The Curtain

Mildred thought about sewing a dark curtain all week. She needed it to fend off the spring light which hurt her sinuses. Bring back winter, she thought. Enough with the bees, tulips, weeping cherry trees and loud neighbors. I love cold weather and reading under my quilt at three in the afternoon. Perhaps I'll become one of those old ladies that refuses to part the drapes or open the windows.

Like her neighbor Mrs. Ross in Merryville when she was a child. Mrs. Ross' house was always dark. Her shrubs grew to be 12 feet tall and the neighbors opposite said she never put out a bag of trash in the 30 years she lived there. She always called the police when we were playing in the pool in the neighbor's yard. We only saw her on Halloween when she came out with a tray of apples for the neighborhood kids. After she died hundreds of empty wine bottles were discovered in her cellar.

Luckily Mildred had Hector her big drooly bulldog and right now he needed to get out and walk. What's good for Hector is good for me she told herself. They climbed the steep hill for the view across the city. Soak it up while you can. In a few more weeks when the leaves mature the view of houses will be obscured and the acoustics will change.

She wouldn't hear the freight train in the middle of the night again until winter. She loved the sound of the train and it often appeared in her dreams. She'd be holding on to the side her legs flying out with the trains racing speed. Hector nearby somehow right beside her in dream logic.

Mildred's psychoanalyst Dr. Fringe seemed impressed with the way her mind worked but never showed it except he changed the ink color of his pens. She was distracted by the choice of colors he chose when she told her stories. Red when she spoke of her mother, green when she spoke of her dreams.