Blue Act I: Chapter I

Blue

Act I: Chapter 1

Clara. I still don't know at what point she vanished. I suppose it was like most, a gradual thing, like the wearing away of a string that you don't notice until it breaks. That morning, as the coffee spilled on her dress and the sun streamed through the blinds I promised to fix, she was sitting, not trying to clean it up, not drinking either, she was just staring at it, as if she could read something between the brown stains. “Are you okay?”, I asked her, more out of habit than concern, I would have reacted the same way to her answer. I was checking mail, like every morning, bills I didn't want to pay, advertisements, there was never really anything. My voice sounded hollow, and she didn't respond right away. “Sure,” she replied for my comfort, with that smile that was more of a reflex than an emotion. Clara had that power: to make everything seem normal, to make me think everything was normal. We had been married for seven years at that point, I thought I knew her, I thought I knew how she felt. What an idiot. The apartment smelled like bread and something indefinable, maybe it was mold lurking in the walls, or a warning of what happened. We lived in an old building away from everything, where neighbors yelled all day and dogs barked all night. It wasn't the dream we imagined when we moved together, but it was ours, at least. Clara used to joke about painting the walls horrendous colors, to “wake this place up.” We never did. Now I wonder if she meant it, or if she just wanted to make me smile. That morning, as I was putting on my jacket to go to work, I noticed that she hadn't moved from the table. Her black hair fell over her shoulders, messy, as if she hadn't bothered to wash it, her face looked bad, exhausted, lifeless, but at that time I just saw her normal face. She was wearing that blue dress she liked, the one she wore when she wanted to feel alive. “Aren't you going to paint today?”, I asked. Clara was a painter, she was trying to be. She had a whole room for it, with half-finished canvases, dry brushes, dreams she never quite caught. “I don't know,” she said. “Said” is not the best word, her voice was a whisper, always, as if the words escaped her. She looked out the window, out into the alley where the garbage was piled up like a monument to rot. “Maybe tomorrow.” I didn't think anything of it. Maybe I should have. I should have hugged her, asked her what she saw that I couldn't understand. But I didn't, and if I had, it wouldn't have prevented what happened. I left for work, that bureaucratic cage where I spent eight hours pretending my life had a purpose. When I came back that night, Clara was on the couch, reading a book. It's weird, she doesn't read. I never knew what she was reading. I didn't ask. We had dinner in silence, as usual, and I thought everything was fine, she told me everything was fine. I know it now. But back then, I only saw what I wanted to see.