When she died Dan passed these earrings onto their youngest daughter Paula, who loved them for a while. She wore them to school plays and pinned them on her dolls and bears. She traipsed around in them by the bay, where Dan used to take her when she was a little girl. She hung them on her bedroom mirror when she was all grown up, a silent reminder of the women who fingers were everywhere in the house--who had left all these discarded pieces of other peoples lives, picked up like notes out of various songs, and forced together into some kind of symphony; a sound that might have been pleasant, if it hadn't remained always in a state of unfinish.
Thus it came as no surprise to Dan that the day Paula moved to Chicago with her boyfriend Mauv that the earrings stayed fixed to her bedroom mirror, immoveable and dangling like the end of some forgotten crescendo. He left them there, until he was old and frail and ready.
Early the next morning, he took one last walk, down to the pier. He had eggs and toast with tea at the diner. He drifted awhile, ending up in the little consignment shop, wandering the isles, looking for glimpses of Maria. There was none, she was gone. Here he saw only things, discarded and old and used up, wrinkled and alone.
He left the earrings there, beside a seaside shell, under the little table lamp that he remembered Maria pausing at for countless moments.
And there they sit, waiting for someone to love them again.
Have any questions?
Contact the shop owner.
