tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88495595902228531392024-03-14T00:29:54.491-07:00Through a Page Darkly"For now we see through a glass, darkly..."Darwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849559590222853139.post-66771479532514510602011-10-30T06:29:00.000-07:002011-11-01T09:59:45.628-07:00Ways Not Taken [DRAFT]The cliche would have been to say that my father could not have called at a worse time. In point of fact, it was a morning like many others at the office, and in that ten o'clock hour at which Moltke's adage that no plan ever survives contact with the enemy is so often borne out. The sound of the phone, vibrating, brought my eye to it, and I saw my father's number, but let it pass. Five minutes later, I saw my sister Emily's number and treated it likewise. A moment later the inevitable text appeared: "Answer your damn phone. Dad has a scheduling question for you." Emily is not one to abandon capitalization and punctuation, even in the medium of the text message. <br />
<br />
Scheduling was the key word here. When the three of us had sat down to plan how to convince Dad to surrender his drivers license, I had agreed, at Emily and Sue's insistence, to be Dad's transportation when the Senior Shuttle couldn't fill his needs. Both married and working, with two children each, they insisted that they already had more shuttle duties than they could handle. And it was strongly hinted that, having only just returned after six years working in the Bay Area, I was far behind in my filial duties -- in addition to possessing that superfluity of time which those who have families are always convinced those who do not enjoy.<br />
<br />
I went to get a second cup of coffee from the break room and then called.<br />
<br />
"Hey, Dad, sorry to miss your call. I was in a meeting."<br />
<br />
"What kind of meeting ends a quarter past the hour?" Whether it was an aspect of the growing Alzheimer's or simple resentment at finding himself, after so many years, in a dependent position, my father's instinct for slights and deceptions had sharpened to a razor edge over the last year, and his willingness to bluntly accuse had developed along with it.<br />
<br />
"My nine o'clock ran over."<br />
<br />
This was plausible in the extreme, but something in my voice must have betrayed the additional lie told to cover the reflexive one. He harrumphed at me and silence drew out for an uncomfortable moment.<br />
<br />
"What is it, Dad? Emily said you had a scheduling question."<br />
<br />
"I need you to take me somewhere tomorrow at two." He spoke with an abruptness that defied contradiction. <br />
<br />
"Okay." I drew the second syllable out, a deflection rather than a rejection. "What sort of appointment is this? Can you take--"<br />
<br />
"A funeral. Downtown. Two P.M. Pick me up by one thirty. And wear a suit. None of your 'office casual'." He barked the clipped sentences out as if, once again, he was instructing my high school self what time to have the Chevy home and what sorts of destinations were strictly off limits.<br />
<br />
There was no arguing it. "Alright, Dad. I'll get the afternoon off somehow. I'll be at your place by a quarter after one. We could get some early dinner afterwards if you want. Did you have dinner plans?"<br />
<br />
"No. No plans..." His bark was gone now. Either he had not expected agreement so quickly or he had used all his energy in the initial request. "We'll see." A pause. Before I could think of a way to ease the conversation towards a close he did so himself abruptly. "Don't be late. Goodbye." He hung up.<br />
<br />
I looked at the phone in my hand for a moment, experiencing the moment of readjustment which takes place when one has finished a phone conversation of some intensity. Then I tossed the phone onto a stack of papers on my desk and got up.<br />
<br />
I found Mark in his office. He was hunched forward in his chair, design mark-up on one monitor, code window on another. He waved me towards his spare chair with an abstracted, "One minute..."<br />
<br />
His desk was in its usual state of chaos. I favor two piles -- the small one urgent, the tall one the slow, sedimentary build-up of the non-urgent. Mark's desk tends to be a single, even, sea of papers, with framed family photographs rising above the chaos like mountains ringed around a gently rolling plain. Ask him for some piece of information and there is a pause in which, hands poised, he turns his head one way and then another, scanning the array. Then a hand darts out with surety and grabs the precise sheaf that he is looking for, drawing it out from under the mess. This state of ordered messiness seemed to fit with the rest of his life, from the slightly rumpled shirt and Dockers he favored to the pictures of four, young, rumple-haired children that ornamented his desk. When asked if he and his wife planned more, he tended to spread his hands and say, "You can never tell." Whether he was genuinely unsure or simply enjoyed the shocked response this often elicited I could never tell.<br />
<br />
"So. What's up?" Mark asked, turning away from his computer and leaning back in his chair, coffee cup in hand.<br />
<br />
"I'm going to have to be out tomorrow afternoon. Take my dad to a funeral. Can you cover for me at the cross functional meeting? Email any actions for me?"<br />
<br />
"Sure. Sure. No problem." He leaned forward with a concern that bordered on the theatrical. "Can I ask... Someone close?"<br />
<br />
I shrugged. "Someone my father knows. He didn't give the name."<br />
<br />
"Well. I'm sorry." I saw his gaze flick over, for a moment, towards the worn bible which always rested under his lunch container, at one corner of his desk. "I'll keep your father and his friend in prayer."<br />
<br />
"Thanks." I got up, started out, and stopped, leaning on the doorframe. "Let me know if there's anything for me out of that meeting. Heard anything from Creative yet?"<br />
<br />
He shook his head dismissively. "Probably not till right before. You know how it is."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I'd half expected, arriving at my father's house shortly after one that next day, to find that he'd forgotten about his plans entirely, and thus I arrived early enough to help him dress quickly if necessary. He was ready, however: wearing a bulkily knotted tie and dark grey suit, and dithering around the house as if checking that everything was in its place. When I was young he used, when nervous or frustrated, to go around the house compulsively cleaning: putting away a few books left out, moving a stray dish to the sink, sweeping odd corners. The house he had bought to spend his retirement in was small -- bought after the divorce and intended to fit only one person -- and with no one else about and a cleaning service that came twice a week, there was no mess to clean. But the habit remained.<br />
<br />
He grabbed his stack -- a hold-over from his work days, a stack of loosely organized documents, notes and reading material he carried with him whenever he left the house -- and we went out to my car. <br />
<br />
"Do you have the address we're going to?"<br />
<br />
He pulled a newspaper clipping out of the stack. "St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Downtown. Your GPS will have it."<br />
<br />
I peered briefly over his shoulder. The clipping was of a two paragraph obituary. The name, Joan Thompson, did not jog any memories, and the rest of the obit was in too small a typeface to read in a glance. <br />
<br />
By the time I turned onto the interstate the silence was becoming uncomfortable. My mother was always the one to carry conversation in our family, while my father maintained a reserved silence, interjecting only to offer facts or render judgements. Looking back, perhaps often he simply did not know what to say but as the youngest and only boy I used, when young, to interpret his tendency to look silently at me rather than speaking as a mental summing up of my inadequacies. Even with this insecurity discarded, his lack of conversation made me uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
"Do you normally read the obituaries?" I asked. He made an uncomfortable, half-shrug gesture. "It seems like I only ever make it through the front page and the editorials," I babbled on. "Sometimes the business section. Sunday book reviews."<br />
<br />
"I have a lot of time in the morning." He shuffled nervously at his stack. "And at my age, you start seeing people you know there. Like reading the class notes in the alumni bulletin."<br />
<br />
"Who is Joan Thompson? Someone you see often? Was she in your painting class or the Senior's Club?"<br />
<br />
He turned to look out the window at the buildings flashing by, and for a moment it seemed that he wouldn't answer at all. "No. I haven't seen Joan in years."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
St. Luke's, when we reached it, proved to be in what is charitably called a transitional neighborhood, just south of Downtown. In 1900 this area was one of the city's first suburbs, and doctors and lawyers built their massive Victorian piles along gently curving streets. Some of these have been lovingly restored, but these outposts of gentrification are interspersed with boarded up windows, sagging porches, pealing paint, overgrown lawns, groups of young men sitting on porches in the mid-afternoon, their eyes seemingly tracking my car as we drove by. <br />
<br />
The church itself stood on a corner. It was a small, pseudo-gothic structure which appeared to be made of concrete, and was surrounded by a towering hedge. The cars in the small lot were an assortment of the very expensive and the fairly old, but none looked as if they would be at home with the rusting Buicks and Mercuries on the street outside. <br />
<br />
I parked and looked at my father, waiting to see what came next. His hands twitched aimlessly at the papers in his stack for a moment, a gesture that seemed to become more frequent of late, and which reminded me uncomfortable of my grandfather in his last days.<br />
<br />
"How much time?" he asked. <br />
<br />
He was wearing a watch, but the question seemed more a play for time and to hear a voice than a request for information. "Ten minutes to two."<br />
<br />
"We'd better go in." He opened his door, placed the stack on his seat, and, grabbing onto the sides of the door, hoisted himself out and upright. I hurried round, half offering an arm, but he shook his head and started off at a rapid and steady shuffle towards the church. I followed. <br />
<br />
The church door, a massive, carved oak affair, was standing open, and in the doorway stood a heavyset man whose balding head belied the youthful smoothness of his pink, round face. He was wearing a set of vestments that looked like it was straight out of a period movie: long black cassock, out from under which heavy, black dress shoes could just be seen peaking, and a long, white thing of intricate lace over it. <br />
<br />
I could see my father trying to get to the door without making contact with the priest, trying to avoid meeting his eyes, but the priest had the sort of outgoing social command which is not easily brooked. <br />
<br />
"Welcome," he said, reaching out both hands and enfolding my father's right hand in a two-handed clasp and handshake. "Thank you for coming. I don't believe we've met before. I'm Fr. Phil. Thank you for coming to help us remember Joan. She was important to so many people." There was an almost imperceptible hesitation as he said 'remember', as if he sensed immediately that my father was not religious and held back some phrase like 'pray for'.<br />
<br />
Dad returned his handshake, then broke away. He started to walk past, then paused, and, leaning in towards him slightly, said to the priest in a low voice, "Thank you. I cared for Joan. Very much. She was a good friend."<br />
<br />
The priest laid a hand briefly on my father's should. Then Dad shuffled past him on into the church. He paused for a moment in the back, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. Then he made for the second to last pew and moved into it. I noticed the slightest move towards a genuflection as he did so. Dad was, I believe, raised some sort of Catholic, but we'd never practiced any kind of religion when I was growing up. Perhaps entering a pew after so many years triggered old reflexes. I paused a moment, myself, at the entrance to the pew. Did Episcopalians genuflect? I tried to recall a movie scene that might suggest an answer and looked around at those who might be well versed, but everyone in the church was already sitting in a pew. Well, we were visitors after all. I followed my father in and sat down next to him. <br />
<br />
It was a relatively small building, there were perhaps 15 or 20 pews on each side of the center aisle, which was carpeted in red. Light filtered in diffusely through stained glass windows, which were all done in a turn-of-the-century medieval style. At the front, even with the first pew and facing the raised area on which the marble altar stood, the casket rested on a wheeled stand, draped in a white cloth which hung nearly to the floor. An organ was working quietly through a set of baroque variations, and there was little talking from the few dozen people seated in the pews in the front half of the church. As we sat and waited, a few more trickled in. All of them passed us and went to fill in the pews in the front half of the church.<br />
<br />
A bell began to toll. Then the organ music changed and swelled. The other people in the church stood, and we did as well. A middle aged man in a black and white altar boy outfit was walking up the center aisle carrying an ornate gold crucifix. Behind him was an older man, also in altar boy clothes, with wild white hair and a beard that would have looked at home in the depths of the IT department, swinging a censor that poured out the sweet smelling smoke of incense. Last came the priest who had greeted us at the door, now hearing heavy, gold embroidered vestments over his cassock. <br />
<br />
Having only experienced church services in movies and at weddings, I'd never seen anything quite like what followed -- all the trappings of a Catholic mass out of The Godfather or some other old movie, but in English with a touch of Shakespeare in it. We followed the standings and sittings of the rest of the congregation, but aside from that I felt free to listen or let my mind wander by turns. Dad seemed much absorbed, particularly during the priest's sermon, when he talked about how active Joan had been in the church. It seems she'd taught a bible study, volunteered at the soup kitchen and done sundry other things. What her connection was to Dad I still couldn't imagine. <br />
<br />
When the service ended, six men carried the draped coffin out, the priest and the men with the cross and the incense leading the way, and the rest of the congregation followed. I wondered if Dad would want to follow them -- go to the cemetery, or whatever was next, but he remained where he had been when the service ended, in a half sitting, half kneeling position with his arms resting on the back of the pew in front of us. Finally, he roused himself and sat upright.<br />
<br />
"Let's go." <br />
<br />
The parking lot was virtually empty when we left the church. Everyone must have either left or accompanied the hearse to some graveside service. (Scenes from <i>Six Feet Under</i> flashed irrelevantly through my mind.) I helped Dad into the car and he sat there, hunched slightly forward, his hand plucking at his stack of papers.<br />
<br />
"Do you want to get some dinner, Dad?"<br />
<br />
It was a moment before he said anything. Finally, he almost whispered, "I could really use a drink."<br />
<br />
I started the engine. "We're near downtown, so there are lots of options. What kind of place do you want?"<br />
<br />
"Somewhere quiet."<br />
<br />
I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a drink with Dad. He was not normally a big drinker, though he'd have wine, occasionally, with dinner, and he'd bought me a bottle of twenty year old Scotch when I turned 21. "You need to understand what real liquor is like," he'd explained. "Once you know that, throwing back cheap shots at a party won't appeal at all." I think in his mind this was a piece of worldly fatherly advice, delivered man to man. For me, at the time, it merely served to underscore how little he knew about my life over the last few years. <br />
<br />
"I'll take you to The Whisky Room," I offered. The high backed, wooden booths there would fit the desire for quiet -- indeed, in some sense not so removed from the aged wooden pew we had just sat in. And the memory of Dad's gesture with that bottle of Scotch on my 21st birthday brought to mind the extensive Scotch and bourbon lists the Whisky Room had on offer.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
When we arrived, I asked for a booth up in the loft, and when Dad proved indecisive when confronted with the menu I ordered us each a sandwich and a tasting flight. Having taken the afternoon off and sat through an hour and a half liturgy for a person I'd never heard of, I was determined both to provide myself with some enjoyment and to get an answer out of Dad as to why this had been so important to him.<br />
<br />
We ate our sandwiches in comparative quiet, conversation restricted to the kind of family updates and business which are plentiful and inevitable. When the flights of Scotch came I opened by reminding him of that bottle that he'd given me eighteen years before. Reminiscence of his college days and mine got us each through the first two tasting glasses. Then I allowed the silence to build for a moment and asked, "How did you know Joan? Why did you want to go to her funeral today?"<br />
<br />
There was a pause, and I had the uncomfortable feeling of him looking at me, but through and past me. <br />
<br />
"I never told your mother about Joan back in the good days. And once things started to go bad, that would only have made things worse. I don't think I've talked about her to anyone since I met your mother."<br />
<br />
He stopped and took a minute sip of the fourth Scotch in the flight. <br />
<br />
"So you knew her before mom," I prompted. <br />
<br />
He nodded, ran a hand over the dome of his head, fluffing the remaining wisps of his hair, then abruptly threw back the rest of that half dram. Then, as if determined to get it out quickly, he ran through the story quickly and simply. <br />
<br />
"Yes. I met her not long after I finished college. We dated for a little over a year. I loved her. I asked her to marry me. She told me no. She had a religious objection. I'd been brought up Catholic of course, but I hadn't believed or practiced much of anything since I left home. Since before that, really. I don't know when. She was religious. Anglican. She'd bring me to services with her, had me talk to her priest. I couldn't see it. Never have. Just don't see the purpose. In the end. She asked for time to think about it. Pray about it, she said. She said that she didn't want to find herself raising children with someone she disagreed with about something so important. So she said no. Three months after that, I met your mother. You know how that went."<br />
<br />
I waited, knowing that, having started, he would have more to say before he was done. He was swirling the last half dram this way and that in the tasting glass, not having sipped it at all yet, staring at it so fixedly as to make clear how little he wanted to meet my gaze. I don't know if this was out of the reticence that always seems to come between parents and children when discussing either one's romantic lives, or because of the more unusual circumstance that he was describing to me why he had almost not married -- looking back with the knowledge of what had followed, probably still wished he had not married -- my mother. With all that implied for my existence.<br />
<br />
"I don't know if she would have changed her mind, if I'd kept asking," he went on. "She was the sort of girl who stuck to principles. Uncompromising. She was a virgin then. Probably was till she died. She never married. I don't know if there was a reason or... she just never found anyone. Maybe if I hadn't given up. But I was angry. And frustrated. And then I met your mother."<br />
<br />
"Even after we were married she sent a Christmas card ever year. Half the time, when we sent cards, I sent one back. For years I never heard more from her than that. Then a couple years before the divorce, the card came during a really bad time. I wrote back to her. A long letter about everything that had happened since. Told her about you and the girls. About Linda. All the things I didn't have anyone to talk with about."<br />
<br />
"That first letter may have scared her a bit, because I never heard back. But in the end we started writing letters a few times a year. And after the divorce we called each other occasionally. She just told me about her church things and her work at the library and such. Just someone to talk to."<br />
<br />
He threw back the last half dram and set the glass down, the five tasting glasses in a neat crescent on the wooden tasting tray. He met my eyes again for the first time since the conversation had started. "You get to this point in life and you can't help spending time thinking about other ways it could have been. What kind of family we would have had if I had married her. What kind of person I would have been if I'd spent every Sunday in that little church for however many years. That's all I could think of during the service."<br />
<br />
"Did you ever meet these last few years?"<br />
<br />
He shook his head slowly. "No. I don't know why. At first we talked about it. And then, when she was being treated for cancer, somehow I was afraid to meet her. At first we talked about having dinner to celebrate when she was done with treatment and in remission. Then we stopped talking about it. Might have beens could have been interesting otherwise. But with no more future, I didn't know what to say. And as things got worse, all she walked about was her church and prayers and God and things." He drew himself up, sighed, and before I could respond in any way said, "Let's go. It's been a long day. I'm tried."<br />
<br />
It was the most I'd ever heard Dad talk about a personal topic -- a window on a side of him that I'd never seen before or even imagined. And now he was distinctly shutting it. Conversation over, time to go our ways. <br />
<br />
I paid the check and led him out to the car. He was closing back in on himself. A tired old man, slumping more than earlier in the day. We didn't talk on the drive back to his house. The act of driving Dad somewhere and home again was familiar, as was his sudden tiredness, something which could strike unexpectedly, especially after an errand or conversation. But there was also the new feeling of a stranger sitting next to me. The alternative contingencies of his life played through my mind, as they must often have been doing through his in recent years. What would his life have been like if he had married Joan -- either joining her belief or coming to some agreement to have a divided household in matters of faith? <br />
<br />
Irrationally childlike as such a question may be, I couldn't help thinking of it in terms of: What would my life had been like if this other woman had been my mother instead of my own? What sort of person would Dad and Joan's son have been? This flowed naturally into the choices and chances that found me, now, on the doorstep of forty, single, driving my father, likewise single, back from the funeral of the woman he didn't marry.Darwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849559590222853139.post-10466554403526074172010-07-07T12:51:00.000-07:002011-10-19T20:08:22.714-07:00One Night Goddess<span style="font-style: italic;">[Originally written in 1998. © Brendan Hodge]</span><br />
<br />
The party was exactly as Geoff had feared it would be. He stood in a corner of the living room, across from the big screen television on which some interminable sports game was playing, tightly clutching a bottle of Samuel Adams. The stuff was not particularly to his liking, but he could not bring himself to commit one of the other two sins available: cheaper beer in cans or cheap wine in plastic cups. Around him, people dressed more trendily than himself discussed foreign films and best sellers. The subjects were hardly beyond him -- he prided himself on being current and literary -- but he found their viewpoints pedestrian and dull. Say something real about the symbolism of Umberto Eco or the color theme in Kieslowski’s trilogy and their eyes would glaze over.<br />
<br />
“Carl said you went to college back east?”<br />
<br />
Geoff glanced at the woman who had spoken. He didn’t know her, if she was from the office at all. Perhaps she was some other friend of Carl’s. <br />
<br />
“Yes. Hamden College. In Vermont.” Geoff tried desperately to remember her name. He knew Carl had introduced her to him. She seemed subtly out of place among Carl’s group. Her hair was golden and she had allowed it to grow down her back in long waves of curls, making her stand out from the other women with their dusty blond hair in short, secretarial cuts.<br />
<br />
“That’s a beautiful place to have gone to college.” Geoff nodded. Sara. That was the name. “What did you study?” she asked.<br />
<br />
“Literature,” Geoff replied. He was rather proud of the way the word alone could halt whole conversations with its musty, academic weight.<br />
<br />
“How wonderful! Older or modern?”<br />
<br />
He was surprised by the enthusiasm of her response, but wary as well. Throughout college he had lived in terror of those well meaning but overly effusive women -- often elementary education majors -- who “knew nothing of literature but loved to read”. He took a sip of his beer and instantly regretted it. Really, how people liked such bitter stuff he just could not understand. “Modern British. I wrote my thesis on Philip Larkin.”<br />
<br />
Sara’s gaze became unfocused for a moment. “‘High Windows’?” she said after a moment. “‘Church Going’?”<br />
<br />
“Yes!” Geoff found himself setting aside his bottle in excitement. He hadn’t met someone who knew his field since he graduated four years before, and even then there were few enough who cared about it.<br />
<br />
“Did you ever read much Gunn?” she asked.<br />
<br />
“Some. ‘Black Jackets’ ‘My Sad Captain’ Others. I wrote a paper in sophomore year.”<br />
<br />
“War poetry?”<br />
<br />
“Graves, Sassoon, Owen.”<br />
<br />
They moved slowly out of the living room, swapping authors and favorite lines, and took refuge in the kitchen. Sara rummaged through the ice chest of beverages till she found a bottle of pale red wine. They sat down, facing each other, at Carl’s kitchen table and Sara poured them each a plastic cup of wine. Geoff watched her as she did so. He couldn’t guess her age with any certainty. Perhaps as old as thirty, as young as twenty-three. Her eyes were a pale blue, almost grey, and though she smiled as she poured the smile did not reach her eyes.<br />
<br />
“So, do you have a girlfriend?” she asked as they both sipped their wine.<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
For a moment they were both still, caught off-guard by the implication of the exchange. Then Sara burst out laughing, almost choking on her wine. Geoff contained himself just long enough to take another sip, then burst into laughter himself.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It was 11:06 by the kitchen clock when one of Carl’s other guests stumbled beerily into the kitchen and began to rummage loudly through the ice chest. Geoff and Sara exchanged a silent glance, and by mutual agreement rose and left. Out on the sidewalk they breathed in the cool evening air of late September in Santa Monica. There was a breeze blowing in off the beach, and the smells of salt water and washed-up kelp were bourne upon it.<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
“It was a terrible party,” Sara said and collapsed into a fit of laughter, hanging on Geoff’s arm as she half doubled over.<br />
<br />
“Appalling. Shockingly mundane.” Geoff laughed as well.<br />
<br />
“Mmmm. Where should we go now?”<br />
<br />
Sara’s arm had found its way around his waist. He stopped walking and brought her around to face him. She was almost as tall as he was. Two or three inches shorter at the most. They stood there for a moment, and then suddenly she reached up and pulled his head down to hers.<br />
<br />
Her mouth was cool and tasted of the wine they had both been drinking. Her hands ran through his hair and pulled him closer. His arms closed around her, and he felt her against his body. He pulled her to him, her chest pressed against his own. As he did so she gave a little moan and clutched him tighter.<br />
<br />
He stepped back and looked at her, her face pale in the light of the street lamps, her lips wet and smiling, her eyes sparkling. “We could go to your place,” she said.<br />
<br />
“It’ll be a drive. I’m over the hills, in the valley.” He hoped this would prompt her to offer her own place instead. His apartment served his needs, but it was not a place that he was proud of. Most of his income had to go to paying off college loans.<br />
<br />
She shrugged. “I’ll enjoy the drive.”<br />
<br />
He started towards his parking space. “Did you bring a car?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
“Well then,” he held open the passenger door of his car: a much aged BMW which he had bought used and maintained with more enthusiasm than real ability -- the age a proof of his indifference to class bias and the make, of his appreciation for quality.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It was not yet 11:30 when they reached Geoff’s apartment. He fumbled with his key at the door, embarrassed at the drab appearance of the building. Pushing the door open, he led the way in and turned on the light.<br />
<br />
It was not as well furnished as he would have liked. He had two real bookcases and a third which was bricks and boards, dorm room style. Besides his books the furnishings were sparse. There was a small, worn couch in front of the television. A battered wooden table stood in the dining niche surrounded by four chairs that did not match. His espresso machine sat on the kitchen counter.<br />
<br />
Sara went straight to one of the bookshelves, just as he always did in a stranger’s house. He smiled.<br />
<br />
“Do you want coffee?” he asked, moving towards the espresso machine.<br />
<br />
“Yes.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
How they came to bed Geoff could not afterwards remember. They had both known that it would come, that it was their final destination for the night. Knowing this there was no need for moves, for thinking, “At this time I will touch her so, and if she responds then we will move on.”<br />
<br />
He made espresso, and they talked. There was a certain amount of cuddling as they spoke and drank. His hand would brush against her breast and pause, for the briefest of moments, before moving on. Her fingers would rest gently on his leg and move every so gently, ever so slowly, tracing farther up and then retreating. But there were no doubts, no moments of seeing what the other would do.<br />
<br />
And then they were in his bedroom, illuminated only by the moonlight streaming in the window. Her mouth was cool against his own, and her hands played gently over him. The zipper at the back of her dress eased down, the fastenings of her bra were undone, and both dress and bra fell away. Her skin was smooth under his hands and pale in the dim light. She tied her hair back from her face, and it bounced and swung against her back as they moved.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The glowing red numbers of Geoff’s alarm clock read 4:23. He lay for a moment and stared at them, slowly bringing his eyes into focus. He was alone among the tangled bed sheets. Had she left already? He sat up and looked around. There was no one else in the bedroom. After a moment he heard a faint sound from the front room. Pulling open his bedside drawer he took out a pair of pajama bottoms and pulled them on as he got out of bed. Then he padded out into the light.<br />
<br />
Sara was curled up on his couch, his copy of Greek Art and Architecture spread open across her knees. Her skin was paler than he had realized, the smooth lines of her body like a marble statue. She glanced up as he entered.<br />
<br />
“You could not sleep?” she asked.<br />
<br />
“I was going to ask you the same question.”<br />
<br />
She laughed. “I do not have to sleep as you do.”<br />
<br />
“Hunh?”<br />
<br />
“Nevermind.”<br />
<br />
He had the vague feeling that some joke had been made which he had failed to notice. He laughed awkwardly.<br />
<br />
She set her book aside and rose. She seemed to have no consciousness of her nakedness. Geoff found himself looking away. His gaze rested on the floor for a moment, then he forced himself to meet her eyes again.<br />
<br />
“Will you come to bed?” he asked, feeling foolish and nervous for the first time that night.<br />
<br />
“Of course.” She came to him, and they met in an embrace, body against body, warmth against warmth. There was some deeper truth in this joining of man and woman, he realized as he felt her living body against his own, her breathing, her heartbeat matching his. His grasp around her tightened.<br />
<br />
There is more than pleasure in this, he thought. This is a sacrament of life. We only know we are alive through others.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
When he awoke again it was morning. The sun shone through his window casting a bright square of light across the bed. He was alone again.<br />
<br />
Rising and dressing quickly he went out into the front room, expecting to find Sara reading or eating breakfast. She was not. He stood there for a moment, his gaze scanning the room, searching for a note at least, a telephone number. Nothing. The only thing which had been moved at all was his copy of Greek Art and Architecture which lay open on the table. He approached to find that it had been left open to a statue of Aphrodite. Slowly he wandered back into his room. The bed was in disarray, the sheets stained and tangled by the passion of the night before. Aphrodite. He could not help laughing at the irony. It was delicious.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“Great party Saturday night,” Geoff said, approaching Carl at the coffee maker the following Monday afternoon. “Sorry I didn’t get the chance to talk to you before I left.”<br />
<br />
“Heard you spent most of the evening with Sara,” Carl said, dumping two packets of powdered creamer into his cup of coffee.<br />
<br />
“Yes. What’s her last name? Do you know her?” Geoff asked. She had not called him, and no one who had been at the party seemed to know who she was or how to reach her.<br />
<br />
“No. Last name’s Faye or something like that. She came with... Shit, who was it? Carol? Dunno. One of the women.”<br />
<br />
“Oh well. Thanks anyway.” Geoff lifted his coffee cup and turned to leave.<br />
<br />
“Hey, Geoff,” Carl said following him down the isle between cubicles. “Is it serious? Did you score?”<br />
<br />
“Fuck off, Carl.”<br />
<br />
“Come on. I just asked if you laid her.”<br />
<br />
“I said fuck off, Carl!”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
By the end of the week Geoff could think of nothing else to try. No one at the office knew Sara. Each person thought she had been the friend of someone else. He had gone to the library and searched every phone book they had for Sara Faye and found nothing. Email search, the phone exchange, and the Department of Motor Vehicles all knew of no such person.<br />
<br />
Sunday was hot and still as was not unusual for the San Fernando Valley during September. Geoff’s apartment seemed silent and oppressive. He was too restless to read and there was nothing on the television. He spent some time staring at the three-quarters-full bottle of brandy in his cabinet. But he had not been drunk since college, and it was not something he wanted to repeat. He even considered going out to buy a pack of unfiltered cigarettes, another habit left behind at college, but he discarded that idea too. Finally he went down to his car, turned the air conditioner up to full blast, cranked the volume of the stereo high enough he wouldn’t have to think, and simply drove.<br />
<br />
It was almost an hour later that he stopped. He was at a park somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley. For several minutes he sat in his car, the engine still running, the stereo still blaring. Children were playing on the swings and jungle-gym, chasing each other across the sandy playground. Under another tree sat a pair of lovers, the woman with her back against the tree, the man lying stretched out on the grass with his head resting on her lap. There was a fountain in the middle of the park, three jets of water shooting up from the center of a pool. Another young couple sat entwined upon the fountain’s edge, oblivious to all the rest of the world.<br />
<br />
He shut off the engine and got out of the car. There was a breeze blowing, and it was slightly cooler here than back in San Fernando. He walked slowly past the playground, watching the children play and listening to their shouts, and past the fountain, where the couple failed to give any sign of noticing the intruder in their little world. Beyond the fountain a curving path led up a wooded hill. Running alongside it was a little, artificial stream which gurgled along its sculpted concrete bed. The trees fell away as he reached the top. There was a grassy expanse, and at the center of it was an artificial pond which was the source of the stream.<br />
<br />
She was there, walking slowly along the edge of the pond, dropping bread crumbs to the eager goldfish, her hair falling loose down her back and her light summer dress blowing against her bare legs in the breeze. Geoff paused, just under the shade of the trees, watching her. She was the only one there at the top of the hill. Her feet were bare as she wandered carelessly across the grass, her sandals swinging from her left hand. When Geoff approached her and laid his hand upon her shoulder she turned to him as if she had expected his arrival. Before he could speak she placed a finger gently against his lips. Then she took his hand and led him off across the grass, deeper into the park.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“I should not have let you find me again,” she said at last. They stood upon the crest of a hill, the city stretched out below them. The breeze blew directly in their faces and Sara’s hair streamed out behind her.<br />
<br />
“Why not?” Geoff turned to meet her gaze but she was looking away, out over the city. “Are you married?”<br />
<br />
She glanced at him and then began to laugh. A bitter, ironic laugh.<br />
<br />
“What?” Geoff demanded.<br />
<br />
“No one,” she said, still laughing, “could be as unmarried as I am.”<br />
<br />
Their gazes met. Geoff was about to speak, but before he could she threw her arms around him and kissed him. He could feel her skin through the flimsy fabric of her dress. Their tongues met, dodged, and chased each other in a watery game of tag, and he returned her embrace, pulling her closer so that he could feel the contours of her body against his own. They stood on the brink of passion. Then he stepped back and pushed her from him.<br />
<br />
“Why did you leave? Without even a note? Couldn’t you at least have woken me up before you left?”<br />
<br />
She turned away. “Why does it matter to you? Why have you been thinking of me and searching for me all week? Why can’t I just be a memory? A woman you’ll never see again but who came at the right time, when you needed someone who could understand what you are?” She sat down on the grass next to her sandals, which had been dropped in their moment of embrace, and hugged her knees against her chest. “Isn’t that enough for you?” she demanded, half petulant. “Can’t the memory be enough?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t want a memory. I want you by my side when I wake and when I go to sleep.”<br />
<br />
“You can’t have that.”<br />
<br />
Geoff turned away from her and stared out over the hazy expanse of the city below him. “If you were so sure you didn’t want to be a part of my life, why did you sleep with me?” he asked finally.<br />
<br />
“Because it was the only gift I had to give,” she replied, so softly that he could barely hear.<br />
<br />
There was a long silence during which neither one looked at the other. “Do you believe in the old gods?” Sara asked at last.<br />
<br />
“What gods?” Geoff started to turn towards here out of sheer surprise, but forced himself to turn away again.<br />
<br />
“Aphrodite.” She paused then went on, her voice, which had been flat and toneless, slowly regaining emotion. “Each of us have only one gift. Athena gives wisdom. Hera gives marital fidelity. I give passion. But only passion. I cannot love as you want me to. I cannot be with you in the morning, see the tangled sheets in the frank light of dawn. That is not my gift.”<br />
<br />
“You’re a goddess?”<br />
<br />
“That’s one name for it.”<br />
<br />
He turned to look at her, on the point of laughing and then stopped. She stood facing him, and her face was bright and terrible. Her eyes flashed like fire, and her hair shone like liquid gold. In the afternoon sun her skin was brilliant white as polished ivory.<br />
<br />
“I believe you,” he said in awe, feeling as if he had stumbled, unawares, into some ancient temple. And yet the vision before him was more beautiful than any sculpted idol could have been.<br />
<br />
Then she smiled, and she became Sara again. Tall, pale, and beautiful yes, but no more so than was human.<br />
<br />
“Accept the gift that I can give,” she said. “It is enough if you will let it be so.” Then, with a calmness that was almost inhuman, she pulled her sundress over her head and stood bare before him in the afternoon sun.<br />
<br />
“Here?” Geoff asked, half excited, half horrified at the prospect. “This is a public park. We’ll be seen.”<br />
<br />
Sara laughed. “This is not a part of the park that any mortal could come to without my help. I am a goddess; I do have some power.”<br />
<br />
Geoff began to unbutton his shirt. A calmness had settled over him, and he undressed quickly but without nervousness or fumbling.<br />
<br />
The world that Geoff knew seemed to fade away from them as they made love. The grass was still grass, but it was soft and did not scratch or stain them as they rolled and thrust in passion. The wild rise and fall of pipes and singing seemed to surround them, and several times, through the mist that sprang up to encircle them, Geoff thought he glimpsed wild animals running and leaping.<br />
<br />
It was dusk when they separated and lay still. Geoff sat, his arms wrapped around his knees, covering his nakedness without being so obvious as to dress. Sara lay, uncaring, on her back, her head resting on her folded hands.<br />
<br />
“What are you thinking of?” Sara asked him after some time. “Why don’t you rest or sleep?”<br />
<br />
Geoff shrugged.<br />
<br />
“Tell me.”<br />
<br />
He hesitated a moment longer, then turned to her and spoke. “I’m wondering when you’re going to leave me.”<br />
<br />
She sighed. “Must you think of that? Can’t you enjoy this moment without thinking of what will happen next?”<br />
<br />
Geoff lay back again, his head now just a few inches away from hers. “I love you. I don’t want a moment; I want a lifetime. Can’t you at least imagine what that feeling is?”<br />
<br />
“No.” She sat up and turned away. “The gift I give is one moment of perfect bliss, and a memory of passion. A beautiful memory. None of the fights, the arguments, the resentments, the compromises of a marriage. I’ve comforted soldiers on the eve of battle, on the night before their deaths. Brought them the memory that they’re human beings, not just meat in the grinder of war’s hate. I’ve given hope to travelers in the wilderness, and to people surrounded by so many others that they are even more alone. I have given people who would never have had any beauty in their lives one perfect moment to look back on. It’s not so poor a gift. Don’t throw it away without looking at it.”<br />
<br />
She rose, her perfect skin rosy in the last light of sunset. Then she put on her dress, picked up her sandals, and walked away. And rather than jumping up to follow her as he would have liked, Geoff found himself falling into a deep sleep.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
When he awoke he was back in his apartment, in his bed. His clothes were scattered across the bedroom floor in disarray. He was alone.<br />
<br />
The first light of sunrise shone in the window. It was 5:36 by his alarm clock, an hour and a half before he had to wake up for work. But he got out of bed anyway and began to dress.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
When Geoff opened the door to his apartment Friday night he found the lights were already on. He stopped, the door half open, wondering if there had been a break in or if he had simply left the lights on in the morning.<br />
<br />
“Who’s there?” he called, hoping he sounded menacing, the sort of man who carried a revolver for such occasions.<br />
<br />
“Just me,” Sara’s voice replied.<br />
<br />
Geoff smiled and hurried in. “Sara, how did you get here?”<br />
<br />
The apartment smelled of cooking and as he set his things down Sara appeared from the kitchen carrying two plates of steaming pasta which she set down on the table. She wore jeans and a black spandex top. Her hair was in a single, tight braid which swung back and forth as she moved.<br />
<br />
“I came to see you. And I brought some dinner. And wine. I brought a bottle of wine. And I thought we could eat and talk and...” She was talking rapidly, almost desperately. She took a deep breath as if trying to calm herself. “Will you eat the dinner? It’s been so long since I’ve cooked. And I made it for you. And--”<br />
<br />
“Yes. Of course I’ll eat dinner with you. I was just surprised,” Geoff said, trying to sound reassuring. The Sara before him seemed a completely different person from the confident, almost cold woman he had known before. On the one hand he was disturbed -- frightened even -- that this woman, or goddess, should be capable of such a state. But on the other, in a corner of his mind he tried unsuccessfully to suppress, he found this more vulnerable woman less threatening, more appealing. The sort of “little woman” a man might be greeted by when coming home from a long day’s work, who would fuss over him and tell him of her little triumphs and troubles of the day.<br />
<br />
It was a strange meal during which there was much talk and little said. When they were finished they cleared the table together, rinsing the dishes and stacking them in the sink. Yet as they moved about their tasks in the close confines of the kitchen they somehow never touched each other. There was a tension between them that there had never been before, a question as to what would happen afterwards.<br />
<br />
When they were finished and had moved into the living room she came to him suddenly and began unbuttoning his shirt, quickly and methodically as if it were an undesirable duty which must be got over as quickly as possible.<br />
<br />
“No.” Geoff caught her hands between his own and held them. “Tell me what’s wrong. Why did you come here?”<br />
<br />
Sara pulled her hands from his grasp. “I just... wanted to see you again.”<br />
<br />
“What do you really want?”<br />
<br />
She reached for his shirt again, but he restrained her. “No. You don’t want that. You’re hiding behind it.”<br />
<br />
She turned her back to him. “I was with a man today,” she said, after a silence that seemed interminable. “A business man. Black suit. Middle aged. We met in a restaurant. I could feel how alone he was. And I could feel how much he wanted me. I thought...” She climbed over the back of Geoff’s couch and sat down on it, hugging her legs to her, forehead resting against her knees, her hair shielding her face from view.<br />
<br />
“We went to his house,” she went on, her voice devoid of any emotion. “He had a beautiful bedroom. A large bed with silky sheets. And we... made love.” She spat the words with such bitter irony Geoff could think of no obscenity that could have been more biting. “His wife came in. Saw us. She was shouting and slapping at him. He wouldn’t stop. I tried to make him, but he held me down. He hated her. He hated her so much each thrust was just another way to hurt her. He didn’t care about me, about my gift. Just hate.”<br />
<br />
She fell silent. Geoff sat on the back of the couch, his hand resting on her shoulder. When she raised her head and spoke again it was a fierceness that shocked him. “He’ll never do that again,” she said. “He’ll never do that to anyone again.”<br />
<br />
“What did you do?”<br />
<br />
“I made it fall off,” she said with relish. “If he thinks he can do that with my gifts, I can take them back.”<br />
<br />
Geoff recoiled but forced the instinct down. It was not the punishment that shocked him but the reminder of what sort of creature it was his hand rested on, beautiful and intelligent and kind in her own way but at times, when he least expected it, completely alien to him.<br />
<br />
“Though of course,” she went on, her voice becoming ragged. “It really isn’t such a gift in the end, is it.” Then she did the one thing that he would never have imagined possible. She began to sob.<br />
<br />
Geoff sat with his hand still resting on her shoulder, feeling more helpless than he ever had in his life. An ordinary woman’s tears were mystery enough to him, and here was a goddess sobbing on his couch.<br />
<br />
“I want to love,” she said at last, voice quavering. “I want to marry you, and I can’t. I can’t even stay the whole night.”<br />
<br />
“What if we don’t have sex? Would you have to leave then?”<br />
<br />
Sara looked up at him, her eyes red from crying. “I don’t understand.”<br />
<br />
“If we don’t make love, if we simply sleep side by side like some long-married couple, will you have to leave?”<br />
<br />
“I never tried.”<br />
<br />
“Well then. Try it now.”<br />
<br />
It was a moment before she replied. Then she burst out laughing. “I don’t know how,” she said, half amused, half hysterical.<br />
<br />
Geoff couldn’t help smiling. “Did you bring... things with you? Do you have a nightgown?”<br />
<br />
“Yes.”<br />
<br />
“Well then. Go into the bathroom and put on the nightgown. I’ll tell you what to do next when you’re done.”<br />
<br />
“All right,” Sara agreed, bouncing up with apparent enthusiasm for the new experience, her previous problems forgotten for the moment. She hurried into his bathroom and shut the door. Geoff got up more slowly from his seat and went to his bedroom. He undressed, folding each article of clothing and stacking them in the corner. Opening his bedside drawer, he took out a pair of pajama bottoms and put them on. Then he went and knocked on the door of the bathroom.<br />
<br />
“Are you finished?” he asked.<br />
<br />
“Yes,” Sara answered from inside. He opened the door to find her inspecting herself critically in the mirror. She was wearing a long, black, silk nightgown, and her hair was tied back with a large black bow. “Is this all right?” she asked.<br />
<br />
Geoff nodded, unsure what sort of verbal response would be appropriate. Then he picked up his toothbrush and toothpaste. “I have a new toothbrush in the cabinet if you need one,” he said, squirting paste onto his toothbrush. She shook her head but watched with some interest as he brushed his own teeth.<br />
<br />
“What do we do next?” she asked when he had finished.<br />
<br />
“We lie down next to each other and go to sleep.”<br />
<br />
He led the way into his bedroom and climbed into bed. Sara climbed in beside him, and he pulled the sheet up over them. They lay gazing at each other across the pillows, their faces no more than a foot apart. Sara smiled, then leaned forward and kissed him. A short kiss, shy and playful, like two teenagers who had never loved before. Then she snuggled up against him, as innocent as a child climbing into its parents’ bed for warmth. He hesitated a moment, then put one arm around her. Her breathing, he could feel, had already slowed, and in a moment she was asleep.<br />
<br />
It was some time before he himself fell asleep. He lay there feeling her warm presence next to him. Never, he realized, would he do so again. He looked down at her face, serene and innocent in sleep. Finally his own breathing slowed, and he drifted into deep, dreamless sleep.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
There was a warmth against his lips, and he awoke to Sara’s gentle kiss. She sat up, beaming, as he opened his eyes.<br />
<br />
“It’s morning,” she announced. “And we’re both still here.” She laughed, and Geoff could not help joining her. They kissed again, more lingeringly this time, their tongues making quick, playful darts at each other.<br />
<br />
“So,” Geoff said when they separated, breathless and slightly flushed. “Do we have breakfast or make love?”<br />
<br />
Sara’s face seemed to cloud over and she looked away. “I think, breakfast.”<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry.” He reached out to lay a hand gently on her shoulder. She touched her own hand to it for a moment before she shrugged it off and rose. She leaned forward to kiss him, lightly this time, then turned and went into the bathroom to change.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
They breakfasted on bagels and coffee at the Starbucks on Ventura and Topanga. There was silence as they ate. It was not until they were both lingering over their coffee, the meal complete, that Geoff spoke.<br />
<br />
“What will you do now?”<br />
<br />
Sara shrugged, staring down at her coffee cup. “Live somewhere quietly. Pretend I’m capable of being alone.”<br />
<br />
“You could visit--”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
“No. I suppose you couldn’t.”<br />
<br />
She reached out, her fingertips brushing lightly along his arm. “The illusion wouldn’t work with you. No, I’ll live alone for a few weeks, years, a lifetime; I don’t know. And then there’ll come some night when I convince myself that my gift is as good a thing as yours. I’ll go back to what I am and stop again and start. And try to be satisfied with my own ‘one perfect memory.’” She crumpled her cup slowly in her hand.<br />
<br />
A moment later they rose, as if by mutual agreement, threw their paper cups away, and went outside. The sidewalk they stepped out onto was filthy and splotched with black patches of aged chewing gum. Cars drove in and out of the parking lot in a constant stream as the two of them stood, facing each other and holding hands.<br />
<br />
“I love you,” Geoff said after a moment.<br />
<br />
“I know.”<br />
<br />
They met for an instant in an embrace that was more friendly than passionate. He released her, and Sara turned as if to go. Then she turned back, and their lips met in one last, brief kiss, a mere brushing of the lips. She turned again and walked rapidly away.<br />
<br />
Cars honked out on Ventura Boulevard. A crumpled front sheet of The Los Angeles Times Book Review blew against Geoff’s legs as he watched her disappear around the corner, her long legs moving rapidly and her hair rippling slightly in the wind. Then he turned away and walked slowly back to his car.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The EndDarwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849559590222853139.post-88055488759481151602010-07-07T12:48:00.000-07:002011-10-19T20:08:22.714-07:00Final Rites<span style="font-style: italic;">[This was originally written in 1996. © Brendan Hodge]</span><br />
<br />
When I was younger I always thought of my grandparents’ house as “The House With Plants In It”. I’m not really sure why. We must have had at least as many, even then, before any of us kids were learning magic. Any family of Walkers has plants coming out of its ears, a fact my sister Lizzy decries loudly whenever it's her turn to water them. But Grandma and Grandpa’s taste finished developing some time in the Fifties and hadn’t changed since; there were at least a dozen large, bulb-shaped bronze pots hanging from large black hooks in the living room ceiling. Our house isn’t like that at all; most of the plants are in the yard, safely out of harm’s and the rug’s way. I always used to imagine I was walking into a jungle when I entered their house. But all that had changed. The plants were dead or dying, and Stepmom always hushed the twins before we knocked on the door, even though they knew better than to disturb anyone.<br />
<br />
Grandpa always lay in the back bedroom, half awake and half asleep. Maybe sometimes he was asleep; half the time he never said a word the whole time we were there. Or maybe there isn’t any difference between awake and asleep when you’ve had as many strokes as Grandpa had.<br />
<br />
Grandma was always the one to answer our knock; Aunt Catherine, Dad’s youngest sister, always seemed to be taking her turn at Grandpa’s bedside when we got there. Grandma was usually in a pretty bad mood when she answered the door, muttering curses under her breath. Cliche has it that a kid hears the words he isn’t supposed to use from his father, but in my case it was from my grandmother. She could out-swear most of the boys in my high school class, which was saying a lot. You could hardly blame her though. It drove me crazy just to be around the back bedroom for a few hours, and she had to be there all the time. Frankly, I don’t know how she kept as sane as she did.<br />
<br />
We usually got there around noon, which meant the first thing we did was go to the dreaded back bedroom to give Grandpa lunch. The only time we could really be sure he was awake was when he was eating, so that’s when we usually made our visit. Grandpa would be lying in the hospital bed they’d bought for him, looking like a thawed out version of the Iceman, and Aunt Catherine would be getting his lunch ready. It was always something that had been mashed into a disgusting looking pulp, but then, Grandpa’s teeth couldn’t handle anything that wasn’t. I’m not sure he could taste things very well anyway. I certainly hope he couldn’t.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
So there we’d all be in the back bedroom. I was always over by the window feeling sick and wishing to hell I was somewhere else, anywhere else. Dad would be standing at the head of Grandpa’s bed holding his hand and not saying much, and Stepmom would be standing next to Dad and holding his hand. Then there were the twins. They always rushed around trying to be helpful. Lizzy always wanted to help feed Grandpa, and Patrick told Grandpa endless stories about what had happened recently, in much the same way he spoke to the cat at home. They were not, I suppose, trying to do any harm, but they always sounded incredibly condescending to me, especially when Lizzy was telling Grandpa about each spoonful of food as she gave it to him. “Here’s a spoon of nice peas,” she’d say, lifting a spoonful of grey things that might once have been peas before they were boiled into submission. “Don’t they look good?”<br />
<br />
It was natural, I guess. I don’t think they could remember the grandpa who once hung half a dozen large, black, rubber spiders from the ceiling of my room as a birthday surprise; they’re six years younger than I am. Grandpa and I had spent a lot of time together when I was younger, especially after Mom died. He used to take me for long walks up in the hills and tell me stories. Once he took me at night and lighted our way with a witch light. He took me to the very boarders of Faery that night, even though I was years too young to be taught our secrets and allowed to cross alone. But now he only lay in bed; sometimes he wouldn’t say a word for weeks, and when he did, it was only to answer a question with a single word. That, really, was what I hated most: to see someone I had known be so completely helpless and know that there was no hope of his recovering.<br />
<br />
After feeding came prayers. It might seem odd to some people for a Walker family to be Catholic, but that would just be because they didn’t understand how our magic works. Our family was Catholic from way back. Grandma and Grandpa were both Irish which made the family about as solidly Catholic as they come. Anyway, as soon as Grandpa was finished eating Grandma would come in bearing rosaries and holy water.<br />
<br />
Now, you should understand that I don’t have a problem with Catholicism itself; it’s just that the way things usually go at my grandparents’ house makes me uncomfortable in the extreme. That last time started out more or less as usual. Grandma went around with her holy water and made a little cross on everyone’s forehead as she always did, and then we started saying the rosary. Grandma, as usual, continued to bustle around cleaning things up and putting things away, sometimes praying along with us and sometimes interrupting to talk about something completely different and then go on as if nothing had happened.<br />
<br />
To this day I’m not really sure what set me off that one final time. Maybe Grandma was interrupting more than usual, or maybe I was already upset about something before we even got there. I remember nothing about that day except the visit to Grandpa. Anyway, at the end of the second decade, well before it was time to stop, I reached a point where something snapped. I said a loud Sign of the Cross, dropped my rosary on the table next to Grandpa’s bed, and left the room.<br />
<br />
When Dad came for me an hour later I was sitting under a tree in the farthest corner of the backyard, mindlessly playing with a handful of pebbles. I wasn’t trying to hide, really; I would have known that was futile. I’m not sure, now, why I was back there, and I don’t think I knew then either. I was, I suppose, trying more to escape than to hide. I was trying to clear my mind of a world where someone I had known could become completely incapable of controlling himself.<br />
<br />
“We’re leaving now,” Dad said crouching down beside me.<br />
<br />
I nodded.<br />
<br />
“Do you want to explain?” he asked.<br />
<br />
“No,” I said.<br />
<br />
Dad nodded. “Well then, be at the car in five minutes. Do you want to drive?”<br />
<br />
I had gotten my license only a month before. “No. I couldn’t concentrate.”<br />
<br />
“All right.” Dad rose and left me to study my pebbles under the tree.<br />
<br />
In the minute before I got up to leave I must have run through every curse I’d ever heard, a rather extensive collection considering some of the friends I had at the time. It was not at Dad or Grandma or anyone who was in the house. It was at pain, death, the world, and the One who made it. In that moment I hated the world generally, and especially the Maker who allowed it to be filled with pain and suffering. Oh, I knew the reason for such things. I understood why they took place. I am not just a born Catholic but a believing one. Yet sometimes understanding has nothing to do with feeling, and at that moment what I felt was hate for all the world.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It was four days later that we got the telephone call. Grandpa’s lungs had begun to fill with fluid; the doctor didn’t expect him to make it through the day. Stepmom picked us kids up from our various schools and took us there immediately. Dad left work early and got there not long after we did.<br />
<br />
Most of the family had already gathered. Uncle Robert, our family atheist, was in the living room arguing with the parish priest when we came in. Aunt Mary and her husband were in the back bedroom, as were Grandma, Aunt Catherine, and the doctor. We crowded in as well, Lizzy and Patrick pushing towards the bed so they could see better and I hanging back. It was hot and stuffy; Grandma had closed the windows for fear of drafts. Suffering seemed to fill the air like a stench. Perhaps it was some hospital-like smell that had come in with the doctor, his medicines, and the oxygen tank that hissed away at Grandpa’s side. I don’t know. To me the smell was simply that of suffering.<br />
<br />
And in the center of it all was Grandpa, his breath ragged, his eyes closed, oxygen tubes in his nose, and his hand continuously tapping the side of his head. I don’t believe I have ever seen anything so utterly horrible. Like any American I have seen the pictures of war and plague victims on the evening news; I’ve seen the tapes of children shot down in the streets. But none of it ever seemed as grim to me as the private little hell that must exist in the mind of someone in the condition that my grandfather was in.<br />
<br />
It was perhaps five minutes before I left the room. Grandma had gone into the living room searching for Lourdes water and Uncle Robert was asking why she couldn’t let a man die without retreating to the superstitions of the Middle Ages. I didn’t want to hear either one and retreated to the backyard and the tree with the pebbles under it. One could, I suppose, say I was praying there. I didn’t think it at the time though, and I’m not sure I would call it that now. Prayer is something I have never felt comfortable with or completely understood. There are those who claim they love the ‘mysticism’ or the ‘spirituality’ of religion but feel uncomfortable with its beliefs; I have always been the opposite. My father says I have a theology but not a religion; perhaps he’s right. Perhaps the feelings of religion are what make it possible to feel faith in the face of death and suffering.<br />
<br />
It was almost dark when my father came out to get me. “He’s worse,” he said. “It won’t be long. You’d better come.” I nodded and followed him.<br />
<br />
If the back bedroom had been full before, it was packed now. The priest was giving Grandpa last rites. The doctor was trying to tell Grandma something about hospitals and experimental operations. Grandma was loudly telling the doctor to “shut up and go to hell”. Uncle Robert was standing silently in one corner. And Aunt Julia had arrived, sans husband but with four of her five children. Yet it somehow did not seem as painful as the first time I had entered the room that day. Grandpa lay motionless now, and his breathing, though shallow, was not as labored. It was, for me, as if he had already died, and we were now assembled for some last pre-funeral parting.<br />
<br />
It was only a moment after the priest had made the Sign of the Cross over my grandfather that he breathed his last. It happened so quietly and so suddenly that for a moment we noticed nothing. Then the doctor rushed to his side and began frantically to adjust the valves on the oxygen tank and search for my grandfather’s pulse. After a moment he stopped, muttering something under his breath. When he spoke he said but a single word. “Dead.” He disconnected the oxygen tubes and left the room so that we could be alone together.<br />
<br />
For some time none of us spoke. After seeing him struggle so long, like a drowning man floundering to remain above water, it seemed impossible that he could slip away so quietly and so suddenly.<br />
<br />
Uncle Robert was the first to speak. “Damn world,” he growled and left the room. It was then that Lizzy began sobbing. A moment later rosaries appeared, and Grandma, Aunt Catherine, and Aunt Julia began to murmur Our Fathers and Hail Marys.<br />
<br />
“Dad,” I said after a moment.<br />
<br />
“What?”<br />
<br />
I glanced again at my grandfather’s lifeless body. “Keys. I need to go.”<br />
<br />
“Faery?”<br />
<br />
I nodded.<br />
<br />
He reached into his pocket and drew out the keys to his car. “We’ll take the other car home.”<br />
<br />
“I may be late.” It was an understatement. I intended to lose myself in Faery for a time. Faery is not a gentle place, but death is not a part of its nature.<br />
<br />
“I know.” I took the keys and left the room.<br />
<br />
It was late by the time I left. The yard was almost completely dark, but a dull red glow, which did not come from the porch lights, lit the yard. The plants were burning.<br />
<br />
No flames had appeared. No smoke was rising. The plants from which my grandfather had drawn his power glowed as if they were the last embers of a dying fire. And as the glow left them, they crumbled away into a black powder which drifted away on the wind.<br />
<br />
I got into the car and slammed the door. For a moment I sat there watching the glow of the burning. Then I started the engine and left.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It was at least an hour later that I pulled over to the side of an empty two lane highway that twisted through the foothills of the San Gabriels. I left the car and set off across the scrub on foot. The moon was setting, and it was both dark and cold. I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket, but I didn’t care if I felt cold. I didn’t care if I came down with the whole lot of diseases Grandma threatened me with whenever she saw me without a jacket.<br />
<br />
Damn them. Damn and blast the whole lot of them with their rapidly murmured and frequently interrupted prayers. Blast them for having no better response to a man’s death than to go on muttering the same prayers, in the same way, again and again and again. Blast the little plastic crucifixes, sometimes broken and held together by rubber bands, that Grandma was always carrying around to give to people. Blast the holy water sprinkled on Grandma’s door every night to keep burglars away, and blast Grandma’s shelf full of books by ‘mystics’ and pamphlets supposedly dictated by God. Blast all the superstitious add-ons that could make a logical theology seem like utter nonsense. Blast everything and everyone.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I don’t know when the boundaries between the worlds blurred, and I entered Faery. The change is hard to see under ordinary circumstances, and that night my mind was on other things. All I do know is that, after what seemed an unending length of time, I awakened from my thoughts and saw that I was walking not through the dry, brown scrub of the foothills but the green grass of the plains that were the borders of Faery.<br />
<br />
When I saw where I was, I put all my previous thoughts from my mind. It was but a short way to the place that I had come to visit, Grandpa’s tree.<br />
<br />
Grandpa first showed me the tree on that trip ten years before when he first took me into Faery. He had planted it when he was a boy. It was the tree that allowed him to draw upon the fay powers as a Walker. The plants that filled his house and yard were necessary too, but they could have done nothing if they had not been linked to that one tree that grew on the plains of Faery.<br />
<br />
Time runs strangely in Faery. And its plants can be very strange indeed, for they never die or wither. Thus, the tree had not been much taller than my grandfather when he first showed it to me, even though it had been growing for sixty years.<br />
<br />
Grandpa and I had gone to Faery together perhaps ten times. After that first time, he did not take me again until after I had reached the traditional age of ten and been taught to travel between the worlds myself. He was with me four years ago when I planted my own tree, but that was the last time he came to Faery with me. Indeed, it may have been the last time he came to Faery at all. He was beginning to slow down then, though it was before the strokes began. Yet almost every time I went to Faery I visited his tree, and at that time I went very frequently. I could never and can never make the crossing without thinking of that one, magical first trip we made when it was not yet six months after my mother had died.<br />
<br />
Thus it was that on the night of Grandpa’s death I made my way to the little dell where his tree stood and saw it in the light of the stars of Faery.<br />
<br />
I have seldom been more shocked than I was at that moment. The tree which had been planted in undying realm was dead and bare. No leaves covered the ground at its foot. It was as if there had been some great wind which had stripped both leaves and life from it, leaving behind no trace of either.<br />
<br />
I sat with my back against the dead tree, and for the first time I felt the full force of my loss. Not only was my grandfather dead, but every last trace of him had been wiped from the earth. Death had taken even this last token of his existence.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“Kevin,” a voice sounding much like my father’s said from somewhere behind me.<br />
<br />
“I thought you were going to leave me alone,” I replied without looking up.<br />
<br />
“I don’t remember any such agreement.”<br />
<br />
“Ah, how convenient,” I said, sarcasticly<br />
<br />
“You left your father’s survival pack in the car. You might at least have brought that with you.” I heard the heavy bag drop at my side.<br />
<br />
“My father’s? Then who--” For the first time I looked up. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t think who he was.<br />
<br />
“Ah, now I see.” The man chuckled. “You appear to have mistaken me for my son.”<br />
<br />
It was my grandfather, but not as I had last seen him. Not, indeed, as I could remember ever having seen him. I would almost say he looked younger, but that would be inaccurate. If it had been in our world perhaps he would have looked younger, but things appear different in Faery.<br />
<br />
It is, I am sure, understandable that I was not at my most expressive in the moment when I first recognized him. My first words were, I fear, terribly cliched. “But,” I said. “I thought you were dead.”<br />
<br />
Grandpa laughed. “And you were right. Have you ever heard the saying that there are three roads, one leading to heaven, one to hell, and one to Faery?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, but--”<br />
<br />
“Well it’s wrong. Our world and Faery are both roads that lead, though at different speeds, to the same fork. And at that fork you must choose your way, to heaven or to hell.”<br />
<br />
“And you’re taking the fay road to the fork?”<br />
<br />
“Oh no, that’s hardly an option for us. No, this is merely a minor detour on a much longer journey. And you?” he asked.<br />
<br />
“What?”<br />
<br />
“Are here. Why?”<br />
<br />
Again I was staring at the ground. “I wanted to be alone, I guess.”<br />
<br />
“There are no other places to be alone but Faery? The world must be becoming a crowded place.”<br />
<br />
“Well . . .”<br />
<br />
“But you wanted to see my tree?”<br />
<br />
“I guess I . . .”<br />
<br />
“Wanted to escape death?”<br />
<br />
I sighed and pulled nervously at the grass. “Yeah. I suppose I did.”<br />
<br />
“It is a hard thing to understand.”<br />
<br />
“It’s not that,” I said. The “death and suffering cannot be understood” line was something I had heard many times and had no sympathy for. Understanding death and suffering, I thought, was easy. It was dealing with it that was hard.<br />
<br />
“Ah, so it’s not a hard thing to understand?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
“And you do understand why there is death in the world?”<br />
<br />
“Yes.”<br />
<br />
“And suffering?”<br />
<br />
“Yes.”<br />
<br />
“Then why were you hiding from them?”<br />
<br />
“But--”<br />
<br />
“And why would you hide from something if you understood it, eh? Perhaps, you do not understand? Mmm?”<br />
<br />
“Understanding doesn’t help. Yeah, there’s death and suffering in the world because we fell. Yeah, I see why that is. And no, I don’t think it’s particularly unfair. Heck, I even think an unfallen world would be pretty dull. But I don’t see how that’s supposed to help.”<br />
<br />
“It doesn’t.”<br />
<br />
“Then why did you say--”<br />
<br />
“Because that’s not understanding; that’s knowing. I could have you memorize the annual rain fall of every city in the world, but that wouldn’t mean you would understand why rain fell. Would it?”<br />
<br />
“I guess not.”<br />
<br />
“Well I don’t guess; I know. It wouldn’t.”<br />
<br />
“And?”<br />
<br />
“Knowing won’t help you deal with things, except to the extent that you know there is a reason for them, even if you don’t understand it.”<br />
<br />
“So what I should do is . . . ?”<br />
<br />
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe there is no way to understand these things. I’ve never known anyone who did.”<br />
<br />
“Then what was the point of--”<br />
<br />
“Don’t lie to yourself, Kevin. The only person who’s going to be fooled is you.”<br />
<br />
I shook my head, feeling both exasperated and amused. “Would it be rude to ask if all dead people are like this?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, changing the subject is always rude.” Grandpa smiled. “Besides, I’ve never met a dead person socially; I wouldn’t know.”<br />
<br />
For a moment we just looked at each other, and that one moment seemed to make up for all the talks we’d missed over that last few years. It seemed a very long time, but it could only have been a moment. Then Grandpa shook his head and looked away.<br />
<br />
“Well, I should be going.”<br />
<br />
“Must you?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, I’ve a long road before me.”<br />
<br />
“Where is the fork, the one which leads to heaven and hell?”<br />
<br />
“The fork? Well, the fork isn’t really a place, as such. It just sort of is. I’m sorry, this must sound like utter nonsense. It’s rather hard to explain, really.”<br />
<br />
“But, if you don’t know where it is, how can you go there?”<br />
<br />
“Go there?” Grandpa gave me a puzzled look. “Oh, I see what you’re getting at. But I’m not traveling to the crossroads. I’m coming from it.”<br />
<br />
“But didn’t you say--”<br />
<br />
“The gates of hell stand at the crossroads itself, but the road to heaven can be very long indeed.”<br />
<br />
“Can be very long?”<br />
<br />
“Well, it rather depends on the person.”<br />
<br />
“Oh.” I paused, there were so many things I wanted to say that I didn’t know where to begin. But Grandpa was obviously pressed for time.<br />
<br />
“Goodbye, Kevin,” he said and started off.<br />
<br />
For a moment I just watched him. Then I called after him, “What should I do with your tree?”<br />
<br />
“Whatever you want,” he replied. “It’s dead and always will be, but I doubt it will ever fall, being here in Faery. You can keep it for consolation if you want to.” For a moment there was silence. Then he called back one last time. “Goodbye!”<br />
<br />
It was the last word I ever heard from him, and a moment later he disappeared into the starlit night of Faery.<br />
<br />
“It’s dead and always will be,” he’d said. “You can keep it for consolation, if you want to.” I reached up to touch a small branch above me, and it broke off in my hand. Completely dry, as if it had been dead for years. No, I could not keep it. It would be like a child prodding the lifeless body of his kitten hoping that life would return to the cold, stiff body. The tree, like Grandpa, was lifeless, and I had to bury my dead.<br />
<br />
The branches were dry and brittle. I was able to break off all but the largest limbs by hand. I made them into a pile at the base of the tree and lit them with the cigarette lighter from my father’s pack. The dry wood caught quickly. Soon the tree was a great column of fire, and the sound of burning filled the air.<br />
<br />
As the flames grew hotter I retreated to the rim of the dell. I sat down there, dropping the pack on the grass beside me. I knew I could not leave till the fire had died out.<br />
<br />
When I dropped the pack I heard a rattle and saw something roll a few feet down the slope. I picked it up and saw it was a small plastic canister such as rolls of film come in. I grimaced and started to put it back in the bag; I knew what was in the canister and had no great wish to see it. Then I stopped.<br />
<br />
Because that’s not understanding; that’s knowing. . . . Maybe there is no way to understand these things. . . .<br />
<br />
I opened the canister and poured the small rosary I’d known was there into the palm of my hand. It was, perhaps, an ugly little thing. I think the reason Dad kept it with him was that it was the only one he wouldn’t have minded losing. Its black plastic beads felt rubbery rather than smooth, and in several places the chain had broken and been fixed with bits of wire. The little crucifix was badly cast, and a thin plating of silvery looking metal was flaking off to reveal a dull grey metal underneath. Even in firelight it looked unattractive; in the full light of day it must have been thoroughly ugly.<br />
<br />
Yet somehow that is not what I thought as I held it that night in Faery, looking at it by the light of the burning tree. The tiny figure hanging on the cross seemed to have a majesty that cannot have come from the badly cast crucifix itself. Perhaps grief could not be wholly understood.<br />
<br />
Perhaps Grandma’s pieties were next door to superstition. Yet perhaps there was still more to religion than mere philosophy. Perhaps there was more than creeds and doctrines. Perhaps there were other things, not more important, but as important as logic and reason.<br />
<br />
Reluctantly, for I was not and am still not completely comfortable with such things, I brought the crucifix to my lips and kissed it. For a moment I sat staring at the little piece of metal I had kissed. Then I made a slow Sign of the Cross with it.<br />
<br />
“The first joyful mystery: the Annunciation,” I began, feeling embarrassed at first but gaining confidence as I spoke. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. . . .”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The EndDarwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849559590222853139.post-52731426914232586992010-07-07T12:47:00.001-07:002010-07-07T12:48:24.459-07:00Some Old StuffWell, I haven't exactly moved on using this blog. But since it's preying on my mind at the moment, I'm reposting two of the better stories I wrote back in the day.Darwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8849559590222853139.post-74953197007504251052008-01-17T09:39:00.000-08:002008-01-17T09:48:28.529-08:00And so it beginsSome years ago I spent much of my free time writing fiction. And then, at a certain point, I realized that I didn't know very much about anything, and that as a result my stories tended to be cleverly derived sets of variations, commentaries and inversions on other stories.<br /><br />So I stopped writing, with the resolution to get back to it when I knew something about life.<br /><br />A couple years ago, I began writing a blog called <a href="http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/">DarwinCatholic</a>. Whatever else one thinks of blogging as an activity, I must say that the discipline of putting out a steady post-per-day for one's readers is certainly a good way to develop the ability to simply sit down and write.<br /><br />As time has passed, though, I find myself thinking of trying to write fiction once again. And since blogging has become so familiar to me as a medium, it seemed the logical place to begin practicing my fiction skills once again. Whether I have learned anything during my period of absence remains to be seen.Darwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.com1