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Short Story / The Beloved Traditionalist
Quaint, lethargic, Milieu sat, utterly cramped in solitude, her shoulders stretching wide, her back pressed firmly into the lacquered weaves of the cold dark iron chair. Swarmed by violet blue barberry bushes, she posed like a statue fixed in the abandoned porch of the gothic street-front restaurant. Honks, beeps, swept through the sleek gray cavern of sprouting concrete buildings, vast and ascended, echoing the grumbles of motorcars. Between the toes, amongst the ankles of the clamoring foundations, a breeze galloped through, dangling the strands of Milieu’s hair.
Oddly simple, her fingers lay folded around the yellow emboss of a polished golden fork. As elegantly as an aged dancer, she raked through the cobbles of lilac tipped romaine lettuce, which sapped in the putty pearl-like chicken cuts. Like a frozen coin, her metallic watch plate magnetized against her thin warm wrist, ticking away her pristine demur. The tingling rash of frustration grew, itching with each flicker, the second hand dragging like brush bristles on her patience. Her heart danced, throbbing against the tight squeeze of her flexed ribcage.
More than ever, she realized, sliding the wet clump of flakey leaves past her lips, she would never see, never hear the prized sounds of hummed taxicab horns and engine revs, or for that matter any novelty of urban refinement. She knew the bustling peace of deafening sirens screeching past her quietness, bell-clinking the golden prong as she dropped it into her half empty salad bowl.
A waiter approached the powdery white linen covered table as delicately, and as cautious as an unsure salesman, wrapped in an inky black tuxedo, refastening his silver ribbon cuffs. He leaned over the moon colored disc retrieving the salad vessel. He nodded, keeping silent, Milieu lost in a stare, he pulled back, gazing at her intentionally, standing aside.
Her thoughts rang loudly like noon church bells. She pondered the reasons why she might stay, the reasons she will go, lost in the chalky grey cut-outs of the cold green glass and blackened steel of the curb side restaurant. Like blue-gold ocean waves, the window panes melted, drizzled over crimson bricks. The fumes, thick and dusty, that would choke anyone, was like a cool humidifier sulking her face. There seemed only normalcy, levelness in the mechanical organism of urban biology. All her habits, those she hoped would die, the ones she worshipped and cherished, were neatly welded in the raunchiness of subway cars and urine freshened stairways. Unfortunately she had stretched beyond the tailoring of these city dreams. Formalistic and decisive, she was routine and structured. She smiled to the transfixed waiter. He then stuttered away whipping his head back to see if he were missing or had forgotten some significantly insignificant detail.
Below the ridges of the firmly pressed polyester cloth, chirped a small sparrow. Milieu barely moved lending to the calm inspection of the brown caped bird, dancing and prancing underneath the linen drape. It waddled hoveringly, fluttering its wings, blurring his tiny feathers into a tanned dust cloud. The winged creature flew rather oddly and by this, Milieu thought the bird to be injured or deformed in some way.
In the blink of Milieu’s inspection, the frail horned hip bones of her mother pressed against the iron bound chair across from Milieu, the woman’s talonized fingers groping the chair-back.
“Fascinated,” heralded Milieu’s mother saint. “I couldn’t wait to see you, you know,” she blushed on, her words about as squeakily plastic as new Tupperware, so very beneath their commonality. “It’s been ages,” she smiled, teeth framed by the Macys red clay cake-icing her lips. “Come here child,” her raspy utterance growled.
“Hello, Momma,” hugged Milieu, soft, enchanted by the sound of her mother’s delight. “I couldn’t wait either.” Milieu pressed the edge of her coattail into her slim waist. She reached out to help her mother into the chair.
The waiter approached, like a blue raven, baring two clear and shimmering glasses of water, questioning his thoughts, with too early a greeting. “Hello madam, would you like a wine to drink,” before setting down the crystal water glasses.
“I would like to sit for a moment sir, if you don’t mind? I’ve had a drive you’d never know,” puckered her smile, pastel and porcelain. “Don’t worry us yet. This is the city, and we country girls know how to wait.” She chuckled loudly, pausing, then looking toward Milieu.
The waiter turned, in confusion, away from the table to the patio of the restaurant dining area.
“You’re lovely dear, let me sit, I’ve kept you waiting and here you…” sat Milieu’s mother sighing. “Oh,” she breathed deeply. She pressed deep into the chair huffing in a healthy gulp of air.
“You know I do not miss this for any means,” she surveyed, her words imprinting into the newspaper flaxen air, reeking like the press of the morning tribune. “I can almost hear your father ranting, shredding the driver of his blithe dignity…Oh well” she laughs, “that’s the past.”
Milieu sipped, the cold teeming precipitous pool drenching her mouth.
Her mother removed a powder pink compact from her purse. She then put it back promptly, “who am I kidding,” she splashed laughingly, the arrogance of perfection wrinkling across her forehead. “I freshened inside.” For a moment she paused intimately; the noisy street hollowed in the distance, the sacred-family-vaulted-tight-taboos blared through the silence.
“How is Russell,” she drank, the old debutante shimmering with sinister glibness, returning her water glass for a second swig, sipping and peeping.
Milieu canted her head a little and batted her eyes. “Momma, Russell is not for me.” It was as though the mention of Russell’s name shrank her into adolescence by the whistling froth of a water glass. Milieu leaned forward. “I told you. We hoped for different things.”
“What is hoping Mil? What is hope?” she remarked in a condescended tone. “That’s all you hope. You couldn’t even finish your salad, and I was late.” She sarcastically flipped between slurps, protruding her lips round, preserving her lips’ clumpy shine.
Milieu was silent. A honking momentary hustle of the nearby colliding traffic breached the tension.
“You didn’t order me wine,” sneered the woman. “You know I always have wine when I’m in the city,” said Milieu’s mother reaching for the canvas covered menu, reading the handwritten calligraphy, and then looking past the top of the folded book. Milieu watched, her mother’s eyes glossing across the pages confounded. The woman chuckled to herself. “This little place is very benny-benny, Mil.” The woman acknowledged, implying Milieu’s self-centered taste for considering no one else’s palette but her own, so well served in her little place. Learned only from the trimmed ankle cuffs of her educated mother, this was the noble tendency Milieu heard in her mother’s comment.
“Your hair looks so cosmo swept back and pony-tailed Millie,” she footnoted. Milieu’s cheeks frosted over with the chill of reddened bashfulness, at the mention of her childhood nickname. Her mother continued to toss the menu edge, sailing the pages from one hand to the other.
The waiter returned from the inner portion of the building.
“We’re ready now. I’ll be having a fine glass of merlot, and your poached quail with rose pedals. And could I have a dish of vinaigrette soup? What will you have Millie?”
“I’d like the champagne glazed oysters with a garlic cookie, and a Biscayne.” Milieu smiled, not in a thankful sense for someone so eager to please her but in the appreciation he had in his obligation to serve them. She was raised that way. Milieu’s mother was the kind of mother, who told stories of governors, and mistresses, and you listened with a slight envy because perhaps your life would not be as grandiose and vibrant. Her mother carried the heiress of arrogance with nobility. Milieu was her jewel. A green emerald sifted from the deepest goodness of their ancestry. Now all that remained of the old woman gossip was the posture and class left by remnants of a socialite. It was for this purpose Milieu went away to an all girls boarding academy, while her mother moved out of the city.
The waiter appeared hosting the slim caldron of red merlot and the cylindrical frame of the Biscayne.
“Did you read the paper this morning?” Milieu asked.
He sat the drinks between the two ladies’ on the white gleam of the linen surface brightened lighter by the intense translucent clouded sky, against the cobblestone grays of the rocky ground beneath.
Her mother nodded, “why,” looking to the waiter in agreement.
That question; the improvisational sound of the singular syllable, was the ever questioning bane of low-toned sarcasm echoing in Milieu’s common thoughts.
Her mother removed the necessities for tea and mixed them. Milieu sat in silence and watched.
The fingers of the old woman, twigged like glossy-wet autumn branches, stirred the filter slowly, the round edges of her knuckles diffusing the murky amber into the waves of auburn liquid. She leaned her head back, lifting her arm, and dipping her finger to the palette of her flickering red tongue, and licked the golden dew from the edge of her nail. The lovely little woman was simple. Milieu smirked.
“You’re cute Momma.” Said Milieu realizing she loved this frail creature so posed in elegance.
The sparrow flittered near the small puddle bowled on the edge of the sidewalk. Milieu’s mother sipped the tea, her quivery swollen lips paddled against the cresting waves of amber gold.
“I wish I could have more lifetimes. I’d be so many things. I’d choose differently just..,” pausing “to see the chances again.” The old woman regretted, pondering the years.
The waiter surfaced with the fine chinaware of perfectly prepped dishes. He knew not to speak in the innocence of an outdoor lunch. He twisted back around to quiet the rustle of his presence.
A swell of emotion seeped into the nooks of the aging woman’s eyes. She lifted her glazened eyes, “I wish you could’ve been a little girl again. With your smile…you look at me; in your dresses, I see you. My sweet little Millie. I would have told you to do things a little different…” She quivered a smile. “You should have loved Russell in spite of Russell.” The woman composed proudly.
“I know Momma.” Milieu sighed back. “We can’t help the way we were. But I love you.” Breathing slowly, she surrendered to her breath’s release and said. “You did your best.” Milieu smiled through the wounding pain of forgiveness. What could she say to a mother’s apology?
“Momma. I didn’t invite you here to be sorry for anything.” She said as she reached over the cloth table to brush the cheek of her mother. “I want you to come live with me. When you’re ready, in your time.”
Milieu drizzled bronzed glaze of champagne over mucous in the deep cave of the blackened shell. She slurped the little snail, shutting her eyes to savor the bite. Milieu’s mother looked up, her daughter pouring orange-brown syrup on her garlic cookie. The crumbs flaked between her bite, dusting her lips.
The old woman winked over her smiling eyes. “In time. You know me.” She spoke as she deepened her smile. “My life is blessed on my rituals… I want you to see more Millie. More than I ever saw.”
Milieu pressed the gin cocktail to her lips. Hushed by the taboo of discussing so openly the true feelings she had stoking inside. Why had you neglected the confusion of an adolescent girl? Could I forget? Could this bitterness be forgiveness?
The oyster savored bitter and sweet in the fizzy texture of the glazed champagne. Once more the women had quieted their feelings over a finely prepared lunch. Milieu’s mother had apologized to the scars of the surface but not the crippled tissue of the tender underside.
Her mother supped the slim crystal glass spinning the wine in repetitious swirls between each taste. She seemed to bury her humility with each swig. If any more apologies were to be squelched from her it would be with the aftertaste of aged alcohol. This lunch was a reconstruction of love. There were solely the quiet options of their appetites motivating them.
“How is your food?” asked Milieu.
With a posh grin she enveloped, “Delicately normal, dear. I am so used to Leonard’s. But delightful. To say it was awfully decent of you to chose such a private place Millie is an understatement..or overstatement? Whichever.”
The two women pressed deeper into their final morsels encountering the silence with the chatter of metal and fine porcelain. The little brown sparrow chirped lowly with a swooning melody, perched on the railing behind them.
Milieu finished her last oyster and wiped the edges of her mouth. She reached down under the tablecloth. From underneath she removed her whitened leather purse.
“I don’t know how to do this but I don’t want you to say ‘no’ like you always try. But please, I am paying for lunch and I have something for you mother, and I would greatly appreciate it if you allowed me the honor of giving you this card. I had it specially printed.”
Milieu reached into the pocket of her slim white purse and removed two crisp one hundred dollar bills. “These are for the waiter,” said Milieu. Then she removed a pink tinted card trimmed with pink ribbon. Written were the words: Your Millie. Milieu carefully hid the writing on the card face from her mother’s view. “Don’t touch it, not till I’ve left.” She stood up slightly, bending a little, checking her surroundings for her things. Milieu twisted her wrist over to look at her watch. “My driver is meeting me at my apartment. I’d be late if I stay.”
The two women stood high and tall. They hugged tenderly.
“Ok. Take care of yourself.” Her mother said cordially.
“I will. You too. And not too much at the racetrack, you know how Daddy would be,” said Milieu.
“I love you dear Millie.” Her mother squeezed tighter. They stood for a minute. Their twined bodies delicately wrapped in silence, breathing in each precious moment. Milieu’s mother rubbed her back, then began letting go. But Milieu held a little deeper, a little tighter, a little longer. Milieu gasped a silent tear and looked up to the building edge to see the quaint little sparrow whistling a hallowed note.
“Okay.” Milieu whispered. “Okay.”
Milieu looked into her mother’s sainted eyes deeply, Milieu’s eyes glazing back the tears. Her mother smiled, her eyes crested with warm droplets, and she smiled.
“My Millie, my Milieu,” she said with stoic pride.
Milieu turned and walked away. Her mother clasped her hands together. The sparrow chirped. The waiter removed some of the dishes from the table to the tray.
“Maam.” He said. “This is for you.”
Milieu’s mother smiled with a proud look and took the pink card from his hand. She read the writing on the envelope. She untied the ribbon, and removed the card. The bird chirped. She smiled to herself.
“Me too, Millie. So did I.”
The End
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crimsonarchon reviewed Version 1 -
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The writing is good and the characters are fairly well fleshed out for such a short work, but to what end? This story isn’t really a story at all. It alludes to a number of things that have happened in the past but gives almost no details. What happened in the past exactly to drive these two apart? What made them the way they are? So many unanswered questions here. This would work well as a lead-in for a story but it doesn’t (at least to me) stand very well on its own. Also, as a somewhat smaller gripe, it seems to me that some of the longer sentences could have been split into several complete sentences and had the plethora of commas trimmed down a bit. I think that would make for an easier read.
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TabulaLife reviewed Version 1 -
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Your writing skills, in uses of descriptions, heightened vocabulary, and near-perfect blocking, and punctual spacing is of a caliber not many writers can achieve. You use interesting adjectives, and origional instances. such aspects as in, “The waiter approached, like a blue raven, baring two clear and shimmering glasses of water” are added touches that many writers pass by. ““Your hair looks so cosmo swept back and pony-tailed Millie,” she footnoted” the simple use of the word “footnoted” is unique in its own right. All in all, you seem to have edited this and revised to a point of perfectionin your own right.
RhapsodyRead reviewed Version 1 -
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You have an interesting way with words, but I would cut down on the similies and metaphores. They bog down your story and make it awkward to read. It was also a bit confusing when the mother prepared her tea. She ordered a merlot, but I saw nothing mentioned regarding water for tea until she started preparing it. A little confusing for the reader.
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