Lily by Roberta Lawson

They had been together two and a half years. He was always telling her he loved her. The more often he said it, the more removed she felt. As if each declaration was burying her in another blank-faced teddybear, another Hallmarked greeting. He smells of insipid chocolates, flaccid roses.

Lily tries to reason with herself what it was she wanted. Sometimes, she can’t be bothered to reason.

Now it is Summertime, she tends to let him stand in the front garden of the Hertfordshire farmhouse a while before she beckons him up. Her on the balcony, sipping Pimms, he sloshing his beer in its bottle, guitar on his shoulder, hopeful as can be.

Lily is watching him tonight, in the late evening’s fading light. Chin propped on her elbow, tongue running over her lips, her raven hair a mane over her shoulders. She surveys him, a wild cat not quite ready for action. A languid stretch, drumming her fingers on the white porcelain table, she asks:

‘How much did you say you love me, my darling?’

‘I love you more than I have ever loved anyone.’

‘Yes?’ Leaning forward.

‘I … love you more than I love my mother?’

Unimpressed.

A tired, tipsy desperation in his voice:

‘I wake up and think about you, and I feel it in my fingertips, brushing my collarbone, in my ankles. I get lost thinking about your face. I picture your lazy smile, and I trip. I’ve stopped wanting to sleep; I want to stay awake penning you songs and counting the ladder of tiny hairs that rise up your spine. My heart is swollen-full of you.’

She jerks slightly, eyebrow quirking. Her voice slides out in a slow and mocking scowl:

‘You love me with your … heart?’

‘Yes, yes! My whole heart! Every muscle of it. Oh, darling …’

Slow movement:

‘Everyone always tells me it’s their hearts with which they love me. Their hearts, their souls; every throwaway organ, ever meaningless abstract concept. I’m given hearts like I’m given prewritten greeting cards, like I’m given road-stall roses.’

He tries to interrupt. She bats it away with a disinterested swipe of her hand.

‘Bring me something new, and something meaningful. Give me something I’ve never had before, something that matters. Then I might keep you.

Or don’t. Go find a Hallmark whore, a woman with a bed brimming full of glass-eyed stuffed animals. A Milk Tray fetishist, a Celine Dion enthusiast. Go lust with mediocrity. And you won’t be mine.’

And he stares for a while. And then he slopes off, guitar banging his chest. His fingernails rake his cheek; leave scratches. He doesn’t notice.

*

It is mid September by the time he returns. Late evening, almost totally dark already. Lily is inside. Phillipa, her dachshund, barks at that familiar shuffling of feet on the gravel. Lily waits, slowly drumming her fingers once more.

He is noisier than usual, feet scuffing. She does not look out yet, stays settled in her candle-lit living room.

‘Lily, Lily, I’ve come back.’

He is almost wailing, banshee-like, lisping a little. The lisp is new.

Her lip curls slightly. Still she listens curiously. Phillipa has stopped barking. The night wraps quietly around the sound of his voice.

‘Darling, I didn’t return until I thought of a way to show you how much I love you. No cards, no truffles. I longed only to find something no-one else could give you. And I ached with wanting you, and I ached and I ached and I ached. Aching that turned to anger and hatred. Hating myself for wanting to puppy-dog please you. Hating you for every word you’ve ever tossed at me, every disinterested glance, every drip of condescension. I drowned you in my heart with whiskey. I filled up with bitterness, toxic and disgusted.’

His voice becomes harder and harder to hear. Lily listens intently.

‘I’m not sure this was ever about my heart, Lily. I thought I fell for you with my heart, fell in love with every fibre of my being. Before you I had never known the late night bitterness a woman like you leaves in the back of the throat. And as my bitterness began with you, in the end the bitterness is all that is left. You created this, and so I return it to you. My organ full of vitriol. All yours.’

And with that his whistling of a voice trails off. The only sound is the breeze blowing outside.

Lily sits very still for a while. Collecting herself, she stretches slowly, pats Phillipa’s head, takes her torch from the drawer and flicks the light switch for the driveway. Bright white light floods the front garden gravel.

She blinks for a short while, her eyes accustoming. Takes a few slow steps closer, and shines her torch-beam right onto him, his body illuminated. He is a stuffed sack that has spilled its contents. His checked shirt is red with blood, the grey gravel runs crimson. His light green eyes aren’t regarding her with that beseeching look any longer.

On top of his dropped body is a muslin wrapped parcel. Phillipa sniffs it expectantly. The wrapping falls away to reveal a thick redblack thing, amorphous and veiny.

Lily looks down at his bulbous liver, the present he has left for her, and a shudder runs through her. As she walks back to the house she allows herself to think ‘I guess he really loved me.’

Roberta Lawson is twenty five years old, lives on the coast of England, and encounters personality failure each time she is required to write a third person bio. She has work forthcoming in Prick Of The Spindle, Gutter Eloquence, Sein Und Werden, Zygote In My Coffee, Eviscerator Heaven and so on. She blogs at Atmospheres Of Perfect Silence and sometimes spills nonsense poetics at Piffle.Lily Previously appeared in Mung Being.< >< ><–>