I hold no proprietary rights to the show General Hospital or any of its characters.
Spring
She came around the side of the house, running. Her hair was liberally sprinkled with the red and white blossoms of the fruit trees which surrounded the house. The trees were in the fullness of their riotous bloom and petals cascaded down upon all who walked beneath them. The pair, each unaware of the others presence, abruptly collided. He was entirely unprepared for the chance meeting and was felled by the force of her slight body impacting his. Files and papers spilled out willy-nilly from his messenger bag where they landed upon the slick, muddy surface created by the recent rains. The wind darted at them causing them to eddy up and start drifting toward the lake as though they were errant children playing a game of 'catch me if you can'.
"I literally fell for her right then and there," he first told his children and then his grandchildren and only hoped that he might be given the chance to entertain his great-grandchildren with the same tale. "She laughed at me," he would add indignantly, looking around at his young audience with an expression of mock outrage.
The first dozen times the very young ones heard his story they always would giggle at this moment and then he would be assured of their rapt attention as he continued onward with the tale. Yet, the older ones, inured through long standing familiarity with the slightness of the humor contained within the joke, would only grimace and grow restless so that oftentimes the story would remain unfinished, much like life itself, he supposed philosophically.
"Then she helped you up off the dirty ground, Grandpa," a helpful grandchild prompted, mindful of his mother's oft stated claim that Father Spinelli would forget his very own head if it weren't somewhat firmly attached to his head.
"Such a dreamer that one," she would add disparagingly, not quite approving of her father-in-law's varied eccentricities.
A reminiscent smile appeared on Spinelli's face and for a brief moment, as his green eyes sparkled, it was possible to see past the wrinkles and white hair to the irrepressible young man he once was. "She was more lovely than the day," he replied poetically, patting his grandson approvingly on the head. "The blossoming trees blushed to be compared to her whilst the sun hid its glory in envy."
"It started to rain again," one of the older children interpreted prosaically for the benefit of their younger siblings and cousins not yet versed in the ways of allegory and metaphor.
"They ran after the papers," another helpful soul piped up, "because the wind was blowing them toward the lake."
"Who's telling this story anyway?" Spinelli would interject, his irritation at the multiple interruptions not quite feigned.
"You are, Grandpa," would be the response of his own personal Greek chorus and for a short while he would reclaim center stage as the narrator of the events of his own life.
"It wasn't bad enough that she first knocked me down but then she decided to drown the poor benighted Jackal in the lake," he said dramatically as he picked up the threads of the saga.
"That's not fair!" The passionate speaker interrupting him this time was a dark haired girl, lithe and slim, as she scowled at her grandfather, her features heartrendingly similar to her grandmother's whose name she also shared, "She did no such thing. You tripped and fell in!"
For a brief while, Spinelli met her glare for glare but he was the first to lower his eyes as he said sheepishly, "Well, perhaps that is closer to the bare bones truth of what happened but what you fail to allow for, Missy," now he was back in fighting form and once again they locked eyes, "Is that the very clumsiness that was my downfall was a direct result of the effect your grandmother had upon my heart and therefore my inner ear which as everyone knows is vital for balance and so I tripped and fell into the lake which is just the same as if she pushed me into its watery depths." He finished triumphantly.
"That's just stupid," she responded airily, not at all impressed by his argument.
"Um, sir," some unknown boy was cautiously raising his hand. He had simply arrived earlier that day, mixed in among the passel of grandchildren, "There isn't any connection between the inner ear and the heart that doesn't make any sense." He was polite but determined to support the facts of biology in his detraction of Spinelli's story.
"It isn't the literal heart, lad" Spinelli backtracked hastily, recognizing that anatomy was never his strong suit, "I meant that the effect of her unsurpassed beauty caused an overall malfunction of the Jackal's internal circuitry which then directly lead to the inner ear imbalance." He shot the pesky kid a look of satisfied triumph, daring him to refute his quick witted response.
"I see," the boy mumbled though it was clear he definitely didn't. A few of the surrounding children nudged him sympathetically and whispered consoling words in his ear.
Spinelli's hearing aid wasn't turned up loud enough for him to hear the comments but he could guess that they ran along the lines of, "you get used to it," and "it's best if you just let him finish and then we can go do something fun".
Spinelli didn't care, it was the price his grandchildren and their various friends paid for being allowed to use his state of the art game room. In exchange for that privilege, each and every time they visited, he extracted the repetitive fee of requiring the attention of their ears, if not their hearts, in listening to his romantic tale. He was long past the age where he worried about what people thought about him. At this particular point in Spinelli's long and varied life he was far more afraid of being alone then he was of being thought a tedious bore.
"Ahem," Spinelli cleared his throat loudly, and the whispered interchanges of his audience slowly ceased, "So, after much struggle with the vicissitudes of the watery realm, I finally managed to make it back to shore." He continued his account methodically, uncounted bouts of repetition having made the text ritualistically familiar to both him and his audience.
"What about the shark, Grandpa?" Piped up a little blonde granddaughter, sitting close by, "The one that nearly ate you but you bravely fought it off with your shoe."
Spinelli had the grace to color as his older grandchildren snickered cruelly. "That's not part of the story today, Paxton," he told her gently, fervently hoping that she would let the matter drop. The little girl's face fell and her whole body drooped in disappointment at losing out on hearing the best part of the story but she made no further protest.
"The wind was blowing fiercely and the lake was icy cold and by the time I made my way back to land I was soaked through in addition to also suffering a twisted ankle." Here Spinelli paused for dramatic effect but his audience misinterpreted his narrative break as an open invitation for questions and commentary.
"What about the papers?" A small and bespectacled boy asked with a focused earnestness, "Did you manage to get them out of the lake?"
"Papers, schmapers," he replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, "What's the point of papers when there's a great love story to be told?"
Actually, at the time, the loss of the papers was indeed a major issue of contention. Diane Miller hadn't been best pleased to be required to draw up another copy of her carefully constructed writ in order for it to be delivered to court by the stated deadline.
"There's a time for law, Mr. Grasshopper, and a time for romance and the two definitely are not meant to be confused," she chided him and then gave him a reprieve as she smiled conspiratorially and asked, "Did you kiss her?"
"Well, did you?" Someone, it was always one of the girls, impatiently demanded, "Kiss her, Grandpa?" She added in case the old man was too befuddled to take her meaning.
"A gentlemen never talks of such things," Spinelli said primly, "Besides," he added pragmatically, with a slight wince of recollection, "We were far from alone."
"Yeah, Great-Grandma and the Great Aunts were there as well," the family historian, the same bespectacled pedant, informed the audience with prim condescension.
"We fought our way through the violent storm back to the comforting embrace of the house," Spinelli continued on in a determined effort to wrestle the tale back from the intrusions of his cynical audience, "Whereupon your grandmother was a virtual Florence Nightingale in her tender ministrations to a wounded Jackal."
"She rescued you and took care of you…it's just like that Jane Austen book we read," the oldest granddaughter once more piped up, "Except that you were more like Marianne Dashwood and Grandma was Willoughby."
"The Jackal has no shame in admitting that there might have indeed been some gender role reversal involved. Yet, it would appear that a more exact designation of your grandmother's overall character should be described as being kindred in spirit to that of the benign Colonel Brandon rather than the morally dubious Willoughby." Spinelli had read and reread every one of Jane Austen's six books more times than he could count. Reading the books was but one of the myriad ways in which he kept his beloved's heart close to his.
Even so, Spinelli was still thankful that there were no video records of the encounter as would have undoubtedly been the case in modern times. Embedded video cameras were now the norm as people opted to record every moment of their waking existence. The cameras were motion activated and ubiquitously occupied both the exteriors and interiors of most homes. Spinelli's house was the rare exception as he refused to tolerate their intrusion, his objections to such electronic nuisances stemming as they did from the quaintly archaic concept of personal privacy.
He briefly wondered what Stone Cold would have thought of his current Luddite tendencies as he stubbornly resisted the ongoing developments in his once beloved field of technology. He now shunned the very things which were previously the gateway to both his career and his fortune. Ironically, this house, which by modern standards was technologically defunct, had been built upon earnings made from a livelihood predicated upon that very industry which Spinelli now vigorously rejected.
Still, he was grateful that back then camera surveillance had been mostly restricted to business and security usage. It was one thing to admit to needing succor and comfort but it would have been another altogether to have visual evidence of the actual nature of the proceedings. No one, particularly these precocious and mercilessly observant scamps, needed to review recorded evidence of Spinelli wearing the hot pink, marabou-trimmed robe of his future mother-in-law as he lay supine on the living room sofa with his injured foot carefully elevated on a cushion.
"So, after a hot shower, I sat with them awhile becoming better acquainted with these remarkable women, all of whom I would soon be able to claim as family." Spinelli intoned the familiar words of the story.
"That's because your clothing was being washed and dried, right Grandpa?" piped up one of the little boys.
"What were you wearing, if you didn't have your own clothes?" Asked young Samuel, he of the glasses.
Spinelli shrugged off the question, "I can't quite recall," he replied unconvincingly. "The passage of time has dimmed the less then pertinent aspects of the encounter."
"Yeah, right," snorted some skeptic from deep within the anonymity of the audience, "You remember every single detail."
Spinelli quelled his listeners with a scowl of disapproval, "Our minds were occupied with higher ideals rather than the mundane minutiae of day to day existence. Your grandmother and I discovered a mutual love of poetry, particularly that of…" Once more he paused but this time it was Spinelli's intention to allow and even encourage audience participation.
"The bard!" They yelled out in enthusiastic unison.
He beamed at them with approbation, "That is entirely correct. I am gratified that you have retained such pertinent information."
"You never let us forget it," came the honest protest from one of the twins.
"Grandpa, is it time for, 'Let us not to the marriage of true minds…'?" The small girl with auburn hair and his own vivid green eyes shyly looked up at her grandfather from her place of choice, seated close by his feet.
He smiled down at her with unfeigned affection, "Yes, Carrie, that is indeed the sonnet we discussed." Spinelli looked sadly down at the little girl, who was one of his undeclared favorites. "Yet, I discern that your brothers and cousins are growing restless. So, I think that in the interests of brevity, we can just this one time forego reciting the entire text."
There was an audible exhalation of relief as the children heartily endorsed their unexpected reprieve from one of the more mind-numbing moments in the well-known narration. "That's okay, Grandpa, I know it by heart anyway," Carrie confided, in a loud whisper, "I can tell it to you later if you want."
"I'd like that very much," Spinelli said touched by her offer, "As for the rest of you hooligans, we're almost done." He spoke the words with a reproving asperity that was belied by the sympathetic twinkle in his eye. After all, he wanted them toactually like coming to his house and not just think of it as a form of subtle torture. "So, after the Jackal was once more dressed in his somewhat the-worse-for-wear apparel, he took his reluctant leave but he was back the very next day with a bouquet of daisies and his most prized possession…"
"The book of Shakespeare's sonnet's that belonged to your mother," interrupted Samuel, "My mom has it," he added with a smug proprietary air of possessing the only extant archaeological artifact of the famous story.
"She does indeed," Spinelli concurred wearily for Samuel's pronouncement at this precise moment in the proceedings was as reliable as clockwork. He wondered uncharitably if he had ever been as overbearingly obnoxious in his intellectual superiority as this particular grandson whilst unhappily suspecting that, in all honesty, he might have been very much worse. "It was one of the few mementoes I possessed from my mother and it only seemed right that it should be passed along to your grandmother."
He leaned back in his chair suddenly exhausted by the session. "Go ahead, children," he said, waving them away, "Refreshments await you down in the game room."
"But you haven't finished the story, Grandpa," Carrie protested, her open face scrunched up in distress as she faced the prospect of not hearing the ending to her favorite story in the world.
"Surely you have all heard it many times over and only listen to it in order to appease your crotchety old grandfather," Spinelli responded reasonably though he was pleased that at least one of his grandchildren didn't appear to view him as a droning old bore.
"It's a ritual," Samuel asserted stoutly, "We need to complete it before we can go off and enjoy ourselves."
Much to Spinelli's surprise, there were widespread murmurs of agreement and not a single one of the children had taken him up on his magnanimous offer of early release. "Very well then," Spinelli conceded, as he surreptitiously brushed aside the moisture which sprang spontaneously to his eyes upon his grandchildren's unanimous refusal to leave. "It's a simple enough ending. After a year of courting your grandmother, she finally agreed to marry the Jackal. So, we held the ceremony at the very place we met and were married on the precise date and at the exact time we encountered one another one year previously."
"Was it raining then also?" Little Paxton asked.
"No indeed, the sun had long since outgrown its resentment of your grandmother's beauty and was just another willing attendant at the wedding. The presence of the wind was but a soft zephyr which caused the women's spring dresses to flutter gently while the birds sang their loveliest songs as they sat amongst the glory of the blossoming trees." Spinelli briefly closed his eyes and he could clearly see it all etched in his mind as though it had happened yesterday rather than fifty plus years ago.
"So you lived happily ever after," it was the other one of the twins, summarizing the story as though it was a fairytale.
Spinelli shook his head, "Nothing lasts forever but we were very happy for the duration of our marriage and your grandmother would be delighted to see what a good looking and bright group of grandchildren we sired. Now away with you all!" He raised his hands, palms outward and pushed them toward the seated group of children in a clear motion of dismissal.
This time they required no further urging and scattered away as they left in search of more up to date forms of entertainment along with the allure of the promised refreshments which would more than likely include barbeque potato chips and orange sods. Spinelli looked around at the suddenly empty room and sighed deeply. With difficulty, he pushed himself up from the soft chair he was sitting in and walked over to a still life of daisies hanging behind his desk on the wall of the study.
"Show wedding pictures," he ordered.
His house might look old fashioned but Spinelli hadn't entirely repudiated technology. The game room and connected office down in the basement both were full of the most modern electronic equipment-virtual games, computers and sound systems-that money could buy. Yet, what was contained within the confines of this traditional looking picture frame was the single computerized item which was dearest to his heart.
He stood in pensive silence watching picture after picture of that long ago ceremony flash across the crystal clear screen. The colors were so bright and vivid that it almost seemed as though all these people, who were either long dead or elderly and marginalized, like himself, were actually right here with Spinelli in his study-laughing, dancing and toasting. These days the distant past was always more vibrant to him than the grey, lonely present.
"Freeze!" He commanded in a raspy voice. Reaching up he ran his fingertips lightly over the captured face which smiled eternally at him both here and in his dreams,
"I miss you, Molly," he said with soft longing.
Unexpectedly, a small, warm hand snaked into his, "She is beautiful," his granddaughter looked up at him out of empathetic hazel eyes, their earlier dispute now forgotten by them both.
Spinelli nodded his agreement, "You look just like her, Molly," he said as he caressed his beloved granddaughter's cheek with a trembling hand, "She lives on in you, in all of you."
"So do you," she reminded him with wisdom beyond her years.
"Well, the genes aren't so diluted in me as they are in you youngsters with your decadent upbringing." Spinelli retorted as he intentionally diverted Molly away from the risks of an overly sentimental moment. After all, he had a reputation to maintain as a curmudgeon.
"I bet I can beat you in a game of 'The Assassin Chronicles,'" Molly challenged Spinelli in response to his mild baiting. She turned toward the door and by virtue of pulling on their interlocked hands forced him to accompany her.
"Ha!" He responded triumphantly, "I designed that game, you can't possibly expect to beat its creator."
"We'll see," Molly said, "We'll just see about that."
Their bickering voices faded away while the static image of a smiling Molly Davis Spinelli stared across the now deserted room. Somehow, even trapped within the two-dimensional confines of the picture frame, it seemed as though her bright eyes sparkled in mute approval at the clear evidence of the special bond between her beloved husband and her young namesake.
A/N: Reviews are always appreciated.