UNTOUCHABLE

It’s as though he’s in mourning. It’s like he’s lost someone dear to him, like a loved one has slipped past into the next life too soon, too unexpectedly.

That is what Louis’s loneliness feels like.

Indeed, this is true heartache he’s experiencing. It has its hand wrapped around his neck. It swirls his intestines, braiding them into a contorted mess. It’s the same thing he felt thirty years ago when his wife passed on, that same echoing sense of being utterly lost within himself. And yet–this time–no one has died. Louis hasn’t lost anyone close enough to make him mourn. No, he hasn’t lost anyone at all. Not really. Not where it counts. It’s just him and these depressive episodes that leave him a mess. Louis has gotten so lonely it could kill him.

He doesn’t know exactly when it started. It snuck up on him, slinking in the shadows like a coward. It caught Louis at his most vulnerable. Grabbed ahold of him around the waist like his wife used to. It latched on when his bones grew brittle and his red hair turned gray. His loneliness knew to make its appearance when Louis had lost his youth. He’s old now. He can’t leave the borders of his home to find solace or make relationships.

Louis is alone.

He is trapped in the same five rooms fading away just as quickly as he is. It should be expected that loneliness is foul and cheating, that it would make no exceptions for the elderly. Still, Louis can’t believe his emotions could be so cruel. Because as time drags on, as he sits in his desolate silence and watches the muted television screen with a gaze gone fuzzy, Louis finds himself thinking of her.

* * *

Imogene never paid any mind to traditional family dynamics. She never cared for them, and Louis didn’t either despite the times they lived in. She always said being a housewife would make her feel tethered. With her mother’s passing, Imogene had to care for her father and younger siblings before heading off on her own. She already knew what it felt like to be a parent, and Imogene was ready to get on with her life. A seemingly impossible feat for a woman in the 1930s, but Louis loved that dream. It never riled conflict. Not once.

Louis loved listening to Imogene’s rants at the beginning of their relationship. He loved how passionate she was. She had this tendency to talk with her hands swinging out in front of her. Sometimes, Imogene would send them knocking into things, so immersed in conversation, she forgot about her surroundings. There was a spark in her Louis always wanted to grasp onto, and soon after they started courting, he became proud of her energy and doctrines. Louis truly believed she could make some change in their tiny world.

That pride continued for a time after they married.

“Hey, Lu,” Imogene had said, poking Louis’s shoulder.

He jolted from his book, dropped it limply in his hand as he looked up, eyes wide.

The wind smelled like spring and oncoming rain, but the sun was still dazzling, lighting Imogene’s hair into gold curls.

“Look here for me, Lu.” Imogene smiled as she lifted the camera and snapped a few quick shots before Louis had the chance to turn.

He felt heat spread across his cheeks. “Stop, Gigi. I don’t want to be in any pictures.” His glasses slipped down his nose, and the cup of ice tea rattled from the side table when he reached forward to grab the camera.

She swiped away. “Oh, come on, it’d be such a waste not to with you looking like that. It’s the first time you’ve showered in days. I have to capture the moment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re so handsome you make me sick. Now sit still. It’ll only take a moment-”

He reached for her again, ears burning, but she twisted off the porch. Her skirts billowed around her knees, looking like a pair of fluttering hummingbird wings. Her laugh made a flock of crows take flight from where they were perched in the vegetable garden.

She turned back to face him just as Louis stood from the rocking chair. “Smile for me, Lu.”

Snap. Snap.

“Imogene–”

“You’re not smiling.” She laughed, the sound catching in her throat. “One picture won’t kill you, will it?”

Louis’s heart strummed, and sweat licked his neck. “You’ve already got your picture.”

He chased after her, and she skipped out of his reach.

“I’ve got to make sure it’s a good one,” she said.

The two of them worked a dance through their yard. Leaping with bare feet, they pushed and retreated from each other. Freshly shaved grass stuck to their heels and ankles. It was as though they were a pair of children playing tag. The tips of his fingers would brush her arms, and she’d somehow duck back fast enough to escape him.

“Come on, Lu. Have a photoshoot with me. I’ll even dress up all pretty and let you take a few-”

Imogene squealed when Louis caught her around the waist. A smile of his own split his face. She struggled to dart away from his grasp. The button of the camera, locked under her finger, sent off a flurry of shutters.

Their chase came to a calm, leaving Imogene and Louis breathless with short, hacking laughs. They swayed back and forth for a moment.

“Imogene Clive, you cause me nothing but grief.” Louis said it with a huff pressed into her hair. She smelled of ink and something like hickory.

She craned her neck back to get a better look at him. Her dark eyes were gleaming. “You poor thing. What distress I must have put you through.”

He nuzzled her further. “You know I don’t like being in front of the camera.”

The smell of rain grew more pungent. The storm would begin soon.

“But I like taking your picture. You always look so serene. It’s as though you’re untouchable through the lens.”

* * *

And untouchable Louis really is now. So untouchable, he’s practically left for dead.

Louis gurgles a cough.

In the beginning, he and Imogene really did love each other. He wouldn’t believe anything otherwise. It happened all on its own, really, the act of falling out of that love. It was outside of their control. Before they knew it, ten years had passed, and they no longer found it within themselves to bother. They had fallen out of their love like a pebble sinking to the bottom of a clouded lake. It started slow, timid. It arrived with the same gradual embrace loneliness did. When they realized what was happening, it was too late.

Louis flicks through the television channels with shaking fingers. The volume is turned off, so all he sees is incoherent blurs darting across the screen. His ears ring. His tea sits on the table next to him, untouched. Alex, Louis’s caregiver, left three hours ago after cleaning and making the drink for him. Louis never even took a sip. He didn’t realize it was there on the side table, and now it’s gone cold.

* * *

Louis and Imogene started running their town’s newspaper together after they got married. Mended Mornings. That’s what they called it. Their columns and stories would scavenge the day and keep the public in the know. With the war raging overseas, their small town needed every source of information they could get. Too often news and talk on the radio couldn’t be trusted. Mended Mornings would change that.

However, long nights of editing and writing articles on the progression of the second World War began taking a toll on Louis and Imogene.

It was eight years into their marriage that Imogene arrived home late one evening. It wasn’t the first time. In fact, this had been the third occurrence that week.

Louis stepped out of the kitchen, wiping his hands with a cloth. His glasses were fogged from checking on the oven. He watched as his wife slipped off her shoes. Her hair was frizzy, and her dress–swathed in business blue–was wrinkled after a full day of work. She leaned under the weight of her briefcase, visibly bulging with the volume of papers she had stuffed in there.

“Are you hungry?” Louis asked. “I made a casserole. It should be ready in a couple of minutes.”

Imogene managed a smile, but it collapsed in on itself a moment later. “That sounds great.” She greeted him at the entrance of the kitchen, stopping to inspect the room. The wallpaper was peeling back, yellowing with cigarette smoke. The hanging photos did nothing to conceal it and Imogene frowned at the staining color. The smell of tobacco clung to the air as though it had settled in and claimed their house as its own.

Louis caught her expression and latched onto her hand.

She turned to him, face softening. She leaned her head against his shoulder, nestling him. He kneaded her neck, working at the knots. They stayed like that for a moment, breathing each other in, grappling at the feeling of warmth and reassurance. It had been so long since they had so much as hooked arms.

The stove beeped. Imogene pulled away first.

“I’ll make some greens.”

Louis nodded, smiling. “I went to the market today after my shift, so they’ll be fresh.”

Imogene hummed, going to wash her hands.

Louis pulled the casserole out of the oven before lighting his cigarette. It was his fourth that evening. The black tray was already full of wispy gray dust. The snap of the lighter made Imogene’s back itch.

Louis sucked at the stick, eyes falling closed. He exhaled.

Imogene watched as the smoke reached out to join their walls.

* * *

Night has fallen outside, but Louis doesn’t go to bed. He sits in the recliner, mouth slightly ajar.

It’s been decades since he quit, but he suddenly finds himself wishing for a light.

Some new cartoons ramble mutely on the television. The browned walls have become even more suffocating with the onslaught of darkness.

Louis is tired. He is so damn tired and in need of a release. Death could do it just as well for him, but what he really wants right now is for his knees to start working. Maybe then, if he could stand from the chair–get off his ass–he could get to his car. Then he could buy a pack of cigarettes. Louis is struggling to breathe. And perhaps, he thinks, perhaps a smoke will help. Anything for that release.

If only she could see him now. If only she could see how far he’s fallen. What would Imogene think if she knew he would crawl on his stomach for a cigarette if he could?

Louis almost smiles something raw and painful at the thought.

Because, of course, she wouldn’t have cared. She wouldn’t have thought anything at all.

* * *

It would have been easier if what they came to feel for each other was hatred. Easier if Louis was unfaithful or if Imogene had taken to drinking. Perhaps then—if they felt a speck of concern, felt anything at all—they could have helped each other. Maybe then they could have fixed whatever their relationship had become, could have known what exactly caused the conflict.

But they didn’t.

Louis and Imogene came to feel absolutely nothing. They never even fought, not once. They didn’t try to solve anything some ten years into their marriage because they simply didn’t have a care.

“How’s the article coming?” Louis asked one winter morning.

It was colder than any winter before it, yet they never lit a fire in the hearth.

Imogene hummed from her position at the dining table.

Louis was sitting across from her. He had thought about reaching out and taking her hand, thought about how she might react if he did. He wondered if her warmth would wake him up again. But he knew even then their hands would just be limp, unmoving in the other.

“I’ll have it submitted tomorrow,” she said.

Her features were growing more and more hollow as the days passed. Sometimes, it took her longer to reply, too. It was like they were living life in a pool of cooled syrup.

“That’s fine. Just leave it on my desk.”

Silence had followed. It’s all that had ever come to sit between the two of them. It hung in the air like a drapery, keeping each other at a distance. Sometimes, the silence came so strong, so thick with indifference, Louis had to play music to cover it. But, then followed her singing. It was something he cherished at first but soon found it too to be empty. Meaningless. Cold.

Days and weeks would pass. Soon, they stopped telling each other where they were and what plans they were making. Occasionally, Louis would spend entire nights away from the house, wandering the streets, sucking at his cigarettes. He would watch cars pass by and think up stories of the people inside. He did anything to escape.

And Imogene never asked him where he went on those nights. Never once did he see a flicker of worry or curiosity.

Before long, Louis and Imogene hardly spoke at all.

That sensation of uncaring or emptiness Louis felt when he looked at her hurt worse than heartbreak. Some evenings, while they rested turned away from each other in bed, he fumbled deep inside himself. He conjured her face—her blank stare—and dug and dug and dug, searching for warmth, searching for something, for anything. He tore at that pit, settled ragged in his gut, and shredded his insides to pieces until his conscience was left a bloody mess because there was nothing. He was numb to her. No flutter. No sense of affection. Just…detachment.

It was as though their love had turned lukewarm. They knew everything about each other, and yet they also knew nothing. They had become acquaintances.

And even then, Louis couldn’t seem to mind. What was the point?

Eventually, Imogene stopped taking pictures. She stopped doing anything at all.

* * *

“You need to eat, Louis.”

The old man barely manages to remove himself from the television screen.

Alex crosses his arms over a broad chest. “I mean it, Lu. I won’t be fighting you on this today.”

Something flickers in Louis’s lungs. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry?”

But the spark is gone. Louis is already looking back at the muted children’s show.

Alex doesn’t speak for a moment before clearing his throat. “Would you like me to heat up the food again? Just to make sure it’s warm?”

Louis muddles a nod.

He doesn’t care anymore. He hasn’t in a long time.

* * *

It turned out she was sick. Sick with something that ate away at her flesh until she was nothing but bones, wasting away as their love had twenty years before.

And Louis hadn’t noticed. A part of him hates himself for it, loathes himself. Because, of course, he was to blame for what happened. Even if Imogene had covered her thinness with layers of clothes and hid her frailty through sheer acts of will, anyone else would have picked up on something. Despite their indifference to each other, he should have known.

She was sick, so sick it took her away, and yet she never spoke a word of it until the illness reached a point where there wasn’t anything they could do. There wasn’t anything Louis could do. Not as Imogene had said it over breakfast one morning like they were discussing what vegetables they should plant next season.

She was picking at her food, hadn't mustered a bite.

Normally, it was something Louis would have ignored. If she didn’t want to eat, so be it. But that day, there was a pull in his chest. A rope was wrapped around his spine, urging him to speak. “Do you want to eat something else?”

She shook her head, face drawn and facing the eggs.

“What is it?” There was a tremor in his voice when he asked, and perhaps that’s what made her finally tell him.

“I don’t think…I’m doing okay.” That was all she had said, but it was enough. Even then, her expression was vacant.

It had been so long since she had last smiled. So long since either of them had laughed, at least to each other. And at the time, Louis had thought she meant with them, that she wanted more space than she already had. He couldn’t believe it. The entire world was practically between them, after all.

But then Imogene said she needed the doctor. She needed the hospital.

Of course, he took her. Louis brought her before washing the dishes, left their plates on the table, and nearly carried her to the car. He held onto her when they were told the news. It was the first time he’d touched his wife in months, and yet he knew then that she was slipping away. She was slipping away faster than before, and he couldn’t even find it within himself to cry.

She couldn’t either.

They were as numb as they always were. It hadn’t felt real.

She denied medication. Louis hadn’t done anything to stop her. He didn’t urge her to go through treatment, anything to give her more time. Never once had he forced her into anything before, and he wouldn’t then, even when it counted the most.

The two of them didn’t even speak of her condition once they left the hospital. They carried on. Their fight left them both behind.

And it was a month later that Imogene left Louis behind altogether.

Only then did he finally manage to feel something again.

* * *

It was with Imogene’s passing that Louis mourned.

The shock of the emotion had moved him immobile, broken with distress for months. He didn’t leave his bed until his niece came knocking. He didn’t eat until food was forced down his throat. He couldn’t sleep, because sleep brought memories, and the memories carried her with them. And seeing her face, seeing Imogene as she was the day she died, he couldn’t handle it.

So he refused to fall into slumber, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

Louis had never felt loss before. He never knew the sorrow, never imagined it could be so great. He mourned for someone he no longer knew. He mourned her until there was nothing left of himself. And this feeling was brought on by the realization that Louis had left her alone. Imogene must have been so, so lonely, yet she didn’t trust Louis enough to tell him sooner. She felt that she couldn’t rely on him.

In return for it, loneliness consumed him too.

And their home—his home now—it had always been quiet, just not like this. Before, she was there. Even when they didn’t talk, he could hear her steps. He could hear her breathing and tranquil singing. He could feel and know her presence the same way he knew to blink.

She was no longer there. The house had never felt so large.

It was two years later that Louis managed to get ahold of his bearings enough to stop smoking. He stopped smoking, and the Mended Mornings newspaper followed soon after. Everything involved with Imogene—whether it was shared with love or disdain—disappeared with her.

But that left Louis with nothing but the loneliness. It stuck with him, kept to his side, filling her role instead.

Louis’s hands have always had a slight shake, but it grew even more so with his age. Some days, the trembling builds so much he can’t hold the remote. Today at least, he is able to lift the cigarette to his chapped lips despite the tremors.

Alex bought the old man a pack earlier per Louis’s request. His eyes are already closed when he inhales the smoke into his lungs.

It used to scare her when she saw how much he clutched to the feeling smoking brought.

The television remains on mute. Always on mute. The house was to be kept in silence.

He releases his puff, coughing. His aged body doesn’t take to smoking like it used to. Still, he feels instant relief. Louis cracks his eyes open, skimming over a tall shadow, and looks at the picture framed over the mantle. He doesn’t know why he seeks it out now. The only reason he kept it up all this time was because of her.

It’s of a man with red hair crazed around his ears, half hunched over a book, and looking at the person behind the camera. Louis really didn’t like having his photo taken. But Imogene, she fawned over it at the time. She said it made him look untouchable.

Louis takes another drag of his cigarette. He lets the smoke go to join the brown walls.

Maybe he won’t be so untouchable for much longer.

He can see her standing at the entrance of the kitchen. She appeared sometime after Alex left. She hasn’t moved, just been watching him, eyes soft for the first time in decades. He doesn’t want to look at her, doesn’t want to see it’s his imagination and make her disappear.

He inhales the smoke, taps the stick to make the ashes fall into the matted carpet.

A second set of fingers grab the cigarette and takes it away from him.

Louis looks, finally looks at his wife.

She’s smiling, young and beautiful like she always was in the beginning before the sickness hollowed her out.

A noise escapes him, weak, like a scuttling mouse.

Louis doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. He’s tired of the silence. And when he looks at her, he feels warm again—alive even. He reaches his wrinkled arms out. For years Louis has been deprived of the feel of her, and now he craves her comfort as much as he craves his cigarettes.

Imogene beckons Louis, wrapping herself around him.

And the loneliness fades into nothing.