Eternity
Jack wears a rubber band, not a ring, hoops it three times. Four would stop his circulation.
Johnny doesn’t wear a ring, doesn’t have to. Doesn’t want to ask Gemma. Has known he won’t since Christmas when she bought him some bread and a toaster.
Kate has rings, some of them silver, some of them cheaper metals, which you can tell the longer she wears them. She likes the green skin, likens tan lines to tattoos, finds eczema artful, enjoys drawing in biro on people’s hands.
Mike spins his ring with his other thumb, his index finger, and wonders how many rotations it takes to unmake mistakes, like winding the mile clock on a car back.
Jane lines her rings on one finger, likes the clink they make. Likes the scrape as prongs and stones clunk against eternity, threaten engagement.
Mark gave a girl a ring, but the planning didn’t start. No invitations sent, parents told, friends asked to be bridesmaids. On the whole it bucked expectation and tradition.
Amelia had a timeline – career, man, ring, house, baby, dog, baby. But time doesn’t like the way we cut days up any more than we do and says I’ll give you what I can when I’ve got it.
Paul had a thumb ring in high school, has a plectrum that’s almost a ring, guitar strings that coil, bed springs that pop, mug handles that curve, a bracelet on a wrist he bought at a festival, a tie that you can knot at the nape of your neck if you want to.
Dan saw his mum melt her rings down, saw her find another use for them. Doesn’t want to give a woman something she can pawn.
Anna wants the lot. The James Blunt serenade, the lines at the end of the rom-com. But she gets goodbyes more often than jewellery. In fact, the only chain she got from a guy she was scared to pop the box on because she knew she’d hate it. And she did.
Lana can’t decide who’s a yes and a no, and who could be a maybe. Because it’s true, sometimes you should hold out for better and other times you’ve got the best but life plumps your vision, until your expectations are swollen, and have nothing on what you’ve got already. But rewind is not as smooth as HD is. It’s never as crisp as a download.
Jimmy thought 26 would be the ring year, the year that he’d get married. But the months of 27 are defined by rent increasing, contracts decreasing, food going bad before you eat it. And 28 is the year he gets told “You might have a baby next year, because this year you might find a wife”. But Jim knows his bones better than you do, than they do. Bones lose temperature like empty houses that forget what it’s like to retain heat.
Bill had a ring for Emma, thought Gemma was the one, is always a couple of letters from the right girl, wants Ella more than Jem, and Amma saw through the whole thing. Said, “Syllables and vowels, letters and sounds, aren’t the ingredients of a person, you know?” It wasn’t a question, but when Bill didn’t nod to agree, she left, and his hope shrunk another percent.
Sophie says she’d take a vintage ring, she’d even take a new one, if it felt right, if the time did, and it fit right, if the silver slid along to her knuckle, made a groove on her finger, if it didn’t slip and move, or tighten when her fingers swelled, which was every evening.
Steve says he’s never seen a ring he liked and he’d rather not wear one, and that not wearing one doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel right. But Fiona didn’t see that.
Fiona wants to pin down, secure, like a butterfly in a jar or a hamster in a plastic ball. And she knows it’s naïve hoping metal will settle it, stop him wandering, but knowing what’s naïve and what’s not is better than blindly hoping for the best.
Fay says she’d wear a ring on each finger, wanted one for each year they were together, and doesn’t need expensive, because the meanings you attach to things are as important as the cash you use to buy them.
Dave doesn’t believe in marriage. Doesn’t think every pot has a lid, every lid has a pot – some containers are made open like vases and cutlery holders, and their insides change, are changeable, because dating’s a convenient conveyor-belt.
Cher says she didn’t think she’d be sure, never knew she’d know now, but she does and that’s bigger than diamonds.
Dad says his wedding ring is in a drawer and Mum knows where he keeps it. It’s never got scratched, never got faded. That how he felt when they put them on each other is as crisp, is as solid as it was then. And that was ’77.
Amy Mackelden lives in Newcastle upon Tyne and has had stories published by Leaf Books and Cinnamon Press. She performs her microfiction as part of new words and music duo The Copy Room, with musician Dan Walsh, and they supported Simon Armitage at Durham Book Festival’s launch night in 2010. Sometimes she wishes life was more like microfiction – concise, containable, bittersweet and beautiful – instead of the messy, sprawling novel it is.
