deep blue of royal porcelain or a navy blazer, but something softer. Just light enough, just bright enough to mark themselves out.
David loves them, too, and for that alone I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Maybe if my face had been punctuated by some other colour the first time we met, he wouldn’t have noticed me, wouldn’t have collided into ‘hello’ and that catchy smile, and all the romance that followed. Maybe, if I had the amber eyes I’ve always craved, I’d have ended up all alone.
I shrug, seeing them in the mirror now, and go about my familiar routine. Morning is morning, and every step is practised. The mascara shade is a light brown, harder to find than a person might think, and it complements a soft brush of Clinique’s cleverly named ‘Almost Powder’ in Neutral Fair. Understated, but just enough polish to let me feel like a well-cared-for piece of art, pleasing without being showy, which is what my mother taught me always to aim for. And mothers, as no one but mothers ever suggest, always know best.
But there’s a headache forming behind my eyes – and I can almost see it in the mirror, too, with the rest that’s visible there. A strange pulsing at the sides of my face, as if the pain has shape and can be caught in the reflection in the glass.
I blink twice, the blue orbs of my eyes disappearing and then reappearing before me. I can’t dwell on the pain in my head. It has long since become a customary feature of my days, and work starts in forty-five minutes. There’s no use dwelling on what can’t be changed.
Just keep going. And I do.
The routine concludes a few minutes later. My face is done, my hair brushed, and my teeth are the glistening off-white of Rembrandt Extra’s best efforts for a heavy coffee and tea drinker.
My feet, seemingly registering all this even ahead of my brain, are already moving me out of our teal-tiled bathroom towards the kitchen.
Like they’ve lives of their own.
By disposition, I’m not a morning eater. A cup of tea, I’ve always thought, is a perfectly complete meal before midday. Add milk and it’s two courses, and entirely satisfying. Recently, though, David has been trying to change my habits of a lifetime.
Because it’s good for you, Amber. It’s healthier. Trust me, you’ll grow to like it.
Sweetest of men, David, though on this front, at least, disastrously wrong.
A tall glass of the monstrosity he calls a ‘smoothie’ has been left on our kitchen’s Formica countertop. It’s his latest effort, fitted nicely into the current trends of our health-conscious West-Coast culture. Its shade is something close to the purple of a badly overripe plum, and he’s probably got plum in there, the ass, along with banana, and berries, and spinach and Christ in heaven knows what else. ‘The flavours mix together so well, you don’t even know what you’re drinking.’ The fact that this is a lie has never stopped him from saying it. The drinks taste exactly like what they are. Reality can’t be masked, not that well. What’s in the mix always makes itself known.
I take a single sip. It’s enough. I know David wants me to take at least two, to give it the honest college try, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Won’t. It’s simply beyond my strength to stomach the stuff, so the rest of the smoothie is down the drain in a colourful swirl, and I’m comforted by the fact that blended breakfasts flow out of existence so cleanly. If David were to cook me, say, eggs (something I loathe with an almost equal fervour to smoothies), the uneaten remains would be harder to conceal. We don’t have a disposal in the sink – the landlord suggests installing one would raise our rent $75 per month, which is simply shit – and the trash can would be obvious. Maybe I’d have to dig a hole out in the garden in which to conceal the evidence, but it seems like 365 days of uneaten eggs would get noticed some time before day 366.
I rinse out the glass and set it in the rack. There’s a note on the counter, next to a ring of condensation. ‘Morning, hon. Enjoy, and have a good one. Love you, -D.’ The blue ink of the ballpoint pen has met the moisture where the glass had stood, the lower curve of the ‘D’ blurring like a watercolour.
The note warms me. I’ve never particularly cared for ‘hon’ as a term of endearment, but from David’s lips, or his pen, the word is a little embrace. I’m smiling without really noticing the change in my face that produces it, and I’m thankful, too, because I have someone who can have this effect on me – who can make my cheeks bend and turn as if he were physically connected to the muscles beneath my skin, provoking my body to move in its most intimate of gestures.
Even if he does make smoothies.
There’s coffee left in the carafe – David makes a fresh pot every morning and always leaves me some – and I pour out half a cup to gulp down before I head for the door. Not tea, but it’ll do. Sadie’s already been walked and fed and is lolling with typical canine disinterest in the corner near the fridge.
‘Bye, Sades,’ I say, my first vocalised words of the morning. I’m nibbling a nail as I say them and the words come out misformed, but my girl knows her name. No children in our little family, though we’ve been casually trying for the past year at least, and Sadie does her best to fill that void. We’re no longer spring chickens, David and I – though I won’t hit forty for another two years, so I refuse yet to be labelled middle aged – but it’s starting to feel like our efforts in this area just aren’t going to lead anywhere. I suspect, sometimes, that Sadie may be as close to a child as I’m ever going to get, though in dog years she could easily be my mother.
She acknowledges my presence with a slightly lifted head and a huff, then lets her nose flop back to the ground. Her pink tongue is askew in her teeth. Her morning walk with David is enough to last her until I get home, and I’m certain she plans to nap for the bulk of the interim. The laziest dog in creation, and I love her.
A few moments later, I’m outside. The front door to our apartment building closes with a click, and I take in a deep breath of the morning air. The sun is already well over the hills, and the flowers that line the sidewalk are glowing. Gardenias fill my nostrils – a heavy, tactile scent, perfume and honey colliding at the back of my throat. A water feature chortles gently in the corner of the lot.
The day is beautiful. The sort of day we sometimes wonder if we’ll ever see, and usually don’t appreciate when we do. I try to soak it all in. Absorb it.
It’s almost enough to make me forget the throbbing that pulses at the side of my face, and the fire that threatens to burn away the edges of my vision.
I’m at the bookshop by 8.25 a.m., a full five minutes ahead of schedule. There was little traffic between Windsor, the quirkily British-sounding, northern California suburb town where David and I have set down our roots, and Santa Rosa, and I’ve got a heavy foot when there’s not a mass of stop-and-go cars before me. It’s an all too frequent occurrence on this tenmile stretch of Highway 101. My little ‘put-put’, as David calls it, might only have 104 horsepower beneath its hood, but I like to put every last one of them to work. Nothing says Modern Woman of Determination like a floored car maxing out its power at 77 miles per hour and getting passed by delivery vans and teens on mopeds.
The shop is already starting to bustle with the customary movements of the morning. A few customers are perusing
