"A Sad Melody"
8/20/2011
Laying on her back, she reached out and felt along the shelf beside her bed until her fingers encountered the familiar shape of an old, worn pair of glasses. She grasped them gently, brought them before her face and, raising her other hand, opened them to gaze through the lenses.
They had been her mother's glasses, and now sat unused for three years collecting dust on her bookshelf in between these increasingly infrequent moments of reverie. The waning afternoon light hit the left lens and refracted, throwing rainbows on the wall beside her. Sighing, she lowered the frames until they rested on her nose and closed her eyes.
o.o.o
She was a little girl, maybe just three years old. She was standing on tip-toes, reaching with one chubby hand to pull something down from the kitchen table. She had just gotten one finger on her prize when a pair of hands grasped her about the middle and lifted her up. Immediate giggles filled the air as she was deposited on a warm, familiar lap and wrapped in secure arms.
Soft hair brushed her cheek as a hand stretched impossibly long across the table, plucked the object of her attention in delicate fingers and with a practiced flick, opened the glasses and rested them on her face. They were much too large and flopped down over her left cheek, but she smiled and lifted tiny hands to hold them in place.
The world warped and swam as she gazed through the lenses, but her smile grew as she tilted her head back to beam at her mother, whose answering smile was small and warm on a delicately bowed mouth.
"Look, Mommy!" the little girl chirped as her mother's hair hung down to frame both of their faces. "I'm pretty like you!"
There was laughter then, and her mother's warm lips as they pressed against her nose.
"The prettiest little girl I've ever seen," her mother had replied. That afternoon was spent in warm embrace between mother and daughter, a jewel that would be kept safe in the vault of memory and only brought out when most desperately needed.
o.o.o
Tears were running into her ears, but she could not find the effort to raise her hands and wipe them away. When her eyes opened, she glanced to the side and found her reflection in the full-length mirror standing against the far wall. Though blurry and indistinct, her long black hair and sharp chin were easily enough to make out. She was tall and long, fuller of shoulder and narrower of hip with long legs and slender arms. Her mother had been a short woman, with auburn hair and an oval face. Her hips had been round, fingers short but slim. There was very little to visually link the two.
She sat up now, slipped the glasses down her nose to peer over the tops. With them on, there was an enhanced resemblance in her and her mother's features. The shape of her mouth and petal-pink lips; the shape of her ears; arch of her brow. They had the same sarcastic smirk and joyful smile. And whatever else of her father she happened to have in her, she had her mother's eyes.
The rattle and click of the door latch startled her out of this beige study and she was surprised to see her father standing at the threshold of her room. He had one hand on the latch and was smiling faintly. The lines around his eyes had deepened in the last few years, and those eyes had lost much of their carefree shine. A pang went through her chest at the thought that he was finally showing his age.
"'Ey, Petal," he greeted and as usual, she smiled at his rough accent. Murdoch Axel Pierce had been an American citizen for nearly half a century, but his speech had never drifted a whit into Yank colloquialisms. He had removed most of his piercings, and his tattoos were covered up now, but in his left ear he wore a gold stud set with a large pink diamond. Its mate sat in the jewelry box in his bedroom, beside the ring he had presented to his late wife eighteen years before.
"Dad," she croaked, then cleared her throat as she tried to inconspicuously slip the glasses off. Axel smiled sadly and stepped fully into the room as his daughter mopped her face with a handful of tissues and replaced the glasses on her shelf.
"Your mum," he sighed as his tired gray eyes rested on the specs. "She was wearin' those first time I saw 'er. Walked into me shop wiv your uncle Trent, shy little thing she was. Your uncle, he talked 'er into gettin' 'er navel pierced."
He chuckled at his daughter's shock, reached out and ruffled her dark hair.
"She 'ad a crush on 'im somefin fierce, back then. I remember 'ow nervous she was. Kept bitin' 'er lip, and I couldn' 'elp but fink 'ow soft they looked. Soft and petal-pink. When she left, I still wished she'd taken my advice on the lip ring."
"Mom with a lip ring?" She giggled helplessly at the thought and Axel grinned devilishly.
"Talked her into it when we started datin'." The silence which greeted that made his eyes sparkle with mischief. "Oh, she stopped wearin' it when you came round, though. Had a likin' to grab for it at odd times."
After sitting slack-jawed for a time, the girl sat forward, leaning toward her father in an unconscious act of eagerness.
"Dad, how did you and mom get together?"
After a moment's hesitation, Axel sat on his daughter's bed and turned his eyes to a photo of the three of them together. It was at her kindergarten graduation ceremony. Axel was wearing a suit, as was usual since taking over his father-in-law's consulting firm not long after the wedding. His black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, with only one earring in each ear. He had his Petal on his shoulder in her baby-blue graduation gown, and Daria Morgendorffer-Pierce stood at their daughter's other side, beaming her soft smile up at the little girl. She wore a simple soft green dress that fell to mid-shin and black leather boots with a modest heel. Her hair was longer than she had worn it in her teenage years, now just brushing her waist, and styled into soft waves that framed her face.
Axel smiled at this memory as he began to speak.
o.o.o
It was late afternoon when the door above Ax'l's Piercing Parlor jangled. He glanced up from his Wall Street Journal and stared with shock to see Janey Lane walk in with the girl whose lips still haunted his memory.
"Hey, Ax'l," Jane greeted cheerfully and reached back to snake an arm around her friend's waist. "Guess who just graduated from college? We're gonna get her ears pierced to celebrate!"
Axl's eyes roved over Daria's changed appearance. Her hair was longer, messier than he remembered. Her glasses were rimless and rectangular, soft curves clad in a black tank-top and snug, worn blue jeans. A pendant of yellow topaz sat at her throat, hung on a delicate silver chain. Her ballstomper boots were all he truly recognized.
"Awright, luv," he drawled, giving Daria a rare smile. He pulled the fourteen-carat gold piercing rings out of a locked drawer and set the tray on the counter for her to peruse. "Special occasion an' all, I'll give you me best price."
Daria's eyebrows lifted in surprise, but she chose a pair of star-shaped studs and stared when Ax'l removed the price tag and tossed it in the trash.
"Follow me."
Daria hopped up on the well-remembered bench and tried to keep her heart from pounding when Ax'l swabbed both sides of her ear lobes before marking them carefully. Jane reached over and took her hand when her fingers started to twitch, and as the needle came within a millimeter of her flesh, Ax'l looked her straight in the eye.
"Deep breaf, luv," he whispered. Daria's own eyes widened at the unexpected depth she found in his gaze and she didn't even feel the needle, or the earring that replaced it.
Soon she was pierced, and as Ax'l explained the importance of a proper disinfecting schedule Daria's eyes never left him.
At the counter once more, Daria held her wallet in anticipation of leaving a hefty chunk of change behind her when Ax'l handed her a small bottle of disinfectant and smiled.
"Earrings included wiv piercings, an' considerin' the special occasion an' all..." He stroked his chin thoughtfully, fingertip grazing over the stud below his bottom lip; his eyes dipped just a bit to caress her mouth, then rose again. "For you, luv, ten bucks."
The girls were agog at the insanely low price, but Daria handed over the bill with no complaint. Her eyes found his again, and their gazes locked as Jane chattered on.
"I'm gonna be graduating in a couple months," Jane wheedled, grinning. Her hair had been chopped to her cheeks on the sides, bangs framing her striking blue eyes and the length brushing the seat of her jeans. She wore a heather-gray sweater with sleeves that covered her hands and a cowl neck that pooled around her shoulders. "You're gonna give me a good price if I decided to get another ring or two, right?"
"Janey, you're family." Ax'l grinned, reaching out to tug on a lock of hair. "For you, five percent off."
Jane was rather vocal in her feigned displeasure, and dragged Daria behind her as she exited the shop. The shorter girl stopped at the door with the excuse that she had forgotten her wallet (safely stowed in the back pocket of her jeans), and trotted back to the counter.
"What time do you close?" she whispered breathlessly, and Ax'l's eyes fastened on her mouth. Her lips were moist and just parted, fragrant breath fanning over his face every few seconds.
"Six."
Her mouth curled in a smile, and once again Ax'l thought how wonderful a silver ring would look snugged to her bottom lip.
"Dinner?"
His eyes snapped up to hers, searching, and the corners of his own lips rose to match her smile.
"Yes."
She spun and ran out the door again, and that had been the beginning.
o.o.o
"She asked you out?"
Axel laughed gently and stood. He had heard the door open downstairs a few moments before and any second now, there would be feet on the stairs and shouting voices as his family flooded the house.
"Don't be so surprised, Petal." He glanced at a framed photograph on the wall, a candid of Daria in three-quarters profile with a small, enigmatic smile on her face. His heart constricted again at her absence. "There's a lot about your mum you didn't know."
At just that moment, the twin terrors burst into the room and tackled Axel's legs. He placed a hand on each of their heads, laughing, as they chattered up at him with gleeful smiles.
Jacob and Taylor Lane had their mother's red-orange hair and their father's dark, soulful eyes. Freckles their mother had taken such pains to conceal in her youth peppered their cheeks, making their angel smiles seem just a bit more mischievous. The identical twin four-year-old boys spoke in tandem, finishing each others' sentences almost before they could be spoken.
Trent sauntered in a moment after Jane, who with a shout of "Melody!" embraced her niece and placed a kiss right in the center of her forehead. The large red lip print was a constant whenever Jane was around.
"Honestly," Quinn Morgendorffer-Lane huffed as she brought up the rear. A sedate teenager walked beside her, hair dark and eyes a light shade of blue. He had a strong, cleft chin and broad shoulders. His black hair was parted and combed back away from his face, as had been favored by his father. He carried a bakery box the right size for a large cake.
"Hey, Li'l T," Jane called to her son, and Anthony DeMartino, Jr. walked up with the cake held carefully in both hands.
Trent draped an arm around Quinn's shoulders, and she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
"Three years," she whispered, voice pained, and Trent squeezed her tighter to him.
"Yeah."
As the family mingled and eventually moved down to the kitchen, Melody stuck by Jane and confided the story her father had told her earlier.
"You didn't know Axel did your mom's piercings?" She chuckled and cut into the cake, depositing the nearly-solid slab of chocolate onto a plate and passing it to Tony. "Yeah, Daria wasn't really the type to talk about that sort of thing."
"I did 'em all." Trent had poured a glass of whiskey for Axel, and he sat swirling it now, watching the play of colors as the light hit it from different angels. "Navel, ears, lip, even one of 'er ni-"
Quinn, Melody and Tony all started speaking at once, their loud voices drowning out Trent and Axel's laughter as Jane finished passing out cake. She smirked to herself as she watched her family interact, then at the oil painting of a pregnant Daria hanging in the living room. She had painted it for Daria and Axel's tenth wedding anniversary, taken from a photo Jane had snapped on a whim during Daria's second trimester. The pregnant woman had her hands resting on her swollen abdomen, smiling down at what would eventually be her only child.
Tears pricked Jane's eyes, and she unconsciously rubbed her wedding ring with her thumb. She knew what it was like to lose the other half of your soul. Tony had been much older than herself, and so it was inevitable that he would be the first to go. But even seeing it happen, watching them slip away by inches, made it no less devastating.
Axel was still talking about Daria's dabbling in alternative piercing, and was even now moving on to tattoos. Jane laughed and moved to intervene. There were some things children should never know.
On the mantle beneath the painting of the late Daria Morgendorffer-Pierce, sat a simple silver urn. Photographs sat on either side of it, each in gleaming frames, and white candles burned. In the reflection of the polished metal was a large family sharing a warm moment, their love like a soft melody floating in the air.
End.