In Which Thursday Must Become Friday

At eighty-six, Clara remained persuaded that she could carry laundry baskets larger than herself.

“I possess the strength of ten men,” I reminded her.

“Then it is remarkable that not one of you thought to fetch the washing.”

I relieved her of the basket. She retained a pillowcase, unwilling to surrender the undertaking altogether.

Age had furnished my wife with silver hair and firm opinions regarding the conduct of birds. It had done remarkably little to diminish her inclination to meddle with anything she considered capable of improvement.

I had imagined retirement might quiet her.

Within a month, she had enrolled in pottery lessons and produced an object of such uncertain purpose and alarming proportions that I placed it in the entrance hall, where it proved effective at discouraging missionaries. I bought flowers for it every Thursday.

She took up knitting as well, though she maintained that counting stitches was considerably more tiresome than repairing an escapement. I held the wool, retrieved fallen needles, and wore everything she made me with solemnity. One sweater emerged with sleeves of such extravagant length that my hands disappeared within them. When she offered to unravel it, I refused.

At sixty, she took to gardening with reckless determination and declared war upon the rabbits. I soon learned which finger she reserved for creatures caught among her roses, though I had always been assured that respectable ladies possessed no knowledge of such gestures.

At seventy, she began making marmalade in quantities sufficient to provision a siege.

At eighty-six, she still made the same gesture at anything that dared approach her roses.

There had been so many Claras.

Clara at thirty-three, dancing through the kitchen in stockings worn through at the heels. Clara at forty-six, painting the conservatory door a most objectionable shade of yellow and silencing every protest I made with a kiss. Clara at sixty, smiling bravely through her retirement supper, only to weep against my chest after placing the shop keys into the hands of her apprentice.

I had loved each of them, scarcely noticing one becoming the next.

Around us the years filled the house with the life we had made together. From time to time, that life included children who required a home for a season, and Clara loved each of them with the same tenderness she applied to everything else.

Sometimes, watching her knit some impossibly small garment for the grandchild of a woman whose clock she had repaired thirty years before, I found myself thinking of the children we had never had. I sometimes imagined a little girl or boy with her dimple and my deplorable disposition.

Once, Clara caught me staring.

“I should have liked that too,” she said.

“I am sorry.”

She set aside her knitting and held out her hand.

“Come here.”

I knelt beside her, and she took my face between her palms.

“I may regret that we had no children without regretting the life I chose.”

I closed my eyes against her hand.

“Besides,” she added, quite unnecessarily, “you have required a great deal of raising.”

Loving her had become a collection of carefully learned habits.

I knew precisely how loosely she liked the blankets tucked about her feet. I held the umbrella while she complained that rain had grown wetter with age. I fetched her spectacles from beneath cushions, from inside the pantry, and once from a saucepan.

There were mornings when she woke tired, and on those mornings I despised every useless, deathless inch of myself. On those mornings, I helped her dress, warmed her hands between mine, and took care that my grief did not become another burden for her to carry.

She remained however, quite capable of undoing me herself.

One evening, as I unfastened the clasp of her necklace, she watched me in the dressing-table mirror. It reflected her, the room behind us, and a necklace apparently removing itself.

“Still handsome,” she observed.

“You cannot see me.”

“Sixty years, Severin. I scarcely require a mirror.”

Her hand reached backwards and demonstrated. I nearly dropped the necklace. Worse still, I felt the wholly undignified warmth of a blush rise to my face.

“Clara.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “Everything appears to remain where I left it.”

I bent and kissed the side of her neck. She tilted her head to accommodate me, and that familiar invitation was sufficient to make a disgrace of what remained of my composure.

My mouth travelled to her shoulder, where the loosened collar of her nightdress revealed skin grown softer and finely lined with the years. I had kissed that same shoulder through half a century of summers and winters, had watched time leave its gentle marks upon it, and still I found reasons to linger.

She turned towards me and caught hold of my shirt.

“Are you going to kiss me properly?”

“I had intended to.”

“You were making rather a study of it.”

So I kissed her.

There was no urgency in it now. We had long since ceased to mistake haste for passion. Clara rested one hand against my cheek, and I kept mine at her waist while she kissed me.

I paused with my forehead against hers, attempting to collect myself.

“Surely you are not tired already?”

“Cruel woman.”

“Lazy vampire.”

Later, she slept against my shoulder while I lay awake considering roses, then violets, then whether the florist might have something she had never seen before. By morning, I knew, I should make a fool of myself again.

As winter closed about, our evenings became smaller and dearer.

Clara favoured the settee beside the fire, where she might rest against me while I read aloud. The cat, who had appeared at the kitchen door some years earlier and thereafter conducted himself as though the house had always belonged to him, had laid claim to her slippers, and her knitting waited neglected in its basket.

One Thursday, she interrupted me halfway through a sentence.

“You are watching me again.”

“I am admiring my wife.”

“At my age?”

She spoke lightly, but there was a small uncertainty beneath the jest.

I closed the book.

“Yes,” I said. “At precisely your age.”

Her fingers found my cuff, rubbing the crooked stitches still preserved inside it.

“You dreadful sentimentalist.”

“I had managed several centuries without becoming one.”

“You were living in the dark.”

She settled nearer, and I lifted my arm to receive her.

After a little while, she asked, “Do you remember the flowers you brought to our first dinner?”

“They required a chair of their own.”

“They were lovely.”

“You laughed at me.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “You looked so pleased to see me.”

I pressed my mouth to her hair.

“I was.”

Her fingers tightened around mine.

The fire settled lower in the grate. I read another page before noticing that she had fallen asleep.

For a long while, I listened to the clock she had mended all those years ago, marking the seconds with ticks.

When her hand no longer answered mine, I closed the book and drew the blanket more carefully about her feet.

The clock struck midnight.

Beyond the curtains, Thursday passed into Friday.

I remained beside her.