Excerpt from the novel...
Shells Of My Heart
It was the first week of September and the streets of New York City were still steaming hot. Nancy thought she'd surely look like a wilted flower if she didn't soon get out of the heat. Having walked the three blocks from her apartment to the Merrian building, she had an appointment for a 10:00 a.m. job interview.
Pushing open the glass doors, she proceeded into the slightly cooler air of the building where the lobby was bustling with activity. Studying the glass-enclosed index of businesses that hung on the wall next to the elevator, she located her destination. Dr. Robert DeMuir, Obstetrician, suite 201, she read.
At precisely 9:56 she entered the suite and approached the receptionist. "Good morning," the receptionist said with a cheery smile. "Do you have an appointment?"
"Yes, at 10:00 with Dr. DeMuir concerning an job interview," Nancy replied. She was politely requested to take a seat; the doctor would see her shortly. There were three other women already seated. Nancy hoped they weren't all there to be interviewed for the advertised receptionist position.
"The doctor is running behind schedule this morning," the receptionist said, looking at Nancy, "so that makes you third in line for the interview." Picking up a magazine, Nancy began leafing through it as her mind wandered back to her reason for being in New York City.
She had graduated from a small high school in Milcrest, Maryland where she was born and raised. Her mother, Grace Williams, was a strikingly beautiful woman who just couldn't find it in herself to settle down with her husband, Nancy's father, Ed. He was a hard working engineer with a Washington, D. C. research and development firm and had loved Grace intensely and given her everything a woman could desire.
However, Grace Williams was a woman who craved excitement and good times. Physically beautiful with flashing green eyes, a lovely shaped nose and full pouty lips, her body was gorgeous. As a child, she'd been pampered and badly spoiled by her parents. Everything had been handed to her. As she matured into womanhood, nothing changed. Men buzzed around her like bees to honey and married or not, were ready to battle for her attention.
Ed, after living through years of watching Grace's flirtations with other men, which consistently ended in sordid affairs, had finally had enough.
Nancy had just turned seventeen when her parents' divorce became final. She would be living with her mother until she graduated from high school, then in the following summer with her dad who had transferred his engineering position, by request, to Benning, Ohio.
Grace and Ed had been so preoccupied with their own problems, they hadn't been aware of the hell that Nancy had been forced to live through. She remembered back to her thirteenth birthday. Her mother had taken her shopping and bought her a lovely new pants-suit outfit and a pair of tan string-sandals. After dinner that evening her father brought out of hiding a surprise birthday cake and handed her a small gift wrapped in paper decorated with tiny forget-me-nots. Her mother suggested she put on the new suit to show her father.
Nancy ran up the stairs to her bedroom to change. After admiring herself for a moment in the mirror and still carrying her wrapped gift, she started back down the stairs. Her father and mother's angry voices arose from the front room. He was accusing her of seeing someone by the name of Carl. Their voices grew louder and angrier. This was nothing new to Nancy, but this was her birthday. Couldn't they control themselves for just this one day? She walked into the room just in time to watch her father walk out of the house and soundly close the front door.
Her mother, ignoring Nancy completely, ran to the door, opened it and screamed out after him. "If you think for one minute I'm staying here waiting for you to stop sulking and return, you're badly mistaken!" With that, she slammed the door and stomped to her room, reappearing a few minutes later, purse in hand. For the first time, she seemed to notice Nancy. "You look lovely, honey," she tossed at Nancy as she passed her. "I'm really sorry about your birthday but I just can't stay in this house one more minute." She closed the front door behind her.
Nancy hadn't moved since entering the room. She stood there, dressed in the new suit, still holding the wrapped gift. Sighing, she turned and slowly walked back to her room. She used to cry in these situations but now just moved as if in a trance. Removing the sandals, she wrapped the suit around them. Opening her closet door, she threw the bundle on the floor in the back. She looked at the gift lying on the bed. The wrapping paper with the delicate blue flowers that she had thought so beautiful a few minutes before now appeared vulgar and ugly.
Pulling on her jeans and shirt, she picked up the gift and walked downstairs deliberately to the trash container in the kitchen. Opening the lid, she dropped the fancy cake with the pink and green decorations into it. Throwing the wrapped gift on top, she slammed the lid.
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