"Twenty-nine days into their marriage, Martin and Margot still hadn’t had sex, hadn’t
consummated their union.
The problem began during the wedding.
As she squeezed the ring onto Martin’s finger, Margot noticed his flesh contort—suck itself to the bone—to accommodate the jewelry. She saw his veins bulge and twist, sending purple ribbons of blood into his hand and wrist. While the minister spoke about love and her mother wept softly from the first row, Margot became fixated on Martin’s bulbous, somehow
too alive left arm.
You may kiss the bride and she let him, but found herself unable to ignore the blue veins beneath Martin’s eyes. They seemed to be moving. Well, they were. And his lips were just fat, encased in thin red skin.
Margot loved Martin and Martin loved Margot. He was handsome, loving and smart. There was nothing wrong between them. That evening while they got undressed she wondered what had happened. Maybe something about the light that day, some unknown element of New England sun had pierced the agreement we all make with each other, to ignore the truth of what lives inside our bodies. We tan and moisturize and decorate with coloured powders something truly gruesome. Then, stop thinking about it! But she couldn’t. A bell she couldn’t unring had been rung.
They tried, lazily, but were both tired. While he was on top of her, Margot realized for the first time that she could see Martin's heart pumping against the tight casing of his chest. A quick, gentle tap from inside the body, rhythmically asserting itself between two ribs. They fell asleep embracing. In the morning it happened again. Two fat veins on Martin’s pelvis were practically screaming in Margot’s face. She apologized and said she needed to work. Martin knew she had to write a press release for an artist’s show during their honeymoon. No rest for the unprivileged they laughed, but it was a brittle, exhausted laugh.
The question of whether a romantic press release was corny had crossed Margot’s mind. Martin said no, nothing’s corny so long as it’s real. She wrote all but the last paragraph, and found herself stuck there. Their time away was happy, intimate too, but neither acknowledged their chasteness. Martin often, somewhat embarrassingly, quoted his uncle when a situation warranted it. “You know when the soup’s ready? When the soup’s ready.” Margot quoted Martin to himself, and he understood.
Back home and on day thirty-one, it changed.
They were having a shower together after yoga. Martin lathered his chest with soap and Margot noticed the latticework of blue and red beneath the foam and hair. This was the heart, where love is said to live. She loved Martin and knew he loved her. What had for four weeks been alarming became appealing. This was the machinery, gruesome or not, that kept her husband alive. The tubes and bags and tissue that composed Martin allowed him to work, to rub her shoulders and make her dinner. He was a great listener, which she sadly found rare. Margot talked to him about the press release, told him what she was struggling with. She watched him listen, watched his eyes match hers, eyes streaked with red and blue, and she loved him. He hadn’t once suggested something was wrong, but she knew he must’ve been concerned.
Margot took Martin’s hand, a strange moving shape that matched her own, and led him to bed. Afterwards, she finished the press release.
Chowdhury’s paintings remind us of the fleeting nature of both love and life. Exquisitely rendered, intimate paintings of love, birth and decay, rather than glossing over the source of their impermanence turn that impermanence into beautiful, inescapable patterns."
Brad Phillips, August 2023
