Music | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Music | Previous Challenge Entry
By
03/13/07
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES

Eddie sat in the front passenger seat of the car. He laid back against the headrest, closed his eyes and turned up the music. Sheila drove home through the purple dusk, realizing she wasn’t going to get any conversation from her grandson. That ipod was the closest thing to him at the moment. He had it on in the morning when he came down to breakfast and in the afternoon when he walked home from the bus. She could hear its percussive strains filtering through the earphones. Eddie had taken to listening to eighties music. She decided it could be worse. He could be listening to punk rock. Instead it was Spandau Ballet and Tears for Fears.

Later that night Sheila sat in her favourite chair listening to the barely audible strains of some Bach concerto, when Eddie came into the room behind her. She craned her neck to look up at his six foot frame and chuckled to herself. He was taller than his Dad and he was only seventeen. She adjusted her glasses and tried to focus, but it was no use.

“Ed…”
“Yeah”
“Eddie, just come round here if you’re going to say goodnight so I can talk to you without hurting my neck”

He walked around and sat down heavily on the coffee table in front of Sheila. His broad, veined hands, brown with a summer spent in the surf, swung between his knees. The hard-bitten fingernails were testament to the stress he had been under for months. Dina, his mother, had taken off a while ago and had only phoned him once in the intervening time. Eddie, the youngest and only child still at home was angry that she hadn’t at least waited until he had left home himself. Sheila wondered if he would hear her over the ipod if she spoke.

“Ed…”
“Yeah?”
“Did you want to talk?”

There was a small silence through which Sheila could hear the crickets chirping their sweet vibrato under the front porch. Suddenly, Vern’s snoring reverberated through his bedroom door and Eddie combed his wild hair with both his hands, fingers crooked with white-knuckled tension.

“I have to leave Gran”
“Eddy…..not yet, you’ve hardly….”
“Yeah, gotta go Gran. Just gotta go, can’t stand all this no more”

He got up and walked off without another word. It was clear that he wasn’t coping with his Dad’s grief. Vern left early in the morning to his construction job, came home late with excuses about having to stay and clean up, and went to bed early. There was little conversation between the two of them and Sheila spent most of her day dreading the tense silence which shrouded their mealtimes and having to navigate the tender sensibilities of both men.

Sheila went and stood in the kitchen and looked up at the old wall clock. It had been a housewarming present when Vern and Dina bought the house. Twenty years it had marked, second by second, its metronome beat set to adagio, quiet and reassuring. She had heard somewhere that music with a beat slower than the human heart actually relaxed you. Sheila thought of Ed’s eighties music; synthesized to within an inch of its life, but somehow catchy and exciting. She recalled that a lot of it seemed to have a melancholic undercurrent, especially the ‘new romantics’. They were Vern’s favorite, Dina’s too. Sheila imagined Ed should have preferred heavy metal nihilism to the haunting strains of ’Mad World’.

There was a noise behind Sheila and she turned suddenly, jumping with fright to see Eddie again, standing with the light behind him like a skinny dark shadow, long bony limbs twitching aimlessly, and shifting his weight from foot to foot. She stood for a moment holding her breath, waiting for him to speak.

“Sorry….Gram” Eddie mumbled “Gonna move in with Adam…you could come and visit”
“Oh, Eddie” Sheila said softly, wondering if she should move towards the boy and give him the hug he sorely needed. Eddie twitched slightly again, and fumbled towards his grandmother, feeling like a little kid. Their arms flailed about for a second then they settled on a brief but close embrace. Eddie sniffed a bit and wiped his nose with his sleeve, then pulled the earphones out of his ears and stuffed them in his pocket. “Thought I would go and buy some Eminem tomorrow” he said thoughtfully.
“Just as well you’re moving out then” Sheila smiled.
.

.

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY
SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE

JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.