Scheherazade Unraveled

We drove up the snowy, winding road towards the cozy, A-frame cabin. For what would be the very last time, though we didn’t know it at that moment. I suspected that we would be the last ones to arrive, though I had no way of checking since we had lost cell service. We hadn’t spoken to each other since well before we lost coverage in the mountains, but my mind had wandered too far and long to much notice or care. If he did, he didn’t let on.

I stared obsessively out the window, mesmerized, watching the frozen landscape trundle by. The brilliant mid-morning sun, so at odds with the brief winter storm of mere hours ago, set rainbow fractals of light dancing over the snowdrifts. Icicles, their hold on the branches already tenuous at best, gleamed brightly as they began to slowly drip melted tears onto the ground below.

He is playing a piano arrangement of “Carol of the Bells” through the car speakers, and I consider the ice-kissed world before me. I can see the music winding through the trees, rivers of color in the sky, shifting with each note and crescendo. Images come, flashing and unbidden, into my head. A family of fauns, dancing with wood-nymphs beneath the moonlight of the clearing we’d just passed, leaving hoofprints in the snow. A woman, shoeless and freezing, half-mad, dragging a body through the snow, leaving blood and the greyish sludge of melted snow in her wake. Soldiers, digging in to build defenses against the unseen enemy creeping towards them in the dead of winter. Lovers, running madly into the wilderness to avoid the ensnarement of their families, preferring death to separation. A drug addict, high and nearing cardiac arrest from hypothermia, who lies safely ensconced in an alternate reality of her own making as she nears her death. Stories, half-formed, people, almost real, my mind racing with all of them. I pick a thread and follow it until I’m bored, or it just feels wrong, going back and reworking it until I like it better or until I decide to choose a different one. Sometimes I am a participant: the murderess, a desperate lover, a wood-nymph; and sometimes I am the puppeteer, directing them through the steps of a dance I have only halfway figured out, that I am making up as I go along. I am a sculptor who watches in awe as the clay of a thousand stories slowly comes to life in my hands. I mix in music and pain as if adding spice to a dish, changing the ratios until I am satisfied.

I spend hours in this way. Not just today, on the road, but often. Ever since I was a child. I don’t know if he knows where I go in my mind, when I get quiet, if he suspects. He’s never asked. I’ve never told him. Never told him I usually prefer it to his company. The safety of a narrative I control, the promise of unending possibility to change the plot if I become bored. The inevitable dissatisfaction that comes with returning to reality. I dance a fine line of near madness, “not quite all there,” as Mother used to say. She was wrong, as she was in most things. I was always too much there, too cognizant of my surroundings, too aware of the pain. So, when the salve of imagination, or insanity, offered itself to me, I took its hand gladly and lived on the edge of reason. I became a Russian ballerina, dancing at gunpoint to save my family. I became the leader of a band of warriors, intent on saving one another from certain demise. I became a deposed monarch, fighting for her kingdom and her life. I became an amalgamation of the best parts of people, real and fictional, that I came across. I became brave, desirable, honest, cherished. Most importantly, I became all of the things I was not in my own life, and I wove adventure into my imaginings that was utterly lacking in my mundane reality. If that is considered madness, then I gladly embrace it. Madness has done more for me than sanity ever has.

The song ends, and I impulsively click the button to play it again. He looks over, but doesn’t say anything. It's just one of those songs, that carries with it such possibility that I know if I allow it to end it will take with it the stories whispered on the wind. I keep watching as it follows us up the mountain, collecting characters from my mind like the Pied Piper as they follow its iridescent river of sound. I cannot bear to let it go quite yet, especially as I will be so thoroughly ensconced in the trivialities of my life this weekend. There will be little opportunity for my imaginings, and so I cling to the precious minutes I have left.

We are meeting two other couples we have been passive friends with for the past few years. He is far more friends with them than I. The husbands, mine included, work in the insurance business. The wives, myself excluded, stay at home and raise the children and gossip about the mutual friends they (we, I suppose), have in common. I don’t know how I ended up here. I don’t know how to make myself fit into this life, this role. It’s not the jobs, or the kids I take issue with. I’d like kids, someday. It just hasn’t happened for us yet. No, the people are somehow just wrong. Not bad, just bad for me. I cannot fundamentally understand them, and I know that despite my fake smiles and decent attempt at playing the expected role, they cannot understand me. Not for a lack of trying, by either party. It’s like they live in a castle built by clouds, towering on the peak of a mountain, but I was born for the ocean, gills and fins and no wings to speak of. It can't work.

Again, the song ends and again I restart it. He still says nothing. I don’t know why this bothers me; I don’t want him to speak. It will break the spell, wake up the blessedly sleeping rational part of my brain. And yet I am somehow disappointed to have failed to elicit a reaction from him. Stubbornly, I resume my vigil, though I am now distracted. My wandering and subconsciously working brain senses this, and I resignedly picture my new almost-characters turning to wave at me, not a goodbye, more of a see you later. I jot down a note in my phone of a few of the more appealing threads I found, knowing a mental note alone will prove insufficient. Slippery thing, the mind. The music I can still see, will see, until I allow it to end.

I don’t though. I restart it as soon as it ends, now purely out of a desire for some sort of acknowledgment from my husband of five years. Childish, I knew, and hypocritical since I had spent the last few hours in completely content silence. He says nothing. So, I play it out in my head instead.

I restart the song. He slams his hands on the steering wheel, furious, demanding to know what is wrong with me, why I can’t just listen to the next song. I scream back at him and ask why he couldn’t stay out of his intern’s pants, ask him through tears if he thinks this weekend will save us. Ask him if either of us even want to be saved. “It was one time!” he yells, “ONE time, and you can hardly blame me! You won’t let me even touch you, even though it has been over SIX MONTHS since the miscarriage. I had ONE MOMENT of weakness because my own WIFE won’t let me into OUR bed.”

I just look at him, numb with shock, that he would use that, use sex, use her against me when he didn’t care, not really, not the way I did. It wasn’t his body that had slowly shifted to accommodate the small, growing life inside of it. For the first time, I had felt completely content and settled into my own skin, happily present in reality. It wasn’t his body that, after the loss, was still confused, still thought there was life to prepare for. Physically, it had taken months to fully recover. Emotionally, I’m not sure I ever will.

He is angry and there is a turn on the road he takes too fast, overconfident in his frenzy of rage. The tires slide on the snow and for the briefest of moments we are flying, over the mountainside, the world stretched out beneath us like a distant game board. Then comes the brutal impact-

I shake my head slightly, clearing it. I’m not very superstitious, but it seems ill-advised to imagine dying in a traumatic car crash while we are still making our way towards the cabin. I look over at my husband, whose eyes are fixed on the road. He’s handsome, I suppose, in a bland sort of way. Thick hair, pretty eyes, average height. Attractive, and interchangeable. Though I think it's his personality that colors my perception of him as replaceable. I loved him once. Or, at least, I imagined I did. Maybe I made it up, my love for him. I’m not sure. Not sure he ever really loved me, or if I was simply in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe we deserve each other.

The song ends. I press restart.

When we arrive in the early evening, Piper and Holly bundle me into the cabin while Dean and Evan help him bring our bags into the cabin. The girls apologize as they lead us into the one remaining bedroom, offering to help us push the two twin beds together. I shake my head, smiling, say that we’ll make do for one weekend. I wonder if he’s told Dean and Evan, if leaving us with this room was intentional, or simply the result of us arriving late. Before we can unpack, glasses filled nearly to the brim with red wine are pressed into our hands, and we trail after the other two couples into the living room. A fire is crackling merrily in the hearth, and somebody has hung up Christmas decorations throughout the room. I drink deeply from my glass, positioning myself in an armchair that has a stunning view of the sun setting over the snow-encrusted mountains. It casts out a net of warm orange that briefly makes it look like the mountain has become a volcano with lakes of fire rippling in every direction. I can make out a few other cabins dotting the mountainside and judging by the clouds gathering we are likely to get more snow in the night. I fervently hope we don’t get snowed in.

The conversation flows as easily as the wine. Made easier by the wine. The boys chat about work and mutual college buddies. Piper and Holly discuss the antics of their various neighbors and ask me how my writing is going, clucking with sympathy as I lie and tell them I’ve been having terrible writer’s block. The truth is the opposite; I have been inundated with too many options, too many directions, too many ideas, that I am paralyzed with possibility. But they don’t want a complicated answer.

Piper starts rubbing her distended belly, about six months along if I had to guess. I watch every movement, fixated on the possessive and comforting touch of her palm. Holly begins to ask how the pregnancy is going, and I watch them remember at the exact same time. Horrified, their eyes dart to me and Holly grabs my hand, both apologizing profusely. I assure them, repeatedly, that its fine, it was a while ago, and that I’m so happy for Piper and Dean. From the corner of my eye, I can see the guys note the shift in our conversation. It is almost amusing to watch as they decide whether or not to address it or pretend like they didn’t hear at all. Evan opts for awkwardly patting my husband on the shoulder before launching into a diatribe about his boss. I spend a few more minutes consoling the mortified Piper and Holly, until I ask them about how their Christmases went. I am rewarded with a soliloquy from Holly, which enables my mind to wander a bit.

I am here but it is different. We have a long-held “no kids at the cabin” rule, but they lifted it for us this year. She’s still so young, we couldn’t bear to leave her for a whole weekend. They all coo and fuss over her. My husband is smiling, he speaks to me instead of around me, and our little girl is perfect. We bundle her up against the cold and rock her when she cries. We’re already talking about when we want to give her a sibling. Our friends are different, more present, or maybe I am the one who is more present. Everyone is connected, engaged with one another. My daughter is perfect, and I remember why I love my husband. He remembers why he loves me. I live in my body, not despite it. At night, I rock her to sleep and tell her fantastical stories of river-people and lions, girls who catch stars in nets like butterflies, a stone that cries golden tears. I sing her tales of adventure and peace, friendship and bravery, and I fit into myself at last.

That night, before my husband comes to bed, I push my twin bed even farther from his, closer to the window so I can see the stars. I hear him come to bed, flopping down onto the mattress and falling quickly asleep. Or pretending to. I watch the stars for hours, convinced I can see them dancing. I trace new constellations with my finger, one eye closed. At one point, an owl comes to perch on the evergreen branch outside my window. We regard each other coolly for a while, her yellow, unblinking eyes narrowed atop a ruffle of feathers, giving her a distinctly imperious look. I realize she is a dowager queen, cursed by her jealous daughter-in-law, a witch who ensnared the prince. The owl-queen’s gaze softens slightly, in either recognition or pity, before a giant’s hand scoops her up, snapping tree limbs like toothpicks as he brings her to his ear so he too can hear her story song.

I dream on, well into the night, awake or asleep, I do not know.

The weekend passes by in a blur of recycled conversations. We've had so many variations of the same discussions over the years that everyone is familiar with their role, their steps in the well-worn dance, and we all play our parts to lackluster perfection. I don’t realize until we're all preparing to depart that my husband and I have not spoken directly to one another once the entire weekend. I wonder briefly if any of the others noticed, before deciding I don’t care if they did. We all exchange embraces and empty promises to call more during the year that lies between us and another holiday retreat. It is an effort not to cringe when Piper pulls me into a hug, the bulk of her pregnancy between us. I think I can feel a faint kicking. I pull away quickly, and she smiles apologetically at me. I try not to hate her for it.

When I get into the car, he is playing “Carol of the Bells,” in challenge or acquiescence, I am unsure. I watch the music fill the car, then trickle out in a writhing cloud of vivid smoke. I spot a boy with dragonfly wings and emeralds for eyes flitting through the trees. He takes hold of a pebble and throws it into the sky, which fractures and rains down in crystal shards to the time of the music. We drive in silence. When the song ends, I press restart. An owl with sad yellow eyes still watches me. I press restart.

I leave him on New Year’s Day. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t protest or try to stop me. I still don’t know if I wanted him to.

I queue the cover of “Carol of the Bells” to play on repeat. This time, the shimmering path of music follows alongside the car on the road, where I can see it without being distracted from driving by its frantic, beautiful frolicking. A Viking skald appears in my passenger seat and sings me the song of a forgotten warrior-hero who died for his lover, a foreign princess. Fox cubs pop up in my backseat, scratching at the windows for their mother. She races alongside my car, a reddish blur in the snow, somehow keeping pace with the swiftly moving vehicle. Hunters with dogs materialize behind her, and though she should dart into the cover of the trees she yelps for her children. Above the trees, a dragon beats his wings, taking to the skies in search of his rider. The Allies hold the line at Bastogne, battered by snow and Germans. A young Victorian-era girl makes snow angels on the ground, her sister beside her, and I know that they will both be dead of tuberculosis within a year. Their mother calls them in for supper, but they ignore her a few moments more.

Tears drip down my face like melting icicles, and I smile. Madness took more from me than sanity ever gave.