Devotion

I am soon approaching the one year anniversary of "my writing career". It has taken its own form and shape without much guidance or structure from me. I'm surprised at that because I've let it meander along without worrying too much about goals.

.

But I have been writing. I effortlessly love writing poems. I've shockingly finished the first draft of a novel, and I've completed a self-help book on changing careers that I hope will find its way to an interested publisher. I excite myself by imagining I will one day walk into a book store and say, "Ohmygod, there's my book".

.

And timidly waiting in the wings, hiding inside my file cabinet, barely able to breathe on its own, is my first true love: the still untitled book about Who's Happy and Who Isn't and Why and Why Not.

.

Why am I saying all this? Because after the poems and the novel and the self-help books, I'm also being courted by the Short Story. Indeed, the story of Izzy and Casey--these two characters I totally love who are telling their story with such glee-- is such a joy to write I can hardly contain it to my weekly writing group, where it was born, prefers to develop, and wants to keep to itself for a while longer.

.

So what's the point? (Jeez). Well....here's a new short story. If you have the time or inclination, I'd welcome the feedback.......

Devotion

She walked to the front window specifically to watch the rain moving down in an aggressive straight line, until each strand hit the middle pane and vanished abruptly.
.
“Isn’t that what’s happened to me? ”, she asked out loud, surprised that given her present state she would make any connection at all, let alone one that started with the physical world of her front yard and ended with her current internal landscape, which as of Tuesday was bleak.
.
She took a chance and lost. She couldn’t say she didn’t know what she was doing from the first moment, when she put aside the little toothpicks that so fiercely though ineffectively had guarded her heart since this smooth as olive oil guy, Matt, had walked out on her one Saturday morning at 11:43 am. She knew this because she looked at the time of his email before she read his sorry lines that told her, the way all cowardly bastards always do, that she was wonderful and perfect and beautiful and intelligent, that the problem was of course him, that for certain some other guy would come along and see her for the precious irresistible woman she obviously was.

That was three years ago. It took her two of those years to stop crying without provocation, and several months after that to finally take down all the pictures and dispose of all the letters. Her friend Amy told her she had wasted too much time lamenting this jerk of a guy, but she didn’t see it that way. In her mind, she had cautiously, and guardedly, and hopefully, and only then appropriately, opened wide her proverbial London Fog raincoat to let herself believe again. She had not been sloppy or desperate any more this time than that other time. For her, believing was based on two precepts she held dear: the first, she would trust she would not be intentionally harmed; and the second, even if she was wrong about the first, loving someone was worth it. After the fact she knew that had been a mistake, loving a certain someone may be worth it, but if that certain someone doesn’t see it the same way you do, you’re bound to end up like that strand of rain, abruptly hitting the middle pane.
.
“What’s the alternative?” she kept asking herself all those months, and even now. It was a bitter question. She thought about her sister Claudia. What made things so different for her? Claudia made the same bad choices, the proof of that pudding being that she was currently languishing in a married man affair now in its seventh year. She could not keep up with the number of holidays she had phoned Claudia only to find her alone, waiting for the squeezed in call or quick secret appearance by this man who had succeeded in keeping her sister’s entire life on hold, with parenthesis before and after any decision that involved Claudia’s life without him. Once she calculated that in any given month, her sister had the benefit of her heart’s desire maybe—maybe mind you—5 to 10 percent of her entire life.
.
And yet Claudia seemed happy. One night after two bottles of Chardonnay she asked her how that could be.

Even with her charming slurred speech, Claudia answered quickly:
.
“First of all, I love him. I am alive when I am with him like no other time in my entire life. Second of all, I am devoted to him. That means I am willing to put him first, even if it means I suffer a lot of the time. I like devotion. I think it’s a good quality”.
.
She stood at the window. The rain was relentless. It was coming with such a ferocity she wondered how the impatiens and zinnias managed to keep their wits about them, not to mention their buds and blooms. She thought about devotion. Then, abruptly, she folded the morning paper and poured her coffee just before she sat down in her zebra covered wing chair, nestled her head deep into the aqua pillow, and dreamed about flying.