Heart Shaped Box

Heart Shaped Box
By Penny Spruce

If chaos theory states that a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo could cause tornadoes in California, is it a giant leap of faith to claim that the suicide of a rock star in Seattle caused my marriage to fall apart? Such is the effect of the unlikeliest catalysts.


I met Simon in 1989, in a smoke-filled Goth club where the dance floor was always full and the Snakebite and Black was cheap. When the club closed that night, Simon and I sat outside talking until dawn. Within three months we were engaged.
He frequently told me, ‘You are the only person who truly loves me.’ I thought it was a compliment.

Living together we relaxed. Free from our parents, we spent our weekends in bed playing video games. Our bodies side by side, surrounded by crisp packets and beer cans. Motionless except for our thumbs and minds, we travelled the world of Final Fantasy.


In 1991 Simon fell in love again. It was Sunday evening and we were watching MTV when angry guitars, a hammering drumbeat and those hypnotic lyrics “hello, hello, hello” growled through the mono speaker. Listening to Smells Like Teen Spirit for the first time gave Simon goose bumps; his pupils dilated and seemed focused not on but through the screen and the images of tattooed cheerleaders: he had discovered Nirvana.

We didn’t know anything about Kurt Cobain. We weren’t yet aware of his separation from his parents, which mirrored Simon’s own background in many ways; or the singer’s habitual drug abuse and self-hatred. At the time, we were simply entranced by the song. We sat together, shoulder to shoulder, on our hand-me-down settee, glued to MTV and bouncing with the music. We had no idea what impact this broken man would eventually have on our own lives.


On April 8th, 1994, Kurt Cobain was found dead. High on heroin he had put a shotgun to the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger. Simon mourned as if Kurt had been his father or brother. He cried harder and for longer than when his sister had passed away, a couple of years before.
Simon arranged a séance for the following weekend. Although I was usually sceptical of the paranormal, I felt a real sense of foreboding about it.
On Saturday at eight o’clock our friends started to arrive; three men, all members of a band that my husband played bass guitar for. He wore a black shirt and jeans, but Matt arrived in Cobain-style plaid pyjamas, with a black scarf tied around his arm. A bottle of red wine and a spliff were shared. Simon sipped his wine while he explained to us what would happen.

‘We’ll sit around the table, one on each side, with our hands laid flat, palms down. I’ll speak. I’m going to contact Kurt.’ Then he removed an elastic band from his wrist and solemnly tied back his long blonde hair. He looked around the room with such sincerity that I had to stifle my laughter.

I thought the guys looked incredulous, but if they did, Simon did not notice. He unfolded the sheet he was holding. On it he had drawn letters, numbers and the words yes and no, in a circle only slightly smaller than the table; a primitive Ouija board.

As everyone sat down, Simon asked me to bring in another wine glass. I could tell that my role that night would be one of observer. I didn’t know, at the time, that I would be playing that part for the remainder of our relationship.

I stood back and watched. The room was silent. Normally Simon’s friends were loud and sociable, but not tonight. We all thought he had gone mad.

Simon started talking; what he said didn’t make much sense. I have forgotten most of it. He asked to speak to Kurt Cobain. Nothing happened. Matt said something and was immediately shushed by Simon.

I watched for a while then wandered into the kitchen to make tea. I heard glass smash and rushed back in.

‘Did you see it?’ Simon raved.

‘Holy shit, how did that happen?’ yelled Dave.

‘Does it feel cold in here?’ asked Paul.

The wine glass was lying broken on the table, the bowl severed from the stem.

‘Get us another glass!’ Simon screamed at me. He slumped forward on the table.

‘Can you get some water, Pen?’ asked Matt, lifting his friend’s head. I just stood there not knowing what to think. Simon was smiling. He claimed Kurt Cobain had spoken to him.

‘I have to listen to the Melvins,’ he panted. ‘I have to write a song for Kurt.’


Our relationship started to feel surreal. I witnessed events as if I were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Powders and pills seemed to breed in our refrigerator door. I would open the fridge for milk or food, and stare at the unidentified tablets. Shivering from the cold, I would grab what I needed, make the cups of tea or cook our dinner. The act of cooking or pouring would purge my memory and the drugs would be forgotten.

Alone in bed, with a duvet wrapped around me, I would listen to Simon laughing loudly through the early hours of the morning. On the occasions when he did come to bed, his body was an oppressive presence and I would lie awake wondering what might happen if I smothered him with my pillow.

The intimacy between us faded: a casualty of his drug abuse and strangeness. This worried Simon more than it did me. One night, at a club, he pulled a girl for us; her name was Alice. Alice looked like Courtney Love might have done if she had pillar-box red hair. When we got home Simon made us all drinks; he was agitated and excited. He put his Nevermind CD into our HiFi. We listened to the music together and talked for a short time, then, we all went to bed.

Simon wanted to have sex with Alice, but she told him, ‘I never have sex with men.’
He flung himself through the bedroom door and downstairs.

Alice’s body was new and exciting; her skin felt smooth against my own and her hair smelled like summer evenings. Alice whispered things which calmed and aroused me. I knew I should join Simon and I did, eventually.

That night, the three of us slept together, in the one double bed, chaste and angry at each other.


By the autumn of 1994, Simon was smoking grass every day. He lost all interest in his appearance, rarely even getting dressed. He became paranoid and started being cruel. On New Year’s Eve, 1995, he threatened to kill me. We had celebrated New Year at a restaurant in Somerset. I was driving and he was drinking. He drank heavily.
Midnight came and went. I wanted to leave but Simon wanted to stay. I threatened to drive home by myself, so he followed grudgingly. When we reached the car park, he shouted an insult at a couple. The man approached him and Simon looked ready to fight. I tried to calm the situation and apologised for Simon’s behaviour. The other couple quickly left.

‘For fuck’s sake, Penny,’ Simon growled. ‘Can’t you ever take my side?’ His eyes flashed with anger, but his body language showed defeat. We got into our car.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ he whispered, as I turned the ignition key. I tried to ignore him and drove along the tear-smudged roads, shaking. ‘I’m going to murder you in your sleep.’

Somehow we got home. As I ran up the stairs he called after me, ‘you’ll be dead by morning.’

I went to bed terrified. Simon stayed downstairs. I heard every movement he made. I lay in our bed with the same tightness of chest I had often experienced as a child: camphor burner in my room, my mother sitting with me, willing me to breathe. This time it wasn’t asthma, but fear, and a feeling of slow suffocation, stifling my airways. Eventually Simon stopped moving and I got to sleep, wondering whether I would be better off dead.


Our marriage wheezed on for over two years. I never considered leaving. I couldn’t cope with the idea of losing my house and returning to my parents, so I waited, allowing my emotions to hibernate. In the spring of 1996 we had separate holidays. Simon didn’t come back from his. He wrote a letter, giving me the house. It was a Pyrrhic victory.

I thought about all that had happened between Simon and myself. Did I love him enough? How did everything go so wrong? Perhaps like Dorian Gray’s portrait, Kurt was Simon’s inner reflection. The moment Cobain died all the emotional torment and insecurities transferred to Simon and festered and I did nothing to help him.


Kurt Cobain had complained about rock journalists and their “second-rate Freudian evaluation of [his] lyrics, when 90 percent of the time [they had] transcribed them incorrectly.” This period of my life remains hazy, even after pulling at and probing my memories. I am trying to understand what happened and yet, like those maligned rock journalists, I can never be certain that I have transcribed what was actually there or just what I think was there.

The Piano

I wrote this for an OU assignment in October 2008.

The Piano

My sister Caroline and I always spent Christmas Eve at Nana and Papa’s house. I remember one Christmas, I was probably eight or nine years old and Caroline would have been five or six, we were making Christmas decorations from sour tasting gummed strips of coloured paper. Both Caroline and I were busy at this task, I was sat on my Papa’s knee and Caroline curled up against his legs. In the warm glow of the electric fire we industriously produced decorations with which we would trim our attic bedroom, later that night. We gorged ourselves on the sweet smells of oranges mixed with freshly baked biscuits and pine-needles heated by coloured fairy lights. We felt warm and safe and loved, snuggled up with our beloved Papa.

Nana sat, her unfinished embroidery upon her lap, relaxed in a large russet armchair at the opposite end of the room. She seemed completely at ease as she closed herself off from the noise and excited chatter of the room.


I put my festive work to one side with a loud rustle and left the room. The hallway was dim and quiet. Six doors ran off from the long hall, the door to the warm living room I had just left, the kitchen door to my left, the front door ahead and three doors to my right. I turned right and walked with springy steps across the soft hall carpet. To my left now the bathroom, to my right Nana and Papa’s bedroom and ahead, the music room. Checking behind me I slowly pushed the music room door. It made a soft groan of protest at being wakened from its inertia, but relented and opened. The frosty air of the room enveloped me and goose pimples rose on my flesh to meet it.

There, in front of me, was Nana’s piano. It was a beautifully polished, mahogany, upright piano; a piano which I was unable to play but of which, nevertheless, I was in complete awe. The piano towered over me, intimidating in its dark, polished bulk. It exhaled the sweet promise of music and the stale must of age. I touched its glossy side with a quivering finger tip, it felt hard yet silken. A thrill of excitement shook me, it darted through my veins and nerve endings, from my outstretched finger, along my arm and across my narrow shoulders until my neck prickled and my ears felt aflame. The untouchable, unplayable piano seduced me with its cool indifference. I felt if only I could play it my life would be perfect. I quietly opened the hinged piano seat with its scratchy and faded beige tapestry covering. Inside were dozens of music books and sheets with a multitude of dots leaping and dipping across the pages. I felt like a musical note rising and crashing across the waves of sound. I felt the soft yet deep melody of the hauntingly beautiful piano echo through my trembling body. In an instant I felt saddened and exhausted by my inability either to create the music or to touch my Nana’s soul, which I suddenly felt certain was trapped somewhere within this perfect piano, so cold and hard and beautiful were they both.

I placed the sheet music back inside the seat and quietly closed it once more. I was so spellbound by the silent, dark piano that I felt unable to return to the comforting warmth of the living room. I loved its mystery and desperately wanted to caress its yielding keys but I had never learnt and I didn’t feel able to break the silence with my discordant notes. The silent piano watched me, its closed mouth, full of cream and black teeth, seemed to wear a self-satisfied smile. The metronome above held its bony finger aloft in warning. Serene on the surface though the piano seemed, it was full of secrets within. Maybe they were secrets which should not be revealed to me, not tonight anyway.


I returned reluctantly to the warm glow of the living room. My Papa was now asleep and my sister sat, smiling, in his lap, in the amber light. As I gathered up my half finished decorations I sat on the carpet next to Papa’s slender legs and I looked across the room at Nana. She was clicking rhythmically, weaving together white threads into a complicated looking embroidery sample, her face hard in concentration, her back straight and tall. I sighed, perhaps in resignation. This woman was as hidden to me as the mysterious notes in the piano stool. I was fascinated by both yet understood neither. I felt inferior to their polished beauties and reflective depths.