Читать книгу Celia's Shadow - Sandy Levy Kirschenbaum - Страница 5

It was after eight o’clock. How much after, she had no idea, but Celia knew it was enough past the hour that her Sunday Globe would be gone. She imagined the paper bandit set their alarm clock for 7:59 a.m. to snatch it before its rightful reader arrived. When she opened the door seconds before eight o’clock, the paper was hers; a minute later, the paper was off on its journey to someone else’s breakfast table.

Celia resigned herself to the fact that a walk to the corner store, for another Globe, would be part of her morning schedule.

Celia had been awake for half an hour. She promised herself she would stay in bed and not look at the clock until she heard the bells ring. She propped her pillows against the iron spindles of the headboard.

Her antique bed was one of the few items she took when she moved back from Connecticut. Years before, when she had first moved to Connecticut, she had discovered it in a neighbor’s trash. The iron had been painted bright pink with purple round knobs at the top of each post. She wedged it in the back of her little green Volkswagen Rabbit. A third of the headboard hung out of the hatch as she drove home slowly. She stripped the pink away and spray-painted it charcoal gray. The brass knobs, no longer purple, were the only parts not made from iron.

Except for some personal belongings, Celia left mostly everything else back in Connecticut. The bed was her treasure, and she was pleased to have saved it from abandonment.

She relaxed and enjoyed the warm morning air. From her opened windows, she heard the sounds in the neighborhood start to escalate. A soft breeze drifted in and brought with it the faint smell of freshly baked bread from a nearby bakery. Brilliantly colored marionettes, which hung by the window, swayed together as if dancing to a finely choreographed performance. Occasionally they gently clinked together.

Celia observed a layer of pollen on the mantel above the fireplace. The fireplace, situated between two windows, was the focal point of the room. Whoever had lived there previously had dramatically different taste from Celia. The pollen-coated fireplace had been painted with a medley of colors. The outer molding was colonial blue, the middle was mustard yellow, and the inside was a barnyard red. The colors contrasted with the brick surround. The walls around were dark yellow on the bottom and pastel yellow on the top. A golden chair rail surrounded the entire room. Months after she moved in, Celia had abandoned her plan to paint the room a soft creamy white. Now, three years later, she was oblivious of the eclectic array of colors.

She reached to the little round table alongside her bed and lifted the pale lace tablecloth. She pulled out a cigarette from the package taped underneath the tabletop. She used to hide the packs in the freezer, but Kate had once discovered them between the ice cream and frozen corn, and then flushed them down the toilet. Currently, Kate had not caught on to the fact that there was always a fresh pack neatly secured in the little hideaway beneath the table. Celia stretched to the nightstand on the opposite side of her bed. She fumbled for matches, which were stored in a small porcelain box. It was 8:47 a.m.

“Damn!” Out of habit, she glanced at the clock. She wanted to wait for the bells to ring before she knew the time. It had been years since she stayed in bed this late. She lit the match and slowly drew it up to the stick of tobacco that extended from the center of her lips. Leisurely and deliberately, she inhaled to light it and then just as gradually and deliciously, she exhaled a soft swirl of smoke. A cloud puffed out of her mouth, while the rest of it filtered through her nostrils. She rested back against her pillows and enjoyed her moment. The strap to her silky nightgown slipped from her shoulder. She left it down and dramatically savored her habit.

Celia used the first cigarette to light the second. As she enjoyed the second as much as the first, the bells rang. Initially, they rang beautifully and musically and then they chimed nine times. She stared out beyond her puppets, where she could see the top of the old church steeple through her window. She loved the sound from those bells.

From the kitchen counter, her cell phone rang and interrupted her peaceful moment. She threw the covers back, adjusted the straps on her nightgown, and got out of bed. She didn’t check the caller ID when she answered the call.

“Hello?” She crushed the butt in the ashtray.

“Hey, Celia, it’s me. Are you interested in a Mexican brunch at Tequila Maria’s?”

“Kate, how can you think of eating that stuff this early in the morning?” Celia walked to the sink, took a large glass from the strainer, and filled it with water. The small kitchen table sat below a large window, where a rectangular flower box was attached to the outside sill. Celia lifted the screen and poured water into the soil that held pink and white begonias. The strap of her nightgown again fell from her shoulder.

“I like it there. Please come with me. Don’t forget, I’m the birthday girl.”

“Yesterday! Yesterday you were the birthday girl. Not today.” Celia lifted the strap of her nightgown back up to her shoulder. Again, it fell off her shoulder, where it remained.

“It’s still my birthday weekend. Come on, my treat.”

“I can’t be ready for a while. I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet.”

“I’m not ready either. Tom’s on call and left a little while ago to see a couple kids at the hospital. How’s 11:30? Could you be ready by then?”

“I’ll be ready.” Celia emptied the glass and placed it in the strainer. “I’ll pick you up. You drove last night.”

“It’s quite all right, Celia, I’ll drive. I want to get there.”

She ignored Kate’s comment about getting there. “I’ll be ready at 11:00.”

“I said 11:30!”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, 11:30. I need to go down to Pete’s to get a paper and a coffee first. See you at 11:30.”

She stepped over her clothes that had spent the night on the floor by her bed and went into the bathroom. She pulled out a plastic tray from below the sink and picked out a brown-coated hair band.

Celia stared in the mirror and sighed. Her sleepy eyes, surrounded by smudged and flaky mascara, stared back. Her hair was flattened to the back of her head and tangled by her temples. She gathered it in one big clump and pulled the band around it. The ponytail, which held most of her hair, was high on the top of her head. A few snarled strands didn’t make it into the clustered mane. She didn’t notice how her big green eyes sparkled like sun-drenched sea glass or her beautiful high cheekbones. She saw the bump on the bridge of her nose.

She lowered the straps of her nightgown and let it fall from her tall, thin body. She walked naked to her closet and found her favorite light-gray sweats. In her tattered sweats, she walked to Pete’s for her morning coffee and a Globe.