She's not homeless, just home less now that what made it a home is missing. |
The hand lies half opened on the sidewalk cupped as if to hold something beside air. Or someone. Dirt lines each crease, nails are cracked; lined with black. Photographic negative of a French Manicure. Blurred vision focuses on minute ant crawling along a crack in the sidewalk. Eyes move, like arthritic limbs, to the outstretched palm supplicating within mere inches of the world passing by. They, as a body, do not see her. A drunk, they might muse or drug addict, should she register, but she doesn't because to them she no longer matters; less perhaps in their world than the ant that now lies crushed beneath a Louboutin red sole with no soul. They see not Marguerite VanDannenbery, who vanished. Missing from her garden twelve blocks west and six days ago to bring Miss Lottie some flowers. She missed Lottie who had wandered to some other world and she sat down to wait. Time holds no meaning for Marguerite; her grasp of time having spilled through her fingers much like the wilted daisy petals on the sidewalk. The day her husband died a year ago the brownstone with the floral fantasy garden lost its magic and the pieces that comprised Marguerite shattered. Sarah Peabody is out walking with her mother. No one listens to a four year old. They do not hear her crying for the lady next door and her mother scolds and says they will be late; there is no time. Her voice penetrates dimmed foggy recesses. Marguerite sits up and watches Sarah being tugged away and thinks of the daisies in her back garden. She stands and slowly wanders back home, fits her key into her gate and wonders if she forgot to feed the cat. |