"Aren't you going to invite Elizabeth to coffee?" Richard started mischievously, putting his plan into action. It was breakfast and he supposed that he might as well kick off with the scheme over the most important meal of the day.
"What, Richard?" She sounded harsher than usual, if that was possible. Judging by the bags under her eyes, she had not slept last night. Or, if she had, it was a fitful night if sleep.
He reiterated, "Aren't you going to invite Liz for coffee?" He slurped up spooned some of his corn flakes.
The gears were turning in her head. You see, she had not told Richard about Elizabeth's letter, or the subsequent reply. More importantly she wasn't privy to his viewing Liz's letter or his hatching a scheme. Hyacinth knew that she would have to lie through her teeth.
"You know I think that she's gone off coffee," Hyacinth said. The words tasted bad to her.
"Gone off coffee?" He stifled a laugh.
"Yes, I don't even think that she drinks decaffeinated anymore." Hyacinth was sticking with it.
"Well then why not invite her to tea?"
"It's not a fitting time for tea, Richard, and you know that."
He dug in, "I suppose that being English means that it is always tea time. You know Earl Grey."
"That would be an American stereotype of their mother country. Americanisms have no place in this house."
Richard continued this game of chess, "Children tend to know their mothers, and based on our current relationship with them were more like friends."
"I suppose." She conceded. Her tired brain was in overdrive trying to figure out why he was acting this way, and why for some strange reason she wasn't putting an end to it.
"Then invite Liz over for some orange juice." It sounded stupid to him too, but he was going to stick with it.
"Orange juice?"
"If she won't have coffee, and you won't serve tea, have her over for some orange juice."
She did something that she had never done before, she obeyed. "Fine," she huffed.
She left the kitchen and walked to her white slim line telephone. Richard shut the kitchen door behind her and pressed his ear against it so he could hear. He listened only for the important bits.
"Good Morning Elizabeth… well… orange juice… coffee… is passé…five minutes."
Richard returned to his seat and feigned interest in his now too soggy cereal. She made a grand entrance and declared, "She'll be here in five minutes. They'll be here in five minutes. Emmet's decided to come along."
"Good."
"You know, since this was your idea, you can let her in when she arrives." She retreated a bit from the threshold of the door and said, "I am going to freshen up for my guests, so when they arrive forgive me if I'm not back.
"Oh, alright." Richard was surprised, but not displeased.
"In fact, I told her that it was your idea, so if I don't appear at all tell her that I'm busy."
"Oh." He feigned dejection, though inside he was quite happy.
She left as dramatically as she entered. He sat, looking even more sinisterly into the bowl of warming milk and disintegrating corn flakes, watching one of them continue to meander and swirl as it melted. He must have done this for the three hundred seconds that it took Emmet and Liz to arrive. He being the only one who wanted or cared for their company, walked swiftly to the door to let them in. They entered in, removed their shoes and followed Richard into the kitchen in stern procession. He shut the door behind them and tarried near it for a few second to make sure that Hyacinth wasn't approaching. His neighbors looked at him, stared at him, puzzled and intrigued with his secrecy. He pressed his ear, again, to the door.
He heard nothing.
He went to the refrigerator, opened it, grabbed the carton, and closed it again. He grabbed three glasses and filled them all about four-fifths to the top. All was in done in the most perfect silence. He grabbed two glasses in one hand and the third in the other and tiptoed to the table.
He retook his seat and spoke in a hushed voice, "I thought it through last night and I know what I'm going to do," he said handing two of the glasses to brother and sister.
"Richard, please tell me what's happening. Whatever happened last night was confusing and I don't like to be befuddled." Emmet whispered.
"Well, everything that you wrote in that letter was true, Liz, and I want Hyacinth to see that." Richard said.
"What?" Liz did not understand.
"What I mean is… I want to trick her into thinking that the letter never existed and that she never replied." Richard stated plainly.
"How do you intend to do that?" Elizabeth asked.
"I want her to think that it was all in her conscience. I want her to think that it was all a dream."
"A dream, Richard I've read about schemes like this, changing perception and it is dangerous stuff."
"My wife," Richard started, still whispering "She is like a orange, and my objective is to get to the fruit inside. When I met her she was peeled and it was wonderful, but over the years and decades the peel built up. I'm fed up, alright. I am fed up. I figure that there are three ways to get back to the beautiful, ripe thing inside. I could rub the peel and wear it away, but by the time I got to the fruit it would have rotted and putrefied. I could rip ferociously at the peel, but I would only damage the fruit and be sprayed in the eye. Or I can be gentle in the peeling and get to the fruit with no damage to myself or my wife."
"That is a clever analogy, but I must say that I have reservations about this whole thing. I'll go along with it, for now." Elizabeth said.
"Richard, old boy, I will help you any way I can."
And the each drank some orange juice to that.
The topic changed.
"How's Gail?" Richard asked.
"Oh, she's fine. She and Harold are really getting on and fingers crossed, he may be the one." Liz said.
"Ooh, wedding bells." Richard said.
"And to think she wanted to keep it a secret at first." Elizabeth chuckled a bit and took another sip of orange juice. She looked down at her hand and realized that she was not shaking.
"We all have secrets or more correctly our children keep secrets from us. Sometimes late at night I wonder. I say, 'What's Sheridan's secret?' Nothing too unsavory I hope." Richard knew that his son was different from most kids, or at least that he was hiding something. He could never put his finger on it.
"It's nothing Richard, my father felt the same way about—" Emmet was cut off by a very special lady who entered the room.
"Hello, Emmet." Hyacinth said before glaring at her other neighbor.
Richard mouthed the words 'be normal' and Elizabeth nodded.
"Hello, Hyacinth, long time, no see." Liz's voice came across as normal and flat.
That threw Hyacinth off of her game. "Oh, hello Elizabeth."
"How have things been with you?" Elizabeth asked.
"Well not so good… you sent me a let—" Hyacinth stopped when she realized that she couldn't find said letter, and therefore could not prove anything. She used some classic Hyacinth technique and changed subject, "So the daffodils are about done."
"I would say so, in a couple of weeks they would have wilted away." Liz said, feeling in charge of a conversation for once.
"I think they look the best with purple hyacinths nearby." Richard said.
"Me too." Liz was still marveling at the fact that she was actually getting a word in.
"Yes," Richard continued with a glimmer of mischief in his eyes, "Yellow is so joyful a color and it is so well complemented with imperious purple. To think the hyacinths are so imperious and command no empire." Richard chuckled alone. He had just invoked, verbatim mind you, the first fault that Liz found with his dearest wife.
Emmet only looked at Richard, and Liz at Hyacinth.
Hyacinth shuddered oh so slightly when he made his 'imperious comment.' She knew that she read it in the letter, or did she? 'Déjà vu' was all she could muster betwixt her ears.
"You know," Emmet started, "I think violets would look better."
Richard pounced on that, "I was never interested in those I guess, most people I speak to don't care about violets." (Grievance XXIII)
Hyacinth put her right hand up to the corresponding temple and rubbed. She got a headache wondering what the hell was going on. She swore that she had read those words. She swore that the postman handed her a letter from Elizabeth and those words were there. There was just no proof of it now. The envelope she remembered holding was gone and the invective she remembered reading was nowhere to be found. When she asked Richard last night if he saw it, he said he hadn't seen anything. It was too weird.
"Excuse me," Hyacinth started, "I need to go have a lie down, my head is pounding."
"Do you need an aspirin?" Richard asked.
"You know I don't like pain killers. I'll just have a quick nap." And she left, shutting the door behind her.
Emmet was frowning slightly, "While I must say that I want her to change, I don't know if I like how this is going."
Richard spoke, "She is the master of overstatement. The plain speech of your letter Liz," and he looked at her, "was simply to overstated. Subversion is the only weapon against bombast."
Liz nodded in agreement.
Emmet nodded no, but said no more. He didn't understand how Richard went from the analogy of wanting to peel the orange delicately to using a 'weapon' in the span of ten minutes or so.