Story: A Friend (part one)

A Friend

(part one)

Mrs. Leonhardt had a plan for the silver. Her mother’s, her wedding and her bought silver, her tea and coffee sets, her vanity sets, the trays, caddies, candlesticks, the odd cutlery—a cheese knife being something, or an olive fork. A teaspoon was not. For a time Mrs. Leonhardt had always been buying, always poking through the flea markets, offering half the asking price.

She had had foresight, that way.

She found Anton easy to manage, him crawling under his covers and staying there, and her not knowing the first days if he was free like he claimed. Or an officer would come pounding at the door. His face had changed, that was for suffering. Her son had the brow and chin of her maternal grandfather…

Only, his thinness showed it now; his hair had darkened, people’s did. She meant to bring out her stores today, engage him, get him grounded in reality, what the TV counsellors said.

“Nobody mines silver anymore. Maybe they will, maybe the G.R.A. has plenty. But this is ours. It goes in the cupboard where I’ll show you, and you don’t talk about it.”

She still needed proving this to herself, that Anton was alive and not dead; that although in memory he could not place his past, how he’d lived away for six years, been imprisoned…

Some guardian angel had done her this kindness.

Of taking him to her doorstep and ringing the bell.

Proof that economy profited you in mourning, as in all things. Heartburning restored to the ledger (for of course, in old age, you could always grieve); another instance of Antonia Leonhardt’s born wisdom. There were mothers like herself, bereaved. They had busted their guts over their tears, and not been given this reward.

The mirror was nailed up…she had done this on her own…to hide the cupboard. Silver let to tarnish, but neat on the shelves. Well-arrayed, too, were some important jewelry, some very old glass, a pastel of her mother as a girl, by an artist. She carried the hammer in her left hand. (Anton’s father had not done much fixing, but he’d been her good student about not giving things away.)

“If you hear anything,” she told Anton, “don’t be afraid.”

“What, what?” He twisted towards her, fighting the quilts.

“I have a chore to do, I’m saying.”

To explain, she happened to raise the hammer. His face altered, lost its unconscious animation. He met her eyes and went guarded. She would not tell him again that she was his mother, that he was her Anton, that he was safe here at home. Today, she would tell him to go to the kitchen and get his own breakfast.

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Tourmaline

A Friend (part two)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)