A White Rose for His Lady
A Short Story
Written by Alexandria Simmons
From off the brim of his dark suede hat, rain dropped onto the cement below. He looked down at his old, wrinkled hands and thought back to the time when they were young and smooth. Back to a time when a light scar didn't map across his forearm, and he even thought far back enough to remember when a gold band didn't loop around his left ring finger.
A benign smirk spread across his stubbly face as he reached a hand up to his beard and remembered how, years ago, he would've given anything for the scruff he had now. He chuckled at the recollection and stepped out onto the crosswalk, pushing his love's wheelchair before him.
"Do you remember that?" he asked her.
She did not reply but he could see her smile, knowing that she knew exactly what he meant. When they first met, all those years ago, they were nothing but teenagers enjoying a carefree summer! Now, after countless years of marriage, he and his lovely wife continue to stroll the streets of their past. In every crack of the sidewalk, and in every shadowed reflection of a window, their life memories as a couple are snugly tucked away- pictures slotted in scrapbooks.
The sight of each tree, lamppost, and gum stain on the street dipped his thoughts in nostalgia. For the hundredth time, he contemplated that if he was once a clueless youth, he was none the wiser an old man. But, still stubborn and learning, he was sure that if he were to do it all over again, there was only one thing he'd change; he'd go back to the day his love became his wife, and smack the ice from his foolish feet! He never should have let them chill in the first place, but, he knew from one look at her in white, that not even a winter breeze stood a chance at making her cold that day, and he was made as warm as her eyes were bright.
His train of thought shifted as a copper coin drowning in a puddle caught the man's eye. Pulling her wheelchair aside, he stooped down carefully to pluck it up. He smiled sweetly at her and flipped it once in the air, "See a penny on the ground, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck!"
At least, that's how his wife always treated stray change; she would never let anything go to waste. Plopping it in his wife's purse, he thought to himself how she has always been the sensible one out of the two of them.
He let out a deep, hearty sigh at that thought; as much as he has always loved her, his realistic view on life has always initially clashed with her optimism. It was a quirk, she would say to spite him, that resulted from a few screws in his head that God had decided to leave a little too loose.
He used to match her passive aggressive remark with cold eyes and a harsh tongue with which to criticize her naivety- until the day when she took his hand in hers and leveled him with nothing but a tired, enthusiastic smile.
After he had lost his job of forty years, with a child to care for at home and another to put through three more years of college, there was a time when he thought his family would have profited more from his life insurance plan than they would have from him.
It was her smile that told him otherwise. On a brisk evening, wind howling outside their windows, she wove her small fingers between his on their living room sofa to tell him how happy she was that it was almost spring.
"It's the little things" she had said. "All the small ones that make you see the magic in the world. Like flowers and local honey on sale!" It was a break of sunshine in a series of cloudy days, and looking at her, laughing at his dumbfounded look, and their life together, he realized she was right. And he loved her for it all the more from then to today.
"You sure showed me," He muttered under his breath, barely audible to even his own ears, and shook the bitter-sweet memory from his mind. Continuing on their walk, the man pushed the wheelchair on, slowing to a stop as they came to a flower shop.
"This is where I always go to to buy you those white roses you're so fond of! My, I came here so often when we were dating they knew me by name!"
Just then a woman with yellow hair and a green apron came out, a sympathetic smile on her fragile face as she handed him a white rose. Nancy was her name. The man and his wife babysat for the girl's parents when she was just a child!
Nancy gave him a gentle hug around his middle, careful not to press against the precious rose, and told him that he will always be welcome here. Her wide, blue eyes met his with a deepness such as he has never seen in a child so young before.
A moment later, she turned to disappear back into the store and address her waiting customers.
She has grown up so much, he pondered as she walked away. She's now discarded her pigtails for an unravelling bun, and wore lipstick instead of middle-school braces. He remembered the crooked smile she used to flash at his wife when biting into truffle chocolates, and the wrinkles of her nose when he presented to her one with riddled with nuts instead of filled with fruity creams.
"Such a nice girl" he said thoughtfully as he continued down the street, pushing her chair gingerly. When they reached the park he went to their bench, not minding the rainwater that had collected there in pools.
"What is it you always say, dear? A little rain never bothered nobody"
He sat there for a while, talking to his wife, a hand still resting on one the handles of the wheelchair.
He looked down at the rose, cold droplets of water sliding down in the collar of his jacket. Thumbing it over, the rose's soft feel brought hot tears to his eyes and it was not long before they mixed with the cool rain.
This is their walk, their bench, their spot- he was not ready to give it up, not ready to lose it.
"You have always wanted the most out of every single day." He whispered.
Sniffling, he placed the rose on the seat of the empty wheelchair beside him.
