Aaron left today. A Monday. Conveniently so, because either way most people hate those, and now Mara does as well, even though as of this morning she did not.
This morning there was no indication of Aaron walking out. It started out a good day: mid-autumn, the temperatures, higher than usual, so Mara slid on a skirt, had a coffee, and went to work, her mood: exceptionally great. On her way she passed playing children, who were collecting nuts between the trees around their house, and as much as Mara hates politeness that is fake, she remembers smiling at those.
Yes, even though it's Monday, today was a good day. At least for half the way. It was in the evening that Aaron was leaving, and when he went away everything turned grey. Five hours have passed since then, and in the meantime Mara started hating Mondays just like everybody else.
Sitting on the window ledge, she is reminiscing about the moment that her husband went away. In painful contrast to the held back attitude that he was brought up to display, he left with a bang. Literally, with the bang that, accompanied by smoke, a bullet causes as it leaves the barrel of a gun.
As she is staring at the 8-caliber in her hand, she shows no emotion. Maybe you could blame it on the shock. Since it happened she hasn't cried, at all, and neither has she felt a thing about the bang, bang, bang that took him, even though, for as long as she wants to remember, Aaron has been the milk in her coffee, the spark in her fire, the tide in her ocean.
The bang that he left with echoed, because the room it happened in was empty. No, empty isn't enough. It was filled with the void that people leave behind as they leave someone behind. A void that Aaron had chosen.
The furniture, the mirrors, the carpets: He had taken everything from their fancy home in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the countryside, and so far off the grid that yóu would struggle to find it via satellite. He had taken everything away by midday. In an attempt to leave her perhaps, but whether or not he was genuinely planning on doing so she will now never know, because - oh, isn't that convenient? - a dead man cannot answer questions anymore.
She puts her finger on the trigger, slides off the window ledge and turns to face her own reflection. The loose dressing gown that she is wearing - a gift that Aaron gave her, white with black lilies on it - slips down to expose her shoulder. It doesn't stay closed anymore. A belt came with it, but she lost it long ago. It was to be expected, considering how messy she has always been. She cannot look after things, and if Aaron ever knew her, he should have known that just as well. He should have bought something other than a satin two-part-robe, the most important part of which would vanish without a trace in the same week and give him something to complain about. Unless that was why he chose it, and - who knows - it could have been, because giving out to her has always been what he seemed to enjoy most about their marriage.
As Mara is facing herself in the window, the dressing gown - without a belt to tie it - swirls open and exposes the lacy lingerie that she has on. She bought it in black, because Aaron liked her in that colour, so he told her months ago.
Oh, fuck him! Now that he is gone he has no right to keep lingering around in her head. Mara wants him out. She should start asking everyone who moves into her thoughts for a higher rent, especially tenants like him who only upset her.
The longer she faces herself in the window, with her black lingerie and the dressing gown without a belt, the more tense her face becomes. Then all at once she aims the gun with shaking hands at the woman staring back at her from the partly steamed up glass.
She wants him out, her ass! He is back again. Just laughable that she cannot stop thinking about him, even though she knows that he has left her on her own.
With an agitated groan, she approaches the window. It clunks when she forcefully puts the gun - is that blood on it? - upon her own reflection. It is the woman she sees who she should be thinking about. But Aaron, and he has always been, is too overpowering.
What a prick!
Upset, she slides the 8-caliber off the glass and throws it on the ground. It slides across the marble tiles and hits the door to the hall, but Mara doesn´t take notice anymore. She starts pondering against the window, that is how upset she is. Safety glass, it won't break and she knows it, but she keeps on punching, because if you keep your anger in, then you end up just like him.
Oh, screw you, Aaron! What a selfish dick you are for dying!
But of course you chose the easiest way, as you always would! And now you are down there with the Devil himself, laughing and probaböly proud that you left me here, guessing.!
It is true. Now Mara can only guess and has no way of ever finding out whether or not Aaron was going to ask for a divorce. Going by circumstantial evidence, she has to admit that, yes, it very much looks like it. An indication for it was not only the empty house at noon, but also the blonde girl - petite, with curly hair, half as old as her - who had dropped him home from work every day in the past year. With it had come a distance in his gestures and in his raspy voice when he would refuse to answer Mara´s questions, and what had followed suit was the crossing of his arms whenever she would tell him that she loved him, as if he had to protect his heart from hearing those words.
Thinking about it, Mara is pretty sure that he wanted to leave her - today, tomorrow, or the day after - had he not been taken by a bang. However, if this were a jury case, there would be reasonable doubt.
For one, he has never directly said it to her, before a bullet hit him straight in the forehead, another one straight in the heart, and a third one straight where it hurts most, just for him to leave the world as what he truly was. Not an actual man, but a coward who couldn't stand up for himself. However, Mara loved all of him, so she likes to think. Then why is she not crying?
She stops hitting the glass. Exhausted, she turns around and sinks back on the window ledge. Her warm breath turns the window white. Maybe the reason for her lack of tears is the only wisdom that her mother has ever taught her: that everything is revealed in the way that people choose to leave. What does the way that her husband left tell her about him? What does it tell her about herself and what about the life that they have built? An iglu that was doomed to lose cohesion as soon as the temperatures would rise. She stares at the 8-caliber that is half in the hall, half in the kitchen now. Nearly like a few hours ago Aaron´s dead body. Does getting shot even count as leaving? She wonders. When they get shot, it isn't their choice to go, is it?
Well, not fully maybe, but perhaps to some degree it could be, because barely anyone leaves with a bang if they haven't done something wrong. They cause the bang themselves and that is by the choices they make. So Mara tries to think in order to figure out what the way her husband chose to go is trying to reveal about the man he was and not only about him, but about everything.
Thinking about it, it depends, though, doesn´t it? It depends on whether or not Mara wants to believe the circumstantial evidence and think that Aaron would have asked for a divorce, if a bullet hadn't forced him to leave before he could finalize his decision. She slides off the window sill and looks out. Darkness, thick and sticky, like tart. Only the red light of their CCTV-system keeps on blinking. Tirelessly. Monotonously. Upsettingly.
My God, stop! How annoying!
She turns her back to it and drags her feet across the marble tiles, when a shiver drives into her body. Jesus, it is cold without the fluffy carpets! Why did he have to take them, without even explaining?
As she starts tiptoeing just so she won't touch the tiles, the muscles in her ankles protrude. They've grown strong in more than 10 years of marriage. Oh, he kept her on her toes, alright! Sometimes in a good way, but most of the time it was more like she had to tiptoe around him, so that, faced with him, she wouldn't get cold feet. Now that he is gone she hates that she still has to do it. Genuinely, she has to, and that is because of the missing carpets and the freezing ground and her arthritis. Her joints are bad enough without the cold creeping into her bones, even though she is only 45 years old.
A symptom of degeneration, Aaron used to call it and blame it on the processed food that Mara likes to eat, on the aspirin that she likes to take, and on the palm oil in the make-up she wears. Still on her toes, she is leaving the kitchen and feels almost like she hears him say it.
Oh, just shut up, Aaron! At least now that you are gone I shouldn't have to listen to your smart comments anymore!
Thinking about it, no, Mara didn't love all of him. His superiority was sickening. So was his judgmental nature, and what she could stand even less was the way he would dress the things he wanted to criticize as a joke, so she would have no way of defending herself against his many accusations. It made him a coward. It made him look weak, because like this he never had to stand for what he'd said. What made it worse was that Mara would try to unwrap his nicely wrapped up accusations, like a pile of dog shit that an enemy masks as a gift and puts under a christmas tree , after which Aaron would only belittle her. He would pet her head as if she were an ignorant cat and give a chuckle, an invitation for reconciliation.
"Relax, rabbit", he´d whisper. " I was joking, alright? You should try laughing sometime, I like you best when you smile."
He tried to avoid conflict by this manner, but he would know what he had said, and he would know that he had meant it, and he would know that she would be aware of it as well. Everytime when it would happen this way, like gas, his accusations would linger in the air above her, from where they would never go away. Dressing them in humour and disguising them as something that he didn't even mean would atomize his complaints, so she would never be able to grab them and take them apart. Instead she would have to live with their atoms in the air around her, and from then on every time she'd breathe they would enter her system and poison her mind from the inside. Continuously, persistently, unseen.
Still on her toes, Mara has reached the hallway and turns into the second door on the right, the bathroom. Oh, what a paradise! An oasis, the bathroom of her dreams! No bathtub, but a whirlpool and on the opposite side, an entire wall with mirror tiles. She is standing between the tub and her mirror wall when she claps her hands and the light comes on. She keeps her eyes on her beloved whirlpool, but as there is light, they shoot open painfully wide, and in the next second her face is drenched in rage.
Oh, fuck this shit! Fuck you once more, Aaron, you narcissist! Can you not finally stop bleeding? Why does it - even now that you are dead - always have to be about yourself, you prick?
His dead body is slumped across the whirlpool tub. The eyes are glazed, his skin is grey, and his limbs are stiff by rigor mortis. Mara gives an angry sigh and her knees start trembling. Five, or however many litres of blood the body of a man his size contains: It looks like all of them are in her beloved tub.
Of course he had to ruin that for her too, and if it were the last thing he would do! Well, in this case - fair enough - it literally was… Fuck him for it, either way! How is she ever supposed to enjoy her whirlpool again? Her exes were right: She should have listened to them and never married the man!
Grinding her teeth, she stomps over to him and sinks her angry eyes deep into his. Then, all of a sudden, the anger slips out and leaves vast emptiness within.
Well, it wasn't all bad with him, was it?
No, it was not, at least not from the start, and that his blood is now filling up her whirlpool tub is probably more Mara´s fault than it is his. Admittedly she is the one who put him there so he could bleed dry. That's how disgusted she was with the sweet iron scent that his dead body was giving off. She pulls up her nose.
Wait… Could all of this all along have been his plan? As insane as it sounds, she wouldn't put it past him.
What a closed off master manipulator he was!
His brilliant mind bought them this multi-million-dollar-home with acres of forest around it. She never knew scientists could make this kind of money. When she first met him, however, she didn't date him for his millions. Back then for all that Mara knew he only owned three sets of clothes.
"A minimalist by choice. For the environment," he liked to explain himself.
The truth was that he was a substitute teacher who worked part-time, and what he earned back then barely got him through his days. As a consequence he left Mara with the bill for their first date. Then for the second, and for the third as well, which was a high enough one, they went paragliding then.
She furrows her brows and crosses her arms. Why did she go out with him again? Wondering about it, she leans across the whirlpool tub and falls down the rabbit hole that are his eyes. Because of them she was infatuated with him from the start. Such depth in them, such vastness. So wild and gentle at the same time. The eyes that unapologetically put a spell on her on the day that they met are the same ones that are now staring back at her, dead, and they look nothing like they did back then.
Well, how would she even know?
She doesn't remember the last time she looked into them. It must have been months if not years ago, and it took for him to die that she even noticed. Maybe he did want to leave her and perhaps for a good reason, before a gunshot wound prevented him from doing so. Regret climbs into her watery eyes and covers up the emptiness with a gloomy shine. Maybe she isn't as innocent as she would like to pretend. She might have let him go, long before he went.
Exhausted, she sinks down on the seam of the whirlpool tub, still captivated by his glance, even though you can hardly call the stare of a dead man a glance anymore. However, when she meets it, her thoughts reset to zero.
Here we go again! Would he really have left her if he hadn't met his death? If the bullets had missed him, would he now stand in front of her and tell her that their time together has to end?
She has to find out. Otherwise, how can she ever move on?
Getting off the whirlpool, she starts thinking of her mother. Oh, her goddamn mother! She should never have told her the sentence that has been haunting her ever since. As long as Mara can remember, she has had it in her head. And where did it lead her? Into a marriage with a man who most likely was a cheater and about to leave her, before he decided to bleed out in her whirlpool tub and will now never give her the closure she needs to move on.
When her mom shared her wisdom with her only daughter, did she know that her words would, once fallen off the tip of her tongue, forcefully break into Mara´s mind and beset her life like a parasite that was determined to suck it dry? Mara was only three back then. Her mother and herself, in the kitchen of their small second-floor-apartment. Not a real kitchen, the living room and their beds were located there as well, just a step from the kettle and the cooker.
It was winter. Cold daylight flooded in through the little windows on the ceiling and lingered upon the plastic high chair that served as an improvised counter. Behind it Mara's mother was standing with a bowl of dough, and one of her long red fingernails broke, that was how angrily she tried to stir flour into.
Of course, the man she spoke about was Mara´s father Rokko, who had, or so she said, left them both in a despicable way. Thinking about it, Rokko hadn't really walked out. Instead he had vanished like a rabbit in a magician's hat, and maybe Mara´s mother should have always known that this would be how it would end. As far as Mara knows, he used to be a low key magician who moved around with a circus crowd. Or he might in fact not have been that low key, after all, and that's why his magic had worked on Mara´s mother.
"One day to the other, just gone. And you know what? He didn't even say that he was going, the cunt! Just left us there and vanished into thin air. Isn't that lousy? And that's how you know, my love! That's how I knew that this wimp of a man would never have been good enough, and guess what revealed it, dear! The way he chose to leave."
This wasn't the last time that Mara´s mother was upset over a man, and whenever she would be again, she would tell Mara the same story. Maybe not in exactly these words, with the names of the culprits the accusations and traits of bad character changed, but for the child that Mara was, who never knew any of the men, they would dissolve into the same and leave only the bottom line.
She rips her eyes away from Aaron and his blood in the whirlpool tub and returns into the kitchen. This time fully on her feet, because she has made a decision. That is it! Bad enough that she ever tiptoed in her own house. From now on she won´t do it anymore! Despite her bad arthritis and regardless of the pain that it causes, because she would rather hurt than never get to feel the ground underneath her feet.
With firm hands she grabs a red wine off the wine stand - an impressive one that takes up half the wall - and as the cork pops out, it bangs, but it isn't even nearly as loud as when Aaron went. After a few generous sips straight from the bottle she gets her purse off the ground, takes her cell phone out and dials 911.
"What's your emergency?"
With the bottle still on her lips she hesitates as if she isn't sure if it is an emergency at all. Another sip of wine - the bottle is nearly half empty - before she clears her throat.
"It is my husband", she says. "I called earlier to report him missing, but... Well, I found him, he is here. And it looks like he was murdered."