Background Colours

The potent smell of lilies and carnations is almost overpowering in the small house. Guests, wanted and unwanted, are gone. Bob and his wife, Nancy, already slurring and tripping over furniture, left this morning. They had stuff to do. Yeah…stuff.

David’s returning to rehab; he only has a two-day pass. And Mike, well, he’s just in a new relationship, and Cameron can’t handle funerals, or being by himself for very long. So with the boys gone it is up to Missy and Hannah to do the actual work. Things never change.

Neat mountains of crap still fill the basement and the second floor. The stairs groan every time one of the women makes the trip out with an armload of stuff. They had already spent hours moving the detritus of their father’s life from the main floor before the funeral. After all, it wouldn’t have been possible to have the wake, no matter how small and intimate, here in their father’s little bungalow.

Even now, six hours into the project, the walls seem to bulge with the effort of keeping the piles contained. A rented skip, almost the same size as the house, is already half full and they still haven’t even gotten half way through the master bedroom.

“Did you have any idea it was this bad?” Hannah asks her sister.

Missy looks around the room as if seeing it for the first time, then shakes her head. “With everything all bundled up and tied in neat little knots it sort of gave the hint of organization,” she says.

The bed squeaks as Hannah drops onto the edge. “I’m bushed,” she says. She tucks her bangs behind her ears and then rubs at the dark smudges under her eyes. “Let’s call it a night and then get a fresh start in the morning.”

Missy nods in a bobble-headed fashion, and mutters to herself. She plunks herself down beside her sister and sighs. “No one in town would blame us if we just torched the place.”

Hannah picks up a well thumbed book sitting on the night stand. It had been the last in a pile which she had gone through earlier. Most of that pile has gone into the recycle bin, but she knew that this one, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, had been her father’s favourite. She had been loath to throw it away with the others. It falls open to the place where the spine has cracked and a couple of yellowed pages slip out the bottom. “Another cheque?” she wonders. So far they have found ten uncashed pension cheques, along with a plethora of paper money – dollar bills, even ten dollars here and five dollars there.

When they had discovered that their father had hidden money everywhere it had slowed the process of sorting and discarding down to a crawl. The money kept piling up on the coffee table all day. The last time she added a twenty to the pile Hannah had counted over five hundred dollars in cash alone.

Hannah carefully opens the paper and begins to read. Missy reads over her shoulder. They both gasp at the same time. “Did…did you know that Dad was a fiction writer?” Missy stutters. They look at each other, eyes wide, mouths open. This isn’t fiction and they both know it.

January 21, 1965

Eyes green as moldy copper peer above a scarf wrapped tight against the bitter cold. I imagine tiny tear drops frozen to those long dark lashes as she blinks her eyes against the winter wind. She stands just outside a pool of light cast by the only dim street lamp still burning on this deserted lane, and waits for Karl’s approach.

Her boots squeal against the snow each time she shifts her weight. Deep moon-dust prints mark her passage down the road to this spot. The smallest breeze makes her squint her eyes. I imagine her looking through those frozen tears as if she is peering through a kaleidoscope which transforms the dim light into jagged rainbows that glint with a knife’s edge of colours. I can almost hear her sucking in a tiny breath as the dark night is transmuted into a beauty she otherwise would have missed.

Then she stiffens. A dim form, outlined in blues and purples, materialises from the deep shadows at the end of the street.

The approaching figure is shapeless and still shrouded in night’s cape, but she knows it is Karl by his limping gait. Silent as a wraith she moves even further back, away from the light which seems to have fused with the crusted snow. Now even the small puffs of her steamy breath are no longer visible.

I imagine her fingers icy and stiff. They no longer feel as if they belong to her hand. They do not feel as if they belong to her at all. It is better that way, I think. Because she knows that it will only take a thought to finish what Karl had started. The gun rests, and waits for that thought.

January 21, 1975

The girls were born six months after that bitter cold winter’s night. Some say that they do not resemble their father at all. Some would be wrong. They are the spitting image of him. But where he was large and ungainly, with a dragging limp and a scarred face, they are tall and willowy. Beautiful. They look like wood nymphs with their dark curls, luminous unblemished faces, and happy carefree laughter.

I buy them each a kaleidoscope for their tenth birthday, and watch with misty remembrances as they discover the beauty of the world of refracted colours.

Image Credit

“Design 1 (K_FUN #79)” by Gravityx9. www.flickr.com. Some rights reserved.

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