The Color of Wine

The memory of him was like a punch in the arm. She felt it, purple and bruised, the color of good merlot, although it didn’t leave a mark. It was that kind of radiating achiness that wasn’t exactly pleasurable, but she knew it was good for her. She checked messages. Nothing, although he had promised to call. She wondered if he’d follow through. And, then she was sure that he wouldn’t. Of course not. She picked up her phone and checked it again. She was right.

Mid-life and alone, pandemic-living wasn’t for pussies. Even her 22-year-old cat knew that. True, he had died. She should not take it personally, but his I’m-outta-here timing, only one day into the first lockdown, was precise. How could it be anything but passive-aggressive? She had loved her cat probably because he was a little bit of an a**hole.

She had tried to make lemonade out of any sour old lemon. And so, as the days of the lockdown yawned on into weeks and then months, as she grew fatigued by Zoom calls and employment rejection emails, as she worried through a historical election, and cried with relief when it went her way, and cried again when she saw her country under siege, she wished she could talk to someone about what it meant.

Damn cat.

Instead, she talked to herself. She started by giving herself silent affirmations that she had once given her cat aloud: “Good job!” “Sweet angel!” “You’re so pretty!”

Then one day, out of the blue, she moved her lips. She silently shaped the words. One affirmation for each stair step, syncopating them to the beat of scrubbing the dishes, putting them to the tune of the happy birthday song for twenty seconds, as she scoured virus from her hands, matching them to strides on her long, long walks under live oaks, soaring birds and blue skies! Past rocks colorfully painted with pandemic encouragement. Past stuffed bears populating neighbors’ windows. It was as if she had never heard birdsong before, and it brought tears to her eyes. Oh, the beauty of it!

That went on for a few months.

How much of her life had she wasted not noticing birdsong?

Then, one morning she got up in the same pajamas she had never got out of the day before, which was not at all uncommon during these uncommon times, and she shuffled to the toilet in her cat-slippers to do her morning business. Upon washing her hands, she sang affirmations. Out loud. To her face. In the mirror. For the first time. Her voice, the resonance of it in her mouth, surprised her. Turned out, she has a good voice.

Why didn’t she sing more often?

She did this for many weeks in a row.

Her affirmations were more ritual than belief, but somehow through those weeks, through the overwhelming consistency and monotony, she was able to take affirmations to a new level. She got up from her business one day, washed her hands, singing her happy birthday affirmations aloud. She stopped in the middle. Looked in the mirror, deep into her eyes, and solemnly said, “You’re beautiful, and I love you.”

She paused after she said it. She considered her face. It didn’t look like her face because of her advancing age. It was not a true reflection of how she felt inside or who she was.

As she stood there, opening herself to her own face, the silence was loud, like an exclamation point.

Something had shifted. Perhaps in reciting affirmations over and over again for twenty seconds after twenty seconds, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, for the briefest millisecond, she imagined she could believe it.

From that day, she stepped lighter in her shoes. The crevasses across her forehead, the fissure between her brows, the parentheticals surrounding her mouth, the hairline cracks at her eyes, they didn’t seem so deep. And, even if they were, she decided that she liked them that way.

She got into a rhythm. She started to paint and fiddle with other hobbies on her list which she had never before had the time to indulge. The grocery checker was friendlier on her brief weekly trips. They learned each other’s names. She no longer dreaded Zoom because she excused herself politely when she’d had enough and refused back-to-back invitations, discovering boundaries.

Then after a full year of holing up, the nightly news announced that it was her turn.

The COVID 19 vaccine was available to everyone over fifty. Like winning the lottery, she eventually landed an appointment.

She sat on her couch the evening before her appointment and thought about what getting vaccinated meant to her life going forward. Was there any meaning to any of this?

She would be thrust back into the world. Kicked out of her nest. Could she hold on to what she had gained? Or was her nascent relationship with herself a fallacy, a house of cards that would tumble down once she had the rest of the world to keep her honest? Was she nothing more than a quirky old woman, getting quirkier and older all the time?

“You are beautiful, and I love you,” she countered quickly, like throwing salt over her left shoulder.

At 4 pm, she peeled off her pajamas and took a shower and washed her hair and brushed her teeth. She blew dry her long, ragged tresses, loving her fine weave of silver. She pulled on a skirt and a top that she hadn’t worn in over a year, finding that it didn’t pinch in the girth anymore.

She debated about her masks—colorful and artistic, à la Nancy-Pelosi couture, or sleek black? The N-95 was out of the question, it ruined the look. Then she saw the smile, a mask that attempted to paint on the outside what was hiding on the inside.

The smile was perfect, casual, not trying too hard, an air of fun.

She drove to the hotel which doubled as a vaccination clinic. The doors slid open, and her trainers made a squishing sound on the sturdy floral carpet as she followed the signs. A series of stations, hand sanitizer, health questions, temperature and the like, a swab of alcohol, a plink on a syringe with a latex-gloved finger, and the needle was in her arm.

When it was over, she walked to the waiting area, her trainers squeaking against the sturdy carpet, and sat. She was browsing her smartphone feeds when she noticed him looking at her from six feet away.

She smiled at him but realized he couldn’t see her smile, so she crinkled her eyes up at the corners, hoping he would intuit her sentiment.

“You have a beautiful smile,” he said.

She felt as if she should have a clever retort but she could think of nothing and so she said, “well, how would you know?”

“Your mask,” he said. “You have a beautiful smile.”

She smiled underneath the smile.

“Is this your first or your second?” He asked.

“My first,” she said.

“My second,” he said.

And then no one said anything, but he still stared at her as if he were waiting for her. Her mind raced to think of something witty and smart to say, but it went blank. Her social skills were shot to hell. Coming out of this pandemic, learning to be conversational again, would be hard.

“I’m excited to see my grandkids,” he said.

Grandkids. He is older than he seems. He has a family. This man doesn’t have a problem with being a conversationalist because this man has had a bubble of people to talk to over the last year.

“If I’d known we had to sit here, I would have brought my book,” he said. “Do you read?”

She nodded. Who doesn’t read?

She wondered if her skirt made her look stupid or dumpy or both. I love you. You’re beautiful, she recited in her head, and she sat up straighter. She wasn’t used to dressing herself anymore. The athletic trainers were a mistake. They didn’t go with her skirt. They didn’t go with her tote. They didn’t go with anything. I love you, you’re beautiful. They made noises on the sturdy carpet.

“What do you like to read?” He asked.

“I’m a sucker for a good romance,” she said.

As a precaution, they were supposed to wait fifteen to twenty minutes after they received their shots. They were there for an hour.

“I’ve enjoyed this conversation,” he said, and he stood, signaling the end. “It was nice to meet you.”

She should stand and leave. They’d been here too long, but she was stuck to her spot. She willed him to stay.

“Good luck with everything,” he said.

“You too,” she said.

He turned and walked out of the room.

Gone. The silence was loud again. She rose. She gathered her things. Her trainers squawked more loudly than ever as she made her way across the sturdy carpet.

As she rounded the corner, she bumped headlong into him. He grabbed her arm. A human touch. It had been so long. She shivered.

“Did you forget something?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did.”

“What did you forget?”

“I enjoyed our time together a great deal. I forgot to ask you for your number, and if you’d be willing to see me again, I’d like to continue our conversation. Social distanced of course.”

She smiled but realized that he couldn’t see behind the mask, and she would need to say something. “Yes, yes of course.” She reached for a pen and a piece of paper in her bag. She wrote the number and handed it to him.

“I’d like to see the beautiful smile behind the mask someday. I will call you soon,” he said.

She checked her phone for the one-thousand three-hundred and thirty-second time since they’d met. It was the forty-fifth time today. Still nothing.

Had he died? Maybe he was like her cat.

Her second punch in the arm had been worse than the first and the vaccine pain lasted longer. It was mostly gone after a week, but she still felt a slight itch like a phantom pain, and she scratched at it as her phone rang.

It was another number that she didn’t recognize. She’d been picking up every robocall since they had met, hoping it was him. She swallowed hard and let this one pass. He wasn’t going to call her. You’re beautiful, I love you. She let it go.

She picked up the voicemail. “Jilly, it’s Hank. I counted the days and well, I know this is your immunity day, and uh, I wanted to wish you congratulations. I know I had promised to call, so we could continue to talk, and I know that it’s late, but if you are still open, I would like to buy you a glass of merlot. You said that was your favorite, right? I’ve been nervous about this. I had a big loss this year. My wife. About ten months ago, to this damned disease and well, it all seems so fresh, like I wanted to, but I wasn’t ready. I don’t know that I’m ready now, I mean damn it, it’s been thirty-five years since I’ve been on a date with someone new. But a glass of wine. No harm in that. Maybe we start there. Maybe we see where it takes us.”

The house creaked. She sat at the desk, holding her phone, frozen. It came to her faintly, the western meadowlark, sitting on the apricot branch outside her windowpane, trilling. She turned to its music, took in its shocking yellow breast and black bow tie, surrounded by blossoms and dressed up for the dance. She breathed in deeply. She cracked open the window and listened.