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Elsa and Alanna met through the personals. Lonely woman seeks same, a soulmate to share nights by the fire, warm cuddles and chocolate desserts. That connection had led to six months of heaven, one of hell.
Now only the personals could save Elsa’s aching heartstrings.
Each Friday morning for a month, she’d hurried to the café down the street, not for bagels or beignets, but to check the city’s Free Press. Leaving her second floor apartment, she locked the door, pausing for a deep breath to gather her strength. This was it. She’d made up her mind this would be the last time.
Elsa walked fast, heart pounding, hands shoved in her pockets to keep her fingers from trembling. Inside the café, she ignored the aromas of fresh-ground coffee beans and pungent chai, and the happy chatter of the patrons. She went straight for the Free Press rack and found it empty. Empty like the echo in her heart.
Shame and regret soaked in as she scrounged through the café desperately seeking a paper. She found an abandoned copy on a dirty table and snatched it. Please, by all things holy. By the power of love. Please.
Nervous fingers sticking on the newsprint, she flipped to 12-B.
***
Holidays are for children. People expected things from adults. Careers. Success. Grandchildren. Thanksgiving had been the worst of all. For the first time, she’d taken someone home to meet her parents, someone she was madly in love with, someone who loved her. Alanna was a warm cinnamon-bun woman, sweet, spicy, a cushion of comfort at each day’s end. They’d lived together four months in a tiny city apartment, with plans to make it forever. Until dinner with Elsa’s family.
Not that they’d said anything cruel to Alanna. More that they hadn’t said… anything. A killing frost had settled over the loving family atmosphere, chilling greedy appetites, freezing faces in that “aren’t-we-liberal?” insincere half-smile. Mother had served turkey with apologies. “I’d have made something vegetarian if I’d known we’d have a lesbian,” she’d said.
“Nice haircut,” her brother Bobby had added, smirking as he heaped potatoes on his plate, next to the Parker House rolls. White food, white bread, white state of mind, colorless, unseasoned, narrow-minded…
Two hours of torment were enough. She and Alanna escaped sans goodbye, bolting when the family gathered around the new big-screen to see a Lions touchdown replay. Brief sentences pierced the hard silence as Alanna drove through the blowing snow on the road back to the city, scattered nonsense, meaningless words. So much to say and nothing said of it. Not till much later, under the thick red batik comforter, between the chocolate-toned linens, each frozen on her side of the bed, that’s when the sound and the fury roared.
Elsa’s heartfelt apology for an insensitive family had been smothered by Alanna’s pain. Alanna had cried, ranted and accused, believing she’d been used as a tool of war or weapon to beat those bigoted parents into forced acceptance. Reawakened acid memories, flashbacks of Alanna’s struggle with her own family’s rejection, poisoned the conversation. Elsa had tried to assuage her anguished feelings, but Alanna, drama-bent and inconsolable, had emptied her drawers, shoved tear-soaked belongings into worn cloth grocery bags, then dragged herself away like a decimated army in icy retreat.
***
She’d truly believed Alanna would call. In a day. Maybe two. But she didn’t. As stubborn as she was theatrical, Alanna didn’t return Elsa’s calls, either. Over the lonely fortnight that followed, a black hole slowly opened in Elsa’s heart, sucking in all that meant life to her, even her pride. Her need for Alanna bled out through her fingers into words she was driven to share. One more try. She put a four-week ad in the personals. A.D., you are my only family, everything in the world to me. Please come home.
Twenty-eight days she had waited. Read. Cried. This was the last.
12-B.
She scanned the column down to the fifth ad.
Honey bear, I miss you so. I’ll be home at noon, with a bouquet of fresh cut lilacs and a chilled bottle of blackberry merlot.
Her hand trembled so that she could hardly read the words a second time. Honey bear, she’d said. Honey bear. Eyes burning, throat choked, she glanced at the clock over the espresso pot. 11:45.
Elsa needed no second invitation to love. She dropped the paper on the table and was gone.
Barbara Mountjoy, a published writer for over 35 years, signed five novel contracts in 2010, including The Elf Queen (2010) and The Elf Child (2011), both from Dragonfly Publishing, and her first romance, Secrets in the Sand, from The Wild Rose Press. The author of 101 Little Instructions for Surviving Your Divorce (Impact Publishers, 1999), she published two stories in Cup of Comfort collections and teaches publicity for small press writers. She blogs on parenting kids with autism, writing and life at http://awalkabout.wordpress.com. Her writing websites are http://clanelvesofthebitterroot.com, for her fantasy series, and http://alanalorens.com, for her romance works.
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14 Responses to “PERSONALLY • by Barbara Mountjoy”
Comments
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October 9th, 2011 at 1:08 am
Awwww! I was expecting something tragic, so the ending was a pleasant surprise.
My only little qualm would be the ‘white state of mind’ comment. If the MC is so aware of bigotry, why such a bigoted thought?
That aside, I found myself rooting for Elsa and Alanna all the way.
Good job.
October 9th, 2011 at 1:16 am
What a lovely story. I’m so happy it ended well for them.
October 9th, 2011 at 5:18 am
I found this story hard to follow because of the inconsistent use of verb tense.
For example: “Each Friday morning for a month, she’d hurried to the café. … Leaving her second floor apartment, she locked the door, pausing for a deep breath. … This was it. She’d made up her mind this would be the last time.”
At first I thought this meant that each Friday for a month, as she left her apartment, she would tell herself, “This will be the last time.” But then she would go again next week. Then, as I read on, I realized we were talking about a particular Friday on which the basic action of this story is happening.
This sort of switching back and forth between past perfect, past and even present (“Holidays are for children”) made the story rather choppy. If you make the verb tenses smoother, it will be easier to see the sweet story underneath.
October 9th, 2011 at 6:32 am
I read this as bigotry on the part of the couple, real chip on the shoulder stuff, that made them read what could just as easily have been clumsy but well intentioned reaching out as prejudice against them. Since both took it that way, only differing in how to respond, they reinforced that interpretation over time.
October 9th, 2011 at 7:35 am
That was inceredible! Five stars.
October 9th, 2011 at 7:47 am
I wanted to like this story because of the message, “True love conquers all,” but I got hung up on the reason for the conflict.
Surely Elsa’s family knew Elsa was gay by that time, and surely she told them how much Alanna meant to her. So to have the family react the way they did (which came across as intentional in spite of the “not that they said anything cruel to Alanna”) just didn’t ring right.
If their misgivings had been less obvious and more of a undercurrent that showed they had never accepted Elsa’s homosexuality but kept it hidden until Alanna showed up, then the situation would have felt more real. The way it came across, the “vegetarian” and “haircut” statements were directed solely at Alanna’s sexuality and didn’t work.
Just my opinion, of course. Liked the writing, a lot however, making this a three star event for me…
October 9th, 2011 at 7:47 am
I got the same impression as #4. This was the first time Elsa had brought someone home. The first. I always find that to be an awkward time for any couple, and it’s nerve-wracking for the hosts as well.
As far as Alanna, I don’t think she’s worth pining over. She left Elsa for something that wasn’t even her fault. I wouldn’t call that love.
October 9th, 2011 at 7:56 am
I’m with #7. I was hoping Elsa would move on. Alanna’s actions make her seem trite and not worth sulking over.
October 9th, 2011 at 11:31 am
At first, I also had trouble believing the premise a bit. I didn’t see why Alanna would get so upset over something Elsa’s *family* did (not Elsa herself), until I read, “…she’d been used as a tool of war or weapon to beat those bigoted parents into forced acceptance. Reawakened acid memories, flashbacks of Alanna’s struggle with her own family’s rejection, poisoned the conversation.”
That fixed everything for me. I actually really liked this piece, and I’m pretty picky.
October 9th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
The exact same story could have been told as a racial problem, a religious allegiance problem, a class problem, without any changes at all except for the tag. The reference to vegetarianism may be a leftover from a story about anti-semitism and kosher (the haircut about sideburns?) I think the story has been made into one about lesbianism in order to modernize and spice it up but it doesn’t transfer to the reader the depth of tormented emotion caused by the other problems to which many readers can personally relate. Society caused the first set of problems. Did nature itself latterly provide a new set for homo sapiens?
October 10th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Wow, really wonderful writing. A five from me.
October 11th, 2011 at 5:51 am
Nice emotional punch with this, Barbara!
October 11th, 2011 at 7:19 am
[...] on topic today, my flash fiction story “Personally” that came out at Every Day Fiction. If you have just a few minutes, that’s enough to check it [...]
October 12th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I think the reasons for rejection by the family and the immediate aftermath was a little too rushed in its depiction.
I like the fact that they got together again, but would have wanted to know more about why.