Sunday, July 29, 2012

Rowena Raven: Chapter Ten



       Four PM, I wake up, Jog till five. Eat breakfast. Leftovers, probably. Something Daisy has made and left in my fridge, or something I brought home from a restaurant if it’s Monday.
Five thirty PM, I shower. At six I walk to the hospital where I work and have time to spare, because it’s closer now that I’ve moved to Sugar Valley.
It took less than a year after she left for my mental practice to go under, if only because I was just barely qualified to run it.
I keep track of our lost time by silently celebrating Velvet’s birthdays.
I feel some sort of male responsibility to care about him, because she was my responsibility nearly the entire time she was pregnant.
Six of them have gone by, now. In two months, It’ll be seven.
Nearly seven years since the last time I’ve seen her. I’ve managed to keep myself from checking up on her records to see if she’s gotten Velvet back, but I’m pretty confident. It’s taken all of my self control not to keep track of every little thing the state knows about her, even though I easily have the power.
When I get home at four in the morning, I check my email and eat something. There’s no time for dating. Daisy’s work has been kinder to her, but she’s not a surgeon.
Saturdays are my grocery days. I like Saturdays. There is something totally Zen about having all the money I could possibly need to buy gourmet cheese puffs, or organic cheese whiz.
                                                            ~o~


I woke up on Saturday “morning” with a sort of spring in my step. It felt like my life was wasting away, one week of work at a time, fifty two weeks of work in a year, and I don’t even think about leap days. I did get vacation time, but where would I possibly spend it? I could just see it now, sitting on the shores of some sandy beach in egypt, drink in hand. There’s an empty seat beside me, a table between us and on that table is another drink. There’s supposed to be someone there, but she’s missing. I know who she is, but I’ve forbidden her name to myself.
Names hold certain power, right? If she hasn’t got a name, she doesn’t exist and I can’t be sad about never seeing her again. User not found.
So I’ll still punish myself for thinking about her as my hands hover over this one container of jam, when I put juice into my basket and wonder what sort of juice Velvet drinks.
Does she make him breakfast in the morning? How many snacks does he get to eat? Does he pack a lunch, or does he buy one at school?
Has she turned into the mother hers was?
I punish myself for thinking about the things she’s said of her mother, just to me. Our secrets. She was never home, and when she was it was like she wasn’t there anyway. She was concerned, but not motherly love concerned, more like concerned the way she treated her child might get her in trouble with the law. Thankful that through her fuck ups her child had learned to take care of herself.
My scorn for a mother like that did not even compete with my love for the woman who could have possibly turned out to be a mother like that.
The juice is heavy in my basket, so when I turn around and catch the shape of her nose and the glint of her hair, I drop it.
I pause for a moment, acknowledging my hallucination, and lean to pick up my juice. But when I cast another casual glance back up, she’s sighted me, and she’s still there. She’s speaking with someone. My hallucinations don’t interact with other people. If I was hallucinating this, I wouldn’t have included Velvet because god only knows what I’d do to the woman after missing her for this long.
She shakes her head a bit and turns back to the woman she was talking with. I pick my things up and put them into my basket, I leave to check out even though I’ve still got quite a few things to pick up here. Amazing how my reaction was completely different than I thought it would be if I ever saw her again. I’m still have convinced she’s a hallucination. Did I even pay for my groceries? I could still be standing there dumbstruck blind by the sight of her.
I’m sitting on the bench out front of the store when she walks out through the sliding doors. Velvet’s in front of her, and he’s the first to see me. She stands there for a moment, just looking at the road in front of the supermarket, or maybe the stores across the street. Velvet tugs on her hand and says to her, “Mommy, do we know him?” he points to me. “He seems familiar.”
Her gaze follows her childs’, and her eyes catch mine. We share a look and I am completely unsure of what it means. She doesn’t answer him, but she does make sure he follows her over when she comes to stand in front of me.
“Hey,” she says. She’s satan and I’m Jesus, starving in the desert. I imagine my throat catching, too dry to speak. Not nearly satiated enough with the human contact I’ve been getting lately to reply. So instead I just sit up a bit and say something intelligent.
“Rowena.” And, I could be wrong, but I think the word sets me free.


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4 comments:

  1. OMG YOU ALMOST MADE ME CRY BUT THEN I KEPT READING

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    1. HAHA I LOVE HURTING VANILLA BECAUSE HE'S SO RIDICULOUSLY DISGUSTINGLY IN LOVE WITH ROWENA THAT I'M LIKE ADSFKG SHUT UP.

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  2. Omg I love your writing style. ; n; And I love how you torture your characters. It makes for a great read. I'm gonna keep this bookmarked and check up on it frequently for an update 'cause I love this. Great work. <3

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    1. wow! thanks so so so much, I'm so glad you like it and I'm sorry I didn't see your comment sooner! <3

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