Woman Story

1
A man and a woman meet at a luncheon organized by their church. He’s just finished service in the Air force as a member of the band, only a french horn ever held tightly against his chest. She grew up in brooklyn and he promises as they sip on coffee she will be the woman to marry him. She calls him crazy like she wants to believe it. He lets her think she does.

2
Let me tell you a story about a girl. She is the youngest of three children, the only daughter, born under an early august sun. She plays the violin because her father wants her too and keeps her nails short because short nails are fast fingers. Fast fingers fill the house with music, and it sinks into the walls. Years later her daughters will visit and say mom, it’s beautiful. She won’t take any credit.

3
She attends a college party and meets a man who’d like to take her on a date. He plays Simon and Garfunkel and she wants to tell him to trim his nails, to hold his fingertips closely as her violin teacher did and cut them so they bleed, so that he will remember. It keeps her sharp but he is so soft sat on his bedsheets singing for Emily, maybe he doesn’t have to change.

4
Blood runs into the woman’s eyeline: she is learning to surf – the board smacks her forehead. The water is quiet, the safety leash around her ankle, she stops fighting and things slow. It is calm now as she is dragged up the shoreline, and thinks she could get used to it. Her body smacks into the sand and then she is breaking the surface with a gasp, she is supposed to swim.

5
The woman stands in her wedding gown, her aunt is lacing the up back carefully, weaving the silk through each ring. When she is almost finished, the aunt leans in between her shoulder blades and whispers in the woman’s ear, “don’t get lost in the playing”. She makes one final tie with the silk. They are married on New Year’s eve, marked by a fresh snowfall.

6
Before her youngest daughters turn nine, her father dies of pneumonia. After the funeral they go back to the house, with music in the walls. The daughters sit at the kitchen table as the woman’s mother tells them a story. “He said right then, I’m going to marry you.” she laughs with tears threatening to fall. The woman hears the horn somewhere far and freezes. She has not strayed too far.