An elegant grandfather clock ticks, regularly telling the hour. Tick Tock- time always moves forward. Always forward. She is so tired of what time does. Time moves ever on, sometimes the pace is slow. More often than not, and she knows this better than anyone, time moves faster than anyone can handle. The grandfather clock never changes its ticking, and yet she knows, oh how well she knows, that time is fickle.
Evelyn Danvers is always elegant, just like the clock she is consistent. The wine glass in her hand her hair done up, her clothes perfect, an Audrey Hepburn in modern form. Every minute she takes another long drag out of her long stemmed wine glass. She lets the Chateau Mouton-Rothschild wine sit on her tongue, her wedding wine. The 1982 vintage is rich, velvety, full of memories as sweet, and dark as the wine itself. Every night she opens a bottle, every night she remembers.
Evelyn Danvers remembers. She is consistent in her misery, and slowly she feels that she too can slip away. No wine can help her forget. The alcohol does not even dull her pain, it intensifies, it magnifies, it makes her pain all that exists. It is their wedding wine. It is there promise that they will always be together, that their love will be able to conquer anything. It is their lie.
James Danvers was her knight in shining armor. She the lowly poor girl who could only imagine the elegance and imperialism that Danvers represented. He was her fantasy, he was her reality, and then he was her distant memory. James Danvers was everything a good wine could hope to be. He was rich and elegant. He was sweet and velvety. He drew her in with his potency and seduced her with his smoothness. He made her forget who she was, and he made her feel desired. James Danvers was the most expensive wine and the most intoxicating presence. He filled a room. He did not have the calm dictated, withdrawn, and controlled personality of Caleb; no, James Danvers lived.
The swirling of the wine in the depths of Evelyn's cup showed the lie that Danvers was. He lived as if he was indestructible, and uncontainable, but like the wine within her glass, trapped. His fall-inevitable.
James had a booming laugh. His laugh was deep and melodic, but it was also uncontainable. Evelyn has loved the velvet quality of James' laugh. She had loved how his eyes sparkled and how he had not considered time or place or propriety as a factor when he laughed. Evelyn loved James. She had loved his spontaneity, something so foreign to her. Perhaps was she had really loved was his irresponsibility. Growing up, a child of a broken home that barely had the money to cloth and feed their children, Evelyn desired James' freedom. She desired his ability to live in the moment. She loved him for the very reasons he 'died'.
Caleb was the image of his father in youth, an image taken and superimposed on another character. He was a replica that lacked the youth and exuberance of the original. James and Evelyn's selfishness had created this version of Caleb, this careworn and responsible child. Caleb was a child who nursed both of his parents before he was an adult himself. He nursed one parent who had lived to well too fast, and one parent who was trying to end their life too fast. He faced the alcoholism, gluttony, and deep selfishness of his parents every day and inevitable he grew up too fast. Caleb did not live life. He did not make mistakes.
Evelyn Danvers knew that she had made mistakes. Evelyn Danvers knew that the glass in her hand was a mistake that she made every night. She knew that when she had passed out, that when this glass slipped from her numb fingers as she finally found sleep, Caleb would find her. She knew that her son would come home and put her to bed. That her son would hope that she was not there. She knew that her son would be disappointed. Every bottle that Evelyn opened was a mistake. She knew that by racing the grandfather clock, she was doing to Caleb what James had done to her, but some mistakes cannot be undone. Some mistakes are as inevitable as the smooth taste of a 1982 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild wine; a wine that tastes of the promises of youth with just that hint of darkness of life.