Edna Marie

EDNA MARIE
By
Deborah Brent




A small electric candle leftover from Christmas, lit up the mantle, the man, and the well-worn frame that embraced her photograph. He stood there propped against the mantle listened to the ticking of the hands of the clock and staring at the smiling young woman. Bottle in hand he saluted the picture.
“Happy New Year, sweetheart. I always thought you should have been named Angela or Caroline. A name that suggested warmth and sunshine.”
He chuckled, smiled slightly, and continued, “But I do remember how your small body quivered with indignation when you were angry. Then you were Edna Marie.”
The solid overstuffed chair creaked as he lowered his large frame into the worn seat. The heat from the fire didn’t seem to reach his old bones, and the deep cold reminded him of his youth. He sat there remembering his youth, “Edna, I can still feel the bite of those cold winds in the Nebraska Sandhills. But, I’m not complaining. Tilling my fields and tending cattle is good, honest work” The thought of dry land and dust made his throat dry, and he took another sip from the bottle. Besides, each day on your way home from high school you’d stop to talk, and you made me forget the cold with your smile. I never told you how much I looked forward to hearing your voice each day.”
Another empty bottle. He slowly pushed himself up and out of the chair and walked into the dark kitchen. The old seal of the refrigerator door made a little sucking sound, and the harsh light from the bare bulb inside briefly lit up his aged, work-worn face as he gripped another bottle. Automatically he reached for the bottle opener stuck to the front of the fridge by a magnet. A bottle-cap clattered onto the counter. Out of habit, he replaced the opener. After countless nights of walking the floor, he needed no more than the faint glow of the electric candle to light his way back to the chair.
His eyes closed as if asleep. He was not sleeping, but playing back the memories of his youth. He sat silently for a few moments savoring the reminiscences of his past, taking each memory out one by one, carefully, as if they could be shattered when drawn from the mind too abruptly.
It seemed as if the worst memories always surfaced first.
Talking more to himself than the woman in the frame, he said, “The Great War. What an absurd phrase. There is nothing great about war... I couldn’t bring myself to tell you what happened over there. Memories, good and bad, are meant to be shared. Mine caused nightmares. You knew and didn’t ask. I wanted to spare you the evil I saw. In the mud, muck, and death of that place, I remembered the open smiling face of a young girl. I wanted to hold onto that piece of home. So, I wrote to you.”
He clenched his fist on the arm of the chair and said, “I wrote those letters to a fresh, wide-eyed young girl, but when I came home you were a woman. I shouldn’t have married you. I was too old for you. Too old, in more than years. I had been lonely in France. The girls were pretty, but they weren’t you. The entire trip on the boat back I kept remembering how you looked the day you saw me off at the train depot in Long Pine. I was expecting the same girl to meet me when I came home. But, there you were all grown up. It was the same small body, but now it had curves. You did something with your hair. It was no longer in a braid down your back, but cut and curled like one of those fashion models. Then I looked down and there were your ankles for all and sundry to see. I could circle them with my thumb and little finger. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Half the men in the county were after you. You were cute and funny, and you made me forget where I had been, and what I’d had to do over there. When I looked in your eyes, I saw possibilities, because you saw them in me, and damn it,” he beat his fist on the arm of the chair, “you answered my letters.”
He took a final swig out of the bottle. Empty again. Light from the refrigerator lit the small kitchen, and another bottle-cap clattered onto the scarred wooden counter. His anger mounted at how easily she had manipulated him into marriage. He walked the few steps back into the living room; in the distance, he heard the lowing of cattle.
“Hear that? That could have been my cattle in the stockyards going to market. Sons, if you had given me sons those could be my cattle. But no, you gave me three girls, and I traded trail dust for sawdust. How is a man supposed to build up a ranch with girls?”
“You caught me in a weak moment. I was just home, you were pretty, and there was Howard Jones on your doorstep night after night. He took you for walks, brought you flowers, and read you poetry. I knew if I didn’t move fast you would be his instead of mine.”
Old jealousy surfaced and made the vein on his temple throb. “But, the final enticement was the day you kissed me. I know, you say I kissed you, but you kissed me. I remember. It was New Year’s Eve. We were at a party at Jenny Miller’s house counting down the New Year. When everyone shouted “zero” you stood up on your toes, grabbed my ears, and kissed me right smack on the lips.”
He stopped his pacing to lift the photo off of the mantle. He traced the likeness of her lips remembered their softness, the sweetness of their taste, and the warmth of her breath joining him in a kiss that never failed to stir his blood and his heart.
The lowing of cattle in the distance brought him back to the anger he nursed like the old friend it was. He replaced the photo and paced back and forth in the small room. Mumbling under his breath with every step, “What is a man ... girls ... ranch ... old ... useless.”
His long strides made him stop and turn every five or six steps. He’d never felt the need for a bigger house than the pink stucco home where he’d raised his girls. He drained the bottle, walked back into the kitchen, and another bottle cap hit the counter. His angry steps caused him to trip over a stack of old ranching magazines. The covers were as faded as his dreams, and the corners curled from many long nights spent reading what could have been. He tumbled into the chair.
“Edna, I forgave you just about everything, but there is one thing I can’t forgive. You left me. One day you were here laughing, talking, and loving me and the next you were gone.”
He sighed heavily, “Maybe if I’d had more money, you could’ve stayed. Polio, Doc Burton said. He claimed he did all he could. Your funeral was a sad affair. It was just me the girls and the preacher standing at your graveside. Everyone stayed in their cars with the windows rolled up. I thought about that later and wondered how hot it must have gotten in those cars on that summer day. The ladies from First Methodist Church outdid themselves with the food. I didn’t have to worry about meals for at least a week.”
He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees and looked down at the weathered wood floor. With a catch in his voice, he continued, “One week, only seven days, and you were gone.” Silent tears ran down the furrows of his face.
His anger spent, he leaned back, rubbed his hand down his face, and burrowed deeper into his overstuffed chair. The ache of loss moved through him and settled over his heart. Staring at the empty bottle in his left hand, he rubbed his left arm with his right hand. He looked up to the mantle where the picture of his beloved sat.
He confided, “You know, I think I have become addicted to these things. The people who make it call it soda pop, but it ain’t nothing but sugar water. You know me and sweets. I can’t get enough of ‘em. Sometimes I can still taste your chocolate cake.” He paused again caught up in the memories of his past.
Resuming the nightly conversation he said, “I forgot to tell you. Our oldest is expecting again, she said if this one is a boy, they’re going to name him after me. Pride filled his chest. Maybe he will grow up to be a carpenter like me.” He paused and smiled at the woman in the frame. “She is near about as good a mother as you. As the oldest, she had to learn about running a house when you left. It wasn’t easy for a girl of twelve. Boy, did she learn how to cook. After college, she went to work for a fancy restaurant in Oklahoma City. She has written a cookbook for children and is the head chef at the big new hotel they built out next to President Eisenhower’s interstate highway system.”
He continued to talk until the only sound in the room was his gentle snore. The first day of the New Year dawned clear as rays of light brightened the room. A voice called to him, a woman’s voice softly calling him to wakefulness.
“Edna,” he squinted into the sparkling light. “Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
Immediately he sat up, wide awake. There standing in the middle of the room, the morning light shining all around her, was the woman pictured in the frame.
He stood, “You left me.” He accused. The pain of her loss still etched on his face.
“I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t given a choice. Can you forgive me?” She smiled, took his hand, and placed it over her heart.
Remembering similar conversations when she had gently laughed at his anger, he stepped closer and touched her face with his fingertips.
The old phrase came readily to his lips, “Since you ask so polite like, I guess I can.”
With sudden clarity, he wondered how he could be touching and talking to a dead woman.
His eyes followed her hand. She pointed to his chair. In it, where he had spent many a night, lay the shell of the man he had been. “You got angry with me one time too many. Your heart couldn’t stand the strain.”
He enfolded her small being in his arms. He looked down into her eyes; with a tremble in his hand, he touched her face and hair.
He whispered, “No, my heart couldn’t stand being away from you any longer.”
He took one last look around the room and nodded to the man he had been. He caught a glimpse of a young woman and man in the mirror over the mantle. He looked again and realized he was no longer old and frail, but the young man who had wooed and won the prettiest girl in Brown County. Turning together, they clasped hands, and she led him toward the light.
EDNA MARIE / Brent

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