Flying the Fight

I wrote this one-pager many years ago.

Flying the fight

Carole stood at the top of the staircase, surveying her lost dominion. She had ruled as mistress of this house for nearly 20 years, and now her husband was suing for divorce, and it would become the home of his new bimbo.

Since Carson was a trial lawyer, she knew he would win. He always won. She hadn’t won a quarrel in two decades, and he could utterly devastate her with just a few well-chosen words.

But he wasn’t unkind, and he had many wonderful qualities. He was very orderly, from his well-organized walk-in closet upstairs to his immaculate workshop beside the garage. In his closet his shirts and ties were organized by color, his shoes from formal to casual. In his workshop, the hammer, the saw, the screwdrivers each had its outlined place, and was always returned there, cleaned and oiled as needed.

And he was caring. During his mother’s final illness he was relentlessly cheerful and helpful toward her, and insisted Carole behave the same. He rejected any idea of a nursing home, but did have a live-in caregiver near the end. She remembered the night he confided how wearing it was, “but you just don’t abandon the people in your life,” he explained.

But he was certainly abandoning her! She had finished college, but instead of pursuing her career in Political Science, she became Carson Gant’s wife. And she had done it very, very well. Now she was being laid off, she thought bitterly.

The 20-foot high living room ceiling created a showcase for fine fabrics and furnishings, and artwork collected from all over the world. The curving double staircase embraced a spacious entry hall tiled with marble parquet. The landing, with its curved carved wooden railing, was a dramatic stage for surveying arriving guests.

Carole reviewed her options carefully. She would die before she’d leave this house! Taking a breath, she measured the rail with her eye; the carefully-cut banister would point investigators to someone familiar with tools. If she lived, Carson would care for her, she knew - at least until she healed. If she died, well, her life was already over, wasn’t it?

Carole pushed, felt the railing give, smiled and sailed away.