How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [44]
I’m standing over the sink in the upstairs bathroom and holding the ring as the sun streams through the tiny window and dances off of it. I remember how proud I was to first wear this ring, always adjusting my hand so that I could view it as I created desserts at the restaurant. In the evenings, I liked being at stoplights so I could have time just to watch the diamond catch the city lights. Sometimes it looked red or green or gold, depending on the light reflecting off it.
Suddenly, the ring slips from my hands and hits the inside of the basin. I gasp, reach for it, but I’m too late. The ring has gone down the drain. Gone. The ring is gone, Deena. So much for pawning it off to get money for a trip to Hawaii.
I stand at the sink. What do I care? I’m not engaged. I should have tossed the ring into the sink the minute I landed in this town.
The doorbell rings, and I hear Jonas’s voice downstairs as he opens the front door. “Deirdre?”
“I’m upstairs,” I say as I rush out of the bathroom and wave to him from the open loft. “Hi.”
“Hi. I came to check the pipes.” He twirls his wrench and smiles. His bandana is the color of apricots this afternoon.
An idea hits me. “Can you help me?”
Jonas looks perplexed. “Upstairs?” he asks, looking up at me.
“Yes.”
“Pipes?” he asks as he starts to climb the loft ladder.
Believe it or not, yes. Just when I need a plumber, along comes Jonas.
My bed is strewn with cotton shirts in all my favorite colors— amber, rust, light blue, pink. I was trying to see which summer shirts I can wear. My plan is to wear shirts that won’t make the scars on my arms look hideous. None of these looked right. They’re short-sleeved, so of course each one shows the rivers. Disgusted, I took off shirt after shirt and wondered if I could get away with long-sleeved shirts all summer. I envisioned teaching in a warm kitchen at The Center, sweat pouring off of me, and the kids asking why I’m wearing long sleeves when it’s ninety degrees. Conclusion of my shirt-trying-on: I may need to move to Antarctica. Forget the trip to Hawaii.
Jonas isn’t bothered by the mess. He enters the tiny bathroom and asks, “Which pipe?”
“Actually, it’s the drain in the sink.”
He gives me a confused look.
“I dropped a ring in there.”
“Why?”
I sigh. I was distracted, clumsy.
“Why did you do that?”
“It was a mistake.” And so, it turns out, was my engagement to Lucas.
“An accident?”
I nod.
After that clarification, Jonas sets to work, getting on the floor, opening the cabinet under the sink, using his wrench.
“Do you think you can find it?” I ask as the top half of his body holed up under the cabinet.
“99.9 percent sure I can,” he says, his voice muffled.
I watch his broad back, his shoulders and elbows moving, and then, the next thing I hear is a triumphant, “I got it!” As he backs out from under the sink and out of the cabinet, his head bumps against the cabinet door. “Ouch.”
The sight of blood makes me queasy. My friends work in the medical field; they deal well with this kind of thing. I fumble in the medicine cabinet by the mirror and find a chocolate cupcake Band-Aid. I place it on the cut above his left eyebrow, just below the fold of his bandana.
“Are you done?” he asks.
I smile at him. “Yes.” I pat the top of his head.
Then he opens his hand. In it is a mass of black slime. From the glob, he picks out a small object. “This it?”
Part of me is grateful he was able to get Lucas’s ring out of the drain; the other part of me wishes it was lost forever. I am amazed also at how filthy the drain of a sink can be. That thought actually makes my skin itch. I carefully take the ring from him and then head down the stairs to wash it in the kitchen sink. To keep from losing it again, I place it in a colander and run water over it until it is free from gunk.
I read a story once about a couple going through a divorce.
The wife threw a pair of Italian champagne glasses off her deck. They’d been a wedding gift, and I imagined