An English assignment that I recently had to do and loved. I had to write an alternate ending or elaborate on an ending from my choice of Short Stories. I chose “Eveline” by James Joyce. All prose in italics belongs to him, the rest is mine: enjoy!
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All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
“Come!” No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.
“Eveline! Evvy!” He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
She remained frozen as the sea of nebulous bodies swept Frank farther away and waves of relief crashed over her. She floated there for a minute longer, clutching the iron framework contemplating whether to listen to the diminutive voice raging inside of her, urging to follow him. Her life, from this very moment, would forever be divided into two parts: before and after Frank. Perhaps in another universe they are together, peering over the rail of a transatlantic ship as it splits the ocean in two, laughing that there could be another world where they are apart. And with that thought, Eveline took her first true step away from him, away from everything. She could no longer see him or feel any trace that he’d left behind; the crowd vastly separated them now. Though, they had never sincerely been together at all.
Eveline walked dazed towards the nearest train station thinking about poor Frank. She did love him–surely she did, thought Eveline. How was she to know for certain? She had never been in love before and had no experience or understanding on how it was all to end. She remembered the night that he took her to the opera and it seemed that she had clambered through a window into someone else’s life. Somewhere where things were fine; where she was a proper lady to be cared after and protected. Had she any say, she would have lived in that lavish house forever. How she hated being cast back outside, the window shut firmly in her face as she returned home that evening to her turbulent father. Frank had offered to take her away from the destruction her parent always seemed to create in his frenzied path. All of her life, her decisions and opportunities had been tainted by the venom that seeped from the shadow’s of that man. She had never been more conflicted as she was with the decision to leave her father behind. She had waited and planned for her future to be without him; she had dreamed of the day she would be free of his incessant scrutiny. In all the days before, something consistently propelled her back to him as if his misery were magnetized. Before Frank, no matter how much distance she put between her and her father, their polarity was insurmountable. Despite all this, buried beneath years of resentment and offense there was love. Compared to how she felt about Frank it was of a different kind, however similar in one regard: neither feeling was enough.
She boarded a train without determining where to it was going. Neither direction seemed to bother her at this particular moment, she was simply satisfied to get a seat alone by the window. She began to worry what her life would be. Without her father or brother to claim her she would be an outcast wherever she ended up. Where would she live? How would she work with flocks of ladies gossiping about her around town? How would she support herself, she wondered. She questioned why the world made it so challenging to be a woman alone. The train suddenly lurched forward quieting her roaring mind for a brief moment as the scenery before her began to blend together. She heard her mother’s words brush against each other again and again derevaun seraun, derevaun seraun, derevaun seraun. As comforted as she was by thoughts of the beautiful woman that bore her, she was overwhelmed with confusion. It had been so long since Eveline was happy. She thought back to the days before her father was a wretch, while her mother and Ernest were still alive, and her days were filled with naive play. They had been so truly happy then, until the loss of her mother created a tremendous void Eveline desperately tried to fill. When she failed, her family collapsed in on each other and they lost all resemblance of that blissful family far off in the old fields. At the end of pleasure, there is pain. With the memory of them, she could now see clearly what her mother had meant for Eveline to take with her. It was time for her grieving to come to an end and her suffering to lessen. The sweet waves of relief wrapped around her once more and the train began to lull her to sleep. She no longer needed to tie her sinking ship to anyone else’s happiness; she would swim. She wouldn’t go back to Frank or for her father. She wouldn’t go back at all. The train pushed her beyond the reach of both of them into a world of her own.
The Way U Carry It 