THE BROKEN CHINA CLOSET

A lazy summer afternoon of reminiscing changes as darkness descends. What happens after the sun goes down shatters a man's world when he is challenged to do the unthinkable.

 

 

 

                        THE BROKEN CHINA CLOSET

 

   It was a late summer afternoon, the kind of afternoon when butterflies drift over light breezes and the earth’s warmth rises from the rich, green earth. He sat in the quiet shadows of his front room holding a cool glass in his hand, remembering her skirt rustling in the kitchen as she stirred a pot of fish stew on the gas stove. He glanced at her china closet, admiring her proud orderliness in her stacks of pastel-colored saucers and bright yellow tea cups.

A matching tea pot lay in wait for her guests who sat around a teak table on the freshly-mowed lawn. They sat under leafy maple trees sipping tea and talking in a language he could not understand. Their foreign camaraderie excluded him but he did not mind. He enjoyed watching her glide around the table as she poured tea and brought her guests sweet cakes, grinning when one or the other of them licked their fingers, before asking for more.

Smiling, he remembered her young Scandinavian beauty and the first time he met her, a fresh-faced actress arriving by boat to New York. She had large brown eyes, and her dimples, when she smiled, dared him to come closer, dared him to delight in her laughter and worship at the altar of her fragrant beauty.

 After her arrival in New York, there were long nights of dancing, holding hands under glittering skyscrapers defying starless skies, passionate kisses melting the glow of  dawns'  salutations; her laughter magnetic in the air, capturing his dreams and  hidden desires, before he was called to war. When he returned from the war, their lightheartedness was gone, tempered by their separation and the sorrow of a torn world filled with suffering.

The shadows of the afternoon retreated as he drank from his frosty glass and listened for her. Solitude washed over him with its familiar longing. He ached for the touch of her and the velvet skin he once trembled upon. He remembered her graceful hands as they moved across her piano keys, as they patted down her flowers on the window sills, as they washed their children’s young, lively bodies, and later in the evening, as her hands held her book perched close to her reading glasses by the soft lamp, after the children were asleep.

When he stood up, his knees were stiff and his back ached. Walking by her china closet, the sight of its beveled glass and carved keyhole comforted him. He had watched her put her tiny key into the silver keyhole countless times before, her world so delicate and proper, as she prepared for her summer garden parties.

Their lazy Long Island afternoons, the stuff made of delicate sandwiches without crusts, cucumbers soaked in vinegar, homemade finger cakes, and tea steeped and strained. He watched her cut and dice, and he marveled at the mystery of her, once a young girl running free in a land surrounded by islands and cool mountain waters that had shaped her wanderlust, independence, and  her resplendent beauty.

Still aching for her, he reached for his linen jacket and his hat, glancing into the china closet where a large bowl with clawed feet rested on the bottom shelf. Surrounding the bowl were rows of little cups and silver spoons, a fancy butter dish, and a grooved, inlaid silver serving tray exactly as she had left them.

He started his car and drove past sun-speckled trees, past his large lawn with remnants of gardens they had planted every year. Their orderliness remained, still the refined rhythm of life shaped by their lives together.

When he returned from the tavern, it was dark. He could no longer see the trees but he sensed them, large monuments hovering above the country home he had built for her with his young, blistered hands. He stumbled up the front steps and caught himself before he tripped. Laughing as he climbed more steps to the front porch, he could see fire flies blinking on and off in summer swarms of fluorescent lights. He could hear the steady call of crickets, and he listened to the rustle of wind blowing against his porch lattice.

Pushing his front door open as he had done thousands of times before, he turned on the light. But everything was different. Broken glass lay across the floor. Smashed china cups were strewn in chaotic piles of rubble; a smoking battlefield of scattered cup handles and broken saucers lay in wait for him. Coins from the claw-footed bowl were scattered across the floor, leaving a trail of copper leading toward the front door.

He screamed when he smashed the etched-glass bowl against a wall where her white linen curtains fluttered nearby. He screamed into the night, raging at the horror of that terrible day, years ago, when he took her shopping. He had waited and waited for her until both his legs cramped and he had missed his lunch.

When two men tapped on his car window and told him she was gone, he shouted at them, his face turning bruised and purple from his fright. “What are you talking about?” He saw their lips pursed together, heard the muffled echoes of their words and the horrifying meanings slipping from them. “What kind of joke is this? Get away from my car,” he yelled. But the strange men's mouths continued discharging shocking sounds, annihilating the contentment of his life, just moments before.

Afterward, the haunting questions remained, years and years of them. Why wasn’t he there to share her last breath and embrace her deep into the passage of it? How could two indifferent strangers look into her beautiful dark eyes searching for him, as her life melted away?

And now this. The very thing that comforted him; her orderliness, her stacks of saucers and rows of teacups exactly as she had left them, lying in bedlam at his feet. Her china closet with its keyhole still locked from her last picnic, ripped apart, a mangled vision of his anguish. She was gone again, leaving behind her china closet full of debris, shards of forsaken glass and cracked saucers. 

The next day, he packed his photos of her into metal boxes and locked their lids.  Waiting until sundown, as shadows grew larger, he brought out his bugle and played taps, a melodic dirge stirring the evening air. He played until multitudes of stars lit the sky. He played until the sky turned dark and thick clouds gathered, bringing torrents of rain spilling over his stooped shoulders. He played until he felt the sun warming his body and drying his clothes. He played on and on, a slow sorrowful melody, until the sky opened into a golden rapturous light, filling him with ecstatic sounds of her rich laughter ringing out from everywhere.