THE WATER'S EDGE

Before, there was the career, the fame, the money, the success, the women...

Especially, the women—a restless succession of faces and bodies he could no longer clearly recall.

Since boyhood, he had dreamed of playing roles—the good guy, the bad guy, the madman, the hero, the conqueror, the dictator, the romantic, the libertine, the barbarian, the joker, the avenger, the seducer.

He had lived all of them. 

His personal life, in a way, followed a similar pattern: chaotic, full of twists and turns, a script he had written as he went along, never revising, never editing, just adding more wreckage.

His parents had always wanted a different path for him—to be a doctor like his father, but for this he had no aptitude.

His real talent was in being on stage, on screen. In inhabiting the skins of others. In forgetting himself so completely that when the curtain fell, there was nothing left but a hollowed-out man in expensive clothes.

All of his relationships ended in failure—he could never resist acting in several beds. Fidelity was never part of his vocabulary.

His two children, just as they had appeared, were gone from his life.

He hadn’t been a good father.

His daughter hated him. His son had no respect for him.

The media scandals spoke for themselves, a public record of private ruin.

These were facts, as solid and cold as the key in his hand.

Lost was how he was feeling right now, back in the house where he had been raised. His parents had passed away without ever having been proud of him.

The price of being an only child—all the expectations, the dreams, the frustrations falling on him alone.

It hurt. A dull, persistent ache...

Aaron Gerard stood on the threshold, a man fifty years old who had once made the world weep or tremble with a glance, now just a tall figure in a good coat that hung a little loose on his frame.

His hair was cut very short, streaked with grey, his weight loss—remnants of his last performance, a successful professional who had not overcome his illness.

Was that a coincidence or a warning?

He recalled the hospitals he had visited to talk to patients.

How they coped with the idea of death.

He had wanted to live his character to the full, to convey authenticity.

He had succeeded. He had been nominated for awards, and had collected a few.

The trophies gathered dust in a storage unit somewhere, along with the furniture from the marriages he had not bothered to salvage.

The irony sat in his chest like a stone.

Now there was the uncertainty. What was going to happen.

How he would live the years ahead. How his mind would react.

How his body would behave.

He felt weak already after his last medical consultation.

The doctor’s words hammered in his head, like an insistent bell, leaving him dizzy, distraught.

Those were the hardest days of his life. He couldn’t accept the diagnosis.

He still had so many things to do. He felt vigorous, alive—and the idea that his memory would one day fail him was devastating.

Why did this have to happen to him? Was it punishment for the fact that he had lived his life up to that point without restrictions, without fear of the consequences?

Punishment for the people whose feelings he had deceived, taken advantage of, wounded?

Behind him, the taxi that had brought him from the train station was already a vanishing sound, swallowed by the narrow, cobbled streets of this town he’d fled from at nineteen.

His eyes wandered over the dense, leafed hedge.

The gate was rusty as he opened it.

The unkempt lawn.

The big tree hanging over the porch—the very swing he used to love to ride on was gone.

The child he once was, gone. His children he had never brought here.

Everything could have been so different. If he had power to turn back time…

Late. Too late, like the train that had brought him back to his childhood house.

A profusion of ifs invaded his mind.

If I had been more thoughtful, more considerate?

If I had been more caring, more friendly?

If I had listened more—to the complaints, to the things I disagreed with?

If I had realised that my reasons were no better than anyone else’s?

If I had given myself over to love instead of the superficiality of desire?

If I had been better—not only on stage and in front of the cameras, but also for myself and for the others I caused to suffer?

A lump clenched in his throat and tears that were not feigned, but welled up from the depths of his soul.

There was no audience, only him and his pain.

He couldn’t have come on his own.

The doctor had been quite clear: ‘You need some company.’

Aaron could have stayed in his luxurious flat, surrounded by staff.

There would have been no problem at all, but deep down he felt a calling – perhaps his final act of defiance.

He couldn’t change the past, but he could try to look within himself for the answer to where it all began, to when he had strayed.

He entered the house, pushing open the heavy wooden door, pulling his suitcase behind him.

In the main room, the furniture was covered with white sheets, like dormant ghosts that would rise as soon as night fell—only a few hours away.

His parents’ life was preserved here, a mausoleum of their memories. Not with intention, but the way life is: full of surprises, and always defeated by death.

Their simultaneous death—a car accident, a phone call, a funeral he’d watched through dark glasses, already late for a flight to a film set.

There were hints of familiar smells—pine, washing soap, spices—soaked into the walls, mingling with mould, beeswax, and something else. Something older. Regret, perhaps. Or the scent of time itself.

The house had been empty for a few years.

He walked about the rooms, his footsteps unnaturally loud, removing the sheets.

The lounge with his father’s armchair On the sideboard, a photograph of him, eighteen, one year before leaving forever— all feral beauty in his long dark blond hair, his steel-blue eyes, a smile of perfect teeth that promised trouble, stared back at him with the cocky insolence of a stranger.

His parents’ bedroom, its window overlooking the front garden.

His old small room. The bed empty, without sheets.

The mattress bare, not waiting for anyone.

The wardrobe, its wood faded by the sun that once shone on it all afternoon.

Today was cloudy. The ashen light added to the sadness that had crept into him.

He made his way to the kitchen. The old pans, darkened by use, hung over the scratched wooden counter. The antique stove, fridge, the kettle, the sink with a pump tap.

Everything seemed stopped in time, fooling the senses—as if his mum would appear at any moment to command her kitchen, cooking something, the smell wafting outside...

He peered through the double doors to the back deck, unlocked them, turned the knob. It moaned for lack of oil. He stepped out.

The overgrown weeds did not disturb the view ahead—the old fence marking the borders of the property, blackened by time, as was the narrow wooden gate giving way to public land where a lake gleamed in the sun as it prepared to set.

As a teenager, he would swim there with other boys. The simple competition of who could reach the other side first—yet back then, it had felt momentous.

The ‘winner’ would feel, absurdly, smarter.

He had won many times. No prizes. Nothing but the jealousy and disappointment of the other boys.

How he loved to show off, especially if there were girls around—his budding muscles, his body in the process of transforming from boy to man.

The tight swimming trunks hinted at something beyond simply winning. They made him proud of himself. The generous size that nature had bestowed upon him, making the tiny fabric bulge.

Silly things. But he would give anything to go back in time. To his teenage days.

When everything had seemed possible.

Days and nights alternating in an infinite succession, without worrying about the accumulated years, without worrying if there was war in the world, if he would wake up tomorrow. The sensation that he would be young forever.

How he wished right now…

Age had brought him an appalling scenario.

What age? He felt full of vigour, but a thief had taken up residence in his mind.

It had all started with him forgetting lines—he, who had once been so good at memorising. They had thought it was fatigue. But a medical consultation and tests revealed what sounded like a death sentence, pulsing in his temples: early-onset Alzheimer’s.

He needed someone. Not a nurse, not yet.

Perhaps a keeper. A witness…

*********

Emelisse arrived three days later, recommended by the taciturn baker.

He remembered Aaron as the boy he had played football with decades ago.

‘Our town’s most famous resident,’ the baker said, with a twinge of cynicism.

They had never been real friends.

‘She moved to town a few years ago. Her mother was ill. She stayed after… well, after. She sings sometimes, at the bar on the corner. Does what she can during the day. A good woman. You should try her.’

Aaron had nodded, not yet knowing that the baker was handing him not just a housekeeper, but a lifeline.

He understood survival when he saw it.

When she came through the door that morning, Aaron found himself arrested.

He had imagined her to be an older woman, soberly dressed. Not this…

She was in her late thirties—high cheekbones, wavy brown hair framing a carved face, a full mouth that gave him a sparing smile, yet one that was bright.

Her eyes were like honey, and he felt attached to them, like a fly trapped in the sticky liquid.

They carried something else. Recognition.

Not of his fame, but of the vulnerability in his soul.

His hand trembled a little as he shook hers.

He pointed to the old sofa. She settled onto it, legs together, parallel, angled to one side, adjusting the hem of her dress as she glanced around the room—the dusty furniture, the faded wallpaper, the piano with its silent keys, the man standing before her, perhaps not realising he was still in his sleepwear— a T-shirt and knitted shorts that revealed muscles and hair.

He offered her tea, standing before her. She seemed surprised—as if the gesture did not suit him, or as if it were her role to serve, not his. After all, he was the employer, and she was the maid-to-be.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Her voice: a low, pleasant rasp.

That was their first moment. He explained his needs. She agreed to his terms.

To live in the house. To be more than a housekeeper—company, a helper in the oblivion he had chosen. Or rather, the oblivion fate had imposed upon him.

From there, he would have his own world. She would be part of it.

With a calm yet energetic manner, she gradually brought his home and life into order.

She never asked personal questions, even knowing his situation. She respected his privacy, simply waiting—in case he wanted to talk, to open the doors of his inner self.

She would watch him as he sat by the window—his well-known profile, the one she had seen on screen, the one that made her sigh. A slightly aquiline nose, a prominent chin, the Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed, stubble dark against pale skin. Rough, and attractive…

She had dreamed of him, and now he was real, she could feel him, in the way he would let his fingers brush hers every time she handed him his drink—a deliberate, lingering touch.

He would find himself watching her when she didn’t know it.  

The way the afternoon light made her hair glossy, the concentration on her face, her hands deft and sure, cutting vegetables, stirring pans or cleaning.

He would appreciate the way she laughed— a rare, pleasant sound, as if it escaped against her will.

One evening, as she set a plate of bread and a bowl of stew before him, he said, ‘You’re a beautiful woman, Emelisse.’

She paused, a flicker of amusement or wariness in her gaze.

‘That’s the second thing you’ve said tonight that sounds like a line from a play.’

‘The first?’

‘Pass the salt.’

He smiled. ‘I’m not performing.’

She looked into his eyes.

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think you are.’

That night, he lay awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

He realised he had crossed some invisible boundary—he was falling for her, with the inexorable gravity of a man who had spent his life avoiding the fall.

The women he had never was love. Desire, passion, whatever, never love.

He used them, he was aware of it, some of them deliberately, to aim high, like he would have wings everlastingly.

Why was it happening right now at this point of his life, where the future was not predictable. Well, the future never was, nonetheless, for him, it was bleak. Or at least that was how he saw it. The perspective wasn’t favourable.

He felt he’d been treated unfairly. But wasn’t that exactly how the people who’d come and gone in his life—especially the women—had felt?

In a way, he was getting a taste of his own medicine...

It terrified him. All his life, he had been the one who left.

He had left this town, left this house, left his wives, left his own past behind like a suitcase abandoned at a station.

But with Emelisse there was something he had never felt before. Not just desire. Something else. Powerful.

The realisation was so sharp, so unfamiliar, that he almost laughed aloud.

Fifty years old, his mind dissolving, and he was just learning something new— he was falling in love.

He turned off the lamp…

*********

A week later, she came up with an idea as she served his breakfast.

‘You need music,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron.

‘I listen to music sometimes.’

‘Not that. I meant live.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘We could have a sort of musical soirée.  I could bring some friends, a guitarist, a saxophonist who plays for me sometimes at a bar in town, even a pianist…’

‘I used to play piano.’ He said it more to himself than to her.

‘Oh, good… so you could play for us?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Why not?’ she insisted.

He ignored her. ‘And you’re going to sing, of course…’

She grinned, a rare flush rising to her cheeks. ‘Yes.’

He had heard her voice twice, drifting through the house, singing to herself.

It had stopped him mid-step in the hallway.

The idea of an audience, even an audience of three, made his chest tighten. But her eyes held him, steady and unafraid.

‘When?’ he asked.

‘Saturday night. If you agree…’

He nodded slowly. ‘Alright.’

That evening arrived cloudy, rain tapping against the windows like applause in advance.

Emelisse had spent the afternoon preparing the living room, lighting candles, arranging the old chairs in a small semicircle around the piano.

At six, the musicians appeared. Both were men in their sixties, wearing dark clothes as if they were a uniform. They had well-groomed moustaches and looked like twins—except that one was bald, while the other had tousled white hair still wet from the rain.

Both were clearly devoted to Emelisse, who disappeared from the room after welcoming them.

Sitting in his father’s armchair, Aaron observed them and found the thought amusing: two near-twins, so different in one small detail.

They set up the sound system and tuned their instruments, the chords tentative at first, then settling into a low, expectant pitch.

Emelisse entered. She had changed into a red dress, her hair loose around her shoulders.

She was magnificent. Aaron swallowed hard.

She approached the musicians and stood in front the microphone stand.

At her signal, the musicians began to play, and soon her voice filled the room—warm, intimate, sensual, raw.

It stirred something inside him…

While singing, she glanced at Aaron. He sat ecstatic, staring at her. She gestured with a raised hand—a discreet wave, as if moving to the melody, respecting his will, his distance, not forcing him to come closer.

Soon, she saw his foot tapping the floorboard. She smiled to herself.

Then, without warning, he left the armchair, dashed to the piano, and settled himself before it—his fingers hovering over the keys, with a frenetic energy.

To her surprise, his voice joined hers. The song was etched in his mind. He had sung it years ago for a movie. He would never call himself a singer, but he could hold a tune.

His voice was rough, untrained, yet not unpleasing.

He and Emelisse improvised a duet, their voices weaving together.

He was enjoying himself.

All his worries forgotten at that moment. There was no threat lurking in the future.

No thief in his mind. No diagnosis.

Only the present existed. That was all that mattered.

At least for the next few hours.

After the musicians were gone, Emelisse came back from the kitchen with a glass of wine and stood next to the sofa looking through the window at the darkness outside.

He was still by the piano, tickling keys at random. Then he stopped.

‘Hi, are you okay?’ he said.

She turned to him.

‘Should be me asking you.’

‘Don’t trouble yourself. I’m fine. Just fine.’

‘You had a great time.’

‘We had…’

‘Sure, we did.’

‘How long have you been singing?’

‘Since I was nineteen, twenty…’

‘Really?’

‘Why the surprise?’

‘I started acting around the same age. Well, a minor role. I couldn’t say I was an actor. Just an opportunity after a test. The director liked me. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think so. He liked your beauty.’

He sniggered. ‘You could say that.’

‘A pass from him?’

Aaron shifted on the seat. ‘Indeed, but I refused any of that. It was never my cup of tea, you know?’

She grinned. ‘I see…’

‘What about you?’

‘I started singing for friends, parties, weddings, and later bars and restaurants.’

‘You should be famous.’

‘I wished it for once. But it depends on luck…’

‘Still time…’

‘For me? I’m not that young anymore.’

‘You’re amazing.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You would be a success. Your voice, oh boy.’

He put his hands at the back of his head, intertwining his fingers.

‘People want youth, not talent,’ she replied.

‘I’m not sure about that.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not unhappy. Perhaps fame is not a great thing.’

He sighed. ‘It has a price to be paid, can become an addiction, where you need another one to cope with your feelings of insecurity.’

‘You mean you had, or have some?’

‘I had…’

She looked at him, inquisitively.

‘Women,’ he added, looking into her eyes.

She blinked, her gaze dropped to the floor. He stood up and approached her.

‘Can I have a bit of your wine?’

‘Can you drink?’

‘Just a tiny bit won’t do me any harm.’

‘What’s your real intention?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My mum used to say, if someone drink from your glass, they would discover your secrets.’

‘Ah… I like that.’

He took the glass from her hand. He raised it to his lips and drank—a slow, deliberate sip. His eyes into hers.

‘Now you can find out about my secrets,’ she whispered.

‘Not all,; he said. ‘Not yet.’

He put the glass down on the windowsill. The candles in the living room had burned low, casting trembling shadows on the walls.

‘Emelisse.’

He took her hand. It was warm.

‘I thought I had been love once. Now, I know, I haven’t. It was only desire, or need. Nothing else.’

‘Why now?’

‘And you still ask me?’

‘I’d like to hear why you came to the conclusion.’

‘I have never felt before what I’m feeling for you. It’s something else and I’m afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘That I will forget this moment. That I will forget you.’

He stepped closer—close enough to taste the wine on her breath, her jasmine scent. Intoxicating.

He touched her face. She did not flinch.

‘Screw tomorrow,’ he said.

He kissed her.

It was not the kiss of his youth nor the performative kind. It was clumsy, desperate, real. His hands found her waist. Her fingers tangled in the short grey hair at the back of his neck.

‘Come with me,’ he murmured against her mouth.

She nodded.

He led her through the hallway, to his bedroom. The one that had once belonged to his parents.

There was no hurry on his part. Not the eagerness of the past, just the subtle desire of a new discovery, the gentle gesture as he removed her red dress. It fell to the floor like in a movie playing in slow motion.

She stood before him in the dim light. Her body strong, scarred, scarred, smooth.

The body of a woman who had lived.

He reached out and traced the line of her collarbone, the curve of her breast, the softness between her legs.

‘You are beautiful,’ he said.

She smiled and touched him. ‘So are you.’

He drew her down onto the bed. The mattress creaked under their weight.

His hands were almost reverent. He had spent a lifetime grabbing, taking, performing. Now he wanted only to give. To learn the geography of her body as if it were a country he had been searching for his entire existence.

She guided him.

They moved together slowly, awkwardly at first, then finding a rhythm that was all their own. It was tender, almost sacred.

He held her as if she were something precious, something he might break.

They came together. His breath caught. She called his name.

‘Aaron.’

He closed his eyes and let himself be taken in the spasmodic wave that washed over them.

Afterwards, they lay in the dark, her head on his chest, his fingers stroking her hair.

‘I always dreamed about it.’

‘About what?’ he asked.

‘I imagined when I saw you in a movie, when you kissed someone, or held someone, it was me. And in my dream, it would be like this happened.’

‘That was performance.’

‘I know.’

‘This was real. I had waited for this for so long. It was unique.’

‘Oh…’

‘Tell me about you. Your life before coming to this town.’

‘I was born here. Left when I was eighteen. Married for fifteen years. He was a good man, or I thought he was…’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘He was a friend’s brother. Doing his military service somewhere. He would come here to visit his family.’

‘Did you love him?’

‘Love… Thinking back, I’d say I was dazzled.’

‘Do you have children?’

‘Not alive.’

‘So…’

‘I was pregnant three times. Had miscarriages. The doctors told me it would be hard for me to have babies. I gave up.’

‘Did you want to have kids?’

‘For some time I did. Well, I thought if I had a child, I'd have something to fill my life.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I wanted to be a singer, but he criticised me. Said I was delusional, that I was chasing a dream that would never come true. That I had no talent.’

‘Why did you stay married for so long?’

‘My parents. I felt I would disappoint them if I ended my marriage.’

‘But you did…’

‘My father passed away. I decided to talk to my mum, and I left him. I started my life from scratch. A dull job as a clerk in a shop, then small gigs in bars sometimes. Two years later, I met another man. At first, he liked me singing, or so he said. Months of dating and I moved in with him. One year together and he changed. He would complain about anything, silly things. The food wasn’t seasoned properly or wasn’t hot enough. Then he started giving me a hard time about singing. Said I didn’t have time for him. He’d turn up sometimes, sitting on the sofa in his grease-stained mechanic’s overalls, expecting me to wait on him like a maid. I put up with it until one night I came home early from a gig. I found him with another woman, naked in our bed. Not the first time, I later learned. He had been unfaithful for as long as we were together. I left that night, took nothing. I called my mum…

‘She was ill...’

‘Yes. She needed me. I came to care for her. She died two years ago. I stayed because… I had nowhere else to go. And because, in some strange way, I had stopped believing that I deserved more.’

‘You deserve everything.’

She laughed softly. ‘I used to think so. Now I’m not so sure. I…’

Emelisse paused. He held her tighter.

‘I want to be good to you.’

She kissed his chest, just above his heart. ‘Oh, Aaron.’

*********

After that night, their life fell into a quiet pattern. Small rituals—morning coffee on the back deck if the weather was good, or sitting by the lake, the mist rising, letting the sun spread on the land, the faint scent of woodsmoke from a distant chimney.

Afternoon walks in the park nearby, his hand in hers, the fallen leaves crunching underfoot. He would stop at times to pick up a wild flower, handing it to her without a word. Neither mentioned that each season seemed shorter than the last.

She would glance at him, not believing the man she had once sighed at on screen was real, and belonged to her. Or that part of him was still with her, for a time she could not foresee.

Some evenings, they would sit at the piano—his fingers finding notes he still remembered, her voice filling the gaps.

Sometimes the musicians would come, and the house would fill with music and laughter. She would catch him staring at her—not with the actor’s gaze, but with something softer, almost wondering, and he would smile at her.

He stopped watching the clock. For the first time in his life, he was not performing.

He was simply present.

Every night, before sleep, she would trace the lines of his face. Mapping him.

Memorising him. Just in case.

The ten years that followed were not dramatic. They were full of small joys and slow losses.

They travelled—to the places he had once performed, to the sea to enjoy the summers, to the mountains to enjoy the snow.

He showed her the world.

At his insistence, she met a producer friend of his. A demo was made. A contract almost signed. But one night, looking at him sitting by the window, she knew she couldn’t trade their remaining time for a recording studio, for concert tours.

She wasn’t her young self, but a woman in her forties, living a kind of dream with Aaron.

‘I want to be here,’ she told him. ‘With you. For as long as you know my name, and afterwards, when you don’t know who I am.’

He wept.

She convinced him to write letters to his children—old-fashioned, but a way for him to put everything he felt down on paper. To be sincere with himself. To purge his regrets. To make amends with his past.

Surprisingly, they replied, promising to come sometime to visit him, yet they never did.

Aaron transferred his parents’ house into Emelisse’s name, as well as a substantial sum of money into her bank account.

‘I want to make sure you will be fine,’ he had said, ‘when my mind no longer recognises even me.’

His memory began to fail as the years went by.

First, where he had left his keys, asking for his reading glasses, that were perched on his forehead.

Then the titles and names of the movies and characters he had played.

His children’s  names.

Where he was. Who he was. Who Emelisse was.

He would call her by his mum’s name or the ‘lady who sings.’

In his lucid moments, he would take her hand, and say.

‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For staying. For not leaving me.’

‘I can't leave you, Aaron. I love you.’

‘I love you too, Emelisse.’

********

Aaron stood on the back deck, listening to the voices calling him. Come for a swim.

He went down through the gate and settled on the small pier, watching the full moon reflect on the water.

Come in. He heard it clearly.

He removed his clothes, stepped into the water.

The cold was a shock.

He took another step. The water was to his chest.

He dived. The cold was no longer a shock, but a pervasive peace.

Emelisse woke before dawn. He was not in bed.

She called for him. Found the back door open.

The rain overnight had stopped. The garden was washed clean, the air sharp.

The narrow gate open.

She hurried down to the lake, her robe barely covering her nightdress.

On the pier, she saw his pyjama bottoms and hooded jacket scattered.

The water was still. The surface unbroken.

She walked to the water’s edge. There, near the reeds, she saw something.

The sun was just showing, enough for her to see what it was…

She entered the water. The cold was savage.

His body already limp. She dragged him to the shore. She tried to revive him.

She screamed his name, sending birds flying away in fright.

His mind had already taken him…