A Time for Love

Day 4

"Amber told me what happened" says Callie, banging on my door. "I'm really sorry that you are upset about them, but I think you should go home for a while. At least until you can sort out your issues."

I listened to her through the door.

"I know you've been wanting to move out and get a serious job going. I know you've been bored since college has ended. Not a day goes by I don't miss them."

"Lousy friend" I mutter. "You're supposed to stick with me. We've known each other since we were kids. Tell that Amber that Steve may like her now, but eventually he will use her like he used me."

I knew Steve was next door, and probably listening in. Nevertheless, he was silent.

"You're wrong" shouts Amber over tears. "Steve cares about me! We love each other with a love that nobody's ever experienced! We will always love each other, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

"Maybe it's your fucking tits he's drooling over, because they shirk him from responsibilities and really being vulnerable with someone" I say. "Ask him. Ask him why I am mad."

Everyone is silent now - including Callie. She is sitting on the couch in concentration as I grab my purse and run out of the apartment. My tears slap against the pavement.

"This is your fault" I tell myself. "If you weren't so lusty, if you were a dutiful daughter like Amber from a culture where people worried about what other people thought of them, he wouldn't have hit you. Wouldn't have left you. He did it because you were so pathetically in love with him."

My phone buzzes.

"Where the fuck are you?" slurs the phone over the roar of wind in the trees. Distant thunder cackles.

It's my older sister. She moved out before I started kindergarten. Got married, had kids. Moved into an upscale suburban neighborhood on the other side of the mountain with her friends.

When her husband was found cheating on her with his associate in Shanghai, she sued him for every penny he spent on those business trips. It was not because of the unpaid tuition bills or the jewelry of hers that went missing. She did it because it was going on for 12 years. Neither partner in this affair thought to confess to it or reconsider their marriages.

Margaret got to take over the company, then firing both of her husband and the woman. She moved far away from the neighborhood and her friends to a downtown-luxury penthouse apartment. She has become a different person - in the words of Rhett Butler in Gone with The Wind, frankly "She couldn't give a damn about her now ruined husband."

"Mimi died" said Margaret.

Mimi, in spite of her constant cynicism from her former husband leaving her, is the only grandma I've ever known. Her love was always distant, but she remained wise and a role model in her stoicism. She was judgmental of in-laws, step-siblings, and other family members unrelated to her - especially her daughter in law.

Aunt Andrea had always kept her husband, his finances, her children, her appearance, and her reputation as an English teacher in an upscale private school on a leash. She was very fond of Mimi for having to deal with the "evil" of her ex husband by staying celibate and true to her marriage vow her whole life. They had a love-hate relationship, where Aunt Andrea would be nice / then alternate with a desire to step in from the wings and take advantage of things - especially the thought of the Swanson inheritance.

"It's the brooch" says Margaret.

The brooch was an expensive heirloom of sapphire lining the sides of a 3 carat diamond ring. Mimi had found it when evacuating France, but she never said how she got it. The memories of the war were too painful to remember.

"Say no more" I replied, and headed over.

The lady stared at my face as I explained who I was, giving me a once-over. Then I pulled my car to valet parking, running into the receptionist desk to tell them who I was. The male receptionist nodded his head before I bounded down the hall, up the elevator, and down the hall to her room.

Her room was immaculately clean and silent, but there were some signs of when my grandmother's health started to fade. An uneaten breakfast sat on the table. Drops of blood on the floor led to the bathroom, where a pool of it lay over the white bathroom rug and tiles.

I went to her bedroom, fearing that by taking Mimi's ring she would haunt me out of her very anger that tears weren't spilling from my eyes. In my defense, at the ripe age of 100, it was her time to go much like her mother.

It sounded as if there was a ghost talking!?

On further inspection, the sound originated from the closet where I found an old radio playing.

"The Nazis push, threatening to take over France any day now. Only courage for the brave men caught on the beach of Dunkirk and prayers from all of you at home can help them now" cackled the English voice.

Sometimes, some things are too difficult to believe. Like, when one sees a flying saucer over the sky, a ghost passing by in the shadows, or hears their deceased loved one on the phone. You want to exert some control over an otherworldly situation that helps compartmentalize the experience into logical sense, but then the moment passes you by and you wonder if what you experienced was, in fact, true.

"This is weird Mimi" I admitted. "I know you may be mad about me coming to get the ring and not crying. I am crying Mimi, in my own time. Besides, you wanted me to get the ring away from her anyway. I need to turn this off" I say, reaching for the radio.

I touch the knob. Lightning strikes, and the power in the apartment complex goes off.

Holy crap, the radio is still playing!

Weird electricity fills the air, making my spinal column shiver with chills.

I touch the knob, and lights flash over and over, blinding me with it's intensity until I pass out.