SENSATIONS

*NOTE: this was written as a prologue to Ramond Carvers short story "will you please be quiet, please?", without knowledge of text the symbolic importance of some of its aspects cannot be fully apriciated. To anyone who hasn't read Ramond Carver, i recomend it as some of the most acutly acurate stories of human behaviour and the implusive nature of those in conflict.


SENSATIONS:

Ralph had his arm draped over the side of the bed, as he always did. It was Monday afternoon, the irritating setting light shone through the almost closed curtain. Opening his eyes he absorbed the imprint of her familiar body pressed into the bed. The sheets were positioned in a way that made him remember her body against his, the heat of it all. Rolling over onto his side he breathed deeply and saw his abandoned clothes mixed with hers in a neat bundle on the floor. He was still heavy with unguided sleep.

He felt different, a sensational difference, yet he felt the same. He was still Ralph.

He could hear her moving in the kitchen. He thought she must be cleaning up after lunch. He thought he could hear the children playing outside, muffled by closed doors. Ralph stirred in an attempt to rise but decided against it. He thought of the glass centerpiece on the lace table cloth in the dinning room, the red flamingos, their outstretched wings on the verge of liftoff. He thought of the couch where her coat lay and of the tall stool on which she sat, again and again he thought of her wide open eyes. Strange to him now, like a hazy memory of a dream. He was dizzy from drink.

He moved to sit up, breathed for a moment holding back, and then clenching his fists, brought his heels to the ground. The weight of the previous night returned in the scenes and faces that flickered like a movie behind his eyes. The argument, Marian panting with fright. He saw frothing beer, a laughing man, a long road of black wet mist, the drunken women holding his coat, a flick of hair, the bottom of a glass, a blurred face of the girl called Betty. Then Marian’s crumpled face. A quavering voice shouting after him ... and he heard Marian coming towards the bedroom door.

Moving tentatively into the bedroom she stood in front of him. He looked at her. She was known to him. He no longer felt a separate part of their lives. His head ached, his mind felt detached and the tight skin stretching across his chest, felt like the only thing keeping him from going everywhere at once.
‘Ralph’ she said quietly, ‘how you feeling?’
He stared into her eyes and then let his own skip over her body for a moment, breathing, tasting, seeing her again. ‘Better’ he replied, and he smiled a small smile.
‘I made you something to eat’, she straightened and moved toward him, picking something off his crumpled shirt, a hair, a thread. ‘When you feel like it’.
He walked out the way he had come in that morning and followed her into the kitchen, watching her hips sway under her skirt. He caught a glimpse of the polished bathroom, his blood stains and grime had been cleansed. The towels had been straightened and fluffy bath mat freshly washed.

The food placed in front of him was eaten slowly.
“Ralph” she said slowly, ‘what happened to you last night…?”
The silence between them was broken only by the scrape of his knife and fork and the children’s jovial cries from outside. He wasn’t ready yet.
“Ralph” she said hesitantly “I’m sorry, I know what I did, it was wrong”.
Ralph set his cutlery down on his plate neatly and turned to her, a little of the fire he felt from the night returning. She sat slumped over the table, her elbows supporting her face opposite from him. He could see small smooth lines on her face, eyes circled with dark rings and skin a little blotchy. To him she looked more real than ever.

“God Ralph, please say something…”
“Marian” he said “you hurt me. God dammit! It broke me…gnawed at away at me for years and hearing it, threw me apart…”
Marian’s eyes welled and she sniffed loudly, ‘Ralph, please, I know, for god sake I know. It was a mistake, I should never have gone…I should never…. it was impulsive, I was drunk and foolish.” She moved her cold tea cup to one side and reached out to touch his warm hand. Ralph half expected himself to flinch at her touch, but he didn’t, instead found himself allowing his fingers to entwine themselves within hers, magnificently dove-tailed

He stood suddenly, pulling away from her and faced the window. She signed and even with his back turned he could see her mouth was sadly down-turned. He heard the chair scrape and the flick of the kettle switch. The water gurgled. He moved his fingers through his hair and then traced them over his cheeks and mouth. “Thinking of him on you like that, inside of you. It made me angry, angrier than I have ever been. I thought I could handle the truth of it all, but I couldn’t, I felt, felt the world spinning out of my control.”
“Ralph” she said moving up behind him, gently stroking the middle of his back. “What happened?” Ralph ears buzzed, the water had boiled. He wondered why he had been so frightened.
“I went downtown” he softly said and sat down. He stared at his own hands, as if they belonged to another and realized he had been gesturing feebly. She straightened and moved behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders. She bent at the knees and inspected the cut on his face. “…and this?” she said. He stared ahead and shrugged slightly shaking his head, tasting the pavement of the previous night.

The sky outside the house darkened. She rested her head on the top of his. “I love you Ralph, you know that…don’t you?”
He raised his eyes from the black coaches on the table cloth, “I’ve discovered things about myself Marian” he said “I thought my life was perfect” he coughed “but it can’t be, nothings perfect. I thought I knew women. I thought I knew you too Marian.” He touched the cool steel of the chair, comforted that it was something he could hold onto.
“Ralph?”
“I just can’t explain it, I feel different, I’ve been so sure of myself all my life…but I’m not, I’m just not. I don’t know anything about anything. I always thought I knew things about the world and about women like you, but I didn’t. I was scared of you Marian, scared of your power. He looked around the kitchen and then out toward the window again. A bird had perched on the windowsill and twittered noisily, the couple watched it together until it hopped off in hopes of finding a worm.

Ralph breathed deeply and smiled ‘I understand something now. About myself, about you, hell about the whole damn world. Last night, the world slammed itself in my face Marian. It slammed everything, bad and good. I lost control but I’ve found it again.”

She raised her eyes, her hair falling in front of her blouse and over her chest. He watched her mouth. ‘Ralph are we crazy?’
‘No’ he said ‘I feel different Marian, I just feel different’ and he laughed suddenly, unexpectedly in surprise at his understanding.