Elaine's Song

Marriage.

What a word. It could have so many meanings. Strange, when it was supposed to be a happy time of someone’s life.

For Elaine, it meant the end of her childhood.

The end had not come when she’d let Brian make love to her in the hotel room at Ormond Beach, with the bitter smell of the ocean flowing through the window. It had not come when she realized she was late, nor when the test finally came back an undeniable positive. It had not even come when Brian reluctantly agreed to do the right thing.

The right thing. What a funny concept. The right thing would have been to wait. The right thing would have been to use protection. The time was past for right things. When Elaine realized this, she also realized she was no longer a child.Now her only options were to choose the least of the worst things.

Donning her mother’s old-fashioned dress, Elaine walked downstairs, stopping for just a moment to gaze at a picture of herself when she was five.The gold-framed photograph hung at a select spot on the wall, where everyone would see it. Elaine glanced at the short, smiling girl with gray eyes and dishwater blonde hair. Her gaze lingered longer on her father, the big dark man with an equally huge smile standing behind her. What would he think of this mess she had gotten herself into?

“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered to herself, continuing down the stairs. Her father didn’t think anything anymore; he’d been dead for ten years. There was no point in dwelling on the past.

“Mom,” she called into the kitchen. When there was no answer, she walked in.

“Mom,” she repeated. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space. A cigarette dangled between two of her fingers. Graying wisps of hair that used to be the same color as Elaine’s peeked out from underneath the handkerchief on her head.

“How do I look, Mom?” asked Elaine, gesturing to her dress. “It fits just right.”

“It looks lovely,” said her mother, finally turning her head.

“I can’t find the veil,” said Elaine.

“Why do you need one?” asked her mother, flicking ashes off the end of her cigarette butt. “Lots of brides don’t wear veils these days.”

“I would like a veil.”

“Then go find one. Buy one.”

“I don’t have any money.”

Her mother turned her head back toward the empty space it had been pointed at a moment ago.“You’d better get some.”

Elaine waited, hoping her mother would say more. When the silence becamr unbearable, she whispered, “Okay,” and left.

Going back up the stairs, Elaine tried her hardest not to stop at the picture again. Back in the attic, Elaine once more went through the trunk that had contained her mother’s wedding dress. There were the shoes, a size too small for Elaine. She had her own white pair of shoes to wear.

No veil in the trunk. Maybe it was somewhere else. Elaine walked to the far corner of the attic, where the light from the one large window did not reach. She shoved a box to move it out of her way, and something fell on her bare toes.

She looked down to see that it was a guitar case. A guitar? Her father had once had a guitar. He’d been teaching her to play right before he died. She smiled, remembering the little songs he had made up for her. When she was very young, she used to sit at his feet, watching him enviously as he strummed the guitar. For her fifth birthday she didn’t get a material present from him, but what she did receive was the best gift she had ever gotten. He told her he would teach her to play the guitar.

She had learned so many silly songs that her father created out of the top of his head. He had a gift for doing that. But that had been long ago, and Elaine had not played since.

Now she opened the guitar case and gazed at the instrument, looking no different from the day she had last seen it. Taking it out of the case, she tentatively strummed one the strings. Out of tune. Tightening the pegs, she wandered over to the window and sat on the sill.

The warm sun drifted in through the window, shining on the polished wood of the guitar. Elaine ran her hands over the strings, her fingers forming the chords she had learned so long ago.

She remembered.

She hummed one of the songs her father had made for her, and played along quietly with the guitar. The music, simple as it was, seemed to exhale a presence, and she thought her father was there.

“Daddy, what do I do?” she asked suddenly. “It’s all messed up now.”

There was no answer. Elaine strummed the guitar a few more times and went to return it to its case. It would not stay up here, however. She would take it downstairs and learn to play it again. She would teach her own child, when it was old enough. A sense of peace and comfort descended upon her. Maybe it wasn’t all messed up. Maybe things could be okay.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said.

"Elaine's Song" is copyright © K. B. Cunningham 2000

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