Softly Through The Shadow Of The Evening Sun, Stealing Past The Windows Of The Blissfully Dead

It’s the crushing quiet of the bedroom you notice first. It’s the unmistakable stillness of a world asleep and its inhabitants hushed by the nighttime environs as if the night were a mother putting her child to bed. You look all around you and you wonder how many times you’ve laid in the same bed, next to the same man, with the same negligee on and never once questioned how you belonged here. But now, in the dimly lit strangeness of a room you have called home inside your home, you notice just how much you don’t know about your surroundings.

You wonder about the orange walls and you think to yourself, “Orange? Really? I picked out that color?” and then you remember growing up and telling your mother that when you had your own place you were going to paint all the walls orange. Well, you never painted all the walls in your home orange but you did paint your bedroom that particular shade of independence, figuring that huge crowds would not be by to peruse your individualistic tastes in décor. Your eyes then settle upon the large antique vanity mirror in the southeast corner. Now there’s something you could be proud of displaying in front of others. It’s a family heirloom, but not just any family heirloom. It’s the antique vanity mirror that has been passed from Holins mother to Hollins daughter for eleven generations. Why, this mirror has survived longer than some countries. To you it just looks like all ivory and steel, even though you know it’s plain old oak and glass. You start imagining the myriad of Holins women who have gazed into its magic portal seeing what the future holds. You start questioning if they ever tried to predict what their own daughters would see reflected back in the mirror. You start questioning if they ever tried to predict what their granddaughters, great granddaughters, &c… would see peering back at them in their mirror. You wonder if they ever saw you sitting at the vanity one day, fixing your chestnut brown hair, your oceanic blue-green eyes.

And you stifle a tear to realize you may be the last Holins woman ever to see into its depths.

By the closet you hear a rustling, a kafuffle, inside the large walk-in closet you had the architect design for you especially. Is that Mary or Louie? Have the cats burrowed their way again into their cavernous castle amid the frippery of a girl not quite into her mid-twenties? You start to roll away from the beanpole of a man who is sleeping next to you, realizing that you could rearrange the furniture and he would still slumber on through. The man is dedicated to his rest, you say to yourself, while you approach the special mini-Dutch doors that mark the entrance to the closet. You know it’s sheer vanity to have a closet that is grander than some rooms in your midsize abode, but, again, it is one of those things you’ve always wished for yourself growing up.

You sidle through the living rainbow, the panorama of dresses and skirts and blouses and camisoles line the racks and racks of clothes contained within the confines of these four walls. You figure as long as you are inside you might as well get tomorrow’s outfit prepared. You have the Whites at 8 and the Deacons at 10. You don’t know exactly how to dress for such an early appointment, especially with clients you’ve never met before, but you stumble through. You choose a top your mother used to wear, all cream-colored silk, and a no-nonsense black skirt. Yeah, tomorrow you shall look the part of an adult, but inside you will still be little ‘ole Breanne, who can’t wait to come home to her schlubby hubby.

You tiptoe back to your King size bed, decked out all in browns and blues and purples of the sheets and covers you picked out yourself. You told yourself that you were doing to humor Greg, picking out these darker “manly” colors. The real truth is that all the dark hues lend a gravitas to the room that immediately draw you in the instant you step into the room. The brightness of the walls, the gigantic mirror, and the hand-carved furniture cannot compete with the brooding bed in which your husband now lays.

As you settle back into the sheets with the silence of the late hour and the early morning appointments on your mind you kiss your Greg good-night and good-bye. The lucky bastard doesn’t have to get up until the late afternoon. And, as much as you hate the man laid out in plaid boxers and no shirt, you love the life you lead with him. You love the feel of him beneath the covers on this nippy night. You love the rush of feelings he causes to swell within you. You love everything about everything.

The last thing on your mind as you finally succumb to your drowsiness is how much you love this room.

Breanne