Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, and no profit is made from these stories. (But I do have fun writing them: )
Clearing out the brownstone was a daunting task.
It also hadn't been easy for Ben to send his mother to a nursing home in Westchester. But it had been unavoidable; she was frail and progressing into dementia. Regardless, he felt like he'd shoved her out of her own home and was now pilfering the remains of her life.
It was at times like this when he wished he had siblings; but fortunately, he didn't have to do this alone. Claire was with him, faithfully helping him sort among the possessions he would keep and those he would sell. He had briefly thought about moving into his former home, but realized that he couldn't; there were just too many painful memories. So he had listed the brownstone with a realtor friend of Adam's.
They were now in the attic, choking in the cobwebs and dust. Claire opened a large trunk, removing an old shoebox full of photographs. Picking up one of the black-and-white shots, she giggled.
"What?" Ben asked, but then saw the cause of her mirth: a photograph of himself as a lanky, brush-cut teenager, towering over a handsome older woman.
"You were pretty cute," she said, passing him the shot. "Is that your grandmother?"
Ben flushed. "Yeah," he replied. "Grandma Fahey."
Claire removed a yellowing envelope from the box. "Wonder what's in here?" she asked, removing several color photographs. She instantly gasped.
"I'll be damned," Ben said, transported back forty years to a time when he was young and innocent, and the woman standing next to him hadn't even been born.
Saturday morning came crisp and clear, one of the first during that spring of 1955. Ben descended the brownstone steps, not really knowing where he was going; he was just thankful to have gotten out of the house before his father hit the Dewar's. With any luck, he'd be passed out by the time Ben got back.
He decided to head downtown, eager to try out the Kodak camera he'd recently gotten for his fourteenth birthday. But he was determined not to use it frivolously; the color film was hideously expensive, and his father would hit the roof if he discovered that Ben had used it all right away.
Ben got out of the checker cab on East 52nd Street, just outside the Gladstone Hotel. He was just about to make his way around the block when he spotted someone coming through the revolving doors.
He couldn't believe his eyes.
She was so much more beautiful in person, literally burning herself into Ben's consciousness. His heart quickened; this was the girl he'd dreamed about for a year and a half, ever since killing a rainy weekend afternoon in the Trans-Lux cinema.
Angel was the word that sounded in his mind, and that was what she truly was.
He wanted desperately to approach her, but his feet felt like they had been cemented into the sidewalk; then he reminded himself that he'd likely never get another chance like this.
"Ma'am?" he asked nervously. She turned around; he found himself looking downward into a face that was fully made-up, and completely flawless. Her flaxen hair sparkled in the April sunshine.
"May – may I take your picture? Please?"
She smiled shyly, then did a complete 360-degree turn for his camera. Buoyed, Ben followed her down the street, snapping more pictures; he had forgotten all about conserving the film. In an elegant black cashmere suit, she stood out against the busy New York background, commanding the attention of everyone in her midst.
Ben's heart sank as she hailed a cab.
"Thank you for being so polite," she said in a childlike voice, blowing him a kiss as she stepped inside.
And then she was gone.
Seven summers later, Ben was twenty-one and weeks away from beginning his second year at NYU Law. He sat at breakfast with his classmate Peter Kern and two girls; one of them, Jan, was his date. Peter got Ben all his girls back in those days, but Ben was hopelessly shy around them and things never went very far.
The diner played a Top 40 station; songs by Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, and Sandra Dee had provided the soundtrack to their meal. The disk jockey abruptly interrupted "Runaway" by Del Shannon, replacing it with trumpeter Ray Anthony's tribute to Marilyn Monroe. After the song ended, there was a moment of silence before the disk jockey returned, breaking the news in a sad voice.
"Marilyn Monroe is dead of suicide at age thirty-six. We grasp at straws as if knowing how she died will bring her back. Not since Jean Harlow have the standards of feminine beauty been so embodied in one woman. Marilyn Monroe; dead at thirty-six."
The diner fell silent; the girls were misty-eyed. The photographs had disappeared along with other mementoes of Ben's youth; but he vividly recalled his brief encounter with Marilyn as though it had happened yesterday.
He found himself fighting to hold back his own tears.
"I thought I had lost these pictures," Ben remarked.
They were now on the floor, their backs against the trunk; Claire had listened with rapt attention as he told her the story.
"Ben, do you have any idea what these are probably worth now?" Claire said.
It was true, the photographs were a goldmine; but Ben couldn't put a dollar value on his memories. Or the knowledge that he was with a woman just as beautiful.
finis