October Sky of October Fifth
In the early morning of October 3rd, hurried feet moves past the buildings on Third Lantern drive for a few minutes before breaking into a run. This is Jon’s favorite past time. Before a run, he fancies himself a plane about to take off, so he walks, faster and faster until his feet gain enough momentum to “leave the ground”. His neighbours do not find it so funny and have tried to make him stop by complaining to his wife who just apologizes to them all and does not do a thing.
After two miles, Jon begins to feel the burn, he has been running all his life, literally and metaphorically. Isn’t he Jon Wensworth, of the famous Wensworth family who has just finished high school and ran off to college? Wasn’t he the young man who returned from college only to pack his bags one day and run off again?
Even in his own personal life, he had met his wife Emily while running away from his career as a musician.
At one point he had run away from her and their son too, but like a better runner that she was, she had caught up with him and somehow kept him in place for ten years now.
Then there was the business of him running away from jobs and by so doing running away from responsibility. Six years ago, his wife began to shoulder the family’s responsibilities since he ran away from his last paying job. She still shoulders it now, and he is still running.
He gets to the park and sits on benches in front of the magnolia bush. He brings out his water bottle and drinks deeply, letting the water run down the front of his shirt. Then he squeezes it hard until it reminds him of himself and Emily yelling at each other into the night, breaking apart. Emily his dear woman, his raven-haired wife was always tired these days. When she comes into the house after work, her eyes droop and her hands shake, he makes her cups of tea and she always has a small smile of thanks to him that makes him stare into her eyes, which makes him see that it isn’t helping.
All those times she reminds him of his mother and his legs itch to take him away, far far away from this weary and life-broken woman coming back home to meet a man who can’t help her, coming back home to nothing.
The next morning, Emily packs some of her and her son’s belongings into the back seat of their car. Jon watches her as she moves about the house picking up this and that. Some part of him is dumbfounded. Another part is pumping its fist and saying Go girl! You are learning the ropes.
Then she comes to seat in front of him and he looks at her, her shoulders aren’t slant as much as they were yesterday, her eyes aren’t as bloodshot and she looks relieved. He knows what that weight is -him. He knows that slant in her shoulders is his doing, that blood in her eyes he put it there. When he begins to cry, she hands him a tissue.
“I’m leaving” she says
“I know” he replies, holding the tissue away from himself while the tears run down his face to the front of his shirt just like the water did yesterday.
“Where would you go?” He asks her
“Somewhere, anywhere” she says smiling. There is hope in her eyes.
“How will you cope” she asks pushing the tissue close to his face.
“I’ll be fine,” he tells her, then he gets up and walks outside. His son David is sitting with his head bowed in the front seat of the car. He doesn’t look up when his father approaches. Jon opens the car door and slips his arms around his son who bursts into tears. They both stay there for a while crying into each other.
In the afternoon, with his wife and son gone, Jon puts on his running shoes, fills his water bottle and leaves the house.
***
Liam takes off his hat and uses it to fan his face. Seven years in Texas and he still wasn’t accustomed to the heat. This place has never been good to him, every time he tries to make a way for himself, it always seems to be pushing back. His thriving construction business which would have taken him four years to set up somewhere else had taken him six years.
Then there was the women. His luck with women had run out when he came to this place. None of the women wanted to settle down with him. They all seemed to be gravitating towards something better than what an ordinary construction worker and now an ordinary construction company owner can ever give them.
He spent a couple of years dating these women who disappeared as soon as he said the word “marriage”. He had already given up when one morning a woman he had dated for four months Ragya, half Indian half Mexican beauty, appeared on his doorstep with his daughter in her arms.
Yet Liam knew he was a handsome man, at 30 his chestnut brown hair and fine build refined through the hard work of building houses attracted the ladies to him. Those ladies who just wanted to have fun hanging on the arm of a ruggedly handsome man. Ragya was one of those women and it had taken his elder brother’s intervention to get her to stay. Jon had flown from Arizona to meet her in person and convince her that marrying him would be profitable.
He named his daughter Emily after his elder brother’s wife because she was also raven-haired and beautiful. He doted on her, filling the void of a loving mother that Ragya was all too eager to leave.
In Liam’s life, Emily was his Sun, not the scorching sun of Texas but the warm sun after a heavy African downpour. Four years old and counting, She was the smartest kid in her Elementary class and she made him immensely proud.
Her cute little frown that made her nose wrinkle reminded him so much of his mother that his heart ached.
Then times when she would cry for her mother, he would be taken back to when he too was left alone, calling for a mother that never came.
Liam places his hat back on his head and continues pulling nails from the wood with a wrench.
Liam pushes his car into the driveway, gets out and calls out to his wife. There is no answer. Seconds later his daughter screams from her bedroom and Liam almost trips over himself running to get her.
Emily’s eyes are wet with tears and she is tangled in her father and Liam’s heartbreaks in many tiny pieces as he gathers his daughter into his arms.
After dropping Emily at a neighbor’s house, he drives to the nearest bar and searches the dance floor for a body that looks like his wife’s then he walks up to the bartender who is now very familiar with his ritual. The man flicks his head warily in the direction of the stairs. When he gets to the room is wife is passed out drunk as usual. But there’s something special about today, she is naked with her long supple legs tangled with a pair of hairy legs that Liam feels like unscrewing from their sockets.
He stares at them both for a moment, leaning heavily against the wall, then he takes off his wedding rings, drops it on the bedside table and walks away.
***
At 8 pm, Jon enters his house through the backdoor and walks to the kitchen blindly groping for the light switch.
Jon? a male voice calls from the darkness and startles him, his water bottle drops from his hand, lands with a thud, just as his other hand flicks the light switch.
The light illuminates the neat and tidy kitchen with a neat and tidy looking man standing in the middle holding a beer. They stare at each other for a frenzied moment before they both burst into laughter, hugging each other tightly.
Liam hands his elder brother a beer and they both toast.
“To Wensworth”
“To ourselves”
Then they both sit and stare at each other’s small smiles sitting on their lips.
“How’s Ragya?” Jon asks his little brother, Liam, though a man already, seems to be growing bigger every day, he thinks.
Liam takes a long swing of his beer and doesn’t answer.
“How’s Emily?” He asks instead.
“Gone,” Jon answers, swallowing heavily, then they say no more about women, they sit there long into the night, making a mountain of beer cans.
***
Stacey didn’t always remember her mother but when she did, the memory was usually forceful and vivid. Memories with her mother had inspired many of her paintings. The most popular of them was a painting of a frightened woman running toward a little girl, that little girl was herself thirty years ago, drawing with a pencil so she could block out the sounds of her father beating mommy again.
The vivid details of that painting had brought Stacey Wensworth into limelight. Another was a painting of a woman packing clothes into a box, tears running down her face was a mask of bruises, a faceless little girl was kneeling beside her watching. The woman’s right hand was a blur as she struggled between packing and touching her little girl again and again.
An artist, Arnold Vicklov, had recreated her painting into a motion picture and invited Stacey to the exhibition. When she stood in front of that picture, staring once again at the tears leaking in bursts from her mother’s eyes, feeling again her mother’s small hands reaching for her knees, her shoulders, her face, Stacey wept into her handkerchief and had to be led out by her friends. The incident made the news: ARTIST LADY WENSWORTH BREAKS DOWN AT ART EXHIBITION.
Yes, it was her who was the last person to see her mother before she left. Her elder brother Jon was at school, little Liam had gone out with his nurse, her father mercifully had gone on one of his business trips, so it was just the two of them in the house.
When her father came back home and realized his wife had gone, his calm was lethal. From that day, he transferred his rage and anger to his three children, withdrawing all of them from school and employing teachers to teach them at home just so they wouldn’t leave his sight.
Twelve years later, their mother returned looking hopeful and determined. It was obvious she had grown over the years and wasn’t the weak abused woman of before. She came back for her children, but their children were no children anymore, they too had suffered at the hands of their father and had been forced to grow up quickly to survive. They wanted nothing to do with her.
Jon came back from high school, saw that his mother had returned only to run off to college.
Liam had asked to be transferred to a high school a hundred miles away, he never went back home. And she Stacey, had taken one look at her abusive father drooling on his sick bed. At the woman who had abandoned them with him, packed her bags and left for Rome.
But she was pregnant now, two weeks ago, staring at the HCG slip, she had realized they had been wrong to leave their mother. She had broken down in tears again, crying for all their mistakes and all their selfishness. She could feel the baby in her womb, she could understand why her mother had come back determined to stay. She had called her Fiance, Francisco, and told him of the plans, he gave her his blessings.
On the flight to Arizona, she prayed every moment, prayed for God to soften her mother’s heart enough so she could forgive them.
At the airport, she shopped for sundresses, flowery sun dresses colourful like all the gardens her mother had hoped to plant but never got the chance.
***
Jon Wensworth
to Emily
October 4th
Dear Emily,
I know you must be far away now, I hope you are safe. Guess who dropped by? Liam came all the way from Texas. Ragya isn’t with him. Stacey followed at his heels from Italy. I wish you were here, that’s the whole Wensworth family gathered excluding our Ma.
Speaking of ma,the three of us have decided to pay her a long visit. Stacey came to us in tears hoping to convince us not knowing we had made the decision already the night before and were about to contact her.
You know, I haven’t seen my ma in twenty years, Stacey in fifteen, Liam saw her last at his graduation ceremony twelve years ago. We all miss her.
Isn’t it strange that we realized this all at the same time? So many years without contact, without a care in the world and suddenly we all are dying to see her. Me especially, I need her prayers.
We both know life hasn’t been going well for me. I was a broken boy when you met me, I am a broken man now. I want to see if spending some time with mother would heal me.
Good news! Stacey is pregnant. Yes, she found out two weeks ago. I know you’re delighted you have always loved children. I also know she wouldn’t mind letting you mother this one just as much as she will.
I do not know when I will return. I have left the house key with Mr. Winthrop, he would give it to you when you return, if you return.
I love you, I want you by my side when I am healed.
***
Stacy Wensworth
to Francisco
October 4th
Dear Francisco,
I do not know if I will ever forgive myself. I do not know if it is possible to heal from this kind of loss. We found Ma. A young woman had been assigned to take care of her, her name is Vicky. She looked at us with scorn when she told us the news.
Francisco, my mother is dying. She was diagnosed with cancer seven years ago. The nurse says she has been fighting it. I wasn’t surprised. Who else had ever fought for life like my mother? Who else is as strong?
The nurse said she had asked to be returned home to spend her last days, she will die tomorrow October 5th. We are all gathered here staring at her withered and motionless form, at all the pipes sticking in and out of her body.
I have wept my heart out, Jon begs me to stop, says it isn’t good for the baby.
Will you promise to never tell our child I did this to my mother?
You should see her, she is all bones, we call her every moment, we bathe her skin with tears but she cannot hear or feel us. We are too late.
What was I doing seven years ago? I cannot remember anything of importance.
My mother will die in the morning. When she does I hope her ghost remains in this house. I too will remain, apologizing for my sins. I will have our daughter here, I will wear her my old baby clothes. I will cry everyday for my mother. You can come visit.
*pixabay license provides for free commercial use and no attribution is required.
What's Your Reaction?
