It was time.
That thought almost had Maisy throwing up. She’d been ignoring, protecting, fearing the damn stuff for a long time.
It was time.
But to do what with it. It had felt like an anchor around her leg for a long time. What made today, the day?
The doorbell rang. Maisy’s body spasmed as the ringing sound jolted through her like a cattle prod. She pressed her hand to her chest, hoping to slow her galloping heart. The good news was that it must be in okay shape, she hadn’t keeled over. Yet.
The doorbell rang again.
“I hear you,” she muttered, letting out a hissing breath. She slowly made her way to the front door. Part of her was wondering who was on the other side, part of her wanted them to go away. She had things to do. Things she’d put off for too long.
Pasting on the smile her mother had told her would win her prizes but hadn’t, she unlocked and opened her front door.
“Well, what did I do to get such a wonderful surprise?”
Jenna, her granddaughter, smiled back at her but her young son disappeared behind her legs.
Maisy crouched down, immediately regretting it. She didn’t want to be that scary old lady, like her mom had been. “No need to be shy. I’m Grandma.”
She made a big deal of peeking around Jenna’s legs. “Where could that little one have gone?” The boy, whom she guessed was about three, giggled. It was nice, childlike and innocent. Something she hadn’t heard or felt in a long time.
Where had the time gone?
Knowing she had to stand now, or it wasn’t going to happen, she put her hands on the floor, and dropped to her knees. Using the frame of the doorway, she pulled herself up. It wasn’t elegant but she was successful, although her muscles protested with a loud bite. She winced but made sure her smile was back immediately to ease the tension in her granddaughter’s face. Jenna had been right there moving with her as she climbed ungracefully to her feet, as though she was expecting her grandmother to fall flat on her busty chest, but had known better than to offer help.
“Mom said you were going through your mom’s stuff. I wanted to know if you wanted some help?”
It really was sweet but not welcome. Her daughter knew that, so why had she sent her child over. Was she scared the crazy mom might throw something of value away? She hadn’t in the five years she’d had the stuff, so why would she now? Temping as it was.
“I’m good. Thank you, though. That is very sweet.” She stepped back but really made no effort to invite them in. She loved her grandkids but didn’t have the emotional fortitude to be nice right then.
“Uhm… there are some things that grandma, great grandma said that I could have?”
Maisy tried not to let her eyebrows shoot up into the stratosphere. Everything had been left to her. That’s why she’d been storing it for five years. That and she was an only child. Of a miserable, old bat. She quickly shut that thought down. If she let herself indulge, she’d get nothing done. It might explain though, why it had taken her two years since her mother had passed for her to even find the oomph to decide to go through her stuff. It was Maisy’s to do with as she pleased.
She never should have told her daughter what her plans were for that day.
“Like?”
Crash.
Maisy spun around. Her eyes darting to the exact location of that sound. A pair of big brown eyes looked up at her in wonder. Maisy stormed over to the child, who had somehow slipped past her. As she rounded the big, oak dining table, he looked up at her with big brown, remorseful eyes, which immediately drew her attention to the floor around him. Her gasp didn’t even closely convey how she was feeling, when what she was seeing at his feet, registered in her brain.
Before she could get the words out, that were screaming in her throat, Jenna was there scooping up her son and staring down Maisy.
“That vase unfortunately was one of the things that great grandma said we could have. She used to let Chad play with it all the time.”
Maisy liked her granddaughter, might have even loved her but that was a load of bull crap. Her mother had never let her touch any of the china when she was a child. Not even as an adult. Nor had she let her grandkids. To think the old bat would let the great grandkids or great, great ones was preposterous.
“I think you should go. None of this was left to you. And if she had, well your son just broke it.”
“I’d still like to take it with me.” She set her son down, before pulling a bag out of her purse and quickly picking up some of the bigger pieces.
Maisy was stunned. For what might have been the first time in her life, she couldn’t find her voice.
Jenna slipped the arm of the bag over her shoulder, picked up her son and made a run for the door. Maisy didn’t try to stop them. What would be the point, the damage was done.
She picked up a small piece of the shattered vase. One that still had a clear definition of a red rose, inlayed with gold. It had been worth a fortune. Or so she’d been told her whole life. The piece felt foreign. Odd. Funny that something so fragile was worth so much. Or had been. Now it was worthless. Unless she could figure out a way to extract the bits of gold from it. The one time she’d looked that up, what she’d found had suggested she’d need to use some harsh chemicals. So that wasn’t happening.
Her thumb rubbed back and forth over the image. She hadn’t touched that vase in years. Her mom would have said ever but Maisy had snuck over and touched it a time or two. Her mom had been the one to pack it, along with the dish set that it matched. Once it had been delivered to Maisy’s with strict instructions, she’d then sat down and unpacked them and had put them away in the china cabinet, that had also come with the dishes. Only a few pieces had been left out for display. Ever since she was a child, she’d been told never to touch that stuff, so she hadn’t. Other than the one time, which she’d gotten the switch for, she’d never crossed that line again.
The tiny piece in her hand felt heavy. She set it down unaware of the spec of blood pooling like a bubble on the tip of her finger, unaware that she’d pricked it. The cabinet which had been sitting in her dining room for five years, untouched, was now begging her to look inside. Her gaze was laser focused on it, but she was struggling to take the few steps toward it. Everything was exactly as her mother had arranged it five years before, the day before she’d moved into a senior’s care home. She’d wanted to take her precious dishes with her but had been terrified they’d get broken or worse, stolen. Maisy had been told she was going to store them. She wasn’t to use them or touch them. The same rules that had always applied to them. The funny thing was that Maisy had never gone near that credenza since her mother died, except to flick a duster over everything.
With trembling fingers, she reached forward and opened the top glass door on the right-hand side. Her eyes were stretched wide, her back stiff. “It’s been two years,” she whispered.
Her mother’s presence and stern disapproval were hanging above her like a rotting corpse. Maisy had to stop herself from looking up or behind her. Squaring her shoulders, she reached for the delicate miniature mug and saucer, the small glass vase, a match to the now shattered larger one, and set them on the dining room table. The one that had never seen the kind of family meals and get togethers that it was meant to host.
There were a few other knick-knack things she placed beside them. The little cupboard was empty. The only other thing, besides the vase that sat on the counter portion, was a painted plate that went with none of it. Her mother had thought of herself as an artist at one time and had painted a nature scene of grass and trees. It was very abstract. And ugly.
Why couldn’t the child have broken it?
Leaving the top door open, she reached down and grasped the handles to both doors. Sucking in a deep, quick breath, she flung them open at once.
The eyes of the four-year-old, who had first seen it many years before, were alive and glowing with excitement. The eyes of the seventy-eight-year-old were narrowed and waiting for the reprimand that was sure to come.
Don’t touch.
Her mother had let her grandkids and great grandkids touch them. If Jenna was to be believed. Those dishes had never even been used for family meals, no matter how few and far between those had been. Never in her seventy-eight years had Maisy seen a speck of food touch them.
Her hand was shaking like she’d instantly developed Parkinson’s as she reached down to grab the small saucer that sat on top of the stack of plates. But it was like her arm was too short. Or her back was refusing to bend any more. No matter how much she felt she had a right, no matter how much she wanted to, she could not bring herself to touch them. Her fingers curled into her hand. She dropped to her knees, immediately having the thought that it was easy to get down, getting up would take a miracle. Not only would her legs protest but the weight of the guilt sitting on her was going to make it difficult. Or was it shame at wanting to touch something that had been forbidden to her, her whole life?
But not others. Her grandchild and great grandchild had touched them. Played with them.
She grabbed the top plate, but didn’t really look at it as she proceeded to drop it to the floor with a lot of force. It shattered like a mini explosion. The one thing she hadn’t taken into consideration was how close she was. There was a small slash on her calf that a trickle of blood was leaking out of. As she reached to inspect it, that’s when she noticed the blood spec at the end of her finger that was growing and starting to drip.
She was a mess. But something inside of her was coming alive. She felt naughty. Free. She grabbed another plate and smashed it with as much force as she could.
That kid had been onto something. Although he’d been smarter and hadn’t cut himself on the glass nor sat on it. He had not put himself in the line of fire of the flying pieces. Maisy saw another cut lower down on her leg but that didn’t stop her from grabbing the next plate and sending it to its fate. It became an obsession. As soon as one smashed to smithereens another joined it.
It felt great.
She reached for a large dinner plate, now that all the small ones were in pieces beside her, and that’s when she saw it. An envelope sitting in the dark. Something she’d felt most of her life. It was sitting at the back hidden by the massive stack of dishes that was no longer there.
With a steady hand she reached in and grabbed the envelope, not caring that her arm rattled the dishes as she brushed them in her haste. Rather than freak her out as it would have at one time, it oddly felt comforting. Sitting back on her legs, she quickly ripped open the blank envelope and took out the folded sheet of paper. Her gaze was immediately drawn to her mother’s handwriting. It was very distinct, flowy with a lot of dips and curls. That along with age made it pretty hard to read.
It didn’t help that she didn’t have her reading glasses. Nor her phone. Either would have been wonderful help in that moment. Squinting, she read the first few lines.
Maisy,
The china set is not for you. It is to go to Jenna.
The grandchild had been telling the truth. Maisy’s back stiffened as she brought the page closer to her face to decipher the last two lines.
I thought about leaving it to you and I know I told you I was going to, but you never really appreciated them like Jenna and her son, Chad, have.
“That’s because I wasn’t allowed to touch them!” she shouted. Even from the grave, her mother was still controlling her. Belittling her. Taking things away from her. Maisy struggled to get to her feet. Her knees screamed in agony as she straightened them and asked them to now hold her upright. Shaking off the numbness that was slowly receding from her lower legs, she took a few cautious steps over to the kitchen counter and picked up her phone.
She was done. She’d had enough. There was no point in reading the last line of the letter, it would tell her she’d been screwed, but in her mother’s, ‘oh so nice way of saying, you get nothing’. She crumpled the piece of paper and tossed it, not caring where it landed. Holding up her phone, she quickly made a call.
“Jenna? Hi, it’s Grandma Maisy. Come back and get the dishes. You are more than welcome to them. There was a bit of an accident, so you lost a few. I won’t be home, but I’ll leave the door unlocked. Don’t worry about the mess.” She hung up and if she’d have been physically capable of doing it, she’d have jumped in the air and clicked her heels. As it was, she settled for a mental visual of it.
Feeling free and light for the first time… ever, she walked out the door, gently closing it behind her. Sucking in a deep breath of fresh air, like she’d been locked inside for years, she stepped down off the veranda. The sun beamed down on her, brightening her mood even more. She walked down the driveway, chuckling to herself. She felt… great. Free. Light. And the need to explore the neighborhood she’d lived in for twenty years but felt like she’d never seen it. At least, not like she was today. The trees were green and full. Flowers were blooming. Birds were signing. It was a beautiful day. It was time to let go of broken dreams.
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