The two old friends sat on the bench in
the bright sunshine and laughed. A bird
with brilliant green plumage cocked its head, beating wings against the large
mesh metal fence.
“Ah,” Suzanne sighed, wiping a tear
from her sparkling eyes. Her hunched
chest still heaved breathlessly. “That’s
too much.”
Her friend cracked a smirk, making
the deep crinkles at the corners of her face deeper. “Oh, and I suppose that means you’ve had
enough of my tales of wonder for the morning?” She spoke in all seriousness,
but a hint of mischief lingered around her upturned lips. Her hands, once dainty, rested as creaking
tree roots on the lilac-printed fields of her lap.
“Enough for a lifetime, I should
say!” Suzanne exclaimed. She tapped her
fist against her breast. “The old ticker
isn’t what it once was, you know.” At
seeing the spirited embers fading in the smoothing lines of her companion’s
face, she hastened an apology. “Dear
Marge, I really do appreciate your gift for storytelling. Those tales occupy some of my most productive
knitting hours.”
Marge smiled, appearing to carefully
examine a liverspot on her wrist. Her
eyes wryly darted to the side as she said, “Do you mean to say that my yarns
keep yours from twisting up?”
Suzanne burst into a fit of
giggles. “Why, yes!” Her breezy laughter stirred the warm air. Leaves on the tree not a half a dozen feet
away lifted and sighed in turn, dappling her face with patchy sunshine to give
the appearance of a much younger woman.
The gnarled fingers on Marge’s lap
groaned as she shifted them to smooth the edges of her cotton skirt. Marge allowed time for the spasms to subside in
her friend’s fragile frame before she mentioned the time. “It ought to be lunch soon.”
“Dear me, is it already?”
“Almost, not quite.”
“To waiting we must go.” She began humming to herself a busy tune,
familiar to both women’s long past childhoods.
Marge made a face not unlike a grimace, only half-listening. Her skinny ring finger twitched.
Suzanne noticed, reached out and
patted Marge’s knee. “Well, it’s just
one of those things, waiting. When it’s
not one thing it’s just another, and when one’s well and done there’s
another. As my mother used to say, ‘A
stitch here, a stitch there, a stitch everywhere.’” She smiled serenely as she looked around the sprawling
courtyard to roses past-bloom, their gentle fallen petals forming a fragrant
carpet in the flowerbeds along the walks.
Her friend gave an indiscriminate
murmur and leaned back on the lacquered wood backing. A hand slipped from its cushy position and
contacted the seat. Pain welled to
Marge’s eyes as her mangled joints sang discordantly. She didn’t make a sound as she cradled one
claw to her bosom, Suzanne babbling on about something or other.
“Oh look, there’s Mr. Averstand,
helped along by that nice new lady nurse,” Suzanne had stopped her gossiping
and pointed, drawing Marge’s watering eyes to the odd couple navigating the
softly curving concrete. Every few feet
the tennis ball feet of his walker would scuffle across the paving with a sound
audible to the second story, and the woman would readjust it. “I don’t know how
he manages to do it, but all the gals who help him on his morning
constitutional seem to have a grand old time of it – they keep coming back for
more.”
The dark-haired woman indeed was broadly
beaming as Mr. Averstand rapidly opened and closed his mouth, nearly tipping
over the front of his walker as it stuck once again to the rough walk. The pair mirrored the silent laughter of the
inept twosome.
“It must be that silver-tongue of
his. I believe he could charm the fur
off a polar bear.” Marge brightened as
she leaned in confidentially. “To my understanding, he’s always been quite the
ladies man.”
“Really? I never knew that. Though with those women friends of his, I
should have guessed it.”
“I’ve heard him tell of his old army
days, when all the girls were clamoring for his number and his gang was at the
heart of the action. You wouldn’t
believe some of the stories he tells.”
Marge snorted. “In fact, I can’t
completely believe them myself.”
This sent them both into another
spiral of giggles. Meanwhile, the
winding path brought the old man with his walker, new lady friend, and tall
tales toward them.
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