11/3/15
`“I cannot wait until Cameron gets back from the service. He’s
been gone almost two years, and carrying on a long distance romance is totally
problematic.” Carrie started folding her new clothes that she had bought for
their honeymoon in the Caribbean. Carrie, thinking about ’her beloved’ was
smiling. She remembered him when they were younger. “I didn’t think he was all
that wonderful back then. He had a meanness about him in high school…seemed to
be always fighting with someone or other.” She recalled that in one incident he
had broken a boy’s noise. Carrie still could see in her mind’s eye the badly swollen
nose and purple colored bruise that the boy had suffered from that fight.
That was at the end of senior
year. Her classmates had graduated and went their separate ways. Carrie started
at a nearby junior college. Cameron had joined the Army. They did not see each
other after graduation. After boot camp Cameron had come home for two weeks
before he headed off to his deployment in Florida. That was in January. Carrie
had seen him at a movie theater. She talked to him for a few minutes before
going into her movie. She never thought about him after he went back to
Florida. However the letters started arriving from him about a month later.
Carrie opened the shoebox tied
with a blue ribbon where she kept his letters. She opened the first envelope
that had arrived in February. The letter was all newsy telling Carrie about his
life in the Army. The letter was interesting. “I was surprised when the letters
kept arriving. I think I got a letter about every ten days or so,” she
reflected. Carrie realized that she started looking forward to Cameron’s
letters, and she started writing responses to him. “He seems different. His
writing is filled with little stories about his service activities and the
other soldiers. He is very humorous.”
Carrie often laughed out loud as she read his letters.
Then after about six months the
letters added something else. Cameron had another skill that Carrie had been
unaware of. He was a poet, and his poems were really good. She loved to read
them, and found herself reading them over and over. “When we were in school I
never heard him share a poem in English class. Looks like he has talents no one
knew about.” Then the poetry took on a
new theme. They were becoming love poems. “Some of those poems got really hot.
I began to love them and then I realized that I was falling in love with
Cameron as well. Then the love letters started to arrive. It was getting
serious, but I loved it.”
“Then one day a small package
arrived. Cameron texted me and asked me not to open it until he called me. When
he called I could not believe it. He asked me to marry him, and then told me to
open the package. There was a beautiful diamond ring in the little velvet box.
“Put it on Carrie, and text me a
picture of it on your finger.
“I did. He told me that he could
not wait until he was discharged from the Army to do this. From then on I was
the sole planner for a wedding to be held the next year.” He will be home in
two weeks. The wedding is planned, deposits made, dress purchased. I am on Cloud
9.”
I sometimes think of what a nasty
guy he was in high school. I think the Army had made a beneficial change in
Cameron. I have heard that boys become men in the service.
“Carrie,” my mother shouted,
“Cameron is on the phone.” I literally ran to the phone. “Are you home?”
“Yes,” he answered in a voice
that sounded strange, “I am calling to tell you I do not want to get married.”
“What?” I yelled.” Everything is all set.”
“Boy, you are dumber that I had
imagined. Did you really think I wanted to marry you? You couldn’t even figure
out that the ring was a fake. You were so high, mighty, and snooty in high
school. I vowed that someday I would get even. I think I have. My friends and I
sure had some fun with the whole story.”
Then he hung up.
I am sitting here wondering what
made me think he could change. You cannot change the spots on a leopard, can
you? Better to find out now than in two years!
Now all I’m left with is a mess
to deal with and a fake diamond ring.
©Corinne
Mustafa
November, 2015
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