What's Love Got To Do With It

“Can I get you or your daughter anything, Mrs. Alexandre?”

She turned to the young man just liberated from nursing school. Jean-Baptiste, christened after John the Baptist, this he shared with her after the many weeks of hovering near Simon.

“Thank you, Jean. I’m fine. Perhaps a refill on my Earl Gray later. Alena, sweetheart Jean, is taking requests.”

“Hold on, Maverick, hey, Jean-Baptiste, I’d love a mocha, mocha, extra cream if you have the time. Otherwise, a bottle of Fuji water will suffice. We’ll never forget how you supported us. Remember, kindness goes both ways,” she said.

The blush in Alena’s cheeks gave her daughter a more youthful look than her 22 years. It wasn’t the first-time roses bloomed on her sweet, fair, freckled face. Anyone, upon observation, would recognize the sign. The girl glimmered. Maverick, the boyfriend, would fume, guaranteed.

Lonnie stirred a bit in the immense, flesh-colored chair as she observed Simon’s body lay inert — the life draining out of him the way he'd sapped the essence from her. Their hands entwined, green and blue veins pushed upwards, although more prominent in his than her brown ones.

As they walked down the hospital corridor that resembled glass, doctors and nurses would peek inside. They were the famous married interracial couple on floor 4 who wed 55 years ago on this exact day.

It went without saying, everyone wanted pointers on how to stay captivated by one another for 55 years. Lonnie had no answers other than a promise was made. A woman of her word; here she sat. They’d hug Alena, and pat her shoulder.

While Simon drowsed, their special one espied them, blushing without doubt at the manner her parents loved. Lonnie stayed, until death do they part. Death was somewhere in the room bidding his time.

The hairs on her arm rose each time she lowered herself to hear Simon speak. Breath, pungent and cloying, clung to her, a reminder of things to come. Cafeteria, coffee, cod and cauliflower kicked in her hypothalamus signaling the stomach it might not be possible to stave off hunger any longer.

Lonnie’s bottom merged with the structure beneath her. When did she last use the restroom, or took a moment to stretch? Alena gazed out the hospital window, arms folded across her bird like chest, which resembled a child coming out of a training bra even at 22 years old.

The huge fenestra empathized with Alena's plight it seemed. Raindrops formed and traveled the window in soldier fashion armed with its own echo of heartbreak. How much longer would her daughter stare out at the firmament?

Their genes, she, and Simon’s, created an ethereal creature. Even she would catch herself gazing. Alena turned, tears stained her cheeks, Lonnie open her arms wide for the woman-child she’d given birth too. No bigger than a pixie, she sat on her mother’s lap, positioned her head on her shoulder and sighed.

“I’m sorry, mom, I am trying to be strong for you and daddy. You’re not crying. You’ve had him a lot longer than I have.”

Simon opened his ocean blue eyes; a weak smile transcended his face. “What are you two ladies lamenting about?” He wheezed, pain riding out his every word.

Alena rose and fell across the bed, weeping without sound. Charlie Chaplin, the father of silent pictures, would’ve been proud. “Daddy,” she said, sniffling, wiping her wet nose across the back of her tiny taupe colored hand.

The mistake hit her with unbelievable clarity a week after their nuptials, but alas, it was too late, but she’d known. Hadn’t she? Right out of gate and pregnant.

It was the day her heart threw up an impenetrable wall. Simon was thrilled. He called his momma and spoke with her for over an hour while she pounded out boneless chicken breast for Madeira.

Lonnie scrutinized him, as she hammered away at the already long, dead bird, heart clamoring with each downward action. A robotic woman void of emotions.

Well, not all.

Aversion and agony grew there, not for them, but for herself. She was as spiritless as the bird. When her daughter was born—nothing for her flesh of my flesh. Why had she done it?

Married him and had a kid when she never wanted children. Alena, a divine child—perfect in all her ways, a replica of herself, only with skin the color of caramel in relation to Lonnie’s smokey hue.

Thick ropish hair as was hers slid down her back in soft sienna vines. Gracious, loyal, and sometime sickening sweet...made Lonnie's teeth hurt from all the saccharine her soul produced.

Why her inner-being hid from this angelic, joyous child who doted on her and Simon as if they were perfect specimens? Lonnie imagined after he departed, she'd endeavor to become the mother Alena yearned for.

Why hadn't she ever fallen for her husband? So many unanswered why's. As men go, he was dedicated to her and their child, affectionate towards her. He thought the sun and moon rose on his Alena. Simon once filled with life, now full of cancer, squeezed her hand reassuring her, all would end well.

He was handsome, well-built, resembling the cover of a romance novel. One flaw, if Lonnie could call it that, Simon was a trace flirty with female servers, but it was harmless. They'd unfold perfumed, before Lonnie's very eyes. She smiled, remembrance climbed, with thoughts of him.

Still their infatuation did nothing to change her way with him. He’d try to impress with jokes, to pull caliginosity from her belly and into the light, forever eager to please. Women would go to great lengths for a man like Simon. Yet he did not stir her soul. 

Should’ve left him companionless. He’d needed to get out of his parents’ house, and she’d hoped to escape her own home where her mother ranted and raved in lunatic fashion while her father sat in his chair day in and out, after work, ignoring her.

Her parents had lost many babies. Perhaps it was the reason her mother was anomalous, which was the reason Lonnie wanted no part of children. How could she do this to Simon?

She held his hand as his broad herculean chest rose then fell. Still fit after all these years. The way the air leaked from his lungs like a hissing stove...when would it end? She was unable love either of them. She masked her inner feelings of ugliness by showing love through her attentive presence, always near to them.

Holding his hand and smiling at her daughter like her dad was her heart’s desire.

Oh, if only she could learn what it meant to love. She expected tenderness to flood her system when Alena was placed on her abdomen.

The draining began that very second, a slow exudation in her spirit, like a yawning, cavernous hole where her heart should’ve been. The Tin Man from the Wizard Of Oz had nothing on her. Environmental, perhaps, her childhood was a dumpster fire. 

Yet, her parents did their best, it appeared both were without hope. How can love survive or flourish in the darkness of her psyche? Simon and Alena depleted her. She was expected to conform to societal norms as a wife and mother.

No one to converse with, Lonnie struggled to maintain the pretense. Simon’s demise would cut down on some of it. Yeah, perhaps she should be the one laying skin and bone deep in the throws of death. Her child and her husband adored one another. They were soulmates, the two of them.

Observing them together caused her to ache. To catch them laughing, touching, sharing...she’d take to solitude for fear of what she didn't know. She prayed the admiration they felt for each other would touch her, send electricity through the core of her Frankenstein monster.

Is it possible somebody could come along and crack her godawful heart? The noise of a thousand scalded cats permeated the space. The normal hiss and rattle of the room no longer persisted, only noise from her gentle, brokenhearted Alena, who shook unrestrained ready to detonate.

Lonnie stood first, weak, worried only for Alena. She gazed into the face of a once charming man who'd retained all his hair and had taken to wearing it long simply because he knew she found men with locks attractive.

Anything, even, until the end to get her to breathe for him, to receive from him what she'd never chanced with him. A humble, man, a man's man now pulled through time back to wince he'd come.

A smile lay on his lips while his owl-like grey eyes, once luminous, held steadfast to something or someone no one else could see. Might it be he witnessed God and found himself in Abraham's embrace?

Simon was a closet Christian. He never knew she was aware of his love for the Almighty. The hospital team hurried into the room, lowered her husband’s eyes, which would no longer twinkled.

Lonnie reached for Alena with a gentleness, led her away from her father while buckets of mucous and tears saturated her neck and chest. The sounds Alena made vibrated her clavicle.

Why Simon buried his faith was a mystery. Lonnie called on his God now. Let me love this child. If you can hear me, show me you’re real. Open my heart! At that moment, she felt the loss of Simon. This, she thought, was a start. 

This piece was meant to be a novel. Sadly, it never reached its potential. Many others like this are waiting to be shared here. Comment if you’d like to see this short story continue or whether you believe it is whole as it is. Thank you for visiting my site. You are appreciated! 

Nedra Russell © All Rights Reserved 2024