An Apple a Day

She turned the red cheeked orb, bit through the crisp skin and into the mushy flesh of the apple. Clear juice seeped out and down the side of her chin as she chewed and breathed through her open mouth. An old familiar tingling began to bother her nose. She wiggled it and sniffed. She placed the apple on the page she was reading from Thackeray's Vanity Fair and pinched her nose with two fingers trying to dislodge the tickle with no success. Her mouth formed an O while her eyes began to squint in an awkward facial expression. Just as she grabbed a tissue from the box next to her, she drew back, gasped a quick short breath, and released into the room a gale-force sneeze of epic proportions.


Falling back against pillows, she closed her eyes, trying to breathe comfortably through her open mouth, while enduring body aches that felt as if someone in a black SUV had run over her repeatedly. An unrestrained, raspy cough erupted and she moaned, "This really sucks," as she rubbed across her forehead with stiff fingers pressing aching sinuses.

With a sigh, she dabbed at her roughened, red nose flaking skin from too much tissue attention and squeaked out a blow into a fresh Kleenex. Her body lay in a listless heap on the sofa while reruns of Boston Legal droned on in the background. She reached for the apple again, glaring at it through tear-blurred eyes, "Phhht...an apple a day.  A lot of damn good you do," she said dropping it into the wastebasket where it lay contrasting red against mounds of white spent tissues.

I'd written another piece for Willow's Magpie Tales apple prompt, but this one just fits better.  Yes, September brought a cold/sinus infection and I'm feeling exactly what I described and yes... this sucks.  Now back to bed and Loving Frank a book by Nancy Horan.

Magpie Tales: Saying Goodbye

She walked about the house; her bare feet cool on wood floors the color of honey straight from the hive before it had been pasteurized. From the living room to the dining room to the kitchen, on hands and knees they’d worked side by side peeling back layers of coverings exposing each plank. So many years had passed that now the renovated floor took on a patina of age and wear, yet the smoothness and color remained as glorious as the day they completed it.
In the foyer, her hands encompassed the walnut ball that marked the beginning of a journey upstairs. Holding it as if she held a mystical gazing ball that would foretell her future, she closed her eyes and traced her fingers over the hash marks left by a hurried craftsman generations ago.

Climbing the stairs she counted, "One, two, three, four, five, six..." A loud creak sounded at the fall of her foot on the seventh step. Over the years it became the tattle-tale of sneaky stair climbers and later the tell-tale sound of a wandering heart. At the top of the stairs she turned to the left, opened the door to the now empty room where once upon a child a little girl lined up paper dolls on a crocheted lavender rug. The tiny table set for tea with a bear, a monkey, and two dolls named Lily and Lucy disappeared long ago. Down the hall, another square room witnessed raucous wrestling and little boy games. She turned her back on the room at the far end of the hall, too many memories, too much pain. Her audible sigh echoed through the hallway bouncing off walls, plumb and plain. No framed prints, no rogue’s gallery of the branches, limbs, and twigs of the family tree stared down from the walls. Everywhere she looked basic beige stuck her as boring and necessary.

From room to room she wandered. Each room naked and vulnerable lacking furniture and adornment that speaks of personalities, experiences, likes and dislikes. Not even shades, hanging like heavy eyelids over dark eyes peering out into a world remained. It had become a hollow house, too lonely for words, so she moved on in silence.

Back down stairs, she gazed out the wavy glass of paned windows where 200 years worth of children watched seasons transform from trees shaking in the frigid winter winds to pastel blossoms bothered by bees on spring days. From this vantage point, she could see the magic tree where the children hid and created fantastical lands of fairies and goblins. So many memories enveloped in a few acres called home. A hot trail of tears descended down the curve of her cheeks, passed her chin wetting her neck with salty brine as she stewed in her thoughts of past and future.

She continued the final tour while ghosts, still living, haunted her mind and followed her steps. In the dining room, where rainbows danced against the wall from chandelier prisms that caught the early evening light, she smoothed a hand over the antique step back cupboard, emptied of its fragile occupants, standing alone, a compromise for the future staring blankly from the wall as if questioning why it should remain.

The kitchen loomed before her an open wound with yawning cupboards waiting to be filled and the fireplace gaping wide-eyed and cold across the room. She stood in the heart of the home, a mirage of joyful meals dissipating into marital battles and lingering tearful nights accosting her memory.

It was time. She slipped her shoes back on and with one hand on the brass door knob; she touched her fingertips to her lips, blew the kiss into the house, turned, and walked out the door.

A brief glance into the rearview mirror revealed the setting sun’s glow embrace the house while she drove into her future.

Each week Willow offers a photo on her writing blog, Magpie Tales, and invites all interested to take a look at the photo and write their take on what they see.  This is my story inspired from the above photo.  Take some time to read the inspirations of other talented writers. 

Magpie Tales: Beyond the Walls

Every day on her way to work at the only law office in the pastoral town, she walked passed a watering can set upon the cap of a stone wall. Weathered with a verdigris patina the long necked spout held out the multi-holed rose as if offering a cool drink from its dark, mysterious interior. On the other side of the wall a verdant green oasis dotted with tulips in spring transformed into a pink pleasure place filled with roses that scented the air with every whisper of wind that touseled wisps of hair and fluttered the hem of a skirt. At times, she stopped to peer into the garden with squinted eyes making out the curved outline of a feminine form beneath a tree. In the three years that she navigated this route to and from her office job, today was the first time she saw anyone in the garden.

Bending at the waist he plucked a weed from a patch of ashes of rose flowers. As he stood up, his rheumy eyes met clear baby blues and for a moment the two locked into a surprise stare. She broke the moment with a wave of her hand and an upturned smile. "May I come in?" she asked without hesitating.

Slowly, he shuffled over to the wall, patting his white hair down with one blue-veined hand, and straightening himself to his full 6 feet height. A gentleman always looked presentable.

"I walk by your garden every day on my way to work." she explained smiling soft and friendly, 'and well....I thought since I saw someone in the garden that perhaps you wouldn't mind if I...."

The old man suddenly realized he was still holding the weed in one hand and gave it a quick toss. "Well, I don’t know. I don't often have guests in my garden."

"It's so lovely, so....pink." she added with a flourish of her hand.

The old man pondered her face and saw a kindness too often lacking in the people who hurried by his wall, hands clenched in tight fists pumping to a beat from headphones that looked like two black donuts. "There’s a gate on the other side," he said turning and walking away from the wall.

Magritte found the gate and opened the black iron latch that held it closed. There was no flowery sign that welcomed visitors to the garden, no cute little cement rabbits, fairies or gnomes to greet passersby, and no gazing balls to mesmerize children. What she discovered was a serene coolness beneath ancient trees surrounded by pink flowers. Spent peonies gave way to hydrangeas that yielded to pink annuals of all shapes and textures. Spring-green ferns softened the edges and everywhere, climbing, crawling, and standing were luscious pink rose petals swirling around high points. Roses, in every shade of pink imaginable from the palest to the deepest, grew in joyous abandon inside the walled garden. Her breath caught in her throat as she took it all in....the beauty and gentle sweetness of the variation on a hue.

A sculpture of a weeping woman seated on a bench overlooked the walled backyard turned garden with a vacant stare. Tears, exquisitely sculpted on bronzed cheeks, caught tiny glimmers of light as a hand, lying in her lap, clutched a bouquet of freshly picked flowers. At her bare feet grew a profusion of pink Damask roses, the scent rising with the heat. "What a beautiful sculpture," murmured Magritte.

The man smiled, but offered no explanation of how such a sublime work of art came to be in his garden.

One turn around the garden and then he suggested she come back another time for a visit and perhaps tea. "Do you drink tea?" he inquired. She nodded as he opened the gate.

"Thank you for letting me visit your...." She began, but he was all ready walking down the flagstone path to the garden.

As she continued on her way home, she realized she'd forgotten to ask him about the watering can on the wall. With a smile, she decided that the watering can would be a perfect tea-time tale and she looked forward to the telling.

Written for Magpie Tales inspired by the watering can photo at the top.

From View to You

Ack!  I've done it again.  I'm too late to post on Magpie Tales, but I'll go ahead and post this bit of fiction anyhow. 

You’ve always had a lush garden crisp with fresh greens and juicy with red tomatoes. I’ve watched from my kitchen window as you toiled under the hot sun, a baseball cap covering your sandy blonde hair and protecting your blue eyes. You never did look right in a garden, to me. You belonged on a baseball field pitching balls at Autobahn speed or in an Armani suit in a gleaming high rise on Wall Street, but then if you’d been there you wouldn’t be here, a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Every morning you’d turn on a hose dripping water into the garden. I was disappointed that you didn’t use a sprinkler so I could see the tiny rainbows that move back and forth with the spouting water, but you know best when it comes to growing things.

You have a hole in your fence. Did you know that? It’s rather large and once I peeked through it to get a better look at your yard and well...at you, too. You took your shirt off that day and I could see the fine, muscular outline of your back as you worked. The sheen of sweat that glistened in drops on your tanned skin made me bite my lip until it bled. At one point you removed your cap, wiped a dirty hand across your forehead leaving a brown smear that marred my image of you. That’s when I stopped looking and went back inside.

Hey, I think it’s really nice that you grow flowers, too. I like flowers, especially those big red ones. You know the ones with the shaggy heads that smell like mint? I guess I’ve given away my secret now. Yep, sometimes I walk in your garden; usually when you’re gone in the evening. Once I went in during the day. Yes, indeedy, I just walked right up to the gate and let myself in. You sure do like pretty plants, but you really should have tore out that nasty rose with the long thorns. It grabbed my shirt, ripped it and left a nasty scratch on my arm. I’m sorry I had to take sharp loppers to it. It sure was a shame seeing all those beautiful, decapitated rose heads lying on the ground like globs of coagulated blood, but it won’t hurt people now.

Hmm...just look at that big bowl of tomatoes. There’s yellow ones, pink ones, and red ones all on one stem. Why did you pick them before they were ripe? Well some are ripe. This one is delicious and just look the juice is running down my chin. You must think I’m terribly uncouth with no manners at all, wiping the juicy stream from my face and licking my fingers.

You know? I could have lived next to you forever just enjoying the view from my kitchen window, taking secret walks in your garden when you weren’t around, but...well...you just had to ruin everything. You spoiled it all when you allowed her into your garden. I was furious when I looked out my window. I had to get my binoculars to get a closer view and there she was, prancing around, like the skinny whore she is, in a stupid yellow dress all sunny and cute. Who ever thought you’d go for a red head? I figured you a blonde sort of lover.

I really hope you enjoyed the tomato juice I made for you.  I even used big, juicy, red tomatoes fresh from your garden. Well, it won’t be much longer now...I’ll go home soon.