Scott and Selene

By Ella Song

Art by Liz Nedelescu

The leaves had begun to fall in Central Park. Young men and women had begun to walk hand in hand along the well worn path carved alongside the pond. Scarf-clad children flew kites across hillsides, one hand bound with string and the other grasping hot meat pies that kept their cheeks rosy and full. 

The park, thought to be a respite within the metropolis that was New York City, was just as bustling. Perhaps it was the oncoming fear of war. Perhaps it was the ongoing ignorance of war. Either way, Selene sat dull to the world on an old hardwood bench facing the pond, her pen a blur in her ink stained hands. Any minute now, Scott would come to collect her, and he would read the words she had so painstakingly crafted in her notebook. He would hold her face in his hands, a gesture that had begun to feel caging instead of tender, and exclaim how remarkable she was with turn of phrase. And then, within the fortnight, Selene would awake in the middle of the night to see him poring over her notebooks by candlelight, entrapping her stories and her thoughts within his own mind. He would entwine her ideas with his so thoroughly that it seemed that he had forgotten whose was whose. 

A stand on the corner of the park sold franks nestled in white buns,covered in pickled cabbage and mustard. Scott wouldn’t like her spending money without him there, but the smell wafting to her was tantalizing, and if she didn’t eat now it was porridge and hard boiled eggs for dinner. She was no cook, she had trained her entire life to be a dancer, for God’s sake. 

But it was too late, across the pond she spotted Scott’s silk top hat. He had come to fetch her. 

She inked her final period. And along the path, she saw Scott approaching, a coal black coat on his shoulders. Her time was up. 

“Darling,” He called to her, an insincere smile playing on his lips, “you’ve been writing.”

The wind blew and shook a spray of persimmon and scarlet leaves across the bench. Selene shivered, her thin shawl ill- equipped for the incoming frost. She thought of when she’d left Montgomery, where in the summertime forgotten ice cream cones on sidewalks would become soup within seconds. She remembered how full of hope she’d been as Scott helped her pack her embossed luggage into the carriage. “This is it, my love,” he’d said earnestly, “this is the beginning of everything.”

And back then, she still had faith in his writing. She’d taken his hand, trusted his steadiness to help her inside the carriage. She’d left her dancing slippers tied to the oak bedpost in her childhood room. 

Selene didn’t know it as she sat upon the bench, resenting the city and hating Scott, but one day her stories would be known to anyone who revered literature. The inked pages in her notebook would be dissected, studied and quoted to death. Her ideas would span centuries, far outliving an age where the taboo was gilded in glitter and pearls. One day, youths would sit on the very bench and read the book that defined her life, her struggles, and her dreams to be something more than a writer’s wife.  

But her name would never be on the cover.