Author: R.D.P.

Beautiful jewels with amethyst and purple sapphire stones, inlaid in an elaborate eighteen-carat gold brooch, necklace and headdress, rest forgotten on a distressed periwinkle armoire. Its golden beauty and luster now faded dim into a reminder of what they had once been and no amount of polish could restore their glory.

Like her mother and her grandmothers before her, Heather Aubergine DuVoile loves purple. She lives and breathes it. She refuses to abandon the whimsy of her family trinkets because it makes her reminiscent of the “old country” and of a time when her ancestors were victorious. Its royal hues make a mockery of what Heather will never become and was physical evidence of an inherited failure. This was not apparent to her at all.

Everyday she rises out of bed and detangles herself from her silken eggplant sheets. She grabs a tin watering can and flutters throughout the houses nourishing her leafy children. They bring life to her barren bliss. Her African violet begs to be left alone while her lilac campanula and dendrodium orchids plea for attention. She sings, “Purple People Eater” in such a syrupy sweet melody and adds a few of her own riffs.

The aromatic-lilac air hovers thickly around the house and drifts like a fog past the purple shudders and emperor shrubbery. She was never more at peace than on a day like today.

Heather hops in the shower thinking, “Today is the day!” and lathers herself down in sudsy sugarplum dreams. Everyday she convinces herself that she will find her prince charming and catapult into a fairytale existence with lavender scented babies. She never realized that her pursuit stretched beyond her mother’s years and left her alone. She was the only child of an only child without children and biology began to make her blueberries raisin.

Passersby of the house at the end of Wisteria Lane scurry quickly to avoid its long-standing tenant. Her improperly died black hair exposes her greys as “purples,” and her ruby rhinestone rimmed spectacles make a spectacle of her.

She dresses in her Sunday best, even though it’s Tuesday, and plants her violet patent leather pumps on the porch. She sits, blanketed by the same air that wraps her home, and awaits her true love. His Purple Heart and yellowed love letters lie limp in her crinkled hands. “Today’s the day.”