Concave Window

She rose from the recliner, and for the first time in years it didn’t hurt. On the first day she ordered flowers, changed the carpet, and called the cleaners to take down the cobwebs. The fans gleamed. The doorknob shone. There was jasmine, there were roses, everywhere. A neighbour saw her happy and came with a small string of fairy lights, and the house lit up. On the second morning, she began to lay the table. She took out the checkered tablecloth. She polished the silver. She took out the crystal wine glasses her husband loved so much, and as she ran a finger along a rim, she found a thin layer of dust. She had treasured his memories, and they had been buried beneath it. She wiped the glass clean, and it rang. She laid out the napkins she had embroidered with forget-me-nots on his birthdays. She baked his favourite cake, cinnamon walnut, and set it on the gleaming cake stand. She took out the silver candlesticks and the tapered, rose-scented candles, the smell he loved. And then she remembered the date. Today would have been their sixtieth anniversary. She had always stitched her own clothes, but the crumpled ones in her cupboard would not do today. She took out a beautiful purple silk sari, the colour her husband loved. She took out the Chanel No. 5 and dabbed it on her wrist, because it was the first perfume he had bought her, on the Paris trip. She looked at herself in the mirror. Then she looked at his photograph on the mantelpiece. For a moment the two seemed to merge, and she saw them as a couple. The guests arrived to a house that smelled of flowers and Chanel and cinnamon from the cake. The candles burned. The crystal clinked. “Come September” played, and with the party and the music she could hear his full-throated laugh and almost see his shiny shoes gliding across the floor. There was song, there was laughter, and it tickled her, and she felt him again. Everybody looked at his photograph and remembered him. One of the guests leaned in. “Chanel? He bought you that, didn’t he?” She smiled, and told them about Paris. That was the wealth, she thought. This was what he had left her. As the guests left, she gave each of them a small present. Somebody got his cufflinks. Somebody got his pen. Somebody took his handkerchiefs. A young one took the tanpura. He was a good man, and his memories needed to breathe in other people’s homes too. The candles burned down. The fairy lights were still glowing. At the crack of dawn, somebody noticed an old man in shiny shoes and an old woman walking away toward the horizon, holding hands. The moon, going down, was a little more silver than the night before.

Here's a story in two parts: 1 and 2. Part 2 continues in the replies. Read it all at once or later. Come September: A Story About Shiny Shoes She had been full of life once. She sang, she cooked for twenty without blinking, she stitched her own clothes. In the old days they threw parties, and “Come September” played until the neighbours drifted in. He was the same, a gregarious man who brought everyone home. He always wore shiny shoes. Several pairs of cufflinks, and his cap looked so good on him. He loved to feed people, to entertain. His laugh, and the welcoming notes: “We haven’t seen you for a while. Come in for a cuppa.” It would infuriate her. But they came, and they made friends, and then some more friends. Then he was gone, and she closed the door. The house went grey. She kept his clothes. She cooked his favourite dishes every day and laid two plates on the table. She picked up the tanpura and sang for him. She let no one in and wanted no help, because she was sure they would take a part of him away. She sat in her recliner. It sank deeper every year, and something hard pressed against her back that she never looked at. Every time she tried to rise, her back hurt more. One day, frail and sick, she knew it was time. Death came knocking, peeping through the sunlight. “Hey, I have come to take you away.” “No. My husband is very much alive in this house. I can’t leave him. I don’t have time.” Then the moon shone on the recliner, and she saw what she was sitting on. A heap of money. He had left it for her, to enjoy her life after he was gone. She understood. She could have shared the wisdom he brought into her life. She could have enriched everyone she met. He was a man who loved company, and she had turned into a closed woman, and that was not what he had left her. “Give me two days,” she said. Death, who was in no hurry, sat down to wait.