#ch: teddy sangria

[star-nova]

The Lives of the RiffRaff: Florence Frost-Good Company

Previous chapters here.

Pietro and I once lived up in Baltimore, where something or other was always going on. When we came to Tanager to settle into a more quiet life, we learned to create excitement for ourselves. If we're lucky, others will join in, and if they don't, we're blessed with a private reverie that's all our own.

On the 4th of July, there's a picnic and fireworks out on the green. We only go on the years when Pietro doesn't feel like cleaning off the grill. He'll take a look over our old stone barbecue and scratch thoughtfully at the stubble under his chin. Then he'll say one of two things:

“Come, my dear, let's get to work. We've got another 4th coming our way!” or,  “I think I'm in the mood for someone else's burgers this year, how about you?”

If it's the second, we go out to the picnic and our fellow RiffRaff, having nowhere else to go for their July 4th fix, meet us there. We settle ourselves in among a collaboration of our bretheren and do our best to ignore the Others as they look at us. They look at us because they never expect people like Pietro and I to show up to a little neighborhood picnic. They expect us to spend the day at some exclusive country club in some fabulous suburb, to behold a private fireworks display imported from China, to travel out to Key West and sip sangria wine. Barring that, they expect us to be lofty and important in what they call a “McMansion” and what the young Hecklers call a “castle.” We just call it our house.

The picnic is very nice, but the moment we get there we know it's designed with Others in mind. I much prefer the 4ths we spend around our old stone barbecue, with no one but our fellow RiffRaff for company. So this year, when Pietro takes a long look at our barbecue and says, “Go find the grill brushes, dear, it's time to get to work,” I breathe a long sigh of relief. The 4th of July will be ours.

We RiffRaff treat eachother's secrets as the most precious of treasure. You'd have an easier time swiping gold from a dragon's hoard than prying a precious secret out of one of us. However, that didn't stop the Others from pretending that they knew everything—in fact, it only encouraged them—and in this town, pretending to know may as well be knowing for real.

Sophia Bolshevik was not herself anymore. She'd gone out to Kentucky with her sister, Charmain, Ellia, and Talia and she'd come back a very different girl. The first I'd heard was that she'd stopped working at the library.

A lady like me could never have enough books, even with the impressively-sized private collection I've amassed, so I knew Sophia from my frequent trips to the Tanager Public Library. She had to be the shyest young lady I had ever known, but she was very good at what she did. She knew the shelves like the back of her hand, and knew the exact location of just about every single book that graced them. She helped out with special events and the children's summer reading program. This time of year meant that she would be looking over the kids' reported book lists, giving them a stamp of approval, and allowing them to pick from a box of prizes based on the amount of books they'd read. She did all this with hardly a word; Sophia never spoke unless she was asked something or addressed personally, but when she did speak, she was sweet and friendly and always very helpful.

When word reached me that Sophia had left the library, I knew immediately that something must be wrong. Sophia had worked that job for the entire year she lived in Tanager, and she'd never had a single complaint about it. On top of that, whispers passed around that Sophia had become another James Weaver; she had stopped talking entirely since her return. The most logical explanation to the public mind was that some terrible event had taken place during her time over in Frankfort. Sophia herself refused to divulge on the subject, and the audacious Others' attempts to pry anything out of her sister Elsie resulted in, “Piss off, it's not your business” for an answer.

It was known, and the subject of incredible disquiet, that she had gone with Talia Santiago. In fact, it was Talia who had taken them all to Frankfort in the first place. Talia's status as the local enigma escalated. What had Talia done over in Frankfort? What was that woman, really, when she was out of the neighbors' watchful eyes? As the rumors grew and grew, I felt a strange kind of sorry for Talia. She was a nightmare of a woman, but nobody ought to be the subject of unfounded speculation.

Of course I wanted to know what had happened, but at the same time I respected Sophia and Elsie's desire to keep it under lock and key. Whatever it was, if they decided it was not for me to know, then it wasn't. Still, I wanted to reach out, to do something—anything—that might show her that she was cared for and valued, that she was among friends who wanted her to be all right. How awful it must be for her to endure an incident so far from home, only to return home to be whispered and rumored about. I spent a night awake long after Pietro had fallen asleep, thinking over what I could possibly do without imposing on her. It's possible the poor girl wouldn't even want the company right now, even if good company was the number one thing she needed at a time like this.

I totally expected Ellia's shock when I showed up at her door two days before the 4th. The rest of the RiffRaff don't see Pietro and I as ordinary people any more than the Others do, and the shame of it is that's really all we are. While the Others regard us as presumptuous yuppies that tower over them in the most pretentious of ways, our fellow RiffRaff see us as Beyonce and Jay-Z, as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, as the Tudors or House Targaryen. They are in equal parts fascinated with us and inclined to keep their distance, unsure of what to do or how to act in the face of presumed aristocracy. Sometimes I wonder if they even think we're real people. And then something happens that reminds them that not only are we real, but we're just the same as them. They see one of us in the produce aisle, or catch sight of Pietro's car making its way down the backroads, or one of us shows up at one of their doors.

“Hi, Ellia,” I say to that wide-eyed personage. “May I come in?”

It takes a few moments for Ellia to register it all—that Florence Frost has rung her doorbell, that Florence Frost is standing at her door, and that Florence Frost has asked to come into her home. But then she says, “Oh, sure, Florence. Sure, come on in.”

I've never been in Ellia and Sophia's house before. It's a small but very homey little cottage, with just one floor and rooms that are nestled in close to one-another like baby kittens. There's a couch with a fuzzy pink blanket thrown over it, and a round coffee table covered in magazines and Blu-Ray boxes and everything but actual coffee. The TV is turned to Freeform, but when I sit down on the couch Ellia switches it off. The coziness of the place settles over me immediately.

“What's going on?” Ellia asks. “Is this...uh...is this about the 4th?”

“Actually, no.” I shake my head. “I'd like to see Sophia, if I may. Is she in right now?” I know she is. Word on the street was that she didn't leave the house anymore, and nobody had seen her around.

For a moment, Ellia looks over my head. Then she looks at a wall, then at the shut-off TV. I wonder if I've already stepped over the line, and maybe I should leave. But finally Ellia says, “Oh yeah. Yeah, she's here. I'll...well, I'll go see if she's available.”

“Thank you,” I say. I want to put my feet up and stretch myself out on the comfy little couch, but I don't know if I'm allowed. So I just lean back on the arm a bit and let myself sink into the blanket. You could make teddy bears out of that blanket.

Ellia returns, leading Sophia by the hand, and when the girl sees me she freezes up. Sophia had always regarded me with the same wonder and reverence as the other RiffRaff, but now she looks at me as if I might be thinking about kidnapping her. Without getting up, I hold out a hand to beckon her over. “You can come here, sweetheart,” I say. “It's okay. I won't bite you.” She takes two baby steps forward and won't go any further.

“Sophia,” I say, “I was hoping you could come over to my place for dinner tonight—just us girls. Pietro's gone out to a rehearsal and won't be back until late. We'll have a real nice little girls' night in. Would you like that, Sophia?”

She couldn't have been more taken aback if I'd asked her to go to Mars. She takes a step back, and she looks to both the ceiling and the floor as if she'll find her answer there. Beside her, Ellia's mouth hangs halfway open. It's as if she's been invited to high tea by the Queen of England. I awkwardly mess with the edge of the blanket.

Finally, Ellia says, “I think you should go, Sophia.”

Sophia looks hard at her, making sure she heard her correctly. Ellia nods in the affirmative. “Go on ahead,” she says. “Have fun.”

I wait. Sophia looks at me for a long, silent time. I try to encourage her with a smile.

She finds her lost voice. “I'll...I'll...I'll go ch-change...” Her voice is as sweet as a bird's, and I'm so happy to hear it again.

Sophia comes out in a navy blue crushed velvet dress. Her hair, which had been pinned up in a bun, now falls in waves around her shoulders. Her eyes are painted blue and her lips painted red, and suddenly I feel incredibly underdressed. “You look so nice,” I tell her. “Well then, shall we go?”

She nods. “I'll see you around, Ellia,” I say, giving her a wave. “See you on the 4th!”

“Bye,” Ellia says, waving back. “Have fun.” She adds hopefully, “Tell me everything tonight, okay, Sophia?”

I lead Sophia out to my car, holding the door open for her so she can be sure it's all right to get in. It's only a 2017 Audi, but I wonder if she expected a limo or a carriage.

“If I knew this was a dressy occasion,” I say, remarking on Sophia's dress again, “then I would've shown up in something more presentable.”

Sophia doesn't say anything, but her eyes are fixed on me. She would rather watch and wait for everything; wait to see where we'll go, what I'll say, what I'll do, what it will be like. She's been in my house before only on holidays, and then she had her sister and the other RiffRaff with her. She was entering another world, and in that world she was going to feel hopelessly lost. I smile at her through the rear-view mirror. “I know you're nervous, Sophia,” I say to her, “but I hope that by the end of the day, you'll find that you had no reason to be.”

More silence. She messes with her skirt, pulling it down over her knees.

“Nobody's going to make you talk,” I assure her. “But even without talking, you still have a voice. Tell me, do you like books?”

She nods. Of course she likes books, she spent her days surrounded by them.

“In every book,” I tell her, “and every poem, is a voice. It's a silent voice, but it's still a voice—a very powerful voice that can carry over decades and centuries. It's a voice that can still be heard even long after the author's gone, and yet it's completely silent! Words, even unspoken, are the most powerful things in the world.”

She props her chin against her hand and looks out the window at the houses of the Others passing by, so full of unspoken words. Sophia's voice wasn't gone. It wasn't even silenced. It was hiding away to protect itself from something, whatever it was.

The familiar wildflower fields that separate my neck of the woods from the rest of Tanager come into view, blooming yellow and pink and buzzing with honeybees. When Pietro and I moved here, we called it “the enchanted meadow.” Every so often, early in the morning, we come out here to sing to an audience of flowers, bees, and dragonflies, until we're dancing and flitting and swaying right along with them and catching eachother up in our arms. Pietro calls it “the best way to wake up the day.”

Then comes our neighbor's house, situated on a huge plot of farmland. Then just a little curve around the hill and there's ours, its white, winged facade greeting us as if with open arms.

“Well,” I say, turning to Sophia, “we're home.”

Sophia ate up her dinner as if she'd never seen eggplant parmesean before in her life. I wondered if she ate anything at all at home anymore, and it ached my heart to think she might be starving herself. I reached across the table to give her a pat on the shoulder, assuring her that she could have as much as she liked. She ate a second serving enthusiastically.

“You like poetry, Sophia?” I asked her.

She nodded. I got up and went into the library to grab a few poetry books—Shel Silverstein, Robert Frost, and a thick collection of various classics. “Do you have a favorite?” I asked Sophia. “If you don't like these, I've got more.”

Thoughtfully, Sophia examined the three tomes. She flipped through Falling Up for a while before setting it down and picking up the classics. I set my empty plate down on the coffee table and made my way over to the pride of our living room, the eighteen-year-old grand piano that had been gifted to Pietro and I on our wedding day. Pietro and I had no children. The piano, instead, was our pride and joy and the emblem of our love and our life together. While Sophia searched the books for the right voice, I took a seat at the piano to let mine free. I chose Tori Amos' “Winter,” which I had spent over half a year teaching myself a few years back, with Pietro's help. When I reached the chorus, I glanced over at Sophia to find that she'd set the book down and was just listening, listening to my voice carry someone else's.

“When you gonna make up your mind?

When you gonna love you as much as I do?

When you gonna make up your mind,

'Cause things are gonna change so fast...”

She remained still and quiet, looking at the floor with her hands folded in her lap. By the time I reached the end of the song, I noticed that she was crying. The tears had stayed bottled up inside her until the song's power had brought them out.

“Oh, sweetheart.” I sat down beside her. I put my arms around her, and when she wanted to sob into my shoulder, I let her, and when she rested her head against my arm like a little girl looking for comfort, I patted and soothed her like she was my own child. Goodness, she was almost young enough to be. I didn't know what happened to the girl in that city, but what I did know was that in that moment, while she fell apart in my arms like she'd been looking all that time for the right place to fall apart, I loved her dearly and wanted nothing more than to take the scary things away. But I knew that I couldn't—they had already happened, whatever they were.

So I just took her face in my hands and patted her cheek. “Sweetie,” I said to her, “I don't know what happened. I'm not gonna ask you what happened. But what I am gonna tell you is that no matter what did happen, you're here and you're loved. Nothing can take that away from you, Sophia. You're loved just because you're Sophia. No matter what happened, you're still Sophia. You always will be.”

It was exactly what she needed to hear. She squeezed my hand and said, “Thank you, Florence.”

Sophia found her voice over coffee, cookies, and poetry. Now I was going to make sure she used it.

“I want to see you here on the 4th,” I told her, “and I want you to recite.”

She looked at me uneasily. “Recite?”

“Recite,” I said with a nod. “Recite something in your own voice. It can be a poem, a piece of a story, or even a song. It can even be something of your own creation. If you pick a song, Pietro or I will play the music for you.”

She stared thoughtfully into her coffee, swirling it around with her finger. I'm sure no one has ever asked her to recite a thing in her life. This was a new experience for her. “You don't have to recite it from memory,” I assured her. “You can read it if you want.”

“I can?” she asked, taking a bite of a French lace cookie.

“You can,” I told her. “And if you have any trouble at all, I'll help you out. There are no rules here, hon. I just want you to show everybody that you have a voice.”

Sophia uses three more bites of cookie as an excuse to have some time to think it all over. Finally, she says, “I'll try, but I don't think I'll be very good.”

“You will be you,” I told her, “and that's all that matters.”

She didn't say anything. The smile beginning to form said it all.

“I can't wait to hear your recitation, Sophia,” I told her.

She gave me a full, real smile. “I can't wait to hear it either.”

#Fiction by Me #The Lives of the RiffRaff #writing #work in progress