Lovesick Little

by Leslie Phelan

  In the midst of all their celebrating, Erica suddenly felt her joy hit a pause when she noticed Arielle on the floor pretending to be enthralled by the lint between her toes. Obviously, she was refusing to acknowledge their news.

  “Arielle!” said Gabriel cheerily, excusing her avoidance. “Did you hear us? We’re getting married! There’s going to be a wedding!”

  Arielle slowly let go of her toes and turned to stare at him from under lowered brows. Her blue eyes that normally held so much depth appeared hollow somehow. He in his ignorant naivety had thought she’d have been excited. He had no idea that his happiness and impending marriage to Erica would literally be the death of his little foundling.

  Without taking her low, sad eyes off him, she rose up to her feet and took a step towards him. Although her heart seemed to weigh a ton, she still moved as lightly as ever to where he stood with his arm around his chosen love. So now it was over for her, and she had nothing to lose. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember why she ever thought she had a chance with him in the first place.

  She took another step towards them and her soles hurt once again as she tiptoed upon invisible points and serrations. As she moved towards them, her defenses felt weakened. Everything hurt. Bitterness built up inside her.

  She took another step and thought about all the time she’d wasted trying to make him love her. He had stolen her heart just to give his own to someone else, and was too blind and too preoccupied to even notice.

  As she moved closer, stepping faster towards them across the wide living room floor, she felt resentment flood her heart like a tide pool. Why does he love Erica? Why is she so much better than me? She thought about her life under the sea, and how she could have had her pick of any merman in the kingdom. Down there, she was the special one. Up in the dry world, she was cast aside for another. She shifted her gaze to Erica and her pretty, smooth visage and imagined smashing the giant pink conch from the coffee table into one of her plump, rosy cheekbones. She smiled eerily as she imagined retracting the conch only to bring it back to smash it through the bridge of her pretty button nose. Her eyes went from hollow to mercurial as she envisioned the bloody aesthetic ruin she’d inflict, if only she was braver. If her fury and bitterness had the powers of telekinesis, then the whole coast was about to go down in flames…

  “Earth to Arielle!” she heard Demetra say excitedly, and it shook her out of her hostile daydream. “Did you hear him? There’s going to be a wedding!” Arielle looked up at her Gabriel, then up at his Erica, whose face was still perfect. Then she glanced at the conch, still sitting untouched on the table.

  With a sigh, she gave her newly engaged friends each an obligatory hug and a kiss, then ducked out of the way so the family could get back to excitedly discussing timelines and venues. Gabriel smelled his new fiancée’s hair. Even with traces of egg in it, she smelled good. Really good. “We wish to be married as soon as possible!” he said, having agreed with Erica that a summer wedding was only appropriate, but neither wanted to wait until the following year.

  “What’s the rush?” asked Ava. “I’m sure you’ll still be all googly-eyed about each other in a year’s time.” Gabriel and Erica smiled at each other adoringly. “Actually,” he said, “we’re thinking next week!”

  Lucia was taken aback. “You’re the first of my kids to wed!” she said. “I might need more than a week to plan it!” “It’s okay, Mom,” assured Gabriel. “We don’t need a huge wedding; we just want the important people there. And we want to have it on the Alexandria! I was planning to call Walt in the morning.” The Walt he spoke of was a friend of his grandfather’s, who lived in Prince Rupert and owned a small fleet of nice wooden ships. Most of them were used as charters for gambling cruises and sightseeing tours but there was one ship, the Alexandria, which stood apart from the rest. He had purchased the antique vessel in Malta back in the early nineties and had had her shipped back to his yard in pieces so he could rebuild her to her original glory. She was now all but completely restored, but with the addition of some modern conveniences like flushing toilets and an ocean GPS.

  “He’s on her finishing touches right now!” he said. “She’ll be ready in just a few days!”

  “And how do you know all this?” asked Cliff.

  “I follow him on Twitter,” Gabriel answered with a shrug.

  “We’ll need to book a caterer,” added Lucia. “And someone to do the flowers!” But Erica explained how she had three aunts who owned a catering business, another aunt who built award-winning marzipan cakes, and an uncle who owned a floral shop. Also, she had a cousin who was a holy woman at a new-age spirituality commune in the Yukon.

  “Well haven’t you got a relative for all seasons,” said Lucia, excitedly pulling out a stack of bridal magazines she had bought that afternoon. “So I guess the only base left to be covered is the matter of the dress you’ll be donning on the big day!” But before Lucia could explain the significance of the pink, yellow, and purple sticky flags that poked out the sides of the pages, Erica informed her that she’d already chosen her dress.

  “I’ll be wearing my mother’s,” she said decisively, with a dreamy, nostalgic look in her eye. Lucia remembered the dress, for she’d attended the wedding back in ‘85 with Ava seven months fat in her tummy. “The butter cream lace?” she asked breathlessly, closing her eyes and remembering how pretty Erica’s mother looked walking down the aisle.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Erica replied proudly. “I always dreamt of wearing it one day.”

  Gabriel covered his ears as they talked dresses. He had heard somewhere that it’s bad luck to know anything about it, or something like that.

  “I’m so excited, let’s have this thing tomorrow!” said Lucia, grabbing a Niagara Falls souvenir plate off the sideboard and taking the family by surprise as she smashed it to the floor. “OPA!” she shouted, and kiss-kissed vivaciously her son and future daughter-in-law. Bubbling over with happiness, her husband grabbed her for a spin around the kitchen and together they smashed a few more plates for good measure. Arielle sat alone outside in the dark as inside, the family cheerily mapped out the day that would be her very last.

  “Congratulations on your engagement,” said Ava, poking her head inside her brother’s bedroom door. Erica was still downstairs sipping champagne with the parents, and it was just the two siblings upstairs.

  “Thanks, Aves,” he said warmly. “Listen - I didn’t mean to beat you to the punch. I know you’re supposed to go first, being the eldest and all. Please know there is no shame in coming in second.”

  “If I ever get married at all,” she said with a snort.

  “Oh, you say that now. But one day, when you meet that perfect guy - ”

  Ava interrupted him. “Spare me, Gabe; I know all the trite clichés,” she said, rolling her pretty dark eyes.

  “I’m just saying, not all hope is lost.” And while Gabriel put away a basket of clean laundry, Ava reached into her pocket and pulled a plastic-filtered cigarillo out and lit it. He hated when she did that in his room and was about to comment until she pulled a Cuban cigar out of the other pocket and handed it to him. He shrugged and smiled, gladly accepted, and sparked it in celebration.

  “Brother Gabe, I’m about to tell you something I’ve never told anyone,” said Ava, slowly exhaling the cherry-scented smoke. He braced himself, so sure she was about to admit she was a lesbian, finally. It wasn’t that. “This is not something I’m proud of, but . . . I am a horrid bitch, straight through to my blackened core. I can pretend to be sweet and easygoing in front of a guy but never for long because the fact is I am neurotic, argumentative, and cold. I am cold as the Arctic Circle; I’ve been called Svalbard cold. And no one wants to marry Svalbard.”

  Gabriel’s eyes smiled at that comment. “No arguments there! But that’s the stuff we love you for,” he said with a chuckle. “And there is a foot for every shoe. You might rip on people a lot and it might humiliate an individual deeply and irreparabl
y from time to time but that doesn’t make you a bad person. Doing bad things is what makes a person bad- you just call it like you see it, especially when doing so gives you the opportunity to be harsh and cold, that’s all.”

  “It’s more than that, Gabe. Not only am I incapable of genuine kindness, I am physically incapable of even saying anything nice. Even in instances where it could potentially benefit me. I can’t even be nice for selfish reasons! It’s all disses. Cold, mean scorn and scurrility. I’ve checked.”

  “Ava, maybe you should stop focusing your energy on the things you dislike about yourself and instead focus on being all the things you admire. And if you’re looking for something nice to say right now, you can go ahead and tell me how sexbomb my new sneaks are!” he said, gesturing towards his fresh new footwear that still smelled like factory rubber. Gabriel loved new sneaker smell.

  “Yeah, I was going to say, those are nice,” Ava agreed.

  “. . . because you’re trying to be a better person?” asked Gabriel.

  “No, because they’re pretty boss. I mean it; good choice,” she answered.

  “Thanks, Erica helped me pick them. But since we’re beautifying our lives here, may I make one more suggestion?” She nodded. “For extra karmic credit, instead of coughing up cajolery, try executing a few random, anonymous acts of kindness.” Gabriel smiled satisfyingly, as if he held the secret to all life’s happiness in his hands.

  “If it’s nice things we’re trying to do, what’s the difference between doing it loud n’ proud, and doing it in secret?”

  “Well everyone knows anything truly selfless needs to be done in secret,” he replied.

  Ava thought about it for a second, trying to think of the last time she did something selfless for no rewards or praise or thanks. She thought long and hard, then came up with something. “I think I already kind of do that,” she said hopefully. Then she explained how sometimes when she’s walking through a downtown park smoking, she’ll often flick her butt or joint roach while it’s still reasonably smokeable.

  “And who are you helping but the street sweepers you’re giving job security to?” her brother asked.

  “Obviously the hobos!” she replied. “I’ll be like, I could take another few puffs and kill it, or I could flick it now and let a derelict have my ‘resties!”

  “People who flick their butts make this world a grosser place, you realize,” he said, unimpressed.

  Ava couldn’t hold back her chortle. “You’re looking at it all the wrong way!”

  He chortled back, “Well then please enlighten me.”

  Ava grinned knowingly. “Just imagine the joy it would bring the down-and-out dero who chances upon it. Have you ever seen one, Gabe? Have you ever noticed their beady eyes as they sketchily yet diligently scan the ground? What do you think they’re looking for?”

  “Money?” he guessed.

  “Money AND something to smoke!” she said. “They spend their days praying they’ll find the sorts of pennies from heaven that I leave for them. And those guys’ll put their lips to anything.”

  Gabriel made face. “This is way outta my league. I’m not exactly versed on what a hobo will or won’t bring his lips to.” He shuddered.

  “Point is, while I can’t really help them with everything else that’s dingy in their lives, what I can do is leave the little surprises that make life to them worth living,” she said with compassion.

  “And what if a kid or a bird or a dog found it first and ate it? What then?” demanded Gabriel, crossing his arms and eyeing her inquisitively.

  “It wouldn’t happen,” she said definitively. “No self-respecting wheedler lets a child or lesser species beat him to the payday!”

  Gabriel sighed. “Well aren’t you just the Princess Di of vagrants,” he said ironically.

  “I guess so,” said Ava, nodding slowly, smiling and feeling a bit better about herself. Her eyes lit up in a way he hadn’t seen them do in a long time; he was glad, but also unsure how much personal satisfaction she could honestly derive from the ‘deeds’ she’d been doing. In any event, he was happy for her.

  “Good talk, bro! Congrats again on the engagement!” she said merrily, and with that, bouncily skipped out of his room, leaving him scratching his head.

  Arielle had been asked to play ring-bearer at the wedding. She was told she’d be wearing orange.

  It was during the night of the rehearsal dinner, over the loud, tangy meal prepared by Erica’s formidable Greek aunts, in which all the wedding roles were assigned. Erica had asked her two best friends from camp, Jess and Juliana, to be her bridesmaids, and had asked Demetra to be the flower girl. Ava offered to be in charge of the punch bowl, and Arielle was asked to bear the rings.

  Of course, she did not want this role. In fact, she wanted no part in the wedding at all. If given the choice, she’d have preferred to sit it out, watch everyone else set sail, and then lock herself in the bathroom so that when the time came, she could just evaporate into a tuft of salty froth, pitifully slipping off clean porcelain to slowly sink down the drain.

  Her dress would be orange along with the bridesmaids and there would be flowers in her hair. No raincoats, no rain boots, so sorry. Orange shoes with an orange dress. Erica liked orange.

  She didn’t know why she agreed, or if she even actually agreed. When Erica giddily brought up the idea, she didn’t nod but she didn’t shake her head either, and so everyone present simply took her lack of response as a silent ‘just pencil me right in’. Now, she was obligated, and there would be no way around it.

  So she was in, and she had the mass of orange silk and taffeta hanging in its clear dry cleaning bag on the back of her bedroom door to prove it. Tangerine Dream, as Erica called it. Sort of like Clementine Holiday, but zingier. It mocked her while she lay in bed wide awake. She didn’t know why, but she detested the color orange. She loved yellow and she loved red, but there was something about the mix of the two colors that set her teeth on edge. She couldn’t understand it, but she knew she hated it. And now, she hated it with a passion.

  She sorely dreaded the next morning where she’d have to slip into the dress that had been chosen for her and pretend to be dazzled that the man of her dreams had found the woman of his dreams in someone else. It seemed almost poetic, she thought, that she should bear their rings; that she should guard the very adornments that signified her forthcoming death, and carry it to her beloved on a fluffy white pillow, no less.

  After lying still for what felt like years, Arielle finally just got up and crept quietly out of the house so she could try and find a way to tire herself out. In the still evening air, it was as if even the wind was resting up for the big day that was about to begin in just a few short hours. The animals from the sea who came up to visit her could sense her melancholy, and so they respectfully kept their distance but watched her from afar.

  She walked down the beach by herself, stepping far closer to the waves than she’d have ever dared in daylight and, even though she found herself surrounded by the magnificent surface world she had once so zealously coveted, she began to feel deeply and agonizingly alone.

  She thought about her decisions and the foolish leap she had taken, just to get closer to a boy. She thought about how headstrong, stubborn, and defiant she had been. She had been a selfish girl to put her childish desires ahead of her people and the will of her father, the king. She hung her head down low; she felt like the worst princess ever.

  In the stillness of this night, stars didn’t even twinkle, they just glowed. No clouds passed between them and the Earth she stood upon and so all stood still, hung tight and beamed brightly. As she passed beneath them, she kept her face down, feeling undeserving of the splendor of basking in their light.

  The deeper she journeyed down the road of regret, the more her face twisted into a crestfallen grimace. All the loathing, shame and pity she felt for herself began to weigh down on her, resting heavily and slothfully upon her wispy shoulders and
neck. The tears behind her eyes that begged for release just circulated around her temples thumping, pressing, contracting. She longed to be free from it all, to just sink away into the cool sand, never to be seen again. Awash in her own despondent blue, she began wishing for an immediate, merciful ending so that she might retire to her state of eternal effervescence just one day sooner than scheduled.

  Just as soon as the thought escaped her head, she felt the sharp pains she had gotten so used to stab through the toes, heels, and arches of her tender feet. In true heartbreaking fashion, the pain that shot through her feet served to remind her of how things can always get worse, especially when you already think you’ve arrived at rock bottom.

  But then, something marvelous happened. Along with the sharp pains that plagued her came the reminder of the magnificent strength her feet and legs possessed. As she admired her little feet, the beautiful pair she traded her voice for, she recalled the rhythm and dance they’d shown her and the ooohs and aaaahs they’d earned her and finally understood why the sea witch had set their price so high.

  She shook off her sorrow and began to leap upon her lovely feet. They were, after all, the one thing she got out of this deal that was totally hers to enjoy. They weren’t like the boy she wanted whose attention required competition and whose approval she spent her days pining for. No, they were freely hers and they carried her lightly and gracefully, even when the rest of her body wanted to cave in and melt away. Sure they hurt to tread upon but she began to think of the pain as simply the heightened sensitivity that came along with their overdeveloped capacity for wonderment and grace. So she kicked her feet up high, tossed sand into the air with her twinkling, flicking toes and did cartwheels and flips along the shoreline. Then she stopped, noticed the awakening of the winds as they pushed through her loose, long hair, and began to chase them down the beach.

  She ran, challenging the breeze, running as fast as her feet could carry her, leaping up and over the highest reaching waves like a bird taking to flight. The salmon that followed her from the water leapt and dove alongside the shore as she pushed the speed in her legs to the limit. She realized that while she had thoroughly tested the strength and beauty in her legs, she hadn’t truly tested their speed until this moment. So, in a final tribute to their unreal dexterity, she took the legs that would be hers for just one more day and night, on a good, long run.