The Stigmata of Opportunity

He told himself he should have had a clearer head for this. This was the photo opportunity he had been hoping for and now that he had to do the setting up and breaking down himself, he felt a pang of regret. None of the interns had been available on such short notice. He only heard yesterday and the woman was very specific about the date and location. 

 

He hated having to deal with the equipment. It distracted him. So why did he drink so much and stay up so late? He pictured in vivid detail the two women presenting themselves to him in his bed. He was strengthened by the thought and sat up straighter. 

 

He noticed the cab was going down a gravel drive through the trees. He had been told rural but had not imagined anything beyond empty fields just past the city. He felt a prickling fear. In the city he was at ease even in many of its darker recesses. He lived and worked as a photographer for the local weekly paper there. He had acquired enough favors over the years to get this lead for a side project of his own photos and journalism, which would no doubt further his ambitions, but he wasn't as sure of himself out in the country. 

 

He’d been hoping and waiting for just this sort of opportunity and here he was, arriving impaired and disoriented with a hangover. It did comfort him a bit to think that the woman was in need of money and he had had a few hundred extra in his pocket to give her.

 

The driver pulled up in front of a house in a clearing and helped bring in some of the equipment.

 

When he entered he noticed her immediately. She was sitting on a stool set in the center of the front room. There was no longer any glass in the French doors that spanned the front of the house. The sun had reached its zenith in the clearing out front and the light on her was stunning at that moment. He had his camera around his neck with a favorite lens and filter so he started taking her picture the moment he laid eyes on her. Even before introducing himself. The cab driver awkwardly waited at the door holding equipment and glancing uncomfortably at the woman sitting in the house. She gestured for him to come in but he wouldn’t. He put what he had just inside and left.

 

The woman and photographer both looked out from the house at the back of the cab as it drove away down the gravel road. 

 

That was supposed to be my ride back, if I’m not mistaken, he said. 

 

I believe so, she told him. 

 

She chuckled and sat back down on the chair in the remaining light in the room. 

 

She told him the house was her childhood home. It was very nice in its day but the family was ruined financially by all their efforts to solve the medical mystery of their daughter. What they couldn’t understand and she had been too young to be able to explain to them, was that it was not a medical condition. 

 

They were not Catholics. Not even Christian. To her parents there was no symbolic or spiritual meaning in it. 

 

There had to be a reasonable explanation. There may be anomalies but they can be explained. Her parents reasoned if they could identify her medical condition then any case of stigmata would then be diagnosed and treated. 

 

From a very large carpetbag on the floor she removed a few towels and set them over the balustrade on the staircase leading to the second floor. She removed her shoes and set them aside. 

 

Then she sat on the stool and leaned forward. 

 

Ultimately it was their undoing, she told him, unwrapping first her right then left hand. 

 

She let the wrap fall to the floor in front of her and held her hands out, palms up. He watched through the lens and kept shooting while the skin in her palm parted and blood ran out. She unwrapped her feet and both her hands and feet dripped blood onto the floor. The drops sprayed everywhere, onto leaves, the wood floor, and the photographer’s shoes. 

 

If it isn’t medical, what is it? he asked her. 

 

She turned and smiled.

 

That was the shot that won him so many awards and landed his book on bestseller lists. And it was that smile that made him want to know everything. It was the moment he decided to dedicate the entire book to her alone. 

 

He learned a lot from her and made a fortune on his book about her. She became even more reclusive since the book came out because she was recognized and accosted in public whenever she went out.

 

She couldn’t understand why, after everything, he never contacted her. Not even a call or message to see how she was doing. She questioned whether they were ever friends and began to doubt herself. The more she doubted herself, the heavier a burden her stigmata. She began to bleed more and without warning. It became her sanguinary prison. 

 

If she stayed put and concerned herself with very little she hardly bled at all. A respite she craved after a lifetime with the condition. She became very pale from remaining indoors with closed curtains and dim lights for so long. Everyone was concerned about her health but did not want to excite her and have to clean all that blood. Though they began to put her straight away in the tub when she bled until they could relax her enough for it to subside. Since they let her alone most of the time, everything had been calm. No blood. Everyone was happy. The place was clean. 

 

Went on that way for years. She even starting walking to the large empty claw foot bath whenever she felt sadness or any emotion coming on, as a courtesy. She sometimes spent days in the bathtub.

 

After all those years of not contacting her, he showed up one day at the rooming house where she lived. 

 

He looked great. He was aging beautifully and it had not hurt that he could afford brightening his teeth and jiu jitsu lessons. He had a presence not lost on the jaded nurse who opened the door to him. She was hesitant to let him through though it was his right to be announced and for the resident have the option to see a guest. She was inclined to send him on his way because she didn’t know who he was and he wasn’t on the list of visitor names in the woman’s file. Something about him, though, softened her resolve. Could have been how clean and tightly put together he was. 

 

He went through to the woman’s room and entered it without knocking. The nurse couldn't reach him in time to stop him. The woman was at the window. She turned and was so pale it stopped him in his tracks. 

 

The moment he came in she began to bleed. The nurse rushed in, calling out to the staff and insisted he help by carrying her to the bathroom and putting her into the tub.

 

During that walk to the bathroom she looked into his eyes right to the core of his being. She saw him and the intense recognition was shocking to him. He had never been looked at that way. He had never been seen or known by anyone so intensely. He lowered the featherweight, white skinned woman into the tub, looking back into those deeply beautiful eyes. 

 

He gained wealth and fame off of photographing those eyes and lost count of the times he looked at the photos of her but he had never actually looked at her face while he was with her in that house. He had not once actually looked into her eyes. It was only then during that walk with her in his arms that he understood--the attention for his photography book was not so much for his work as it was for those eyes, for that woman's presence. The realization struck him physically as a blow to his chest and took his breath away. He backed out of the room almost tripping.

 

The nurse closed the door so that the woman could undress A bucket was filled and rags taken out to clean the blood trail off the wood floor. 

 

By then he was in the entry feeling uncomfortable and confused. The nurse came out and escorted him to the front room, to sit down. There she politely explained that it would be best if he not attempt to see or speak to her. Apparently the stress was too much. 

 

He ignored the request and telephoned constantly. 

 

It began late one night when the woman was near the house phone when it rang on her way from the kitchen with a glass of water. She answered in a whisper so as not to wake anyone. He responded in a whisper and in this way they were able to have little communiqués and scheduled phone calls while she was naked in the dry bathtub. Very tricky maneuver when both hands are bleeding so she cleverly devised a cushion and holder out of a bath towel. 

 

The tryst didn’t last long, though. Turned out amorousness made her bleed so profusely she would pass out. The staff kept discovering her in the tub, unconscious, with the phone dropped to the floor. After cleaning her up they would feed her fried liver and pickled beets to revive her. 

 

The staff of three decided it best to invite him to meet with them. Matters cannot continue in the same way they told him over the phone. 

 

All they could get out of him once they had him in a meeting was that he felt the woman had spiritually liberated him. They came to realize that he was unaware of the woman’s amorous feelings for him or the heartbreak he caused her before. 

 

They told him. At first it seemed he might not quite understand what they were saying. How long? Not all this time? He asked. Has she always? Yes, they told him, from the moment she first saw you. 

 

He was suddenly very uncomfortable with himself and could not help leaving. His immediate impulse was to go and keep on going. So he did.

 

No one understood why he had come to see her in the first place. Why did he show up after all that time? He never said. 

 

He rested easy over all. Both times seeing her he gained a lot. Both times they talked for hours and he learned so much. At first he gained his fortune because every subsequent door opened as a result of the success of that book. Then when he returned for forgiveness for profiting off exploiting her, he was not only clearly absolved, she did so with warmth and deep compassion. He was content. She had delivered peace to him. Now he could part company unburdened by guilt and doubt. 

 

As the years went on she grew so milky white she was often mistakenly assumed albino. Until one noticed her slate gray eyes turning bright blue whenever she looked at her photographer's book, which she kept displayed on the bureau in her dark little room.

 

Reviews

[Sensaround]

Is it better to avoid intimacy in order to minimize the pain of rejection and loss? This story provides a graphic metaphor on the nature of unrequited love. The main character never advocates for her own needs and lives a life of isolation and emotional deprivation. Yet she never faults the man for not loving her back and, at the tail end of the story, accepts love's pain as her just due.

[Michelle Espinosa]

Well put. Thank you.