Cherry Pie

A short story I have to turn in on Sundy. It's a three level story with flashback within flashback. So any and all suggestions would be very much appreciated. =D

Blood was starting to stain the floor as Emilia brought the frying pan down on Jake for the third time.  She looked upon the crumpled body and brought down the now bent pan for a fourth attempt at bashing in his skull. He caught her wrist in desperation and pulled her down to the floor. Struggling out of his grasp, her back hit the dining room table that had been set up just hours ago for their anniversary dinner.

“Fifteen years, can you believe it?”

Emilia looked up from what she was doing. She had set up the dining room table so nicely, even bringing the good china and glasses out for the special even. It was all for their anniversary dinner. Some couples went out to eat on such an occasion, but she preferred home cooked meals. Small dinners like this were more intimate in her opinion.  

Smiling up at her husband, she responded. “It feels like just yesterday you were carrying me over the threshold.”  Lighting the two candles on the table, she turned down the lights to give the room an ambiance. Jake had bought a bouquet of roses which she had put in an old crystal vase adorned with daises. Emilia stared at the red roses for a moment as she considered why Jake would give her roses. She hated rose, doubly so when it came in red.  

Red was such an odd color. She rather hated it even.  She attributed her dislike for the color to her mother. Her mother used to wear thick red lipstick. The kind of lipstick old movie stars would wear, but her mother made it far less classy. Even as a child, Emilia always remembered her mother’s thick red lipstick. She had been fascinated by it back then. Her earliest memory had even been infected by the red lips.  She was about two, sitting in a crib, looking up at her mother as the woman leaned over to tickle Emilia’s stomach.  Her plump red lips pulled back to reveal gnarled yellowing teeth.  

“How was work? Emilia asked trying to ignore her husband as he picked his teeth with a toothpick. She never understood why he did that before eating.  No, she would not bring up his disgusting habit right now. The dinner needed a good start, and thus small conversational talk should make their anniversary productive one. They did not talk much anymore and this dinner hopefully would allow them to reconnect on some level, even if it was just a little bit. It was just the revitalization their relationship needed. Year after year their relationship dipped, and it was always charged back up by these anniversary dinners.  It was always best to shake things up from time to time.

The table shook, causing the vase of roses to tumble to the floor. Emilia scooted to the side avoiding it. Glass and rose petals filled the air. She reached for the pan again.  On the black metal rested a single rose petal, as if the very iron was bleeding red. It was very similar to the blood soaking into her the wool carpet.  She gripped the pan at a different angle and slammed in against Jake’s leg as he tried to crawl away.  He cried out in pain. 

“Do you like the roses?”

“Of course, I don’t use my mother’s special vase for just anything.”

Jake nodded obviously pleased with her lie. “The dinner looks really good,” he said, spooning peas onto his plate to join the meatloaf, corn and mashed potatoes.

Emilia smiled.  “Worked on it all day”

“It shows. I like how colorful it all is. It’s like a healthy plate of Skittles”

She nodded, excited to have a topic to latch onto. “I read in an article that the sign of a nutritional meal is for the plate to be a rainbow of colors; yellow corn, green peas, violet grapes. Do you want to read it? It’s fascinating really.”

“No thanks,” he paused for a moment and looked around the table. “No red?”

Emilia’s smile thinned. “I have a cherry pie baking in the oven”

“You know, we’ve been married fifteen years and I don’t know your favorite color.”

“I don’t have a favorite, she said”

“Oh, well I’ve always been partial to green.

“I know. Your favorite color is green because of football,” she said.

He looked up in surprise “What?”

“Your father used to take you to football games on the weekends. You used to say that spending time with him made up the best moments of your life. One day you even wanted to share that experience with a child of your own one day.” 

 “Oh, yes…a child of our own.”

“A child of our own,” she said. There was an awkward pause. “I think I smell the pie, it must be ready.” She smiled hoping talk of dessert would clear the air of the touchy topic. She walked into the kitchen and put her hands on the counter as she breathed in deeply.

 The kitchen.  That was where her next memory of the red lips came from. She had been eating her breakfast. She was five now and she had not seen the red lips since that night in the crib. Her mother had been wearing a fine white dress, which contrasted heavily with the deep red of her lips.  Emilia recalled her father complaining about the red lips and how it when she wore the lipstick it got all over his clothes.  Emilia’s mother gave them both a kiss on the cheek before leaving for work, leaving the crimson imprints of lips as proof of her apparent love.  Father wiped the marking off and returned to his beer bottle.

“Are you okay in there?”

Emilia straightened up, brushing off her skirt with quick strokes. “Yes, just checking the pie.” She moved over to the stove and opened it up.  The fresh smell of the pie’s crust and filling wafted out. Some of the filling oozed from the crust like lava escaping a volcano. Her distracted mind forgot that the oven was still on, reaching for the pie plate, she retracted her hand quickly from the stinging pain of being burned.

Fire pulsing through her veins Emilia jumped on top of Jake. He was bigger than her, but he already had lost a lot of blood. She clawed at his face as he squirmed underneath her. He flailed out his arm, knocking her across the face and off of him. Her face hit the floor with such force that her lip busted open letting out a fresh stream of blood. She ran her fingers across her lips so the blood coated them like a grotesque lipstick.

Two perfectly white teeth soaked with blood, fell out into Emilia’s hand. She hurled away the lost teeth. Jake had gotten to his feet and was stumbling towards the door. Emilia jumped to her feet; her hip clipped the table as she ran to catch up with him. A plate of green peas clattered to the floor.

Emilia ripped a hanging picture of the two of them off the wall and hurled it at his head. It was just enough to knock him off balance and sent him careening into her glass display case that housed all her porcelain dolls.  He crumpled to the ground, bleeding from the shards of glass that had rooted in his skin. He lay in a sea of glass and broken dolls, barely moving.

He was no longer trying to escape. His chest still rose and fell as he let out soft whimpers.  Satisfied he would not be getting up; Emilia went back into the dining room.  The table was in disarray. The food sat scattered so all the colorful foods bled together like a rainbow had exploded. She picked up the bottle of wine.   She walked into the kitchen and grabbed the bottle opener. Making quick work of the bottle, the cork shot up into the air slapping the celling.  She walked back into the dining room and picked up one of the candles. She walked into the foyer, her high heeled shoes crunching on the glass. She began to pour the alcohol on Jake.  Once the bottle was empty she threw it down by his face, adding to pile of glass.

It wasn’t enough; she walked back into the dining room and to the cabinet where she kept the hard liquor.  She grabbed one of the clear bottles and unscrewed the top. Once she was back to Jake’s fallen body she spilled the entire contents on his body.  She tapped the bottles side so the last bits of liquor fell over his body in drips.

“I hear the water running. Is everything okay?”

“I just burned myself a little. Nothing to worry about.”

“Do you want me to come in there?”

“No, it’s just a small burn. I barely feel it anymore.” She turned off the water and stared at the drops of water that stuck to her skin. Each droplet lay on her skin like perfect glass domes. She had made the comparison once before.  

Water clung to Emilia’s lashes the third time she saw the red lips.  She had advanced to the age of thirteen. She recalled thinking that the water droplets that stuck to her lime green rain coat looked like small crystal domes. She had stayed after late for her creative writing class, which was more like a club meeting.  It had been raining and her mother was picking her up late. Emilia stood huddled under the flag pole, waiting for a reprieve from the cold. A few hours passed before her mother’s old truck pulled up.  Emilia got in, and the first thing she noticed had been the red lips.  The second thing she noticed was the tired expression her mother had.  It was a haunted expression as if something had been broken inside of her.

“Are you sure you don’t want any help in there?” Jakes called from the dining room, breaking her out of her thoughts.

“I’m fine,” she said drying her hands.  She glanced over and saw her reflection briefly in the cracked glass covering of the microwave.

She remembered so vividly the fourth and final time she had seen her mother with the red lips. It had been from her window.  Emilia had been in that same year. She had a small couch by her window, for reading and simply resting while she watched the seasons change outside.  Today, nature wasn’t very interesting due to the rain, so she had curled up with a good book. She always read with a pen so she could make notes and underline passages she found interesting.

Her eyes were brought away from the words of Austen by movement outside.  She glanced out the window; her eyes found the red lips like a beacon in the grey gloom of that day. Her mother stood in front of the house, waiting for something.  A green car Emilia did not recognize sat in front of their driveway.

 A young man helped Emilia’s mother put her suitcase in the back seat. Emilia recognized him vaguely as the nice man that had worked at the diner her mother worked at.  She kissed the young man on the cheek, leaving a crimson mark. The man went around and got into the car, leaving only Emilia’s mother in the grey scaled world of outside. Her mother turned to the window and blew a kiss with the same red lips that would forever be burned in Emilia’s brain. It was like all four of her senses were being assaulted by the memory of those lips.   Every sound, taste, and smell seemed heighted by the within these memories.

“I can smell the pie from here. It smells delicious.”   Ever since that rainy day, Emilia had mostly hated the color red. She had only made cherry pie because she knew how much Jake loved it and it was their anniversary after all. Love often required sacrifice.  She carried the pie back into the dining room. As she entered, she saw a red stain on the back of Jake’s collar. She put down the pie on the table and smiled.

“I think I left something in the kitchen. I need a knife to cut the pie.” 

“It needs to cool anyway. I bet it’s delicious. Can’t wait to dig in.”

“I’m sure you can’t,” she said entering the kitchen and picking up a pan that she had used previously when she had been cooking.  “You know, I don’t have a favorite color, but I have a least.”

Jake apparently did not hear this statement as he went on about the pie. “The smell is killing me, hurry bring it in.”

“Oh, your senses are always so easy to seduce…using sweets.”  

Emilia licked the sugary wine from her hand. While pouring it some of it must have gotten on her. It was too sugary for her taste.  Of course, Jake loved the heavily sweet wines. The taste was only slightly deluded by the liquor.

 Shattered glass was all that remained of the liquor bottle when Emilia dropped it on the floor.  She held the candle with a surprisingly steady hand.  Half of the wax had already melted away.  The flame flickered as she held it over Jake’s quivering body.  She looked directly at the flame as if looking into a mirror. Jake grabbed her ankle. It was a weak grasp, and his eyes partially opened to look up at her.

“Please…don’t,” he rasped.

All she saw were those red lips. The red lips that had torn apart her family. The red lips that had left her without a mother. She was Thirty-Five and married and not once had she ever worn red lipstick.