THE COFFEE TABLE

Lori Lancaster

She had planned the words carefully, crafted them on paper, re-written, edited, rehearsed in front of a mirror.  She breathed these words.  She dreamt these words.

And when she was finally ready to speak these words, she called them.

“Can you come by for coffee, both of you?  We need to talk.”

There was hesitation on the other end, a reluctance that tasted of understanding and not wanting, more of defiance than of fear.  She held her breath.  Were they going to refuse her this?  And then a sunny “Of course, we’d love to come for coffee dear.  How about Friday?”

The sunniness caught her off guard.  Had she read too much into that hesitation?  “Friday is fine.”

A cheerful, “We’ll see you then,” and the call disconnected before she could respond.

When she answered the door, there was a large object on a dolly standing between her and them.  It was old, the stone cracked and much of the once-ornate carving broken.  A large padlock held it closed.

“What the hell?”

“Language, dear” The words were soft but the reprimand clear.  “We brought you a new coffee table.”

“This is a sarcophagus.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, dear.  It’s a coffee table.  Yours was so ugly.”  They pushed past her, wheeling in the sarcophagus, shoving her coffee table out of the way and planting the hideous thing in the middle of her living room.  Like a magician’s trick, a large doily emerged from a pocket and became a tablecloth.

They sat down.  She opened her mouth to speak but he interrupted her to complain about the neighbour’s dandelions infecting his carefully kept lawn.  She opened her mouth to speak and was interrupted by news of a cousin’s new baby.  And on it went 

until the words in her heart were sucked into the sarcophagus to die and join the dust of a million other unspoken words.

Finally she served coffee and cookies.  They rested their cups and plates on the sarcophagus and talked about the weather.