Winter Pays For Summer
by Gavin Broom
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Life is full of cycles. Karen's destiny is explored through the rings that life presents to her.
_____________________________________________________________________
The glass fang upsets Karen the most. She can almost pretend that her mother's face isn't so drawn or yellow and if she really concentrates, she can tell herself that her mother's voice scampers from her lips as usual and doesn't creak out in a crawl. But the fang buried deep into the arm, hooked into a vein -- well, there's no getting away from that.
"You're thirteen years old," her dad says. "You need to be brave."
Karen thinks she is being brave so she looks at a loose thread on her mother's pillow and does her best to think of nothing at all.
"She's fine," her mother drawls, sounding as though she's just woken up, which is how she always sounds these days. "Aren't you, Karen?"
Karen's eyes fill up and she stares even harder at the pillow as she swallows. She wants to say she isn't fine. She wants to take her mother away from this ward, away from these other people, these much older women, some of whom look dead already. Most of all, she wants her old mum back instead of this shell but her dad's words are still fresh in her ears, so she keeps quiet.
"Sweetheart," her mother continues. "I need you to go into my drawer and take out my ring."
Karen looks at her dad who manages a smile and nods toward the light pine drawer at the side of the bed. Inside, along with the packets of paper hankies, bottles of pills and loose change, there's a worn down red felt ring box. Karen takes the box from the drawer and offers it to her mum.
"You open it," her mum says.
Again, she does as she's told and immediately, her mother's diamond engagement ring grabs the energy from the ward's strip lighting and turns it into something beautiful, throwing it back out in squares of blue and red and white.
"I need you to take care of that for me, Karen. You keep it close to you, darling. Look after it for me until I get out of here." She inches towards her daughter and adds in a stage whisper, "I wouldn't put it past some of my neighbours here to nick it and exchange it for a magazine or some cigarettes."
Her dad smiles. "It's raining outside, Jean. Do you remember?" He turns to Karen and puts a hand on her shoulder. "It was raining on the day I gave your mother that ring. That was in January, too."
Her mum coughs a little and stretches out, looking like she's trying to find comfort somewhere in the bed. "It's not such a bad penny. Try it on, Karen. See how well it fits."
With the diamond sparkling like a firework, Karen plucks the ring from the box and from all her naked fingers, she chooses to slide it on to the middle finger of her left hand where it sits snug but not too tight.
Mother and daughter look at each other and share a connection where silent truths are exchanged and Karen leaves the hospital that night with a burning throat, knowing that her mother is never going to follow her home and the ring is never going to be reclaimed.
It's May, two years later, and a new ring finds a home on one of Karen's fingers. This one has a purple amethyst stone in the shape of a heart and although the boy who gives it to her had intended for it to go on her ring finger, he misjudged the size and so it has to go on her pinkie instead.
Karen and Jasp are sitting near the top of the hill on the edge of town. It's Karen's favourite place because up here she can see all the houses that make up her little world and in the distance, lighting up the clouds in a perpetual sunset, the flames burn on the chimneys at the petrochemical plant where Jasp has secured an apprenticeship. Around them, swarms of midges hang and stretch and tumble as though they're part of an insect lava lamp
"I wanted to get you a proper eternity ring for our six month anniversary, but I couldn't afford it … not yet ... not until I start work." Jasp beams as he looks at her hand. "This'll have to do until then."
"All rings are eternal," Karen replies. "That's the whole point, isn't it?"
"You know what I mean."
"It's beautiful," she says and she means it. She admires the new colours on her outstretched hand.
"Are you sure? Are you sure it doesn't look stupid compared to your other ring?"
Karen looks at the diamond and wonders what it means to her. It's a stunning ring, that's for sure, and it's received more than a few jealous looks from girls in her class but since it's been on her finger, it's only ever symbolised sadness and winter when all she ever needed from it was comfort.
"The other ring," she says, "reminds me of rain."
He looks pleased, which reminds Karen that he doesn't know the story behind the ring. He shuffles closer and puts an arm round her, using his free hand to hold hers, her palm resting on his and he twists the new band round her pinkie where it's quite loose.
He's blushing when he asks, "What do you think this ring will end up reminding you of?"
She looks at him and searches for a connection but there's nothing in his eyes except, she detects, a hope that there's happiness between them right here and now; that he hasn't messed up. There's no thought of the future and maybe that's just as well. Maybe that's normal. In the last two years, she's seen her father drift away from her so she knows how fragile love can be and how plans can become drowned in circumstance and how quickly fairytales can spoil. She and Jasp, well, they're still at school so she knows this relationship is unlikely to survive to their full year anniversary because neither of her previous relationships did.
"Karen?" he asks. She's been quiet for a long time. "What will it remind you of?"
"This moment," she says, because it's the best she can offer.
Karen's working in a cafe in a shopping mall in town. It's a temp job or so she keeps telling herself. Once she gets a bit of money behind her, she'll go off to college and get some proper qualifications.
She's changed a lot since school. Her hair has been dyed so often, she's not sure what colour it was originally but today, it's auburn. Her left ear has been pierced nine times and she wears a small stud just below her bottom lip. Although she's never been overweight, now she's definitely underweight. She still stays with Dad, but Dad isn't doing too good these days and Karen suspects this all started nine years ago on that night in the hospital. When people ask, she tells them she's looking after him even though they barely talk to each other any more. She and Jasp slid apart and although there have been others, he remains a template for her because every time she looks at the amethyst on her pinkie, she remembers thinking she might have been happy back on her hill.
On her thumb, there's a new ring, given to her a week ago. It's a silver band, set with five emeralds and she suspects it's stolen because Barry has followed in the footsteps of his father and brothers, is on the dole and heading for jail.
It's July and warm and the mall is still busy when she finishes up work at ten past six. Barry's waiting for her, looking impatient because, she thinks, her shift finished at six and he's probably on his way towards being drunk and desperate to get back to the pub. He's more like her dad than she'd thought.
"I'm going home," she says to him before he gets a chance to remind her of her scheduled working hours.
"But I was waiting on you," he replies, sounding more hurt than annoyed.
She doesn't melt. "So you were."
He mutters something under his breath and leaves her to make her own way home. When she looks up through the mall's skylight, there's nothing but blue so she actually looks forward to the walk and the time on her own. It'll give her time to decide, if Jasp is a template, why does she keep ending up with no-hopers like Barry.
She still sees Jasp from time to time, though with decreasing regularity as the years have rolled by and she wonders if he ever moved away because part of her would like to think he comes back to see her. When they first broke up, a month or so short of their three-year anniversary as it turned out, he looked shy and awkward when they bumped into each other and his cheeks would redden into his familiar blush.
Now, four years on, she sees him again. Maybe she's subconsciously seen him already and that's why he's in her mind or maybe this was just the way things were meant to work out, but as she stops to stare at him in the busy shopping mall and as the attention forces him to look back at her, she's not sure he even recognises her. At first, she's crushed, then it angers her to be anonymous -- a face in the crowd -- especially when she thinks of all the dreams he's managed to infiltrate over the years. She resents that he can have this power and the arrogance to be unaware of it. Despite this, she doesn't remove the ring from her pinkie because although she's twenty-two now and shouldn't feel like this anymore, she can't imagine how her hand would feel without it.
He looks sad, she notices, and a little lost. He scans other faces in the crowd as they bustle by, perhaps searching for someone who's also lost and looking for him. After a minute, Karen senses he's being careful to look in every direction except back at her. Maybe he does recognise her after all. Maybe he is here to see her. Maybe he flew in from London or New York or Madrid to spend his Saturday afternoon standing like a pillar in the middle of a mall, praying his first true love would walk by.
Or maybe he lives on the outskirts of town. Maybe he still works at the refinery. Maybe he's looking for his wife or girlfriend. Maybe it's not even him. Up ahead, Karen sees a girl -- pretty, blonde -- stretching her neck and looking optimistically for something that can't be far away.
Before she sees any more, Karen turns away and it's minutes later before she realises she's no longer walking home.
Although it's only November, not even Bonfire Night yet, people are already Christmas shopping. The mall is full of shoppers with colourful plastic bags and expressions that toy between determination and desperation. Karen weaves her way through them, anxious but neither hurried nor harassed because she knows exactly where she's going and what's she's looking for.
"Can I help you, madam?" the young, male assistant asks, greeting her with a warm, friendly smile. He looks like he might still be at school.
Karen's anxiety swells while she tries to find her voice. She's twenty-six now but has been mistaken for a thirty-year-old and although her father's liver finally poisoned him eighteen months ago, she can still hear him telling her that such a mistake wouldn't happen if she got a decent night's sleep once in a while and put some meat on her bones. But that doesn't matter because she made it here. The first hurdle has been cleared.
"You have a ring in the window," Karen starts. Her throat suddenly dries into a cough, reminding her that there are other hurdles to be negotiated before this is over.
The assistant follows while Karen leads him to the window and points out the tray.
"It's the one in the middle," she says.
"Isn't that something else?" the assistant asks, as though he hasn't seen anything as gorgeous in his life.
"I'd like to see that one, please." Her voice croaks and she realises how close she is to tears.
Karen is led to a cushioned chair at a mahogany table while the assistant fetches the ring. When it's brought to her, it's laid in the centre of a square of green felt.
"Looks even better out of the window," the assistant says. "Is it a gift?"
The sapphire ring is simple and seems to radiate calm. Karen is transfixed by it, as though the whole world has been cleaned and freshened and made new.
"Madam?" the assistant asks. She's disappeared into herself while she's examining the ring, but his voice recaptures her attention. "Madam, are you okay?"
Karen nods. "I'm fine, sorry. Just in a world of my own. Can I try it on?"
The assistant smiles. "Of course."
After thinking about which finger deserves to display the ring, she decides on the third finger. It's a perfect fit. With her right hand, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a thick wedge of ten pound notes, money she managed to rescue from Barry's wallet and pockets over the years, money she was due after all he took from her, money that will otherwise serve as a constant reminder of standing still until it eventually dwindles away, spent on rent or food or heat now that she's on her own.
"I'll take it," she says, her heart crushed at the back of her throat.
"Excellent."
"There's just one thing," she adds. "Would you mind if I didn't take it off?"
"Madam?"
"Would you mind if I kept the ring on? If I wore it out of your shop?"
This is important. She doesn't think she'll be able to go through with this if she has to take off the ring now and watch it be boxed and wrapped and if she doesn't do this today, she doesn't know if she could try again tomorrow or if it would take another twelve years.
Thankfully, the assistant allows this idiosyncrasy, although he looks at her as if she's mad. She can live with that. She pays with the cash and even gets some change.
"Isn't it good to treat yourself every now and then?" the assistant says as he hands her a receipt. "Life's boring otherwise, isn't it?"
She wants to agree but she also wants to explain. She wants to tell the assistant that the most important thing she's ever learned in this life is that it's nothing extraordinary to be hurt or emptied or devastated or pained or broken. It's getting over it that's the trick.
But in the end, she just smiles and nods and leaves the shop with four rings on her hand and an empty ring box in a leather-handled carrier bag. When she reaches the mall's exit, only one ring remains and the bag is lying crumpled in a bin. She pushes through the door, out into the daylight, already feeling better because a circle has closed today and a new one has opened.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Life is full of cycles. Karen's destiny is explored through the rings that life presents to her.
_____________________________________________________________________
The glass fang upsets Karen the most. She can almost pretend that her mother's face isn't so drawn or yellow and if she really concentrates, she can tell herself that her mother's voice scampers from her lips as usual and doesn't creak out in a crawl. But the fang buried deep into the arm, hooked into a vein -- well, there's no getting away from that.
"You're thirteen years old," her dad says. "You need to be brave."
Karen thinks she is being brave so she looks at a loose thread on her mother's pillow and does her best to think of nothing at all.
"She's fine," her mother drawls, sounding as though she's just woken up, which is how she always sounds these days. "Aren't you, Karen?"
Karen's eyes fill up and she stares even harder at the pillow as she swallows. She wants to say she isn't fine. She wants to take her mother away from this ward, away from these other people, these much older women, some of whom look dead already. Most of all, she wants her old mum back instead of this shell but her dad's words are still fresh in her ears, so she keeps quiet.
"Sweetheart," her mother continues. "I need you to go into my drawer and take out my ring."
Karen looks at her dad who manages a smile and nods toward the light pine drawer at the side of the bed. Inside, along with the packets of paper hankies, bottles of pills and loose change, there's a worn down red felt ring box. Karen takes the box from the drawer and offers it to her mum.
"You open it," her mum says.
Again, she does as she's told and immediately, her mother's diamond engagement ring grabs the energy from the ward's strip lighting and turns it into something beautiful, throwing it back out in squares of blue and red and white.
"I need you to take care of that for me, Karen. You keep it close to you, darling. Look after it for me until I get out of here." She inches towards her daughter and adds in a stage whisper, "I wouldn't put it past some of my neighbours here to nick it and exchange it for a magazine or some cigarettes."
Her dad smiles. "It's raining outside, Jean. Do you remember?" He turns to Karen and puts a hand on her shoulder. "It was raining on the day I gave your mother that ring. That was in January, too."
Her mum coughs a little and stretches out, looking like she's trying to find comfort somewhere in the bed. "It's not such a bad penny. Try it on, Karen. See how well it fits."
With the diamond sparkling like a firework, Karen plucks the ring from the box and from all her naked fingers, she chooses to slide it on to the middle finger of her left hand where it sits snug but not too tight.
Mother and daughter look at each other and share a connection where silent truths are exchanged and Karen leaves the hospital that night with a burning throat, knowing that her mother is never going to follow her home and the ring is never going to be reclaimed.
It's May, two years later, and a new ring finds a home on one of Karen's fingers. This one has a purple amethyst stone in the shape of a heart and although the boy who gives it to her had intended for it to go on her ring finger, he misjudged the size and so it has to go on her pinkie instead.
Karen and Jasp are sitting near the top of the hill on the edge of town. It's Karen's favourite place because up here she can see all the houses that make up her little world and in the distance, lighting up the clouds in a perpetual sunset, the flames burn on the chimneys at the petrochemical plant where Jasp has secured an apprenticeship. Around them, swarms of midges hang and stretch and tumble as though they're part of an insect lava lamp
"I wanted to get you a proper eternity ring for our six month anniversary, but I couldn't afford it … not yet ... not until I start work." Jasp beams as he looks at her hand. "This'll have to do until then."
"All rings are eternal," Karen replies. "That's the whole point, isn't it?"
"You know what I mean."
"It's beautiful," she says and she means it. She admires the new colours on her outstretched hand.
"Are you sure? Are you sure it doesn't look stupid compared to your other ring?"
Karen looks at the diamond and wonders what it means to her. It's a stunning ring, that's for sure, and it's received more than a few jealous looks from girls in her class but since it's been on her finger, it's only ever symbolised sadness and winter when all she ever needed from it was comfort.
"The other ring," she says, "reminds me of rain."
He looks pleased, which reminds Karen that he doesn't know the story behind the ring. He shuffles closer and puts an arm round her, using his free hand to hold hers, her palm resting on his and he twists the new band round her pinkie where it's quite loose.
He's blushing when he asks, "What do you think this ring will end up reminding you of?"
She looks at him and searches for a connection but there's nothing in his eyes except, she detects, a hope that there's happiness between them right here and now; that he hasn't messed up. There's no thought of the future and maybe that's just as well. Maybe that's normal. In the last two years, she's seen her father drift away from her so she knows how fragile love can be and how plans can become drowned in circumstance and how quickly fairytales can spoil. She and Jasp, well, they're still at school so she knows this relationship is unlikely to survive to their full year anniversary because neither of her previous relationships did.
"Karen?" he asks. She's been quiet for a long time. "What will it remind you of?"
"This moment," she says, because it's the best she can offer.
Karen's working in a cafe in a shopping mall in town. It's a temp job or so she keeps telling herself. Once she gets a bit of money behind her, she'll go off to college and get some proper qualifications.
She's changed a lot since school. Her hair has been dyed so often, she's not sure what colour it was originally but today, it's auburn. Her left ear has been pierced nine times and she wears a small stud just below her bottom lip. Although she's never been overweight, now she's definitely underweight. She still stays with Dad, but Dad isn't doing too good these days and Karen suspects this all started nine years ago on that night in the hospital. When people ask, she tells them she's looking after him even though they barely talk to each other any more. She and Jasp slid apart and although there have been others, he remains a template for her because every time she looks at the amethyst on her pinkie, she remembers thinking she might have been happy back on her hill.
On her thumb, there's a new ring, given to her a week ago. It's a silver band, set with five emeralds and she suspects it's stolen because Barry has followed in the footsteps of his father and brothers, is on the dole and heading for jail.
It's July and warm and the mall is still busy when she finishes up work at ten past six. Barry's waiting for her, looking impatient because, she thinks, her shift finished at six and he's probably on his way towards being drunk and desperate to get back to the pub. He's more like her dad than she'd thought.
"I'm going home," she says to him before he gets a chance to remind her of her scheduled working hours.
"But I was waiting on you," he replies, sounding more hurt than annoyed.
She doesn't melt. "So you were."
He mutters something under his breath and leaves her to make her own way home. When she looks up through the mall's skylight, there's nothing but blue so she actually looks forward to the walk and the time on her own. It'll give her time to decide, if Jasp is a template, why does she keep ending up with no-hopers like Barry.
She still sees Jasp from time to time, though with decreasing regularity as the years have rolled by and she wonders if he ever moved away because part of her would like to think he comes back to see her. When they first broke up, a month or so short of their three-year anniversary as it turned out, he looked shy and awkward when they bumped into each other and his cheeks would redden into his familiar blush.
Now, four years on, she sees him again. Maybe she's subconsciously seen him already and that's why he's in her mind or maybe this was just the way things were meant to work out, but as she stops to stare at him in the busy shopping mall and as the attention forces him to look back at her, she's not sure he even recognises her. At first, she's crushed, then it angers her to be anonymous -- a face in the crowd -- especially when she thinks of all the dreams he's managed to infiltrate over the years. She resents that he can have this power and the arrogance to be unaware of it. Despite this, she doesn't remove the ring from her pinkie because although she's twenty-two now and shouldn't feel like this anymore, she can't imagine how her hand would feel without it.
He looks sad, she notices, and a little lost. He scans other faces in the crowd as they bustle by, perhaps searching for someone who's also lost and looking for him. After a minute, Karen senses he's being careful to look in every direction except back at her. Maybe he does recognise her after all. Maybe he is here to see her. Maybe he flew in from London or New York or Madrid to spend his Saturday afternoon standing like a pillar in the middle of a mall, praying his first true love would walk by.
Or maybe he lives on the outskirts of town. Maybe he still works at the refinery. Maybe he's looking for his wife or girlfriend. Maybe it's not even him. Up ahead, Karen sees a girl -- pretty, blonde -- stretching her neck and looking optimistically for something that can't be far away.
Before she sees any more, Karen turns away and it's minutes later before she realises she's no longer walking home.
Although it's only November, not even Bonfire Night yet, people are already Christmas shopping. The mall is full of shoppers with colourful plastic bags and expressions that toy between determination and desperation. Karen weaves her way through them, anxious but neither hurried nor harassed because she knows exactly where she's going and what's she's looking for.
"Can I help you, madam?" the young, male assistant asks, greeting her with a warm, friendly smile. He looks like he might still be at school.
Karen's anxiety swells while she tries to find her voice. She's twenty-six now but has been mistaken for a thirty-year-old and although her father's liver finally poisoned him eighteen months ago, she can still hear him telling her that such a mistake wouldn't happen if she got a decent night's sleep once in a while and put some meat on her bones. But that doesn't matter because she made it here. The first hurdle has been cleared.
"You have a ring in the window," Karen starts. Her throat suddenly dries into a cough, reminding her that there are other hurdles to be negotiated before this is over.
The assistant follows while Karen leads him to the window and points out the tray.
"It's the one in the middle," she says.
"Isn't that something else?" the assistant asks, as though he hasn't seen anything as gorgeous in his life.
"I'd like to see that one, please." Her voice croaks and she realises how close she is to tears.
Karen is led to a cushioned chair at a mahogany table while the assistant fetches the ring. When it's brought to her, it's laid in the centre of a square of green felt.
"Looks even better out of the window," the assistant says. "Is it a gift?"
The sapphire ring is simple and seems to radiate calm. Karen is transfixed by it, as though the whole world has been cleaned and freshened and made new.
"Madam?" the assistant asks. She's disappeared into herself while she's examining the ring, but his voice recaptures her attention. "Madam, are you okay?"
Karen nods. "I'm fine, sorry. Just in a world of my own. Can I try it on?"
The assistant smiles. "Of course."
After thinking about which finger deserves to display the ring, she decides on the third finger. It's a perfect fit. With her right hand, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a thick wedge of ten pound notes, money she managed to rescue from Barry's wallet and pockets over the years, money she was due after all he took from her, money that will otherwise serve as a constant reminder of standing still until it eventually dwindles away, spent on rent or food or heat now that she's on her own.
"I'll take it," she says, her heart crushed at the back of her throat.
"Excellent."
"There's just one thing," she adds. "Would you mind if I didn't take it off?"
"Madam?"
"Would you mind if I kept the ring on? If I wore it out of your shop?"
This is important. She doesn't think she'll be able to go through with this if she has to take off the ring now and watch it be boxed and wrapped and if she doesn't do this today, she doesn't know if she could try again tomorrow or if it would take another twelve years.
Thankfully, the assistant allows this idiosyncrasy, although he looks at her as if she's mad. She can live with that. She pays with the cash and even gets some change.
"Isn't it good to treat yourself every now and then?" the assistant says as he hands her a receipt. "Life's boring otherwise, isn't it?"
She wants to agree but she also wants to explain. She wants to tell the assistant that the most important thing she's ever learned in this life is that it's nothing extraordinary to be hurt or emptied or devastated or pained or broken. It's getting over it that's the trick.
But in the end, she just smiles and nods and leaves the shop with four rings on her hand and an empty ring box in a leather-handled carrier bag. When she reaches the mall's exit, only one ring remains and the bag is lying crumpled in a bin. She pushes through the door, out into the daylight, already feeling better because a circle has closed today and a new one has opened.
About the Author
Born in Falkirk, Gavin Broom now lives in Stirling. For now. He's been published over fifty times online and in print, and he edits fiction for The Waterhouse Review.