The Four Seasons. Mary Monroe Alice
Something was very wrong between them, something they couldn’t put a name to. They were cohabiting space, more like roommates than husband and wife. She knew she snapped at him a lot. She couldn’t help it; he irritated her so often, more than anyone else. It was almost as if he did it deliberately, to get her attention.
Or maybe it was just that after twenty years, they were both getting a little too familiar with each other’s habits and flaws. He was pretty good at getting his digs in, too, and he excelled at tuning her out. But she never questioned that she loved him. He was her husband. The father of her only child. Her friend.
He nuzzled at her ear suggestively, and all she could think was how she didn’t want to be touched.
“We’re both tired,” she said, pulling back, pretending not to notice the stark disappointment in his face. “Why don’t I make us something to eat and we’ll plop in front of the TV.”
“Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Break away whenever we get close?”
She laughed nervously. “I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.” He was utmost serious.
Birdie’s face grew somber. “I don’t do it to hurt you, and I do want to be close to you, it’s just…Lately, I don’t want to make love and I know you do. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s hormonal.”
“Maybe,” he replied. Dennis picked up the bag of empty bottles in a swoop. “But it’s not been just lately. It’s been a long time, Birdie. Too long.” He turned away, then headed to the back door.
Birdie felt the space lengthen between them as she looked over her shoulder to watch him leave. The empty bottles clanked against his leg as he walked out from the house. It was a hollow, lonely sound.
The snow had melted under the day’s warm sun so Rose was able to walk easily along the sidewalks of her neighborhood. Hers was a block like many others in the country and she knew each house and yard almost as well as she knew her own. She noted where one neighbor had pruned the front hedge, or another was beginning an addition. Most of the houses were well cared for, even lovingly so. Passing by she could peek in the windows overflowing with light and see typical American family scenes being played out. These houses had a feeling of family and cheerfulness that was warm and inviting.
When she’d arrived back at her own home she remained on the sidewalk, her coat collar up close around her neck and her small hands tucked tightly under her armpits. She tried to look at the Victorian with the same dispassionate eye she’d looked at the neighboring ones. Mrs. Kasparov’s list of flaws came to mind, and though it rankled, they were all too true. On the block, their house was the eyesore, the shabby one that prompted neighbors to say, “What a shame. If only they would fix it up.” It was a shadowy, melancholy house that sat on a huge double lot on the corner, hidden by overgrown pines and a forest of shaggy shrubs. Light flowed through torn shades or missing blinds, adding to the somber sense of depression.
Looking at it now, she found it hard to remember when happiness flowed bright from these dreary windows, or when the family had lived and laughed and talked in those darkened rooms. Merry had been the last flicker of light in the old house and now that, too, had been snuffed out. The old Victorian appeared exactly as it was—a house of secrets. Suppressing a sigh, she walked up the front steps and slipped, unnoticed, into the house.
Hours later, the house was deathly quiet, save for the melodic clanging of the five-note wind chimes outside her window. Rose sat alone in the blanketing solitude of her room while the computer whirred. She opened the side drawer to her desk and pulled out a file from far in the back where no idle eyes would find it. It was a plain manila file with only the initials D.B. on it. DannyBoy. Copies of his e-mails were inside. Not love letters—theirs wasn’t that kind of relationship. She thought of them as letters from her dearest friend. By the time the computer had booted, the words were ready to spill out of her. Laying her hands on the keys, she took a deep breath and typed.
Dear DannyBoy,
Tonight I feel a despair that frightens me. I feel I am nothing of value. My sister Merry at least depended on me but now she is gone. My older sisters have their own lives that do not include me. Soon they will leave, too. Even this house, which had once been my haven, feels hostile and forbidding. But no matter, because I, too, must leave. The four Seasons have been cast to the wind.
I’m sitting here in the darkness, listening to the wind chimes outside my window and waiting for the dawn. I’m reminded of Emily Dickinson’s “slant of light,” and wonder to myself where nothing goes after death?
Rosebud
An e-mail came almost immediately.
Dear Rosebud,
Don’t you dare despair. Turn on the lights!
I swore I wasn’t going to do this. We’ve been chatting online for a long time, though we’ve only talked privately like this for a few weeks. I think of us as friends. I hope you do, too. So I hope you won’t think I’m one of those Internet creeps when I say this, but I get the sense I better tell you now.
I drive a truck all day through town after town. The miles roll beneath me and I have to tell you, it gets pretty lonely. One day is pretty much like the next. The roads are always crowded and some of the drivers are nuts. It’s not like the old days when the road stretched out before me.
But lately, I know when the day is done and I park my rig that it’ll be okay because I’ll find a letter from you waiting for me. I don’t know what you mean by that “slant of light,” but I can tell you that your letters are the bright point of my day. I don’t have any wind chimes outside my cab, either, but your words are music to a lonely man.
You think you are nothing? You are something! Real special. I feel lucky just to know you. Like I said, I’m no nutcase and I don’t mean to get too personal, so don’t worry.
DannyBoy
Rose put her hands to her heated cheeks and laughed out loud. She couldn’t write much, afraid that she might get maudlin and start getting really, really personal. So to ease his mind, and because she sensed he was waiting for a reply from her, she wrote again.
Good night DannyBoy.
I’ll sleep well, now.
Your friend, Rosebud
Down the hall, Jilly lay in her twin bed staring at the ceiling. So they’d known all along, she thought with chagrin. Even Merry. For years her sisters had whispered about her secret. Guess what? Jilly had a baby! Mother had explained it to them. Jilly always was the wild one, you know. You don’t want to end up like Jilly. Did they know that in all those years she never once allowed herself to think of it? Never once so much as breathed the words in her sleep? The nuns at Marian House had promised her redemption if she pretended that it had never happened, it being the scandalous, sinful cycle of conception, pregnancy and birth outside the sacrament of marriage. She’d lowered a veil over that episode of her life, a black fog of forgetfulness so impenetrable that, as the years passed, she actually fooled herself into believing none of it had ever happened.
Occasionally, over the years, something insignificant would trigger a memory: the sight of an infant in a carriage, the smell of cafeteria food, the sound of rain on the window in the early morning. Jilly would dismiss the memory with a quick shake of her head and a willful command of her mind to think of something else. She’d cast the memory into the deepest, darkest compartment of her heart, locked it tight and thrown away the key.
But Merry had managed to open it. Sneakily, when her guard was down, Merry had come forth with this request to search for the child. This Spring. It felt like her ghostly hand was stabbing into Jilly’s chest, wrenching out her heart and rummaging through the myriad compartments, and in doing so, releasing the memories like demons taking flight.
How wrong Sister Benedict had been! Years of