The Tale of 3 Mothers

It was hard for Mrs. Crumple to balance herself down the muddy road. The rain drenching them cold. The sky grumpy and threatening. Flashing them lights and scaring them with exploding thunder.

Mrs. Crumple brushed away the water dripping from her lashes. "A very nice Sunday, this is," she said at the top of her lungs.

Mr. Crumple held on to her by the hand. Even with him, the ground remained tricky to tread on. If she put too much of her weight on her feet, she'd get stuck. If she doesn't, she'd slip.

"Don't drop my apples and peaches. Give me that basket. They're my apples, and I don't want any mud on them."

"They won't fall. It's just hard for me to hold on to the basket and keep you steady," he reasoned.

"Give me the basket. If they fall at least I won't have to blame you," she said. "No! Don't bring your muddy shoes up the porch nor the house. I don't want any dirt in the house! One dirt was enough for me. No more. I told you we should have taken the car. If it were sunny, though, we wouldn't enjoy the day. I don't know what to do these days. The weather forecasts are so unreliable. Go straight to the room, bathe or change clothes. Don't wet the entire house and expect me to mop them all out!"

Mrs. Crumple went straight to the laundry room, stripped all of her wet clothes and wrapped herself in a purple bathrobe
. She saw a red shirt folded neatly on the shelf above the dryer.

"John, is this red shirt by the dryer yours?" she yelled.

"No. That must be Mark's." came the muffled reply from the distance.

She took the shirt, grabbed one of the garbage bags in the stockroom, dropped the shirt in before putting them in the garbage bin.

 She headed to the kitchen to bake the apple and peach pie.

Mr. Crumple, all dressed and dry, approached the kitchen sniffing the sweet homey aroma of the pie drifting in the air. There were three sets of pie sitting warm on the island counter. "Are we sending two of these over to Melissa's? They'll love them!"

"No. This is just for us. Come have a taste."

"Why is this too sweet?"

"Really? I barely taste any sweetness, so I kept adding sugar and honey."

"They're too sweet. This is bad for us."

"Let's throw them out then." She dropped all of the pies on the garbage bin over the red shirt.

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Mrs. Crumple woke up. Her face towards the bedside table clock. It says 5:00 am. She heard it ticked by above her husband's snoring. After 5 minutes of waiting for sleep to come back to her, she got up, tied the laces of her brown bathrobe handpainted with dead leaves and walked down the stairs. She headed to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of red wine.

The big kitchen window opens up to the lighthouse that her family has kept running for decades. The sky was dark and even darker clouds hovered where the ocean should be. A faint slapping of the waves down the cliff rocks could be heard. She saw her faint reflection on the window, wavy brunette with streaks of silver, wrinkled skin around elongated hard eyes. She touched the window glass, felt unusually cold, guessed it's going to be a cold, windy and even rainy day. She withdrew her palm. Her warm hand left a misty imprint on the glass. She turned, carried her wine up the stairs and walked towards the nursery room.

She opened the door. A powdery scent which smelled like mild citrus met her. She walks in towards the crib. The pillow and mattress unruly liked it had just been slept on. She had her fingers run through the top railing of the crib, felt a chip on one of the edges.

"Heaven," she said, walking away and closing the door. She headed to Melissa's room. She opens the door, breathed in a heavier perfume which smelled like an expensive wine married to rose petals.

The closet door half open. She walked towards it, placed the coffee cup by the dresser, took a hanger out from the closet and looked at Melissa's favorite Sunday dress, a white one with faint rose petals, green leaves, and vines printed on them. She returned the dress in the closet and closed it. She turned towards the dresser and looked above it. Melissa's three framed photos hanged. One was taken after her daughter's graduation.

"Boy, she can jump!" Mr. Crumple smiled as he looks at how high Melissa jumped in ecstasy, her toga wrinkled, legs curled behind her knee, arms flailing up, her cap thrown high above, all smiles and pretty with her wavy brunette hair flowing sideways in the air.

The second photo showed Melissa at her Manhattan office. The third photo shows Melissa with a key to her dream car, a black Mercedez.

"Lovely," Mrs. Crumple whispered. She took her coffee and slid open the top drawer of the dresser. She saw a white polo shirt and a tie. She raised it to her nose. It smelled pungent.

"Must be Eric's"

She carried the shirt and tie over to the kitchen, threw them in the bin and spilled the remaining wine over the garment. She went out, walked to the lighthouse, arms wrapped around her chest, her hair whipping sideways in the freezing wind.


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Mrs. Satinka pushed open the white two-door entrance to her in-house dance studio with a pair of ballet shoes in hand. It had been a couple of years since she last stepped foot in the room. As the doors swung open, the air warmed by the sun coming in from the left rectangular ceiling-to-floor high windows surrounding the studio in three sides met her like a warm towel touching all of her skin.

Out in front of her, she can see the street where vehicles and people on bikes and on foot pass by. Parkers Street is lined with shops and restaurants spruced up by palm trees and flowering hibiscuses in between them. Far behind those buildings are the white sands that meet the blue sea.

She stood in the center, breathed in deeply, smiled and walked to a stool on the left near the phonograph. After her shoe was laced, she stood, switched on the two ceiling fans and the 5-foot crystal chandelier that hanged in between them, and placed a record on the phonograph.

"Three, two, one" she skippity-hopped on the floor. The piano music of CrusaderBeach's Jump reverberated around the room and out on the street. Several local residents passing by turned to see the music coming from the black & white three-storey Second Empire home known to the locals as the dance home.

She twirled, arms waving above like grasses dancing in the wind. She made a short run, jumped and did a split in mid-air before landing softly on the dark glossy wooden floors. She tiptoed towards left heading to the framed photo of her only daughter, Kachina, when she was still a year old.

She blew the photo a kiss, smiled then spun around a dozen times like an ivory queen twirling in delight until she got to the next wall in between windows with another photo of her child at 6. Kachina, dressed in a blue tutu, smiling while doing an arabesque. Mrs. Satinka also did the same pose before the photo. She looked up, saw how the chandelier crystals shimmer like diamonds, shedding pins of light down below. She smiled, stood on her toes, tossed her hands in quick rhythms, skidded, squatted, hopped, extended her legs straight and tapped the floors with the flat tips of her shoes in rapid motion while taking short glances of photos around. She raced around the room like a jolly skipping frog. She whirled once more in the middle of the room, waved to herself on the mirror. A woman in it, in a golden tutu, grinning, her almond-shaped  brown eyes gleaming, her skin wrinkled and sagging beneath her elbows and jaws. Her cheeks blushing. Streaks of silver a bit unnoticeable in her ash-blonde hair.

She floated across and out the room through the hall leading to the living room. Her fingers touching both sides of the walls. On one of the living room table sits a tall glass vase filled with branches of cherry blossoms with dozens of its pink blooms. She took all of the flowers, one by one dropping petals on the floor as she walked up the stairs to her daughter's room. She opens the door, saw Melissa's bed with the quilt she made for her on it. The music audible like a soft whisper. She curtsied, showered the bed with the flowers and threw herself over them, chest heaving.