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There was a rocking chair in the Green Room. There was a crib, toys and yellow curtains.
Sophia feels green, Rust had declared.
Claire had never loved the color and it almost hurt when she had pointed that out, because he thought she was a little bit green too, because green was a beautiful color, because it was brilliant, fresh, candid, crisp and it meant hope, and their daughter was going to be all that.
He had explained it to her on a Wednesday. They were on their couch, and he’d been caressing her round belly. He’d mentioned it again at the hospital, holding the tiny bundle with trembling hands.
Green was a beautiful color, green was his favorite color.
The first time Claire had seen them together in the Green Room Sophia was 4 days old; they had gotten home the day before. It was the middle of the night and Rust was holding Sophia close to his chest, head bent, whispering in her ear and rocking them lightly on the chair.
He was murmuring about notes, flavors, colors. The picture oozed intimacy, it was a confession, a love declaration and she almost felt like she was intruding. It sounded like a Kandinsky painting, what he felt about their daughter.
Then he had lifted his head and addressed her, still on the threshold, admitting that among that spray of sounds for Sophia there were stronger nuances of what he felt for her, that Claire had never been that green, that he hoped she would understand that he could never love her as much as he loved their daughter.
Rust always kept the real form of his thoughts private: unsure, tired of questions and condescending looks. Claire was the only one allowed to listen to his mismatched speeches, his synaesthesic combinations, just as they formed inside his head. She had even found herself thinking like that, now and then, almost grasping an order in that tangle of colors, sounds, flavors and touches.
And he was still looking at her, almost expectantly, and he was so young and uncertain and beautiful and Claire had never loved him more. Of course I understand. She had, she did.
It was their place. Claire had found them there many more times, after a nightmare, during a cold, chatting or playing on the carpet. The Green Room would resound with sobs, whines, words or giggles and she would peek in and watch them, and wonder what nuance of green he had tasted that had put the silly smile on his face. She would tease him about it and he would feign hurt, whisper something conspiringly into Sophia's ear and make her giggle more.
Claire had read dozens of maternity books during her pregnancy; Rust had read those plus some heavy manuals of educational philosophy. They had met at the University of Houston Library, after all. So, it might have been a combination of their overzealous parenting and their not-so-bad genes that made Sophia such a precocious child. Rust was shamelessly proud of it. Then again, they would have been shamelessly proud of anything.
Sometimes she still found it strange to see her husband so domesticated. Rust had always had such a wild mind, an incessant flow of thoughts and mingled sensations that inevitably led to a sort of wildness of the body too, the need of confrontation, sometimes the need of conflict. She had fallen in love with his physicality, his deliberate movements and gestures, long before even speaking to the aloof sociology student in the library.
Now he was working hard, building his career in the Force, and she knew it was his way to allow air to flow, that he was feeding both his hunger for mental challenge and physical unchaining. He would drink more of that at home as well -with her: discussing, speculating and making love, but he would spend the majority of his free time in the Green Room, with their daughter.
Claire would hear them disagreeing on her plushies’ disposition, talk about pet’s habits and why couldn’t she have blue eggs for breakfast. After putting Sophia to bed, on the night of that particular inquiry, she watched him from their bed as he painted one egg with light blue watercolors, and the following morning, a Sunday, she had been woken up by Sophia’s delighted squeals.
They had been in the Green Room, trying a 12 pieces puzzle, a few hours before the accident.
After... After, she would find him often in the Green Room. Usually in the middle of the night, sitting on the floor, eyes vacant, face lost in the smoke of the ever-present cigarette. They would fight because he was smoking there, because she couldn't smell her daughter anymore and they would cry, yell and why, why, WHY.
Claire wouldn't stop seeing that scene again and again, she would hear the bump of the car and her own screams. She would see her daughter on the ground, motionless. She would hear Rust's breathing stop, the suspension of any sound, she would see the incapability and the horror defacing his expression, while throwing himself towards them, towards Sophia, his Sophia and her broken tricycle.
Someone had called an ambulance; they had just knelt there.
A coma first, 5 days in hospital, barely eating, barely sleeping. Then Sophia slipped away.
Rust had arranged the funeral and she only remembered half of it. She had woken up in their bed that night, shaking and damp: he was grabbing onto her shoulder and sobbing brokenly in her neck. That was the last time they held each other. That was the first time Rust had cried over Sophia.
She took some time off from her work at the museum; he started to work 20 hours a day. They kept fighting for a while, then he started taking drugs during work -and after, and she wasn’t anywhere near as shocked about that as she should have been.
She should have gotten him out of the addiction stupor; he shouldn't have started in the first place. They ended up ignoring each other. Then one day he stopped entering the Green Room, and a week later, Claire left.
She had visited him in North Shore. They had gotten a divorce in the meantime, almost four years had passed, but she still was on his contact list.
She didn't mind.
He was under heavy medications and breathing trough a ventilator; he had been shot three times. He was pale and gaunt and he had a tattoo on his arm. She could still see her Rust under all those layers, though. And he was probably going to die.
Claire had brushed her fingertips over his hand; the skin felt familiar, the skin she had felt so many times against hers, the skin Sophia had felt.
Memories crushed her unexpectedly; she remembered the time they had picked him up from the hospital, the time he, idiot that he was, had jumped into a freezing river to save a young boy. Claire had brought Sophia and rushed to him. It was the very first time Rust had gotten into trouble at work. He was okay, really, he was. When they got to him, he was still shaking badly, and Sophia had clumsily offered her daddy the little green coat she was wearing. So you warm, Daddy. Her parents were both stunned for a moment; Claire was sure it was possibly the purest gesture anyone had offered Rust, possibly the most intimate moment their little family had shared.
Claire had watched him hug their daughter. It was moving, to watch him clinging into that little body for dear life, murmuring quietly in her ear. Sophia was squirming and giggling in his embrace and he wasn't trembling anymore.
Then she was in the present again, she was in a hospital but there was no Sophia with her, no little green coat, and her ex-husband wasn't recovering from hypothermia, he was at death's door. She had held his hand, melancholic and sad, loss and pain, old love and joy lingering painfully.
Rust had opened his eyes briefly then, still the truest blue she remembered, only clouded by pain and confusion.
Claire had smiled at him, silent tears running uncontrollably down her cheeks.
She hadn’t visited him again.
Not for almost twenty years, in another town, another state, another hospital.
Again, she hadn't minded receiving that call, she wouldn't have minded receiving more, maybe from him, hopefully from him. Claire wanted to receive those calls, even if they meant that the only thing they had left was a surreal, terrible connection made of pain, hospitals, hurt and death.
This time though his hair was long and his skin worn out, he had mustaches, mustaches, and half of his face was a dreadful, dark purple bruise. She couldn’t see it, but they had told her he had been cut open through half of his abdomen. It's a miracle that he survived.
He was older, they had aged, and he was thinner and different and Claire couldn't see her Rust there.
He was in a coma, just like her, and he would probably never wake up again.
His fingers though. His hand still felt familiar and she held it tight for a moment. Regret, pain, loss and old love and joy went through her older body once again.
Her eyes were only misty this time when she left; he seemed at peace, he seemed loved.
They told her he woke up the next day.