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Tragic Irony
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Tragic Irony |
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
Author’s note: I will begin by telling you that this story was born from an overheard conversation of ‘what if’ and was then fueled by my own imagination. I pray that no one is offended or thinks that I take lightly the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. This is a work of fiction, just a simple story that wouldn’t stay inside my head. *** She gazed at her reflection in the store window. Silhouetted beyond her was a mountain peak, gray and dead in this desert winter. The window display included mounds of white snow and cavorting Christmas elves. She smiled. Even here, in the desert, everyone wished for a piece of a Dickens Christmas. This would be her first Christmas without snow. Without her friends or family. A creeping sadness lay around her shoulders where, if she were still at home, a woolen scarf would lay. But she was not. She was here. In her new home. In a desert city where she found a new home, a new life, a new freedom. She smiled. It was ironic that she would venture here and find a job as a secretary in the county court house as that is where her journey began almost a year ago. A county court house. ~ ~ ~ Christy sat very quietly on the bench as she had been instructed to do. She had come to get a copy of her father’s death certificate and the clerk behind the counter told her to ‘take a seat’. As if she would pick it up and walk out with it! She’d been sitting there for almost an hour when a woman, dressed in blue jeans and a leopard skin tube top, walked up and sat down beside her. When the woman lit a cigarette, Christy pointed to the no smoking sign on the wall, quickly turning away lest the woman become angry and create a scene. Christi hated scenes. “Damn!” the woman said. “I really needed that too!” But she dropped the butt to the floor and stepped on it with her foot. “Why is it that when you’re in a place that makes you nervous and you need a cigarette, that’s the ONE place they won’t let you have one? Stupid law!” Christy kept her face turned away from the woman. She didn’t want to make contact or start up a conversation. She was nervous about being away from home so long. She had to get home as quickly as possible and the delay in getting the certificate was making her uneasy. She twisted her hands together. “Honey!” the woman spoke quietly to her. “What?” Christy whispered as she turned quickly to find the other woman staring at her. “You better take up smoking or you’re gonna twist them fingers right off your wrists!” Christy looked fully at the woman and realized the woman who spoke was older than Christy had first thought. Smeared makeup could be seen on the woman’s throat. “My name is Isabelle.” The woman held out her hand and out of habit, Christy shook it. “My name is Christiana.” “Now that’s a name!” the woman exclaimed. “I’ll have to remember it in case I want to use it sometime.” “Use it?” Christy asked. “Yea. Someday when I need to be someone else.” Isabelle said matter of factly. Curious now, Christy asked what she meant. Isabelle told her that since she was 18, she had been many different people. Changed her identity so many times, she couldn’t remember the name she started out with! Then she laughed. “But how could you do that?” Christy asked. “You really want to know?” Isabelle asked. She stared at Christy and something flickered between them. An unspoken bond. “Yes.” Christy said quietly. Suddenly her heart began to beat faster. Stay calm, she said silently. Don’t be too interested! And so, for the next half-hour, Christy got a lesson in how to get a new identity. From a woman formerly known as Isabelle; who today, was getting a birth certificate to become ‘Sandra’. Christy’s life was quiet for a month after her encounter with Isabelle. Then one night, Nick got home late, drunk and mean. For Christmas, she covered her bruises with long sleeved sweaters, Christmas gifts she received from her loving husband. Christy and Nick seemed to have a perfect marriage. They were high school sweethearts who got married just after graduation and went to college together. Nick finished college with a degree in business and Christy got her BA in political science. But six months after college, she had a miscarriage and spent several months in bed recuperating. After that, she became depressed and stayed at home, telling her family she was still too tired to go out job hunting. But she wasn’t just tired. She was bruised. Nick hit her for the first time the morning of the day she had her miscarriage. He hit her hard, in the stomach. Their families were supportive and praised Nick for his compassion. He never once publicly said a word about losing the baby or about Christy not getting back on her feet and getting on with life. Privately, with every punch, he let Christy know how much she had disappointed him. Failed in her duty as a wife. Failed as a woman. Another pregnancy ended in another miscarriage. Not all of them were the direct result of a beating, but in her heart, she knew every time she conceived it was after a beating, when Nick was ‘apologizing’. After five miscarriages, she begged the doctor to perform a hysterectomy and end her torture. But Nick wouldn’t allow it. He wanted a son of his own. And he’d do anything, hurt her in any way, to get one. The sixth miscarriage almost killed Christy. Rushed into surgery, her doctor had no alternative but to remove her uterus. She recuperated slowly, most of the time happy that she wouldn’t have to be put through the torture of losing yet another baby. But the sadness of knowing she would remain barren forever overwhelmed her. And the beatings continued. When she was 30, she wanted to kill herself. When she was 40, she wanted to kill Nick. And then she stopped caring about either. Nick began to openly have affairs. She really didn’t care – if he was involved with someone, he left her alone sexually. But sometimes, when a relationship was going bad, his guilt, mixed with liberal doses of Scotch, fueled his anger and spilled across her face in red rivulets of her own blood. He seemed to despise her. She offered to divorce him. But he wouldn’t allow it. The year she turned 42 she went to stay with her mother, trying desperately to break the bond he held over her. He came to her parents house and begged her to come home. Ashamed to let her parents know how weak she was, she went home with Nick. A week later, he beat her with a belt and told her that the next time she left, he’d kill her. Although Christy lived in fear for most of their marriage, there were times when Nick was a model husband. In the last two years, she thought he had changed. There were no beatings until late in August when he came home from a week in Los Angeles. He accused her of having a man in their bed. Christy, huddled on the floor of the bedroom, while he tore the bed apart sniffing it, searching for strange hairs from another man’s body. Then he turned to her and she saw her own death in his eyes. She knew he would kill her. But all she got that time was a broken arm – she told the doctor she fell off a ladder while painting the bedroom ceiling. Every night for a week, he beat her, the back of her thighs were so bruised she could barely sit down. And then, her father died three days before Thanksgiving and as the oldest child, it was left to her to help her mother pick up the pieces of her father’s life. Nick allowed her to spend a week with her mother after the funeral. Her father wasn’t a rich man, but Nick was certain there would be some kind of monetary inheritance. It was at that time that she met Isabelle. It was that time when the idea of becoming someone else first started. By Christmas Eve, 2000, Christy’s plan began to take shape. She spent hours in the library, constructing a new life. She made notes that she stashed in a locker at the gym so Nick wouldn’t find them. She got a post office box in the new name she’d chosen. She began to siphon money out of their checking account. She privately asked her father’s attorney to send her inheritance in two installments. One right away and the other in three months. Nick was shown the first check, which he assumed was the only one, but never knew about the second check. Christy realized there were advantages to being home alone all day when no one could see what came in the mail. Nick took a business trip to Miami in May and Christy took that week to ‘try out’ her new identity. She donned a black wig and flew to Phoenix. She rented a mailbox under her new name. She checked out apartments. Got a checking account and talked to a car dealer about getting a new car. She applied for a couple of jobs and took one that allowed her to work over the Internet, something she could do at the public library back home without Nick’s knowledge. Then she flew home in time to greet her loving husband. By the end of August, Christy was ready. She could pick up her things and disappear within an hour. She practiced and practiced until she knew her getaway route. And on that day, September 11, she went into the city early. She had not intended this to be the day she would leave. She was going to walk around New York for a few hours. Sightseeing for one last time before she left. Storing up memories of her home that she would carry with her when she left. She planned to leave in two weeks. But fate stepped in. She was a mile from the Trade Center when hell was unleashed. Suddenly, she knew what she would do. She called her husband’s answering machine (it was an antiquated system that didn’t register the time a call came in). She told him she was shopping for his sister’s birthday gift at a shop in the World Trade Center. She said she’d be home early and make a nice dinner for them. And then, as the world watched the horror going on in New York, she quietly slipped away. It was difficult getting out of town. She traveled by rental car to Vermont. She stayed there under her new identity, taking time to cut and die her hair. She rented a car and decided to drive to Phoenix. All the while, she watched as the families of the World Trade Center bombing came forward. She kept searching for Nick’s face. Kept looking for her name. But she never saw it. And now, looking at the Christmas display, Christy missed her mother. Someday, she thought, someday I’ll call her and tell her the truth. ** In an article in the New York Post – Untold Tragedy – New York, NY - September 12, 2001 – Tragedy struck thrice yesterday. Mrs. Christy Lavelle, wife of Nicholas Lavelle and daughter of Mrs. Janet Simpson was missing and presumed dead, a victim of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Mrs. Lavelle called her husband shortly before she arrived at One Liberty Plaza to tell him that she was shopping for a birthday gift for his sister and that she would be home early to make him dinner. When the news spread that the World Trade Center had been the target of an attack and had subsequently collapsed, Mr. Lavelle and Mrs. Simpson rushed to the city to search for Mrs. Lavelle at local hospitals. As they left the Simpson home in Elmhurst, a truck veered into the wrong lane and struck the Lavelle vehicle, instantly killing Mrs. Simpson and her son-in-law, Mr. Lavelle. ** |
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| © Copyright 2001 Poet deVine - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Wanda Member
since 2001-10-23
Posts 461 |
Your story held me in a grip all the way through. I was inwardly cheering for Christy, hoping she would be able to get away. Your last paragraph had quite a twist..This was definitely a good read. Wanda |
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serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738 |
This was quite a taffy pull of a story...I love the way you do this!!!! Smiling Devine One...gotta try this sometime. I LOVED IT. |
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Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187St. Paul, MN |
What a tale... I was wondering how you'd link it into the WTC attack and the way you put that in was well done. What a life poor Christiana suffered through, miscarriages (a horrible pain right there) and an abusive husband. The ending left me with mixed feelings, the abuse is ended for sure, but at the cost of her mother, and the guilt of having led them, inadvertently, to their deaths. This one catches in my throat, a harsh and sad tale, wonderfully written, Ms. DeVine "Beat a drum for me, like a butterfly wing |
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Sven
since 1999-11-23
Posts 14937East Lansing, MI USA |
this is one of your best. . . the ending was perfect. . . a very well told tale. . . lots of twists. . . you didn't know what was coming next. . . great job. . . -------------------------------------------------------- To the world, you may only be one person. But to one person, you may be the world. |
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Accordionmaid Member
since 2001-10-28
Posts 153MA/USA |
Enjoyed reading this. It really held my attention. Great! |
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