Yes, it seemed she did come to loving the old man somewhat, though it was nothing like that love that would have been if he were a young beau, no, it seemed more a daughterly kind of affection, and his love for her, a somewhat fatherly care that filled the holes in her heart left there by the absence of the real father she never had, as he had died in a freakish accident right before she came into this uncertain world: He had gone deer hunting one snowy November day and on the way hit a deer with his car; the deer smashing through the windshield; one of its antlers piercing through his eye into his brain. But yes, as I was saying, betwixt the two of them, there was an apparent measure of compassion, but no, not passionate love, there was little of love or lust for the flesh, though that fire was not all extinct in the old fellow and now and then the embers could flared up again ignited by the spark of her youth. And no, she was not a lovely dish that would fit into anyone's canon of beauty; she was not one men would chase after, or ever had chased after, for by nature and inheritance she had been bestowed with a long unshapely nose that severely distracted from, or let us say, ruined her otherwise quite good Italian looks. No… men would look only once at Cassandra, but never twice, except for Georgio.
***
And now here they are, the two of them, two years into their cohabitation, and in the same little house he has lived in since his marriage to his first wife Gina. Georgio is sitting now in his favorite spot in his favorite chair by the windows in the sunroom near an old stove that he has kept burning day and night and day through the long winter nights and days for sixty winters. It is his comfort spot in winter and summer too. And he loves that comforting old stove like some people love the comfort of an old dog. And there she is, his young wife of a mere thirty eight, Cassandra, puttering with the plants he had for thirty years kept there by the sun windows. Plants he had bought with his second wife, Maria, who died long ago right after they were married, as did Gina, his dear Gina, the only real love of his life, who passed some twenty years before that, having died in childbirth along with their child. Cassandra, his third, tends the plants through all four seasons, the old philodendrons, the various old ivy, the old rosemary and oregano, and on and on, and she has wanted to throw them all out ever since she married him two years ago, but Georgio wouldn't and still won't let her: “Keep them living, keep them living, keep them healthy and alive,” he'd tell her every time she'd threaten to throw them out, just as she was doing right now again, and “ Give them some tea,” (meaning some very weak plant food solution,) he'd always say, and usually, as he was saying now, “ and give me some too.”
“Tea, Tea... That's all you ever want is tea, tea, tea....” Cassandra chimed “tea, tea, tea, all morning long and all afternoon, that's all you ever want is tea…..tea, tea, tea.”
(But then Georgio did have his wine that he makes himself every year in the Italian tradition, a whole barrel of it kept cool in the cellar, where many things are put up from the garden he grows every year. Some wine he would have most every evening, enjoying modest sips of its pure earthy pleasure; some times all by himself while gazing out the windows in the dark in the sunroom at the mystic moon entranced in reverie, and some times old salty tears would come with the sips, and sometimes new salty tears, mingling with the tart-sweet taste of the Diego red on his lips and scraggy mustache.)
And then she said, “ Why don't you get up and do something today, and do something more then those stupid exercises you've been doing everyday for the whole two years I've been with you. Why don't you do some exercises on me, did you forget again how young I am?”
“Oh no, my little tulip, did you forget what a great part you are of my plan?” Georgio said, “And do not forget my goal of modesty in all pleasures, how often must I remind you? How many times have I told you that if I could only make “nothing” itself my pleasure, just the pure pleasure of being alive, I would.”
“ But what is life, what is it just to live to live. To live just to live to live?” Cassandra said, “ to measure every pleasure the way you do?”
“Ah, my dear,” said Georgio, “as I have explained to you so many times before, if each day is a treasure, then why wouldn't one want more and more and more and put in a treasure chest as much as they can, as many as they can, and more and more tomorrows store? Look at me, how trim I am, how strong yet for a man my age; how spry I can be if I need to, and how spry I can be with you who is less than half my age? Physical pleasure, my dear, is a dangerous thing for someone who wants the bare pleasure of staying alive, of being alive, of being healthfully alive, people think I am old because I am eighty years old and gray, but, I am not old, and you know Cassandra dear... am I old?”
“No…… yes, Georgio dear, I know you are not old.”
“And how do you know now, my dear tulip, but by the proof in your belly, by the power that produced that me and you inside of you.….a tomorrow to look forward to for us….. many tomorrows. We shall bring it up on parsley and tea, we shall bring it up on little, we shall bring it up on denial, and teach it the pleasure of the days, the bare, pure pleasure of being itself, the preciousness of a breath itself! Tea! Tea! Tea!, my dear Cassandra, do not you see how sparse the needs of the things that in nature grow, how the best ones are always closer to a state of starvation right near too little... too little... and if too much...... how if overfed they get sick, just as if underfed, and...........
“Oh please, please, that's so ridiculous, so foolish and funny; I've heard it all so many times before, Georgio,” she said, turning away from him to go get his tea and some “tea” for the plants by the window, “I've heard it all so many times before!” she said again as she left the sunroom, and he heard her singsonging on her way to the kitchen “Tea, tea, chicken broth, chicken broth and tea, we shall bring it up on chicken broth, and parsley and tea, tea tea tea.”
And now Georgio knew by her reference to “exercise”, and by the rebellious, frivolous way she was acting today, that that hunger of the flesh was knawing down inside her again anew……. that old itch that must be scratched from time to time. Pregnant she was, yes, but still months before the point of abstinence. And Georgio, having not been feeling so well as of late and keeping it a well hid secret from her, worried he was not up to fulfilling that husbandly obligation that rose up before him from time to time.
It is not OK for a man, especially a healthy man like Georgio, to say, “No, not tonight dear, I have a headache.”
Waiting for Cassandra to return with his tea, Georgio turned his comfortable old swivel chair around to face the sunny windows by the plants, as was his habit many times while having his tea. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and light snowflakes were gently falling, sparkling likes shards of crystal in the early winter sunshine that shone intermittently through the wide gaps of high white and gray slow ambling clouds. Such natural spontaneous occurrences of beauty in nature were among the things old Georgio loved to look at, and think about, and kept in his arsenal: The little book inside his mind full of many such small moments of visual pleasure such as that, that he kept there, thinking such simple pleasures were important for his good health and his sense of wellbeing.
A considerable while passed before Cassandra returned, bringing him his nice hot Salada tea, his favorite brand, made his way with a healthy squirt of fresh squeezed lemon and clover honey.
And as she approached him from behind his turned around chair, she sweetly chimed, “Oh Georgioooo!, here's your tea dear, your tea, your tea dear, turn your chair back around for your tea dear.”
But Georgio did not respond. So she repeated it again. “Your tea dear Georgioooo.” And still he did not respond.
And as a gray cloud slipped suddenly over the sun, darkening down the room…… she set the hot steaming tea down on a table near the old stove.
And then, with both hands on the back of the chair, and as the cloud passed returning the room to sunlight, she gently turned Georgio's chair slowly back around to face her…….
Only to see him slumped back……..
his head cocked stiffly upward……..
his eyes frozen open in their sockets…….
his mouth agape.
Cassandra then, calmly and quietly, checked Georgio's pulse, and there was none.
Then Cassandra calmly picked up the tea, and calmly walked back to the kitchen and poured it all down the drain and thoroughly washed out the cup and put it away. And thoroughly washed her hands.
And then, putting her right hand into her pocket, she felt the little brown medicinal jar, with skull and crossbones on it, that she had stuck in there only minutes before, and, retrieving it, took it into the bedroom and opened her purse and stuck it back into her purse where she had kept it hidden for many weeks, and then pulled a little white business card she had also kept hidden in there out of it and looked at it again.
It read: Board Certified OB/GYN Physicians
Abortion Services-Private
For consultation call 666-6666
And then she went and called the ambulance for Georgio.
