We're supposed to write an allegory for English. Basically it's supposed to be a story with an overriding thesis, and the thesis is proved through the use of symbolism. The "thesis" is a statement about humanity in general. The rough draft is due tomorrow. This is what I'm handing in. Thoughts? What do you think my thesis is?
The house seemed empty with Luke gone. I sat on my bed, casting sullenly around for something to wear, but nothing was really catching my eye. The thought of stuffing myself into one of the itchy dresses lying around my room sounded about as appealing as eating a brick.
I shook my head violently, trying to rid myself of the ringing that seemed to have found a permanent home in my ears. It was those damn cannons blasting day and night for ages. I’d had a dream last night of an elephant stuffing Luke into a cannon, only when he shot out of the big, black monster it wasn’t Luke, it was a bird. The bird didn’t even come out squawking. It was a dove and it came soaring out like it was proud of its predicament, like it didn’t care one bit the smoke that was charring its wings or anyone below it might’ve been upset by the blast.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I wished I hadn’t. I looked around at the warm, cozy blankets and my toes curled sadly against the cold floor.
The house was bustling, naturally. I was always the last one up. Our house didn’t stop for anything. It kept going like perfectly oiled clockwork, even when Grandpa died and then even when we found Uncle James dangling on a rope hanging from a tree outside. No matter what had happened, the choreography of footsteps remained the same every morning.
I gravitated towards the foggy window, watching my breath mist the panes. Our estate sprawled lazily in every direction. It’d become barren and desolate with the coming winter. I could see a clothesline from which hung an assortment of dirty, ripped clothing.
These days I felt like an earthquake could come at any minute and tear the ground apart, swallowing us all whole. It didn’t seem so impossible, given the state the country was in. It was if there was nothing binding anyone together anymore. I felt disconnected from everyone around me, absorbed in myself, unable to feel any kind of empathy. The constant rain didn’t help. It came down in sheets, like blankets hanging from pillows in the forts I used to make with my friends, shielding us from the world around us.
The occasional news that reached us was never very interesting. Every day was the same: conflict in its various forms. So and so had passed such and such a law, so and so had taken money from such and such a business… destruction seemed to be the only thing we were capable of nowadays. But the worst part was the lack of attention anyone was paying to any of this. It seemed like I was the only one who was paying any attention to the coiling springs and suppressed electricity crackling through the trees. The Civil War was over but it seemed like no one could get rid of any of their leftover animosity.
~
Before the war began in April, I was happy. Luke’s parents died that Christmas, and by January he was living with us. I’d bring him hot chocolate on those bitter winter mornings and we’d sit and talk by the frosty window in his room, watching snow blanket the ground. Winter was beautiful that year, before the winters when the ground was stained red.
I knew my parents wanted us to marry. Although his parents had died, they had left him with a huge sum of money and he had already made a name for himself without their influence. But I was only 14, there was time.
It was mornings like these that I couldn’t help but think back to those days spent in his room. My parents were so desperate for our pairing that they didn’t even mind the hours I spent with him.
“Nina,” he said to me once. “How do you feel about marriage?”
I’ll never forget the knots that question tied in my stomach. I’m still untangling them.
I’d just looked at him with my cheeks flaming and I suppose the blush was noticeable enough that he laughed and pressed his cold hand to my cheek. “You’ll never change Nina, will you?”
And I don’t know why, but that question seemed like the most natural thing in the world to ask. That was the way it always was with Luke. He was so comfortable that I never questioned anything about his nature: How easily he touched me, teased me, how personal space seemed to be a nonissue for him. Parents aside, I don’t think I would’ve been comfortable with that kind of behavior had it been with anyone else. At the time, I assumed it was because I was in love with him. Nowadays I cringe at my naivety.
I’d been too tongue-tied to say anything back, so he just smiled and shook his head.
“What?” I had asked, grinning.
He’d reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Nothing.” He watched my face. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
~
The year Luke came to our house was the year he left. He left right in the middle of April when the war began.
“Nina,” he’d said as he stood in front of the open door. I’d come down with some kind of cold and was wearing three shawls and shivering against the cold blasts of wind pouring into the house.
“Nina,” he said again, his voice breaking. He squeezed his eyes closed. I didn’t move. My mother and father had been standing some ways behind us, in the hall. I thought my toes were going to snap off if I stood there much longer.
I could still see him moving towards me, still feel his warm hands slide into mine, still hear his heartbeat as I rested my head on his chest. It felt like we stayed like that for ages, but in hindsight I knew it had only been about 10 seconds.
He came back a couple years later. I don’t know why or how, but he came home to visit and then left again. I should’ve realized then, should’ve known that something had switched. But he was still so sweet, so gentle, so kind.
There was no way I could have predicted the cracks he would leave in my heart.
When he proposed to me during that visit, I sincerely thought that I was being wise about making my decision. I did not accept right away, I spent about two days deliberating. It felt like an eternity.
“Luke,” I approached him the day before he was supposed to leave. He brightened when he saw me.
“Good morning,” he’d said, kissing me on the cheek.
And then I’d looked him in the eye and said told him yes, I would marry him. With all of my heart, I bound myself to him.
~
When he didn’t come back home again at the end of the war, I waited for months. When in June we still had no
word of him, I assumed he was dead and cried for an equal number of months. Sometime in September a neighbor stopped my father on the street and asked “Why isn’t that nice young man living with you anymore?” When my father told him that we hadn’t seen him since the end of the war and that we’d assumed the worst, the neighbor had furrowed his brows and said “But I just saw him last week in Providence!”
Well my father, being the man he was, had crunched home on a ground covered in leaves and stormed into the house, his pride smoldering on his shoulders; a bonfire that could turn trees to ash. He told me what the neighbor had said and as I sank into a chair he stood over me, telling me that as far as he was concerned the engagement was dissolved and he didn’t care what feelings I may still have for the boy.
“The ungrateful bastard has the audacity to live on our food for months and then leave us in the dust simply because he feels like it. Well I don’t care how much money the boy has, I don’t want you going anywhere near him.”
As slighted as my father may have felt, it was nothing compared to the hole that was burning into my heart, the kind a cigar would make if you pressed it into silk.
~
I had been in love with Luke. Naïve as that love may have been, I was in love all the same. What affected me the most was how easily he severed that bond, because I couldn’t bring myself to think that maybe he’d never actually had the same feelings for me. That’s what I told myself when I began falling for someone new. That Luke had just been a mistake on my part. I married when I was 20 and even as my husband and I drifted apart after the early years of our marriage, I still believed in love. I still believed that it was just my fault, that I’d been choosing the wrong men.
Falling in love was something so pure, so beautiful, so perfect. Everyone eats chocolate after a good cry, I told myself. So why not fall in love all over again after a good heartache? After all, things were bound to get better. Things were bound to be different the second, third or 10th time around. They just had to be.
~
