The darkness to come
He cornered me early, started talking when I walked into the fire hall and had not let up. A perpetual cigarette dangled out of his mouth and his conversational style was mumbling ramble pierced by awkward silence and intense stares into the crowd. Whenever he made a point, one or both of his arms shot out and swept the air around us clean. Invariably, this resulted in contact, usually with the thick hand or arm of someone beefy and bearded (there were many at the Saturday night dance) whose back tensed up before he turned around. But everyone knew Paulie, and the bearded men laughed and thumped him on the back, hearty gestures which almost knocked him over, before they belched in our faces or leered at me. Finally one of Paulie’s arms landed on my shoulders. He let it hang there, limp and damp. I sent him to the bar to give him something else to do. And then Steven walked in.
Two weeks ago, I slipped out of Steven's truck without saying goodbye. I unplugged my phone and spent evenings into late night on the tiny back porch reading Russian novels and swatting mosquitos, sometimes burning incense as a cleansing ritual. I was leaving for Illinois soon and needed to make a clean break. But there he was in front of me, radiating heat, his faded jeans held up by a cracked belt, his plaid shirt blurred by years of wear. He looked hungry. Lonely. I plunged my free hand into my pocket and gripped the other tightly around my empty plastic cup.
Steven moved closer, smelling fresh as the bay in the morning, his familiar hip almost touching mine. He opened his mouth to speak when Paulie floated back from the bar, a white ghost in a crowd of sweating men in sleeveless shirts and women with wrinkled butterfly tattoos nestled in sagging cleavage.
Blame it all on my roots, showed up in boots and ruined your black tie affair. The band launched into Friends in Low Places. The lead singer's eyes closed as he gripped the neck of the mike. He was pigeon-toed and the points of his cowboy boots intersected at the mike stand. Steven grinned and reached for my hand. As we twirled away, Paulie tipped one beer into his mouth and then another and vanished.
What do you do when the feeling lingers, when someone's touch is like fever against your skin? I was already lightheaded, Steven's hands firm against the small of my back, his chin against my cheek. The song was background to the buzzing in my head. As the band wrapped it up, Steven led me through the crowd and out the door. Outside, it was quiet. We felt no need to speak. The waning gibbous moon was bright, heavy as an egg, the cool air a reminder that fall was imminent. We walked arm in arm to his truck and kissed against the driver's side door until he opened it. I accepted my fate.
The wind tangled through the truck, the fields rustled as we rushed by, and when I shivered Steven pulled me closer. The corn was August-melancholy, still green but going brown at the edges. Spotlit by our high beams, it shuddered in anticipation of the harvest, of the darkness to come. With a crackle of gravel, we pulled into the driveway, briefly illuminating the cottage before Steven cut the engine and helped me out of the truck. He led us to the edge of the cornfield out back. Here the landscape was still, monochrome in moonlight. Framed by dark cornstalks, Steven's face looked serious, purposeful. As he kissed me I thought, "This is happening right now. I am happy right now."
This is part of a short story (in ultra draft format) that I am picking up again. Because I craved the contrast is an earlier excerpt. I keep on editing it and reposting when I see how awkward/unbalanced/sloppy/overwritten it reads. It's been a while since I've written fiction. This is my warm-up.
Image by eggman.
I originally called this post "Fever." For a great version of the song (though with an irritating video), listen to Shirley Horn singing it. It might wipe "Friends in Low Places" out of your mind.
I remember the heavy air and the smell of gin
The kitchen on Queen Street was out of proportion, with a large linoleumed space that could hold a table for six but contained only an old refrigerator and a telephone jack. The stove, sink, cabinets and counter space were jammed into an adjacent galley. Everything we owned -- pots, pans, dishes, and silverware -- was a parental hand-me-down. In the mornings we would linger over percolated coffee diluted to a muddy brown with half and half, the perfect solution to a mild hangover. Some days I would come home for lunch to make BLTs on poppy seed buns, the bacon still hot from the pan, tomato juice and mayonnaise dripping down my fingers.
This was the place where we learned to cook, tried recipes from Gourmet Magazine and the Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook. In our year there, we made pizzas from scratch, cleaned and fried squid, and grilled chicken marinated with olive oil, lemon juice, and rosemary. Peter showed us how to make pesto and a cook at the Ironstone brought us a bushel of crawfish that we steamed in a cauldron of boiling water.
I have a file of recipes from that period, most of them copied by hand from D's mother's cookbooks, some of which I still make, like Lebanese Cucumber Soup, and Rice with Garlic and Walnuts. I even have the pizza recipes from Gourmet, which seemed so exotic at the time (Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza with Peppers, Onion, and Garlic Confit, Broccoli and Ricotta Pizza). Going through them reminds me that I never clip recipes anymore, just search around on the internet or Epicurious to see what looks good. Recipes on paper are another thing I miss from the pre-internet days, another reason to toss our modem out the window. I want a paper trail blotched with oil and tomato sauce. I want tangible memories. I want to have my mind and time returned to me (brief interruption while I look at Facebook: see what I mean?).
Still, the memories remain. When my family returned from vacation last Friday, there was a half batch of gazpacho, vinegary and bright, waiting for us, courtesy of our housesitter. Gazpacho was one of D’s favorite foods and I thought of that long-ago summer, which was also the first time M and I made the soup. The recipe called for peeled, deseeded tomatoes and we were mystified. How did one peel tomatoes? Like, with a vegetable peeler? Or by hand somehow? And, umm, the seeds? What was the problem with seeds? Finally, M called her mother. She gave us instructions: put a big pot of water on to boil, remove the tomato stems and cut Xs in the blossom ends before immersing them in the boiling water for under a minute. Then remove the tomatoes with a strainer and plunge them into an ice bath.The peels would slip off in our hands.
Gazpacho recipe, copied in the summer of
1988.
It worked. M and I pureed
the still-seedy tomatoes with bread crumbs,
garlic, vinegar, olive oil and tomato juice,
adding onion and cucumber at the end. The
soup chilled while we chopped the garnishes.
It was late July on the Eastern Shore. The
air was resistant, fluid, like water. Heat
flattened the landscape, made the houses
across the shimmering street one-dimensional.
While I poured the soup, M filled two cups
with ice and gin and topped them with tonic
and thin wedges of lime. We sat in the living
room with our drinks, the bowls of gazpacho
balanced on our laps. The soup was bracing,
the acidity of the tomato and vinegar
complemented by the bite of onion and
coolness of cucumber.
Sometimes all that remains
is sense memory -- the taste, the scent, the
aching loss, the joy of conquest -- or a
suspicion that something
else must have happened. So
maybe M and I went our for a walk that night
after the sun went down, barefoot on
sidewalks that radiated a memory of sun. Or
maybe we refilled our cups again and again
and cried about our crazy mothers, our absent
fathers. Or we danced to Prince or sung along
to Paradise
by the Dashboard
Light. D may have spent the
night, the two of us still and quiet on
checkerboard sheets, feeling the pull of
the window fan in my attic bedroom, while
downstairs M let the smoke from her
cigarette drift out of an open window.
That night is lost. But I remember the heavy
air and the smell of gin, our kitchen counter
splattered with tomato juice, the closeness
of friendship at a time when the world was
new.
Images:
Top: Me, a blurry goofball in the yard on
Queen Street.
Middle: The original gazpacho recipe.
Bottom: The checkerboard sheets, the
I
Love You This Much
statue, the orange crate. The
artfully-placed bottle of Corona.
And in the room locked up inside me
I remember what it was like to care about fashion and boys and what the other girls thought, all the other girls with their money and their bright sweaters in primary colors and their designer clothes. When you’re a teenager you think everyone else is better off than you, except for S. whose brother would beat her up or F. whose father didn't know he existed or N., who lied about her address, too, and had an alcoholic dad. My friends were the exceptions, but the rest of them, the money flowed like water from a tap and their parents, they might have been strict, but it was in good ways that showed they cared instead of being random like my mother. The other kids had stable parents who drove newer cars. They lived in the suburbs, not the middle of the city where the houses slammed against each other, where you knew everyone's secrets, could smell the neighbor's dinner burning.
It was a time when I joined the consumer world with its fashion and makeup and music to buy (Def Leppard morphed to Wham! and Duran Duran bled into the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks, Echo and the Bunnymen) and then retreated from it. In the Little House I was stuck with the dull depression of being fifteen and separated from the world, first alone, then alone and pregnant, and then the survivor of both, still alone, and with life experiences that made me feel so, so old.
But there was beer to drink and a guy who bought it for me. He eventually came around more often, was there for real, for love. D. still lived at home, was the youngest of four in a tight family. They got together for big extended family dinners, would greet me with a hug, kiss my cheek when it was time to say goodbye. The womenfolk prepared delicious food and it always seemed like there were at least twenty people at the table, with toasts ("Proost!") and heated conversation and endless bottles of Grolsch.
I loved that family, their sheer number, their passion and personality, the safety net of so many people. In the photographs, however, I look small. Contained. A little scared, like I knew a secret that could destroy me.
Image: Me, late December 1984, in my grandfather's yard. This was before I moved to the Little House, but I still spent most weekends and school vacations visiting. I remember this day very well, the abnormally warm temperatures, the feeling of anticipation that D. might show up that night, that he actually did show. Ah, redemption, brief and sweet.
The original prompt was a photo. You can look at it here.
The post title is a line from a Yaz song that I listened to a lot in the Little House: In My Room.
Remember part of me is you
Where it takes
me:
*A hot Delaware day, late
July or August of 1986, D. at the
construction site. He wears cut-off shorts
and a torn, sleeveless shirt, has wrapped a
red bandana around his head to catch the
sweat. Somehow on him sweat is sweet,
necessary, like the damp of a spring rain. D.
stands on a ladder at the roof line, swings
his hammer. On the backstroke, the claw end
meets his eyebrow, tearing a gash that
requires fifteen stitches. I wasn’t there,
but I can imagine it, the blood, the truck
ride to the emergency room, the endless bowls
of marijuana that he probably smoked to
counteract the dull throb. Later I held my
fingers above the stitches, lightly kissed
the jagged rays of black thread.
*D. at the wheel of the Newport Custom,
gunning it over 100 miles an hour on Town
Point Road, the flash of
grey-green cornstalks
rushing past
the window, the curve before we reached
the woods, cool and dark, my heart
pounding, the tape deck blasting
Manic
Mechanic. I cupped the wind, I
caught it, let it flow across my body to
his.
*Early on: waiting by the flicker of the
television set in the Little House, falling
asleep to Kung Fu or Fantasy Island reruns,
waiting until 1 a.m.. Waiting even later.
Just waiting, sometimes for nothing, a replay
of my waits of early childhood.
*Still early on: The weekend he rode his bike
home from college, logging almost 100 miles,
to wish me a happy sixteenth birthday. Me,
waiting. Him, appearing at 10:30 or so, a
reasonable hour, with a half-consumed bottle
of vodka. My present. He knew I would be
leaving Maryland soon, but he didn't know
why. He didn't find out until
after
the drama was over.
But it actually wasn't a photograph that
brought this back, it was a poem from one of
my Round Robin writing partners last week,
something about the love of men who work with
their hands. D. was (and still is, I presume)
a talented carpenter, a man who framed houses
and built furniture. Despite the endless
nostalgia of my brain, the way the past rolls
out of my fingers and clogs up my mind on a
daily basis, I don't think about him very
often. He's from the far-away past. I don't
wish I was back in Maryland living the life I
rejected when I was still a teenager, making
the roundtrip from home to grocery store to
liquor store and back again. And although I
look back on him with sweetness, the pain I
feel in writing this surprises me. It's a
secondhand ache, pain at his early treatment
of me that echoed my parents' treatment,
sadness at how I ended up treating him
ultimately.
I still puzzle over how people drift away
after love, after the intensity of the burn
is over. In early 2002, when my mother's
boyfriend Kevin was in for his final
hospitalization, I called D. to talk once or
twice. I called him because he was there
during the worst of my teenage years. He was
my closest friend then, the only insider. He
knew Kevin as a healthy, often cruel man. D.
was there through nights heated by kerosene
and electric heater, he held me when I cried,
and he cried in my arms when he found out
about my pregnancy after the fact. So I
called him from Kevin's hospital after a
particularly harrowing day. I was nervous,
paced in front of the wall of windows in the
Critical Care Unit hallway. We had an
awkward, didn't-I-used-to-know you
conversation. D. didn't remember much. Who
can blame him? It wasn't his intense life, it
was mine. I remain the only witness.
When old friends disappear, a bit of our
memories go with them. I mourn the shared
experience, the fading away. I wish I could
gather them all up, friends long gone, the
ex-boyfriends, the ex-husband. We would talk
and laugh again, would remind each other of
our once-live connection. I would pull them
with me into the present, link the people we
used to be to with who we are now. I would
tell them, "Remember part of me is you."
Image:
Pixelated D. in the Little House, Winter
1985/86. Some of my readers know this guy and
I feel a little strange for putting his
picture out there. Hence, the pixels.
Some of this is from a prompt,
"Rectangular."
Because I craved the contrast
I moved west in part to escape the relationship, to wash the taste of salt and blood out of my mouth. And there was Shelton, clean-smelling, like soap, like a freshly-washed window, sitting across the aisle at our graduate school orientation. He was thin and pale with a cap of dishwater blonde hair. When he contributed to class discussions, he pushed his rimless glasses back and wiggled in his chair before over-intellectualizing a dot point into a master’s thesis. Silence filled him with anxiety. He adorned it with linguistic frills, explaining simple concepts with an academic loquaciousness. It was cute, for a time.
I've been working on a short story and doing very little other creative work (outside of the Round Robin). This is an excerpt of my story, still in infant form. And since I'm in the middle of it, I have absolutely no perspective on its quality, but I wanted to put something out here, a crumb, a thought, a naughty word, a study in contrasts.
The bitter scent of coming winter
I remember preparing a meal for him in the decay of autumn, after the leaves had dropped from the trees and lay rotting in the gutter and the breeze was turning cold and harsh. I was just 21 years old and could focus on the kitchen, had the time to think about cooking, and it was all still new, too, love and cookery. There was a recipe in Gourmet for roasted fall vegetables. I skinned and hacked a heavy butternut squash, added knobby shallots, garlic, and chunks of red potato, then tossed the vegetables with olive oil and roasted them in the oven. Near the end of cooking, I added slivered sage leaves, the bitter scent of coming winter.
Sage takes well to butter and olive oil, get
crisp and intense, medicinal over gnocchi,
tucked among thick slices of potato. My
husband and I grow sage in our front yard.
The plant sits between the flat-leafed
parsley and the lemon verbena, its silver
green leaves upright, purple flowers still
drawing honeybees. I’ll have to trim it soon,
deadhead the flowers and clean off the spider
webs in preparation for the feasts and
sadness of fall.
Here is the original recipe, from
Epicurious. Add 2 tablespoons
slivered sage in the last ten minutes of
cooking to recreate my more winter-scented
dish.
Roasted
Autumn Vegetables
1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes
1 pound shallots (about 24), peeled and
trimmed
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 pounds butternut squash, peeled and cut
into 3/4-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
fresh thyme sprigs for garnish, if desired
In a bowl, toss together the potatoes,
quartered, the shallots, 4 tablespoons of
the oil, the bay leaf, the
dried thyme, the garlic, and salt and pepper
to taste. Spread the vegetables in an oiled
large roasting pan and roast them in the
middle of a preheated 375°F. oven, shaking
the pan every 5 to 10 minutes, for 25
minutes. In a bowl toss the squash with the
remaining 1 tablespoon oil and salt and
pepper to taste and add it to the pan. Roast
the vegetables, shaking the pan occasionally,
for 10 to 20 minutes more, or until they are
tender. Discard the bay leaf and garnish the
vegetables with the thyme sprigs.
Gourmet
October 1990
Image: Attractive sage
bush, much nicer than ours, from
eHow.
Shameless
Image from Hope4Survivors
You want instant writer's block?
Try to write about your own shame.
That's not how today started. I wanted to
write a story about a boyfriend I had in
college, the tale of my second long term
relationship. Our innocent beginnings. He was
a teller in my bank, we shared smiles and
pleasantries. Then one evening, when I was
leaving the local watering hole with one of
my male floozies, J approached me and said “I
know you’re leaving with this guy, but can I
call you sometime?” I gave him my number.
There was the little detail of my real
boyfriend and our slowly dying couplehood. I
had to put that out of its misery. It wasn’t
a clean death. And when J went on a white
water rafting trip with his family a month
into our serious dating, I might have had a
bar hookup or two. In between his return and
our demise, we shared a period of sweet
intense love. I loved him. I really did.
I was kind of crazy then. Angry.
Pathologically needy. J was sarcastic and
cruel, bitingly funny with a mean streak
brought on by his quietly twisted childhood.
After six months of total absorption, our
relationship stalled and then limped along
for another two years, with sporadic weekend
visits (the margarita-inspired sex in a
sprawling azalea near the Capitol grounds;
the drunken knock on my door after a Redskins
Super Bowl victory; my leap into the pool
with the band, fully clothed, after I
secretly followed J and Frieda
back to his
bedroom). I had a few mini-boyfriends on the
sly, including one fellow philosophy major
who totally trampled my heart and a graduate
student who was a Jew posing as an
Italian-American. Nervous about how he would
be perceived in a Catholic-tinged philosophy
program, the graduate student exploited his
olive-toned skin and love of opera to go
undercover, lived an odd temporary lie.
Still, J and I continued in our half-love
without discussing the side relationships.
The week I headed for graduate school, he
left me a message, sang “I’m Leaving on a Jet
Plane,” to my answering machine, funny and
bittersweet as ever. In November of that
year, 1992, I found out that he’d gotten a
new, serious girlfriend. After a tearful,
confessional conversation, I mailed him a
copy of the credit card receipt for my
abortion. I’d been holding on to it for five
months, waiting for the right moment to tell
him.
Shame.
Ashamed of who I was and what I did. Ashamed
of the abortion – the abortion. You think you
can wash away shame or pain by showing it to
the world, or to a limited subset of the
sympathetic. Sorry, my good religious
friends, my lovers of life. I let one baby
happen by accident and took care of the next
by violence.
By the end of my first semester in library
school, I was in crisis, totally falling
apart. Enter my first real attempt at therapy
and my future first husband, the slow process
of life rebuilding. If you are reading this,
thank you future first husband, future
ex-husband, for being so totally solid. I
don't think I've given you enough credit for
that. There is absolution in unconditional
love.
I am starting to sift through the decade
after the stillbirth, shining light on a dark
time, preparing myself to come clean.
I have
wondered if the
blog, my self-made public confessional, is
the best way to expurgate shame. Wouldn't it
be simpler to say nothing at all? Maybe
finally get around to locating another
trusted therapist, go the traditional
recovery route? Or, if I must expose the
ugliness, couldn't I just make it quick,
compile a list, invite brief flagellation or
accolades for my honesty and then move
quickly on to self-forgiveness?
No, no, I have to transform the shame into a
narrative, examine it inside and out. I need
to dust if off, shine it up, put it in the
shop window. Later, I'll pass it along to my
fictional characters. They are waiting
backstage, eager to take on the burden, ready
to be set into motion. But before all that,
before I can pass the torch in good
conscience, I'll occasionally be picking
apart my mistakes here, aiming for tricky
self-forgiveness.
I hope you can stay with me for the ride, can
keep an open mind and an empathetic heart.
Oh, the places we’ll go!