Every Second Saturday (#TeamUpChallenge2018)

Every Second Saturday

On the second Saturday of each month, Mrs. Hackett wakes at the stroke of sunrise, when the sky is blushing and the air is still warm with last night's romance. But the heating of her little house on Rutherford St. has been broken since last spring, so she pulls her woolen coat tighter over her shoulders and shivers at the stinging bite of the late autumn wind. Her fingers are numb as she slathers hummus on bread and packs away two ham sandwiches, folding the brown paper bag twice over before departing for the gardens.

She hums to the tune of The Immigrant Song, fingers drumming against her hipbone as they ache for the strings of the guitar she sold six years prior. Her husband used to play the song every Friday night, and the pair would dance and laugh from when the stars began to twinkle until the sun began to rise. The record player now sits cracked and obsolete in the dusted shelves of her basement. It hasn't been touched in fourteen years.

The gardens have been around since long before the record player broke, but they're a quiet affair in the middle of November. The usual crowd has dwindled to three or four regulars who come for a bit of peace each Saturday morning. Most of the trees have been stripped bare, dried leaves sitting in a heap of brown above the protruding roots. There's little color in the gardens now, but Mrs. Hackett has grown accustomed to the shades of brown and deadened green that line the cobblestone path. After all, Mrs. Hackett has little care for color.

She sits on the bench built between two lamp posts, where the arching branches of the maple trees dip low enough to grant her an abundance of cool shade. The wood creaks beneath her, blackened and rotten at the ends from decades of use. The bench isn't one of breadth or grandeur, but still the emptiness beside her is haunting. Mrs. Hackett trembles as the wind picks up speed, shoving her hands into the warm pockets of her coat. Still, her hands shake.

The sky is a bitter shade of gray now, and the clouds are thick. The heavens might weep today, but Mrs. Hackett has little care for rain. She never checks the forecast on a second Saturday.

Mrs. Hackett ignores the sky as her gaze finds the statue of a wild, roaring donkey leaping meters away, a single horn emerging from its forehead as the shadows sink in, turning the gray a shade darker. She imagines a time when her hands pressed up against the cold stone, tracing the dent in the side where rock has crumbled away, leaving behind a mess of dirt and dust. She imagines a time before even that, when her skirts would fall loosely over the back of the donkey and her fingers would wrap around the curved horn. Her husband would hold her hand, and the pair would laugh and giggle as they rode off into the sunset.

But Mrs. Hackett is no longer young and in love, and the years have been cruel to her. She hasn't laughed like that in a long time. She won't today.

"Gerard." Her voice is cracked and hoarse, roughened by years of using it so little. There's a familiarity to the name, a fragility that clings to how she says it. She's careful of it, careful of what Gerard means to her. "How's it going, buddy?"

The wind whistles in reply.

Mrs. Hackett is quiet for a moment, watching as the dried leaves blow from the deadened grass to over the statue and into the air. The scent of roses wafts under her nose, but such a smell isn't from the gardens; there's no beauty here in November.

So, as she does every second Saturday, Mrs. Hackett opens the brown paper bag and retrieves a ham sandwich. "I brought you a sandwich--Tom's favorite." She pauses, throwing it at the donkey, but her arms aren't as strong as they used to be and the sandwich only makes it half the distance. "I know Tom brought you one every second Saturday," Mrs. Hackett pauses again as her gaze shifts to the horn, "and I know you're off in your own world, being some sort of hero, but..." Mrs. Hackett looks away as her voice trails off. "I don't know. Just try it."

She knows Gerard won't. But Mrs. Hackett likes to imagine he will.

She likes to imagine a donkey carved from gold, glinting under the tender kiss of the sun as it charges into battle a mighty warrior. She likes to imagine Gerard's horn, caked in dried blood as corpses of the enemies litter the battlefield. She likes to imagine a donkey with wings, standing at the edge of the cliff with a whole wide world before him. She likes to imagine herself on top of Gerard, a hand curled around its horn as he flaps his wings and they take flight for the first time, their destination the shining sun in the distance. Mrs. Hackett likes to imagine Gerard sitting on a picnic blanket, eating the ham sandwich rotting on the ground because Gerard is her friend.

But Gerard was more Tom's friend. Ever since Tom has been gone, Gerard isn't as alive as he used to be. Every second Saturday, Mrs. Hackett wonders if it's because she's grown old and her mind has grown weak. Every second Saturday, Mrs. Hackett wonders if it's because she doesn't care enough. But that can't be true.

Mrs. Hackett has little care for the gardens, for the statue, or even for the broken record player in her basement. But Mrs. Hackett cares for what they used to be fourteen years ago, when the bench was not old or rotten and the place beside her was not empty.