Beatrice, She Flew

If it was up to her, the thing would be going straight, it would be riding the wind like a fearless adventurer, not like this contraption that twisted and turned. The kite had a hole in it, but she didn’t care. It flew. It rattled in the wind, going up, down, turning left and right, faster than Penelope could control it. It was her mothers, given to her in a box of things labeled “For My Love” that was left after the funeral.

The clouds in the sky seemed just above the kite, ever so low, ever so reachable. She wondered why people didn’t ride kites, like Aladdin on the carpet.

The rain came on, and she left the field.

Inside the house was the smell of battered sunfish on the skillet, of the sighs the wood released into the air that mingled from the windows, from the summer breeze that crawled in like a creature from the sun. Her father was in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove with steam clouds rising in twisting swirls.

“Beatrice, She Flew!” Penelope exclaimed.

“I saw” said her father, a warm smile across his face.

“Did you get the fish bones out this time?” Penelope asked.

Her father smiled, his eyes relaxed and crinkled. “Yes, this time they’re out.”

She put away the kite, stuffing it into the cabinet beside the door.

“Is that where that’s going to go?” Her father asked.

“She won’t get another hole in her that way.”

Samuel’s lips spread open and curled upwards; “Alright” he said, his face red with admiration

The birds on the feeders outside took turns, rotating positions like a finely practiced orchestra. Their chirp chirp chirping crept in through the window, as Penelope stood there in the last of the daylight that laid itself on the kitchen floor and brought with the wet smell of rain.

There was the hissing of the oil, the conversations of the birds, the fan from the hood range going and the stillness of the room. Penelope watched her fathers form, flipping and pressing the fish in the pan with no bones in it this time. She never noticed how quiet all the noise was, how in between the sounds, there was something she couldn’t name; something that lingered between her and everything around her. She suddenly felt herself placed into a world that was not her own, one that suddenly felt foreign, that felt vaguely misplaced.

Her father looked at her, seemingly aware of the quietness that was mingling itself in with the remainder of the day. It wasn’t her father, she knew, that was responsible for the silence. She felt something had been removed, something vaguely absent. She turned and began to walk towards her room, her father watching as she walked away from the kitchen.

He realized one of the pieces of fish had stuck to the pan, though he hadn’t realized he was staring at an empty hallway. Penelope had gone to her room, which he now figured that must have been a few minutes or so ago, after which he began to drift off. He felt himself come to, wherever it was he was. Wherever it was he was, that he felt was never the same as it was the minute before, each moment feeling as though it were proclaiming a fact, a fact of it’s inevitability, how one can’t slow it, how it moves and moves and moves.

If even for a moment any of it were to make sense, Samuel would slip between it’s fingers and find himself again somewhere he forgot. Somewhere that was familiar but not. He crawled into bed as the evening turned to dark blue streaks behind moonlit clouds. Penelope knocked on his door.

“‘Mmin” he said, his eyes heavy over himself. Penelope stood in her gown next to his bed, her face tired and vacant. “C’mere” Samuel said, his face against his pillow, as she crawled onto the bed and over his legs. She pulled the pillow in closer, as Samuel turned to his side and rested his elbow under his cheek.

They looked at each other, lying there as the quiet of the night outside the bedroom window seemed to be the only form of company they had visiting. Samuel kissed her forehead. Outside the trees swayed gently as the wind found it’s way between the branches. There was the sound of thunder in the distance, far off, coming from somewhere, going somewhere.