A completely fabricated tale I wrote while waiting for friends to join me at Mohonk Mountain House, a historic Victorian Castle Resort in Upstate, NY. Its a game I play if I find myself somewhere with a lot of time on my hands and a lot of people around me. I find someone and imagine their life, and sometimes I write it down.
Hope you enjoy….
It is teatime at the Mohonk Resort when I spot him at a table in front of the fire. His face is weathered with deep crags and grooves. He is waiting for her to return with his tea and cookies. There is a slight edge of panic in his eyes. He does not like needing her. Once he made all of the decisions and she carried out his wishes. Now he is forced by age and circumstance to depend on her, and he hates it.
She returns with the tea and cookies and he peers over her arm anxiously as she counts out one, two, three for you. One, two, three for me. Unsmiling and stern he slides them over and begins to nibble. He was once a strong man. He has a square, powerful jaw but he eats the cookies like a prim and proper lady afraid to drop a single crumb on the table. He glances over at her through horn-rimmed, Coke bottle-bottom glasses. his eyes magnified by their thickness. She faintly smiles. They don’t speak. He simply stares sternly ahead chewing his cookies and daintily sipping his tea. He doesn’t appear to be aware of the beautiful view of the Mountains so elegantly displayed through the spotless floor- to- ceiling windows in the tearoom. This moment is his entire world – the tea, the cookies and her.
She looks sad. Then he speaks to her quietly and haltingly and a smile creeps across her well worn, beautiful face. He does not smile. His mouth is drawn down at the edges and the lines in his face are craggy and deep. He appears bitter and smaller than she somehow. Perhaps it is due to too many years of being in his chair, who knows? At any rate, he remains harsh and mean looking as she slowly unbends her aged body and with elegant, fragile fingers collects the tea things and returns them to the tray. Her fleeting moment of humor is gone and she appears as defeated as he when she returns and wheels him away.