Concerto
by
Aviva Shen
She is in the kitchen.
Just where a woman ought to be,
her jolly and deceased Grand Pappy used to rumble. His words float back
to her unbidden as she reaches for another dirty plate. She cringes
slightly, as if to dodge the fate he condemns her to with that
condescending declaration.
But she hasn’t. She hasn’t
managed to escape, for here she is, in her comfortable, warmly lit
kitchen, conducting herself around the Formica countertops and scrubbed
floors she knows so well, defining her life through new basin and tub
cleaner and Better Homes and Gardens. She sighs and idly examines her
dish-chapped hands. She can still remember the days when these hands
had been elegant, manicured, lovely, even. Admired by many for their
adept fingers that leapt from string to string and coaxed quavering
beauty from lovingly polished wood. She remembers those days vividly
but in jagged, broken pieces. Sometimes she thinks it’s only a dream
she had long ago. It seems this place, the life she leads now, is and
always has been reality for her.
Oh, but if dreams came true.
Potential, her teachers and admirers always said. Potential, you have
so much potential for one so young. You could be great. You have
potential. Potential…
Now all she has is dishes to do.
Dinner to cook. Children to raise. Her eyes wander listlessly around
the kitchen. Her hand drops to the plate again and scrubs scrambled
eggs off the once virgin white surface. On its own, her other hand taps
out a fingering on the edge, quivering in vibrato on a chipped pink
flower.
It’s raining hard. She wonders
when it started. Droplets hurl themselves against the small kitchen
window, a mindless suicide that leaves the glass streaming with
casualties. She stares until her sensibilities snap back into place.
What is she doing? How much time has she wasted? Hastily she rinses the
plate off as she glances at the clock. Ten minutes until the kids come
home from school. Fifteen before the chicken has to be defrosted.
Thirty or forty until her husband comes home and the kids start
demanding help with homework, rides to friends’ houses. An hour till
the dog needs walking and the chicken marinating. She has so much left
to do before she is allowed to turn in for the night. Sometimes she
feels a certain companionship, forged out of commiseration, with God.
She knows what it is to work-work-work for too long before resting for
not enough time. The difference is her labor doesn’t bear such
miraculous fruit as the universe.
She sets another plate aside and
reaches for a glass stained with grape juice. Her fingers automatically
arrange themselves in a G minor scale position, still stubbornly
clinging to the abandoned daydream. Annoyed, she wrenches her
rebellious, dreaming fingers off the cup and it crashes to the ground,
shattering instantly. Startled, she jumps back before composing
herself. She shakes herself and clucks her tongue. She shouldn’t have
been so careless. She bends to clean up the pieces. As she is throwing
the glass away she thinks she hears the rain beating out a familiar
rhythm on the window; perhaps something she heard on the radio. But as
she pauses to listen, one riotous drop hits the sill at the wrong time
and it all falls apart. After another moment passes, she returns to the
dishes. She is sure she imagined it.
|
|
