Clara is prowling through the wooden Easter eggs in the china department sale bin. Satisfied that her selected items do not exceed the change she has in her bag, she jokes with the young porter; he went to school with her middle son. She has greeted everyone she has met with a smile, a joke, a loving remembered treasure. Now, she is moving toward my terminal, impish grin lighting her thin face. She is not much older than I am, but she is so frail. She has lost much of her thick, black hair; so much of her tall, willowy body has been wasted by the disease that will not retreat.
“Hi!” She is here. Her fingers are like claws, gnarled and discolored at the knuckles. But her laughter is accentuated by her sparkling eyes. Disease, frailty, defeat do not live in those eyes.
She smells faintly of bourbon, “How are you, dear? You look so pretty!” She pauses, the eyes brim with tears. “Did Wayne tell you? Do you know about ... us?”
“You mean ...” I stammer, uncertain of an answer. Everyone knows about Clara and her husband, Phillip.
“Married thirty-three years, and the day before Valerie’s wedding, he told me that he was leaving.”
The sad litany continues, though I’ve heard it before. Clara and Phillip, childhood sweethearts, teenage dreams, young couple on the move, five children, a mansion on a hill, thirty-three years and a divorce later, Clara is terminally ill. And sometimes the bitterness takes over.
Clara finishes her purchase and her story. Suddenly the tears disappear; she is the Clara of yesterday, pin-up pretty, smiling to the Homecoming crowd.
“Come here, Glenda!” Joyously, she moves out the door, framed in the brilliant pink sunset. “Take a minute, come here, see this gorgeous sunset!” A pause. “It may be the only thing I ever give you.”
It is eight o’clock, no other customers have come to my terminal in the large department store in the Mall where I work; I’ve had time to think about Clara and even though the sun disappeared hours ago, through misty eyes, I still can see Clara’s sunset.
