Rosie and I have been friends since the beginning of secondary college. Those were the glory days at Our Lady of Mercy. We haven’t always seen eye to eye, Rosie and I, but both of us persist in accepting each other’s views. She believes one thing, and I believe another. We stick to what we think, despite argument. Often we’ll have a laugh about it or tease each other light heartedly. I might refer to Rosie as “the bible basher” or she’ll call me “a nun’s Christmas package”. We have fun, Rosie and I and after all these years that has never changed.
Her sun chair is horizontally opposite to mine, a sitting table in between. The bright summer glare is peaking over the hills we overlook; the crystal green resonant of a scene in our favourite film The Sound of Music. Beauty has never been so spectacular as in the late afternoon in the mountainous countryside of Victoria.
“ Would you like another cuppa Franny?”
“No luv, I’m fine for now. I’ll have one soon though before I take my blood pressure tablets. Look at how the shade outlines the edge of the sun on the hill? Isn’t it stunning?”
Rosie tilts her head and beams. “Aren’t we lucky we’re retired Francis?”
“ Yes, we certainly are.” I give her a look of fleeting relief.
“Even if we have left the golden days.”
Naturally I respond with a differing view. “These are the golden days.”
Rosie chuckles and turns to me slightly surprised. “ You don’t miss the flawless skin, the nights out on the town, the se-?
I knew what she was going to say, but she stopped herself with a shuffle and cough, probably remembering we did not share every value.
“ I enjoyed my youth, but not to the extent that I will enjoy God’s house.” Firm passion had taken it’s tole, when I hadn’t intended for it too. I felt as if I had disobeyed a moral code. I had let my views get in the way of our long term friendship.
There is an uncomfortable silence. Rosie steadily takes a sip of her cup of tea. This is usually indicative of her distinct disagreement with an idea or topic.
I’ve always avoided coming to terms with reality. Salvation may not be possible for Rosie. I used to comfort myself by saying “there is still time”, but now I just don’t know. What if there isn’t any time? What if she will be damned for eternity? I wish for Rosie to feel God’s presence, but time is quickly yet slowly withering away. I was thinking about it again, the cheerful mood shifted to distress.
The sun was now setting.
“Your my closest friend Rosie. I just want you to know that.”
She doesn’t react, and safely remains stationary so not let her alternative opinion flare up I’m guessing. “Then you’ll know that I stand firm in my athieism.”
“I’m scared for you Rosie” I touch her hand with affection.
“ I can’t force myself to believe in something I don’t Fran.”
It arrives out of nowhere, the emotions rise to the surface and I’m trembling. I don’t let her see it though. “Just tell me then, how are you convinced that God is not here?”
“ Well he hasn’t exactly popped in.” She laughs.
I’m serious though and inform her of that. “This is not a joke Rosie. I’m serious.”
She seems to realise my concern because she carefully places her the mug that she has been cradling in her hands down onto the bench and grips both my hands tightly. “If he is so loving, then why is he so unfair?”
“What?”
“Why does he invent humanity to be greedy, he ‘clearly’ did it, so why?”
“ You’ll have to ask him.”
Her eyes are stern and still. “Well I won’t get to, will I Fran? I’ll be burning in hell.”
I reach for her arm in sympathy “but you don’t have to-“ she pulls away “but I do have to Fran because I don’t bloody believe in God do I?”
It’s time for Rosie to take her pill.
“This why I believe in God” I say “ because of how I feel. I feel like there is a loving presence that surrounds me; a presence too complicated for the human mind to verbally express. Beyond this world.”
She appears over it now, she doesn’t usually enjoy engaging in religious discussions with me because she knows she doesn’t care enough. “Well if it’s so difficult to explain then stop trying to justify your faith.”
That hurt me. It was a dagger to the heart kind of feeling. Usually she would just listen, but today was just-different. Perhaps it was our age. We had both turned seventy this year, and both of us had children who had married this year. We had both been busy, and had had flashbacks to our past at these events.
“ I just don’t understand it.” She began again “ I can’t understand one-spirit or whatever being in charge of everyone. How is that fair? That doesn’t feel right to me.”
“He doesn’t rule, he advises us. He guides us to-“
She snapped “don’t even say heaven Francis. Let’s just sit here quietly and relax, I don’t want to say I died of a heart attack because of high blood pressure.”
I immediately felt guilty and touched her shoulder. “Oh Rosie, I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t.”
For a while we sat and didn’t speak. I would be leaving in an hour, to go home and make dinner for my husband. We always had a Roast on Sunday then went to church in the evening. I enjoyed church because I liked hearing the gospel stories; they gave me hope and taught me to be a better person. Even today, they still do. Church also gave me time away from everything, you had to be quiet in church so I didn’t have to speak to anyone. I could just think, be at peace. Be myself within myself. No harm. The only other time I felt that way was with Rosie, undoubtedly because we had been friends for so long. She knew my every bone; I could be myself around her. My husband? Well, men are very critical aren’t they; I have to maintain my personality around the husband, set a good example for women as he would put it.
I care for Rosie, so much. Just having time to think about her position scared me. Could God make an exception? Could she be forgiven? I wanted it to be true, but I couldn’t know. My hand in the arm rest was shaking, I couldn’t control it. Was I growing anxious, why was my chest shivering, my breath uneven? I started to cry and couldn’t stop myself from doing so.
I leaned in quite frantically towards her. “The more you reject God, the further away from understanding his will you’ll get. You don’t need to be able to explain it in words for it all to make sense. Look at it this way, if you accept God you will go to heaven or you’ll just die and that’s it. But if you don’t believe in him you-“
She moves up out of her chair, but not dramatically. “Well that’s religious of you. Blackmail on God’s behalf.”
The panic rises. My vision is fuzzy. She must have noticed a change in my demeanour because she suddenly kneels down to hold me up. “Franny, are you alright? Let me get you a glass of water.” She quickly walks into the kitchen and returns with a full glass of tap water. She knows I don’t like refrigerated water.
Now calmly and in a softer voice she speaks, still keeping me up. “Look, Franny, can we please just-just not talk about this. We obviously both have radically opposing views and I wouldn’t want our disagreements on things to get in the way of our relationship. I value it too much. I will never believe in God, believe me I’ve tried-for you. I just never will. Please don’t be upset. I don’t want you to make yourself ill.”
I continued crying, I wasn’t panicky but overridden with grief because I knew I would never see her again when we died. I just hoped I would die before her, so I couldn’t suffer the pain of knowing she wasn’t going to the same place as I was.
She pulled me lightly into her arms and stroked my hair, I didn’t let go. I whispered “ I’m scared Rosie. I’m really scared. Please.”
“ I won’t go to hell, it’s ok” she whispered back to me “I’ll try and make a reservation early” that made me laugh, and her happy. She looked at me and smiled and wiped a tear from my face.
How sweet of her
Confusion appears upon her face, and she shakes her head as if shooing away a thought and returns to her seat.
“Are you ok?” I ask, trying to be considerate of her feelings too.
“Don’t worry Fran”
“Tell me, what’s wrong, are you ok?”
“ It’s nothing really, don’t worry about it.”
“Rosie, you have known me for fourty years. Tell me, you can trust me. You know I won’t put you down, I love you too much.”
She looked at me, and stayed looking at me for a bit. “I don’t know.”
“Rosie, I just want you to be ok. Talk to me luv.”
“It doesn’t matter Franny. It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late.”
“I thought that wasn’t what you think.”
Silence.
She goes to move into the lounge room, but I grab her by the arm. “This is how much you mean to me; if I can’t enjoy eternal life with you then I’d rather suffer in hell.”
The blasphemy frightened me, and I could see that Rosie could tell. A tear dribbled from her eye down her cheek. “Are you sure God would let you do that” she smiled.
She acknowledged him. She had acknowledged him as if she believed he existed. She had respected the love that guides me through life openly. Her words, her mere words triggered the warmth that buzzes inside my chest.
We lean back in our sun chairs looking at each other.
“Franny” she chokes “ I don’t love my husband”.
I somehow knew what she was saying. My mind was in chunks, I didn’t know what to make of it. Nothing was making any sense.
“You know Rosie, I’m starting to think that I’m such a good catholic because you.”
We just stare at each other. It felt comfortable, not weird. We just gazed. But then Rosie blinked, and looked down and sighed, supposedly relieving herself of intensity. “Then if the bible is true Franny, then we can be rogues together.”
She gently held the bottom of my wrist in her palm and began stroking my arm softly upwards. She rested her eyes on mine as I did hers.
Like two magnets the passionate static of both bodies combine spiritually to establish fulfilment and instant peace. A single moment of realisation begins another journey where together, the two souls can attempt to conquer what life throws at them, with calm and the knowledge that what they feel in the present is what counts for determining the management of the future. And the two will never know what is to come; they shall only be reassured by the serenity that binds them together in unity.
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,014 Literary Works • 672,845 Reviews
Yo.
With a little work, this could be a really interesting story. When I started reading it,I really hoped that the characters would have at least a little bit of meaningful debate. Maybe you didn't want any debate. A majority of the time, it seems the two characters are trying to engage in a discussion and then at the next moment trying to get away from it: "their friendship" being the excuse.
Now this would've been interesting as hell to read, but the execution wasn't well and it ended up being too much talking where nobody is talking.
Dialogues.
You need to work on them. E.g.:
This is what I think you should not do: Trying to portray how "close" your characters are using the dialogues. You do this a lot in this story. It doesn't work all the time.
Insert those little bits of info about one another where those info might gel in "naturally".
The characters have been friends for a long time and it does make the reader question why they are having this kind of generic discussion particular at that moment. The reasons you give later on are not believable. I didn't believe you.
I always think the story must have a modicum of "honesty" injected upon it to be able to bait the reader into reading your stuff. The premise you have is actually a very interesting one--two ladies (one religious and one not) having a conversation, with the story culminating with them having sex.
Re-write this because there are lots of typos here. You even wrote "fourty" somewhere here and that's really disappointing because you seem like a writer with very good ideas.
You could give it another spin? You know, making it more "essayistic" with some actual arguments by the two ladies. The ending was good, though. Really.
PM me or something if you have questions.
Un.
Hello, Flite here for a review. This review is gonna be short and to be point.
So, this is a conversation between the old friends but for some reason, this seemed more like a discussion on the existence of God instead of friends having a conversation. Except this conversation is probably not the first one they had, judging by how old their friendships are this isn't the first time they've talked about God and their different belief in him. The conclusion to this story was also incredibly vague, Rosie didn't actually agree to believe in God but Fanny mistaken that assumption and was mollified. The ending paragraph itself didn't tie in with the rest of your chapter which was about God, the last paragraph was about their friendship and and their unity in that friendship.
Also, Rosie mentioned that her husband didn't love her at the end, how does that tie in with the rest? Disjointed, once again.
Therefore, I propose the question of what was it exactly you want to express through this story? Did you want to tell us about the two friends (you displayed their friendship well, they do seem like long - term friends who know each other very well. From the small gestures they exchange and observe.) Or are you trying to discuss what God means to them? Focus on one theme and spin your story around that, this is a short story. You only have so many words to convey what you want.
Anyways, let's move onto the actual writing itself.
Let's look at your opening two paragraphs. The first paragraph details their friendship since secondary college and how they treated each other. It's not bad for an opening paragraph, it's light hearted and nostalgic. However, the time transition between the two paragraph was far too sudden. One paragraph they're girls, the next they're retired women? O_o That was really quick, we need some time to ease into that. You can't just skip several decades all of a sudden. Maybe if you mentioned they were retired, or hint at the setting then it wouldn't have been as sudden.
Next, is the dialogue and how that reflects their age. They're around eighty something, however their way of speaking still reminds me of how someone might speak in their late teens. Apart from the 'luv' you've included here, nothing else in their speech indicates their age. Most eight year olds I know don't use, 'whatever' or 'just-just do something', they're how modern teenagers speak. And frankly, their behaviour on here reminds me quite a bit of teenagers too. If they've reached that old an age, and this argument has obviously been going on for decades. I would have thought they'd have come to an agreement long time ago, and certainly armed with enough maturity to not say things like.
^ That sounds like something my friend might say to me when she's frustrated over something, like an argument we can't agree on and she's defending herself. Wait, that's exactly what's happening here. Except, we're with eighty year olds.
I've also noticed several minor punctuation details with your dialogue, there is a link here that will explain how to punctuate dialogue correctly. It's a very common mistake.
Overall, this wasn't a bad read, I actually quite liked the relationship between the two however, some of it just wasn't very realistic. You've got a good handle on character development though. I hope I wasn't too harsh, if you have any questions please feel free to PM me.
-Flite