Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: The Pen is Mightier than the Sword (04/08/10)
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TITLE: Of Written Words and The Word | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marlene Bonney
04/12/10 -
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Forty years! Forty years married, never mind the four years before that when they had dated. And now it was over. Marta brushed a white curl behind her ear as she knelt beside the overflowing cedar chest to add the latest bunch of family photographs. The house’s silence cast a gloomy shroud over her like drapes pulled across a window. Marta shut the chest lid, only to discover that it would not latch.
“Well, Wyatt’s not here, so it’s up to me!”
Lips pursed together and jaw set, Marta proceeded to assess the situation. A twisted pink ribbon had wrapped itself into the latch, catching it backwards. Tracing the ribbon’s other end down through years of stored memorabilia, her fingers plunged beneath layers of old pictures, baby books and souvenirs, making her feel like a pirate searching for hidden doubloons.
“A-HA!” triumphantly tugging out a bundle of cedar-scented envelopes—love letters from Wyatt . . .
The vibrating alarm clock bounced across the nightstand, sending coins, keys and pop cans careening to the floor. But the man slept on, awakening only from the incessant rap song blaring from his cell phone.
“Hel—lo?”
“Wyatt, where are you? Mr. Stat is going ballistic waiting for that proposal!”
“Oh, no! I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
A quick trip to the bathroom, and dressing fast enough to challenge Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman, he grabbed his electric razor, keys and wallet and bounded out the door. Driving through the city while shaving, Wyatt reflected on what his once comfortable life had become. Forty years! Forty years plus a few before that, he had loved her and now she was out of his life. She had awakened him every morning for years and he just couldn’t get a grip on retraining his ears.
“Or disciplining myself to make my bed, do my laundry or wash the dishes,” he acknowledged, surveying his bachelor pad after work that evening.
A day playing catch-up and placating an angry boss had him running on coffee-induced adrenalin, and all he wanted to do was plop down in front of the big-screen television—she got the house and he got the TV and car—with his take-out burger and fries, tuning out the squalor surrounding him.
“Why isn’t it working?” he stared at the blank television screen.
After a failed attempt at tinkering with wires shooting out of the back of the television, Wyatt began ruffling through unpacked boxes for a screwdriver. Instead he found himself gazing into Marta’s eyes as she stared back at him from her framed high school graduation portrait. As he picked it up, the lid popped off the attached shoe box, revealing flower-scented envelopes jumbled every which-way—love letters from Marta.
“Dear Marta, my love,” she read from the last letter in the stack on the floor in front of her, “I miss you so much it hurts. Your picture is setting on my pillow as I write, your eyes and lips begging for my kisses . . .”
Marta closed the cedar chest, mascara-stained tissues at her feet. She reached for her Bible to a passage she & Wyatt had embossed on their wedding invitations those decades ago:
“Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. I Corinthians 13”
“My darling Wyatt,” he read as dusk turned into midnight, “my heart aches for the sight of you. I don’t know how I can wait for your Spring Break. . .”
He refolded the last letter of the box, thoughtfully stuffing it back in its envelope and placing it on top of the pile in front of him. Then he spent another two hours cleaning up the apartment, tired though he was.
The next day, Marta was startled by the doorbell, echoing through the empty spaces of her renewed heart, even as it reverberated through the childless, husbandless rooms of her house.
It was Wyatt—dressed in a tux, no less and SO handsome, butterflies danced through her stomach in spite of herself. In one sweaty hand, he held a bouquet of wilting pansies, her favorite flower. In the other, a shoe box of her letters, his Bible on top.
“Whatever it takes,” he firmly asserted as she fell into his embrace.
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