Twenty Three

Resigned to pauper's wages,

And late -- she raises up

From digging for the fabled gold

In fields of buttercup.

"A jazz club? Sounds fun, Mark," Andrea said into the phone as the afternoon sun streamed through the garden doors, "but are you sure?" She leaned back against the hard kitchen counter, wrapping the cord around her finger while she talked. "I'm sure you know it can never be the way it was for us."

She looked at the slender narcissus on the kitchen table. The miniature buds were just beginning to open into fragile white trumpets. Andrea had placed Mark's gift there when it began to grow so the children would have a better view of the marvel. They'd watched in wonder as the emerald stems reached for the sky with no more encouragement than sunlight and water.

"I don't want it to be the way it was either, but that's behind us now," Mark said. "Can't we go just to hear the music?"

They made plans to go out that Friday.

After replacing the phone Andrea walked across the kitchen and looked out the glass doors into the deceptive sunshine where the dog lay curled up on the flagstones. The chilly March winds had delivered a pile of dry leaves to the corner of the terrace on a day too cold to sweep them up. She gazed beyond the terrace to the birch trees, their graceful limbs still barren after the long winter. Soon it would be time for things to come alive again. It couldn't come too soon.