Spring Break
'The sky will never look the same again/'til you show me how it could be'
The Story So Far
Shannon Barry
Issue date: 11/9/06 Section: Opinion
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She said she needed time. She had become cold, bitter and angry. And when they first met, she couldn't stop giggling just at the thought of holding his hand.
Time to think, time to sort through feelings and time to let the pain heal.
***
The stained brown wood had taken a beating over the years.
The cracks and subtle imperfections seemed to culminate to the very end of the dresser drawer. As it hung open and drooped down, she grazed her finger along the rugged edges, catching on her like splinters from a playground on days long since gone.
The fan zipped around and around as her brown sideswept bangs blew into her eyes. Raising her head, she hesitated, closed her eyes and reopened them. The light flickered with the movement of the fan. Just slightly above it, this constant, this rhythm, this stability comforted her.
She reached her hand slowly into the drawer. Past buttons that her mother had collected for her on trips to Philadelphia, Florida, Georgia. Places she had gone, but had not bothered to take Casey. Because the souvenir would really suffice for a memory … or at least her mother had thought so. Past the torn playing cards that she had once looked forward to playing hearts with her father each Friday night as they watched classic movies like "Casanova" and "Gone with the Wind." When Clark Gable spoke those magical words to Vivien Leigh, she remembered sighing, looking fickishly away and dreaming of one day falling in a love that would look and sound like a movie.
"There's one thing I do know … and that is that I love you, Scarlett," he spoke.
Her dad walked into the kitchen as she heard the fizzing of soda pop being poured into a glass.
"Want anything to drink?" he yelled as Gable finished his line that would set her up for a life of nothing more than high expectations and failure. "In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you."
She became startled into the moment as a marble rolled, and she picked it up, palming it in her hand. Past the cards she felt for her peanut jar full of marbles: butterfly agate, shooters, steelies and, her favorite, the common cat's eye marble.
Time to think, time to sort through feelings and time to let the pain heal.
***
The stained brown wood had taken a beating over the years.
The cracks and subtle imperfections seemed to culminate to the very end of the dresser drawer. As it hung open and drooped down, she grazed her finger along the rugged edges, catching on her like splinters from a playground on days long since gone.
The fan zipped around and around as her brown sideswept bangs blew into her eyes. Raising her head, she hesitated, closed her eyes and reopened them. The light flickered with the movement of the fan. Just slightly above it, this constant, this rhythm, this stability comforted her.
She reached her hand slowly into the drawer. Past buttons that her mother had collected for her on trips to Philadelphia, Florida, Georgia. Places she had gone, but had not bothered to take Casey. Because the souvenir would really suffice for a memory … or at least her mother had thought so. Past the torn playing cards that she had once looked forward to playing hearts with her father each Friday night as they watched classic movies like "Casanova" and "Gone with the Wind." When Clark Gable spoke those magical words to Vivien Leigh, she remembered sighing, looking fickishly away and dreaming of one day falling in a love that would look and sound like a movie.
"There's one thing I do know … and that is that I love you, Scarlett," he spoke.
Her dad walked into the kitchen as she heard the fizzing of soda pop being poured into a glass.
"Want anything to drink?" he yelled as Gable finished his line that would set her up for a life of nothing more than high expectations and failure. "In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you."
She became startled into the moment as a marble rolled, and she picked it up, palming it in her hand. Past the cards she felt for her peanut jar full of marbles: butterfly agate, shooters, steelies and, her favorite, the common cat's eye marble.
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