Blurry Windows

She paced back and forth in a perpetual circle before the blurry window.  The flat they lived in was dull and dark because of those windows that never seemed to come clean, no matter how many times she washed them.  She had tried, how she had tried, washing and washing, day after day.  She never stopped trying to clear away the dirt, but no matter how she tried nothing seemed to work.

The young woman herself was lovely, short of stature, with long auburn hair, hair that he had told her time and again he loved.  (How many times had he stroked that long hair of hers, telling her he loved it and her, she wondered?)  Her hands seemed to be filled with grime and dirt, and incredibly small.  Yet, though small and weak, they held a strange power, she understood that now.  They never came clean either, no matter how often she washed them.  Her eyes were dark, and large, and shaded.  There was a blur on them too.  There was a blur on everything in the flat, everything in her life, since it happened.

It was a simple surgery, really, just as all her friends had said it would be. They never told her (and she never told him) about what really happened afterwards.  No one ever spoke about the pain or the sickness or the dirt.  There was no getting rid of that dirt.  The blur that came from it was irrevocable, never to be removed.  It came and never went away.  It couldn’t be washed, she had tried; she had tried all the conventional ways at least.

The flat itself was actually quite nice, when one forgot the blur.  Small, yes, but not so small as to prevent life.  It took people to do that.  Only people had that immense power to think that they could play God and win.  There were only a few pieces of furniture, a couch, two chairs, a table.  The windows had no dressing on them.  They didn’t need any.  The blur took care of that.  You couldn’t see out and nothing ever got in past it.  There had been no sunlight since it had happened.

Until now, she had been alone, walking in that endless circle before the windows.  Then the man came in.  He was tall and thin, with a boyish charm and a false naiveté about him.  They lived there, the two of them, with no rings and no children, now.  There never had been any, children that is, only the thought of one, and that had been enough to scare them both.  The surgery had taken care of that. He walked over to the window and stopped her.

"How was your day?  Didn't try washing those windows again, did you?" he said with a laugh.  He didn't understand the blur.  He never allowed it to affect him.

"No, not today, I couldn't. I just…"  She trailed off into a whisper.  She wanted to say that she didn't have the energy, but she knew he would never understand that.  He seemed not to understand much of anything since it happened.  Either he didn’t see the blur that covered everything or he was better able to ignore it.

"I took a walk today, down to that church."

She could see him stiffen at the word.  They had never gone to church together.  She had abandoned that when she met him.  He had said church made him "uncomfortable".  All the church wanted to do, he had said, was keep you from having fun. So, she had stopped going.

"Listen," he said, ignoring her again, "I thought we could go out tonight. Maybe get a bite to eat, see a movie.  What do you say?"

"What?  Oh, yes.  No.  I can't.  Not tonight.  I'm just not up to it yet."

"Why?  Don't tell me that again.  You could be up to it if you wanted to be.  Things can be as they were if you would just forget about it.  It was a simple surgery.  We weren't ready for it yet."

"No, we weren't, were we?  You're right of course.  You're always right."

"Yes, I'm right," he said.  He had not heard the last part.  He had not truly heard any of it.  He was only speaking, not listening.  "We aren't ready for it yet.  We're young.  We're too young.  We should be out having fun, not in here carrying on about those windows."

There was that word again.

"We had fun.  Isn't that the problem?" she said, almost in a whisper.  Things were starting to connect now, slowly.

"What was that?" he asked.  He didn’t really want the answer; he only thought he should ask.  “Anyway, we can't let this get in the way of our future.  That was the point of the procedure in the first place."

"Yes, it was.  Why didn't it work?" she asked, out loud this time.  Yes, it was starting to make sense finally.

"What?" he asked again, waiting for a reply this time.

"I asked you why it didn't work.  Why?  It's a simple question.  You promised it would and it didn't.  Why did you promise me that?"

"You're not letting it work," he said, angrily.  He didn't want to hear what she had to say.  She was trying to talk to him about the truth, but he just kept ignoring it.

She realized then, perhaps because of his anger at her simple questions, that she could not stay with him.  This man offered her no answers, only more hiding and more lies and more of the blur.  Had he really not been affected by all that had happened between them?  Had this man really not grown at all in all their time together?  After what they had shared?  After everything they had done for each other?  Maybe she had been mislead.  Maybe he hadn’t really done anything for her at all, only for his own pleasure.

She was walking away from him now, away from the window, away from the blur.  Everything was becoming clear now.  It was not the window or her eyes or anything like that.  She walked into the kitchen and began searching through the drawers, not quite sure of what she was looking for, just something that would hurt him.  Finally, she found something and drew them out.  She grabbed her hair.  Holding it out, she cut it off, all of it.  Her hair began falling around her feet, as dead as her past life.  He walked in, startled, and tried to stop her but she would have none of it.  She kept cutting and it kept falling.  Her beautiful hair, the one thing he had loved most about her, would soon be gone and so would he.  Strangely, she couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry about either of those facts.  He had only loved her hair, or her face, or her slim, pretty figure, not her.  Finally, the blur was dropping away.

"I didn't want to do that," she shouted at him.  "I wanted more than anything to keep it.  Now it's gone, and we can never get it back, and we can never go back."

"Yes we can.  Nothing has changed."  He tried to take the scissors from her again, but she held onto them tightly.  He hadn’t heard a word she just said.  It was as if she had been speaking to herself the whole time.  Yes, she had; she had been.  She realized that now, and she knew what else she had to do.  She had to leave this place, this man, this life.  She had not been made for this, and she was not going to live like this anymore.  What had that man, the one in the church, told her today?  Someone was waiting to give her everything she needed and wanted, and all she had to do was ask.

The girl with the choppy brown hair and the clear brown eyes dropped the scissors.  She didn’t need them, or the hair, or him.  She knew what she needed now, more than anything.  She put on her coat, walked out the door, and down the street.  He was waiting for her there, the One the man in the church had told her about, and He would understand it all.  It was over now, and everything was just beginning.