Henrietta

A Story by TestSubject

A sliver of fiction about a loss.

Henrietta’s hands ached as she rustled her crooked fingers through the dozens of pages scattered in her desk drawer. “Where’s my pen?” she called, half turning her face toward the ascending stairs. No reply came, only the upstairs darkness blending into the yellow basement light.

Sighing, she faced the small, diamond shaped mirror resting at the far left corner of her correspondence desk. “Old,” she whispered, furtively shifting her eyes back to her fingers, hidden from the knuckles in paper. “Chester, where the blazes is my Christmas pen?” There was no answer. She sighed again, then inhaled the dampness of the basement in a long, forceful draw. “Oh, Chester, I love you but you never put things back where they belong. Remind me to put that pen somewhere where you can’t find it. I swear, I love you, but I spend more time looking for my own things...”

Opposite her at the desk’s far right corner was a photograph. Locked within a metal frame of braided willow branches was Chester--young, a confident half-smile pushing his left cheek toward the crisp white brim of his favorite trilby hat. The rounds of his eyes seemed softened with confidence and happiness, and it was always sad for Henrietta to note that the photograph did not reveal the brownness of those eyes. Behind him was a crisp, apple-red barn, its white trim fresh and bold. Henrietta recalled her last glance of that old barn, how the world and time had wearied its color, wrinkled and greyed its proud trim.

She was startled by a squirrel scampering among the leaves accumulated in her window well. The squirrel moved in quick, spasmodic bursts of urgency, sending leaves willy nilly into the air. After a few moments it jumped, disappearing into the vast evening. Henrietta wondered if it had found what it was looking for, or simply decided to search elsewhere.

Now, where was that pen? She began combing through the pages one by one. One by one she skimmed through them, and with each a few lines rose into focus, triggering a distinct memory. Some she released gracefully to flutter toward the floor; a few she balled up, her arthritic fingers squeezing tightly, triggering her eyes to roll high under tired, old, lowered lids. Finally, she heard the roll of her pen, her Christmas pen, amplify toward the front of the drawer. “Never mind,” she called toward the settled darkness at the foot of the stairs. “Don’t mind, Chester, it’s here.”

Her lips curled upward, stretching, reaching desperately for her downcast eyes. Pressing the pen against her palm, she slowly removed it from the drawer and placed it on the desk between the braided willow branches and the photograph. “Don’t mind. Never you mind, Chester, it’s right here.” At that, Henrietta gathered the littered pages from the floor, and in no organized manner, placed each individually back into the drawer, leaning tiredly open.