Tying the Knot

20th Sept 2022

Six sentence story with :

                                              girlieontheedge 

   I Can't Undo The Knot

Part 1

Marie waters the rose bush, notices some old blossoms which have changed from  beautiful, rich, deep orange to faded, dull  pink and which she now dead heads, wondering why age is so ugly.

 "Rosa Independence",  a bush she  chose herself, has grown outside her husbands greenhouse for six years now and yet, regularly,  Marie walks to the end of the garden to tend it and spend some time in quiet contemplation, though it never seems to settle her thoughts or bring her any comfort or consolation and whilst she abhors living in the rambling old house, with it's creaky stairs and large cold rooms, she knows that she can never leave. 

"Mum, this place is killing you, it's about time you got out, moved on, got a life for yourself" her daughter often pleads, "and mum, you know me and Chris will help, and come on, it's gone six years now since dad went, and, honestly,  seeing you like this is heart-breaking."

Her daughters words hurt more than she wanted to admit, but as she kneels down in the dirt,  weeding under the bush, she remembers her last day with Frank,  when he came home from the Mid Henton Holicultural show, with an award for "Most Improved Bloom", and walked through the hallway, her clean hallway,  imprinting it with muddy footprints from his boots and grunting, "Where's me dinner then?"

"I do miss you," she snifs,  as her tears fall into the dirt,  "but maybe we shouldn't have tied the knot so tightly all those years ago, because , no matter what I do, I can't undo it...I can't undo it, and although I'm not locked up,  I'm not free, am I,  and here we are, you and I, here we are"  

----

 

Marie glanced through the grubby window of the greenhouse, saw his spade hanging in the place he had always left it, saw the neat pots stacked in ordered rows, saw the seed boxes  all meticulously and lovingly  made by Frank all those years ago, and wondered what had finally pushed her over the edge, what was the spark that set her off.

When they first got married she enjoyed sharing his passion for all things horticultural, had followed him around at shows, had even done a course in flower arranging so she could make use of the many flowers that he grew, eventually becoming a teacher herself. 

However, as time went on and the children came along, it became clear to Marie that his plant obsession was the most important thing in the world to him and she would have to get on with things by herself, which , for the sake of the children and because she had loved him, she put up with.

The fact that their father showed them so little affection, she found it difficult over the years to convince her daughter and two sons that their father did actually love them, speaking well of him at all times and doing her best to encourage him on the odd occasion, usually with flowers involved, to attend events that they might be involved in. 

But she had become tired of living a lie and on that last day, the day he'd trudged over her new carpet with his muddy boots without a care for her at all, she'd been slicing onions for their dinner and suddenly, though she has no recall of the incident itself, she found herself looking down at his body, blood dripping from the knife she held in her hand.

"This is a good spot for you, right where you'd want to be," she said to her dead husband as she rolled him into the hole she'd dug outside his greenhouse, while she wondered how she would get his blood out of her new carpet.