Two of Us, p. 2

July 1967

“Cellophane flowers of yellow and green towering over your head. Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes, and she’s gone”.

He and I were sprawled on my bedroom floor, laughing until we cried and stuffing ourselves with Gummi bears – the red ones for him, the green ones for me. We had different shiny black records scattered across the floor, and on the turntable was “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, The Beatles’ latest album. We had pooled our money to buy it on the release date exactly one week ago, and we’d listened to it almost nonstop since.

Despite our age difference, my brother and I were best friends. I was fourteen in the summer of ’67, and he was 18, and heading off to college in two months. Paul was going to study creative writing and journalism to be a writer. I was planning on studying music when I was of age. We would always be best friends.

We joked about teachers and neighbors and had deep discussions about music. I declared a Gummi bear war. I began pelting the tiny green bears at him, some sticking to his shirt and hair. He laughed a laugh so hearty and worthy of a hug that I climbed over and tackled him, and ate a bear off his shoulder.

---

I’d never had much luck making friends at school. I was always alone every lunch hour except on Tuesdays, when Paul and I had the same lunch. When the buzz of the lunch bell rang on the other four days, though, I made my way down the crowded halls to the music room, which was always unoccupied. I would fill the empty place where friends were supposed to be with sonatas and concertos. There had been amity between my fingers and the ivory keys since I was six years old, a little prodigy.

Claire de Lune p.3

Just outside the apartment building, there was a cobblestone courtyard. A timeless wrought-iron fence stretched all around, making the building look like Cinderella’s house more than an apartment complex. The sun warmed the small puddles from the rain that had been sent to earth the night before. Two small feel stood in the puddle directly outside the old wooden door with misted-glass windows. The feet overlapped a little, and Anna rubbed one on top of the other in the puddle. From the far side of the yard, old Mrs. Lavalle stood in her garden of Eden, tall and stately. The woman was widowed eight years prior. She herself had no grandchildren; she fussed and worried over Anna like only a grandmother would. On the days when Anna didn’t show up in the courtyard at precisely 11 A.M., Mrs. Lavalle marched upstairs with a pot of steaming hot chicken soup to Anna’s top floor apartment. At eighty-two years old, the old woman was still running strong.

This day, Mrs. Lavalle stood up from pruning her forsythias to find Anna lingering just outside the door. As she watched, she took note of Anna’s fidgetiness - how she rubbed her feet together, how she twirled her wrists around and around, and how she slightly swayed back and forth in place. Anna’s eyes were thoughtful, frightened-looking, haunted, as if to walk out the gate, Anna would lose herself all together.