My English professor gave us an assignment about writing an alternate ending to Ethan Frome, saying that she did not care if we placed it in an alternate universe, just as long as we stayed true to the setting and to Madam Edith Wharton's writing style of using the setting to describe the characters. Thus, I have undoubtedly one of the best English professors ever.
"Tribulations", a short story by Treena-Ivy Thyme Carter, Class of 2016, 13 March 2013. (I made a 100, if anyone cares).
Two large, shapeless shadows dance across the rotted, white-washed walls, created by the desolate, dying fire in the beaten hearth before the two shadow-castors. The shack is isolated and forsaken after the death of its original owners, anomalous in the icy, sheeting hail just outside the shattered, mottled window, black against the white around them. It is the spot of Yin in the Yang, the good in the bad. The black spot, a fault, a mistake, an unwanted uninhabited shack marring the otherwise beauteous surroundings as the cruel breaths of a wounded, angered zephyr beat even more misfortune into the hated couple's last shelter in the hateful, prejudiced world. The two had been sequestered away, running from something or another for such a long period of time. It had been so long since they had been in the town of their birth, the town of their meeting, the hearth of their love and forbidden desire. It was the genesis of hope, of pain, of tragedy, of their lives and love, and of, finally, their inevitable doom.
They sat, kneeling as if in surrender as they stared into the inviting, but wounded flames before them. One chuckled, bitterly, hysterically, even sadly, and said, "Even the fire cannot stand this storm. It's a harsh one out there this year, eh? Or maybe we are unused to it now after..." Everything, they both thought in chorus, connected and yet apart once again, forever and always.
The other looked out the cracked window, shattered by a prejudiced teenager's carefully aimed rock, at the swirling and whirling white specks of sadness and betrayal against the despairing grey sky; it was the mark of Hera's rage at her husband's continued adultery. The speaker sighed and stood, joints cracking soundly in the ominous darkness as the fire began to perish in the cold. The other looked after his lover worriedly. The speaker put a bare hand to the crack, stoic as the freezing remnants of agonizing loneliness, of a betrayed sun-nymph that had turned the sun to stone in vengeance, of Demeter's depression, met the skin and blued it easily. The blizzard was the courtesy of Massachusetts, welcoming the ruined couple back with an icy vengeance. The other followed his lover to the crack, wrapping his arms around his companion and they stood like that, staring out into the storm, the harsh winds of Aeolus blowing against them, forcing them, begging really, to back away from the crack between them and the other citizens of Starkfield.
The speaker spoke once more, whispering against the shouting hail and ice, "Do you know why the snow is white?"
The other held his lover tighter, silent in the melancholic surroundings. The trees were dead, the fire had broken under the anguish of its keepers, and soon the couple in the scene would too perish in the tragedy. That is what it was, he now knew, it was a tragedy. He had been promised to another, they both had. Even if one of them had been unmarried at the time of their joining, they had been destined for others.
Society would never accept them, especially not for their love. It would have forgiven him if he had killed his wife, if he pleaded that she was getting too sick, breaking under her agony that he was obliged to end her pain for her. It might even had forgiven him if he had become an adulterer with someone else, perhaps that hired girl, as long as they were not directly involved, as long as they were "morally" wrong. Society would have forgiven him for suicide, for robbery, but not for following his heart. It would never allow someone like him or his lover follow their hearts, not in the 1900s.
The speaker continued, unawares of his inner melodramatics, "Snow is white because it forgot what color it originally was, like us. Because its family threw it away and took everything from it, and so to protect itself it forgot who it was, to be free, to be happy," the voice broke on the last word, a sign of losing his own happiness because his own family had forsaken him.
He sighed and kissed his lover's neck, tightening his hold. His lover sighed and said, "I can see them."
Over the snowy mountain, through the blizzard they saw the blaze of the approaching mob, of the tribulation before them, the judgment of God, he thought. The fires of the clichéd torches and the gleam of the pitchforks were almost ironic in the snow.
"Why can't they accept us?" He asked his lover, "We never did anything wrong. We never hurt anyone. It isn't their business. It's-it's not fair." His voice dropped down to a whisper, a broken whisper that had been shattered too much to become hoarse enough for a sob. The childish idealism, the hope for a black and white world, where good, God-fearing people accepted everyone and loved everyone and did not care who loved whom, and that bad heathenish people were jailed for murder, where anyone could love anyone and not have to fear for death or abuse or rape for their own feelings. His tears had long since frozen inside of him, his own anguish and agony cooling them inside of him, and his love was unable to thaw his emotions out of his mask of stoicism. His long-since fled wife's iciness finally held new meaning to him. Were her emotions also too cold, too pained? Was that why she was so silently judgmental? Did she, too, love another that had been denied by their society? Did he force her into a loveless relationship because she knew it would sufficiently hide her "sick" desires? Or, even more horribly, did she know about his desires before he did? Did she marry him to protect him? Or did he marry her to protect himself?
His lover turned and pulled his head under it rested against the bony shoulder in front of him. Their breath was frozen and icy, a visible expression of depression and death in front of them. They knelt in front of the freezing embers and Ethan held his lover tight against his broad chest. He said, "I won't let them kill you. I won't." That was their fate for defying society, their punishment for love: they would be lynched, or burned, or arrested at the very least; their was no chance for freedom. It was unfair. Should there not have been a happy ending for them? Did he ever do anything wrong, other than cheating on his sickly little wife?
His lover nodded, unsmiling, unhappy. The both of them were together in this silent prison of loneliness, of a crystallized black fortress of forbidden love where anyone could gawk and judge them for something beyond their control.
Ethan pulled the revolver he had stolen long ago in Bettsbridge, back when they believed they had a chance for happiness, and he pointed it at his lover. He said, "I love you, more than anything. If I could, I would marry you. I love you more than my own life."
"And I you. I love you Eth – "
CRACK!
Silence was an eerie sound in the momentarily calmed storm as it was no sound at all. Time had frozen in the world, stopping to document something precious that had been lost, stolen away from it by the person who should have protected it more than anything. Love lost, life lost, freedom lost – what else was there? Who would have a reason to live after what he had done to the person who had loved him more than anything? But, he knew that they would never have seen sunrise again – unless they were suffocating in a hanging tree.
The liquid splattered violently across the weathered cabin floor. Ethan shuddered in front of his lover. The liquid, a scarlet color, looked almost like rose petals across the wood, or perhaps, scattered teardrops. Ethan ran a violet, frozen hand over his lover's pale, aged face. The books lied: his companion did not look like he was sleeping or peaceful, he looked as conflicted and loving and resolute as he was in life.
The door burst open and a cruel, judgmental man shouted something unheard as the brains of Ethan Frome splattered across the walls and that jagged window, as a silver, smoking gun clattered on the rotten-hickory floorboards. The man stared at the bloody scene before him: the great Ethan Frome, and his lover, the noble Jotham Powell; men whose relationship would never be accepted in that day in age. The man sighed and called the order to burn the cabin to the ground. A final fire to melt the ice inside of their hearts, a pyre for love, passion reborn, a light in the darkness, and finally a spot of pity that would grow inside of a man's heart
In the distance, the whirring blizzard stopped, the storm was silent, the snow was still, and finally and icicle on a broken farmhouse without an L-shaped piece began to melt.
A single drop fell and met the snow below.
It was almost weeping for them.
And finally, nearly two decades later, a nameless man would stare up at that forsaken house after Ruth Varnum Hale finished her tale and turn away in disgust at the hatred that still resided in the world. And nearly a century after the homicide-suicide of Ethan Frome and his lover, same-sex marriage will be legalized in the state of Massachusetts.
…END