Smile!

Here's a short story to keep you going while I write my new book! Enjoy!

Loud applause erupted from the studio audience of the Wheel of Fortune. Her family would have no doubt complained that the volume was too loud, just as they would have complained that the room was too warm. She liked it warm. Maybe they would have been right. Maybe it was too loud. But Gladys wasn’t listening.
Her eyes had strayed as they so often did to the wall behind the television where the photograph had hung for the past fourteen years. It was, had been, her favourite photograph, at one time. That was a long time ago, shortly after it had been taken. Now she hated it.

It had been taken at her 40th Wedding Anniversary celebration. At her and Ron’s favourite restaurant. The Cow and Crab. A steak and seafood place out in the sticks that they’d stumbled upon on a scenic drive back from the coast. She and Ron were pride of place in the centre of the photograph, with the fireplace a warm and welcoming backdrop. She and Ron were seated, with Tony, Stephen and Janice standing behind them – their three kids in order of age (it also looked good because Stephen was the tallest). And beside them stood their two grandchildren, Timothy at one side, and Jackie at the other. Sarah (Jackie’s mother) had shouted smile!, and smile they had. It was an evening that Gladys would always remember fondly. But the photo? The photo she hated.

She’d tried to get rid of the damned thing, after Ron died. She took it down and put it in the shoebox that she kept all her special memories in. The shoebox beneath the bed. It seemed a sin to put this awful object in there with the cinema and concert tickets she’d kept from special occasions, but at the time she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. That afternoon, when the photo was gone, she had been able to focus on Wheel of Fortune. And all of the shows that came after it. Her eyes no longer drawn to that cursed picture lurking in the background serving as a constant reminder of…

That night, she’d gone to bed and slept well for the first time in God knew how long. The following morning, she peered beneath the bed just to check the shoebox was still there. And it was. British Racing Green with a thick tan elastic band, corners a little tattered. For the first time in years she went to the kitchen and prepared breakfast with a smile on her face. But the smile disappeared when she sat in the living room to eat. On the wall, behind the television, like it had never been away, was the photo.

At that time only three of the seven people in the picture had died. Ron most recently, of his heart condition. Before him Stephen, victim of a motorcycle accident. The first to go had been young Jackie. Only seven years old. Kidnapped and missing for four weeks. Gladys had been the first in the family to know she was dead. Earlier that week, before the police visited Tony and Sarah with the awful news, Gladys had found that God forsaken photograph not on the wall, but on the floor. Frame intact, string in one pristine piece. She looked up at the nail where the picture had been hanging, and it was fast in the wall. She’d never been the superstitious type, but that morning when she found the photograph on the floor, she knew. Balls to bones as Ron would say, she just knew.

It had, of course, fallen again in the week of Stephen’s motorcycle accident. And again in the week Ron was rushed to hospital. That was the first time she’d taken it down. After Ron had died. She never told the family. They’d make fun of her. After the first reappearance of the photo, she locked it in the cupboard where Ron kept his whiskey, only for it to be back upon the wall the next morning. She even took it into town. She removed the photograph and gave the frame to a charity shop collecting for cancer research. And when she got back home she cried as she put a match to the smiling faces in the aluminium kitchen sink. She watched as the flames consumed them one at a time. She sat in a chair and sobbed as the acrid blue smoke hung in the air. She’d cried until the smoke cleared, and when it had, she hoisted herself up and staggered into the living room. As she slumped into her chair, the chair she was sitting in now, she screamed. She screamed at the seven faces smiling at her from the wall behind the television.

Now, as she sat staring at the photograph in the warmth of her living room, another burst of applause exploding from the studio audience, she cried. That picture had fallen three more times since Ron had passed. Once each for Tony, Timothy, and Janice. Now there was nobody to complain that the volume was too loud. It was just Gladys and the picture.

There was no one to complain that the room was too warm. But was it? Gladys pulled the thin cardigan up over her shoulders and tight around her chest. She rolled the sleeves down over her forearms where the goosepimples had formed. The sound from the television seemed to fade as once more her eyes were drawn behind, to the wall – to the photograph.

Now her eyes went from the blurred soft lines to hard focus. Onto those seven smiling faces, six of whom were now gone. Onto the frame that she’d left behind in the charity shop years before. She looked at the faces and they smiled back at her. Suddenly she realised that for the first time in years she didn’t feel the old bitter animosity towards that picture. She didn’t feel the fear. As she stared now, the old feelings of warmth and happiness came back. The happy memories. The love of those in the picture.

The picture. And as the warmth crept back into the room, she stared at the picture. She stared at the picture: then it fell.

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