The Girl with the Wistful Eyes

By Xlibris US

In this carefully paced novella the author offers the reader an admixture of mystery and charm when an English professor promises his lover-colleague on her death bed that he will complete her landmark study of one of Britains most illustrious novelists. She leaves him her research notes along with a batch of letters she has written to him. Enter next The Girl with the Wistful Eyes --a strange college student and single mother of a five year old who rents the apartment above the professors and sets in motion events that will send his life spiraling.
The characters in Mr. Applebys eclectic collection of short stories are caught in isolated moments of crisis that speak to the human condition a despairing university student returns to her grandmothers house seeking a remedy for her broken heart; a young man attempts to make sense of a mysterious girls profound melancholy; a young women unwittingly relives a past love within the crevices of a new love, and in The Catalog Bride, a story rich with nuance, an aging university professor strikes a Faustian bargain--with himself.

Cover Art: Erika Appleby

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493170661

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Copyright © 2014 by David Appleby.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Art by: Erika Appleby. Copyright © 2014

Rev. date: 02/19/2014

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

WILLA

THE CATALOG BRIDE

WINTER LOVE

TAOS

A SIMPLE BOG GIRL

YOU LOOK LOVELY TODAY

A LONG ROMANCE

MALLORY THE OLOGIST

FRUIT COCKTAIL

THE GIRL WITH THE WISTFUL EYES:

FOR ERIKA

ALSO BY DAVID APPLEBY

Moon Alley

Love Sketches

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

________

The author gratefully acknowledges the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, The Council for Basic Education and The PEW Charitable Trusts for their support and encouragement.

A special thanks to Fiona Smith, editor of shortbreadstories.co.uk and Short Breaks: The Best of Shortbread Short Stories, Volume One, © 2010 by shortbread stories, and published by Discovery Press, Dundee, Scotland. Fiona couldn’t have been more gracious or more supportive while reading and commenting on many of the stories that constitute The Girl with the Wistful Eyes.

‘A Long Romance,’ was first published in Love Sketches, © by David Appleby, 2011.

WILLA

It was late in the evening—I wish I could say, ‘a new morning, predawn hours,’ so to invoke the cliché of a weary and empty night, but Starbucks isn’t open at that time. But here in this midnight hour of a lonely Saturday night, she sat at the piano in a deserted Starbucks and began to play and sing the saddest song I’ve ever heard.

We search for moments when love begins or ends, all of us at one time or another do this, and I am doing it now. It began that midnight in Starbucks. She turned this song into a lament, and she and I found one another as she whispered the lyrics in a soft, alluring voice. A sorrow and forsaken feeling swept through me as she accompanied herself with a dreamy, bluesy approach that ran across the upper register of the keyboard with the most subtle punctuations. Her eyes were wet with tears and belied the quiet of her voice. When she looked up I saw that a rueful expression had claimed her face.

Ours was a love born in such a crushing sorrow that neither of us could identify its source except to know that it ran so deep, and was so fundamentally devoid of the lightness that love applies to lovers at the start. Love without a smile, love in shadows, not in light, she would say of that night in Starbucks, the night we fell in love. She would often turn her face from mine and lower her head, a supplicant to her hurt, her pain. I held her arm whenever we walked through the city, and when we entered Rittenhouse Square, a block or so from where she lived, I’d put my arm around her for I knew that more tears would spill before we exited the small, green oasis of leafy elms and waist-high hedges guiding us to her brownstone.

On that first night, the night she sang and played, the very moment we entered her apartment she headed for the piano, and in a time signature that was heavy with her sorrow, began to play the same haunting melody. She made the slightest tilt of her shoulders to the right as she teased out the notes, and then her soft voice caressed the air: ". . . I fell for you . . . I love you so . . . want you so . . . need you so . . ."

Her name was Willa. She had a feminine, demure look, shy and pretty with her soft, brown eyes. Her hair was cut to fall to her shoulders, a fringe spread haphazardly across her high forehead. Her lips beckoned, asking to be kissed, I hoped. However hers was a face never free from the sorrowful expression that had claimed it, how long ago I could only guess. It was this unchanging expression of an aching sorrow that I had been drawn to at the start, a sorrow that delineated her essence which I found to be sensual and seductive; her sorrow a call of mystery, a call I was unable to resist.

We were together constantly. I recall a time, it was a few months after we had met, that she confessed to me she had searched through my desk drawers and had come upon my passport. She had taken my passport and hid it in a secret place in her apartment. She had done this, she admitted through a flood of guilty tears, for she feared I would go away. That I would leave her. That she’d be alone, alone as she was that night we first met, the night she played the piano and sang to me. All her memories are desperate and pained. She sometimes speaks with eyes shut tight, fists clenched; these are moments when I sense in her a silent howl.

It was after she had confessed she had taken my passport that she told me she wanted to walk the beach with me. Take me to the sun, she said, her voice infused with an anguish that sank me. She returned my passport, held it in both hands as if a book of prayer, her face drained of color, her eyes filled with a fear that frightened me.

One night she slipped beneath the sheets and immediately took my hand to her face, and gossamer-like, her trembling fingers alighted tenderly on my lips. The lights were dim, but the full moon had found the smallest chink in the blinds to slip a token of moonlight on the single pillow that held our faces. I traced her tears with my fingertips. Her cool, moist lips touched my hand, rested there for moments before she raised her sad, glinting eyes to meet mine. I will lose you, I heard her sob. I hardly recognized her voice. My instinct was to protect her, to cherish her, to collapse myself into her, never to be without her. I held her as her body shook with her sobs, the pillow damp with our tears.

She slept fitfully. I held her through the long night. Every so often she uttered a sound, a whimper as if she was delirious with periodic spasms of memory.

The ray of moonlight was replaced by the early morning sun, a dust-dappled beam had slanted its way onto the bed and awakened me. I reached for her but she was gone. And then came the light sound of her trills at the piano. A run that included hesitations and delicate pauses, slow prefaces to her pleading voice that came drifting toward the bedroom as thin as a line of cigarette smoke moving toward the ceiling: My one and only darling . . . help me, I beg you . . . I’m so alone . . . my need for you . . . stay close to me . . . I beg you . . . give me the love of you . . .

Will you take me today? Take me to the sun? she whispered. She wore pajama bottoms, and my blue shirt buttoned and tied in a knot at her navel. At the front door, her zippered suitcase waited, handle raised high, definite and defiant, I thought.

She returned to her song, this time improvising along melodic lines that grew light and sweet with fills and triads of notes that lovingly melded beneath her fingers, and yet, a tight tinkling that continued the forlorn, bluesy yearning she had perfected and made her own. Head down, fingers lifting and falling as if moved by pockets of air, she leaned herself closer to the keys, and softly covered her playing with barely a breath of voice . . ."A cry of longing grows in me . . . it is your face in my dreams that I see, my darling . . . so I beg you . . . come to me . . . stay close to me . . . . give me the love of you."

I went into the bedroom and called the airline. My voice cracked when I tried to speak, a sound as sharp as if I had snapped a twig on a forest floor.

Her fingers continued to feather the keys, and her soft voice was swept with wisps of yearning as she fought back her tears: "My darling hold me, please . . . her fingers climbed the stairs of the melody, and then came the final line drenched with hurt and sorrow, "Please don’t leave me . . . lost though I may be . . . My love, my sweet, give me the love of you."

And at that moment I knew it was not she who would lose me, but I who would lose her. The song she sang and played was not to me, but for me. I knew that in the end I would lose Willa, and that I’d never be the same again.

________

THE CATALOG BRIDE

Walter walks into the men’s room on the upper floor of Philadelphia’s Academy of Music before taking his seat in the amphitheater section. He occupies the first open urinal, glances over to an elderly man who is peeing. The man has a smile on his face. Walter unzips his fly and quickly grips his penis as he would a carrot in a display bin, lifts it toward the urinal just as his stream begins splashing against the center of the glistening white enclosure. He sighs. The elderly man looks over his shoulder, says to Walter, That’s a big mistake.

Walter ignores the man.

You shouldn’t stand and pee all tied in like that, the man continues. He nods his head, looks up to the ceiling and downward again in the direction of Walter’s penis.

Walter stares straight ahead, fixed on one spot as he pretends not to have heard.

The man straightens his back, leans backward and shakes his penis until dribbles of urine hit the lip of the urinal. Walter’s stream, as it lessens, saturates a circular cake of disinfectant affixed to the drain below. He allows himself a swift, peripheral glance at the elderly man’s maneuvers, flinches somewhat when he notices the man is holding his testicles and penis in the cup of his hand; Walter notices patches of the man’s silver-grey pubic hair appear as dry-looking as a clump of uprooted desert sage. A final shake, a throaty grunt as he watches the stranger lift and lower his hand inside his white underwear to reset its contents. The elderly man zips up and moves to a bank of sinks to wash his hands.

I’m going to give you some sound advice, friend, calls the elderly man from the sink. When you stand up to pee, lift all your works up and out. Don’t leave your testicles locked inside your shorts and trousers. You’re going to create urological problems for yourself down the road.

Walter thinks of leaving without washing his hands, but realizes his wife, who prides herself on her keen sense of smell, might very well pick up the scent of urine on his hand. He moves two sinks away from the man.

My name is Dr. Lewis Knox, the man says, soaping his hands thoroughly. I was Chief of Urology at Washington Hospital up to my retirement three years ago. Listen to me because I know whereof I speak, he says. How old are you by the way?

Walter washes his hands, ignores the man’s question, but is listening and smiling. Nice to meet you. My name is Walter, Walter Anders.

I’ll forego shaking hands with you, Walter, until I’m dried off. But do what I say: lift everything up and out, don’t trap your testicles down there, he repeats.

The lights dim then flicker three times. The men avoid any handshake at the door and leave the restroom together. The elderly man walks briskly down the steps to the Family Circle seats, while Walter is quickly ushered into a narrow set of stairs that leads to the amphitheater section.

You just made it, his wife says, shifting both legs to the side as Walter squeezes into the narrow aisle.

Walter looks down into the Family Circle section to see Dr. Knox enter and take his seat next to a beautiful young woman. He guesses her to be perhaps a third of Dr. Knox’s age. The lights flicker and dim as the concertmaster walks on stage. Walter watches Dr Knox lean close to the woman who then turns in her seat and looks up to the amphitheater. Walter assumes that Dr Knox had redirected her attention for now they are both fixed on Walter’s location.

A Holst program this first half. The girl below makes a half-turn in her seat and lifts her face to the amphitheater seats once again before darkness falls. Walter continues to focus in her direction.

Brook Green Suite for String Orchestra followed by the Morris Dance Tunes and concluding grandly with St Paul’s Suite.

And then intermission.

The finale of St. Paul’s Suite is barely ended when Walter suggests they walk down to the Family Circle lobby for a glass of wine.

*     *     *

Walter, dear boy, will you and your wife please join us? And to Walter’s surprise, Dr. Knox adds, My wife, Lee. Walter responds accordingly, and after introducing his wife hears Dr. Knox in full voice say: Alice Anders: How lovely to meet you. And you’re also drinking red, are you?

White for me, Lewis, Mrs. Knox says quietly.

Simple enough. Dr. Knox announces, "Two glasses of Valpolicella for our guests. And will you help me, my dear?" he asks Alice, gently touching her elbow to guide her toward the bar before she has had a chance to answer.

Charming husband you have. Walter offers. He and Mrs. Knox move to the side to allow others a clear approach to the bar. Is it Lee or Leah? I’m sorry I missed the . . .

He said Lee. She leans close to Walter. Shhh. Short for Leander. Tell no one, I beg you, she whispers jokingly.

Your secret is safe with me.

Walter gives her a quick study. Dark eyes beautifully spaced, her bare shoulders reveal the smoothest skin, Mediterranean-looking and luminous; wide cheeks with an unobtrusive elevation of bone. But it is her red mouth—her full, sculptured lips that captivate Walter. An upper lip that does not disappear when she smiles, a lower lip that allows her that special, Bardot pout. She speaks in a soft voice, rounding her mouth on the words, ‘Ahm I-beg-you,’ accenting each. Blond hair graces those luscious shoulders; her sharply styled hair hugs her oval face. Her eyes swim and fix on Walter.

Actually, she says, Lewis prefers Lee. I on the other hand do prefer Leander.

Your southern roots?

Exactly.

I’m guessing North Carolina?

Very good.

Where?

Asheville.

Help! Alice arrives, walking in half-step, gingerly reaching one glass outward to Walter. Leander places her hand on Walter’s upper arm, the lightest touch as she steps forward to take the second glass from Alice. Dr. Knox continues a conversation with Alice that had begun at the bar. And not a drop spilled, adds Alice proudly, flashing a broad smile at Dr. Knox.

Their conversations then surrender to the prescribed intermission talk, agreeable talk that centers around the music—Dr. Knox issues brittle tidbits about Holst first, then of St. Paul’s, where Holst had taught. Walter listens politely while the women listen, and though he attempts to pull in what little Leander is saying to Alice, from what he hears her husband tell he concludes that all of what Dr. Knox is chirping is little more than previously known gossip. He considers that Dr. Lewis Knox may well be a gasbag. The lights flicker them back to their seats, too quickly they agree, but not before they exchange telephone numbers and email addresses.

*     *     *

The phone call from Leander Knox came two weeks later. Walter expected it, yet an expectation more hoped for than known. He had devised several scenarios she might use, ignoring the most realistic: an offer to give him and Alice their prized Family Circle tickets for next Saturday’s upcoming concert . . .Which, sadly, we are unable to attend.

Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, Walter answered, a bit too loudly, a bit too excitedly. Yours are wonderful seats. In fact we are on the waiting list for Family Circle seats . . . hopefully; we’ll get moved up next season.

She had spoken just above a whisper, and he found her soft telephone voice quite similar to her in-person voice of sweetly aspirate southern vowels. He realized he was about to fall into that stagnant water basin of stupefying speech a sudden phone call often initiates. Recovering somewhat, Walter suggested that she take his tickets and return them to the Orchestra’s office. And in a voice grown calmer and measured, he asked, Are you free tomorrow?

They agree to meet the next day at D’Antonio’s Restaurant just off Rittenhouse Square where they’d exchange tickets over coffee—or a glass of wine.

*     *     *

What did she say? Alice asked. What’s the reason?

Walter explains twice, but in a more matter-of-fact manner the second time. Instinctively he tells Alice that exchanging tickets is Dr. Knox’s idea; he knows it’s wiser to diminish Leander’s role in this, imply that she, Leander, was merely playing messenger, little more that that. I don’t know, she seemed blasé to the entire thing, as if her husband had insisted. He paused.

Alice looked up from her plate. Seems like something he would do. He strikes me as a very considerate man.

Walter affects indifference to the entire conversation.

What’s their story, anyway? Alice asked. She twists her closed lips, takes a breath and continues. "He must be at least . . . three times older. What could possess a young, beautiful girl like that to . . . ?

Oh, who knows? Maybe he’s a father figure.

Alice guffaws at that. You sure you don’t mean a ‘grandfather figure?’

Walter winces. The mere mention of ‘age’ annoys him; the reference to ‘grandfather’ as horrible as hearing a fatal diagnosis.

Oh, yes, Alice says as she rinses the dishes. She has an accent, and if the accent is East European—Slavic, Russian—who-knows-what—well, then I can dope it out easily enough. ‘She’s a catalog bride, I bet. She’d marry any guy in America no matter what, just to get a green card and get the hell out of some hell-hole over there.

Of course, that happens, he says patiently. But Dr. Knox is a prominent guy, and her accent is not East European. It’s southern—Carolinas. North Carolina. She’s from Asheville, it turns out. Walter finishes drying the utensils and leaves the kitchen.

He seems like a very nice man, Alice repeats, placing the utensils into the dishwasher. But really, who does he think he’s kidding. She’s after a green card. What else could it be?

She’s from North Carolina, Alice. Get off the catalog-bride business. She’s from Asheville, for godsakes.

Maybe she’s one of those college girls you told me about? You know, those girls who pick up a sugar daddy while in school. She gets used to the good life and keeps it going after graduation.

Walter seeks to strangle his imagination, rid himself of Leander, but his image of her—her full lips, her soft brown eyes—and the sound of that melodious voice that had whispered to him, ‘tell no one, I beg you . . . ‘lingers, and something in him resists his efforts to close the image that had taken hold in his mind’s eye. Walter accepts his truth: he cannot wait to see her again. Tomorrow seems to him as far away as the dawn of time.

He walks into the living room as Alice shouts something about Viagra being a potential widow-maker. "I still think he picked her out of a catalog. I bet she’s Eastern European. She can screw him to death if she puts her mind to it. And walk away sitting pretty. With a green card and his estate."

*     *     *

Leander enters D’Antonio’s, pauses at the hostesses’ station, and the moment Walter sees her he rises from his chair and walks a few steps toward her. She moves quickly to meet him. They greet with a handshake and an abbreviated embrace that results in an exchange of air kisses.

He says something during the in-and-out seconds of that greeting, but believes she has not heard his words, words poorly pronounced, warped by his excitement. She must sense his anticipation, he believes, excitement and anticipation that has not only tangled his speech, but has left him near breathless. She takes a half-step back, releases his hand, smiles broadly and nods her head ‘yes,’ in answer to what she has probably not heard. Now she does hear his one word reply. Good, Walter says. He leads her to a table in the corner, an intimate table for two.

A waiter arrives quickly, presents menus to each of them. Leander handles the menu, but ignores it and looks up at Walter. The waiter makes a suggestion. They agree on a bottle of Bolla Valpolicella. Walter steadies his breathing.

Ah, a continuation of our Academy of Music evening. How nice, she says. She opens her bag and removes an envelope. I don’t want to forget these.

He hands her his amphitheater tickets, allows his fingers to brush hers.

Mission accomplished, Leander says with a smile. Now, that’s out of the way. So, tell me, is this your favorite restaurant—yours and Alice’s?

No, we’ve never eaten here. I’ve been here just once before, for a drink before taking the train home.

That’s right, you do teach close by, don’t you?

Yes, I do.

At Franklin College.

Yes. How did you know?

The waiter returns, opens the bottle. The formality: sight and swirl and sniff and taste, but Walter and Leander nod simultaneously, both adding a polite wave of the hand that cancels the waiter’s perfunctory procedure. Obediently, he fills their glasses and places the bottle on the table. They skim the menu and order quickly to hasten his departure.

I hope I didn’t embarrass you when we chatted at the Academy, he asks.

She looks down at her flared skirt, cream-colored poplin that she lifts lightly and smoothes delicately with the palm of her hand as she crosses her legs. She leans back in her chair and evens her stare, adds a smile. Embarrassed? No. Should I have been? What did I miss?

In that case I guess I’ve given myself away. I thought you had picked up on my staring at you. When I thought that you’d found me out I quickly averted my eyes, glanced around aimlessly. And now here I am doing it all over again.

Better that I thought you rude, than bewitched? she asks, her eyes dancing. Come now, what girl does not want to be looked at?

I grow shy in certain circumstances, he offers.

"Well now, Ahm don’t. Leander replies with a soft, throaty laugh. And now ahm will admit that ahm don’t believe you. Ahm doubt you have a shy bone in your body. Leander’s laugh quiets. She picks up her glass. Shall we? she hints, leaning her glass across the table. Thought you’d enjoy a bit of my North Carolina accent—exaggerated version we Southerners use for you, she wriggles her nose and wags her finger at Walter, you Dahm-Yankees."

Walter touches his glass against hers. I consider that a gift. Thank you for delivering that lovely end-stop puff of breath. And now, to you and our lovely lunch on a pleasant day in Rittenhouse Square, he announces, ceremoniously. Hers is a coquettish performance and his heart races with the pleasure of her company.

After they sip their wine Walter splays his fingers on the edge of the table and continues to look