Renata loved to be sad. She positively basked in melancholy, as only someone who has never experienced real sadness could. She loved a tragedy, and we all know there’s no shortage of them to shed a tear over.
She loved to cry on rainy days. She’d sit in the window seat of that big bay window in her front room, her forehead pressed against the glass, tears tracing tracks down her face like the droplets that ran rivulets down the outside of the windowpane. Of what she thought that moved her so, I could never be quite sure.
“I just can’t respect someone who laughs at everything,” I heard her say once, with such gravity.
I loved Renata with more love than my heart could give. I loved her so it hurt. I loved her fiercely, possessively, with a burning that all but consumed me by the end.
There was something about her, some magnetic pull. It started like that urge you get when you’re driving by a car crash and you can’t help but crane your neck and gawk at the mangled wreckage. I’d see her on a Thursday at the library in the early afternoon. She’d float in, her eyes downcast, wearing misery like a perfume that wafted from her and scented the whole room. I’d look up from behind whatever medical journal I was pretending to study that week and watch her page through shelves of books, looking for the saddest, every time.
When she found one that she liked, she’d carry it gently over to a chair—always the same chair. I could watch her read for hours, my Renata. When she came to a passage that particularly moved her, she would close her eyes and place one hand, palm open wide, on the page, and the other over her heart. More than once I saw a tear caress that lovely cheek and then drip forlornly onto the page. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t on occasion followed her with my eyes to note the location of the book replaced upon the shelf. I’ve taken more than one home and found the page adorned with her sorrow, to read again and again and try to feel what grieved her so.
I can’t say what went wrong between my dear Renata and me. Time does dreadful things, changes a person, you see. One time I spotted her through that big bay window and it gave me such a shock—she wore a smile. The sun was glaring down and Renata wore a smile and everything I knew and loved was not what it should be.
Not long after that, on a Thursday, when Renata came to the library, she was not alone. Her boisterous companion, immune it seemed to all my shushing, cheerfully selected an armload of books that were all wrong. And then I heard it. Her laughter, bubbly and bold, was as foreign a sound as had ever rung my ears. I knew then. I knew that something must be done.
Aly Writes 