Kaleidoscope Hearts by Claire Contreras
THE FIRST BOY I fell in love with used to regale me with stories about kings and queens and war and peace, and how he hoped to one day be somebody’s knight in shining armor. I lived vicariously through his late night adventures, watching the way he swung his hands animatedly as he told his stories, and loving the way his green eyes twinkled when I laughed at his jokes.
He taught me what it feels like to be touched and thoroughly kissed. Later, he taught me the pain one feels at the loss of someone that you’ve grown attached to. The one thing he forgot to teach me was how to deal with the way my chest squeezed after he broke the ghost of what heart I had left. I’d always wondered if it had been a missed lesson. Now I wonder if maybe he’d been trying to figure it out for himself, or if he just never felt anything at all.
THEY SAY THE best way to move on is to let go. As if letting go is the easy part. As if trying to dim or erase three years of memories, good and bad, is something you can do in one day. I know it’s not, because in a couple of weeks, it will be one year, and the memory of him is as potent as if he was still here. His San Francisco Giants sandals are still in front of the sink, right where he left them. The smell of him lingers on some of his shirts—the ones I still haven’t gotten around to wearing to bed. His presence is powerful even in his absence. As I walk around the house making sure everything is out of sight, I know that for me, this is a huge step in the letting go process.
I’m in the kitchen taping up the last of the boxes, when I hear the jingle of keys followed by heels on the hardwood. Another sound I’ll miss, I’m sure, once I leave this place.
“Estelle?” she calls out in a soft melodic voice.
“Kitchen!” I wipe my hands over my jeans and make my way over to her.
“Hey. You got a lot done last night,” she says, smiling sadly, her eyes glistening as she looks around the nearly empty space. She has the same wild curly hair and expressive caramel eyes her son had. Seeing her makes my heart hurt all over again.
I shrug and bite the inside of my cheek so that I won’t cry. Anything not to cry over this again, especially since I haven’t in so long. When Felicia pulls me into her arms, I let out a slow breath and try not to completely lose it. I try to be strong for her and Phillip. Wyatt was their only child and, as hard as his loss is on me, I can only imagine the emptiness they must feel. We usually don’t cry when we get together—not even when she comes over here—but selling this place is more than just saying goodbye to a house. It’s leaving Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving dinners behind. It’s saying, “Wyatt, we love you, but life goes on.” And it does, which is one of the reasons I feel guilty. Life goes on, but why does it have to go on without him?
“It’s going to be fine,” I say, wiping my wet cheeks as I pull away from her.
“It is. It is. Wyatt wouldn’t want us to break down over a house.”
“No, he would definitely think we’re dumb for mourning a structure,” I say with a small laugh. If it were up to Wyatt, people would live in tents and bathe in rainwater.
“Yeah, and he would have cut the electricity on this place two months ago since you’ve been eating takeout anyway,” she adds.
We shake our heads, new tears forming as the laughter dies and silence settles around us.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with Phillip and me?” she asks, as we walk from room to room, making sure nothing is left out. The realtor is going to start showing the house tomorrow, and it needs to be perfect for potential buyers.
“No. Victor would be highly offended if I didn’t take him up on his offer. He would probably start bringing up my not wanting to go to the same college as him, not liking the same football team, and the fact that I never paid up and did his laundry for a year that time in high school. I think that’s why he’s so eager to have me move in with him, actually.”
Felicia’s shoulders shake as she laughs. “Well, tell him I said hello, and invite him to dinner with us on Sunday. We’d love to have him over!”
“Sure,” I say, my smile disappearing as I notice the sandals on the floor.
“You want me to take those, or do you want to keep them?”
“I . . .” I pause to take a shaky breath. “Will you take them?”
I don’t think I can bear to look at them every day in a new place. I’m already keeping all of Wyatt’s t-shirts, and it’s not like the sandals fit me—they’re like five sizes too big for my feet—but they’re his favorite. Were. They were his favorite. That’s something my therapist had me work on—speaking of Wyatt in the past tense. Sometimes I cringe when I do it, but I’ve gotten better. For a while, I was living this false reality where Wyatt was away on a business trip or something. He loved to travel alone and let the different cultures inspire his paintings. After a month, I started accepting that he wasn’t coming back. After three, at the request of my therapist, I started putting his things in boxes so that I wouldn’t have the constant reminder.
Putting them away didn’t do much. The house was a reminder, and our art studio couldn’t be packed up either. It was something I had to learn to live with . . . being without him. After six months, I was able to walk in and out of both places without having my heart squeeze in my chest every time. And now, a year later, I think I’m ready to move on. If Wyatt’s sudden death taught me anything, it was that life is short, and we need to live it to the fullest. It’s something I understand, but still struggle to follow through with some days.
“Honey, everything he left behind is yours, you know that,” Felicia says. I don’t even realize that I’m still crying, until I taste the salt of tears on my lips. I try to thank her, but the words stay lodged in my throat under the boulder that’s settled there.
After one last look around, we hug, and I promise to see her on Sunday. I glance over a shoulder as I walk to the car, letting my heart squeeze one last time before I get in and drive away. The memories . . . the comfort . . . the past . . . all become a distant picture in the rearview mirror as I head to my brother’s house. I’m running through a mental checklist of things I have to do, when a ringing phone cuts into my thoughts.
“Hey, how’d it go?” Mia asks in greeting.
“It was okay. A little sad, but not terrible.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be there. Did Felicia come to pick up some of his things? How is she doing these days?”
“Good. She looks good.”
“Are we still going out tomorrow night?” Mia asks slowly, treading water.
“As long as we stick to one bar, I’ll go. I’m not in the mood for bar hopping and doing the college girl thing you like to do.”
Mia never shed her wild side persona when we graduated and started living our “grown-up lives.” As much as I love hanging out with her, replenishing my liver with an insane amount of water after drowning it in alcohol the night before isn’t something I can do every week, like she does.
“Okay, no bar hopping. I have a brunch date on Saturday morning anyway and can’t afford to look like crap, so we’ll take it easy.”
“A date?” I ask with a frown, as I pull into my brother’s driveway.