June in Athens is hot. Not the kind of hot that the sweat dribbles down your forehead to the tip of your nose either. The hot where your entire face is drenched and shimmering against the sun, your shirt sticks to your body and you feel that you might pass out if you spend another minute in the heat.
Granted, every summer day in Georgia isn’t this miserable, but most are and today was no exception. I’d gone inside three times already to gulp down a full glass of lemonade. Each time Drake would meet me at the door, his tail wagging at high speed, and follow me into the kitchen. I stood there wiping the sweat from my forehead with my t-shirt. Drake stared up at me, his ears perked and his head cocked to one side as if to say, “I want to go outside and play too.” I sat down Indian style on the kitchen floor, level with his panting mouth and scratched his ears. “I’m sorry buddy, it’s just too stinking hot outside today” knowing full well he had no idea what I was saying.
I found myself talking to my Golden Retriever more often these days. It’s been almost six months that Robert has been gone, but I still can’t get used to living alone. For months after the accident I didn’t touch anything in the house. His coat still hung on the hook next to back door; his toothbrush was still in the drawer by the sink. My mother had told me to pack everything up. She said to take it to the Salvation Army or give it to someone. That was closure, how we dealt with losing someone. I couldn’t do it, not entirely anyway. After about a month I did pack away what was lying around the house. His coat, shoes, the book lying on the bedside table, still open to page 126. It was Nocturne, something about the Cold War and a conspiracy theory, he had told me.
I tried to put away everything, but I left reminders here and there, most hidden from any guests. In my own way, that’s how I held on to him. I remember the day I took the last box up to the attic. It was filled with baseball cards he had collected as a boy. He said one day when we had a son, he’d give them to him. I put the box on the floor and stood there. Until that point I hadn’t truly faced the fact that he was gone. Maybe it was the shock wearing off, I don’t know, but as I stared out the attic window to the driveway below it hit me.
My husband was dead.
My legs may have well crumbled beneath me. I dropped to the floor and laid my chest across the box, my arms beneath my face. I cried. Harder than I did the day the Sheriff’s department called to tell me about the accident, harder than at the funeral and all the days since then. I cried for him, for us, for everything that we’d never have. Every inch of my body trembled. I had never felt so alone and empty.
I lay there for almost an hour. When I finally rose to my feet, my eyes were puffy and sore, dark strands of hair matted against my wet face. I took a deep breath and made a promise to myself that I’d try and put my life back together.
Months later, I went back to the gallery for the first time. My assistant Carol had been handling things since I’d been away. I took a few pieces that I’d finished before the accident but my heart wasn’t in it. I regretted the long hours I spent in the studio above the garage. I’d lock myself away for hours painting. Robert would come up every now and then to check on me. I’d be covered in oil paint, and he’d laugh. That child like giggle that always made me smile, even if he was laughing at me.
The gallery had only been open for six months but at that point I didn’t care if it closed. Despite my attic promise, I felt like a lost child. I wanted to go back to Chicago, back to my mother and pretend life in Athens never existed. Carol brought me back to reality.
“Sydney, the art fair is coming up in a few weeks, are we going to take any pieces over?”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. It’ll give the gallery some recognition.” I said half-heartedly.
Carol looked at me as though she wanted to ask a thousand things and that was all that came out. She had always reminded me of my Aunt Margaret. She had the same short dark hair, speckled with gray. Her wire-rimmed glasses always slipped to the end of her nose. She never looked at you through them, as if they were only an accent piece to her face. I’d met her while she was still working at the library. She always complained about them not giving her enough time off. When I mentioned I was opening a gallery downtown, she seemed like the right person to help me out.
“Hon, are you sure you’re ready to come back here?” She questioned me.
“I have a business, I have to move on Carol.”
“That sounds like a comment your mother would make. You move on when you’re ready Sydney, and if you aren’t please tell me, you know I can hold the fort down here until you want to come back.” She said, looking at me with concern in her eyes.
“Thank you, but I have to get out of the house. I’m trying to put my life back together.”
I had tried. I bought Drake the same week I had the courage to pack up my dead husband. I needed a companion, even if his only source of communication was to lick my face. He also gave me some security. Living alone took some getting used to.
The gallery had been slow to start off but Athens is a city so rich in creativity and vision that an art gallery did well downtown. It was always filled with a handful of curious window shoppers or tourists. Carol was a magnificent sales woman; she could sell one of my paintings to a blind man without blinking an eye.
It never quite left me though. The emptiness was always there, poking me in the side as if to remind me that now, all I had was a business. My social life had slowly deteriorated. Most of the couples that Robert and I were friends with seemed to extend their reach just a bit. The men didn’t have Robert to talk sports and politics with and the women feared that if they talked about their upcoming wedding anniversary or the fact that they were trying to have kids, I’d break down sobbing right then and there.
I traced figure eights with my finger on the unfinished cotton canvas I was standing in front of.
“I have to go run some errands, I’ll be back in a couple hours,” I lied.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and waved at Carol as I passed through the open front door.
I made my way down Clayton Street past the bars, restaurants and assorted galleries and boutiques that lined the heart of Athens. It was unseasonably warm that day, a relief from the suffocating heat that had plagued us for the past week. I thought about spending the day wandering the art museum checking out their newest exhibits. Then I decided against it and turned into a small coffee shop that had caught my eye at the last second. I usually went to one across town and had never been in here before.
