Time in a Bottle

TIME IN A BOTTLE

I have been here only a short time, but the days have blurred into night, in a rhythm matched by the rolling swells of the sea. For now my journey is a slow one with no clear end in sight. If I could laugh I would,
or at least chuckle at the irony of my plight. I am so very far from my former position in the Madison's kitchen. For  countless years I  sat on my shelf, above the cupboard, dreaming, if bottles can dream. of taking a journey to see the world. Now I have my wish.

Until now my world had been a narrow view of the Madison's kitchen, an old -fashioned kitchen found in the many older cottages sprawled along the beach. Many of the neighboring cottages had long since sold and been replaced by modern beach houses. My owners resisted the lure of the new and modern and continued to live in the old cottage,  unchanged since their wedding so many years ago.

I joined Sarah and Arthur on  their wedding day. I was one of many gifts presented to the new couple. Cousin Clare, always a romantic, had purchased me from a choice of fine wines, and in her elegant calligraphy had written on my label “To Arthur and Sarah. May you Celebrate your Love Forever”.  If they had planned a reception they may have opened me that day and my story would be over. But it was wartime and there was no reception,  just a quick, small ceremony with Sarah in her handmade gown, fashioned from an almost-new white bed sheet.

I spent a few years packed away in a box along with other wedding gifts, in a small apartment. We were all forgotten until Arthur returned from the war, unscathed, and  finally ready to find his bride a real home. On the day he carried her over the threshold,  I and many other wedding gifts found our places in the little cottage. Sarah found me in a our cardboard box with the words“Wedding Stuff” scrawled on the outside.  Arthur wanted to open me to celebrate their first day in their new home but Sarah said “No. lets wait”, and put me up on my shelf above the cupboard. She had another plan for me.

Her plan  did not include me casting me adrift in the open sea---that came much later.  Because I was a wedding gift, Sarah decided I should be opened and enjoyed on their wedding anniversary. She of course kept this a secret from Arthur. Their anniversary day I watched her cooking dinner in her best dress and heels, her hair freshly set, nails perfect and polished  She used the money she and Arthur kept in a coffee can in the cupboard below me. She put the money in her purse, left the cottage early that day, and returned with groceries and her new hairdo, nails, and clothes. When Arthur arrived home from work, Sarah had moved me onto the dining room table, Soft music played on the record player.

No anniversary toast happened as Arthur found Sarah so beautiful that dinner ended early.  Left alone, I had no view
beyond the dining room, but I suspected they had gone to the bedroom. I sat waiting, but they
never returned that night.

In the morning Sarah returned me to my shelf in the kitchen “'Maybe next year”she said softly , and I thought I saw a faint smile and a blush on her cheeks.

Before their next anniversary, someone new came to live in our cottage.  I saw little of Sarah for many months except when she would stand at the stove sterilizing nipples or cooking Arthur dinner. Sarah was so worn out from the new arrival that she completely forgot me and their anniversary, and I remained on the shelf that year. 

Soon,  Baby Emma had a highchair in the kitchen, and Sarah would talk softly to her as she did her housework.  More anniversaries led to  more babies as the  family grew. Each year, Sarah and Arthur planned to open me, and it finally became a family joke, the kind that no one else understands when told at family gatherings. Many nights, after the children were asleep,  I would see Arther sneak up behind Sarah and whisper “Sarah, lets have that wine now” and they would both giggle and leave the kitchen without a second glance at me. I saw so much life in that kitchen.

I also saw sadness---the sadness that is an inevitable counterbalance to the happiness of life. I saw Sarah's tears as her each of her babies grew and left the cottage, .and the house grew quieter with each departure. Finally it was just Sarah and Arthur again, both grayer and  heavier, many years of childrearing worm into their faces. Except for the physical changes, life was much as it was before and I still went unopened at each anniversary. There were some that were celebrated away from the cottage, Sarah and Arthur spent much more time away and the she marked the special days with red in the calendar that hung by the phone, a new .phone an answering machine.  I also heard life in he kitchen. “Happy Birthday Nana” a chorus of childlike voices singing off key and very loudly on the answering machine. Each summer, the house would grow noisy again, ad the babies would return, this time with babies of their own.

Arthur no longer worked and he and Sarah would leave the cottage to walk on the beach every day. I saw Sarah reading the labels on the food boxes as she prepared meals for Arthur, meals that were now “low-fat” and accompanied by a small bottle of medicine that Arthur took every morning. Marked in red,  physician appointments now dotted the calendar.  I heard them argue about the food, apparently Arthur didn't like the changes is his diet. They always kissed and made up, and they would joke about opening me. Then they were off to the bedroom.

One day it was only Sarah, as it had been when she lived alone in that tiny apartment while Arthur was away at war. I could not see in the war days, but I often heard Sarah crying with worry when too long had passed without a letter.. She cried now too,  not with tears of worry over potential loss, but deep uncontrollable sobbing. People came and went from the kitchen that day, dressed in black and carrying casseroles which they left on the stove..

More years passed with just Sarah and I in the kitchen. I saw her preparing meals as she used too, but many more came from a box. “Its just so hard to cook for one!” she would tell her daughter Emma on the phone and then agreed to try harder. Every day she would go down to the beach and walk, just as she had done with Arthur. Each year,on their anniversary she would  bring me to the dining room and put me on the table, candles lit and and running her finger over my label, softly reading Claire's inscription out loud. Sometimes she would blush and laugh, and then cry. She did it like this each year. But this year, the year I went to the sea, it was different.

I remember the events  clearly, as if  they were permanently etched in my glass. The phone rang. Sarah stood and watched it ring, She finally answered it, btinging the receiver slowly to her ear like a loaded  gun. Then she cried.

I heard the word “cancer” many times over the next few months and I saw Sarah slowly lose weight and her hair thinned and finally fell out. She still went for her walks on the beach but took longer to return. There were unreturned messages on the machine from a person named “Hospice”,  I heard her talk to Emma and plans were made for her to come and stay with Sarah.

The morning I went to sea was the day of the next anniversary, Sarah appeared in the kitchen much earlier than usual. She reached for the coffee can on the shelf where she still kept her emergency money. She put the money in her purse and left.

Since that phone call so many months ago delivering her fate, Sarah had dressed for comfort-in baggy jeans and sweatshirts which accented her skeletal frame. Now she returned wearing a  new dress which hugged her bones, nylons, and high heels, with a matching hat covering her bald head. Her nails were painted red and were long and smooth.

Sarah took me down from my shelf . I  expected our usual anniversary dinner but I saw she had prepared  no dinner that night. Instead  she had placed a teakettle on the stove that was now whistling notice that its steam was ready. She carried me over to t he stove and held me so my label was directly in the path of the escaping steam. After a few minutes in this steam bath, she carefully peeled off the label that had been my only adornment for 40 years.

Sarah took me into the dinning room, holding my label carefully by the edge.. It had faded and browned  like the wrinkled, parchment skin of her hands. She placed me on the table, and laid the label next to me. As she sat down, I heard soft music, just as she played during so many other dinners with Arthur. She had also placed several brown containers of medicine on the table and she opened each container and removed several pills.

She had a corkscrew in her hand. 'Well Arthur, lets have that wine now” and she smiled through her tears. She used the corkscrew with some difficulty, my cork was old and tried to spit apart. But she finally pried it out, and air entered me for the first time.

She swallowed the pills, one at a time, each followed with two large gulps from me. I was as old and aged as she was, and it took some time for her to finish her task. When she had drank all she could she took me, back to the kitchen, By then she was staggering and almost dropped me. She emptied the last few drops of wine I held into the sink,  then folded the label in half and put it inside, and pushed the remnants of the cork back in. “I am hurrying Arthur, I am!” she gasped and I almost expected to see him in the kitchen. She stumbled down the hallway, carrying me by the neck, through the house and out through th front door.

.Sarah took off her high heels and carried them in her other hand as she floundered through the sand. She made it to the edge of the shore where the tide line marked the inevitable rising of the water in a few hours. The pills and my contents had done their work, and she fell to the sand, then rolled on her back, holding me with her hands to her chest. 
.
.All breaths stopped  before the tide, she rejoined Arthur long before we were both pulled out to sea. We traveled together for only a brief moment, then Sarah sank below, as  I floated above her-- a  glass  tombstone,  bearing the epitaph of an endless love.


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