toasting you, chère. You are my eternal friend.”
Tak, tak, tak, tak! Whoever is tapping must surely be tired!
Jacques and I cry together after tasting what remained of our wine, the last wine on earth.
I fancy I might find some more if I just go up in the closet, and see what is on the shelf. Jacques and I carry a chair so I can see just over the ledge.
There is no wine there.
“Where is my son?” I ask Jacques. But he is silent now. There is a blue line around his neck just underneath his chin and it keeps him from speaking.
I see darkness in the corner of the closet. If I only had a match!
In the kitchen there is a box of matches. There is a broken wine glass on the floor by the sink. I would clean it up but Jacques is telling me it does not matter now, and I am glad he can speak again even though he seems to have disappeared.
I climb up the chair, grabbing a rope attached to one of the bars of the shelf.
I strike a match. My arm extends to the corner of the closet, above the shelf.
“Jacques, are you there? Oh, where is my son, my baby boy?”
“I believe I know, chère.”
When I turn around, Jacques is there. He is young and perfect again, like he was when we used to drink wine together.
The match comes close to burning my fingers. I drop it and light a new one.
“Must I check the other corner?”
Jacques says, “He is not there,” and, oh—I know where my baby boy is, I know where he is. Jacques looks at me, the matches, the looped rope attached to the closet shelf.
Rope slips under my chin, a thin cord slip-knot around the back of my neck.
I drop the other match, and another small flame lights the carpet near the old closet door.
Jacques smiles.
Jacques is a magician now.
He will attempt to remove a white tablecloth from beneath two glasses of red wine!
The audience is on the edge of their seats—will he break the wine glasses?
“Fly, chère.”
He pulls the chair out from beneath me.
