‘The Reds and the Golds’

Photographer Maithili Rajput is a South Asian interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, performance, and video. Her practice investigates endurance, vulnerability, and the tensions that emerge when bodies confront restrictive or resistant structures. Rajput earned her MFA in Sculpture from Boston University and her BFA in Painting and Sculpture from Ohio Wesleyan University. She has exhibited internationally, including in Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, and India.

The Reds and the Golds

Most couples have some supposed golden day or days at which they look back fondly.

Joe remembered the perfect day he spent with Catherine. Autumn had just set in and the cooler

temperatures felt like bliss against his skin after the oppressive humidity of a Southern summer.

For the first time the promise of a coming frost hung in the air, even if only a pledge for the

future. She was waiting for him in her apartment with the sliding glass door open, and the cool,

soothing wind drifted into the living room. Whatever temperature this is, Joe thought, I want it to

be precisely this against my skin forever. “Clair de lune” was playing somewhere in the

apartment and Debussy had never sounded so appropriate. Catherine had been collecting leaves

from the trees outside the apartment. “I was looking for the perfect Sweetgum leaf for you,” she

told him, since he had mentioned he loved their autumn colors and rigid points. “Vermillion,”

she called the color of the one she had found. He maintained Sweetgum trees were his favorites,

at least if you picked favorite trees based on their autumn splendor. They can be both red and

gold in the same leaf, Joe explained.

“The reds and the golds of autumn will always be yours,” Joe told her.

Catherine had been wearing nothing but a pink T-shirt and Joe hadn’t noticed at first

since she was sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her. When he realized, they made

love. She wept afterwards and Joe held her and kissed the tears from her eyes.

“What’s the matter, my sweet love?” Joe asked. She responded well when he called her

his sweet love, though the words still felt too syrupy coming out of his mouth. Whatever works,

he told himself.

“It’s just that this can’t last,” she answered.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m married,” she told him, “and you’re going to get tired of waiting around for

me. You’re going to choose one of the pretty younger girls that bat their eyes at you, some petite

blonde who hasn’t yet pushed out a baby, someone who can give you everything you want and

live in the farmhouse with you.”

I don’t think that’s the reason it won’t last, Joe wanted to say, but I’m not about to agree

with you that it won’t, and therefore ruin the moment. “That will never happen,” Joe assured her.

“I will never grow tired of you. How could I, my sweet love?”

Oh, but I will, Joe knew. We will have many days like this, perfect and unforgettable and

everything we always wanted. They will be everything you are expected to cherish, at least based

on the modern novels of love. Or at least they will feel perfect in the moment because of the rose

prism through which we always look when we are first in love. And then life will happen and we

will spend our time wishing for another day like those to come along. But it won’t, because there

never were days like that, not outside of our duplicitous memories. And then we will wonder

why and each blame the other for our vexations. The only thing inevitable is entropy. Everything

is on a path to its end and all we can do is enjoy the meantimes, fewer and farther between while

the glorious past feels more impossible. Even the reds and the golds of autumn lose the meaning

we assign them.

But what if they don’t, Joe wondered. What if just for once in this world that’s falling

apart faster than it can regenerate itself, in this disillusioned existence that loses its luster faster

than we can repaint it with shiny tones, what if just once something lasts forever? Even the stars

collide and one day the universe might shrink up to nothing again, but what if just once

something survived the expansion and contraction and two pieces of stardust stayed together

forever, clinging to each other magnetically against all hope and odds, and what if those pieces

were us? Something must surely be at the hard core of the universe, and what if it’s love?

Well, it won’t be this love. Joe brought himself back to reality. This is a beautiful

moment, and maybe even unlike all but a handful before, but there were cracks in this long

before I ever looked close enough to see the shine was only a glow against its surface from

somewhere else. As much as I cherish these moments, and as perfect as I say they are when I talk

about them with you, they don’t feel perfect to me. Something has always been missing. Hell,

maybe it is the fact it’s an affair. But more likely it’s the fact that nothing about you feels like it

will hold itself together under the surface. It always feels like you are one step away from

exploding and I could spend the rest of my life putting you back together again, and that is

something I would rather not spend my lifetime doing. I would rather give my pearls to

something else. But maybe, Joe thought, if I did spend this lifetime doing that, it could last and

the reds and the golds would always shine.

George Uriah's short stories have been published or accepted for publication in The Bookends Review, 300 Days of Sun, Bare Hill Review, Timber Creek Review, Thin Air Magazine, Line of Advance, SHIFT, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and the Southeast Missouri State University Press. His education includes an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s from the University of Tennessee.