Moonflower

She stood by the climbing moonflower vine as the light faded from the sky. Her eyes were still puffy and red though it had been two hours since she’d last cried--her final sobs reaching their peak as she crossed the bridge and saw the beginning of the sunset, red, over the city.

Now she was waiting the way she always had, barefoot, outside and alone, waiting for the night to swell up around her and bring her comfort. As a teenager she had run out through the empty field where her grandfather’s cattle had once grazed; the grass was thick with clover and springy under her feet. When they were arguing she would stand in her pajamas until the cold of the dew made her legs tremble with shivers, until the moon rose up and the moonflowers opened.

She had rented this house because of the expansive plant at its southern corner. The minute she drove up the gravel drive and spied the great, fat buds “like swirls of soft ice cream”* she had known she would pay whatever the landlord asked. In the end, it had been a good price and it had been a good place for her. An empty outbuilding nearby had become her pottery studio and what had seemed to most people to be a passing whim--a few extra credits her senior year of college, was now close to becoming her vocation. She had made the jury cut and had a tent booked at the Stone Arch Bridge Art Festival later this month. She should be throwing pots now, she knew, but she didn’t move. The dark settled in around her. She waited.

They had had an argument--not anything very different from any others, but this time he was more insistent, or she more stubborn--she wasn’t sure.

“Marry me,” he had said. “Damn it, Ava, be sensible and marry me!”

She couldn’t say for sure what had made her say no--made her flat-out refuse instead of being coy and tactful. But then he had made some off-hand remark about her pottery, about how his recent promotion would provide them with more than enough and she could “keep her hobby” at least until they had children. That had made her angry, but she was old enough to sense that it had only scratched the surface of something deeper. She hadn’t expected to snap at him, but then wasn’t surprised when she did. She watched, as if from over her own shoulder as the argument turned from catty to heated. In the height of it she had closed her eyes and thought of this moment, outside, barefoot, waiting for the moonflowers to open, and it had brought her back to the meadow outside her childhood home. Her eyes had snapped open then.

“I will never marry you, Ricky!” she had said with such venom and certainty that her boyfriend-of-three-years’s jaw had dropped slightly open and hung there, gaping.

“I’ll go spend fifty bucks on a vibrator and another fifty on a bottle of wine [throw all the dame pots that I want] and get on with my life!”

The fight had only escalated after that, of course--how could it not? They had never spoken to each other that way; those words would have stung anyone.

“I was just so tired of dealing with his--” she whispered to herself in the dark, then stopped. A flutter of wings rushed by her head and she opened her eyes.

The moon had come up without her noticing. It was behind her and, thin though it was, it illuminated the enormous buds so they nearly glowed. A second sphinx moth whirred past her ear, loud as a hummingbird, and Ava saw the first flower open.

It did not unfurl or open delicately. The six-inch pearl-green petals snapped apart like the smacking of a pair of lips released from the furtive embrace of the long, hot day. A light breeze swirled the air and, “Oh, God,” she groaned with pained pleasure: the smell.

She stood there until well past midnight, unaware of the passing of time, thinking of nothing but the moonflowers, counting them as they spread themselves before her, one, two, three, sixty, eighty! She was giddy with delight, drunk on the lushness of it all--their rich perfume swathing her, the sphinx moths beating the air, brushing against her until her skin, her whole body was humming! She swayed and hummed a silent melody, she stepped out of her bitter sadness, she drank in dew through the soles of her feet.

At last when the last moth had moved on--flown to the rich and drooping lilac bush beyond the drive, she shook her wavy head, turned her face up to the million stars.

“Thank you,” she thought.

Though it was early summer and the nights were still cool, she left her bedroom windows open to the south. Alone in her double bed in her simple white nightgown, with the hoot of owls, the steady chirrup of courting frogs, and the mixture of lilac and moonflower floating in the window, Ava fell asleep.

The night was her lover and she was completely content.

-Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux

*quotation: Jenny Andrews, Garden Design, May/June 2010, “Plant Palette”

photo by Anita Munman: Moonflower & Moth

The Golden Courtier

“Oh, my,” she said, shaking her head so that the thin-stemmed feathers on her hat quivered. “This is simply mind-boggling.”

The two women, the older in her Sunday hat, the younger in black pants and jacket with an orchid-purple scarf knotted at her throat, stood in the entrance of the greenhouse. Damp, warm air swirled slowly around them, inviting, but the gray-haired woman stayed where she was, gloved hands clasping her purse.

“They’re just flowers, Mom,” said the younger one.

“Oh, no,” said her mother. “Mums.” This she breathed as if the very word was a perfume from long ago, from a younger, more vital time in her life.

The daughter shook her head, then stopped herself, her brown hair rustling silkily against her neat jacket. Her voice was softer this time, “Let’s just pick out the displays, all right? We shouldn’t be late.”

This time her mother allowed Rebecca to take her hand and lead her slowly down the far left aisle. Her feathers quivered anew as she turned her head left, right, left, right, and Rebecca thought how much she looked like a little bird: eyes bright, head cocked, lips parted.

They walked past the standard daisy-style flowers--Rebecca had to squint to read the names. Her townhouse was filled with hardy green plants like ficus and palm and jade--plants that no one expected to burst into bloom. She didn’t consider herself a gardener, but then, she didn’t consider her mother to be one either, though Vivian could nurse any bedraggled houseplant back to life.

“Sing to them, dearie,” her mother had told her once when she came to reclaim custody of a Christmas cactus the orange tabby had gnawed to a pitiful state. This was before Dad had gotten sick. Rebecca had put a hand on her hip and said, “really?” expecting her mother to laugh at her own joke, but Vivian had only raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips in a distinct, mysterious way that was entirely out of character and said no more. Some years later, when Rebecca had found the bags of fertilizer out in the tool shed, after they had moved Dad to the home and she and her brother, Kevin, were helping clean up the yard, she had clucked at her own gullibility. While she had never gotten the nerve to actually sing to her plants, she had allowed herself to hum along to the radio when the classics came on, glancing self-consciously at them where they sat in the big windows that looked out over the city. Anything more than that and she would risk being reminded of the cello still in storage in her mother’s upstairs hall closet, and guilt and failure would settle in like mist. Easier to just bring the plants to Mom’s house like wayward grandchildren and leave it at that.

“Look at this, Rebecca.” Her mother’s voice, still soft and rapturous, pulled her back and she instinctively took a deep breath in, feeling the living, fertile moisture fill her lungs. She turned.

Vivian was fingering a bloom bigger than her hat. Its scalloped petals curled over each other, forming an almost-perfect sphere of orangey gold.

“A Golden Courtier,” said her mother with that same faraway whisper that Rebecca had never heard before in her life.

“It has to be this one.” She touched the petals once more, tenderly, then, with a small sigh, like a child who must leave her longed-for favorite doll in the toy shop yet another day she returned the little gloved hand to her purse. “I’m ready,” was all she said, but her voice, though soft, was direct now and Rebecca was startled to have her mother’s eyes meet hers, all the dreaminess gone out of them, a touch of her tiredness from the past three years showing in them again.

“Are--are you sure, Mom?” she asked. “Don’t you want to look at these?” She swept a hand past the thistle and quill mums with their thin petals and wild colors; her mother was already shaking her head, sending the little feathers bobbing resolutely.

“All right,” Rebecca sighed. “How many?” She waved a garden boy in a canvas apron and work gloves over and he loaded the plants onto a wagon and into the back of her SUV. Rebecca paid with a card, scribbled her signature. Vivian was already belted and ready when she got to the car and started it up.

They pulled onto the highway in silence. When they reached the first crossroad, Rebecca cleared her throat. “Everything ok, Mom?”

An almost imperceptible nod. “Oh yes, I’m fine.” And then, “These will be perfect.” Just a hint of that dreaminess returned, a ripple of youth flowed over her face once more and then was gone. Rebecca thought of how much of her mother she would never know, and they drove in silence the rest of the way to the funeral.

-Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux

p.s. Inspiration comes in many forms... in this case, a Garden Design magazine!

Delight in Spring

I’m sitting outside facing east, facing the still-bare trees and beyond them, Lake Superior. Cars hum by steadily on the road between, but I don’t see them because the tangling bushes are thick together, even without their leaves.

A pair of crocuses have begun to open, near the house, well-protected from the wind but in the full force of the sun. It’s April and the sun is hot and the wind, cool.

Flies buzz and are still confused after their hibernation. I heard a robin yesterday for the first time this year and didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t until I saw a flash of rusty red breast that I guessed it. More are trilling their throaty songs now, “chirp, chirp, chirp, chirrup!”

Wind sweeps through the red pine, balsam and spruce. Chickadees squeak. I don’t hear any incensed red squirrels, but it’s only a matter of time. They are territorial and aggravated by “love” this time of year.

The grass still matches the rather tired brown of the deer who wander freely into the yard, but upon closer examination there is green beneath the dead stuff.

Ennis played outside for the first time yesterday. Of course, we’ve gone on walks since he was born (and before that) in all sorts of weather, but yesterday, still in his soft winter boots, I set him down on the asphalt driveway and waited.

He waited. He stood, solid, unmoving, looking around with a half-grin, his eye brows furrowed in the sun. At last he took a few steps, but it was sitting on the lawn that delighted him

He picked up spruce cones and blown down sprigs, handing each one to me with pleasure. When I showed him how the dry aspen leaves were so light I could blow them from my palm with a puff, he giggled with surprise and delight! He handed me leaf after leave and laughed to himself again and again. Then he clutched at clumps of dry grass and tossed them in the air. (When I told him that spruce cones are only food for squirrels, if he didn’t understand he at least obligingly enjoyed them without eating them.)

The ravens are calling. I learned yesterday that crows don’t stay here through the winter, and that the raven’s tail is pointed while the crow’s tail is flat. I have seen them flying, all black but for the strand of nest material they are bringing home.

All these animals (and insects) make their homes anew in the spring. Maybe they return to the same tree or nest, but still they are rebuilding, reinforcing. Perhaps we miss the newness and renewal of this season by staying inside our same old houses and apartments, only finally packing up the Christmas decorations in preparation for the chicks and bunnies of Easter.

But a good ten minute meditation in the sun on someone’s back deck makes up some of the difference. Out in the hum and chirp and caw of spring all the old wonder and appreciation comes back, like a long-frozen mother tongue. We respond to the sudden, cool wind with a shiver, to the warbling bird with a cocked head, to the wonderfully bright sun with a squint. We pick up spruce cones, we touch the dry grasses and see the new life pushing up beneath them, we delight in the day, in the earth and the sky, in spring.

-Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux

The Big Hurrumph Takes a Honeymoon

“Don’t steal my dessert!”* or “Let there be space in your togetherness.”**

I haven’t exactly said either to Jay while traveling, but of course actions speak louder than words. In any case, I didn’t bicker with him over our dessert of fresh, quartered, naked figs served by candlelight on the French Mediterranean and garnished with just-as-fresh raspberries. We were on our honeymoon. Not that that meant we were fully compatible travelers yet.

When we first met (out in North Dakota, made almost exotic by our fascination with each other) we spent the last of the four days up late talking at a Perkins. (Again, our enthusiasm provided all the necessary charm). Though we hadn’t kissed or even really flirted yet, we planned our world travels together excitedly, I promising to take him to Prague and around Belgium, and he vowing to show me India.

That was October. By March we had been engaged for three months and I had invited him to join me on my trip to England to visit my granny in Leicester and meet my great-uncle Peter and his family in Manchester. Jay is Irish by heritage, so we added in a train trip through Wales and a ferry ride to Dublin (and then took a night buss across the country to Ennis, the hometown of his ancestors).

It was a full trip, made up of both the new and familiar. We had home cooked Belgian dishes with my granny but spent more time exploring skin than the nearby village (which I had seen many times before). Then, on to Nottingham and uncharted territories of both place, people and, to my surprise, self.

By the time we got to Manchester, I was so surly I could hardly stand myself. Or understand myself. I loved traveling, I loved Jay--what was wrong with me?At Nottingham castle he climbed ivy-covered stones and swung like a kid fromthe long metal railing going up the drive. I took his picture only to mask my annoyance. When I posed outside of Grumpy’s pub my scowl was heartfelt and a relief.

So, after meeting my relatives I finally begged for a chance to split up. We each photographed the city independently, and I felt much more friendly when we reunited at the fountain by the train station. But I also felt like a bad dog who had snapped at the leash and run off for the day and now, at dinner time, had snuck guiltily back--covered in muck and trying to appear winning and penitent, but not regretting a moment of independence.

That night we took a walk after supper and found a Gilbert & Sullivan play at a small theatre. Afterward, in an attempt to bridge the gap with my rather silent fiance, I made up a story on the spot as both explanation and request for forgiveness. It went something like this:

Turkey Lurkey and the Big Hurrumph were out walking. Turkey Lurkey was so happy! “Look at the sunshine! Look at the swans! Look at the red telephone booths!”

“Hurrumph. Hurrumph, hurrumph,” said the Big Hurrumph and looked at nothing.

“Oh, let’s go to that cafe!” cried Turkey Lurkey in excitement.

“Hurrumph,” said the Big Hurrumph and shuffled by.

“Ok, ok, I know--let’s go to that museum! Or to that theatre!”

“Hurrumph. Hurrumph!”

No matter what happy little Turkey Lurkey suggested, the Big Hurrumph refused, settling deeper and deeper into the gloom, until at last it spread to Turkey Lurkey and he grew quiet.

They walked in silence for a while. And for a while longer. Turkey Lurkey didn’t point out the funny mail boxes or the double-decker buses. He didn’t suggest they get cornettos and walk through the park. The light beganto fade but Turkey Lurkey didn’t seem to notice anything. The Big Hurrumph started to miss all his cheerful chatter.

“Hurrumph?” said the Big Hurrumph hopefully, looking over at Turkey Lurkey from under his shaggy eyebrows.

Turkey Lurkey didn’t look up.

“Hurrumph, hurrumph?” said the Big Hurrumph again, opening his mouth into a tentative, craggy grin.

Turkey Lurkey only sniffed.

“Hurrumph!” cried the Big Hurrumph. “Hurrumph, hurrumph!” He hopped up and down and pointed at the mail boxes. He pointed at the swimming swans. He pointed at the tiny cars going the wrong way down the narrow roads.

Turkey Lurkey straightened up a bit and looked warily at him.

“Hurrumph, hurrumph, hurrumph!” he shouted madly. He grabbed Turkey Lurkey’s hand. “Hurrumph, hurrumph!” and he started to run; he started to skip as hard as he could. Turkey Lurkey dragged along in amazement for a moment, then a grin broke out over his face and he kicked up his feet, too, and Turkey Lurkey and the Big Hurrumph skipped crazily down the street until at last they came to a little cafe spilling light out onto the cobblestones and they ate chocolate eclairs and lady fingers and drank Irish coffee and got whipped cream mustaches and laughed and laughed, though the Big Hurrumph’s laugh still did sound mostly like “hurrumph.”

Jay and I walked in silence for a while after I told that story, me still with the guilty-hopeful-naughty puppy look. We both knew which one of us was which in the story. How did he feel about a future spouse like that? Turns out, the same way Turkey Lurkey felt about the Big Hurrumph. We held hands the rest of the way home.

Sometimes I am still the Big Hurrumph, but at least now I know it, and he knows it and we don’t feel so doomed about taking precautions: allowing me time to explore alone. Because for whatever reason, that is how I still think of travel. Maybe it came down in my blood from my solo-traveler mother. Maybe it’s my artistic nature or my oldest sibling nature or the fact that though I’m very socially capable, I’m actually an introvert. Regardless of the reason, our trip to England taught me that no matter where I travel or with whom, (and no matter how much I love either) I must take a half or full day to myself by Day Three to keep the Hurrumph at bay.

Still, I romantically mused that this need for Me Time wouldn’t apply to our honeymoon. I was wrong, but thankfully we recognized the tell-tale signs right away. Jay left our little hotel for the morning and I wrote in my journal on the balcony looking out over the residential part of the city and the sea beyond. With much less fuss than the first time we resuscitated our enjoyment of the Cote d’Azure. We walked to the beach and bought a parasailing ride in a double-harness parachute pulled high up over the waves by a skipping speed boat, the rest of the world far below us and the two of us dangling our feet and holding hands in complete delight. We swam and dove, we watched old men playing bocce ball. We ate crepes and read aloud to each other on the sand. That night, after a day full of both time alone and time together, after a rich meal and a bottle of mellow wine, we savored the complementary freshness and simplicity of our tender figs, our thin-skinned raspberries, and we began to learn how to do the same with ourselves.

*from “The Art of Travel” by Alain de Boton

**from “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran

Persephone's Descent

When Persephone went down into the earth, down into the underworld on the back of Hades’s big, black horse, she was terrified and thrilled. He was easy to hate and love, easy to blame.

But what did she find down there? First strangeness, then sameness that bored her to agony and tears, but then--she took out her glass eyes and bent low, saw the lichen growing on the bare rock, eating slowly away at it, crumbling it to earth without counting the hours by a clock. Down in the unchanging dimness she finally, gradually began to stop looking for the sun or stars to tell her what to do or where to be (or even where she was). She stopped looking for her mother, she settled down inside herself and even the whisperings of minor and more cunning devils fell away to the shadows and she heard them no more than she heard the wind. She found solitude, she found darkness, and one day at the table with Hades, her host and husband, he offered her a pomegranate.

It was roundish and bulging, already cracked open so that its burnished skin seemed illogically dull compared to its fruit.

The seeds were wet but held their moisture to themselves and, unlike in the tender fig, each one was its own little orb; each one sat, pressed snugly into the protective white pith, further armored by the dull red-black sheath. Here was a marriage proposal like none she had ever received, and even though by all standards of the upper world she had already lost herself and her name to Hades, he sat and looked at her across the black table with his black eyes, waiting for her response.

And she saw his eyes were not only black, but dark like the earth around them, veined and flecked with bronze, gold, pewter, copper and many-colored stone. She saw that the hell she had thought herself in was in fact a womb, the house of the Mother. That her captor was in fact her guide and deliverer and the three-headed dog that guarded the gate back to the upper world was not a beast to keep her shut in away from the light but her own three-headed instinct, her own tripartite goddess self who knew this was the time to learn the truth of shadows and no longer be afraid.

So she looked at Hades the way she had learned to look at the lichen and fungus, taking out her glass eyes and using instead her womanly touch to know what to do. He was no longer thrilling or villainous--only steady as the earth, strong as the three-headed dog. He smelled like the deep moss, like the cracks in the stones that ran too deep to fathom.

The pomegranate, cracked in two, glowed, gleamed against all the blackness as if it were the central fire for this kingdom--this subterranean domain of the Earth Mother. Persephone, with her pale arms translucent as mist after so much time below reached out one now-virginal, naked hand and plucked one, two, three, four, five, six seeds, watching Hades steadily, easily as she did. Neither of them changed their expressions, but a depth came to the room, a mixing of cool air from very deep caves with that of the upper channels. Everything felt damp, as if there was a fog. But the air was clear, and so were her thoughts--or rather, her thoughts were silent, watching like the guardian dog.

The pomegranate seeds reflected deep pink off her white fingertips. Quickly, easily, she brought one to her mouth, almost tossing it in.

The flavor burst out tart and dry and sweet--a shock, and without her glassy eyes the air seemed to have called forth glow worms--the room glimmered as with a pulse, but Hades’s eyes remained as two still, deep rock pools, reflecting almost nothing.

In went the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. Each one stung her mouth with a release--of sadness, agony, fear, terror and forgotten names. Each one brought to mind an aspect of her upper world life and, it seemed, erased the bitterness that had stained it until she felt refreshed, until her mouth and cheeks were vital red.

The rock walls hummed around her. The basalt, the lime and sandstone, the magma, the slate and silt and gravel all reverberated within her body, breathing with her or she with them.

She felt her hips shift, widening slightly, she felt her breasts relax from their high perch and settle like sphinxes with utter confidence in the knowledge of their riddles. Her shoulders also dropped, in fact every part of her descended and deepened; within she widened as a subterranean river widening the crevasse in a deep rock.

She knew her own mossy places, her own earthy smells, her own delicate undersides like the crinoline frills of mushrooms; in short, she knew her own weight and gravity, her own interconnected life-giving strata, her own perfect decay and renewal--she knew her Self.

Persephone popped the last of the six jewel-red seeds onto her tongue, and then with her mind and her heart and every mossy, craggy underworld part of her reclaimed self, she knew Hades.

Though Demeter wept to know her daughter had eaten of that vivid truth-teller and was no longer free to remain in the world of sun and harvest all year long, Persephone did not mourn. She had mourned already, long before the fruit; she had tasted that bitterness and known that hunger, and she had planted seeds of her own finding within herself.

She passes now, each equinox between the upper- and underworlds, taking nothing with her from either, standing unafraid while the three-headed dog sniffs every part of her. She has nothing to fear; she carries nothing more in the crossing than her own true self.

-Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux

Swearwords, Ouija Boards & Other Lessons From Grandma

I was in elementary school--maybe only second grade, when Grandma stopped me in the hallway at her house and explained that “you can say ‘blue smoke’ or ‘purple cow,’ but only God is holy.” I was confused because saying those apparently sinful phrases had felt so satisfying. “Holy smoke!” I exclaimed with great enthusiasm. My classmates all smiled when they said them. No one else looked like they felt bad or guilty. I twas a hard idea to reconcile, but of course, I stopped saying it. Grandma hadn’t threatened eternal damnation or even a spanking or a mouthful of soap, but her somber, certain tone must’ve brought to mind the sad-eyed painting of blonde-haired Jesus, and I never wanted to disappoint anyone.

Grandma was also the one who banished, with just a few words, the coveted ouija board. My sisters and I had all wanted one--everyone had one back then--and our atheist-agnostic neighbors (the ones who let us stay up just a little bit later than bedtime and allowed candy and pop) gave it to us for Christmas. Josie, Abbey and I had summoned up a dozen spirits there on the sunny floor of the playroom in our pajamas before Grandma found out. “That’s a tool of the devil,” she said, again not menacingly, not trying to scare us--just telling us the matter-of-fact truth about life (and the afterlife). I think she told us to burn it, but we hid it under the couch.

Though we kept it, every time thereafter, fingertips on the little plastic triangle, I’d feel my hands moving of their own accord and wonder if she was right. The risk of really communing with the devil took some of the fun out of it.

There was another time when I played, “Sand, Cement and Water” in her presence that ended with a fake demonic possession, praying and wailing to God and me once again left feeling confused about how something that had been so fun (and that I was so good at) could be bad.

(We were all in a station wagon coming back from our A.W.A.K.E. multi-generational theatre performance. I told the “Sand, Cement and Water” tale to a boy about my age, eleven or so. This was of the same era as “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.” I told the story of how the boy was knocked unconscious, only to awake to feel a circle of skin and bone being cut out of his forehead. His captors then proceeded to fill him up with sand, cement and water, sand, cement and water, until he was as solid as a rock and couldn’t move. I had discovered my skill at this at summer camp, embellishing the gruesome tale and using a hypnotic rhythm as the sand, cement and water filled his body, layer by layer. If it was done right, and I was one of the best, the subject would be unable to move for at least twenty seconds after the story was completed.

So, I did this to a rather obnoxious boy while we drove through the darkness, massaging his temples and ignoring my Grandma’s comment about demons and evil spirits. Everything went as planned, but the boy got mad that it had worked on him and begin to thrash around, muttering gibberish and rolling his eyes back in his head. The other family in the car was a religious home-schooling mother and son who immediately began to pray, then weep and beg Jesus to call the demon out of him. The other girl started crying, too, even as I insisted he was faking it. When he finally quit it, I smacked him and started to cry myself. I think I only did “Sand, Cement and Water” once or twice after that, but as with the “holy smoke” and the ouija board, I never enjoyed myself again.

The last time I swore in earshot of my grandma--the only time--I was in traffic and suddenly afraid I was about to crash into the car in front of me. “Holy shit!” I cried with my cell phone pressed against my cheek. I immediately tried to backtrack, explaining to her what the situation was. In that same, simple way she countered my “I hardly ever swear,” with “you shouldn’t swear at all.”

But this was a few years after a life threatening accident and recovery that gave her the mantra, “it’s not my job to judge people--God judges people. It’s my job to love them.” I was older now. I had more wayward cousins who did worse than say “holy shit,” so I didn’t feel so bad.

Except, I sort of did. But this time it was clear to me that it was because I agreed with her. I shouldn’t say holy anything. Even if I don’t believe all the same religious creeds as she does, even though I keep this to myself so she won’t worry about the state of my soul or our reunion (or lack thereof) in Heaven, i do believe that the Holy exists, and just like I wouldn’t stomp on flowers or throw a painting in the mud, I shouldn’t smear shit on whatever this Holiness is, not even if I’m about to be in a fender bender.

Do I really worry that playing with an ouija board or saying ‘sand, cement and water’ are invitations to the devil? I don’t know. I didn’t do either of them with bad or harmful intent. But that uncertainty is what made me stop, and what has stopped me since. Grandma may be old and outdated, but she may also be right.

So I just say “Jeez Louise!” I let “shit” stand alone. And when I make my art, I try to tell not stories of how we die, but of how we live.

Emilia's Storm

Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead as she looked out across the lake. The lake was gray, too, a high wall of clouds cutting over it but not yet blocking out the low-angling sun.

We had come up for the weekend and everything had been a little off. It was looking like rain the whole way here, but when I asked her if she wanted to turn around, spend the weekend in my apartment in the city, she just shook her head.

She hadn’t been back since--and I was interrupted from my brooding thoughts about whether or not she even knew I was with her by a roll of thunder. It made me jump and for the first time since we had made our plans, I saw her relax, as if she had been coming back here for this, as if she had been waiting all morning for it.

“Jesus!” I said. “That surprised me.” I swished my drink around so the ice cubes clinked against the glass. “Where did that come from?”

“From that,” she said simply, pointing into the heart of the clouds that were growing darker. The wind picked up suddenly, tossing the tops of the feathery white pines on the other side of the lake, slapping the water from gray to white and then rushing at us as if to blow us off the dock.

“Jesus Christ!” I said, slapping a hand to my hat. “Emilia, I’m going in.” She didn’t respond--just hugged her knees and stared out as if she were waiting for what would come next.

“Emilia--” but I knew that posture, that look. I sighed very slightly and then cursed again as the lime toppled off the edge of my glass and into the lake below. “If there’s a tornado I’m coming to get you. Don’t make me carry you in...please.” I could hardly tell if she had even heard me, so intense was her gaze--like a cat I once knew who would get that same look sitting at the edge of a field for hours, waiting for the mouse to think it was safe and reappear.

She sat out there as the rain came down--I watched all of it from the picture window up in the old cabin on the hill, jumping back from the glass whenever the lighting flashed. The water beat against the house and I decided to go get her, but the intensity, almost anger of it drove me back inside.

“Christalmighty, it’s her lake--she can do what she wants!” I kept on muttering arguments with myself as I poured more gin and tonic water into my glass.

I peeled off my now-wet shirt and went back to the window. The tv showed the heart of the storm poised over us. I could hardly see her when I looked out again--the sky was a [wash] of wind and rain, and the sun was long gone.

When the lightning flashed again I saw her caught as if by a flashbulb of her former life. She was standing spread-eagled on the edge of the dock--arms out and head tilted back. When the flash came again I saw that her mouth was open wide, eyes screwed shut, as if swallowing the storm or screaming.

I paced the decades-old carpet and flipped through the handful of channels until at last the hail drove her back in. She burst in through the door as it pelted down like a broken pearl necklace. I held out my arm to pull her in, but she stood there in the doorway looking wild and triumphant with the storm hurling its stones at her back. Her hair was plastered to her head, her clothes stuck to her body, but the flatness was gone from her eyes, as if she had swallowed the lightning, and Emilia, as I had known her long ago, was back.

........................................

Italicized first line come from "The Great Gatsby." I learned this trick at a writing group--to open a book and pick a sentence as a starting point or inspiration.

27 January 2011