chapter 10Joy and sorrow The camaro soledad california
By hippie girl
- 559 reads
Soledad Marquesa sat shotgun in a vintage black Camaro, revving up the engine. She still had her mother's zany sense of humour and heart shaped face, although now it had puckers around the edges. Her husband Doyle, had built the machine nearly from scratch. Four years prior, He had found the chassis junked in the middle of a cornfield.
The landowners had paid Doyle seventeen dollars in quarters for taking the gnarled, piece of garbage off their hands. Onlookers at classic car shows scarcely believed such an outlandish story. Doyle had a knack for taking the old, the broken, and bringing them back to life, a truth his wife knew full well.
Her father, Bartolome, sat in the passenger's side. An ironed polka dot handkerchief hung in its regal position from the front pocket of his linen suit. "Good Gravy, you are going to ruin the engine! Why must you drive so fast?" the old man cried, shaking his head. Sixty years had flown by, and their relationship was the same.
Bartolome had fled Spain during the Spanish civil war after His wife became a casuality . An acquaintance of the family, smuggled him and Soledad to America. He had found employment as a janitor at the Met. The first time he heard Aaron Copeland play there, he decided two things. (1) He would become a great man (2) His infant daughter would become a world famous piano player. Bartolome, played his cards right and eventually became a banker.
He made her practice piano for hours daily. Forcing her to play for drunken colleagues and their bored wives at cocktail parties. She came to loathe the piano passionately. Her solace was science fiction movies and swimming.
When swimming, stories would pop into her head and refuse to leave until written down. Soledad felt set free of all earthy chains, writing about the exploits of zombies and creatures from outer space. She even won a contest with a story about killer turtles who built their own planet completely out of egg shells.
Bartolome refused to pay college tuition unless she became a Pianist. Soledad pawned some jewelry and applied for secretarial school. She despised the old man for some time after that.
She did not hate Bartolome anymore. The old man had been a rock , when her son was kidnapped and her first husband left. She resented him telling the staff at the Four Seasons it was a shame his baby threw away her true talent.
It irritated her exceedingly when the old man booked her to play piano at posh weddings, when truth was, she couldn't remember a single note. This was his way of loving , as suffocating as it might be. Arguing did no good, because he never listened anyway. It helped that he respected her current husband for being a handyman, and Doyle put up with her father's ornery demeanor to a certian point.
If he hadn't been such a tyrant, she probably would not have become a secretary for Paramount Studios . The world might have not seen her wacky science fiction movies and she would have never have met Doyle. She wouldn't be Soledad Marquesa. That would have been a tragedy.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Lots of intrigue here. You're
Lots of intrigue here. You're connections have been good for you. 11 here I come. Roy
- Log in to post comments