Pieces

The moon shone in through the blinds of their bedroom window late one fall night.  She noticed that when she listened hard enough, she could hear the wind gently rustling the few dried leaves that held on to the otherwise bare branches outside. She missed the summer, when the trees were green and full and the wind didn’t sound so ominous. 

She sighed and let her eyes fall back upon his face, where just enough moonlight revealed the serenity with which he appeared to be sleeping. She tuned her ears away from the wind and back toward memorizing every breath he inhaled and exhaled. She knew it wouldn’t be long before those breaths wouldn’t be there to punctuate the thoughts that kept her awake.

As he inhaled, she studied his nose—the angle at which it jutted out from his face, the perfect compromise between round and sharp at the point. As he exhaled, she marveled for the millionth time at the angle of his jaw.

This every effort to memorize everything about him, from his breathing and the shape of his nose to the way his eyes focused on her as she related funny stories from work—it was exhausting. Yet she couldn’t help herself; she was addicted to this desperate attempt to hold on to as much of him as she could before he was deployed. It was a game, an attempt to find some order in a life that had recently become anything but orderly.

She began this quest about a week after he received notice of his assignment. At first, she started sneaking off to jot down notes—His nostrils flare and he raises his left eyebrow when he gets mad about something that happened at work. Or, tonight he told me he’s scared to leave me alone here. He didn’t catch her secretarial efforts until she stared too intently at him brushing his teeth. He’d been amused, if not a little saddened, at her earnest attempt to fix him in her memory.

Lately, however, she had toned down her note-taking; as the clock ticked on, it was getting too sad for both of them. Besides, she realized how much time she wasted by running off to scribble on scraps of paper. Instead, she focused all her energy on simply living in each moment she spent with him.

But at nights, when she couldn’t sleep (and that was often these days, as less than two weeks remained until their good-byes must be said), she found herself playing the game again. It usually calmed the myriad worries that woke her up in the first place, nauseatingly swirling around her stomach.

Something about this night, however, was too heart-breaking for her, so she quietly slid out from under the covers and made her way to their living room.
Amid the clutter of DVDs, board games, picture frames, ratty crocheted blankets, last Sunday’s newspaper and an odd array of throw pillows, she found the order and peace she was seeking. She pulled a card table up to the couch and emptied the box on the table.

Red puzzle pieces stood out, vivid against the fake brown grain of the card table. Some pieces were dotted with specks of green, and some were such a dark stained red that they almost looked black. She began pushing the pieces around, purposefully separating them into piles—rose petals, leaves, the black centers of the flowers, corner pieces and edge pieces. Her fingers moved automatically, snatching the next piece, fitting it into place and moving on to the next. It required no thought, no emotion.

Even as the moonlight shifted into daylight, she kept going, trying to get it all to make sense. He found there when he got up for work, her eyes narrowed and bloodshot.
“Couldn’t sleep again?” He wasn’t surprised. She had already tackled the puzzle three times in the past week. He leaned in the doorway and took a sip of his coffee.
She nodded but didn’t—or couldn’t—meet his eyes, searching instead for a missing piece near the center of the puzzle. He shifted the coffee mug to his other hand and sat down next to her on the couch, putting his arm around her shoulder and kissing the top of her head. She let herself lean into him and closed her eyes.

“This isn’t good for you,” he whispered. “You need your rest. I’m worried that when I leave…” But he couldn’t finish. He never could tell her the fears that he had to fight through just to fall asleep.

“I just need one more piece,” she muttered with her eyes still closed, her body relaxing even more. “It’s missing, but I need it…” He stayed there with her until her breathing deepened, then he gently shifted her head to the pillow and covered her with a blanket. “It’s gone,” she sighed one more time. Then he put down his coffee mug, stood up and was out the door.

She didn’t wake up until 4 that afternoon, completely disoriented by the deep sleep her body had forced her to succumb to. She rubbed her eyes before getting up, showering and doing the cleaning she had meant to tackle on her day off from work. In the living room she dusted and vacuumed her way around the puzzle, unable to look at it but unable to put it away and give up. Her cleaning was extra vigorous as she searched for the missing piece, and she couldn’t help but feel some dejection when the whole house had been turned upside down and put back together again, to no avail. By the time he came home, she forced herself to put the feeling out of her head. Instead, she focused on laughing about what his buddy had done at work, finalizing plans for their weekend getaway, discussing who would pick up his parents from the airport next week.

They made love that night and fell asleep without much effort, their bodies thankful for the release of emotion and the temporary respite from the constant tensions and fears. The next morning, she put the puzzle pieces back in the box and completely out of her mind.

The next two weeks passed by faster than they both could have imagined. Saying good-bye was difficult but somewhat surreal—he didn’t feel the reality of their situation until he saw the desert stretching out beneath him from the airplane window. She didn’t feel the depth of her loneliness until almost two months in, when she found herself unable to sleep and searching for the puzzle box.

They had talked on the phone for the only the third time two nights ago, and as her fingers automatically sorted the pieces into their respective piles, her mind went back through that conversation. She tried to remember not what he said but how he said it—the million meanings that the tone of his voice carried. Their 20 minutes was gone in a second, and she had replayed that conversation in her mind dozens of times already.

When she had exhausted that game, she flipped through her mental notes of him. There would be pauses, lapses when she couldn’t quite remember something about him exactly. It scared her. But then she would concentrate harder and the memory would finally return.

Tonight, though, she couldn’t recall the amount of pressure with which he would rub her shoulders, the shoulders that now felt tense and knotted. Her movement of the puzzle pieces around the table became more frantic as she struggled to feel his hands on her. Okay, she told herself. Start with how he held your hand. Got it? Okay. Now, remember his hand on the small of your back as he would guide you through crowds. Yes, there it was, reassuring and gentle but strong enough to feel secure. Move on to his arm around your shoulder as you would watch movies on the couch. Loosely draped, getting heavier as he became more relaxed. Good, good. Now, the way he would rub your shoulders when you had a rough day at the hospital. He was trying to take out the tension, so he would use some pressure, but it was relaxing, too… damn it, why couldn’t she remember?

She looked down at the table. She had finished the puzzle without realizing it. Well, almost. That damn center piece was still missing. She tried to focus on putting each piece back in the box one at a time, anything to push away the sense of failure she felt for forgetting that tiny but important piece of her husband and their life together.
She put the box away and crawled into bed, not looking at the empty pillow next to her. She grabbed the sleeping pills he had insisted she keep around while he was gone and swallowed one. She fell asleep moments later.

The force of the impact threw him against the wall of the tank, killing him instantly, they told her when she finally woke up. He couldn’t have seen it coming or felt any pain. His sacrifice was greatly appreciated and his fine leadership will be sorely missed. Please let us know if we can do anything for you.

She woke up later that night, her neck and back sore from lying in a contorted position on the hardwood floor. After they left, she had closed the door and slid down it, collapsing into a ball on the floor. Everything ached with an intensity she had never before experienced. She stretched her arms above her head, then stretched out her legs and grabbed her toes. When she looked up, she saw a piece of red partially hidden under the coat rack. She dove for it, swatting it out from under the heavy brass stand. The missing puzzle piece taunted her with its bold color, its audacity to have been hidden for so long in a place she never even thought to look for it. Her eyes traveled up from the puzzle piece to land on his favorite leather jacket, just hanging there. She held it to her face, catching remnants of his cologne and nuzzling the worn leather against her skin. The tears finally came, with her face buried in the jacket, the sight of the red puzzle piece burned into her brain even when she closed her eyes.

Eventually, she stood up. She went to the living room and picked up the box, holding it tight to her chest as she went back to the front door. She pushed open the door and held tight to the railing as she went down the steps. She paused when she reached the sidewalk, then took the lid off and held the box over her head. She flung the contents up in the air, raining red puzzle pieces down over her and onto the ground. Then she closed the box, put it in the garbage and returned inside. She bent down by the coat rack, picked up the missing piece and put it in her pocket before lying down on the couch to sleep for a very long time.