| Blogs > RickySpin01 > Salon De Sapience |
|
Balboa Ghost BALBOA GHOST © So many years ago, when I was a young man, I lived in a cozy bungalow on Balboa Island. We had a happy little my wife and I. We had a happy life. I was a CPA back then when everybody thought it meant Cutting Pressing and Alterations. Oil companies were moving in and business was good. I was investing in land. I would take my little family boating in the bay. The club was forming and I was joining. I enjoyed when little Joseph and I would sail around the bay. His mother, my wife, my Joan beside me, and, Joseph on my lap. We would pretend to sail to Australia and Joseph would scold me that he did not see any kangaroos. At least not one hopping from boat to boat. Of an evening Joan and I would walk around the Island. Holding hands. Feeling the fog drench us. Little droplets; glistening jewels of beauty would form on Joan’s eyebrows. I would kiss them off and savor each delicious sensation. Sometimes she would take out her little lace handkerchief, daubed oh so subtly with her perfume. Shrouded in fog, glowing with the moon and serenaded with the sounds of the bay, she would whisk it against my cheek and when I turned my head to sniff the bouquet she would lean to me and whisper in my ear her special desire. Tonight the whisper was: “Pavilion dance.” In the morning I checked the ledgers and had my secretary authorize Mrs. Schneider the hat maker and Helen’s Dress Shop. I made a note to be sure I had a proper suit, looked forward to Joan telling me I did not and set a budget for that. The night of the Dance was wonderful and Joan was simply dazzling. So daring was her gown, with the tops of her smooth shoulders showing like waving lilies at dawn. But oh, it was a cold fog that night. All the ladies shivered, Joan most of all. The influenza had stuck and Joan was among the first. I had her buried in her new gown. I became ill and was bedridden with influenza and grief, I barely remember Joseph passing. My Mother kept him from the lime pits. His nanny recovered and her gentle, kind features reminded me so much of my loss that I gave her six months severance and locked myself away. Each thing I looked at, anything I touched, each glistening speck of dust floating in the sunlight that burned through the window reminded me of the hard, cruel claws that had snatched the breathing soul from me. I sold the house and practice. I became a clerk at a jerkwater stop in the Sierras. Each year on my ’s birthday I take my vacation and ride the train back to Balboa. I stand at the waters edge and see the Pavilion, shrouded in fog, bathed in moon light and serenaded by the sounds of the bay I see little Joseph come to me, holding his mother’s hand. And each year, on the anniversary of the moment my was born, I kiss my heart good-by. |
|||
|
 No words needed.
| ||
9/22/2007 10:04 pm |
Abelle thank you for you kind appreciation. I wrote this story and I perform it. This story has also been published in "Newport 714" magazine. I found some historical photos of Balboa Island circa 1905 and they became the settting. In the wonderful French animation "The Man Who Planted Trees" is a scene in which the man describes how plague had taken his wife and son. I wished to recreate the mood, the powerful emotional angst, from that superb and brief animation scene.
|
×
×