My mother was a kind, gentle woman, whose hands never hurt anyone. She had been a nurse throughout her life - that’s how she met my father, who was a successful doctor at the time. Their story unfolded in the very house she was living in, which used to belong to her parents. Their playful glances across the porch and his ridiculously common visits, their first kiss, where he met her family, her, at the east window, and him, down on the grass, while they were still a secret.
She always loved to talk about him, about how shiny her life became after she met him. Iulia, darling, he is proof love exists. I have never met someone whose soul touched mine like that. If you have a purpose in life, it should be finding that shimmer. I see God in him everyday. He truly saved me.
I always admired the devotion my mother had for my father. Him, on the other hand, wasn’t so in love. I don’t remember much of him - he died when I was young. The more I try to think of him, the more his face slips away through my memory, like sand through someone’s fingers.
My father was a sober, intellectual man whose ambition had always been science. They called him the Dove, because of his shiny white coat and because of how often he’d bring good news to his patients. His studies were, as they said, brilliant. His discoveries, rays of hope. The diamond of medicine, they said.
Even the brightest diamond has to be buried one day. His ambition, however, casted a long shadow after he died. I got into medicine - mostly because of my mother, who supported me and helped me throughout my studies and hard years of trying to make a name for myself.
Soon enough, my mother started slipping away, too. For her, death came in waves, like the sea eroding a stone wall, patient and cold. The first to go was her mind.
I always visited her, and when I did, I’d bring her a basket of peaches. That reminded her of my father, I think. That’s what she had always said.
She would smile and take them away. I felt responsible to keep this fragment of him still alive - when she’d see the peaches, her eyes would light up and her mouth would fall slightly open. Towards her end, she stopped speaking. I don’t even think she recognized me, but she remembered the peaches.
One night, I had to make my visit a little late. Double shifts had gotten the best of me, and when I arrived even the sky seemed to be cross with me, gathering clouds silently and flashing a few lights in the distance. The air carried a vast calmness, and the trees lay still as stones. I made my way through the front yard and knocked on her door, like my father had once done.
She didn’t open it. I knocked again.
Greeted with silence, I came in by myself. The house was dark and cold, like a tomb. A warm, welcoming light shone upstairs. I made my way to her bedroom, where she sat at the window, watching over the fields.
When she saw me, a flicker in her eyes made my chest tighten. She remembers me.
‘Iulia, is that you?’
It was the first time in months to hear my name out of her mouth.
‘Yeah, mom, it’s me. I’m here.’
A few tears gathered in my eyes, for some reason. It just felt so familiar, so intimate. Love.
She saw the peaches and looked down.
‘I, um, brought you some peaches. I know you liked them.’
She sighed. Her trembling hands took the basket and placed them in the corner of the room.
The house had this sweet smell, of summer.
‘I miss you, mom.’
‘I know.’
That night, I sat next to her and we talked like we had never talked before. As the storm raged around us, I felt so safe with her, and the basket of peaches sat in a corner and, somehow, made me think my dad was in the house with us. In the morning, when I left, she told me one last thing.
‘Iulia, please promise me you’ll search for love.’
‘Like you and dad?’
A painful expression swept over her face. Was is grief?
‘Promise me you’ll look for it.’
‘Yeah, mom, I will.’
As she turned to close the door behind her, I heard a faint whisper. ‘Do you know why he brought me peaches all the time?’
‘Why?’
‘That was his nickname for me.’
I smiled. Then, as I was walking to my car, another faint whisper.
‘Because he said I bruised like a peach.’
I stopped and turned around, but she was already gone.
She died a few days later.
Since then, an odd wave of sadness swept over me. Now, that I think of it, I remember sitting in my dad’s office. Looking over his notebooks, his beautiful cursive writing. I always wondered how similar their writings were.
How, everywhere he went, people applauded him for his marvelous work.
His work.
The love she had for him, and the love he had for science.
And the terrible accident that cut his life short.
Maybe I was thinking too much into it. Though, I felt as if my world had shattered before my eyes. The ideal love, the bliss I had looked up to, had been an illusion kept up by a mother who wanted to bring up her child in a different world? Did she really suffer? There was no doubt in how much she loved him, but she suffered, nonetheless.
I could not bear to revisit that house, because I felt afraid I’d discover my doubts were true.
However, a few months passed and May brought me there.
The house smelled sweet. I went through all the rooms, my childhood memories. The sweet, sticky smell brought me to the basement.
Weird, I don’t remember the last time I went in there.
Down the stairs, the smell became so strong it almost made me gag.
Sweetness.
The room was pitch black. Aside from the darkness, I sensed something else.
Movement.
As my eyes adjusted and my fear began creeping in, I made out something laying, in the dark. It was a huge shape, something like a big pile. Was it moving?
Panic settled in and I frantically searched for the light switch.
As the room exploded with light, suddenly thousands of flies blocked my vision. They were everywhere: in my eyes, mouth, nose, I screamed and gagged as the vile bastards flew around, smelling of decay and rot.
After I got rid of them, I looked down, only to stare in disgust at dozens of baskets with rotten, decaying peaches. Piles and piles of fruit melting away, of all colors, some white from the mold, some black, as if eaten from the inside. The flies went in an out, in an out, like worms from a decaying corpse, and the pile itself seemed to move, an abominable monster. Everywhere I looked, peaches.
I took a few steps back and stepped on soft matter, which made me gag.
However, I could not leave. I only sat and stared in disbelief.
Only what I saw next broke my trance. I ran straight out and puked in the bushes nearby, then locked up that inferno of a house and drove away without saying a word.
And I’ve been silent ever since.
Silence is what saves me. I am afraid that, if I ever speak, I won’t stop.
I’ll tell them about the rot. The flies. The mold. Most importantly, I’ll tell them about the hollow orbs that stared at the from the other side of the room. About the bony hand which lay next to the rotten fruit. About the dirty, ripped shirt and dried up bones. The skeleton, surrounded by his peaches, looked like a veritable king of the rot.
I’ll defend her to my grave. My mother was a kind, gentle woman, whose hands never hurt anyone.