‘You’re so beautiful …’ the old man’s yellowed fingers moved toward her face, hesitantly.
She jerked back, automatically, tried to cover the rudeness with a laugh. Called him an ‘old rogue.’ Looked away.
Beautiful. The one lie her husband had never told her.
Beautiful was then a word reserved for unattainable women, the golden favoured women – one could not fairly call them few – who captured his eye, and held his attention. She, Melanie, was ‘faithful’, ‘good’ ... the same dour, trustworthy epithets one might use for an old hound, one who clogs the fireplace and has started to smell.
On occasion she’d prodded him for it, sozzled by Christmas wine, demanding to know what he made of her looks.
‘Am I beautiful?’ She’d rattled her bangles at him like a viper.
He’d laughed. ‘Darling.’ Cocky, and amused. ‘You know me. You know I don’t tell lies.’
Time and the predictability of his women had marched on, trampling her promises; and they had parted. Melanie rebuilt her life, hoping to prove him mistaken. He still denied her his attention, and the juddering brutality of it ending had crushed her. Memories were all she held close, now.
Time had brought her to the care home, by the mountain. Time had rendered her a boiled sweet-bearing busybody, that jolly middle-aged visitor who wakes the old gentlemen and brings them back to the present. Wrenches them from the tender fingers of old, from dreams of days where they once might have been beautiful.
Beautiful
‘You’re so beautiful …’ the old man’s yellowed fingers moved toward her face, hesitantly.
She jerked back, automatically, tried to cover the rudeness with a laugh. Called him an ‘old rogue.’ Looked away.
Beautiful. The one lie her husband had never told her.
Beautiful was then a word reserved for unattainable women, the golden favoured women – one could not fairly call them few – who captured his eye, and held his attention. She, Melanie, was ‘faithful’, ‘good’ ... the same dour, trustworthy epithets one might use for an old hound, one who clogs the fireplace and has started to smell.
On occasion she’d prodded him for it, sozzled by Christmas wine, demanding to know what he made of her looks.
‘Am I beautiful?’ She’d rattled her bangles at him like a viper.
He’d laughed. ‘Darling.’ Cocky, and amused. ‘You know me. You know I don’t tell lies.’
Time and the predictability of his women had marched on, trampling her promises; and they had parted. Melanie rebuilt her life, hoping to prove him mistaken. He still denied her his attention, and the juddering brutality of it ending had crushed her. Memories were all she held close, now.
Time had brought her to the care home, by the mountain. Time had rendered her a boiled sweet-bearing busybody, that jolly middle-aged visitor who wakes the old gentlemen and brings them back to the present. Wrenches them from the tender fingers of old, from dreams of days where they once might have been beautiful.