The Trap

A widow regrets.

It is always when Mrs. Wilde is looking out the window that she feels the most regret. Like it is its own independent identity and a parasite feeding off her sorrow, Regret moves silently and skillfully, but it is also powerful and fast. A moment of almost tranquility is transformed in an instant. Regret's immersion becomes complete in a matter of milliseconds, and she becomes paralyzed, stuck within the feeling like an animal in a trap. Her senses work still, but sights and sound come to her as if from far away. When something does filter in, it comes as if were on another frequency. Distorted and muffled, it weaves itself into her current state of mind, giving Regret a more powerful voice. A police siren, at first barely detectable, grows in intensity – not because it is coming closer but because her codependent parasite Regret gives it another form: a red flashing stop light. A sound becomes a visual at the same time that it becomes memory and regret, and Mrs. Wilde takes no time trying to figure out the significance of the flashing red light, as she is soon immersed in the past – to the same place she always returns to.

 

It is the memory of an argument that had arisen – or erupted– out of such a petty thing: whether or not to run the air conditioning as they slept. He hated being cold. She hated being hot. She had acted instantaneously, and then so did he, and then hurtful words were said, things that never should be said, and for a short time their relationship seemed doomed, and Mrs. Wilde, Cassandra, had taken up smoking again, and then so did he, and for both of them it stuck, but for him the consequences were so much more severe. Life threatening. Life ending.

 

 

The siren and the stop light is replaced by the sound of two people walking underneath her window, and again her sensory input is transformed. The distinct loud gruff and casual conversation taking place between two of the maintenance men spirals away, and she hears instead the voice of a couple. The tone is also casual, but filled with tenderness and love. It brings Nostalgia, a close companion to Regret. So many times, Stan, her late husband, and she had walked and talked right outside this window in moments she had never fully appreciated. Until now.

 

 

Their condominium unit, along with many others, sits upon a hill that runs parallel to a freeway, so the rush of traffic is constant where they live. (Cassandra corrects herself: It is just where she lives now; the they is gone forever.) Its sound wraps itself around her sadness and juxtaposes itself next to her disbelief. The traffic is constant. It never stops, and the sound of so many cars - each individual car immersed - becomes another transformation. It becomes symbolic. A symbolic sound. Mrs. Wilde thinks about how stuck - in this mad rush of traffic we call life - there are individuals. So many. Being rushed. Rushing by.

 

 

It would be better to be a tree, she thinks. (And there is a beautiful white birch tree outside the window. It is her favorite tree. His too. Another symbol.) Trees never relocate. They stay where they are, and they exist for so many more years than us. They sway sometimes, effected by the wind and the weather, but they never move away, or travel, or just plain move about. They must be more in the moment than us. And she wonders if this is her own thought, one she can take complete credit for, or is this a thought only Regret could have brought her? And why couldn't Happiness have (or another time of life) brought her such sentiments? These questions have a spiral-like affect on Cassandra, the widow. Senses are put on mute– or pause- and she can only think desperately of him.

 

 

Is he out there somewhere, or can he only exist now inside her head and the heads of those that knew him? No one knew him like her. Inside their minds, he would quickly diminish, getting smaller and smaller, like some far-off star that would eventually burn out. He was her sun. She could not imagine him fading to anything less bright than this, the moon or a far-off star.

 

 

Her mind is brought to her friend Mary, her best friend, and how happy she is with her new husband. He is now her great sun. How can such an eclipse happen? Cassandra does not know. She doesn't want to know. How can a husband of thirty-plus years be replaced so easily, so effectively, and completely? How can this ever happen? For Mary, it happened in just less than nine months. This could not be.

 

 

Mrs. Wilde would not do this. She would keep her sun. Even if it could happen, even if the universe did send it, she wouldn't allow it. She'd refuse to be transitory.