Rhapsody in Blue: Part Thirteen
Author's Note: Hello again. I know that it's been an awfully long time since I last updated, and once again I blame my crazy life. I'm graduating from high school tomorrow so things have been ridiculous. I plan on posting two parts in this coming week. Most likely I will post them on the same day. The reason for this is because a week from tomorrow I will be leaving to go to France. I'm going to be out of the country for about ten days on a French trip with people from school. So I'm hoping the two parts will sufficiently tide you over until I get back in the US again. xD
Part Twelve
Part Thirteen
(Restless Heart Syndrome)
The change happened on a Thursday. It had been four days since Ariadne had spied Robert sulking at the piano. Since then she had been trying her hardest to get him to crack. She hugged him, cuddled him, and touched him more than she ever had. She was trying to melt him with love and kindness. To Ariadne’s dismay it wasn’t really working.
The change came with a package.
“This was sent to you…” One of the men who worked regularly in the business wing of the estate handed a package to Robert. Robert took the package without a second glance and dismissed the man with a small ‘thank you’. The man left the room quickly, closing the door to the office behind him.
Ariadne stood next to Robert, wondering what could have been sent. It didn’t seem to her that they had been expecting anything of the sort in the mail at all. Ari watched as Robert tipped the package over in his hands, examining every part of it.
The package was in the shape of a medium sized rectangular prism. It was covered in brown paper that was decorated with postmarks and stamps. On the other side of the package a letter was taped. The letter contained the return address. Ariadne didn’t get a good look at it, but she thought for a moment that it might have said Australia.
Robert leaned himself against the side of his desk. With a frown he pulled the letter off of the main package. The envelope didn’t come willingly, but with enough coaxing on Robert’s part, tore off quite nicely. Examining the envelope for a moment Robert rolled his eyes. Ariadne didn’t know whether to smile or frown. He was showing signs of emotion, and any emotion, no matter how simple or mundane, meant something.
The envelope was torn open and a paper came out. The paper was folded and creased neatly. Ariadne watched as Robert unfolded it and then read it silently. Robert’s eyes went back and forth over the paper. When they got to the bottom of the paper they went back up to the top and read it again. He repeated this four or five times before he sighed and placed the letter on the table.
“They found something that they missed when they cleaned out Maurice’s office…. So they sent it…. It was in his desk…” Robert ran a hand through his hair as he spoke and then brought the hand down to rub his chin.
Ariadne smiled due to the sheer fact that Robert had said something of meaning to her. Her eyes squinted for a moment in question. “Did they say what it was?” She asked softly.
Robert shook his head and sighed. With his hands still holding the package Robert searched for a seam with which to tear the paper by. He found one quickly enough and began to tear the paper from the object underneath. The paper came away quickly and what was left underneath, resting in Robert’s hands, was a book. It was Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The book looked fairly old. Its spine was worn with apparent countless readings. Even from a few feet away Ariadne could smell the book. She could tell it was old and tell that it had been greatly loved. It had the timeworn book smell.
As Robert looked at it, his face changed. His eyes shined in the light of the room and small droplets formed themselves at the corners of Robert’s eyes. His lips trembled and his hands shook under the book’s minimal weight.
Ariadne watched the man before her with curiosity. She wondered what the book meant to him.
Robert’s mouth opened and a choking sound was audible. It was as if Robert was actually choking on his emotions. His lips continued to shake as the sound turned into a soft but saddened whimper. He bent forward with the book still in his hands. The brown paper that had housed the book fell to the floor.
Hands began to touch the book, to grope the book, to feel the book. It was as if Robert didn’t believe it was actually there in his hands in that moment. He turned the volume over and over in his hands, holding, touching, feeling, loving. Again and again he rubbed the spine and felt the edges of the pages underneath his thumbs.
After a moment Robert slid to the floor. The tears in his eyes were fully making themselves known and they threatened to spill down his cheeks at any moment. Robert leaned against his desk as he sat on the floor holding the book like it was a cherished relic.
Ariadne watched with confusion. She had no clue what was going on. She didn’t know if it would be better to crouch down to be on Robert’s level, or to survey him from above. She decided quietly to stand over him for the moment.
Robert’s face contorted. His eyebrows nearly met each other above his nose and his eyes wrinkled up until they were tiny slits that barely exposed the blue irises underneath. His lips stretched back to expose his teeth, and his voice was smothered and stifled by his tears. He let out one loud sob and then closed his mouth. He swallowed once, tears streaming. He swallowed again. Another quieter sob escaped him and he clutched the book with his fingers forcefully.
It was then that he began to flip through the pages. Page after page he went past, looking and absorbing. He flipped and flipped and flipped, and then, he stopped flipping. He stopped on a page that held an illustration of the Mad Hatter at his never-ending tea party with the March Hare and the Door Mouse. Covering up half of the illustration was a photograph. The photograph was in a rich sepia tone. It held the image of a woman. The woman smiled at the camera with a longing and beautiful expression. She wore a black dress that matched the shade of the dark curls that framed her face.
It took all of Robert’s skill to pick up the photograph with his shaking hands. When the image was within his grasp he looked at it for a long moment. The moment gave way to more tears and an even more wrinkled face. He gasped loudly and threw his head back quickly as he tried to suck air into his lungs. He gasped again and again. The photograph trembled in his hands as he shook.
It was then that Ariadne decided she should step in. She got down on her knees quickly and reached for Robert. Grabbing him was slightly difficult due to his shaking, but when her hands finally caught hold of him she felt a tiny bit relieved. She moved her hands from his shoulders to his face, as if cradling his head in her hands would heal things and make him stop.
Ariadne’s holding Robert had the opposite effect than she expected. Rather than ceasing his tears, Robert’s tears grew until he was nothing more than a sobbing mess on the floor. His back shook with his emotion and his shoulders heaved under the weight of what seemed like mountains.
Unintelligible words made their way out of Robert’s mouth as he cried. Ariadne wished she could understand. She wished that she knew what was going on in Robert’s mind. She could only guess as she held him, and she was sure that none of her guesses were even remotely close to the truth of the situation.
Ariadne quietly smoothed down Robert’s hair and rubbed his bearded face with the tips of her fingers. Seeing him like that almost brought her to tears. She tried in vain to choke down her own emotion as she hugged Robert to her chest.
Robert’s sobs became more and more exasperated the longer they went on. It was like he didn’t even have the will to cry anymore as he sucked in breath after breath.
Suddenly, Robert’s lips were trembling and quiet broken words were coming out. “I-in, in the afternoons she would play piano in the music room…. I r-remember listening, for hours listening, I remember the sun shining through the windows and the music, her music… And it was so empty,” Robert paused as he spoke to sob quietly into the back of his hand, “it was so empty, so cold, so barren after she died. She was s-so beautiful and then she was gone…”
There was a deep silence after Robert’s words ceased. Ariadne inhaled the smell of Robert’s hair and watched his hands tremble while still clutching the book and the photograph. “There wasn’t anything left…. Nothing was left, nothing. S-she died and everything was sold or packed away. I, I d-didn’t think this still existed…. Oh my god…” Robert’s words were replaced with a fit of tears and more trembling. Gently, Ariadne held out her hand. Robert closed the beautiful photograph of who Ariadne perceived to be Robert’s mother into the book and then placed his hand in Ariadne’s. The book stayed clutched in his other hand.
“I didn’t think, I….I didn’t think he kept it…. Jesus…. I never thought…”
Ariadne tried to shush Robert. She pressed her lips to his ear and hissed lightly, telling him that everything would be okay.
“I thought he didn’t care, I knew he didn’t care…. He certainly didn’t care about me…. And Jesus! This book!” Robert quickly placed the book on the floor and shoved it to the side. Ariadne cringed. She had assumed that the book held great importance for Robert and his childhood. She didn’t want him to do anything rash to it. She hoped that he wouldn’t, and sat hugging and listening to him speak.
“A-after my mother died, my family was broken…. And now, my father is dead, but my father died when she did and then, he died again. I have no family, Ariadne. I have n-nothing…. I haven’t had anything for so long…” Robert’s tears began again as he lamented the loss of his known family ties.
Ariadne hushed Robert again and spoke. “Robbie,” she said, for some reason not calling Robert by his full name, it seemed gentler that way, “you have me. You have me…. And we have our baby…. We will have our baby…”
Robert sighed. “That’s just it,” he said. As he spoke his face paled. He looked sickly in the light of his office. “What if…. That turns into nothing…? What if I go on to live the life of my father…? What if I become him? Ariadne, I don’t know how to be a father. I don’t know how…. I was raised by my mother, my father, even when my mother was still alive, barely looked at me. How am I supposed to look at our child and know how to love it? How am I supposed to do that…? How, Ariadne, how?”
Quiet tears streamed down Robert’s face as he looked to Ariadne. The serious expression held Ariadne’s heart hostage. She almost couldn’t look at him like that while he was so broken. It hurt too much.
Drops of moisture were falling down Ariadne’s cheeks as well. She hadn’t realized. She hadn’t realized at all. This, surely, this had been what Robert had been so upset about. He was scared to death that he would turn into his father; that he would become empty inside.
“Robert,” Ariadne said, pulling Robert as close as humanly possible after handing him the book he had discarded, “you aren’t going to turn into your father. You have more heart, more soul, than anyone. You have a bigger heart than I’ve ever seen before. You aren’t your father, you aren’t your father. I could never ever love someone so cold as your father, I could never ever do that…. And I love, I love you. I love everything you are…. Robert, I believe in you, I believe in us…. I know that this has been bothering you, I’ve seen it slip into your core and begin to eat you from the inside out. I’ve seen you become careless, and lost, and sad, and exhausted. Robert, I want to help you. I want you back, I want your smiles, and I want your demeanor, I want you…. Please…”
Ariadne’s words seemed to settle the issue. Silence enveloped the two and they sat huddled on the floor together for a long time. Their tears slowly gave way to drying cheeks and soft eyes. After a time, Robert’s shaking ceased and he sat, still holding Ariadne’s hand in one of his, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in his other. The two leaned against each other for support. The light in the room was soft as the sun died in the sky.
An eternity seemed to pass and Robert slowly began to flip through the book in his hands again. He paused slowly on each page, examining it, experiencing each part of the book for himself. Ariadne experienced it as well. Her experience was obviously different than his. She had no prior knowledge of this particular copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She had of course read it in her childhood, but this book, this specific copy, did not hold the power over her that it did for Robert.
Robert leaned close to Ariadne. The tears on his face had dried considerably. He still looked pathetic to her though. He looked tired and troubled, but somehow at the same time he looked hopeful. For the first time in weeks he looked hopeful. He looked like he thought that his life could mean something, that he could make something of himself and accept the challenge that had been placed before him. The challenge was that he was going to be a better man than anyone in his life had given him an example of. He was going to become a better man on his own. He was accepting the challenge. Ariadne could see it in his shining eyes.
“You can have me…” Robert whispered endearingly. It was then that Ariadne knew that things could be okay. It was then that she knew deep inside that Robert, with a little help, and support, would turn out okay. Love would bring him through.
After a few more noiseless moments Robert sighed. It was the biggest sigh Ariadne had ever heard him expel. Robert then looked to Ariadne and without a frown or a smile on his face, held the book out for her to look at.
“My mother used to read it to me, when I was young…. She loved this book. It was her favorite…. She loved the story, but, she loved this copy. My father gave it to her when they had first started dating…. She was hardly ever found without it…. I thought for sure that it had been sent away when she died…. To know that he had it in his desk this whole time is…” Robert swallowed quietly and looked to his hands once while trying not to let more tears slip down from his eyes.
Ariadne nodded quietly. She smiled a sweet and understanding grin and placed a hand over Robert’s shoulder. “It’s okay, I understand…” She said. Quickly, she leaned in to place a kiss on Robert’s cheek. To Ari’s surprise, Robert returned the kiss almost immediately.
Part Fourteen