FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #9

It was the thing he'd always loved about her. Her left eye. That gorgeous blue left eye that was so different from the chocolate brown one on the right. He’d loved them both, really. But now, it was all gone, and he didn’t know how he felt. 

You can never see the end at the beginning. He certainly couldn’t. He knew when it had started, and now he knew the conclusion, but how could they ever have become connected?

 

“I want to fix it,” she said. He had walked into the bathroom to discover Jane, his wife of two years, staring at herself in the mirror. At her eyes, specifically. Her incredibly special heterochromatic eyes. 

“Don’t be dumb,” he said, wrapping his arms lovingly around her shoulders. This wasn’t a new idea. She brought this up at least once every two months. It was just another ledge he had to talk her down from. 

“I’m serious this time.”

“You say that every time, too.”

“I know, but now I really mean it.”

“Of course you do.” He kissed her on the cheek and turned to leave.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

He turned once again and gazed at her reflection which was gazing at him. “All right, what happened today?”

“Huh?”

“Usually when you start talking about this it’s because you had a bad day. So spill. Did something go wrong at work? Was the manager on your case again?”

She simply gaped at him for a few seconds, then blurted out, “No! It’s nothing like that. This is something I’m really thinking about. Stop trying to dissect me.” She folded her arms and let her gaze drop to the sink drain. 

He only had to wait. Jane wasn’t good at keeping secrets.

She sighed. “I had a checkup today,” she began, gently running her finger along the rim of the sink. 

“Are you healthy?” he quipped.

“Just let me finish,” she said with exasperation. “I was in the waiting room and the nurse came out and called my name and when I looked up, a little girl across the room saw me and said, ‘Look, Mommy! That lady looks just like Rusty!’ Rusty. A dog.” She stopped, choking a little.

“Babe,” he went to her. It had been a bad day after all.

Jane wiped away the beginnings of a tear, still focusing on the drain. “So, the nurse must have heard and said something to Doctor Peterson because at the end of the appointment he asked if I would be interested in surgery.”

“Surgery for what?”

“My eyes. To change one of the irises to match the other. They can do that now. I didn’t know that.”

He was a little astounded. She was seriously considering this.

 

“Come here,” he said, and drew her against his chest, forcing her gaze away from the sink and the mirror and welcoming the weight of her head on his shoulder. 

“Jane, you are absolutely perfect, here,” he kissed the lid of the blue eye, “here,” the brown, “and here,” her lips. She gave in and melted with him, but it didn’t last as long as he wanted. She broke away. 

“I knew you were going to say that. You’re supposed to say that. And it’s not helping.”

“Hey, if I believe you’re serious about surgery, then you have to believe that I love every inch of you and would never change anything I see. And no stupid little girl should ever make you feel bad about yourself. Do you hear me?”

She was still for a minute. Then she pushed herself back and looked at her husband, with both eyes, equally powerful.

 

“You’re right,” she said. “Of course you’re right. I’m just overreacting. Silly.”

“So, we’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“No more surgery talk?”

“No more. I’m fine.”

And he believed she was. 

 

Until three weeks later when a bill from the doctor’s office arrived. And not from the checkup. From a second appointment. One he hadn’t known she had made.

He wasn’t one to be indirect. During a lull in their conversation at dinner, he brought it up.

“Did you go to the doctor again?”

Her fork hung in midair for just a split second. She didn’t look at him. “Um, yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Well, Doctor Peterson called me saying he had some more information on that iris procedure and he wanted to know if I was still interested.” She was forcing her tone to stay casual, despite the magnitude of her words.

“But you’re not interested.”

Pause. “Right, but this is something fairly new, and I just wondered a little about how it was done.”

“But you promised you would stop thinking about this.”

A longer pause. “I know-”

“So, why did you even go when he called?” His volume was rising, he couldn’t help it.

Her eyes finally met his, the blue shocked, the brown brooding. “Genuine interest. Is that so hard to believe? This is genetic, you know,” she snapped, waving her fork at her eyes.

 

“When we have kids, what if one of them gets my heterochromia?”

“I hope they do!” he shouted.

Her eyes widened in surprise, then faded to disappointment. “No child of mine is going to go through my childhood. I decided that a long time ago. And I plan to take any chance there is.”

“No!” He couldn’t stop himself. Jane had to see sense. “You are so unique and beautiful and I want our children to be unique and beautiful, too. Why can’t you forget your past and appreciate yourself for once? See yourself the way I see you.”

“It’s not as easy as that,” she said, eyes regretful. 

He was fuming. Why was she so stubborn? Anymore acting she did on her own would surely be dangerous. He had to protect her. “I’m forbidding you.”

“What?” she half laughed.

“I forbid you from thinking or trying to do anything about your eyes ever again.”

Her eyes were skeptical.

 

“You forbid me? I understand that you’re concerned, but don’t you think you’re going overboard here?”

“No. I’m doing exactly what I need to do, as a man and as your husband. This is my right. So, you’re forbidden.”

“Honestly,” she muttered, shaking her head. Her blue eye was appalled and her brown eye was hurt as she stood up from the table and stormed upstairs.  

 

It had been a fight. A bad one. The worst since they’d been married. He gave her a day to calm down and she gave him time to think and they both tried to pretend nothing had happened. And it worked for them, perhaps longer than it should have. But he couldn’t forget, and he could tell that her eyes couldn’t either. He was always watching for signs; secrecy from the blue eye, guilt in the brown, anything. He found none, and as she remained pure, he began to hope again, to love again. He could forgive her. Of course he could.

But then she ruined it.

 

The office had held him later than usual and he knew Jane would be home already. He walked into the kitchen and she was putting away clean coffee mugs in the high cabinet, humming to herself. 

“Jane,” he said softly.

As she turned to him, it almost seemed to be in slow motion. He was suddenly swept over by a wave of foreboding. Something was wrong. He focused on his wife’s face, still turning to him. Her hair swirled past her neck revealing first the brown right eye, and then...

A second brown eye.

He couldn’t move.

“What do you think?” she asked through a small, nervous smile. “Don’t worry, it’s only a test color contact. I have a blue one, too. I’m trying them both out to see which color feels better.”

He couldn’t speak.

“I’ve been talking with my mother for a while and she’s persuaded me to go through with the surgery. She even said she would pay for it, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

He couldn’t see.

“And I know that you’re very against this,” she continued, holding up a hand, “but I really feel like this is something I just have to do. For myself. Please say you understand.” She said it all so easily, with a smile. 

“No.” It was all he could manage. He had to look away.

“No? What do you mean, no? Does it really upset you this much?”

“Take it out.”

“What? Do you realize how ridiculous-”

“Take it out!” He flew at her, grabbed her shoulders, shoved her back against the countertop. 

“I don’t-”

“Now!” he shouted over her. “This is not you!” Pointing to the impostor brown eye, the one he couldn’t read, “You are not my wife!”

She gasped. Shakily, her left hand rose and slowly peeled away the chocolate colored mask, setting the brightness of the blue free. For once, both eyes displayed the same expression, alarm. She flicked the contact lens away. “There, it’s gone. Please.”

He loosened his hands. He could fix this.

“Honestly, I don’t understand why this makes you so crazy. Can’t you see how much I want this?” she said quietly, the blue eye sorrowful, the brown eye reserved. “Sometimes I have these horrible thoughts, that the only reason you love me is because my eyes are two different colors.”

He froze.

“It isn’t, is it?” Blue eye questioning. Brown eye hopeful.

There was nothing to say.

“Is it?” Blue eye piercing, brown eye terrified.

But she already knew. 

“Oh, god,” she choked out, both eyes filling with tears. 

He watched her flee upstairs. Everything was being revealed. 

Not a minute later, he opened the door to their bedroom to see her feverishly piling clothes into a suitcase. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” she babbled, frenzied and distracted. “My mother and I haven’t only been talking about surgery, we’ve been talking about you, too. I don’t know what’s happened to you. You look at me like I’m some prize piece of art in your collection, and then the way you talk about my heterochromia? I don’t know what’s going on but I need to-”

“You need to stop and you need to listen to me,” he said cooly. 

Blue eye steeled. Brown eye despairing.

“Yes, it has always been about your eyes. Everything I’ve ever said about them is true. Their beauty is so unique among a trait that is incredibly rare, and that is why I wanted you. That is what I love. And I thought you could see that beauty in yourself. But I was wrong.”

Apprehensive. Scared.

“You kept trying to change, no matter what I did, and that can’t happen. I need you and appreciate you in a way that no one else can, or ever will. That’s what you need.”

Loathing. Hate. “That’s not true.”

“It is. You’ve told me all of your stories. Have I ever called you Two Tone? Witch Eyes? Compared you to a dog? No. I am the one who wants you while the rest of the world can’t look at you.”

Anguish. Pain. “Stop it!”

“I’m only telling you the truth. Don’t you want to hear it?”

Panic. Panic. “No. I want to leave.”

He had moved close to her without realizing it. 

“It’s too late. These are mine forever.” He leaned in and kissed the woman, right in the middle of his two loves.

“Ced-,” she gasped, and then finally exhaled, “Cedlio.”

He leaned back.

The blue eye was dead. The brown eye was empty.

And the only color he saw now was red.

 

The jigsaw puzzle is supposed to get easier towards the end. The holes become more obvious. The pieces get smaller. But that was just the trouble. The details of the story were too small for him to remember. When had he grabbed the knife? In the kitchen? Who had called the police? What had happened between that moment and now? None of it was clear. It was hard to see anything these days. No crystalline blue. No soul-warming brown. Only the bland, gray bricks and bars around him. Nothing to see, and nothing to love. 

back to Contest #9