Smashed Fingers and Sweets
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
It seemed, from Collette’s notes, that it was Mr. and Mrs. English’s 25th wedding anniversary that day.
OLeif had not returned home from cabling the new NAWS building Monday night, till 10:30. And while he was gone, Collette tried not to eat any more of the best chocolate bar she ever tasted, direct from the Austrian Alps to Aldi. Mom would occasionally pick up a bar or two for her while she was out. Somehow the chocolate managed to stay soft enough to be just perfect. But Collette decided that if she was determined to like chocolate so much, she had better change her preference to dark chocolate and try to be at least a little healthy in the matter. She had, of course, been better about eating more fruits and vegetables, thanks to the use of Mom’s and Dad’s juicer when she tutored. As Kitts had said at the lunch table Sunday afternoon,
“Word is on the street, you’ve been eating vegetables again.”
And that was according to Bluebell South. Funny how word got around about odd things.
Meanwhile, Carrie had served all Sunday at Columns where Kurt Warner (who was now playing for the Arizona Cardinals) and his wife, Brenda, (who had grown out all her white-blonde spikes) were hosting a charity banquet of sorts. And she was off again to work that Tuesday for something or other. After spending a day playing with Kitts and Eve on Wednesday and Shakespeare with the girls, Clover, Relevance, maybe Bing, Unn, etc., she would hop on a plane the following morning at 8:30 with Eve for New York. Collette realized that Carrie had been to New York City every year since 2002. And Joe and Rose attended the choir party with kites and catching mitt at the park across from the Ernies. It was also reported that Og Valentine was engaged to a girl of the name, Juliet. Joe had washed Bluebell’s miata again and Curly’s car with Izzy, and went out with Wallace to A&W afterwards, Monday afternoon.
Somehow Collette was reminded that day of the time a good number of years ago when she had just finished a violin lesson for the afternoon. It was probably the summer of her eleventh year. And she had just come out of Mrs. Wagner’s house near Elm Street. She had also just had her hair cut to her shoulders, and Diana had seen it, who had a lesson right after hers, as had Mrs. English. Not that any of that had to do particularly with the story, but it was the smaller details that usually made the story worth listening to. However, Collette was rather proud of her new haircut and thought it over awhile, just how becoming it must be. And after Mom and Mrs. English had spent awhile chatting, they piled back into the old Bailey Mobile station wagon and headed to the store a little ways down the road. Everyone got out into the parking lot in the heat and brown leaves and early fall of the day.
It happened so suddenly that Collette did not even feel any pain for a good twenty seconds. Before the wave could hit her, she was calling at Joe,
“Joe, Joe, open the door! Open the door! Joe, open the door!”
She did not scream it, but she was quite urgent and Joe swung around to open it, not fully realizing what had happened. But then the pain hit as Collette removed her three fingers from where Joe had just opened the door. Why they weren’t all broken, she could not understand. The door had been slammed fully on all three and had closed over the exact middle of her middle finger. She didn’t cry but held her hand gingerly. Mom did not get very upset, but Collette’s middle finger was beginning to bleed across the first joint from her knuckle and Mom hurried them across the parking lot to Hardees. Collette did not recall much of what followed but she remembered a nice teenage girl handing Mom a large cup of disc-shaped ice from behind the counter and Collette stuck her fingers inside. Mom decided that Collette was well enough to continue and they all trooped over into Micahel’s (or some sort of card-store) and Collette managed to find a place on the floor to sit down before the shock hit her and her vision began to tunnel. In the end, her fingers were not very damaged and she continued to have violin lessons shortly after. Of course, Collette could no longer remember which fingers on which hand had been injured. The door had been slammed in just such a way that they were not broken. But it did hurt at the time, and Collette felt her pride kicked down a notch that day for having so vainly admired her new haircut, and tended to keeping her fingers out of the way of all doors.
As it turned out, there would be no attending of a voice recital that day, as OLeif had a website to design for work. And Mom and Linnea dropped off Collette at the apartment to construct fajitas for dinner and start the laundry after Linnea had a few questions:
“What sort of mazes are in the pyramids, Collette?”
“I don’t know for sure. They think there are more mazes there.”
“Well, would they let me explore inside?”
“No, they probably wouldn’t let you in unless you got permission from the government.”
“Well, what if I did go in there and found a pharaoh? Would I get to keep it?”
“No… But they would probably make you a little national hero.”
“Yes!”
“And they’d maybe put your face on all the coins.”
“Then I would own everything!”
“Why would you own everything?”
“Because when Jesus showed them a coin with Caesar’s face on it, they said to give to Caesar what was his, and so they had to give him all the coins.”
Collette attempted to explain.