Some moments are larger than life, bigger than the space allotted to hold them. Some moments give more than they take, leaving behind a sense of emptiness, for the next moment is bound to disappoint.
But those sparkling moments, ripe and full and rich, hold all of eternity in their grasp.
The pine trees lining the driveway murmured amongst themselves, the inconsiderate bastards. Don’t they know it’s rude to exclude people from a conversation? I need to know what they are saying. They might be plotting an ambush on my car during the next storm, hosting a flock of insolent birds with digestive troubles, creeping under the driveway with their roots, preparing to burst forth and tear the pavement into pebbles.
That’s alright. I have a lot of patience. And a chainsaw.
The sound of the Nocturne hung in the room, coloring the very air with its sadness. Kelly sat motionless at the piano bench, frozen in the last moment of the music, unwilling to let go of it. The echo filled her ears, her lungs, her fingertips and she ached to bring it back.
Evan finished his sherry and rose from his chair. “I don’t suppose there’s any cake left?”
A light creak issued from the piano bench as Kelly turned slowly toward the open window. Having tried discussion, Kelly was hoping that the music could convey the pain that her words had failed to impart. But all he wanted was cake.
With appalling certainty, Kelly realized that while she had thought people were listening to her words or her music, they were usually just waiting their turn to talk.
Evan left the room in search of dessert, and found the room empty when he returned.
Screams floated through the open window. Evan wandered over to see what new calamity was taking place on the street below his 15th floor condo. Kelly’s twisted body lay on the pavement, surrounded by horrified onlookers.
Evan’s first thought was “Damn it, Kelly! Why didn’t you say something?”
One and one half miles. Hardly makes one an elite athlete, but a long enough walk to get the blood pumping, work out the kinks in the back from sitting all day. The route was the same every day, the familiarity beginning to breed contempt.
I came to the first intersection, where I always made a left turn, and stopped. Staring off to the right I felt a pull – a queer physical feeling, as if my heart were attached to a string that was being pulled in the opposite direction of the way I intended to go. I stood still – pondering, hoping, yearning. Wondering if it could possibly make a difference, if somehow turning the other direction could change my life, give it direction and meaning. Could it feed the hungry, house the homeless? Could it find homes for the stray cats, conquer my heartburn, make my cantankerous mother apologize?
God damn Frost – generations will stand at that divergence and wonder, certain that whichever path they choose will be the wrong one. His mother apparently never told him the adage about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I turned around.
All at once it was clear – this year had been the intermezzo. Julie thought that this year had been the beginning of a new road, a new life, a way of being. She had embraced it, as she believed she should. But it had not hugged back.
The relief was palpable as Julie now realized that this year had only been the short entertainment between acts to distract her from set and costume changes. This year – with its upheaval and strain, triumphs and trauma – had not been the new scene, but the diversion while larger forces were at work.
There was a thread that ran unbroken from earliest remembrances to the present. The feeling of being cut loose, unmoored and drifting for many months had been an illusion.
Now to sit back and watch it unfold, for after all, “the play’s the thing.”
The curtains shivered gently in the breeze. Sally sat on the stool, staring out the second floor window, as she had done every day since her mother died. Not a word, not a caress, not a look had she given a single human since that day. Trays of food left on the table by her side were toyed with, nibbled at, shoved aside.
Twice her nanny had tried to take the china baby doll from the sideboard. Twice she had quickly returned it, the hair on the back of her neck standing up, electricity flickering through her body. Sally had named the doll Lolly. The nanny was certain that Lolly was had something to do with the difficulty her ward was having coping with her grief.
Then came the morning the nanny entered Sally’s room to find the curtains billowing, and the doll gone. Sally sat on the stool, facing the door as the nanny entered, blood on her hands and chin, staining the front of her pretty nightdress.
“Mummy says things will be better now that Lolly is gone.” Sally’s eyes were wide, intense, staring. “Mummy said Lolly wasn’t nice to me, so she had to be done away with. You’ll be nice to me, won’t you Nanny?” A grin spread slowly over her face, showing a small tuft of doll hair caught in her teeth.
The light has changed.
The seasons develop an identity crisis before releasing their hold on the year. It is mid-August, but the golden slant of the morning light hints at late September. The sun is no longer breaking through the trees and onto my face to serve as alarm clock. Crickets sing as they did in June, but now their song is a sad one, an elegy for the fullness of summer.
It is mid-August, I can’t relinquish the summer yet. But the light has changed.
