The insufferable suffering widow (Five minutes freewrite)

marie-jay (61)in #freewrite • 6 years ago (edited)

There were many sunny days with balmy weather and barely a gust of wind, just as there were many drab and drizzly days, but the widow Abernathy cared about neither of them. She rarely ventured outside since she had no one to visit in town and when she did the stress of talking to people gave her a headache. Not that the people in town really cared to talk with the sole resident of the villa by the lake. She'd been living there for the past ten years, yet she never felt like one of them. Truth be told she'd made it clear from the very beginning she preferred being left alone. Some assumed she might be grieving for her lost husband and it was something they could respect.
Elsa Abernathy spent most of her days on the veranda of her villa, although, it must be said, the term is deceiving for the house was cold even during summer, the roof leaked so many of the first floor rooms were littered with strategically placed buckets and old pots and pans. 'Come summer I need to get the roof done for the house is a mess', she liked to complain when she did talk to people. Or spring. Or autumn, for the job never got done. The people nodded understandingly, they all knew such work was a lot of money. Once, the mayor's wife ventured to say she was hoping to have the fence fixed, but the widow Abernathy just stared at her and went on to talk of her favorite subject - the school children who came to play by the lake every evening and made a terrible noise. 'When is the mayor going to do something about it?' The question always left Helen, the mayor's wife, at a loss, for it was useless to explain yet again to the widow she didn't own the lake and the kids didn't have much entertainment in that small forgotten town.

Not only talking to the useless people in town gave her headaches, reading the newspaper also sent her in a terrible state, as did watching TV - as she liked to tell Sarah, the woman that did the cleaning and cooking for Mrs. Abernathy. A sturdy woman with a mop of red hair, Sarah just nodded absent-mindedly as she struggled to get everything done by one o'clock so she could get home in time to cook for her children. She never contradicted the old woman as she'd worked in many houses and had seen her kind before. And anyway, as long as Sarah nodded from time to time, it was all the conversation the widow expected of her.

One thing the widow never talked about was her late husband and it hadn't escaped Sarah the fact that there wasn't any picture of him around the house. It was not the pain of losing her husband that kept Elsa from talking about him, but the humiliation. For he was not dead and indeed as healthy as can be for a 60 year old with a passion for sports. Fred Abernathy had left her two years into their marriage and not for another woman as it usually happens. He'd just left her because he'd come to the conclusion he just couldn't stand her. And her headaches, for even as a young woman Elsa was known for her headaches. Some people are just born like this.