Dear Bepa

This is an experimental piece...

Dear Bepa,

Life is sort of like dandelions, isn’t it, Bepa?  With time, all of your youthful petals whither to gray and fly away on the wind, and then one day you wake up and realize that you have a bare head.  Sometimes I forget to make wishes, and all of those seeds blow away across the hills with no purpose other than to become bedding for a bird’s nest.

The other day, Joan told me that Doda died.

“Gone like a puff of a candle,” she said.

I asked her how, and she replied with a shrug, “Goddess only knows, Yvonne.  It was his time, though.”

I didn’t know what to say, Bepa.  I just sat there with her on the porch for a while, drinking lemon iced tea.  I don’t think that I believed that he was really gone. I half expected him to walk around the corner with a grin and tell us that it was all a joke.  He did that, sometimes.

Joan told me that he talked about his first love all the time. 

“He always said she was a fiery chic.  He used to go on about how wonderful she was, how she always made him smile.  Never could get her name out of him, though.”  She sighed.  “I’d let her know that he passed, but I don’t know how to get a hold of her.”

I just ducked my head and didn’t say anything.

“Sometimes I’d think that he still loved her.  The way he carried around her amber sun necklace with him, wherever he went…  Yvonne, are you all right?”

“Yes, yes!” I replied, angrily brushing away the wetness in my eyes.  “I’m sorry.  It must be the ginger I put in the tea.  Go on.”

Joan got a faraway look in her eyes, her fingers drumming absently on the edge of her teacup.

“It was hard, sometimes, bein’ married to a man who dotes on another woman.  Ye learn to live with it, though.  I used to be afraid that he’d go back to her, sometime, but I guess she never did have the guts to come back here.”

I stood up abruptly.  “Can I get you some more tea, Joan?”

“Oh no, no.  I’m quite alright.  Besides, I’d best be going now.”  She leaned heavily on her cane, hoisting her frail body out of the old whicker deck chair.  “Ye know ye can never trust them boys bein’ alone.  Always gettin’ into trouble, they are.”

She hobbled to the screen door, but she paused for a moment before pushing it open.

“Ye have any idea who she might be, Yvonne?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Joan,” I said with a half shrug.

She seemed to eye me for a moment, but maybe she was really just trying to remember where she was and who she was talking to.

“Well, I best be goin’ now,” she said again.  “Ye know ye can’t trust them boys to be alone…”

“I know, Joan.  They’re always getting into trouble. 

She gave me a puckered old smile.  “Ye always did know what I was thinking, now didn’t ye.”

I half smiled, helping her down the steps.  “I’ll see you later, Joan.”

“Okay.”  She patted my hand.  “Bye-bye, honey.”

I watched her hobble across to the red Corvette, wondering if perhaps she was a bit too old to be driving alone.  But then, I wouldn’t be the one to stop her.  I never was one for interfering with other people’s business, was I, Bepa?  That’s probably what took me down in the end.  My unwillingness to assert myself with what I wanted, for fear that I would be too pushy.  They don’t tell you in grade school that if you don’t stand up for what you want while you’re there that you might as well give up right then any dreams of becoming more than a wallflower. 

Some things never change.

I closed my eyes for a moment in the summer breeze, trying to catch a memory that flitted past my eyes.  It behaved like a slippery fish, though, and with a sigh I realized that I wouldn’t be hooking that one again. 

The dandelions are blooming in the west pasture, Bepa, near the place where we used to fly our kite.  That little knoll on the top of thill holds secrets.  Secrets I’ve never told.  But what’s the point, now?  I’ve kept them to myself for long enough now, and the investment rate on secrets isn’t going up anytime soon.  It was on that little knoll that I shared my first kiss, Bepa.  I know that it might come as a surprise to you, but it’s true.

A certain sweet man led me up among those sweet-smelling suns. He plucked one of those dandelions and put it in my hair, and then he kissed me, right there beneath the bare blue sky, where anyone could have come upon us if they had been curious enough.  I didn’t care, though.  I was thrilled; happy. 

I thought that that feeling would never end, but it only took a couple of days for me to hit rock bottom.  Suddenly there were no more dreams of riding off into the orange sunset with my lover.  I became paranoid that he wasn’t the right one, and that he’d try to thwart me for sex and money. I turned over every word that he had said until I had all but convinced myself that he was part of the mafia. 

I should have known better to let my mind carry on like that, but by then I couldn’t climb out of the trench that I’d dug for myself, and I became cold to his touch.  He wanted me, I could see that clearly. But instead of seeing it for the declaration of love that it was, I found myself thinking that he was trying to wrap me up in chains.  And so I made the biggest mistake in my life, Bepa.  I would take it back a thousand times if I could.  But what is done is done.  There is no going back, now.  That is the last time that I’ve ever been kissed, Bepa.  Once.  In my whole life, with all of those dishes and cleaning days and picnics, I’ve only ever been kissed once.

There’s never a day that passes that I don’t think about that.  It drives me crazy.  It makes me so angry that I walk right outside to my blue ford and drive away, between the rows of geometric corn fields, and try not to think about the fact that Joan has a red Corvette.

 

I was down at the grocery store the other day, and James " you remember him Bepa?  He’s the one who helped you paint the fence white when we were all younger " he took my hand and said that he was right sorry that Doda had died.  He looked at me for a little too long when he said it, and finally I was the one who had to pull my hand away.

How could he know, Bepa?  I never told him anything. 

I left the Piggly Wiggly so quickly that I forgot my bacon on the counter.  I guess it had to wiggle right back into the sales case and wait for some other junkie who isn’t worried about high cholesterol and all that. 

Maybe it was “all that” that brought Doda to his end.  Maybe it was because he was so careless and free that it didn’t matter to him that bacon might subsequently block his arteries or be high in sodium.  He lived a good life, didn’t he, Bepa?  I don’t think I ever remember him being anything but smiling and happy.

Do you remember the time when Anne’s husband left her?  He was the only one in the whole town who could make her smile.  Within a week, he had her grinning and working on her life-long dream, which was to go bike around one of those small French lakes with the cypress trees and the quaint little bed and breakfasts.  He did a good job of it, too.  She was gone within six months, and when she came back she was laughing and had a smart looking Frenchman at her elbow.  With the luck that she had, I almost wanted to waltz right up to Doda and make him take me on a trip around the world.  I didn’t do that, of course.  It would have been too apparent.  And besides, he was already infatuated with Joan by then.  For a couple years, that was all that he had eyes for.  She was a lucky woman.  But then if what she said was true, then maybe being married to him wasn’t all fun and glamour. 

Yvonne, Yvonne. 

That was all so long ago.  Time flies, doesn’t it, Bepa?  When your young and opening all the doors the world has presented to you, it never occurs to you that there might not be enough time to open them all, let alone step through them. 

That is where I found myself most of the time " standing on a threshold and watching a beautiful scene unfold before me.  But I rarely stepped through.  The one time I did, it all ended in disaster.  I’ve never told anyone, Bepa.  They’d probably just laugh, but it hurts when they laugh, probably because it hits so close to home.

It was right after Anne came back with her Frenchman.  I was tired of being alone, Bepa, so I put on a little orange dress and went upstream to the city for the day.  They say a city is full of strangers, Bepa, and whoever they are, that are right.  Who goes to a big place like that and thinks that everyone will turn and gawk at them just because they’re a newcomer?

Me.

I waltzed right into a café, sat myself down at the bar, and ordered a club sandwich.  The old black and white TV was on, showing another all American baseball game.  That was thirty years ago and I still remember that game.  The Yankees were winning. 

It was a hot day, and my bare legs stuck to the red leather stools. I watched the door with excitement at first, waiting for the “right” person to walk through, but as the hours on the old Coors Light clock slowly ticked by and all that came through that door were middle aged business men wanting nothing more that no loosen their ties with their buddies, my eyelids sank low in disappointment. 

By the time I finished my third root beer, I decided it was time to go.  I’d forgotten to buy a return ticket for the ferry, though, so I ended up squashing between old Mr. Crabbypants and a grimy wall with a red “no smoking” sign on it.  That was the last time that I ever went upstream in an orange dress that set off the color of my hair in all of the wrong ways.

I think that was when my last hope for true love died, Bepa.  I gave up " I didn’t care anymore.  And by then, not even Doda and all of his carefree ways could lift me up.

I can remember wishing that you could take me up to that hill again, and we could just fly a kite and not worry about anything.  That little red kite.  I used to love that thing, didn’t I, Bepa?  I can remember bugging you every day to get you to take me.  You must have gotten tired of it, but you’d still take me there on weekends.

I first met Doda up on that hill.  We were so young, then"barely past the years of losing teeth and playing in the mud.  He used to call me Auburn Yvonne.  I asked him what it meant, and he said it was the color of my hair.  But it’s really more like orange, isn’t it, Bepa?  Didn’t you used to say that it looked life fire?  And fire’s not red, it’s orangey-gold.  Like a sunset in summertime.

Speaking of which, the sun is setting now, Bepa.  It is so beautiful, and I find it crazy to think that even after we’re all gone the sun will keep rising every morning and setting every night, putting on a spectacular show whether or not we’ll be around to see it. 

There is a dandelion growing between two stones in my walkway.  I find it hard to believe that it has enough vigor to make it in the hard earth, but there it grows, completely oblivious to its little feat of strength.  In a couple of days, it’s pretty yellow head will turn white and fluffy, and maybe I’ll blow a wish on it.  Maybe I’ll get up the courage to tell Joan that I am Doda’s fiery chic, and maybe I’ll just get on a ferry and try again.  They say you can never know a city in just one day.

I love you, Bepa.  

Good night.

 

Author's Note

Does this paint an active picture, or is the story flat?

Reviews

[M. L. F.]

This story is deep and rich. Your character lives and breathes, she lets us inside of her head where all of her hopes and fears hide from the world. I felt like I truly knew her, your Yvonne, if even for a moment. The description you used about the memory being a slippery fish, too hard to grasp, was stunning and unique. I just loved the way you let her have an unexpected epiphany, right in the very last sentences of the tale. Great Read....

[Zoli Fern]

Thank you so much!!! I really appreciate your kind words.

[Inject Positivity]

I think its an amazing work....The whole story felt alive in my mind....Unique thought, lovely concept and very well balanced....There is a pattern of simplicity in this story which makes it much more pleasing to read....Well done mate....Clappings+full ratings......

[wordman]

a great story ! it was interesting ,welcome to w/c

[Zoli Fern]

Hi Guys! I'm new to this group, and I would really love some feedback on this story. It is a completely experimental piece, and I would like to know if it works or if you find it dull. Also, if you review and have a short story, I'll let you know what I think. Thanks!