Category: Love

Diamond Cutter


Wedging herself onto the end of a thickly shellacked wooden bench, she sat amongst a group of waiters. Music pumped from strategically placed speakers over her head, as she placed her feet out of range of the oblivious, polo-shirted man standing with his back to her. He laughed, gesturing with his drink, to the delight of his date.

She leaned forward slightly, at the approach of a car, straining to take measure of its occupant. An older man, and the woman riding the passenger seat, meant nothing to her.

Oppressive July heat fell in droplets around her, pasting her carefully chosen cotton tee-shirt to her body. She stretched it towards the laughing man in hopes of a stray, drying breeze.

A garbled voice, calling names, replaced the music. An elderly couple beside her took their cue, barely escaping the flying elbow of the ebullient man. His date’s face quickly flashed from flirtatious delight to horror. Harnessing his elbows, she pulled him forward.

And the music ensued. A family of five occupied the opposite bench. Mother, her face colored by a mixture of fatigue and gratitude, jostled her youngest to distraction, while Father palmed a beer, protectively.

Several sets of legs to her left, parted, revealing him.

She hadn’t seen as much as a picture, but she knew.

His face split, revealing a set of uneven, but well-cared for teeth. The collar of his pastel- hued shirt parted graciously, admitting jet black curls. There was a shine to his hair.

He squeezed his generous frame into the space beside her, leaning against the wall before expelling the air he’d been holding.

“Hey…” The word came on the breath of his sigh, and around a grin that would remain, throughout the evening.

The speakers crackled, again, as his name was called and he took her hand. The niceties had finished.

Months of practice fueled their conversation. She studied the way his generous hand wrapped around a steak knife, and, as he chewed with upturned lips, she marveled at his pleasure.

He paid with plastic as she considered her options.

The interior of his truck spoke to her. She flashed on that first drive with her father. She felt the plastic knob of a gear shift in her hand as she maneuvered the weather-beaten Ford F-150 out of the parking lot, and onto the roadway; setting it up on two wheels. And, her father; his white-knuckled hands gripping cracked vinyl, as he screamed…

“You made me pee my pants!”

Their first uncomfortable silence came as he settled himself against the nylon-covered bench seat. Questions, she was hesitant to answer, hung in the air, buoyed by vibrations emitted from a factory-installed radio. Windows were lowered, and she re-adjusted her shirt.

She felt him before she saw him. He face hovered above hers, eager to deliver what would be the first of many sloppy, wet kisses which would improve with translation, over time. The cadence of his garlic-tinged breath filled the air around them, and, her decision was made, as his hands grasped the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head before the slammming of a nearby car door reminded her they were still in the parking lot.

Time and circumstance placed them together, allowing them every other weekend. For two years, at no small expense, he rented the same set of rooms in a local concrete-encased block of suites. Lamp-light reflected off chrome appliances in the tiny kitchenette; spawning in her, domestic fantasies.

Sated fatigue colored his voice as he drew up the sheet, turning his back.

“There’s something in your drawer…”

Delight propelled her from the bed. A curled hand carried the sheet with her.

He hadn’t bothered to wrap it, and it didn’t matter. Two pewter-toned Tahitian pearls sat, ensconced in tiny diamonds, at either end of a platinum ring which slid easily about her wrist. She raised her arm; twisting the facets in admiration.

And, he began to jump. Both hands clutched the polyester-infiltrated fabric surrounding her, as 200+ pounds pummeled a well-used mattress. She watched, integrating the juvenile glee on his Sicilian-hued face with the incongruously violent swing of his penis. Nothing in her experience could make this right.

Roses arrived. Mounds of them, in varying colors, filled vases on tables throughout her home, only to be replaced by fresh bouquets the next day.

And jewelry; rubies protected by diamonds, and a pendant supporting a single, large, perfect stone.

They talked, hesitant to disturb the stillness of a southern spring night, while she fingered his gift. And, as he lifted her hair to cinch the clasp, he assured her…”No strings…”

He hadn’t tried to hide. As they approached her driveway, his Toyota sat, valiantly, next to her Ford. She whispered her “Goodnight”, before stumbling into the darkened living room.

Straining, she recognized his form, filling the center of her second-hand sofa. Neither spoke. She straddled him, and weeks later, he would invoke the scent of the other man. But, for now…tonight, it didn’t matter.

“I could’ve bought a bedroom suite for my daughter with that money!”

Rubies, and diamonds, and dreams, crunched against concrete under her running shoes before she turned, and mounting the steps, jogged to the door; closing it behind her.

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net

Waiting for the Light to Change


Twenty years old, I sat at a traffic light in a tiny yellow Datsun whose compact size barely accommodated my girth. I was eight months pregnant.

I wasn’t employed at the time, so I must have been heading home from a trip to the grocery store. I remember it was a Friday; payday. The light couldn’t have been long. I lived in a small town, but, it may have been rush hour. There were several people ahead of me, and more behind.

The tears came, unbidden; followed by an incredible rush of feeling unlike anything I had ever experienced before, or since. And, it filled me, starting in my feet, before rushing upwards. My hands, on either side of my mercilessly swollen belly, felt warm, and alive. Love, for an unborn child who kicked, ferociously, at the most inopportune times, making the sheer act of breathing difficult, overcame me, as I fought to remain cognizant of the mundane world around me. And the light changed….

“A person who loses a spouse is called a widow. A child, who has lost his parents, is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who has lost a child.”

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net

Washed Ashore


Born into a family of blondes, she stood, proud and straight against a hand-drawn measuring stick on the wall. Chestnut ringlets danced about a face punctuated by chocolate brown eyes mirroring the mischievousness in her smile.

I fell in love at first sight.

I was an adult before I realized how alike we were; how her path had intersected mine too many times, and how those shared experiences had built a bond of belonging.

She was rebellious.

She liked bad boys.

She led with her heart.

Life, age, children, and too many days spent on uncharted waters brought both us to shore, in different places.

And, I miss her.

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net

To Tell…or Not to Tell…


On first sight, his cerulean eyes put me in mind of an open sore, compelling me to touch his hair and tell him…“It’s ok…”

As we shared a couch in my living room, we sipped “sweet tea” in front of the television, as he remembered the morning they came to “get him”, and the long ride through artificially lighted streets that ended at the door of an orphanage. He was three.

His younger brother had the good fortune to be adopted. His older sister was reclaimed by his older brother. His mother visited occasionally, leaving a sock-full of dimes in her wake.

The recounting came in fits and starts. Nights filled with stories were followed by canned laughter, as time rocked on, and lives changed. By the end of the year, we were more than friends.

In the ten years we spent together, he talked often of the camp that would shape his life without ever naming it, though I never realized it, until now. He has been dead for 3 years.

Reverence colored his voice when he spoke of Dr. “P”, the camp director; the same man accused of child molestation in 1986. I listened as he spoke of his mentor, never mentioning the charges. And now, as I read and uncover the atrocities visited upon the children relegated to Dr. Poetter’s care, I wonder if my silence was in deference to his pain, or to mine?

The information I have gleaned has shed new light on his pain, his demons, and his personality. He never explained that the gloriously primitive canoe trips he spoke of, so often, were part of his therapy. And, he never mentioned the back-breaking labor of hauling hundred-pound rocks or digging latrines. He never told me that admission to Anneewakee meant complete isolation from family and friends, and he never told me that home was a tee-pee, or that baths were taken under a pail of mountain-cooled water, regardless of the season.

When the compulsion came to me to research the camp, I had no idea of why, or of what I might find, and the results lead to questions that can no longer be answered.

For ten years, he did the best he knew how to do, as did I, with the information provided.

Would things have been different had I known?

He is with me, still, in his final form. His spirit lives with us, even as his ashes lie, dormant, in the container his childhood friend, Beau, reverently handed me, inside a quiet funeral home, on a cold December evening.

The expression on his face told me Beau had information he wouldn’t reveal, while his hands performed in a way long-since taught, and honed, by years of practice. He chose not to give details, sharing only what was necessary, but the pauses between his words filled in the spaces, making the picture complete.

The call came from his sister, once reclaimed, and the picture she painted, expected, yet, still jarring. A newly purchased, red pick-up truck sat in his driveway; a sign of reclamation. And, inside, two pictures adorned his walls; one of me, old, faded, and dated, and the other, of his son.

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>To Tell…or Not to Tell…

>
On first sight, his cerulean eyes put me in mind of an open sore, compelling me to touch his hair and tell him…“It’s ok…”

As we shared a couch in my living room, we sipped “sweet tea” in front of the television, as he remembered the morning they came to “get him”, and the long ride through artificially lighted streets that ended at the door of an orphanage. He was three.

His younger brother had the good fortune to be adopted. His older sister was reclaimed by his older brother. His mother visited occasionally, leaving a sock-full of dimes in her wake.

The recounting came in fits and starts. Nights filled with stories were followed by canned laughter, as time rocked on, and lives changed. By the end of the year, we were more than friends.

In the ten years we spent together, he talked often of the camp that would shape his life without ever naming it, though I never realized it, until now. He has been dead for 3 years.

Reverence colored his voice when he spoke of Dr. “P”, the camp director; the same man accused of child molestation in 1986. I listened as he spoke of his mentor, never mentioning the charges. And now, as I read and uncover the atrocities visited upon the children relegated to Dr. Poetter’s care, I wonder if my silence was in deference to his pain, or to mine?

The information I have gleaned has shed new light on his pain, his demons, and his personality. He never explained that the gloriously primitive canoe trips he spoke of, so often, were part of his therapy. And, he never mentioned the back-breaking labor of hauling hundred-pound rocks or digging latrines. He never told me that admission to Anneewakee meant complete isolation from family and friends, and he never told me that home was a tee-pee, or that baths were taken under a pail of mountain-cooled water, regardless of the season.

When the compulsion came to me to research the camp, I had no idea of why, or of what I might find, and the results lead to questions that can no longer be answered.

For ten years, he did the best he knew how to do, as did I, with the information provided.

Would things have been different had I known?

He is with me, still, in his final form. His spirit lives with us, even as his ashes lie, dormant, in the container his childhood friend, Beau, reverently handed me, inside a quiet funeral home, on a cold December evening.

The expression on his face told me Beau had information he wouldn’t reveal, while his hands performed in a way long-since taught, and honed, by years of practice. He chose not to give details, sharing only what was necessary, but the pauses between his words filled in the spaces, making the picture complete.

The call came from his sister, once reclaimed, and the picture she painted, expected, yet, still jarring. A newly purchased, red pick-up truck sat in his driveway; a sign of reclamation. And, inside, two pictures adorned his walls; one of me, old, faded, and dated, and the other, of his son.

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net

Facing the Mirror


I think about that old mirror often.

It was, at least, five feet long, and two feet high at it’s tallest point, which featured painstakingly carved intricate flowers and filigree. Two wooden slats divided the glass into three separate mirrors, and, long ago, someone had burnished the wooden frame golden.

I came upon it while helping my elderly next-door neighbor, Ruby, remove years of flea-market finds, incredible buys, and assorted debris from what was to have been a spare room. Ruby was everything her name implies. She was also a packrat.

As I pulled the awkwardly shaped mirror out from behind a crib mattress Ruby was sure she might need one day, I immediately noticed the craftsmanship. The detail, the inaccuracies, and the aged brown paper, stretched across the back of the frame, proclaimed “hand-crafted”.

Turning it to once again admire the carvings, I caught Ruby’s reflection in one of the panels. She stood behind me, and a little away; and, on her face, a look of adoration, usually reserved for my children.. Glancing at her, I asked the question without words, and she began to tell the story.

The mirror had been in her family as long as she could remember, which was a very long time. It had been the centerpiece of her grandmother’s dining room, and then, later, her mother’s “front room”. She wasn’t clear as to whose hands had done the carving, but she knew he had presented it to the family as a treasured heirloom, and they had treated it as such, for decades. Regret replaced delight as she explained it’s present home.

“I used to have a place to hang such things, but I don’t anymore.”

Coming closer, she raised one gnarled hand towards the apex of the frame and rested it upon the most elaborate of it’s decoration. After several seconds, she used the same hand to retrieve the ever-present tissue from the pocket of her shapeless sweater, and dabbed tobacco juice from one corner of her lined, colorless mouth.

“I want you to have it.”, she proclaimed, and turned back to the box she had been pillaging before my find.

I stared at her bent back for several seconds, before challenging her decision by suggesting she consider making a gift to one of her two daughters.

“Do you see either one of them here today?”, she barked as she rose creakily, turning slanted eyes in my direction. “Huh? Do ya?”

Several seconds passed in uncomfortable silence before she closed, quietly, with “Alright, then.”

I hung the mirror, that evening, over the sofa in my living room, and it was, once again, the centerpiece it was meant to be. It hung there for several years, until the size of my family exhausted the space inside the little house next door to Ruby, forcing us to leave our friend. But, her mirror made the trip. In total, I moved the mirror to three different homes. Ruby would see the mirror hung in all but the last, but, somehow, I’m sure she knew it was there.

During my most recent move, light packing, invoked by emergent situations, left the mirror hanging for the next occupants to admire. And, I hope they did. I hope the decades of love and care stroked into it’s wood demanded the respect it, and she deserved. And, Ruby, who was everything that name implies, understands.

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Facing the Mirror

>
I think about that old mirror often.

It was, at least, five feet long, and two feet high at it’s tallest point, which featured painstakingly carved intricate flowers and filigree. Two wooden slats divided the glass into three separate mirrors, and, long ago, someone had burnished the wooden frame golden.

I came upon it while helping my elderly next-door neighbor, Ruby, remove years of flea-market finds, incredible buys, and assorted debris from what was to have been a spare room. Ruby was everything her name implies. She was also a packrat.

As I pulled the awkwardly shaped mirror out from behind a crib mattress Ruby was sure she might need one day, I immediately noticed the craftsmanship. The detail, the inaccuracies, and the aged brown paper, stretched across the back of the frame, proclaimed “hand-crafted”.

Turning it to once again admire the carvings, I caught Ruby’s reflection in one of the panels. She stood behind me, and a little away; and, on her face, a look of adoration, usually reserved for my children.. Glancing at her, I asked the question without words, and she began to tell the story.

The mirror had been in her family as long as she could remember, which was a very long time. It had been the centerpiece of her grandmother’s dining room, and then, later, her mother’s “front room”. She wasn’t clear as to whose hands had done the carving, but she knew he had presented it to the family as a treasured heirloom, and they had treated it as such, for decades. Regret replaced delight as she explained it’s present home.

“I used to have a place to hang such things, but I don’t anymore.”

Coming closer, she raised one gnarled hand towards the apex of the frame and rested it upon the most elaborate of it’s decoration. After several seconds, she used the same hand to retrieve the ever-present tissue from the pocket of her shapeless sweater, and dabbed tobacco juice from one corner of her lined, colorless mouth.

“I want you to have it.”, she proclaimed, and turned back to the box she had been pillaging before my find.

I stared at her bent back for several seconds, before challenging her decision by suggesting she consider making a gift to one of her two daughters.

“Do you see either one of them here today?”, she barked as she rose creakily, turning slanted eyes in my direction. “Huh? Do ya?”

Several seconds passed in uncomfortable silence before she closed, quietly, with “Alright, then.”

I hung the mirror, that evening, over the sofa in my living room, and it was, once again, the centerpiece it was meant to be. It hung there for several years, until the size of my family exhausted the space inside the little house next door to Ruby, forcing us to leave our friend. But, her mirror made the trip. In total, I moved the mirror to three different homes. Ruby would see the mirror hung in all but the last, but, somehow, I’m sure she knew it was there.

During my most recent move, light packing, invoked by emergent situations, left the mirror hanging for the next occupants to admire. And, I hope they did. I hope the decades of love and care stroked into it’s wood demanded the respect it, and she deserved. And, Ruby, who was everything that name implies, understands.

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net

If

“You haven’t cared in over three years….”

The words are spoken at a dining table, bereft of food, as my fingers find play in tiny, loose strings on one corner of an unemployed placemat.

A whoosh of hot breath forces me back against the rungs of an unforgiving maple chair as I absorb the blow, while a corona of dull pain spreads through my sternum.

As I rise, I’m vaguely aware of the uncertainty of my legs, and use a second or two to will them to stillness before I spit, “That is the most ridiculous thing you have ever said to me.” And, as I turn to walk away, fluttering candlelight accents ten smears on the freshly waxed tabletop.

If only, I could have been a little quieter…

If only, I didn’t have an opinion…

If I could hide my feelings…

If I could be a little less intelligent…

If I could sit, quiet, and smiling; always smiling, but quiet.

If I could nod, and smile, agreeably Madonna-like.

Like the portrait of the Madonna; one-dimensional, always smiling, always lovely, always quiet.

If I could have done that…

But, I couldn’t.

And, because knowing I can’t be what you want doesn’t keep me from wanting it for you, I did the only thing I could do.

And now, even that, is not enough…

© Copyright 2007-2008 Stacye Carroll

http://www.thewriterslife.net