She counted silently along, measuring her breaths deliberately as she always did, watching them creep up and over the lip of the slender glass flute one or two or three at a time. At first they had come up foaming, all the individual bubbles pressed close together. Did that count as one or as ten? Thirteen, she thought. It counted as thirteen bubbles.
Sundays meant champagne brunch. He had suggested the idea when they first married, and it seemed to her a very romantic tradition. Always their most beloved habit, a leisurely morning into afternoon with fresh fruit, thick bacon, hot biscuits and their bubbles. The bubbles in their glasses set off the shine in their eyes as they talked for hours and the effervescent thrill of their hearts never waned even across all the years. Thirteen years since the Sunday they exchanged vows and thirteen Sundays since their last champagne brunch and she was carrying their tradition alone now. One bubble chased by thirteen bubbles. Just her alone. Champagne for one in an empty kitchen in a house with too-high ceilings. A house set back from the road.
The house that had once been home was an elegant creature designed in love, proxy for the children they never had.This place was born of light and dreams. Each room was carved and shaped with divine intention as though it were the most precious creation in the world. And weren’t they each, once? No visitors came by anymore to admire the vaulted ceilings and cheeky carvings in the molding, the velvet throw pillows on ivory satin settees. A white house to fill with color, but what did all those rooms look like to the staff that stayed on? Was the velvet faded? Did the colors truly vanish when he left, or had her eyes simply lost interest in perceiving violets and cobalts? It was hard to say.
Now another bubble, then three breaths later came two more. They were quiet ones. The first rush of foam had been audible in their silent home. Her sharp chin dented the soft flesh stretched across a palm that had been fuller thirteen Sundays ago. Stillness was a matter of course now. A new habit. A religion. The first pour of champagne was like a golden roar, her only movement the act of tipping the bottle and setting it down on the table again. Her chin would return to the thinning palm and nothing more could be drawn from her except the counting and the movement of her eyes over each bubble as the roar hushed into a whisper, then into a sparse and delicate popping. As though any sense or solace could be found in the counting and careful analysis of champagne bubbles trapped behind glass until they weren’t anymore.
Every half hour the fizz would cease almost entirely and her cold left hand grasped the stem of the flute. Chin remained on hand, bone upon bone, and the act of drinking served only to dispose of enough champagne that the glass could be refilled and the counting could begin again. The wine had no flavor, or if it did she was unaware. She was entirely focused on counting.
Twenty-one bubbles strung up one side of the flute. Sluggish strands of seven or fourteen made less of a spectacle. This strand of twenty-one was bold. It was only larger bubbles, not making itself small as it neared the open air. It wanted to pierce the hushed murmuring of the foam, through the white noise and into heaven. She could have climbed those twenty-one pearls straight up, up, up to where he was waiting. For a moment she became lightheaded and thought it was possible to make that celestial ascension. Her face lifted slightly from the palm, which drew near her heart. The heart below the palm quavered and shook, having forgotten how to beat.
Two bubbles breached the surface and vanished.
Nineteen remained.
Not enough to reach heaven.
Again. Empty, pour, roar, fizz, repeat. Champagne brunch sunlight stretched aching fingers across the cold empty kitchen table and into the glass. One ray through the flute and ten around it. Two in her eyes. She wouldn’t squint, wouldn’t blink. Once he had loved the way sunlight played in their glassware. His smile would tilt, a small and slightly crooked thing, all thin lips and guileless fascination as he moved the flute this way and that and exclaimed over the sparkle. She looked for him in the glow, in the way each large bubble took on a sheen, in the way each small bubble became a speck of glitter. Her eyelashes held a prism and she made a mental note that a tear was no more a pearl transport to heaven than the rising bubbles. Whether liquid held by air or air held by liquid, all she could do was count them.
This thirteenth Sunday, in the fourth glass, one bubble sat in such a way as to hold her breath outside her chest. It sat heavy at the bottom of the flute, in the little well that was so hard to reach with a sponge. A golden pocket inside the golden drink. It was approximately the size of thirteen average bubbles, but would not rise or break. Her mechanical practice disrupted, she shook the glass. Champagne slopped, tepid and half flat, across her slender wrist and the loose skin that hung from her forearm. The bubble would not move. It was no air pocket, but a marble of something otherworldly that tap-tap-tapped maddeningly at the locked door in her mind where she held safe the most secret wonders of his place in her life. It was an itching sensation that sounded like his breath, deep and even in the nights. Steady and maddening. Unfair. Beloved. Cruel.
The flute was released from gaunt, slack fingers and allowed to fall to one side, a waterfall of gold and decaying fizz trickling from the oilclothed table onto the black and white tile of the kitchen floor. The bubble stayed within the well, still gold, a much richer gold than the champagne itself. No sound came from the upset flute, gone as quiet as their home. The impossible little sphere could not coexist with the fizz, held no place in the golden roar of their champagne brunches. The locked door in her hind-mind creaked and rattled, and she felt herself moaning loudly at the disruption, though in actuality her mouth remained still and cool as carved marble. It was wrong. There was no room for mystery or mischief in her glass after thirteen Sundays after thirteen years.
No movement would convince the stubborn golden bubble to rise and be counted. Inversion of the flute failed to budge it. Her fingers, slender and lengthy though they were, could barely brush it. Her mind, through the thick gauze in which it had been carefully wrapped, howled. It grew more desperate by the moment to reclaim the computable rhythm of the beloved Sunday ritual. The shining blister did not hold sympathy for her anguish and simply existed, incontrovertibly continuing to be.
She thought her insides would split, and maybe she was indeed screaming outside her head as well as in. The bubble sat mercilessly in the glass. It struck her as wrong, as not-supposed-to-be. No other recourse, she stood with the flute in hand and made her way to the kitchen sink. She slipped on the wine coating the tile, and thought surely she fell to the floor, thin skin stretched to the breaking point over vulnerable temples, frail body still and folded and unbreathing. Her heart stopped. He called to her from behind the door in her mind. The lock released and she could very nearly feel his lips on her ear, calling her to come to him. To join him. Surely this had all happened in a split second. The slip, the fall, the voice of her beloved. She had imagined her own death so many times. Imagined seeing his sweet eyes again.
But no, she was on her feet after all. Floating across the kitchen as if in a dream state, Her hands and body moved slowly and with intention, even as her mind wailed and rioted against the disruption to the sacred enumeration. To the eye of the house cleaner or gardener, she would appear as poised as ever, if somewhat more vacant than usual about the eyes. Upon reaching the impeccably tasteful farmhouse porcelain, her gaze caught upon a branch gently pressed against the window pane above the imported Italian faucet. The cherry tree hadn’t been pruned since the week before he left her alone in this house. It had been bare, skeletal, the week of his funeral and was just beginning to bloom, buds of pink potential a mockery invading her line of sight.
He’d always loved vampire novels and teased her gently each time she counted buds or bubbles or boats in the bay. Thirteen buds caressed the window. Zero caresses had touched her face, her hands, her body since he’d gone. Zero. A non-number, and therefore not real. Cherry blossoms were real. Champagne bubbles were real. The undeniable ball of rich gold in the well in the bottom of the glass still gently caged in her rawboned left hand was real. Her eyes shifted down, body unmoving. The bubble. The unacceptable mystery. The punishing fixation.
An impotent whining sound escaped her throat, scraping the long-unused tissue on its way. It would have been painful, if she’d noticed. If she still inhabited her corporeal frame. If she weren’t so far beyond the physical realm, deep in a rabbit’s hole of unreality, numb from the core of her fragile self, held together by counting and routine and numbers and counting and counting. The glass fell from her hand and fell into the capacious sink.
She had picked out this sink three years ago, apologizing to him about the expense even as she batted eyes that put puppy dogs to shame. He laughed that it was fortunate she’d married rich. He laughed that he would buy her one hundred sinks if it would make her happy. He laughed constantly, filling the house with the warmth and rich texture of his voice. This was her dream sink. A sink built for extravagant loads of dishes, all dirtied by dinner parties, high teas, and a lifetime of champagne brunches.
Time slowed to an eternity as the flute slipped from her frail fingers and descended, burst, broke into countless pieces. She could have lived another lifetime in the span of that moment. It was a beautiful explosion.
The light sparkled brilliantly through the glass as it became more and more and more prisms. Impossible to calculate. Spectacularly loud in the empty, echoing room.
Silence descended once more upon the light and airy kitchen with the too-tall ceilings in the house set far back from the road. A muffled silence, more like a shroud than a library. In absolute stillness, her eyes remained fixed on the sparkling pieces of broken glass within the sink. Nestled with an offensive casualness amongst the shards, in the center of the fine needle mess, the golden bubble continued to exist. It beamed warmly in the coldly cheerful sunlight. Serene and eternal. Perfectly at home in the mausoleum that had once been his gift to her. Her dream house.
Every breath in this empty house had been metered, subconsciously counted and measured and tallied for months. The intake and expulsion of air from weary lungs became uneven and soft as she was drawn into the bubble-glow. It was at that moment that she gave everything up. She gave up the veneer of numbness barely masking a feral, writhing pain. She gave up heartache and despair. She gave up cold, sterile loneliness. She gave up counting. She stopped counting. She quit counting. There was only one of her. One of the golden ball. One million glass shards. It didn’t matter now, because she no longer belonged to the finite world of counted objects and numbered experiences. Her days would never be numbered again. A calmness radiated from the beautiful orb of glowing wrongness, suddenly righted by the shift of her perspective. She extended one thin finger and slowly, gently, stroked the bubble.
It stroked her back.
There was no other way to describe the sensation. The familiar caresses of an age barely remembered washed over her, as real as they’d ever been when he’d been alive. His gentle laugh, always so soft, resonated in her ears. She understood these sensations to be an invitation. The glowing ball of pure love had been waiting for her, patiently and kindly. It was here to rescue her. To guide her along the path of light and into his life after life. They never did like to be apart for long, and she was overdue to join him.
A woman going into the light is the same as a salt block dropping itself into the ocean. She dissolved and was absorbed into the wholeness as she went. The golden bubble thinned and spread, sliding smoothly up her fingers, over her hands and wrist. A strong lifting sensation washed over her, and she offered no resistance as the light pulled her up and up. She ascended on a string of ethereal bubbles, as she’d always known would be her eventual fate. Tens of thousands of tears and champagne pearls helped her peacefully along her way, a parade of all the friends she’d ever counted.
Heaven had no need for data. She melted into the vast mosaic of souls, the golden universal harmony. Eternal champagne brunches and love and never again the lonely acoustic of haggard breathing in an empty house. Only love and light forever. She could rest well now, all the loves of all her lives a part of her and she a part of them. Countless bubbles in a golden glass.
Friday is writing creepy bummers. 
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