White Houses

White Houses

         Under the austere, uninviting emerald Christmas tree lay a single gift wrapped in clean white paper, with a thin pink ribbon tied around it and a simple pink bow atop it. A youthful girl sat still upon the floor, with her arms in her lap and her legs crossed, hands folded, and a soft, almost forced smile. A young blonde girl, hair only just to her shoulders, and cheeks still round with childhood. Though her family could not afford a gift for her in years past, with the exception of the yearly Christmas décor, a smell of the holiday greenery, and the alluring sight of mistletoe on the white walls, she still sat straight and quiet, showing greater modesty than many adults in the temptation of anticipation.

         At last, the gift was set upon her lap, and she immediately took the pink ribbon off and placed it beside herself. She paused momentarily, as if hesitant, then turned the box upon its side to unwrap it from the folds, preventing the paper from ruin or tearing. As she finished unwrapping, she folded the white wrapping paper, tied the ribbon around it elegantly, and placed it again to the side. Moving again to the box, she opened it but an inch and peeked inside, her lips stilled. Her eyes, however, widened, heightened, and gently surfaced to her audience, as if to confirm something with them.

         Placing the paper inside the inch-opened box, and closing it again and carrying it as if it contained the most fragile of contents, she quietly kissed her mother on the cheek, embraced her father, then, hushed, left the room and turned the corner to the staircase that led up to the loft, her room. Coming upon the first step, she turned her head from her parents who spied on her from the living room, and hurriedly rushed up the stairs, smiling for she could suppress it no longer.

         Upstairs, she opened the antique white door to her vacant room, which had the feeling of confinement but was decently furnished with a bed, a chair, and a window, and stepped upon the hard floor of wood. Hurrying over to the cushioned seat in the corner, her petite hands, small enough to fit into the palms of young man, grasped the object of her anticipation and pulled it from the box. She slipped upon her tiny, white feet the tiny, pink slippers, and closed the antique white door that she had left open in her hurry. Alone, she danced, and danced, and danced.

***

Under the blooming oak tree, a young man lay, his hands folded upon his chest, his eyes closed. A very aged, tattered looking book was open in his lap, the spine between his legs where it had fallen in its failure to entertain him. Instead, he had been seduced by the glamour of slumber in springtime warmth. Spring was his pride, or so it looked in the way that he confidently slept beside nature and upon it, and how nature favored him, the wind curling his blonde hair that gleamed even in the shadow of the tree. Soon he would be awakened by the sun, which was now falling into the west, and taking from him the shade of the early Saturday afternoon.

         A young woman peeked over her left shoulder and noticed the young man reclining against the tree, thinking it somewhat peculiar and improper for a public place. She turned her head but peeked again at him from the corner of her eye. At second glance, the scene lost its obscenity, and she gathered his appearance of meekness and peace. Modesty and aristocracy were her prominent manner, straightly seated, dressed in a long, chic white dress, and a white pearl necklace around her lovely, gentle neck. Such womanly or mature fashions for a youth might suggest superiority, but were not gaudy or flashy; also, her celestial blonde hair reached to her shoulders, as was trendy, but failed to curl and shielded the side of her face that had no lipstick or other excessive makeup. Neither did she wear earrings. She sat at a nearby park bench that overlooked the pond and mused at its serenity before returning again to the reading of her Jane Austen, which had been distracted by the handsome young man and the colors of God’s creation.

         Sunshine, held fugitive by the clouds’ white heavenly cellars, escaped its residence to display flags of blue in the sky, little gold fish in that nearby pond of early migrated swans, and the little lions prowling upon the grasses and the young man’s white collared shirt and brown tie; sunshine pranced upon the young man’s eyes, but he did not flinch, calmly and dreamily lifting his eyes, as if awoken by a kiss. His head did not move, nor did his posture change, but he instead only looked down to his book. His midday nap had distracted him not at all. He read with no haste; one hand coiled and the other lay over it, as if one were peacefully deceased and the other was a spouse weeping over her. The young man’s hands remained near his chest and would not shift, thus the page was never turned.

         Time passed, and the sun now began to set. The little woman rose from the bench, closed her book, and hugged it close against her side like the embrace of a gentle man. The colors of sunrise trickled through the trees of the forest that surrounded the clearing around the pond-- trickled like the light around a closed bedroom door. The hues dampened her dress with gold and red, and the north wind seemed to be bathing her with these pigments, glistening in its breeze. She closed her eyes as it stroked her right cheek.

         Gold and violet glinted on the lady’s backside-- majestic colors, yes, but in the eyes of the young man who first looked upon her at dusk, those of a goddess. Glowing like a medallion in the dark, her fair skin like a canvas for the sunset, her hair with little golden butterflies that fluttered in the gentle wind. She stood straight, and her weight did not shift to either side. Tears dripped down the gentle man’s cheeks, and others on alternative route to slide along his nose, for never had he seen a woman lovely as her, such a stance of innocence. His hands still clasped at his chest, remained motionless, unwilling to wipe the little trails of violet and green tears, though they began to drip upon his antiquated book.

         The orange was burnt, the red crimson like wine, and together in the sky, they made a kite that seemed to fly in the heavens because of the scattered clouds blowing in the wind. Moisture collected at the corners of her eyes, which were glossy and reflected the clear water of the pond, but only a single tear fell from her eye and went no further than the top of her cheek. It dangled there for moments, as if feeling unwelcome to descend her cheek, and was then hastily wiped with the tip of her pinky. Another droplet fell upon her bare feet that stood on a smooth boulder near the shore and a few feet from the path; the droplet had not fallen from her eyes.

         Sunset had begun its final phase, the third quarter gold sun giving its light to a silver harvest moon, and the silver droplets sprinkled down on the top of her head. She reached her hand to where the moisture had puddled upon her hair, as if to reconfirm the rain. Rainfall mixed with her restored weeping as the streams fell from her chin. Hardly a cloud above, still Sky managed to cry without the gloom of dark storm clouds. As she turned her head around, she saw that the oak tree stood lonely and vacant; the young man had left. The little blonde woman ran from the places of rainfall for cover to escape the dankness that threatened to change her dress to a transparency.  Her back turned to the final pang of the poignant sun fall, and her dreariness left oblivion on her eyes as the last rays of light fashioned a spectrum from her weeping aid, the rain.

***
         Hardly a cloud ruffled the sky, though a large, black automobile that drove up the winding country road to the cottage and threw up a cloud of dust and gravel resembled one bringing storm. The little blonde girl noticed, looking through the window that peered over onto the front yard, the visitors driving nearer, and hurried to tell her mother, who worked busily in the kitchen.

         “Someone is coming up the driveway,” she quickly said before running back to the window. A man with an army uniform, a variety of medals on his breast pocket, respectfully walked up to the front porch of the white house. Fear in her eyes, Mother hastened past the living room where the little girl peeked out the window, and surreptitiously tried to hide her face. As she opened the door, the sunset sky refracted upon the house’s white walls and interior, a domestic aurora.

         Mother stepped out and closed the door behind her. The military gentleman removed his hat, humility in his eyes. “Ma’am.” Peering through the living room window, the girl heard only these words. “Your husband…”  He looked away and the girl was unable to hear his complete statement.

         The girl sat patiently, naïve of the significance of the small conversation and the stillness of her mother. The aging woman slid both of her hands from her sides and brought them to her face, below her cheeks and no farther, for the tears had long since traversed the short road to her chin, and streamed with such fluency that they continued down her lovely, gentle neck. Brought to awareness of her father’s death by the curiousness of the military gentleman, the gestures of her mother’s fingers and palms, and by the refraction of the light from the moisture on the aged woman’s forearm, she convened with her mother outside the door, weeping as she embraced her mother around her hips.

         The respectable man, seeing that he could help no further, with a polite and sympathetic face, went again to the black automobile and drove off into the red and violet colors of sun fall. The mother and her child stood upon the porch, together in the woe of lost love. Tattering began above their heads, and black storm clouds spilled over into the front side of the house. Raining down like the storm clouds, the tears continued to stain their white dresses. Streaming down like the mourners’ tears, the rain began to fall upon the front porch of that disheartened cottage, and threatened to change their dresses to transparency.

***
         At the bench that faced the pensive pond sat a young blonde man with a harmonica in his mouth, staring into the pond and whistling the tune of “’Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus.” The youth was already comfortable in the early Saturday morning, dressed again in a white collared shirt, one side of the collar folded down improperly, and the typical brown tie and slacks. His sleeves were rolled up nearly to his elbows, and his right foot rested upon the opposite knee.

         The young woman walked along the path, came upon her bench, and sat down quietly, so as to not disturb the man’s soulful hymn. Neither his song nor his glance was bothered, his eyes still fixed upon the blue waters of the pond and the redbirds that perched in the branches of the oak tree above the bench. Opening a book again under the singing of the birds and the harmonica of the young man, which seemed in sync and harmonious, the young woman stared into the book, as if to read its pages, and performed other deceptions of unexcitement at spotting the handsome young man again.

         The song was lengthy, yet not dull, for he gave it spirit with every breath of new dynamic and vibrato. Surely he had been acquainted with music from his early days, though an indefinite songwriter, and gave the hymn quiet charisma. The closing note endured neither beyond his breath nor ended prematurely: it was, to the ear, like an ocean wave that tirelessly echoes upon the shore by day and night. The man took his lips from the instrument, but kept his gaze forward without greeting the young woman, not seeming impolite but rather in a trance of sorts.

         “Will you play for me ‘Amazing Grace?’” was the mere greeting the young woman gave, rather hushed so that she wondered if the man even heard her.

         Bringing the harmonica again to his lips, he peacefully began to play the aged hymn. He played with the quality of a mourner and the gentleness of a man comforting one, as if aware of the circumstances of her past. Nevertheless, she lowered her head to, again, pretend to read and attempt to deceive both him and herself into disinterest. His song ceased abruptly, as if cut off. She kept her finger in the page she was open to and turned toward him with wonder, since he seemed in no hurry to close his preceding song, then again opened her book, attempting to not appear disappointed in the ceasing of his song.

         Bringing the harmonica from his lips, he hummed a line before he began to sing in his soft baritone voice:

The Lord has promised good to me...
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be...
as long as life endures.

Incredulous, the woman closed her book without marking its page, and turned her head, bright-eyed and attentive, to the young man who sang richly:

When we've been here ten thousand years...
bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise...
then when we've first begun.

         From profile, she stared at the lovely reverberation of his voice, and her cranberry lips were slightly open, awestruck. Rotating his head, his first look at her face was directly into her exquisite brown eyes, amber in morning light.

         The words hardly rolled from her lips, as if she were disturbing some sacred stillness: “Your voice is lovely.”

         Smiling, he reached to the side opposite her, and his hand returned with three white daisies. “There you are. They’re for you.”

         Joyful, yet somewhat mystified, she whispered, “How is it that I know you?”

         “Oh, we are rather unacquainted yet.”
***
          Spring came to its finale, and the soothe of temperate summer rain began to fall on the grasses, that they might keep their emerald charm. The air did not breathe torridly, but continued to nurture the lands with the breeze of spring and the arrival of dew each morning.

         That late spring morning, the last of its kind, was bright and cool. The hands of the young woman were sprinkled with the cold. Warmth came from within her, alleviating her of the pain of cold, of lonesomeness, or of dejection, at the memory of young man’s singing serenade, or his reciting the lines of “The Highwayman,” or merely sitting beside her independently, reading his own book while she read hers, and occasionally looking up to smile. It became ritualistic; every Saturday of that spring season, he would await her upon the bench or beneath the oak tree with a handful of white daisies. At times she would attempt to arrive earlier than him, but every time found him in the same places, in the same way she had always seen him, as if he had never left that place.

This last spring morning, his sacraments were broken by twelve tulips of different colors in his hands, a blanket beneath the oak tree where the woman would sit in white dress, and neither harmonica nor book in his hand. He hummed to himself the melodies of “Sweet Is the Sunshine After Rain” as she leisurely walked the path, the guide to the bench of enchantment and the tree of curiosity. Gazing upward toward the sky as she walked the winds of the pathway, her hands folded at her breast, she prayed simply: “God, be there.”

The young man briefly closed his eyes to say a prayer of his own (“God, be here”), reopened them, and gathered himself to a stance. Terrified of the movement of his own two briskly pacing legs, he still drew near to the woman.

“They’re for you.”
***
Light again began to drift into the West, and complete its half-day life. This occasion, the juncture of speaking to the young man on Providence, nature, on the themes of despair and love, on the relief and praiseworthiness of an honest tear, and of the heartiness of singing, as well as other things closely or loosely associated with these themes (they filled the day with conversation); it had been a lovely time. They had chipped bark from the tree and flung its flakes at each other, like a friendly snowball fight of presummer; where the bark had been stripped, the young man secretly carved a heart with their initials in it and the girl did not discover it.

         “I really must be going.” Though it had been an extraordinary day, the woman was very assiduous to her self-imposed curfews that were ever changing.

         “Walk you home?”

         “I live nearly four miles from here. Surely you needn’t…”
         “No fuss,” the man said with a stern grin, and a slight chuckle.

         Through the town and through the country they walked; past schoolyard and barbershop, on city streets and natural grasses. They traversed the route mostly in the contentment of silence, which they were familiar with and furthermore enjoyed. At times, their shoulders would brush unintentionally as they walked side by side, as if neither of them could prevent the draw.

         They came upon a windy country road that led to a miniature cottage dressed in white. Oak trees stood behind and beside it and gave it depth—for it was a rather simple and fair house besides—but the road was barren of trees and went upward to the house that was built atop the hill.

         “Here we are. This is my house.”

         The man saw its plainness, but he yet described it with honesty, without flattery: “Charming.” They turned upon the pathway, and their shadows were cast ahead of them as the sun finished its course. As the road began to wind, their shadows merged so that they became one.

         “I’ve lived here since birth. This house belonged to my parents, and I continued to live in it after they died.”

         The tip of the land stretched out its hand, and began to pull the Skylight to its embrace and coalesce the two, so that the outlines of them both first grazed; as the woman turned to face the man, her shoulder brushing his.

         She awaited his farewell, but his face, steadfast, remained forward.

         “May I come in.” The question was not suggestive, but came in respect and curiosity. Continuing up the steps, the man opened the door for the woman, and guided her through the door with his hand on her waist.

         The young man first noticed the aged yet sophisticated woodwork, the white walls that replicated the exterior, and the vase filled with white daisies from the week before in the middle of the table.

         “May I have a look around?” She nodded, and followed him around the house. Hanging above the piano were two pictures: one of a father, a mother, and their child, who had blonde hair and a fair complexion; another was of that same man and woman, the man dressed in Army uniform, and the woman dressed fairly casual and struggling to smile willingly.

         “How did your mother die?”

         “ My mother was never much well after the death of my father.” She paused. “Nearly two years ago she died. I’ve cried for her most every night since.” Glaze coated her topaz eyes, the sharp hint of new tears, as the man looked tenderly into them.

         “Many things changed after the death of my father. I took up many of the chores that my mom could not do because of her weakness. I remember I would go into my mother’s room—I did the laundry—and I would go to take off the sheets to the mattress and take the pillowcases off the pillows to wash them. The sheets would be disheveled, and the pillowcases still tear-stained from the night before. My mother was never much well after the death of my father. She maintained fair spirits, mostly on my behalf, but many things changed. She never was the same… she never wore white again, so I took on he the hopeful duty, and still do… I suppose she died… of lovesickness.”

         His eyes were sympathetic. “Are you… have you been well?”

         The woman did not respond, but the man did not expect her to say much anyway. She took the daisies from the vase, and put in the fresh tulips. The man’s eyes turned to the steps.

         “Is there anything upstairs?”

         Astounded by the man’s question, not expecting it, still she answered, “That was my room as a child. I’ve not been in there since the day that news arrived of my father’s death. Everything was left as it was… we started over, and the spare room became mine.”

         Without the consent of the woman, the man took her hand in his, and led her to the steps. Coming upon the first step, he looked into her eyes, and hurried her up the steps.  As they reached the top of the stairs, she looked back at him, then little by little opened the white antique door.

         Looking aged and dusty, yet the room held everything in its place, and was as tidy as when she left it. The bed was neatly made, the curtains pulled away from the window, and all her belongings neatly sorted in the closet. And in the corner, along the wall that also contained the window that beamed in the violet and crimson of sunset, sat the chair, white wrapping paper tied about by a pink ribbon, and a pair of pink ballet slippers.

         “ Do you still dance?”
         “I have no time for such silliness” was her reply, and she knew the man did not believe her; here she had fond memories, and she missed them so, and the boy was not so foolish to believe her.

         The man gently swept her away into his arms, and sat her upon the chair. He slipped the tiny, pink slippers on her still tiny, white feet, and, after unknotting it from the paper, tied the pink ribbon around her wrist. The young man looked up to the woman, and grinned, and so did she, for she could suppress it no longer.

         The woman put her hand in the man’s, and he lifted her from the chair. He hurried over to the antique white door that was tinted orange by the refraction of the sunset in the attic window. And they danced, and danced, and danced.