A Matter of Words

1. Brian Paone – Outside of Heaven-1

Outside of Heaven

Brian Paone

As Cecil subconsciously rubbed his bandaged left hand, he could feel the low throb of pain start again. This time it didn’t appear that any blood was seeping through the gauze. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter with his better hand and stole a glance at his wife.

“Everything okay?” Grace asked her husband.

“Everything’s great.”

The upstate New York sky was an explosion of orange, littered with wisps of gray clouds. The car’s top was down; the air grew crisper by the minute.

Grace reached over and placed a hand on his thigh. Cecil tried to conjure a halfhearted smile.

“How’s your hand?” she asked.

Cecil opened and closed his fist to prove that movement had not been compromised.

“Feels much better today.”

“Do you need to check in with work while we’re gone?”

“Nah. I took care of all the workman’s comp paperwork when I left the hospital last night. I made sure that there’s nothing hanging over our heads during our little getaway.”

Grace smiled and removed her hand from Cecil’s leg. “This trip will be good for us.”

Cecil shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t expected her to talk about it so soon after getting on the highway.

“I think so too,” Cecil replied. “Everything will be different when we return.”

“A clean slate. That’s what I want,” Grace added.

Cecil nodded. That’s all he wanted too. This vacation was going to represent locking away forever the skeletons in their matrimonial closet. He just hoped that he was able to truly forget about Lucas What’s-His-Name. Cecil had already proved to Grace that he had the ability to forgive, but he wasn’t too sure about the forgetting part.

“We’re about four hours from Toronto,” Cecil said. “Any objection to stopping in Rochester for the night? We can leave first thing in the morning and be in Toronto before anyone stops serving breakfast.”

“That’s fine with me,” Grace answered. “That’ll give me a chance to rewrap your hand in some fresh bandages.”

“Plus those clouds don’t look promising.”

Grace looked up and could see the orange and red sunset being consumed by sinister-looking clouds.

“You might want to pull over to put up the top before it starts raining,” she suggested.

Cecil grunted. He knew she was right, but a piece of him wanted to defy her suggestion and keep driving with the top down just on principle. It came from a small place inside him that still hung on to some residual anger about Grace and Lucas What’s-His-Name. Cecil was honestly trying to let go of the anger that reared its head whenever he thought about what his wife and her high school sweetheart had done together behind his back over the past few weeks.

He pretended that he hadn’t heard his wife’s suggestion and, instead, stepped on the gas pedal a little harder.

Ninety minutes later, Cecil and Grace entered Rochester just as the skies opened up. Cecil caught Grace shooting him a glare as if to say, Now will you listen to me? Cecil knew she never would have said it aloud. Not with the frail balance that their marriage was in at the moment. Grace probably felt that she needed to walk on eggshells for a little bit longer, until their lives returned to normal, and this whole Lucas What’s-His-Name mess was behind them.

Cecil’s stubbornness cracked, and he slowly pulled the car to the highway’s shoulder. When the car came to a stop, he pressed the button on the vehicle’s console that controlled the convertible’s top and reached back to help guide the roof down. After the top was locked and secured, Cecil carefully drove into the flow of traffic.

Cecil opened and closed his fist once more to alleviate the itchiness and discomfort that he felt. Grace noticed that he was in pain again.

“We can stop now,” she said sympathetically.

Cecil didn’t want to admit defeat or look like less of a man in front of his wife—especially when he believed that image of him may have attributed to Lucas What’s-His-Name worming his way back into Grace’s heart—but Cecil knew that stopping for the night was inevitable at this point.

“That might be a good idea,” he answered.

Cecil steered the car onto the next exit ramp that boasted hotels and restaurants. He stopped the car at the bottom of the ramp, looking left and right.

“Which way do you think?”

“Umm … go left.”

“Left it is,” he said, forcing a smile.

Ahead of them were a multitude of gas stations and fast-food restaurants.

“There’s a sign for a hotel,” Grace said and pointed toward the right side of the road. “The Blue Leaf Motel.”

“Really? Sounds seedy. There are no signs for a DoubleTree or a Marriott?” Cecil joked.

“I think it sounds quaint.”

“Quaint is how I would describe someplace like Miss Sally’s Bed-and-Breakfast. The Blue Leaf Motel sounds like our room will be sandwiched between a crack w***e and a serial killer.”

Grace playfully poked Cecil in the ribs.

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Mr. Man?” she asked, mimicking Kathy Bates in Cecil’s favorite Stephen King film.

“All right, all right. You know I’m a sucker for Annie Wilkes.”

Cecil turned onto Yuka Street.

“Right there. Past the church,” Grace said.

Cecil drove by the white church and churchyard that abutted the parking lot of the Blue Leaf Motel.

“Looks harmless enough,” Grace said as they pulled into the parking lot. “I think it’ll be—”

The sound of rain hitting the top of the car was so deafening that Cecil couldn’t hear the rest of her comment. It sounded like bullets on tin. He frantically turned on the windshield wipers to their maximum speed.

“Can you see anything?” Grace asked.

“Barely,” he answered, trying to navigate the car into the entrance of the parking lot.

“Just be careful please.”

Cecil flexed his hand to relieve some of the pressure while he safely parked in the nearest empty spot.

“Should we wait it out?” Grace asked.

“We’re only fifteen yards from the front door. Who’s the one without a sense of adventure now?”

“Adventure is one thing. Getting my hair wet is another.”

Cecil chuckled. Little moments like these were when he knew, down to his core, that Grace was the only woman for him. In these little moments, Cecil felt confident about not leaving Grace when she had come clean about Lucas What’s-His-Name.

“All right, princess. We’ll give it a few minutes.”

Cecil shut off the engine, and the wipers came to a halt. The outline of the hotel’s sign became increasingly fuzzier through the stream of water that continued to pour down the windshield.

“The sky must be broken,” Grace said, looking at the clouds to find any sign of reprieve from the torrential downpour.

Cecil adjusted his bandage again and squinted through his side window at the cars sprawled out in the parking lot.

“Well, that’s encouraging,” he said with a hint of sarcasm.

“What’s that?”

“There seems to be more broken-down cars here than working ones. You certainly have a knack for picking winners.”

“Oh, get off my back,” Grace said playfully.

Cecil studied the handful of cars that had been abandoned in the lot; some cars had flat tires; some cars looked so rusted that they might turn to dust the moment anyone tried to open its doors; and one car not only was propped up on cinder blocks but had a family of Triffids growing underneath the hood. Still the Blue Leaf Motel was a place to lay their heads for the night and would give him an opportunity to put a new dressing on his wound.

A gust of wind rocked the car back and forth.

“I don’t think it’s letting up,” Cecil said. “I’m ready to make a run for it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“It’s my hand that has the stitches, not my feet.”

“Okay. I’ll race ya. On four … Ready?”

“I was born ready.”

Grace rolled her eyes, grabbed the door handle, and yelled, “FOUR!”

Cecil hadn’t even realized he had been hoodwinked until Grace slammed her door shut, leaving him alone inside the car. He shook his head and jumped from the vehicle. He dug his heels into the pavement, trying to catch up to his wife. The rain doused them both with buckets of water, making it hard for him to see without wiping his eyes every few seconds. It was important for him to beat Grace to the lobby doors. It would be another check mark on his “man card.” Any opportunity he might have to show her that he was just as testosterone-filled as Lucas What’s-His-Name was a moment Cecil had to seize and conquer.

Grace was fast, but not fast enough.

As Cecil sped past her, he timed his footfalls accurately to make sure he landed square in a massive puddle, ejecting a perfectly aimed splash of water all over his wife. Grace pumped her fists in the air at him. Cecil was laughing so hard he almost tripped over his own feet.

When Cecil stopped at the front entrance, he smiled triumphantly at his wife. She still had to cover another few yards. As soon as they stumbled into the lobby together, there was an instant puddle under their feet before the door even closed behind them.

“Nasty out there,” the man working the reception desk said.

Cecil shook his head like a dog. “You can say that again.”

“What can I do you folks for?”

“We’d like a room,” Grace answered.

“You’re in luck. This is our slow season. How long will you be staying with us?”

“Just the night,” Cecil answered.

“All righty. If you could sign in and pay, please. We only accept cash here.”

The man slid a blue-colored piece of paper toward Cecil with today’s date, Sunday, May 4, handwritten across the top.

Grace reached for a pen and jumped back when a cat landed on the man’s desk and knocked an acrylic container of tiny rubber bands to the floor. Grace covered her chest with her hand.

“My God. That cat almost gave me a heart attack.”

The man behind the counter chuckled. “Sorry about that, ma’am. Don’t pay Lucy any mind. She’s scared of her own shadow.”

The cat scampered through a door into another room and disappeared. Grace reached for the pen again and signed the blue paper with their names.

“Alice!” the man yelled into the room behind him. “Could you grab the keys to eighteen, please?”

A moment later a young girl emerged from the back room with a key attached to a wooden board. Alice handed the key to Cecil.

“My name’s Gabriel, and this is my daughter, Alice. Don’t hesitate to ask for anything you need. My desk is extension 2570 from the phone in your room. We’ll be here for a few more hours before heading home.”

“Thank you so much, Gabriel. What time is check out?”

“Noon,” Alice answered for her father.

Just as Cecil was preparing to thank Gabriel one more time, the lobby door flung open, and a thoroughly soaked man almost knocked Grace over.

“I am so sorry,” the priest apologized. “I was just trying to get out of the rain as fast as possible. It’s coming down like cats and demons out there!”

Grace’s face immediately reddened.

Cecil knew she felt instantly embarrassed. She had never been comfortable around men-of-the-cloth—or anyone donning any kind of clerical attire for that matter.

“Everything okay, Father?” Gabriel asked.

“Better now that I’m out of the rain. I tried to call the extension but no one answered.”

Gabriel shot his teenage daughter a stern look.

“I’m terribly sorry for your inconvenience. What was it you needed, Father?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any shampoo or soap in my bathroom.”

“Alice, could you get Father whatever amenities he is missing, please?”

Alice scoffed and mumbled something under her breath as she disappeared into the back room.

“We better get to our rooms,” Cecil said.

“Again I’m so sorry about running into you, dear,” the priest said to Grace.

“It’s no problem, really,” Grace replied.

“What is your name, child?” he asked.

Grace’s hesitation and the look on her face told Cecil that she had gone from feeling uncomfortable straight into feeling claustrophobic in a split second. She could never explain why to Cecil, but police officers and priests had always intimidated her the most.