Framed Life
by Marc Breyer
The book of photographs was on her bed as usual, and it was open on the third page. The yellowed pictures, their edges dog-eared and already worn out, had once been carefully stuck and laid out on a page that had been very white.
There, among other photographs, were those from one of the days her grandpa had taken her for a walk near a pond, in the surroundings of Norfolk, a place where she used to stay for the school holidays. In those photos, a little girl with big green eyes, wearing a kilt, a white silk blouse with bouffant cuffs and a plaid bonnet could be seen from different angles. She was a lovely little girl. Her big green eyes and long curly black hair framed her white-skinned face, giving her the aura of an angel. The girl in those photos seemed to have been cut out from the pages of a fairy tale. Elizabeth was a phlegmatic woman of about fifty-six. Her face had certainly changed a lot, and even those sweet eyes from the time when she was a little girl had turned cold and weak. The long black hair was now short, white and much thinner. The angel’s aura had left her long ago, especially after her husband had died and she had lost her son to alcoholism. Living alone, she was forced to limit her source of affection to the old ladies from the elderly women’s association she frequented every Tuesday and Thursday. There, she would always have the chance to see people like her, people with stories to tell, though changed somehow, as stories can never remain the same, and as the memories they had were then a mix of reality and fantasy.
In such conversations with the elderly ladies, Elizabeth’s favourite subject was certainly illness. Whenever she had the chance she would spend long afternoons, reporting to her friends how much she had suffered when she had to go through physical therapy on her legs; she would provide all the details about the assistance at her favourite hospital, the M— . Actually, she loved the food at the hospital, and knew the names of an endless list of nurses and doctors.
That Friday morning Elizabeth got up early and took her book of photographs from the bedside table to go through those pages again. She turned them slowly with a pair of wrinkled hands and wistful eyes that traveled along the rows of pictures from top to bottom, from left to right, backward, forward, stopping and focusing details that had been seen thousands of times over all those years. After some thirty minutes she got dressed, went to the kitchen for a small breakfast, picked up a bag full of old newspapers she had collected for the week, and left for her son’s house. She walked slowly to Earl’s Court underground station, took the District line up to Notting Hill Gate station, and then the Central Line to get off at Stratford. Five blocks away from the station she found herself at a filthy entrance building with a dark red door, the colour fading, stains covering the area around the hinges, some rips clearly made by some sort of sharp tool. She sighed for courage and patience — a ritual that had been repeated for so many years! At first it had been only a novelty, but by now turned into a pain. Finally, she knocked on that door, not once but several times, until a voice came from inside.
‘Leave the stuff by the door. I can’t see you now.’
That harsh voice clearly revealed the man’s recent consumption of alcohol, or else, had his alcoholism slid into other drugs? That was something she would not be able to find out.
‘Hearing it, not smelling it, not seeing it, that’s paradise to me,’ she muttered.
She almost insisted on knocking on the door again to see if he would open it personally. But it’d be better not to. So, Elizabeth just did what she was told to do, cursed him for that ridiculous situation and left for home.
The temperature seemed to be going down, and as the day was probably going to end a lot colder, the best place to be was home. Somebody might call later in the afternoon, or maybe one of the ladies from the association could come by for some tea and a chat. One more Friday would have gone, one more week would have gone in a life that was being conducted with no reward or pride, but memories and a certain indifference towards the reality around it.
Elizabeth arrived home very quietly, absorbed in her inner world. She entered the flower-perfumed sitting room of her house. The brown-boarded floor, the completely organized rooms, all that domestic atmosphere drove her to the bedroom. She sat on her rocking chair by the window, which was there much more to allow air and light to get into the place than to serve for one to lean and watch the world outside. There, in the comfort and peace of her den she took her book of photographs from the bed and started going through it again.
Marc Breyer is a German-Brazilian who lives in Curitiba. Besides writing fiction in English, he is also an artist and musician. He translates and teaches private classes in English. He can be contacted at mcbreyer14 at yahoo dot com dot br
