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The Lady in Prayerbooks (standard:romance, 948 words) | |||
Author: KShaw | Added: Sep 10 2005 | Views/Reads: 3326/3 | Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes) |
A writer is troubled by a letter he's recieved. Is it her, is she the one? | |||
Tom Schofield woke some mornings with nothing but a blank space for a brain. He'd wander around his home, pick up the paper, read a line or two, and then move around some more. There were beautiful pictures on the walls, pictures from his childhood, elves, fairies, long eared rabbits, and photographs of his children and grandchildren. It was a strange house, filled with all kinds of absurdities, a computer, a printer, a scanner, and other modern tragedies of technology. He looked at the chair where he often sat, the same chair from which ‘Frank' was born, the very chair ‘Poppy' went from to meet all her friends, the chair in which he had despaired, laughed out loud, and tricks were played on his mind. Moving the mouse the screen-saver disappeared, revealing a letter. He scanned down the letter to see again the sentence that had kept him awake. "What do you want with me, Tom?" Why that particular sentence should hurt him, he wasn't sure; he just kept looking at it. It came from someone he'd never met, simply exchanged warmth with over the Internet. After all, he mused, Tom Hanks did it, falling in love through exchanges of email, so why not him? Through the night he'd tossed and turned in his bed. No other woman in a long time had made him think so much about his life; the ridiculousness of it, the tragedy of it, the loneliness of it, and now the direction of it. This writer had confronted him. "What do you want with me, Tom?" His eyes focused on that sentence. He recalled that night he sat in this chair and out of boredom and panic answered a ‘lonely hearts' ad. Leaving the chair that evening he wondered if he wasn't going mad, what kind of frustration makes a man answer a classified ad, and what, he wondered, makes a woman post one? A questioned she had answered for him. The thought of hurt wasn't on his mind when he answered this most interesting and seemingly honest request for a male companion. He would answer and probably not receive a reply anyway. He pondered, and in the end talked about silly things. His eyes read down the reply for the umpteenth time and stopped at certain sentences to think about what he was reading. "Tell me what to do next, Tom." She explained that she was ‘ordinary' and wasn't sure why he, being so expressive, so articulate, should want to know her, as if ordinary wasn't what he wanted. Extraordinary people, most of whom he wouldn't give the time of day, dotted his days. She, to the contrary, allowed him to think of himself as normal. Sure all the trappings of success clogged up his life, but they hadn't clogged him up from the reality of what was good. He wanted to say something honest, in the best way he knew how, which was to write to her, to make her understand him, tell her that his life went just as far as the ocean went, and that was very far. Characters had walked into his life and remained there. He picked up a book, dusted off the spine with the palm of his hand, and looked at it. He was a man who had seen his work sold, read, and dismissed or acclaimed all over the world. Writing, he knew, had a deep affect upon him. Being so much fun when an idea comes floating by, waiting to be plucked out of the air and thrashed down onto paper. But writing is mostly about not having an idea. When the blank whiteness of paper becomes some absurd monster waiting to devour him with ‘blank-paper' screams haunting him in his sleep...'you can't leave me....you can't leave me like this!' And with his hot early morning drink he'd sit down to find something to say, but what? He looked hard at what had gone before. Six weeks of hard work had produced little he liked, and when such things happened he lost confidence, thinking about becoming a writer with no outstanding ability, no peculiar talent, in fact the only writer in history who might put down a million words without slapping to life one substantial character, in one small base of a story. What, he wondered; could he say about writing that hasn't already been said? Moons had waxed and waned, trains had arrived and departed, lives teetered on the brink, suitcases packed and unpacked, bells rung in far off steeples, journeys begun, finished, and yet being travelled. Soft burning September skies, a dog barking over the hill, letters written, sealed, posted, talking of love, or fear, or fun...and all these things might have happened, but went by unnoticed because of writing. All the time he kept thinking to himself ‘What if a letter arrives and I'm not here to receive it?' And because he's a writer, he is here, and no letter ever came, till yesterday. Loves came into his life, glowed, burned, and failed, and he never noticed because of writing. Love, like a train, blew its whistle and moved off. There were tears in the back of his eyes as he fought back the memories, and the staring blank paper in front of him. Now there was this woman confronting him, telling him how she feels, and in his heart is reaching out to her. He is hoping she can see him for all that he is and not what he's achieved, or what he has, for only the love of his children has been worth keeping. He moved back to the chair and flopped down. ‘Dear Tom,' he wrote... Tweet
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KShaw has 33 active stories on this site. Profile for KShaw, incl. all stories Email: Kelly_Shaw2001@yahoo.com |