The Ceiling

Cassidy Forrest

The Ceiling

Silently she chopped up the vegetables they had bought together at that same supermarket. Her face reflected towards him the same set of emotions she had looked through the ripe and colorful pile of bell peppers with. The emotions that questioned stamina and follow-through, the look that sought out that special-certain magnitude in said pepper and said husband. This was not the first time he directly felt like a vegetable because of her; she had a way of bringing him down to the likeness of a plant without much effort.

The night before, as always, they had both stayed awake on their pre-selected sides of the bed. She read and pursed her lips, eyes focused on the page as if she were reading words that would spell out the rest of her life. He could watch her for hours, not that he did. He could watch her for hours in the sense that she would not notice his gaze, an unloving, questioning gaze that watched her turn the pages over.

Once upon a time, before things had broken and pieced off over the years, romance had danced ramped through this bedroom. The musky smell of young love floated through the house and out into the open air as the two of them ate breakfasts in bed and sat hand in hand on the porch swing, watching the world that seemed to broaden outside of their own.

But as with anything else, time took its toll on the two of them, and the goodbye morning kisses became only the goodnight kisses, and soon there were no kisses at all. Now the romance was only painted on the layer of their lives that went to parties and had dinner dates with friends that contained conversation about politics, gossip, and expensive items for the home.

To her, he still existed in some sort of romantic light, but it was mainly as part of a romantic setting. He fulfilled a young fantasy dating back to the days of her innocence, when the dreams of the perfect home and family formed on her eyelids as she fell asleep: her desire for the perfect house and children; a family that effortlessly could be put together and developed; one where she sat rocking in a chair, reading and smiling to her young children, and pouring hot tea into cups for evening company. When the kids were gone, the two of them would travel, and talk of the gossip, politics, expensive gadgets and other light hearted happenings of what was going on back home.

In their heads, such a setting was still plausible; time might still allow the two of them the opportunity of strolling and picnicking through empty fields together on a hill. As it was through, in this reality, within such a scenario; he was something beneath her, rather than the man beside her. He was the support and cushion to rest her bottom and back on, the blanket that shielded her from grass stains from the ground below. He was something she only took notice of once the blanket was wrapped, and it was time to leave.

And so he strayed from watching her in those late nights in bed. Instead he would watch the ceiling for change. He would wait and watch to see that, if studied hard enough, its plain and elegant blankness would alter into a new form; the atoms and microns eventually pushing and moving due to the lack of development in its way of life, on a slow journey to become, he believed, something different. He thought that anything, if left alone for long enough, would eventually move and change out of spite for its mundane existence.

This watching of the space above his bed became the highlight of his day; its whine tone and composed stature created setting he had trouble finding throughout the rest of his day. His morning routines bled dullness, and his job at the office was even worse. Coming home, soaked with the stink of a full day in his dry and fruitless workplace, he would learn the lessons of his failures and shortcomings as a husband, taught through his wife’s side of telephone conversations as she spoke into the receiver in their medium-sized living room. She would express his last mistake or her disappointment in his being a proper consensual life-partner to her receiver in a few short sentences to whichever girlfriend his wife blathered her unfounded grievances to on the other end. The topic of his deficiencies in these conversations could be confirmed by the eyes that met him when he walked into the room that she occupied, painting her nails in ugly shades of red or blue, as a dinner would be cooking for one.

So he would wait in the yard until the sun set below the rooftops, pacing about the garden that had been forgotten, and raking the dirt that lay over the box that contained the dog he and his wife had purchased when they first married, an animal she had never liked, as she had told him as often as possible.

And so it went on like this, weekdays into weekends of nothing of change but the rotation between work and passive-aggressive home life.

The husband, for the first year or so, felt neglected and began noticing resentment towards his wife. Soon those aggressions melted into numbness and his emotional core curled up and became distant. His work life and home life became reflections of each other and soon he couldn’t tell the difference between being alone at the office and being alone at home. The day’s hours became seconds and before he knew it, the sun had set and he lay in bed looking up at the forgiving ceiling.

The ceiling reminded him of the few art classes he had taken in college, a brief stint based on a temporary feeling that he had a creative process deep inside him. This feeling had been left in shambles as he realized the truly great artists had much more chaos inside them then he could ever hope to possess. He wanted what they had, that inner fear, that self-hatred, self-loathing, condemned to live a life of inner struggle and torment in getting the wicked feelings of whatever emotion plagued the artist’s mind for them to expose it onto paper or mold with clay.

But to his misfortune, he felt none of this. He had grown up in a formidable home with loving parents and a sister who now lived in Seattle. And after meeting and marrying his wife, he came to cope with the knowledge that he would never be besieged by the thoughts in his own head. His greatest triumphs were only going to be self-satisfactory, and his only torment was knowing he had nothing that bothered him.

He came to love those hours before sleep more than any other part of his day. His wife would shut out the lights and murmur truly sweet nothings in his general direction, and then she would turn onto her side and fall asleep. He could then gaze up onto his canvas in peace. He would watch the spots that started to appear on the pallid ceiling and stare up as those spots became hills and mountains.

He began to run through these tall grassy mountains and sprawl out in the damp greenery. Trees would appear that embodied the perfection of what one imagines when they think of the perfect tree to climb, and he would do just that: lift himself above the soil and wrap his hands around the rough bark as he shimmied his way to the top, eyes furiously searching for the next branch to grab. Finally, as the sweat dripped down his face and his hands ached, he would poke his head out of the green bouquet of leaves and soak in the land that surrounded him. Rolling hills of grass and thick fog running off into an infinity horizon. He would stand there at the top and let his skin bake in the heat of the sun with his mouth open, breathing in air.

Other nights before sleep settled in, he would be in Las Vegas on a winning streak, crowds of people cheering him on as he rolled the perfect pair of dice as woman ran their hands down his chest and whispered in his ear . Some nights he rode a motorcycle across the desert, hair blowing in the wind with his feet inches from the pavement, roaring down the open highway as the barren hills gave way into a hot sun. Then in the distance he would hear the echo of laughter, then horns, a phone ringing and the obnoxious melody of some jingle built to stick in head of commuters. He would wake then on his back to the sound of his bed-side radio and his wife in the shower. Then the day would start again.

After these encounters with the ceiling, he began to think of its gift throughout the day. The sizes and shapes of the steps, streetlights, cars and homes gave no resemblance to the peace brought by the ceiling, so at work, he began to draw its figure on small, colored notepads that sat on his desk. He worked freehand until perfection in shape was almost achieved, and soon little squares on post-its covered every free spot on his workplace. When he started to run out of room on his desk, he posted these notes on the border of his computer screen. Little blank squares surrounding his dark monitor; much like postcards a person keeps as reminders of travels and dreams of the future. One perfect square he drew, he kept close to him, filling in the laminated segment of his wallet where the picture of his wife’s face was once visible. Now her face was a square, a perfect square on a white post-it he had found on a co-worker’s desk one day on a trip to the men’s room, different from the yellows and blues that didn’t quite bring justice to the perfection of the white ceiling back home. Like any picture though, it didn’t come nearly as close to the real thing as he wished, just a quick way to bring a smile to his face when needed. His workdays became shorter, and he started leaving work quickly so as to get home faster and fulfill his routine of pacing and dinner, making light conversation and watching the nightly news. He noticed in his wife’s sitcoms, that ceilings were never shown, and he wondered how the men and woman of these shows stayed grounded without a ceiling in their lives. The TV would shut off, and the lights would go out. Then, before his wife had even begun to prepare herself for bed, he dove under the covers, sheets pulled up close to his face so just his eyes stared up at what would inevitably be an adventure.

His wife would come in dressed in her nightgown, dip into the covers and open her book. He would wait, time moving at a much slower pace now than it had in the sunlight and florescence’s of his office, where time had seemed to have sped up fueled by anticipation. From an outsider’s perspective, the expressions on his face under the covers would seem like impatience, but actually this pleasure delay became something he loved. He would dream of what the ceiling would show him tonight, what deep fantasies it would supply him until he could no longer take it; then he would fall into a deep, blissful sleep.

When his wife turned a page, he could tell by the sigh she let out that she had reached the end of a chapter, and that end led to the beginning of his night. She closed her book, and without looking at him, muttered something about rest, and something about love, and turned over onto her side and shut out the light. When her eyes stopped fluttering, and he breathing lessened and patterned out to the tone of a heartbeat, He pulled the covers from his face, and looked up at the sallow space above his bed.

“That took awhile.”

The man nodded in agreement.

“I thought she would read that book forever. I’ve been waiting up here for you.”

“And I’ve been waiting down here for you,” he whispered nervously.

The ceiling shimmered and looked down lovingly at him. He looked back up at her blankness, those white square eyes gleaming down at him as he relaxed and smiled like a resting new-born in a cradle, radiated with love.

“Where am I going tonight?” He said submissively.

“I don’t want you to go anywhere.”

This answer startled him; he feared that he had somehow disappointed the ceiling, that it no longer saw him worthy of its journeys, and that the one thing that had brought him happiness in years was about to abandon him, just like everything else.

“I’m feeling neglected,” said the ceiling.

The man cocked his head questioning the ceiling’s statement.
The ceiling giggled.
“Don’t worry, I could never get tired of you.”
He relaxed again. “That’s good,” he said.
“It’s just…” the ceiling paused. “You always leave me here when you go off on your adventures.”
“I don’t mean to,” he said.
“I know, but…I love you.”
He smiled at this.
“I love you too”.
The ceiling sighed, that same loving way his wife used to when they were first married.
“So I can come with you then?” the ceiling excitedly cooed.
“I can think of nothing I would like more,” the man said in reply.

The ceiling opened up and embraced him, and he stretched out his arms and embraced her back, shutting his eyes tight in the first loving moment he had felt in years.

Together they were in Paris, on the roof of a perfectly designed building, with flat roofs and pews painted on the walls of the buildings around and below them . He filled her glass with the thick French wine that he had ordered from their waiter, his vocabulary perfect, but his accent off enough that she giggled as he stumbled through his words. They smiled together. Her white hair dangled around the glass of pinot noir as she purposely tapped her foot into his leg under the table. They watched the sun set through the openings of steel in the Eiffel Tower, and as it became dark, they walked the streets and alleyways sharing a baguette, laughing and holding hands. His dark blue sports coat was a perfect match for her white dress.

Finally they stopped atop a bridge, dark and tan cobbled stone beneath their feet, and he looked deep into her eyes.

“Why couldn’t I have met you years ago?” he said.

“Let’s not think like that,” the ceiling said. “We have now, and that’s all that matters.”

They kissed, and her lips tasted of the sweetest lead-paint.

Their nights were always perfect. They danced in great ballrooms, with elegant vases and red carpets and took walks on the beach in Costa Rica sipping from a comically large glass. They walked through the chapels in Rome, and laughed at the complexity of their décor. They dipped fondue into chocolate in the early mornings, having stayed up all night catching the fireflies in the subtle hills of Indiana.

During the day, his dress code lightened, and his smiles became more frequent. He whistled as he shaved in the morning, rather than staring back at his own face with tediousness. He started each day with ease, but hurried to work, impatient to get back to love that waited above him at home.

He rushed up the stairs to his office each day, another fast morning, another fast brown bag lunch eager to return, and this certain morning, he was more eager than ever see the images that surrounded his desk: mere remembrances of his love, but enough to get him through the day so as to make it back home to the ecstasy of being in bed.

But on this morning, what he found startled him. The post-its had been removed, and his work area lay as barren as all the other copies of his section that lined in rows in the sterile building’s 28th floor. A single green post-it rested on the monitor of his computer, but rather than the portrait of his love, it contained only foreign handwriting scribbling out: Please keep your work space neat and clean at all times.

On this morning, his face flushed, and he curled his hands into tight balls. The agony of knowing that this would be just another day spent in his blank office was more torment than he could bear.

He had given life to this inert space, and the same people that stripped his life of feeling were now trying to strip away his one chance at happiness. He suddenly remembered the square in his wallet, the perfect square that brought on more feeling than all the others combined. His panicky breathing subsided, and he quickly wrestled with his pockets, prodding around for the soft bunch of leather wadded in his pants. Finally finding it below his keys, he opened it and gazed at the little white square that covered his wife’s face. He dragged his finger along its solid shape; What beauty in its nothingness, the square forming any desire he could imagine.

He sat down in his chair as the phone rang. Slowly, as if only led by repetition, he picked up the cold receiver, and murmured a standard practiced workplace greeting. His wife’s monotonous voice crackled on the other end.

“You left so fast this morning, I didn’t have time to tell you…”

“Yes…?” the man painfully anticipated a conclusion to her sentence, still staring at the laminated square coving the face of a woman sitting in a park, still moving his fingers around it’s perfect edges.

“The carpenters are here, they are doing the work on the bedroom we talked about.” She garbled at him as she fiddled with something crunchy on the other end of the line.

He screamed in horror, dropping his wallet. His co-workers looked over their desks to find the source of the noise.
Much earlier in the year there had been talk of changes to be made to the house in order for it to have a more long-term livable setting, another droning conversation between him and his wife that he had foggily pushed through.
He threw the receiver into the monitor on his desk, and rushed from the office.

The man drove fast; the object of his desire clouding traffic lanes and street signs. His pale face in the mirror watched him back, a reminder of what he had to save: his only known love, waiting her execution in his own home. In the purest form, a man should protect the ones he loves, and give them a home where this protection can be guaranteed. He plunged the pedal in and out, but due to the heavy traffic, the car moved slowly as his mind raced.

Finally he squealed his tires into the driveway where a construction truck sat parked, its white and orange lettering appeared black to him like the hood for the executioner. He ran to the front, his feet trampling the dirt where flowers had once bloomed, crushing down on the raked soil that covered his buried dog.

The door was open, and inside stood his wife and men in hard hats; they looked at him with worried faces; he looked back deranged, because to the man it felt like entering a funeral reception, having just learned the fate of a loved one.
“What is the matter with you? Hanging up on your wife; That was extremely…”

He shoved his wife to the ground before she could finish, and grabbed the nearest worker by the collar, his scruffy face startled by the viciousness of the intruding stranger.

“What have you done!” the man cried into his face.

The construction worker cocked his fist back, and landed it squarely in the face of the man, then reached down to console the man’s crying wife.

He stood almost as fast as he had hit the ground. Dazed, and leaking blood from his nose, he hurried to the stairs. His heart thumped harder than each step as it hit the wood and he ran to his bedroom.

He stood in the doorway, and looked about the colorless room. White drapes covered the bed and furniture. Plastic had been laid down on the carpet, so no mess would damage its delicate patterns. It was a sterile environment like a lethal injection room at some modern day prison. Perhaps elegant to those that don’t realize its purpose.

In the center of it all, she lay sprawled out across the ceiling. Her gentle corners the same, her egg-white paint layered evenly under the bits of spackle that gave slight character to her plain traditional beauty. But in the center of the ceiling’s former self, a hole was opened; a skylight that stood as an exit wound in the center of her picturesque flat body.

“No…” he whimpered softly.

The ceiling shuddered, and gazed down on him.

“I got here as fast as I could. I’m sorry…”

The ceiling smiled at him. A few flakes fell from the half built skylight as sunshine gleamed into the room.
The man noticed the weapon in the corner of the room, a pickaxe: the same tool that had destroyed his beloved to create the condemned form she was now in. Bits of white were scattered on the tips of the horrible bludgeoning device.

“I can’t…” the man said.

A few flakes dripped from above him.
The man picked up the axe, and carried it over to the bed. He slowly put his feet up onto the corners, the only spot that allowed him the position to carry out the act.

“I love you” whispered the ceiling.

“…and I love you” said the man.

He swung the ax hard, and it bit into the cheap shell of the pilaster and sill plate that held the ceiling’s face. Again he swung, over and over; tears dripping down his face and onto his shirt, wetting down the blood that leaked from his nose. He bawled as the insulation came down on him, not from the fibers that cut his face, or the pink dust that floated gently into his eyes, but from the facelessness of the wood and the ledger that sat behind the features of his former love. Bits of white and dust swirled around him as he screamed into the sunshine that began to leak through. The lifeless wooden support beams were exposed behind the image he fell asleep to each night; the face that had shown him desire for modification, and happiness with pleasure and comfort in living was now gone. Her caulk had giving him the foundation that helped him find change. Her majestic wall studs were support in completing his life, a life that had been empty for far too long. She had been the roof that covered him and the lag-screws that gave him strength. And deep within that white paneling, it had been everything he could dream of. He would not love again.

Cassidy Forrest Copyright 2009