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| Not even LolCats are immune to the dreaded bug!! |
Staying home from work with the ole bug. Will try desperately to make it to aftercare though, as I teach a drama enrichment on monday afternoons. I'm a drama teacher, don't ya know?
SO............
Even though I have a whole FOLDER of unpublished vignettes, I wanted to publish this one that I wrote tonight, because it is the first complete little vignette I have written in some time. It is also a 'flash forward' into things that will come to pass, which makes a nice change from all the flashbacks we've been having. I wanted to give you a little teaser, a taste, of the way the story is unfolding. It will not all make sense, but I hope it will whet your apetite and keep you reading!
Enjoy! And stay hydrated, all you sufferers of this awful bug :\
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Velvet slipped her fingers up the crisp, perfectly ironed cotton-silk blend of her husband’s collared shirt and felt the muscles bunched and knotted beneath it. He flinched at her touch—just a fraction, just a bit, but he flinched, and she sighed. He’d been doing that lately, the nervous flinching at her touch, and she was well and truly over fretting about it. For weeks, for months, she’d tried to get to the bottom of this strange new reaction to something he’d always melted into, something that had always before elicited a contented exhale of relief and enjoyment. But whenever she’d ask, the same brush offs would inevitably follow; the ‘Nothing, Love’s, and the ‘Must have been daydreaming’s and the ‘Sorry, Sweetheart’s piled up, day after day, before he’d quickly recover from the initial automatic reaction and he’d be her Jonah for a while. Her Jonah, but not her Jonah too. And there was nothing she could do to persuade him to confide in her whatever the hell was slowly, but very surely, driving an invisible wedge between them.
So this morning, when he did it, she couldn’t muster the energy to comment, to call attention to it, to put up a fuss. She simply sighed and pushed her small hands up the broad expanse of his back and found his shoulders, which were not easy for her to reach when he stood, like he was now, at his full height. “Hello Angel.” He murmured, forcing a gentleness that did not agree with his tensed frame. Velvet swallowed as she began to knead the taut muscles on either side of his neck. Jonah Delaney was ready for a fight. He expected an altercation. He was bracing himself for one, standing there in his tailored shirt and his best dress khakis, cleanly shaven and showered and smelling, like he always did, of clean laundry and fresh soap and bergamot.
“I love you.” She prefaced, sticking her toe in the water to take his temperature.
“I love you.” He replied effortlessly, his shoulders like stone under her newly manicured fingers. He said it so easily, so readily. It was an habitual thing. And at the moment Velvet couldn’t help wondering how many times he’d said it like that, so pleasant but so devoid of real feeling—wondered how many times she’d smiled and purred and ignored that hollow note resonating within the words he recited by rote. “That feels wonderful, thank you.” He added, just as automatically.
Velvet made an indistinct sort of noise in her throat and tried to work her fingers into his stony clusters of muscles with little effect. The guests would start arriving any time now. Caleb had come early to help her set up, and was around there somewhere giving orders and seeing to last minute details. Usually Grace helped out with that sort of thing, but, well, in light of present circumstances…
Velvet couldn’t help the little sigh that huffed out of her, thinking about all the terrible ways her family was being ripped apart. And all of the awfulness mounting up on a day that was meant to celebrate family, celebrate new life, celebrate the bonds of blood and marriage. She half wished she could cancel the shower, have a rain date; But what good would it be postponing the inevitable? It would only add fuel to the fire, as it were. The gossips were already buzzing so loud around town that Velvet imagined Cedar Falls had turned into one massive hive of supposition and rumor and salivating scandal mongers. The amount of behind-the-hand conversations that had sprung up in her wake as she made her way through the market this week had put her on edge, but that was nothing compared with the open stares and pitying glances she received while out on the Centre street as she picked up the last of the things she needed for the shower.
It was miserable. And humiliating. And desperately awkward. She felt as though she were emblazoned with some scarlet letter on her breast; yoked with the neck-breaking albatross of ‘dysfunctional family’—she felt the pitiable weight of it all pulling her spirits down into some grim abyss. She felt herself frowning more than she’d ever done before. And worrying. And praying.
To whom? She didn’t really have a clear grasp on that, but that was a whole separate issue, and not one she really had time for, especially not on the day of Maggie and Grey’s Baby Shower.
All this when she should be the happiest little wife and mother in the county. The wedding had gone so beautifully! Her first grandchild was very nearly here! Her twin girls had graduated high school with top grades and limitless prospects for the future! Her husband was up for the top promotion! Life for the Delaneys should have been as charmed and charming as a storybook.
She let her hands slip down his back and fall away as dead weight. She hadn’t made any headway at all and her hands were beginning to cramp. He turned his head to the side just a fraction. “All done?” He asked politely, as though she were a co-worker who’d just handed in some minor report.
“Mhm.” She intoned succinctly, not trusting her voice to mask her real feelings.
“My thanks.”
They stood there, together, for a long few moments in silence, looking out over the splendidly appointed back lawn. The party tents, the bouncy castle, the buffet tables, the ice sculpture. The sculpted rose bushes she’d had brought in, the large round tables with their fine linen, and the stylishly upscale folding chairs. The neatly mown grass, the freshly re-pebbled walks. The pool, blue and rippling and glinting diamonds in the late spring sun.
“Beautiful work, as usual, Mrs. Delaney.” Jonah said quietly, and with his easy grace turned just enough to slip his arm around her and pull her to him gently.
“Thank you.” She hadn’t intended to answer in that tight-throated whisper.
He glanced down at her and she avoided his eyes. After a moment she could feel him looking back out once more, and she could breathe a little easier.
“Do you think she’ll come?” She asked, following one of the cater-waiters with her eyes absently, her mind fixed on the many ways this celebration could turn into an epic disaster.
Jonah gave a short, uncharitable laugh. “Which?” He asked, an undercurrent of bitterness and hurt flashing white-hot through the simple retort.
Velvet leaned her head against him and sighed yet again. It was a fair and a loaded question. “Any of them.” She responded dully. “All of them.” She added.
Jonah was quiet. Velvet watched the landscaper adjusting some lovely urns of riotous hot-house blooms in the area surrounding the swimming pool. She felt a shiver chase through her husband, from top to bottom, and she shivered a little in response, despite the pleasantly warm morning, her teeth chattering together a few times before she could compose herself.
“I believe Avalon will attend, if only out of duty.” He said in a detached and professorial voice. “I think Grace may attend because of our desperate entreaties.” He said, maintaining his emotionless tone. “And I expect Viola will be here—“ He cut himself off, seemingly in mid thought. Velvet tilted her head up to watch the small, silent debate her was having with himself. After a few moments he shrugged and continued his original prediction. “I expect Viola will be here, quite against her will, because He will wish to drag her to this event and parade her around on his arm.” Jonah said almost casually, sending another icy shiver slipping down Velvet’s spine. “To hurt me.” He said quietly, but calmly. “To humiliate us.” Jonah finished matter-of-factly.
Velvet’s hand reached up of its own volition and cupped his beautiful face very gently. Behind his glasses Jonah’s exceptional violet eyes seemed to shimmer and burn as he stared fixedly out, over the nearly-party of their lawn. Velvet thought if she followed his gaze she would find him staring at that old swing-set he’d put together when the kids were small.
She searched his face but, as usual these days, it was unreadable. Even. Controlled. He was getting very, very good at compartmentalizing, at quarantining his more visceral reactions, his more human feelings; He was fast becoming adept at presenting a mild, uninterested persona. And only if you got close, like Velvet did, could you see the strain around his eyes, the pulling at the corners of his mouth, spot the enormous effort it was taking to keep up appearances, feel the miserable tension twisting every fibre and sinew of his long, graceful form.
“What are you planning?” She ventured cautiously.
A muscle ticked in her husband’s jaw, but when he spoke it was in the same calm, neutered voice as before. “At my son and daughter-in-law’s baby shower?” He asked rhetorically, “I plan on being the perfect host.”
Velvet felt something panicky and ominous jittering around behind her ribs. She imagined a pin ball with her ex-husband’s face on it, battering around inside her torso—slamming into her ribs, crashing off her spine, zooming circles around her heart and bouncing again and again through her lungs, robbing her of air in odd little bursts.
“What do you think he’s planning?” She asked as levelly as she could manage, some of it coming out like a croak.
Jonah snorted very softly, like a horse ready to take its head from its rider. “He’ll want to get me to throw a punch,” Jonah said plainly, “Or worse.”
Velvet closed her eyes and held them closed, collecting her wits and catching her breath. “Jonah, you can’t—“
“I’m aware.” He cut her off curtly.
She tried to swallow but found the task undoable at the present moment.
She watched the tent people triple-checking the rigging, and the tie-backs on the flaps, and whatever the hell else a tent-erector had to check thrice. The hum and whirr of the motor on the bouncy house cushioned the steady lap and splash of the gentle waves in the pool and Velvet thought she’d quite like a frozen cocktail and a license to put her feet up and forget the whole affair.
“I love you.” She told him again, the words falling out on yet another, quite resigned--and quite disillusioned--sigh.
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