A Most Rapid Fall (BWWM)

A Recollection

They were surrounded by the bustle of squeals and stomping feet. Young girls chased each other through the house under the pretense that they were taking a break from their chores. One girl dawdled around Mona's feet tugging at her shoe laces, toying with new knots and snickering to herself. She was heavy-set and bored, so Mona obliged. Eventually, though, Nan turned and quipped at the girl so that she skittered away down the hall in a rat-like manner.

"Yes, there. Be still and don't let go." Nan balanced the needle between frail, shaking fingers while her granddaughter held the fabric taut, "I like to do this when he's on his trips. He never notices a thing, though. He probably won't notice that you're here until you're gone. The poor boy's stuck in his own head."

Mona watched and listened.

"He's really got a twinkle in his eye but he doesn't know where to take it." The woman eyed her knowingly above her glasses. "I bet your mind has wiles the most uninhibited of brains can't reach. But, you don't speak too much, do you?"

Mona's eyes widened ever so slightly, she humored the old woman.

"You're afraid of being found out." The thin lips quirked into a thin grin, "Built an intricate little system of wires around yourself so that you're always on the alert, always listening for them to catch on. Well, you're safe here. But, I wonder what's got you so wound up."

Mona turned over the cloth.

"Where's your mother?"

"She had to stay home."

"And why's that?"

"She had work to catch up on and couldn't find a place to keep our dog."

Nan's nostrils flared as she halted with her stitch, "Well, that's just unfortunate."

"Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask me anything."

"What's kept you here?" Mona looked up to meet the woman's glassy eyes. She had reached that point in age that was well past her peak, that point where one begins to shrink and, somewhat like a vacuum, one's body sucks in the flesh so that the skin begins to crinkle deeply. Like, a heavy breeze could easily wear her to her knees, but something in her spirit seemed to endure. "My mother mentioned to me that time when you left home and never came back. She told me you were practically untraceable and how her family sent her away to a place in the middle of nowhere without an actual explanation and it all seems so... vague. Then, you show up at her home almost a thousand miles away from here, just to look at her, never quite saying anything at all?"

"While I'm glad to hear that that's the most you've spoken today," Nan sat shaking for a long while, quietly chewing her gums, "You don't want to know the answers to that question. There are too many, I think."

"I don't care so deeply for the subject, but to see my mom show such a heap of sadness at the fact that you asked to see me and not her, that was unsettling. After all, she's your daughter. I'm not."

"And you're my granddaughter."

"Do you miss her at all?"

"She's my daughter. Of course, I miss her."

"Then, why couldn't she be here instead of me?"

"There are things in this house that, unfortunately, I  have no control over. I must answer to the call of certain duties that require the utmost expedience. It's not my highest wish to be meeting you this way. Do you think I'd drop out of my own daughter's life so abruptly?" Her wrists were shaking and her fingers were pinching the needles viciously now. She dropped her voice so that the girls around us couldn't hear, "Waste my life being away from her like this? I've exhausted my one and only resource to find a way to see her face just once. It was so, so long ago. But, I did it. Now, look where we are. I'm still a prisoner and you're looking at the shell of a woman that calls herself your grandmother. It's a mockery, I've made of the name. But, this all out of my control. I'm-"

"Nan? Supper's almost ready if you want me to start getting the house together." There was a creak and sigh of the kitchen door and out slunk a  teen covered in flour and smoke. The first boy she'd seen in the house. Quite possibly the only one, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we'd have a little more time before she got here." He wiped the white off of his yellow fingers and offered them for a shake. Mona didn't budge

"Can't you see she's busy." There was a gentler bite in Nan's tone with this one. Dismissive yet softly so.

Mona tilted her neck almost ninety degrees to really take a good look at him. She raised a brow. Behind the flecks of flour and dough, he was a nervous handsome. There was a softness in his voice and his looks reflected it. His body could've been a flute of cold milk and his eyes were chipped drops of cocoa.
He was observing her too through weary eyes. Unnerved and flighty, she turned back to Nan, "I have work to do upstairs on the curtains. I just remembered."

"What work? Didn't I mention, Eli, that this girl is graduating at the age of sixteen."

He was still staring at her with that skittish look, she felt it. "There's a situation upstairs that needs handling, Nan." His tone was strained, then before he turned back to Mona with that pure smile, "It was nice meeting you, Mona."

He offered his hand again and she ignored it, choosing the thread's intricacies over his gawky misgivings.