Star-crossed Elderly Lovers(Barry) “Uncle Ralph’s a freakin’ pervert!” Blythe fumed after Nicholas told her what the sixty-eight year-old spinster had just done.

“He’s only two years older than the woman,” Nicholas noted feebly in his uncle’s defense. “My own father didn’t marry until he was in his late thirties.” They were in the Toyota sedan en route to Uncle Ralph’s apartment. Throughout his life the confirmed bachelor had been something of a romantic rake. A month earlier he met Margaret Benchley, who resided two doors down in the condominium complex. Now, on an abominably ludicrous whim, he was marrying the anonymous woman.

“She taught philosophy and ethics at the community college,” Nicholas noted.

Blythe pursed her lips indignantly. “A highly educated academic dating a retired bricklayer… now that makes a ton of sense!”

It was a typical New England early September morning with the temperature hovering close to seventy. Nicholas glanced uncertainly at Blythe. In her early twenties, the thin-lipped, dark haired girl was a lithe creature – more tom boy than svelte beauty. What Nicholas liked best about his fiancé was her nonchalant, easygoing personality. Whenever they disagreed, it was relatively easy to gently finesse her to an alternative point of view. Turning a sharp right at the traffic light, Nicholas eased into the housing complex, found a parking space and shut the engine. “Don’t say anything confrontational.”

“I wasn’t planning to say much of anything at all,” she noted dourly.

Uncle Ralph and his paramour were sitting in the kitchen when they arrived. Sipping a cup of chai laced with cream, Margaret was statuesque, big-boned and strikingly attractive for an older woman. And yet, it wasn’t her physical features one noticed initially but the huge shock of platinum silver hair that cascaded down her shoulders past the breasts. As much heretical testimonial as fashion statement, the hair, which had been meticulously brushed and combed, seemed to have an unruly mind of its own flowing in myriad directions.

“Hello, there,” she greeted them with a generous, unassuming smile. Once they were settled in Margaret turned to Nicholas. “Ralphy tells me you lovebirds announced your engagement earlier this year.”

“We won’t be tying the knot for another few months,” he noted guardedly, “until I’m out of college and established in a decent job.”

Margaret reached across the table and ran her fingertips across the older man’s bristly face. Uncle Ralph was stocky and well built with a full head of gray hair and bushy moustache. He hadn’t shaved yet and a pebbly, salt-and-pepper beard was beginning to seize the upper hand. “Unfortunately,” she quipped with an impish grin, “we lack the luxury of time.”

“Just don’t wait too long,” Uncle Ralph interjected, “or you’ll end up a couple of comatose, old farts like us.”

Margaret burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, and Blythe couldn’t deny that the caustic commentary was amusing. “At face value,” the older woman continued in her singsong, lackadaisical tone, “Ralphy and I would seem to have little in common. We’re star-crossed lovers teetering on the romantic abyss.”

Blythe lowered her eyes struggling to digest the woman’s cryptic language. “According to Shakespeare, star-crossed lovers are usually much younger.”

Margaret reached up and tapped the side of her head with a poised index finger. Then the hand slid down her temple finally coming to rest between her breasts. “Youthfulness is most often a reflection of heart and mind.” Leaning to her left, she kissed Uncle Ralph playfully on the grizzled cheek then wiped the wetness away with the heel of her hand.

“You met Blythe in college?” Margaret asked in her breezy, unhurried manner.

“Freshman year,” Nicholas replied, “at a sorority party.”

“And what first attracted you?”

“She’s easy to accommodate… malleable.”

Margaret, who had been playing with a strand of silvery hair, weaving it between her fingers, crooked her head to one side. “Malleable like clay… pliable, pliant, easily manipulated?”

Nicholas winced as though the woman with the ungovernable hair had slapped his face. “Not exactly,” he backtracked, immediately, rescinding the unsavory, ill-chosen word.

Uncle Ralph suddenly rose to his feet and blurted, “We’re out of coffee and cream. I gotta make a quick run to the convenient store.”


“I’ll join you,” Nicholas blurted. Even with Blythe as backup support, he clearly had no desire to be left alone with the enigmatic Margaret Benchley.

“We’ll be back in five minutes,” Uncle Ralph insisted as the two men headed for the front door.

“Ralphy!” Margaret abruptly called him back. “I’m going to whip up pan-glazed peaches while you’re gone so pick up some vanilla ice cream… the more expensive vanilla bean variety not some generic crap.”

“Yes, dear.” The twosome disappeared out the door.

Once they were gone, Margaret located two plump peaches in the refrigerator fruit bin and began peeling the skins away. “You’ll love this concoction,” she promised. The woman cut the fruit into thin slices, which she tossed into a shallow pan. Placing the pan on the stove she added a skim coat of water and watched as the yellow flesh began to simmer.” “This won’t take long,” Margaret assured her.

They were standing together at the stove. “When we first arrived,” Blythe observed, “Uncle Ralph was holding your hand under the table.”

Margaret stirred the frothy mix that was bubbling and sending up a fruity aroma. “Yes, well Ralphy tends to wear his emotions on his sleeve.” The juices thickening, she sprinkled several tablespoons of brown sugar over the fruit then reached for the cinnamon.

“And the way he looked at you, when you called him back about the vanilla bean ice cream…”

“What look?”

“I dunno,” Blythe murmured. “Reverence, slavish devotion.”

“Well, we’re kindred spirits… twin souls.” Margaret began dusting the mix with powder from a small spice container.

“What’s that?”

“Cardamom, the queen of Indian spices. They use it in curry, teas and all sorts of exotic pastries.”

“What’s it taste like?”

“Impossible to describe!” Margaret shook her head vehemently. “You’ll just have to wait to taste the dessert.” The peaches bathed in a rich, amber sauce, she lowered the heat. “To be sure, Ralphy’s a gem… a one-of-a-kind rarity.” “Unfortunately, all the young men your age seem to be suffering from a debilitating disease.”

“And what might that be?” Blythe asked.

“Peter Pan Syndrome. They have difficulty with responsibilities and long-term commitments.” “I’ll never grow up! I’ll never grow up! I’ll never grow up!” Margaret chirped in a singsong cadence.

* * * *

Margaret Benchley’s scathing critique of the contemporary male was spot-on, and, as far back as middle school, Blythe learned to cope with her dysfunctional, male peers. When a randy date attempted to grab her crotch or undo the bra, she would push the offending hand away. “No funny stuff on first dates! I gotta know you better before we go there.”

“Well that’s reasonable… fair enough,” the offender mumbled half-heartedly. Little did he know that the Messiah would revisit earth a second time before the horny fool laid eyes on the young woman again.

“Most young men don’t appear to have moral centers.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Blythe agreed emphatically. After a brief silence she added, “I just finished reading a novel by Edith Wharton.”

“Age of Innocence and House of Mirth.” Dicing several oversized pieces with the tip of the spatula, Margaret adjusted the heat

“In the book she discusses a young girl’s maidenhood.”

“Virginity.”

“Yes, but there’s far more to it than that,” Blythe qualified. “Back to the Victorian Era young girls lived with their parents. They fed chickens, milked cows, churned butter, learned to cook and clean.” “When they came of age, maidens became wives, mothers and heads of households.”

The signature Cheshire cat grin that graced Margaret’s lips faded to nothingness only to be replaced by a bleak melancholy. “Yes, well these days, maidenhood is dead.” “Women shake their fists in the air demanding late-term abortion, drag queen story hour at the local library and hormone blockers.” “Men, even the meager handful of relatively normal ones, don’t know what they’re dealing with anymore.”

Blythe felt a dizzying nausea swirling in her gut. “It’s a romantic ship of fools.”

* * * * *

A raucous buzzer sounded in the basement. Margaret put the spatula down and stepped away from the stove. “Before you came I put a load of laundry in the washer. I got to switch the wet clothes over to the dryer.” She hurried off.

* * * * *

Nicholas took great pleasure ridiculing Uncle Ralph, the uneducated brick layer who dropped out of college in the eleventh grade, but, to his credit, the elderly man had built a thriving masonry business. Before retiring, Uncle Ralph contracted to oversee the masonry on the new city hall project, one of the most aesthetically appealing structures in the urban center. He also supervised construction of a blue-black, flagstone terrace, which graced the entryway.

Over a period of several months he meticulously hand-fitted each flat stone into a seamless tapestry of ornamental loveliness. Showered with praise for his deft artisanship, Uncle Ralph replied, “If I couldn’t do basic stonework after forty years, I’d be a sorry soul.” Though Uncle Ralph deprecatingly downplayed his manual skill, there was nothing ‘basic’ about the intricate stonework.

* * * * *

Margaret resurfaced after only a few minutes, the impishly droll, Cheshire cat grin back in full force. “Ralphy and I made love the other night but it wasn’t sex in the conventional sense.” Margaret confided. “It resembled something out of the Kama Sutra, where energy flowed in multiple directions… passion but on a higher level, far beyond carnal sex.”

Blythe was blindsided by the odd remark. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“It was passion at another dimension… something sacred, spiritually consecrated.” When she spoke, her free hand moved with a balletic, choreographed grace, the supple fingers arching in the air. Only now did she resume stirring the fruit with a nimble touch. “If sex was a culinary seasoning, which spice would it be?”

Blythe gawked at the woman. “I dunno… cayenne pepper, smoked paprika?”

“What about cardamom?”

“I still have no idea what cardamom tastes like.”

Margaret bent over the stove, sniffed the dessert then turned the heat off. “See for yourself.”

Blythe lowered her head within an inch of the simmering mix.

“Perhaps you think I’m nuts… a whacked out, old geezer whose emotions run amok, but Ralphy and I are sharing a belated benediction – belated because we had to wait the better part of a lifetime to experience such joy.”

“When’s the wedding?” Blythe asked.

“Tuesday morning. We’re going to a justice of the peace. Just the two of us, since nobody from either side of the family wants to attend. They think we’re a couple of misguided, geriatric fools… elderly crackpots.”

Blythe reached out and grabbed the woman’s wrist. “I’d be honored to attend your wedding. Just let me know the time and place.”

The door burst opened and Uncle Ralph hollered, “We’re back!”

* * * * *

“Margaret Benchley is a certified lunatic,” Nicholas seethed on the drive home. He pulled up at a red traffic light. “Of course, the peach dessert was incredibly scrumptious. There was some foreign spice I couldn’t identify.”

“Cardamom,” Blythe responded.

“Uncle Ralph’s making a huge mistake. Nothing good can come from this train wreck of a -”

Nicholas never quite finished the thought. In the passenger seat Blythe was bent double, hands cupped over her eyes with an endless rivulet of tears streamed through her fingers and pooling on the rubber floor mat. Nicholas pulled the car off the road and killed the motor. “What’s the matter?”

A minute passed. The emotional cloudburst having passed, Blythe straightened up but said nothing. Nicholas glanced uncertainly at his future bride. The expression on her face reminded him of a medieval castle fashioned from two-foot-thick granite slabs. A rusty metal chain had just raised the massive drawbridge; the surrounding moat was filled with ravenous crocodiles. An enemy, a thousand, battle-hardened warriors strong, could lay eternal siege and never break through the fortified defenses.

* * * * *

Damage control.

Thank God they hadn’t sent out marriage invitations, put a retainer down on a wedding venue, hired the caterer, band or photographer! Nicholas would simply tell friends and relatives that the engagement was on indefinite hold. Blythe had suffered an unspecified, emotional upheaval. No need for particulars as long as he could not be held directly accountable for the romantic mishap.

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