The Peacock 42

 Except for the candles, the lights are all out and it is rather dark in here.  Then Carl brings in dessert, a bowl full of flambe pear halves poached in Amaretto. Melissa is following him and as he puts the bowl on the table, Melissa puts a lid on it, dousing the blue and yellow flames from the brandy that had been added as fuel.  

I am feeling rather odd right now.  I have just managed not to tell anyone about two very crucial chapters from my past.  And right now I am feeling rocked like a skiff in a tempest between that vague memory, a child of four, being pulled from the burning wreckage of the car my mother was driving.  She never made it out.  And then my last talk with Greta before she left me.  And even worse, I ended up also losing Eric, my brother-in-law, who couldn't live down the role he had played in what happened to his sister, and to our marriage.

Both images coexist, side by side, the blue and yellow flames almost engulfing me as a man's strong arms are pulling me from the wreckage, and the black pale look, making even whiter the Nordic face of my ex-wife, not even fighting back tears, not even screaming or hitting, but simply retreating back into that damp, cold, dark grey realm of misery, for which Swedes are so famous.  I imagine the burning pears have been my trigger.  While everyone chatters and smiles around me, now even the two community brothers are fully participating, and the Filipino is even cracking a joke right now! I have just retreated into my own dark little misery, like a cell, like the quiet room in the psyche ward, and I can now hear the door closing behind me and the key being turned.

No one is ready for this, and I can't control the tears, the weeping, nor the animal howls that are ripping unbidden out from my chest and in this paroxysm I can only collapse, head down on the table in front of me.  I feel the strong arm of Carl covering my shoulder, and can already feel myself begin to calm a bit, but the tears will not stop, they are not going to stop, they are going to keep flowing on forever and forever, as I try to forget that image of the pure, innocent creamy white pear halves being immolated in those flames or until the dying sun drowns itself for one final and terrifying time in the spewing waves of the boiling sea....