Maria (or The Lady who Lost her Heart on the Trolley)

 

“I've got the world on a string, sittin' on a rainbow. Got the string around my finger. What a world, what a life, I'm in love”
     Or at least she had been in love, one day, now so far in the past it seemed like a distant memory of a phantom but certainly not her. Perhaps she was confusing herself with the princesses and fair damsels from the tales of the Round Table. It would be difficult to see the deep, trusting beauty she once had which was now hidden behind deadened white hairs and glazed eyes that still shimmered dully with the hope and innocence of days past. Now her exterior was petrified into a crusted shell pungent with the scent of mothballs and laden with obvious cobwebs hanging from crusted flower dawning her hat. Clearly it had been taken from the shelf and thrust back into her rotation for this day. This so very important day.
     It had to be 60 years if it was a day. Back when she was in her prime, dressed to the nines her burgundy hair radiating its own shine rivaling any light Apollo himself could bear upon the earth. A woman who if she walked by at the right angle could have strained the neck of more than one onlooker. Walking down Appleton street with a distinct purpose in her best new dress. Royal blue with yellow sunflowers making up the pattern bought fresh at Sears and Roebuck's with a big gorgeous blue hat with a flower pinned on it to match her dress. Yes she was walking with a focus that likened her more to a rail car steaming down a track. “Two more blocks down and a left at the park”, she thought to herself. She would be there soon, she would need to make haste if she had any hope of catching her trolley.
     The 3:15 from Kennedy Center... she would ride for two stops then he would be there metals shining in the afternoon sun she could see him already as she stared down the backs of her eyelids. He would stand on the very edge of the curb in attention, still used to army life, he'd let all the women and children with their awestruck glances enter first with his cap lowered in respect. He was a gentleman before he was sent to war but now he would be changed; with a new confidence and respect for his fellow humans that one can only achieve after fighting to protect the free world. Two weeks prior to the day she received a letter from Albert instructing her to meet him on the trolley at the Central street stop. There he will be waiting for her bearing the ring he promised her when she saw him off to sea so many months before. Indeed, she dreamed, he will be standing there her night, her warrior, her husband-to-be.
     When she finally opened her eyes it dawned on her but did not sink in until she saw the water glistening down the canal impeding the Merrimac sensually merging it with the Concord rushing calmly like the tear she discovered rolling down her cheek to a sudden dry stop; the trolley was moving towards its third stop. She rose to her feet and to the back of the moving car she must have missed him. He was nowhere to be seen among the familiar forms that were now shrinking before her eyes. Panic set in, darting to the front she harassed one patron after the next. Did you see him? Did you see him? He told me he'd be there he promised he swore. She was shaken off as a mad woman, and who could blame them? A banshee raging down the isle prattling on about her war hero. She never received the second letter detailing the end of her love's life, the end of her life as it was known.
     Just three days after sending the good news Albert, with his hand in his pocket clinching the thin gold wedding band for Maria, boarded a ship in Okinawa that was to make a stop in Hawaii then to California where the train would bring him first to Utah, then to Nebraska, Ohio, South, North Carolina, then New York would show herself and he would know his trip was nearing its end. He would board the final train after making one stop at a jeweler to polish the modest ring for his far from modest fiancée. After a long nap he would arrive in Lowell, Massachusetts, home he knew the plan all too well: he would enter the trolley lower his hat, offer a proper proposal then anticipating an enthusiastic yes would wrap her up in his arms forgetting about the fractured wrist he earned somewhere in the jungles. He knew the plan all to well as the ship set off from the lush, beautiful coast of the war-ridden island their defenses were caught completely off guard four planes diving through the think cloud cover guns blazing, bombs falling, set fire to the ship. It only took moments before all was lost. The monstrous war machine along with its 235 souls went down just two hours into their voyage home; only remnants of the sculpted hull which rested in peace at the bottom of the Pacific was retrieved
     The world changed like it does; in the fashion we read in history books today. The trolley stopped dead in its tracks taken over by massive free moving buses. The people changed, no longer fearful of the USSR or the stranglehold Hitler was bearing on the world, now people's minds were busy with their own dealings and the fear of fear itself. Time went on but seemed to remain all but still for Maria, who lost her heart on the trolley. She continually rode the bus through the inner workings of the once bustling city once a year dawning her best dress from the late Sears and Roebuck's with the matching flower in her hat. To the unknowing eye she may well have been the modern personification of Homer's Penelope waiting for her brave Odysseus but to be perfectly honest she was nothing more than Mariana in her moated grange wilting away with that sun flower humming her hopeful tune.
“What a world, what a life, I'm in love”. 

 

Author's Note

This is the first draft ignor grammar and spelling and little cosmetics