The Story of Someone´s Aunt

It´s Three Word Wednesday. The words: effect, immense, shimmer.

The Story of Someone´s Aunt

”I´ll kill you,” he said. One time, ten times, a hundred times. Over time it lost the desired effect; she no longer believed him.

She cleaned the house and then went to her lover. She worked and then went to her lover. She said she´d come to the cottage, but she didn´t, she booked a trip to Greece for her and their daughter. When she came home she made dinner and then went to her lover.

She assumed he stopped caring, at least he stopped commenting, he actually stopped talking altogether.

He got a new job and she was glad; maybe now he´d move on and she´d be able to divorce him without too much fuss. But one night he took out his rifle to clean it and the look in his eyes told her there´d be fuss.

Their daughter moved south, met a man and started a life of her own. And nothing changed. ”I´ll kill you,” he said. Sometimes she believed him, sometimes not.

In September she was diagnosed with cancer. Their daughter came home and cried, it seemed like an appropriate reaction.

Chemo makes one´s hair fall off. She preferred scarves to a wig.

In December, December 6 in fact, he went to a Christmas party. He came home drunk and hung himself in the downstairs closet.

When she came down the next morning, she wanted her shoes to go get the newspaper. But he had brought them with him, into the closet, so that she would have to come into the closet to get them. So that she would have to see him, all on her own. It struck her then, how much he must have hated her.

They buried him on December 22, they wanted it done before Christmas. Fresh snow had fallen and there was an almost virginal shimmer over the landscape as they followed the coffin out of the church. Their daughter cried. She wanted a large grave stone, due to guilt, maybe.

The lover was supportive through radiation and chemo, but he didn´t leave his wife.

Two years later their daughter had a daughter and they baptized the child in that same church. It was a joyous day and it finally pained her; their immense lack of sorrow.

That evening she called her lover and said: ”No. No more. Never again.”