The Copper Locket

A Short Story by Michael F. Nyiri

Originally created for WhenWordsCollide on Xanga: March 25, 2011

She sat forward with a jolt. Birds in the distance warbled in song, as if they were chirping for the first time. Her eyesight, failing for decades, seemed to be sharper. She looked straight ahead and focused on the lace curtains blowing almost wistfully in the warm summer breeze. She could make out the stitching. The curtain on the left was slightly yellowed.

Suddenly Phyllis was awash in sweet, rich memories of Howard, her late husband. Howard had passed to the hereafter many years ago. How many? She wasn't exactly sure, but she knew the hole in her heart where his enduring love had resided for all of the time of their marriage had been empty for some time.

Her aged yet still somewhat smooth fingers reached instinctively for the faded copper locket around her neck. Howard had given it to her in 1951 as a seventh wedding anniversary present. The outside was burnished with age,  and the etched curlicues which used to be a deep black were so close to the surface that they had almost disappeared. Her index finger scraped lovingly along the curve of the locket hanging around her mottled, pursed neck, with wrinkles showing the peaks and valleys of a long life. She flicked at the hasp, but didn't have a need to open it. The locket contained the smiling black and white visage of Howard in his sailor's cap; one of the first photos he'd given her during the Big War when they met, the contrast now faded so one couldn't even ascertain his features.

Phyllis remembered the smile. Her memory instantly transported her to that bright day on Coney Island beach. She relived her marriage, too; her white haired hefty father parading her down the aisle of the Lutheran Church as if he were showing off one of his prize dogs. The sweet taste of Howard's kiss. How his smile melted her resolve during the honeymoon night. She closed her eyes, her hand almost absent mindedly still fingering the locket. So many memories. Phyllis was somehow acutely aware that she didn't have much time. She remembered the birth of their sons, Jack and John, one right after the other. She would get their names mixed up all the way into their adult years, and still might phone one and ask about the other. This never failed to irk both boys, now men, during their conversations. But both of them accepted this, as they had all their lives. They were in their fifties now, with grown kids of their own, and beautiful wives. They had lives. Separate lives. All Phyllis had were memories.

She was walking Jack to school. Or was it to the park after? He was smiling that selfsame grin which Howard was always able to summon. It was smaller, befitting the round five year old face from which it beamed. His azure eyes sparkled. He laughed as he ran ahead slightly, and Phyllis called him back to her side.

John got into trouble more than once. If Jack didn't "bail him out" as he would often remark, John might go to a place where he really did need to be bailed out. Howard was sometimes absent from the boys. After all, he worked long hours as a longshoreman, and was pretty tired in the evenings. A little television at night. Maybe some wrestling or a ballgame. And then he was ready for bed. Howard always retired before Phyllis and the kids went to bed. If he hadn't been so tired as to fall instantly asleep, he would have been able to hear them laughing and playing until late in the evening. Phyllis loved her boys, her devil and her angel, and sometimes spoiled them a little.

But she spoiled them with pure love.

In time, so short a time it seemed, the boys grew up and grew away. Howard had more time now to spend with her after the boys left, Jack for college, and John for the service, like his father. Howard retired at 65. Was that in 1986? They shuttered the house which had been a home for decades to the four of them, and Howard and Phyllis spent the next decade traveling around the country in a large Winnebago motor coach. Soon dozens of touristy stickers adorned the rear of the coach. They even visited Coney Island once, but it was only a sad ghost of the vibrant place where they met so long ago.

Phyllis got up from the rocking chair and silently moved over to the nightstand. She reached out to the phone nested in it's cradle, all the while her right hand almost glued to the locket, almost as if the copper color in her hands had fused with the copper color of the locket. She had both boys on speed dial. She pushed the small button for Jack, her angel. "Mom?" Jack's voice boomed after he spotted her number on his phone's screen.

"John" Phyllis called.

Mixing up the boys, as usual.

"It's Jack, Mom. Mom, are you all right? I was going to call you later tonight."

"I'm at the hotel. Can you come and get me?"

"Mom, that's your home now." Jack had said those words so often that they came out of his mouth as if by rote. "Can you see your dresser? And the painting of Dad and you above the chair?"

"Is Howard with you?" She used her husband's given name instead of saying "Father" as she'd always called her husband when addressing her sons.

"Mom, Dad passed away five years ago. He's with Jesus now."

"Could you put him on the phone?"

The conversation, or what passed as one anyway, caromed like this for almost half an hour. Phyllis by turns got upset, angry, and saddened. Her right hand had dropped the locket, and it bounced around in the valley deep in her bosom. She was frightened, like when she was only seven, and the lamp had gone out in the front room during a storm. She very clearly saw the look on her own mother's face, worried but genuinely loving, giving her a safe place. She needed something safe right now. Where was Howard? Why wasn't Jack, or was it John, coming to get her and take her away from this lonesome hotel and back to the house? Why was everything so screwed up?

She looked blankly at the handset, and even though Jack were still trying to appease her, his voice fading in the distance, she put it back in the receiver's cradle, and the connection disappeared.

The curtains were still flapping about around the window, but they were hazy, and foreign. The yellowed pall washed over them completely. The window became an open maw, mocking her. Laughing at her. She grabbed the locket. This was safe. This was important to her. Phyllis looked down at it, staring at it, wanting to make it tell her what was happening. Why was the world getting all fuzzy? Where was....what was her husband's name, anyway?

The room in the elder care facility was smallish, furnished with the remnants of her life as she once remembered it, but rarely did these days. At 84, Phyllis had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for almost eight years now. The good days hardly ever came anymore. Her home was a hotel from which she could never check out. Her clothes were old and the yellow curtains never seemed to be washed. She never remembered who she was talking to. And there was the other woman in the mirror, who never seemed to go away. The woman in the mirror. The yellow curtains. The hotel. They all mocked her, and made her feel miserable.

Now she couldn't even remember what his name was.

She fingered the copper locket. Yes, this was important. This was the only link she had with sanity. This was her safety and her reality. She opened the hasp, having a bit trouble as usual, and looked at the photo held fast with little clips within. She didn't recognize the man in the sailor's cap. She didn't recognize the smile.

Phyllis sank back into the rocking chair, and finally let the locket slip from her grasp. Everything in her life was slipping. Everything was... forgotten.

In time she fell asleep. A deep, restful sleep. And she dreamed of Howard, smiling at her and telling her everything was going to be all right.