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avevale_intelligencerIt's a quarter to three, the moon is playing with the clouds outside the netted window, and bam, Laura's awake. There's a jingle running through her head, Burl Ives' voice cool as cotton candy. There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she'll die.
She feels the cool covers on her body, and the unaccustomed lightness in her soul. The bad memories are all still there, but their emotional weight has gone, and all that matters now are the good times. She feels nothing but fondness for him now, sympathy for the times he fell short of his own standards as well as hers, and the forgiveness whose denial has poisoned her life for all of the eight years since he finally gave up trying to breathe. And she owes it all to Mrs Curbinand. There was an old lady who swallowed a bird. How absurd, to swallow a bird!
She must try to get a moment with her tomorrow, to thank her properly. Mrs Curbinand will be busy, certainly. All the other women in the shelter will want her to suffer for them. All have come to the shelter weighted down with frozen grief and soured anger and the waste of a life in the service of some man or other. The best years of their lives, she thinks. We all gave the best years of our lives to someone who didn't deserve it, because how could any man deserve us? And Mrs Curbinand will listen to their stories, and suffer for them the way she did for me, and they'll feel stronger and lighter and happier the way I do. And then we'll go back out into the world and make places for ourselves, and Mrs Curbinand will go on to help more women. There was an old lady who swallowed a dog--
It isn't a scream, exactly. It's a human voice, but muffled, clotted somehow, and it's close, somewhere outside. Laura gets out of bed and goes to the window, picking up her robe from the chair by the bed.
The moon etches the garden in silver, and there in the middle of the lawn lies a curled shape. Laura has the sense that something else has just moved quickly away, but her glasses are still on the night stand and everything but the shape is blurred and wavery.
The shape is all too clear.
As Laura, glasses on now, makes her way along the corridor and tiptoes down the stairs, she wonders why no-one else heard the noise. But then, LeeAnn next door on the left always puts her earplugs in, and Betty on the right wouldn't wake for the last judgment even if God hired Aerosmith to do the gig. She reaches the French windows, and takes a moment to open them as quietly as she can. Through the conservatory, and out into the garden, and there it is, looking something like a rose in the middle of the lawn, a rose four feet across; but Laura knew what it was the moment she saw it.
She reaches the still form lying curled in its voluminous robe, and wraps her own hand in her sleeve before gently turning it over. The pale face of Mrs Curbinand stares unseeing up at the moon.
There was an old lady who swallowed a horse.
She's dead, of course.
She feels the cool covers on her body, and the unaccustomed lightness in her soul. The bad memories are all still there, but their emotional weight has gone, and all that matters now are the good times. She feels nothing but fondness for him now, sympathy for the times he fell short of his own standards as well as hers, and the forgiveness whose denial has poisoned her life for all of the eight years since he finally gave up trying to breathe. And she owes it all to Mrs Curbinand. There was an old lady who swallowed a bird. How absurd, to swallow a bird!
She must try to get a moment with her tomorrow, to thank her properly. Mrs Curbinand will be busy, certainly. All the other women in the shelter will want her to suffer for them. All have come to the shelter weighted down with frozen grief and soured anger and the waste of a life in the service of some man or other. The best years of their lives, she thinks. We all gave the best years of our lives to someone who didn't deserve it, because how could any man deserve us? And Mrs Curbinand will listen to their stories, and suffer for them the way she did for me, and they'll feel stronger and lighter and happier the way I do. And then we'll go back out into the world and make places for ourselves, and Mrs Curbinand will go on to help more women. There was an old lady who swallowed a dog--
It isn't a scream, exactly. It's a human voice, but muffled, clotted somehow, and it's close, somewhere outside. Laura gets out of bed and goes to the window, picking up her robe from the chair by the bed.
The moon etches the garden in silver, and there in the middle of the lawn lies a curled shape. Laura has the sense that something else has just moved quickly away, but her glasses are still on the night stand and everything but the shape is blurred and wavery.
The shape is all too clear.
As Laura, glasses on now, makes her way along the corridor and tiptoes down the stairs, she wonders why no-one else heard the noise. But then, LeeAnn next door on the left always puts her earplugs in, and Betty on the right wouldn't wake for the last judgment even if God hired Aerosmith to do the gig. She reaches the French windows, and takes a moment to open them as quietly as she can. Through the conservatory, and out into the garden, and there it is, looking something like a rose in the middle of the lawn, a rose four feet across; but Laura knew what it was the moment she saw it.
She reaches the still form lying curled in its voluminous robe, and wraps her own hand in her sleeve before gently turning it over. The pale face of Mrs Curbinand stares unseeing up at the moon.
There was an old lady who swallowed a horse.
She's dead, of course.