Fragile Love

“Fine.” Zahra’s voice was tinted with bitterness, “I stole it.” She looked quite unabashed if not a little angry. Then her expression changed; her lips curved into a mocking smirk as she questioned, “What’re you going to do about it? Turn me in?”

Felix clenched his fists and it looked like he would say something, shout, maybe. But he merely shook his head and sighed. After a few moments his voice came out weak and insistent, “You’ll hand it back, won’t you?”

Zahra barked a dry laugh, “What, you suggest I just walk in there and hand them back something I took seven years ago? Besides, what they don’t remember they won’t miss.”

“It isn’t something one can forget!” Felix’s eyes widened and his pupils dilated. His breathing soon turned hard and labored and he subsided into a coughing fit.

“Best not to talk right now.” The girl’s voice became surprisingly soft as she led him away, grasping his shoulder firmly. The pair walked with hurried and hesitant steps- best to get the worst of it over with. The ground was soft underfoot with a faint smell of soil and grass lingering in the air. The day seemed dull and tinted with a monotonous shade of grey and the vast grounds were empty of the usual crowd.

Far beyond the barren grounds was a majestic structure. It was a huge brick building decorated with festive lightings at any time of the air; the air smelled faintly of paint as you stepped closer and you could see a few specks of the paint accidentally splattered on the contrasting walls. Felix was led to his room and he immediately flopped down on his bed. Zahra left the room, closing the door behind her.

She walked up to the telephone and waited. She waited for what seemed like an eternity before it rang. The ringing was magnified eerily in the vast structure. Wincing slightly, she answered it.

“Good Evening.” Zahra kept a curt and formal demeanor. The voice at the other end seemed much brighter in comparison, “Zahra! How have you been?” the female voice was soft yet high-pitched.

“I have been quite well, thank you.” Zahra replied stiffly. There was a moment’s silence before Zahra added, “And you?” Her voice sounded almost uncertain.

“Drop the act” a visible sigh was heard from the other end, “Felix? It’s about him, isn’t it? Always him.” The elated tone that had previously occupied the voice was conspicuously absent.

“Yes.” Zahra replied, trying to maintain the façade of indifference, “I care very much of what happens to our brother regardless of the events… in the past…” Zahra’s voice became breathy and she trailed off.

“That’s how you put it?” A dry humorless laugh was heard at the other end, “Events in the past? You do realize that abandoning someone for seven years accounts for a huge argument. Abandoning your family, no less.”

“I am back now when I am most needed and that is what matters.” Zahra’s voice took an acrimonious tone, “Now, what is to be done? About Felix.” She added to prevent any further prompt on the former matter.

But the voice on the other end was oblivious to these attempts as the question rang out, “What is to be done?” The voice had put in a new meaning to the words. “What is to be done for a dying pest? What is to be done for the funeral arrangements? Which of these do you mean Zahra? ‘About Felix’ doesn’t cut it.”

Zahra drew in a shaky breath and her voice shook with suppressed rage when she next spoke, “Preferably about keeping him alive. I discussed it with his doctor; there’s hope-”

The voice interrupted, musing those words, “There’s hope.” There was a short pause, “There was hope long before and there’ll be hope long after. It existed regardless of predicaments and victories. But what good does it do us? It is a plague, Zahra, and you’re being consumed by it. Fabricating hope when it’s not there is a macabre tale of destruction; when you have it you lose it and it destroys you. We both know Felix is past the stage of ‘hope.’” There was an expectant silence which Zahra did not break. After a long moment the voice at the other end continued, almost sympathetically, “What is to be done?” the words were echoed and they hung in the air, timeless and unanswered.

The tension in the air seemed to ripple as Zahra ‘dropped the act’ and broke down into huge sobs, “You don’t understand.”

“As much I’d like to comfort you, I want to prepare you for when you have to face it. It’ll break you when it reaches you all at once.”

“So, you’d rather watch me crumble? Slowly, agonizingly, painstakingly…” Zahra cleared her throat and without further ado flung down the receiver onto the floor. The impact of this movement caused the wires to jerk about and the telephone fell crashing down.

The silence that graced the aftermath of this sudden explosion was eerie and suffocating. Zahra strode into her room and hastily spilled out the contents of her bag, flinging them in all directions. She took out a worn-out toothbrush and made her way to the bathroom. On re-entering the room her eyes took in the mess and she frowned.

A loud cry of pain followed suit as she stumbled over one of the heavier contents. Muttering a number of swear words, she picked the lump. The lump-about the size of a book-was wrapped gruffly in dark black paper; the paper peeling from places showed the outline of a heavy, ornate picture frame.

Zahra unwrapped it slowly and cautiously, at first, and hungrily and hastily later. The frame was large and heavy with thin golden patterns on the wooden exterior. On the very top was a very large wooden declaration with intricate silver words- Family.

The picture beneath this declaration was a black and white replica of a smiling family. Seven smiling individuals. A handsome man, hand in hand with his wife; three young children- an older girl of about seventeen, a younger female apparently fourteen or thirteen and a grinning boy of eleven. An older couple smiled good-naturedly at the younger ones.

Below this picture was minute childish writing- Arthur, Clara, Zahra, Scarlett, Felix, William, Monique.

Zahra put it down in her bag, precariously. She frowned at it for a moment, then made up her mind.

The car whirred and sputtered to life and Zahra tapped her fingers impatiently. The drive was peaceful but she felt a strange restlessness- a surge of adrenaline coupled with the abruptness of her decision. When the outline of the huge building loomed closer she paused to think clearly for the first time.

Her footsteps were sharp and loud in the quiet evening air. The grass surrounding the property was overgrown and damp and quite uncared for. Grime and dust enveloped the benches in the park and overgrown vines surrounded most of the free space. Zahra wondered for a moment if they even lived in the place, anymore. The sound of the doorbell rang out and made the situation almost surreal. Minutes passed and Zahra was about to leave when the door creaked open.

“Trespassers are not encouraged, young woman! Steve!  What’s the bastard doing? Bribed our watchman now, did you? Frank! Call the cops!” the stooped figure of a woman came into focus.

“Frank and Steve died…years ago.” Zahra took in a shaky breath, “Hello to you too, mother.”

The woman’s scowl remained, “Scarlett? Your ‘servant boy’ not there today? Or have you decided you have had enough of your crazy mother finally? I tell you, woman, I can fend for myself! The Whites-they’ll give me a job! Marie will, won’t she? Of course, she will. Now get out of my sight!” the woman was about to shut the door when Zahra stepped in through the doorway.

“Marie White died too; if you remember, their fortunes weren’t in good shape and admittedly suicide was their idea of a ‘dignified’ way out.” Zahra spoke, examining the piteous condition of the living room.

“I say get out of my house!” the woman’s eyes bulged with rage, “You dare step into my house and speak…speak-”

“Mother” Zahra paused, trying to placate her. She, then, extended her hand, “Zahra.”

The woman’s expression turned blank. After a tense moment, she repeated, “Zahra.” The words were repeated in several tones, the full impact of them hanging in the air-in the moment.

“GET OUT!” the woman’s eyes were blank but her voice was agitated and tense.

Zahra merely went ahead and sat herself on the couch which was the same she’d sat down on seven years ago. The very same ketchup stain on the far right. The whiteness faded to a dull yellow. The musty smell. She took it all in.

Hands trembling, she took the frame out of her bag pack. She placed it on the weathered, round coffee table in front of the sofa. The woman’s eyes darted to the picture and for the first time her expression flitted. Her eyes clouded over with an undecipherable emotion and the tense lines in her face relaxed slightly. She took the picture with trembling hands and held it at an arm’s length.

Zahra broke the silence, “Mother?”

“Why are you here?” the reply was stoic and cautious.

“I realized…I was-”

“A murderer? A thief? A... a-”

“A bad daughter.” Zahra replied quietly, “I panicked. I didn’t mean to…” her voice trailed off.

“Didn’t mean to kill your father?” the woman’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

Zahra clenched her fists and snarled back, “I couldn’t help it! He was the murderer. Do you think I could watch him murder my…my sibling?”

The woman laughed softly, “A sibling who you abandoned and basically left to die, anyway. Felix was being insolent and his punishment wasn’t being murdered. Arthur just wanted him hurt bad enough to set an example…and you.” Her voice dropped, “You killed my husband. Left me a widow. Left your siblings fatherless and penniless. And you had the sheer audacity to run away!”

Zahra shivered slightly despite the cold. She remembered everything. The attempted murder of Felix. Her defense leading inevitably to the death of her father. The fact that she was a minor and that the death was ‘an accidental case of murder arising from a situation involving self-defense.’ She had escaped from it all quite narrowly. Then, the phase of abandoning the loathing family for seven long years; and as her mother had so pointed out-abandoning her siblings.

Hatred. She remembered the feeling of pure ambiguity and hatred blossoming in her tender heart. She was barely seventeen and her heart was tender and loving-not accustomed to the devices of torturous means. At some point after the murder she had found herself coped in her room-alone- distraught and scarred.

 The warm light streaming into the room, the soft bed, the scent of strawberries drifting from the half-open window-all of the usually pleasant sensations struck a chord of unpleasantness and bitter remembrance. All of it was purely and truly hatred. She hated her father for being vile, she hated her mother for being weak and unsupportive, she hated her siblings for being so young and helpless, she hated her grandparents for the anger at their son’s death, she hated the sun shimmering through the clouds, she hated the scent of strawberries.

Oh, how she hated everything.

The first night after being cleared from the situation completely she’d run away. Without a second thought. Without a backward glance. Without regret. And she had not looked back once in seven years.

Zahra found her mother sitting in one of the armchairs, clutching the frame firmly.

“Yes.” Zahra spoke tentatively, “I ran away. I abandoned everyone. I was a bad person for killing my father, a bad person for abandoning my mother, a terrible person for deserting my siblings. But I am back when it matters the most.”

“Matters the most?” the woman snarled, “What, may I ask, matters now? What has changed?”

“Felix” Zahra replied simply, “I am aware that your mental state doesn’t exactly extend far enough to care for the well-beings of your children but I expected more, nonetheless. Your son is dying.”

Eyes bulging with shock, the woman stood up to her full height clutching the frame close to her chest, “How did you get in? Are there no watchmen! Fire the brutes!”

Zahra stood up and walked back to the car; the rush of energy had gone away and she felt blank.

The piteous condition of the loathsome woman had sparked something she hadn’t expected to even exist all these years.

The miserable state of her once vivacious brother had caused a strange surge of emotions. Guilt was the primarily decipherable one.

Sweet, kind, thoughtful and caring. Harsh, indifferent, accepting yet strong. Her sweet sister, Scarlett, had changed marvellously. The difference only intensified the guilt- suffering had changed her tender sister and Zahra had not been there for her.

Amidst all the guilt, confusion and anger-she had struck on the spark of long-gone love and appreciation.

When she had run away, she had refused to believe that anything apart from hatred existed in her anymore. But the mere sight of her family- so drastically changed- had overwhelmed her.

Fragile and broken things were easier to love. The distant and unknown were easier to love. Time made it easier to love. Familiar and present things and people were harder to love and appreciate and all that was left in her was regret. Such a bitter sting of regret.

On reaching Felix’s home she felt a strange feeling. It was almost relief. Relief at having returned the only surviving picture of the once happy family. Her mother would love the version of her father in the picture-handsome, smiling and not an inkling of his true personality. The parents of the dead man would cry over it and get to love a part of their son. It was where it belonged.

“Zahra” the voice she’d only heard over the telephone, now came in-soft and high-pitched. Scarlett stood in the living room looking every bit as sweet as the scared and fragile child in the picture; but something had decidedly changed. The fragility was replaced with determination and the hope her eyes had once held was replaced with somber acceptance.

Zahra walked up to her hesitantly and gave her a short hug. She wanted to pour everything into that hug-guilt, apology, anger and love.

Scarlett smiled softly and, in that moment, she looked so like herself that Zahra was deluded into believing that things were back to normal. A groan from the room next door broke the moment-infusing it with tension and foreboding.

“Felix” Zahra knelt next to the bed of her dying brother. The boy had tear tracks running down the side of his cheeks and his face was scrunched up. She was struck with his resemblance to that day- the day the fragile eleven-year-old was inflicted with so much pain.

“Did you return it?” his voice was rushed but calm.

“Yes.”

He gave a small smile- a ghost of his vivacious self, before he shut his eyes.

The groaning ceased soon after but the smile remained in place- never fading.