Member-only story
Marvin and Viere
A conversation between two elderly cousins.
Marvin and Viere
Marvin leaned over the kitchen counter, with his phone in “speaker mode” on full blast. Marvin was talking the ears off his eighty year old cousin Viere, who was five years his junior. Marvin lived in Philadelphia, and Viere lived in Washington DC, but the often conversed about their humble beginnings in Trinidad. Marvin had left their rural seaside town, Moruga, when he was 16 years old, and hardly ever went back. His cousin Viere moved away when she was 21, and maintained strong connections with her home town. Marvin and Viere talked about twice a year, sometimes three times.
Marvin’s housekeeper, Janet, loved to eavesdrop on the conversations between these cousins. Today was no different, and she listened and waited for Marvin’s exaggerated whimpers, squeals, screams, and wails, which she found to be both confounding and entertaining.
Almost on cue, Marvin let out a loud scream, “Oh no!”
He continued, shouting in horror, “I can’t believe it. Hamilton died? How sad?”
Viere said, “But Marvin, Hamilton died over forty years ago. You didn’t know that?”
Marvin replied, with dry tears in his eyes, “No. He was such a good man. And we were so very close. I will miss him.”
