It rained the day she knocked on his door

It rained the day she knocked on his door. A slow, soft summer rain. She wore red rubber boots and a cotton dress. Her hair hung in wet strands around her face. Eight days ago they had made love. He had called a few times since but she hadn’t answered. And now she stood in the rain outside his door. The sunbeams in her green eyes shot straight into his heart.

“Do you want to take a walk?” She twisted her hair around her fingers as she spoke.

When he hesitated, she smiled, showed her crooked left canine tooth.

“Or not?” She shrugged her shoulders and took a couple of steps away from him, turned and started to walk down the sidewalk. Her dark hair was wavy and spilled down her back. Even though she walked in big boots she moved gracefully. He rushed in, grabbed his keys and put his feet in his sneakers, then he headed after her.

At the corner he caught up to her. She didn’t acknowledge him but he could see how a quick smile spread across her face. They walked quietly. The rain, now more a mist in the air made all the colors vibrant. The flowers sparkled in red, yellow and blue. The grass was crayon green. Her skin golden, he could almost recall the smell of her, the taste of her.

“I like the rain,” she said and stopped next to him. “You know how people think that sunny weather is the same thing as beautiful weather. But isn’t it much more beautiful now?”

He nodded and reached for her hand. She didn’t pull it back but she didn’t squeeze his hand either.

“I called.”

“I know,” she said but didn’t look at him.

“Did I do something? Say something?”

She shook her head.

“No.” She looked down at the ground, moved her red rubber boots back and forth a few times. Nudged his foot.  Nudged  it again.  

Her dark hair was covered in a lattice of miniature drops. Tiny, transparent pearls.

“I needed to recuperate.”

“Recuperate?” He couldn’t help but chuckle, a very serious word in his opinion. She lifted her head, anger flared up for a second in her eyes and she pulled her hand out of his.

“Yes, recuperate.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“From what?” Clearly he was missing something here.

She looked down at the ground again, moved her rubber boots but didn’t nudge his foot this time.

“I was thinking how strange it is that we met. How strange it is that you seem to know me so well. How strange it is that I can’t remember how my life was before I met you. And when we…” She lifted her head again and met his eyes. “ When we made love…” She stopped, bit down on her lip and looked to the side. An older man came walking on the sidewalk with his black Labrador. She was quiet until the man had passed and walked around the corner.  “You know he died, right?”

He did know, everybody knew that her husband had died. Withered away from cancer a few years ago.

“I know and I am sorry.”

She started to walk again and he followed, when they came to the corner she stopped under the big oak tree. Heavy drops came down from the branches. Dropped on his head, on her face. She tilted her head backwards and opened her mouth. Caught a drop and swallowed.

“I had to be so strong,” she said with her head still tiled backwards, “I had to take care of him and when he died I broke. Into thousands of pieces. I couldn’t even get up in the morning. I was so tired. I slept. For weeks that was the only thing I did. And then I cried.”

He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t know where. She looked vulnerable, her neck exposed.  She rubbed her face and tilted her head forward again.

“But life in itself seems to have a strange power. One day you notice something small. How a bee hovers over a flower or how the water feels against your skin in the shower.  A reminder of…” She started to walk again.

“A reminder of what?”

“That everything is beautiful. And when you realize that you explode inside.”

The sun started to break through the clouds, the ground gave off steam and she grabbed her hair with both hands and twisted it to squeeze out the water.

“That realization makes you feel alive and when you feel alive you  start to heal. But some things are harder to heal. “

She turned her face towards the sun. Stood still with her eyes closed. Her eyelids shuddered and he thought she would cry. But she didn’t.

“Do you want to go and get an ice cream?”

“I didn’t bring any money,” he said and felt like a fool. “I can go and get some if you want or…,”he hesitated. “I have ice cream at home.”

“Ok,” she said and turned on the spot.

 

She left her rubber boots outside his door and made wet footprints on his floor. She moved slowly around in his apartment as he opened the freezer and scooped ice cream into two bowls. He had invited her several times but she had never accepted the invitation before.  She got up on her tippy toes and looked at the photos he had arranged all over a wall.

“Did you take all these?”

“Yes, top left is the first one I ever developed myself and the bottom right is the last one.”

She bent down and looked at the picture at the bottom right.

“That is me!” she said surprised and turned to look at him.

“Yeah, when we went to the beach that day in May.”

She nodded and smiled.

Every time he had run by her house in March and April he had seen her digging in the dirt or carrying heavy bags of manure or peat moss. One day he stopped by her fence and asked if she needed help. She had smiled brightly, showed her crooked left canine tooth and said “yes”. When April turned into May and her garden was finally done he had asked her out. First for dinner, she said no. Then to a movie, she said no. Then for coffee, she said no. His friends told him to go after someone else. A widow had too much baggage. His mother had said he should be careful.  He kept asking and eventually she had said she wanted to go to the beach and they had gone. It was a windy day and the ocean was not much more than fifty degrees. They had a great day and came home with windburns and sand everywhere.  After that day they had gone to every forest or beach within two hours of driving. She never spoke of her dead husband and he never asked. And then they had made love. A hot humid night in June. 

She sat down on his couch, pulled her legs up under her dress and balanced the ice cream bowl on top of her knees.

“After we made love I felt like I was an inch away from falling in love with you. It scared me to death.”

She blushed suddenly and looked down into her ice cream.

“Scared me to death. What a crude choice of words,” she said quietly, her cheeks flushed.

He took a spoonful of the ice cream; let it melt slowly on his tongue. Mulled over her words.

“Why did it scare you?”

She looked out the window, chopped her ice cream into small pieces.

“Because love means attachment and when you are attached…” Her voice faded and she took some ice cream and looked at him. “I guess this is the last thing that needs to heal. Me daring to feel attached again.”

He looked away from her face, looked out the window and tried hard not to think of this as a rejection.  The clouds had grown thicker and darker again, it would soon start to rain.

“So,” he said slowly, “what do you want to do?”

She sat quietly, it started to rain, light at first then heavier. They surely needed the rain; it had been a dry and hot June. He felt something nudging his thigh, he looked down. Her foot had moved close to his leg and she was gently poking him with her toes. 

“Can we go slow?” Her voice gentle and soft. “So I have time to heal as we go along?”

His heart did a summersault. She didn’t reject him. She didn’t reject him! He started to smile.

“Yes, of course! As slow as you want.”

It rained the day she knocked on his door. A slow, soft summer rain. She wore red rubber boots and a cotton dress. Her hair hung in wet strands around her face. When she left the moon hung heavy in the clear sky.