(no subject)
Suddenly everyone wanted to see what had become of the creepy, mysterious mansion on the hill, and the creepy, mysterious, slightly off stranger living within. Melora anxiously tapped her nails against the window-pane. Edward watched her from deep within the shadows of the house, feeling as if the emptiness of the house threatened to tear through his life, shake it to pieces. Melora would go out those doors, and she would never come back. Or worse, she would come back, with an army a hundred strong, come to rip him apart and destroy the peace in his heart.
Melora snapped the curtain back in place and stalked around the living room. Edward had never seen her so tense before. Melora had been rather strained at work, regretting the barbecue to come more and more each day. Michael did not stop by anymore, perhaps sensing that Melora would blame him for his parent’s attempts to bring her into the community. Home did not seem like a safe haven anymore, when soon strangers would be trampling the grass that grew there.
“I can’t stand this!” Melora gnashed her teeth, “those voyeuristic bastards, pretending like they want to get to know me, I know they just want to oogle at me and get a glimpse of the horrid, ugly ruined castle they think I live in!”
“Will they come in?” Edward whispered.
Melora stopped her pacing. “No. No, they won’t. There’s no way I’ll let them. This is our home. But...they could see you through a window. No doubt they’re going to try to get a look at the inside.” Melora scowled. The time was fast approaching. “In the bathroom. There are no windows there.”
And so Edward climbed the stairs, somehow feeling abandoned, even though he told himself that it was for his own protection. He shut himself in, his blades scraping against the wood of the door, sealing up the room in darkness. He wandered around the bathroom, trying his best to avoid the tub, and sat down in a far corner. Edward drew his legs up close to his chest, and awkwardly wrapped his arms around his knees. There he closed his eyes and thought of Melora’s smile, telling himself that it would be the first thing he would see when that door opened again.
Downstairs, Melora tossed the large salad she’d prepared for the afternoon’s activities. All the while, Melora told herself this was a one-off, and after this she would never have to entertain again. She felt horribly guilty for shutting Edward up in the bathroom, but she convinced herself that it was for his own protection.
The hour waxed and waned, and soon the sun shone in the middle of the sky. One by one, they made their way up the long driveway, abandoning their cars at the foot of the hill to travel on foot. One by one they spilled through the gate, filling the lawn with their nervous laughter and the smell of food. A grill was set up, and soon burger patties were cooking. Children chased each other through the sculpture, never straying too far from their parents, who milled about drinking their strawberry daiquiris and chatting. Melora nearly tore the curtain, she was so furious. The nerve they had, setting up their grills and lawn chairs even before they saw their host. She silently bared her teeth at all of them, and then stood back. She straightened her hair, pulled up her socks, and, salad bowl in hand, went out to greet her neighbors.
Chatter stopped as soon as Melora appeared. There were a lot of people she barely recognized, along with Michael and Brian, and even Eric from the thrift-store was there.
“Well.” Melora stated a little icily, “enjoy yourselves, by all means...” her eyes shot to the children running about in the garden-“but I ask that you treat the horticulture with respect, and absolutely no one is allowed inside the house.”
The silence went on, and Melora began to sweat. People were looking at her expectantly. What did they want her to say? “So, uh, have fun, all of you, and...welcome to my barbecue?” Melora balked inside; she couldn’t believe she’d said something so dumb sounding. However, the guests seemed satisfied, and went back to chatting amongst themselves. Melora frowned, but set the bowl of salad down on a table and went back inside.
All the lamps and candles had been extinguished to discourage the guests from peering through the windows. Melora traveled up the long staircase to the upper floor, slowly opening the door to the bathroom. It was pitch dark inside, and absolutely silent. Then Melora heard a few soft snips. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Melora spotted a few bolts and buckles, weakly glinting in the gloom . Drawing closer, she saw Edward’s pale face lift, his eyes lost in the deeply cast shadows beneath his brow.
“I just came in to see how you were doing.” Melora said, kneeling beside Edward. She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he turned his face to hers.
“Have they tried to come in?” he whispered.
“No. I think it should be fine.” Melora said, and then bent to kiss his cheek. Edward smiled softly, and for a moment Melora could see tiny pin-pricks of light shining in the two caverns of his eyes. “I have to go now; the longer they miss me, the more they’ll want to come in here and find me.”
Melora closed the door behind her and made her way down the stairs, out into the garden. She stood in a place that seemed out of the way, where she could watch the goings on of her neighbors. It wasn’t long, though, before one of the women of the village struck up a conversation with her.
She was tanned, in her late thirties, a creature of perfume and nails and lipstick and of high heels. Her hair was cut short, the color some sort of brownish-blond variety. Her dress ended at her knees, and was covered in lime-green and hot-pink watermelons. In her hand she held a little plastic cup of ice tea, and on her ears dangled two teardrop pearls.
“Hi, my name’s Jenna Parker. What made you decide to move in here? It’s quite the fixer-upper, isn’t it?”
“I’m a very private person. It’s hard to paint when there are so many distractions to deal with in town,” Melora answered, “and I think I’ve managed quite well with the repairs. I don’t need anything fancy. I actually like the way it looks.”
“What, on the outside?” the woman sipped her ice tea, “I guess if that’s your thing. So you paint? Like, on canvases? Ever think of taking them into town to sell?”
“I suppose I could. I don’t know if anyone would want to buy them, though. I’m afraid people would think them too unusual.”
“Unusual?” The woman replied, looking confused, but before she could continue, another woman came up to Melora. “Lucille Balle. No relation. Nice place you got here. Quite the view.” Lucille had brown hair, that was cut too thinly for her features, which were dark and flushed with rosaceae. Her nails were not painted, and her clothes were very simple and casual. With the two women facing her, Melora pressed her back a little more firmly against the facade of the mansion. Melora felt short and young next to them, perhaps secretly criticized for owning such a large house in her youth.
In the next hour, many women came up to Melora. None of the men offered to talk to her. The women asked Melora a lot of questions, mostly having to do with her future there at the mansion, but also questions about where she came from. Melora dodged these questions as best as she could, often blatantly ignoring them as they came up. All the women frightened her, to some extent. They seemed so garish, so replaceable, though Melora knew this was a very petty judgement. The conversation was so empty. Melora longed to scrub the paint off their faces and hands, mess up their hair, dirty up their dresses, and expose the most vulnerable parts of them. Not out of malice, but out of an allergy to their ridiculous pretensions as they were. They seemed so ugly to Melora, ugly in their loud colors and expensive perfume and caked on makeup, and the worst part about it was that she could tell they all thought they looked stunning. These were the sort of women who would try so desperately to include Melora in their leisure time, introduce her to all of their friends, and then be offended when she would rather paint alone in her studio. They were a trap, a very dangerous one. They were there to tear down Melora’s barrier of privacy, they would force their way into her home with Edward and laugh at how poor they both were, or look at her paintings and feel sorry for her, or discuss what a scandal it was that she was living by herself with a man who was so handicapped.
These were the thoughts Melora had as every woman in the neighborhood came up to talk to her, and no one noticed that while her lips smiled, her eyes were guarded. She refused the food and drink they had brought, and firmly denied them entrance to her home when they insisted on seeing the reparations she’d done.
Finally, she heard a man’s voice above the high chatter of the females, and Brian parted the women to draw Melora out and away from the others.
“Thanks. They were getting a little tiring to talk to.” Melora said.
“No problem. I can tell that this isn’t really your sort of thing.” Brian replied.
“You’re so right! I can’t believe people actually do this sort of thing on a regular basis.”
They walked away from the noise of the barbecue, Brian following Melora to the back of the house where the vegetable garden was. The day was hot, the chill autumn not having set in yet. Brian’s heart was beating wildly in his chest as he watched Melora walk before him. Her dress was checkered grey, tying in the back with a bow; her hair in its habitual side buns. Her skin was luminescent in the sunshine, and the bees seemed to follow her away from the flowered landscape of the front yard. Melora did not notice the insects as they spun lazily around her. Having never seen Melora in her natural settings before, Brian could only wonder at how she transformed her surroundings to become enchanted. The air around her was sweet and fresh, hot as it was, the grass did not seem to bend beneath her feet as she walked.
“Is this your garden?” Brian asked.
“Yeah, I’m hoping I’ll be able to live mostly off this in a while; my finances are pretty tight.” Melora replied.
They spoke for a while, idly, Melora’s eyes constantly wandering back to the front yard. If Brian seemed a little tense, Melora didn’t pay too much attention to it. Her mind was mostly on Edward, hoping the barbecue would end soon so that she could join him.
“Melora...” Brain started, and then stopped. She glanced back at him, lifting her eyebrows.
“Yes, Brian?”
“I need to ask you something.”
“...I can see that.” Melora said, hoping her tone was cheerful and not critical.
“Melora...ever since I met you, you’ve been in my mind.” Brian shifted from foot to foot. “God, that sounds terrible.”
“Take your time.”
“...Out of all the girls in this town, you’re the only one who does anything for me-”
“I-do something for you...” Melora said incredulously; “surely not.”
“Please, let me finish...Melora, you’re so smart and interesting, and you’re really pretty in a kind of weird way, and...” Brian sighed, “this is really hard to say.”
“Pray continue.” Melora leaned against the facade of the house, kicking lightly at the grass with the heel of her boot.
“Melora, to me you are, and have always been, and will always be-the pink, the pearl, the perf-”
“...ection of my sex. You’ve been reading Virginia Woolf, I see.”
Brian looked hurt. “You don’t have to shoot me down like that. You can just say no, you know. I know I’m not your type.”
If only you knew what my type was... “I’m sorry, Brian. It must have taken a lot of courage to say all that just now; I didn’t mean to crush your hopes. But you still haven’t asked me your question yet.”
Brian was at a loss. In theory, Brian knew that he wasn’t the sort of guy that girls like Melora went after, even if he really didn’t know what the profile for a girl like Melora was. In practice, though, Brian was unused to handling rejection, and had assumed that with a little integrity Melora would see that dating him was the best thing for her.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, not to me.”
“Then...what I’m asking is...uh...is...will you go to the Sadie-Hawkin’s dance with me?”
Melora stared at him, hard. “The Sadie-Hawkins’s dance. I thought that was an event where the girls asked the boys out. You haven’t had any invitations?”
“Of course I’ve had invitations! But the only person I want to go with is you, and I didn’t think you’d know about it unless I asked first.”
“Now, hold on a minute...” Melora said, “out of all the girls, and I’m sure there were plenty, out of all the girls who asked you out, not one of them appealed to you?”
“Nope, compared to you, they’re all...well, I don’t know...I feel like I could get to know them completely in fifteen minutes. They all like the same stuff. And it’s not that they’re not good looking, it’s just, I get so tired, sometimes, of looking at the same face on every girl.”
“It’s Stepford down there, and you’re looking for something that wasn’t pieced together by Hugh Hefner and Kate Moss, correct?”
“Uhm...I think so. Yeah.”
Melora sighed, looking around herself at the safe haven that she had built, and felt saddened that it was now being invaded by such triteness. “Brian, everyone is different. I don’t know why your people try so hard to appear the same; but I bet that if you just looked hard enough, and spent some time at it, you would find that every girl down there is a treasure waiting to be discovered, a sleeping beauty waiting to be awakened. They just don’t know it yet.”
Brian looked crestfallen. “So you’re saying you won’t go to the dance with me?”
“No, Brian, I won’t go to the dance with you,” Melora said in frustration, “instead, why don’t you take the time to get to know all the girls who would give anything to dance with you? You could be their hero; you could rescue them from a life of boredom and Pleasantville-pleasantness.”
“What?”
Melora gritted her teeth, forcing herself to be patient. “I’m not some shooting star you have to catch. God, I don’t even know how old I am, I could be old enough to be your mother with a stretch of the imagination! There are so many girls down there, sleeping, waiting, drowning in a sea of sameness and lowered expectations. I’m telling you to go down there and give them a chance to shine, unearth their hidden glory-” Melora stopped, and Brian followed her gaze as a look of horror spread over her face.
“NO!” Melora shouted, and ran towards the front of the house, Brian close behind. Melora’s legs pumped furiously, her hair bouncing on the sides of her head. Though the day was hot, Melora felt chilled inside. “Stop that!” she yelled, her eyes wide as she watched the children of the neighborhood stomping through the flower-beds, ripping up grass and flowers in their play. Some were trying to climb on the hortisculptures, others were digging holes in the earth to play games. And, to her horror, many of them were trying to climb through the windows of the house, trying to look inside.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Melora’s cries grew frantic. No one heard her; the adults laughing over their private jokes, pretending not to notice the havoc their children were wreaking. Melora could just see them, throwing their martini-mixes on all her paintings, tearing apart her furniture, breaking the priceless china, and once they had done that, they would make their way upward, forcing all the doors open, hauling Edward up over their shoulders, touching him, unbuckling him, tearing out his hair, ripping him to pieces to carry them home as souvenirs.
Melora stomped over to a picnic table and lifted a large pot of casserole. Then, using all her strength, she heaved it at the facade of the house. The sound of shattering porcelain pierced the din of laughter, and suddenly all was silent, eyes fixated on the trembling, furious figure in the middle of the yard.
“The party is over. Pack your things up, and leave now.”
No one protested. Melora could see that they all thought she was overreacting, though nevertheless they packed up their grills and napkins and tables and plates, and no one asked her about the casserole dish. Melora could see that secretly, they knew they were guilty. Brian tried to come up to her, but she said to him, quietly, “Go away, Brian. I can’t talk to you right now.”
When they had all left, making their way down the long, serpentine driveway, Melora allowed herself to relax just a little bit. She turned to the garden, feeling like her heart was dissolving. It was a mess. It wasn’t anything serious; she and Edward could patch it up, she was sure. It was really the insult of it all, that a haven for so long had turned into a stomping ground for strangers. It had been Edward and Melora’s playground, free from prying eyes.
We’ll fix it. It wont be this way forever. Melora thought to herself, Edward probably misses me. I can take care of this later.
Melora made her way back to the giant front doors, thankful that inside was completely undisturbed. All of her paintings hung against the studio wall, dark and bright squares greeting her. She touched the velvet cushions of the couch, intact and welcoming. Melora climbed the staircase, touching the crouched, vulture-like sculpture perched on the banister.
Reaching the top of the staircase, she stood directly before the door to the bathroom. It was then that Melora knew that something was off. The single wall light was on, and the door was half-open. Her blood turned to ice at the sight of two sneakered feet peering out from under the door. Melora rallied her wits about her, preparing herself for a possible fight. She then quickly pushed open the door, fist raised.
The girl turned to look at her, her skin white as a sheet. She was trembling. Edward stood in the corner farthest from her, his arms awkwardly crossed over himself, his head bent downward.
“...Paula?” Melora asked shakily, lowering her fist.
Melora snapped the curtain back in place and stalked around the living room. Edward had never seen her so tense before. Melora had been rather strained at work, regretting the barbecue to come more and more each day. Michael did not stop by anymore, perhaps sensing that Melora would blame him for his parent’s attempts to bring her into the community. Home did not seem like a safe haven anymore, when soon strangers would be trampling the grass that grew there.
“I can’t stand this!” Melora gnashed her teeth, “those voyeuristic bastards, pretending like they want to get to know me, I know they just want to oogle at me and get a glimpse of the horrid, ugly ruined castle they think I live in!”
“Will they come in?” Edward whispered.
Melora stopped her pacing. “No. No, they won’t. There’s no way I’ll let them. This is our home. But...they could see you through a window. No doubt they’re going to try to get a look at the inside.” Melora scowled. The time was fast approaching. “In the bathroom. There are no windows there.”
And so Edward climbed the stairs, somehow feeling abandoned, even though he told himself that it was for his own protection. He shut himself in, his blades scraping against the wood of the door, sealing up the room in darkness. He wandered around the bathroom, trying his best to avoid the tub, and sat down in a far corner. Edward drew his legs up close to his chest, and awkwardly wrapped his arms around his knees. There he closed his eyes and thought of Melora’s smile, telling himself that it would be the first thing he would see when that door opened again.
Downstairs, Melora tossed the large salad she’d prepared for the afternoon’s activities. All the while, Melora told herself this was a one-off, and after this she would never have to entertain again. She felt horribly guilty for shutting Edward up in the bathroom, but she convinced herself that it was for his own protection.
The hour waxed and waned, and soon the sun shone in the middle of the sky. One by one, they made their way up the long driveway, abandoning their cars at the foot of the hill to travel on foot. One by one they spilled through the gate, filling the lawn with their nervous laughter and the smell of food. A grill was set up, and soon burger patties were cooking. Children chased each other through the sculpture, never straying too far from their parents, who milled about drinking their strawberry daiquiris and chatting. Melora nearly tore the curtain, she was so furious. The nerve they had, setting up their grills and lawn chairs even before they saw their host. She silently bared her teeth at all of them, and then stood back. She straightened her hair, pulled up her socks, and, salad bowl in hand, went out to greet her neighbors.
Chatter stopped as soon as Melora appeared. There were a lot of people she barely recognized, along with Michael and Brian, and even Eric from the thrift-store was there.
“Well.” Melora stated a little icily, “enjoy yourselves, by all means...” her eyes shot to the children running about in the garden-“but I ask that you treat the horticulture with respect, and absolutely no one is allowed inside the house.”
The silence went on, and Melora began to sweat. People were looking at her expectantly. What did they want her to say? “So, uh, have fun, all of you, and...welcome to my barbecue?” Melora balked inside; she couldn’t believe she’d said something so dumb sounding. However, the guests seemed satisfied, and went back to chatting amongst themselves. Melora frowned, but set the bowl of salad down on a table and went back inside.
All the lamps and candles had been extinguished to discourage the guests from peering through the windows. Melora traveled up the long staircase to the upper floor, slowly opening the door to the bathroom. It was pitch dark inside, and absolutely silent. Then Melora heard a few soft snips. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Melora spotted a few bolts and buckles, weakly glinting in the gloom . Drawing closer, she saw Edward’s pale face lift, his eyes lost in the deeply cast shadows beneath his brow.
“I just came in to see how you were doing.” Melora said, kneeling beside Edward. She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he turned his face to hers.
“Have they tried to come in?” he whispered.
“No. I think it should be fine.” Melora said, and then bent to kiss his cheek. Edward smiled softly, and for a moment Melora could see tiny pin-pricks of light shining in the two caverns of his eyes. “I have to go now; the longer they miss me, the more they’ll want to come in here and find me.”
Melora closed the door behind her and made her way down the stairs, out into the garden. She stood in a place that seemed out of the way, where she could watch the goings on of her neighbors. It wasn’t long, though, before one of the women of the village struck up a conversation with her.
She was tanned, in her late thirties, a creature of perfume and nails and lipstick and of high heels. Her hair was cut short, the color some sort of brownish-blond variety. Her dress ended at her knees, and was covered in lime-green and hot-pink watermelons. In her hand she held a little plastic cup of ice tea, and on her ears dangled two teardrop pearls.
“Hi, my name’s Jenna Parker. What made you decide to move in here? It’s quite the fixer-upper, isn’t it?”
“I’m a very private person. It’s hard to paint when there are so many distractions to deal with in town,” Melora answered, “and I think I’ve managed quite well with the repairs. I don’t need anything fancy. I actually like the way it looks.”
“What, on the outside?” the woman sipped her ice tea, “I guess if that’s your thing. So you paint? Like, on canvases? Ever think of taking them into town to sell?”
“I suppose I could. I don’t know if anyone would want to buy them, though. I’m afraid people would think them too unusual.”
“Unusual?” The woman replied, looking confused, but before she could continue, another woman came up to Melora. “Lucille Balle. No relation. Nice place you got here. Quite the view.” Lucille had brown hair, that was cut too thinly for her features, which were dark and flushed with rosaceae. Her nails were not painted, and her clothes were very simple and casual. With the two women facing her, Melora pressed her back a little more firmly against the facade of the mansion. Melora felt short and young next to them, perhaps secretly criticized for owning such a large house in her youth.
In the next hour, many women came up to Melora. None of the men offered to talk to her. The women asked Melora a lot of questions, mostly having to do with her future there at the mansion, but also questions about where she came from. Melora dodged these questions as best as she could, often blatantly ignoring them as they came up. All the women frightened her, to some extent. They seemed so garish, so replaceable, though Melora knew this was a very petty judgement. The conversation was so empty. Melora longed to scrub the paint off their faces and hands, mess up their hair, dirty up their dresses, and expose the most vulnerable parts of them. Not out of malice, but out of an allergy to their ridiculous pretensions as they were. They seemed so ugly to Melora, ugly in their loud colors and expensive perfume and caked on makeup, and the worst part about it was that she could tell they all thought they looked stunning. These were the sort of women who would try so desperately to include Melora in their leisure time, introduce her to all of their friends, and then be offended when she would rather paint alone in her studio. They were a trap, a very dangerous one. They were there to tear down Melora’s barrier of privacy, they would force their way into her home with Edward and laugh at how poor they both were, or look at her paintings and feel sorry for her, or discuss what a scandal it was that she was living by herself with a man who was so handicapped.
These were the thoughts Melora had as every woman in the neighborhood came up to talk to her, and no one noticed that while her lips smiled, her eyes were guarded. She refused the food and drink they had brought, and firmly denied them entrance to her home when they insisted on seeing the reparations she’d done.
Finally, she heard a man’s voice above the high chatter of the females, and Brian parted the women to draw Melora out and away from the others.
“Thanks. They were getting a little tiring to talk to.” Melora said.
“No problem. I can tell that this isn’t really your sort of thing.” Brian replied.
“You’re so right! I can’t believe people actually do this sort of thing on a regular basis.”
They walked away from the noise of the barbecue, Brian following Melora to the back of the house where the vegetable garden was. The day was hot, the chill autumn not having set in yet. Brian’s heart was beating wildly in his chest as he watched Melora walk before him. Her dress was checkered grey, tying in the back with a bow; her hair in its habitual side buns. Her skin was luminescent in the sunshine, and the bees seemed to follow her away from the flowered landscape of the front yard. Melora did not notice the insects as they spun lazily around her. Having never seen Melora in her natural settings before, Brian could only wonder at how she transformed her surroundings to become enchanted. The air around her was sweet and fresh, hot as it was, the grass did not seem to bend beneath her feet as she walked.
“Is this your garden?” Brian asked.
“Yeah, I’m hoping I’ll be able to live mostly off this in a while; my finances are pretty tight.” Melora replied.
They spoke for a while, idly, Melora’s eyes constantly wandering back to the front yard. If Brian seemed a little tense, Melora didn’t pay too much attention to it. Her mind was mostly on Edward, hoping the barbecue would end soon so that she could join him.
“Melora...” Brain started, and then stopped. She glanced back at him, lifting her eyebrows.
“Yes, Brian?”
“I need to ask you something.”
“...I can see that.” Melora said, hoping her tone was cheerful and not critical.
“Melora...ever since I met you, you’ve been in my mind.” Brian shifted from foot to foot. “God, that sounds terrible.”
“Take your time.”
“...Out of all the girls in this town, you’re the only one who does anything for me-”
“I-do something for you...” Melora said incredulously; “surely not.”
“Please, let me finish...Melora, you’re so smart and interesting, and you’re really pretty in a kind of weird way, and...” Brian sighed, “this is really hard to say.”
“Pray continue.” Melora leaned against the facade of the house, kicking lightly at the grass with the heel of her boot.
“Melora, to me you are, and have always been, and will always be-the pink, the pearl, the perf-”
“...ection of my sex. You’ve been reading Virginia Woolf, I see.”
Brian looked hurt. “You don’t have to shoot me down like that. You can just say no, you know. I know I’m not your type.”
If only you knew what my type was... “I’m sorry, Brian. It must have taken a lot of courage to say all that just now; I didn’t mean to crush your hopes. But you still haven’t asked me your question yet.”
Brian was at a loss. In theory, Brian knew that he wasn’t the sort of guy that girls like Melora went after, even if he really didn’t know what the profile for a girl like Melora was. In practice, though, Brian was unused to handling rejection, and had assumed that with a little integrity Melora would see that dating him was the best thing for her.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, not to me.”
“Then...what I’m asking is...uh...is...will you go to the Sadie-Hawkin’s dance with me?”
Melora stared at him, hard. “The Sadie-Hawkins’s dance. I thought that was an event where the girls asked the boys out. You haven’t had any invitations?”
“Of course I’ve had invitations! But the only person I want to go with is you, and I didn’t think you’d know about it unless I asked first.”
“Now, hold on a minute...” Melora said, “out of all the girls, and I’m sure there were plenty, out of all the girls who asked you out, not one of them appealed to you?”
“Nope, compared to you, they’re all...well, I don’t know...I feel like I could get to know them completely in fifteen minutes. They all like the same stuff. And it’s not that they’re not good looking, it’s just, I get so tired, sometimes, of looking at the same face on every girl.”
“It’s Stepford down there, and you’re looking for something that wasn’t pieced together by Hugh Hefner and Kate Moss, correct?”
“Uhm...I think so. Yeah.”
Melora sighed, looking around herself at the safe haven that she had built, and felt saddened that it was now being invaded by such triteness. “Brian, everyone is different. I don’t know why your people try so hard to appear the same; but I bet that if you just looked hard enough, and spent some time at it, you would find that every girl down there is a treasure waiting to be discovered, a sleeping beauty waiting to be awakened. They just don’t know it yet.”
Brian looked crestfallen. “So you’re saying you won’t go to the dance with me?”
“No, Brian, I won’t go to the dance with you,” Melora said in frustration, “instead, why don’t you take the time to get to know all the girls who would give anything to dance with you? You could be their hero; you could rescue them from a life of boredom and Pleasantville-pleasantness.”
“What?”
Melora gritted her teeth, forcing herself to be patient. “I’m not some shooting star you have to catch. God, I don’t even know how old I am, I could be old enough to be your mother with a stretch of the imagination! There are so many girls down there, sleeping, waiting, drowning in a sea of sameness and lowered expectations. I’m telling you to go down there and give them a chance to shine, unearth their hidden glory-” Melora stopped, and Brian followed her gaze as a look of horror spread over her face.
“NO!” Melora shouted, and ran towards the front of the house, Brian close behind. Melora’s legs pumped furiously, her hair bouncing on the sides of her head. Though the day was hot, Melora felt chilled inside. “Stop that!” she yelled, her eyes wide as she watched the children of the neighborhood stomping through the flower-beds, ripping up grass and flowers in their play. Some were trying to climb on the hortisculptures, others were digging holes in the earth to play games. And, to her horror, many of them were trying to climb through the windows of the house, trying to look inside.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Melora’s cries grew frantic. No one heard her; the adults laughing over their private jokes, pretending not to notice the havoc their children were wreaking. Melora could just see them, throwing their martini-mixes on all her paintings, tearing apart her furniture, breaking the priceless china, and once they had done that, they would make their way upward, forcing all the doors open, hauling Edward up over their shoulders, touching him, unbuckling him, tearing out his hair, ripping him to pieces to carry them home as souvenirs.
Melora stomped over to a picnic table and lifted a large pot of casserole. Then, using all her strength, she heaved it at the facade of the house. The sound of shattering porcelain pierced the din of laughter, and suddenly all was silent, eyes fixated on the trembling, furious figure in the middle of the yard.
“The party is over. Pack your things up, and leave now.”
No one protested. Melora could see that they all thought she was overreacting, though nevertheless they packed up their grills and napkins and tables and plates, and no one asked her about the casserole dish. Melora could see that secretly, they knew they were guilty. Brian tried to come up to her, but she said to him, quietly, “Go away, Brian. I can’t talk to you right now.”
When they had all left, making their way down the long, serpentine driveway, Melora allowed herself to relax just a little bit. She turned to the garden, feeling like her heart was dissolving. It was a mess. It wasn’t anything serious; she and Edward could patch it up, she was sure. It was really the insult of it all, that a haven for so long had turned into a stomping ground for strangers. It had been Edward and Melora’s playground, free from prying eyes.
We’ll fix it. It wont be this way forever. Melora thought to herself, Edward probably misses me. I can take care of this later.
Melora made her way back to the giant front doors, thankful that inside was completely undisturbed. All of her paintings hung against the studio wall, dark and bright squares greeting her. She touched the velvet cushions of the couch, intact and welcoming. Melora climbed the staircase, touching the crouched, vulture-like sculpture perched on the banister.
Reaching the top of the staircase, she stood directly before the door to the bathroom. It was then that Melora knew that something was off. The single wall light was on, and the door was half-open. Her blood turned to ice at the sight of two sneakered feet peering out from under the door. Melora rallied her wits about her, preparing herself for a possible fight. She then quickly pushed open the door, fist raised.
The girl turned to look at her, her skin white as a sheet. She was trembling. Edward stood in the corner farthest from her, his arms awkwardly crossed over himself, his head bent downward.
“...Paula?” Melora asked shakily, lowering her fist.