I no longer watch CNN because they've gotten so partisan and have idiots on as guests. Bill Bennett makes me sick, the fat slob, calling his wife 'Elaine Bennett'; and John King with his favorite pundits, James Carville and his wife Mary something or other. What a pathetic pair they are with John sucking up and blathering over them.
So after I walk the dogs and make coffee, I peruse the Huffington Post and the Washington Post and sometimes Slate. Politics is depressing these days. I'm disappointed Obama made a deal with big pharma. It's sad Ted Kennedy isn't there any more to work a healthcare bill. Bill Moyers seems to be the only one with an intelligent outlook on what needs to be done for the healthcare business. That is, make it back into 'care' and not 'business.' What a concept.
Whatsoever you have done to the least of these, my brethren, you have done unto me. These so called Christian right wingers might think about that one. Bah!
And Dick and Liz Cheney? Good God. Liz Cheney makes a baseball bat out of her words and bludgeons poor Sam Donaldson. But you gotta hand it to him, he at least stuck to his guns. George tried to change the subject but she wouldn't let him. Isn't it a sad state of affairs when someone sends their daughter out as front man? And why can't he just stand up like a man and admit he was wrong and broke the law? And let poor Scooter Libby take the fall for him. What a frakkin' coward.
I hope Obama finally comes out swinging and whether he gets it passed or not, puts up a fight for healthcare. That is if the country doesn't fall apart since it's teetering on an economic abyss.
So I have to go to work and listen to people all day. I think I have six scheduled.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Graduation
An original short story
The professor bobbed up and down in front of the blackboard, waving her chalk around, fairly spitting in her enthusiasm for social policy. The air in the classroom congealed, stifling, as the sun buzzed through the window. Martha shifted in the hard chair. Her back itched. The pencil in her fingers tapped the paper beside her doodles. She wondered why the hell she was here. She’d come to graduate school to learn about the intricacies of the human mind, and this certainly wasn’t teaching her that. Social policy was, she decided, a bore.
She looked around at her classmates -- almost all of them quite a bit younger than she -- and saw that more than a few appeared bored as well. Relaxing, she returned to her doodles. Her mind wandered free, then pulled her down the worn painful path that had brought her back to school.
Her mother is making her a dress of red taffeta. She hates it, but the cloth was on sale. Her mother tries the dress on her and pins the back together where the zipper will go. She looks in the mirror. Her breasts push out obscenely and her waist goes in and her tummy and hips are humongous below it. Her friends are straight up and down and not fat like her.
"I hate it. It makes me look fat."
"It does not make you look fat. It makes your waist look small." Her mother is talking around the pins in her mouth.
"I do, too, look fat," she wails.
"All right, let's ask your father." Martha is pushed to the living room where her father is sitting in his chair, drinking a beer and twisting his hair while he reads the newspaper. He looks over the paper at her and takes a swig of beer.
"Charles, does this dress make Martha look fat?"
"Well, you know what they always say. The bigger the saddle, the easier it is to ride."
"Oh, Charles! Honestly! ……. She hears her mother mouth in disgust.
Another scene followed, unbidden, equally unwelcome.
You’re not getting another cent of my money,” Dave is shouting.
“Fuck your money!” she shouts back. “Fuck you! Fuck your family! Fuck your ridiculous antiquated notions about life!”
Martha's body numbed to ward off the blackness. Shaking her head as if to shoo away an insect, she reminded herself that boredom lured her into the muck she was trying to escape. ‘Miss Chipper’ was wrapping up. Martha reached under her chair to get her things. She wanted to smoke a cigarette and walk her dog, waiting in the car. Every morning she searched for a shady parking spot, constantly worried about the heat. She left windows open and trusted that no one would steal her, such a good dog, a comfort, and so patient, waiting during the long classes.
A young man, Barry, who she’d noticed because he asked intelligent questions, touched her arm as she moved down the hall to the door. He startled her and she turned, almost bumping into him.
“Oops,” he laughed. “Can I walk with you?”
“Sure.”
She was afraid to be pleased at the unexpected attention, as they headed outside. They walked through the wide mall of trees and grass outside the building, acorns crunching underfoot, fallen long leaf pine needles waving under grass and bush. Sam was waiting on the seat of her car, rising when she heard them coming, head out the window, tongue lolling as she panted her welcome.
“Beautiful dog.” Barry said as they stood on the mall in the shade of the high trees. Sam’s tail waved in front of them as she nosed acorns and leaves, and sun sprinkled heat between the leaves overhead.
“Yes.” Martha was very conscious of his presence next to her and concentrated, trying not to show her fear of scaring him away.
“What do you think of Dr. Berry?” he asked.
Martha wrinkled her nose.“She’s certainly enthusiastic.”
“She’s an idiot,” He said this without emphasis.
“That, too,” Martha smiled.
They smoked together while Sam led them around the mall. Barry lit a cigarette for her, their faces close for a moment, her hungry heart skipping a beat. She wondered what the other students thought and looked out of the corners of her eyes at their moving shapes in the sunshine.
On the long ride home she traced his face in her mind. He looked about thirty, maybe younger. He’s too young for you, idiot, she scolded herself, regretting her forty-eight years. The mountains loomed ahead as she topped a rise, and sudden fear gripped her chest, an unreasoned panic that her home was gone. Pouf, kaput! Reason calmed her. Don’t be silly, she chided. It’s still there.
She parked in front; Sam jumped down and peed in relief on the lawn. They walked between the dogwood trees, up the flagstone path to her front door.
After she walked Sam, she ate and went upstairs to bed. Sam jumped on the bed and settled against her back, a comfortable warmth. The house was cool, ceiling fan circling soft overhead, windows open. She’d bought the house after her divorce -- painted, wallpapered, refinished floors, and stripped paint off window fittings, while she ached with anger and loneliness. Her daughter visited when she first moved in. She’d watched her walk to the porch.
"Did you have any trouble finding the house?"
Jen shook her head no. "I had a terrible week and I'm tired. Hope I can sleep all right." She looked around, a polite smile on her face.
"Do you want the grand tour?"
Jen nodded. "Sure!"
Martha led her around the boxes. She had a small seating area arranged in the living room. She had hired a carpenter to build a closet and do some work in the kitchen. She described her plans to Jen and showed her the paint and wallpaper samples she was considering.
"When you and dad redid our old house, did it look this bad?"
Martha laughed at her honesty. "Yes, yes it did. Worse, as a matter of fact."
"Well, I'm sure it'll look nice when you get done with it, but I have no imagination. I would be depressed if I had to stay here." She had looked around at the walls, corners darkened with years of winter heating, and shuddered. Martha wondered if the shudder was at the house or her parents’ divorce.
~~~~~~~
Her eyes found Barry in every class, his urgent questions, his dark curly hair filling her imagination as she thought about touching his cheek. On breaks they smoked together and sometimes went to lunch. He talked about wanting to change the world; she said she just wanted to be a therapist, to change people one at a time.
“What do you do besides this?” His question startled her.
“I used to draw and paint.”
“Can I see some of your work?”
“They’re large – too large to bring here.”
“Maybe I could come to your house sometime.”
Suddenly aware of her beating heart, she flushed. “I’d like that.”
That night she had a dream that he made love to her. His hands were soft against her skin. She blushed when she awakened, shook her head.
“I’ve got to stop this,” she told herself.
One of the other students, a fellow dog lover, had two yellow labs. Martha spent the night with her sometimes when she was too tired for the drive home. Sam was delighted when they stayed there and ran around like a puppy with the other dogs. The female lab was pregnant and when the puppies were born, Martha wanted one. Maybe a puppy is safer than Barry, she thought, and their liquid brown eyes and soft yellow fur was irresistible. Martha picked one out, an intelligent looking little guy.
“Luke is your name,” she told him. At home, she put a biscuit on the floor for Sam who snarled and snapped at Luke and took the biscuit into the dining room. Luke cried piteously and she picked him up, scolding Sam. He snuggled to her breast and sighed. He was hers. Sam gave her a look of betrayal that tore her heart.
When the semester ended Barry asked for her phone number.
“I’ll call you.”
“Great,” she said, faint with shyness, like a twelve year old with a crush, thinking of their age difference.
During summer break, Jen visited again and they walked the dogs up in the mountains.
“Sam walks like Marilyn Monroe,” Jen said and Martha laughed in delight.
“Yes she does!” She had long white blonde hair on her tail and hindquarters that swayed as sexy as a grass skirt when she trotted along. Her legs were short and her feet dainty as if she were wearing high heels. Luke, on the other hand, looked like John Wayne in fur trimmed chaps. He lumbered along, skin and muscles rolling over his long and angular bones. Sam took two steps to his one.
She waited for a phone call from Barry and filled her time with gardening. Pruning deadheads from her petunias, her mind wandered back in time to the sight of white French lilac branches loaded with blossoms, that had been so beautiful with promise, laying in the cinders of the alleyway.
Her ex husband is shirtless, belly hanging over his belt, hedge clippers in one hand.
“What did you do?” She cries in horror.
“I trimmed the bushes,” he says with satisfaction.
“You idiot,” she yells. “Didn’t you notice that bush was in bloom?”
She had dug the bush from a hidden and shaded place at the edge of the yard and transplanted it to the alley, imagining the beauty it would bring to the starkness of the ugly passageway.
That was Dave. Clippers in hand, he cut the beauty and joy from life. She shuddered.
The old storm door stood open to let the dogs go in and out, a lazy habit that allowed Sam, who had a phobia about doors and would not go through one unless it was standing wide open, free access to the back yard. Otherwise, she stood on the step and yapped her frantic yap, please help me, unable to live unless she followed Martha wherever she was. It was frightening how dependent and adoring she was. Luke was contented in the backyard, and dug himself a dirt bed behind the forsythia bush, destroying a yellow Black-eyed Susan in the process.
Her sister Bobbie came to visit, bringing her clumps of perennials.
“Are you going back to school in the fall?” she asked.
“Of course,” Martha said. Bobbie couldn’t understand why she wanted to be a therapist.
“Some of us just don’t want to go into all that pain,” she had remarked.
Martha couldn’t help it. She was driven.
“You need to find a dog trainer,” Bobbie remarked as the dogs panted at her every movement. “These dogs need some discipline.”
Martha was relieved when she left.
The phone caught her totally off guard. Barry’s voice was soft at the other end. They made a date for him to come and look at her drawings.
Looking at herself in the mirror was demoralizing. “Hopeless,” she said to her reflection. “What should I wear?” she asked the dogs who panted at her with questioning eyes. She thought Barry was a vegetarian, bought things for lunch at the fresh market, barely slept the night before, body melting with anticipation.
She watched his lanky walk up the path to the front door. She was standing in the frame of screen. Dogs were in the back yard, safely out of the way.
“Hi,” she smiled, feeling awkward and cold.
“Hi yourself,” he had an easy smile, long thin face matching his frame, his eyes only an inch or two above her own. He touched her cheek. “Where are the dogs?”
She led him to the back door, and he greeted them. Her cheek burned where he touched it. She loved that he liked animals, was at ease with them. Dave always stood clear. “I don’t like to be licked,” he said, with the sensitivities of an eight year old girl.
She picked up the heavy portfolio of drawings. Barry hefted it from her, laid it on the floor. They leafed through them, one by one. Almost all of them were of nudes. They sat on the floor, shoulders touching. His eyes traced the curves of the bodies. She wanted them to trace hers.
“You’re very talented.”
She felt sad. He picked one out for himself at her urging. It was of a girl, sitting with her back to the viewer, nude, a pot of flowers on the floor beside her.
They ate slowly. He gossiped about others at school that lived near him.
“I love the mountains,” he said.
“Me, too.”
As she rose to clear the table, he rose, too. They carried the meals’ remnants to the kitchen. His hand brushed her arm. She turned, still as stone. He drew her close, kissed her. Her heart hammered in her chest.
She waited while he undressed her. His love making was gentle, hands kneading soft flesh, warm, then hard….
“I’m too old for you,” she said afterward. She was lying on her back, his body cupped around hers. She heard the dogs rustle in the back yard under her window. He kissed her again. “Shhh… shh….”
When he left she cried hot silent tears.
Martha spent the next day raking long grass and dog shit in her back yard. She trimmed with the weed-eater and lamented the absence of the lawnmower that was being fixed. While she worked the wind blew and black clouds and thunder and lightning threatened overhead. The dogs alternately barked at the thunder or scuttled to the back door. She eyed the weather warily and thought, Oh well, there are lots of ways to die and I'm not going to die right now. I'm not finished with school. So what, if Barry never calls again?
She swung the weed-eater viciously at the tall grass and took grim satisfaction in all the things she did for herself -- finish floors, wallpaper, paint, prune branches, mow. It didn't rain until she and the dogs were walking in the half light and so they waited under a Japanese maple in the front yard of a limestone house with green wrought iron trim and spider flowers. Cleome, Bobbie said they were called.
The rain stopped and they walked to the golf course. The clouds were thinner and the wind died down and they could hear the loud singing of the bull frogs along the edge of the artificial pond built for the golfers, and later the loud rock music coming from the country club. Martha was glad she was not there, dressed up and sweating and smiling and unable to talk over the music.
The summer passed and Barry did not call again.
Second year of school he was more distant. She’d known it would be that way. Truth be told, she couldn’t see herself with him. He was a secret moment of wonder. He had her drawing. Her back was to him, facing elsewhere. The memory of his lovemaking warmed her.
Someone wanted me, she thought, listening to her mother on the other end of the phone.
“And what is it you’ll do?”
“I’ll be a therapist, Mom. I’ll see people for an hour each week, help them with their problems.”
“Oh.”
“Graduation is next month.”
“Well you know I can’t come all that way.”
“I know, Mom. You know it’s a Master’s degree.”
“Yes, I know. Why not a PhD?”
Martha sighed.“You don’t need that for what I’m going to do.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t see him at graduation. It was in the gymnasium, totally dark except for the lights on stage. The noise was deafening, the way her friend Taylor used to describe being deaf and wearing a hearing aid. Echoes roared off walls, all sounds the same intensity, no modulation or ability to tune out one or the other for focus. She wore her pink suit and felt silly, as the others -- younger, more careless -- were in shorts or jeans and t-shirts under their graduation gowns. On the drive home thunder and wind and angry black clouds chased her up the mountain. The radio sputtered tornado warnings. She pulled into a rest area and waited a while, then drove home in the black night rain, sobbing all the way that there was no one there to wonder where she was, to worry about her safety. She knew this was why it had taken her so long to leave Dave, this vast wasteland of alone.
Next day she drove the dogs up the Parkway to Graveyard Fields – a strangely level plain in the mountains sprinkled with tree stumps and blueberry bushes and rhododendrons, a wide and gentle shallow steam meandering through grass and gravel. The dogs loved it. She was afraid a little, almost at the end of the trail. The sun had gone down and there weren't many people. “Well, Martha, if you can go to graduate school by yourself I guess you can climb a trail by yourself,” she said aloud, voice echoing in the silence, faint roar of water in the distance. And so she did and got to the waterfall. Along the stream on the way back, people were camping and a terrible loneliness swept over her. She felt bitter and sad as the dogs frolicked and played in the stream all the way back to the car. They absolutely adored her for doing this for them, panting their gratitude on the back of her neck as she drove down the mountain to her home.
The professor bobbed up and down in front of the blackboard, waving her chalk around, fairly spitting in her enthusiasm for social policy. The air in the classroom congealed, stifling, as the sun buzzed through the window. Martha shifted in the hard chair. Her back itched. The pencil in her fingers tapped the paper beside her doodles. She wondered why the hell she was here. She’d come to graduate school to learn about the intricacies of the human mind, and this certainly wasn’t teaching her that. Social policy was, she decided, a bore.
She looked around at her classmates -- almost all of them quite a bit younger than she -- and saw that more than a few appeared bored as well. Relaxing, she returned to her doodles. Her mind wandered free, then pulled her down the worn painful path that had brought her back to school.
Her mother is making her a dress of red taffeta. She hates it, but the cloth was on sale. Her mother tries the dress on her and pins the back together where the zipper will go. She looks in the mirror. Her breasts push out obscenely and her waist goes in and her tummy and hips are humongous below it. Her friends are straight up and down and not fat like her.
"I hate it. It makes me look fat."
"It does not make you look fat. It makes your waist look small." Her mother is talking around the pins in her mouth.
"I do, too, look fat," she wails.
"All right, let's ask your father." Martha is pushed to the living room where her father is sitting in his chair, drinking a beer and twisting his hair while he reads the newspaper. He looks over the paper at her and takes a swig of beer.
"Charles, does this dress make Martha look fat?"
"Well, you know what they always say. The bigger the saddle, the easier it is to ride."
"Oh, Charles! Honestly! ……. She hears her mother mouth in disgust.
Another scene followed, unbidden, equally unwelcome.
You’re not getting another cent of my money,” Dave is shouting.
“Fuck your money!” she shouts back. “Fuck you! Fuck your family! Fuck your ridiculous antiquated notions about life!”
Martha's body numbed to ward off the blackness. Shaking her head as if to shoo away an insect, she reminded herself that boredom lured her into the muck she was trying to escape. ‘Miss Chipper’ was wrapping up. Martha reached under her chair to get her things. She wanted to smoke a cigarette and walk her dog, waiting in the car. Every morning she searched for a shady parking spot, constantly worried about the heat. She left windows open and trusted that no one would steal her, such a good dog, a comfort, and so patient, waiting during the long classes.
A young man, Barry, who she’d noticed because he asked intelligent questions, touched her arm as she moved down the hall to the door. He startled her and she turned, almost bumping into him.
“Oops,” he laughed. “Can I walk with you?”
“Sure.”
She was afraid to be pleased at the unexpected attention, as they headed outside. They walked through the wide mall of trees and grass outside the building, acorns crunching underfoot, fallen long leaf pine needles waving under grass and bush. Sam was waiting on the seat of her car, rising when she heard them coming, head out the window, tongue lolling as she panted her welcome.
“Beautiful dog.” Barry said as they stood on the mall in the shade of the high trees. Sam’s tail waved in front of them as she nosed acorns and leaves, and sun sprinkled heat between the leaves overhead.
“Yes.” Martha was very conscious of his presence next to her and concentrated, trying not to show her fear of scaring him away.
“What do you think of Dr. Berry?” he asked.
Martha wrinkled her nose.“She’s certainly enthusiastic.”
“She’s an idiot,” He said this without emphasis.
“That, too,” Martha smiled.
They smoked together while Sam led them around the mall. Barry lit a cigarette for her, their faces close for a moment, her hungry heart skipping a beat. She wondered what the other students thought and looked out of the corners of her eyes at their moving shapes in the sunshine.
On the long ride home she traced his face in her mind. He looked about thirty, maybe younger. He’s too young for you, idiot, she scolded herself, regretting her forty-eight years. The mountains loomed ahead as she topped a rise, and sudden fear gripped her chest, an unreasoned panic that her home was gone. Pouf, kaput! Reason calmed her. Don’t be silly, she chided. It’s still there.
She parked in front; Sam jumped down and peed in relief on the lawn. They walked between the dogwood trees, up the flagstone path to her front door.
After she walked Sam, she ate and went upstairs to bed. Sam jumped on the bed and settled against her back, a comfortable warmth. The house was cool, ceiling fan circling soft overhead, windows open. She’d bought the house after her divorce -- painted, wallpapered, refinished floors, and stripped paint off window fittings, while she ached with anger and loneliness. Her daughter visited when she first moved in. She’d watched her walk to the porch.
"Did you have any trouble finding the house?"
Jen shook her head no. "I had a terrible week and I'm tired. Hope I can sleep all right." She looked around, a polite smile on her face.
"Do you want the grand tour?"
Jen nodded. "Sure!"
Martha led her around the boxes. She had a small seating area arranged in the living room. She had hired a carpenter to build a closet and do some work in the kitchen. She described her plans to Jen and showed her the paint and wallpaper samples she was considering.
"When you and dad redid our old house, did it look this bad?"
Martha laughed at her honesty. "Yes, yes it did. Worse, as a matter of fact."
"Well, I'm sure it'll look nice when you get done with it, but I have no imagination. I would be depressed if I had to stay here." She had looked around at the walls, corners darkened with years of winter heating, and shuddered. Martha wondered if the shudder was at the house or her parents’ divorce.
~~~~~~~
Her eyes found Barry in every class, his urgent questions, his dark curly hair filling her imagination as she thought about touching his cheek. On breaks they smoked together and sometimes went to lunch. He talked about wanting to change the world; she said she just wanted to be a therapist, to change people one at a time.
“What do you do besides this?” His question startled her.
“I used to draw and paint.”
“Can I see some of your work?”
“They’re large – too large to bring here.”
“Maybe I could come to your house sometime.”
Suddenly aware of her beating heart, she flushed. “I’d like that.”
That night she had a dream that he made love to her. His hands were soft against her skin. She blushed when she awakened, shook her head.
“I’ve got to stop this,” she told herself.
One of the other students, a fellow dog lover, had two yellow labs. Martha spent the night with her sometimes when she was too tired for the drive home. Sam was delighted when they stayed there and ran around like a puppy with the other dogs. The female lab was pregnant and when the puppies were born, Martha wanted one. Maybe a puppy is safer than Barry, she thought, and their liquid brown eyes and soft yellow fur was irresistible. Martha picked one out, an intelligent looking little guy.
“Luke is your name,” she told him. At home, she put a biscuit on the floor for Sam who snarled and snapped at Luke and took the biscuit into the dining room. Luke cried piteously and she picked him up, scolding Sam. He snuggled to her breast and sighed. He was hers. Sam gave her a look of betrayal that tore her heart.
When the semester ended Barry asked for her phone number.
“I’ll call you.”
“Great,” she said, faint with shyness, like a twelve year old with a crush, thinking of their age difference.
During summer break, Jen visited again and they walked the dogs up in the mountains.
“Sam walks like Marilyn Monroe,” Jen said and Martha laughed in delight.
“Yes she does!” She had long white blonde hair on her tail and hindquarters that swayed as sexy as a grass skirt when she trotted along. Her legs were short and her feet dainty as if she were wearing high heels. Luke, on the other hand, looked like John Wayne in fur trimmed chaps. He lumbered along, skin and muscles rolling over his long and angular bones. Sam took two steps to his one.
She waited for a phone call from Barry and filled her time with gardening. Pruning deadheads from her petunias, her mind wandered back in time to the sight of white French lilac branches loaded with blossoms, that had been so beautiful with promise, laying in the cinders of the alleyway.
Her ex husband is shirtless, belly hanging over his belt, hedge clippers in one hand.
“What did you do?” She cries in horror.
“I trimmed the bushes,” he says with satisfaction.
“You idiot,” she yells. “Didn’t you notice that bush was in bloom?”
She had dug the bush from a hidden and shaded place at the edge of the yard and transplanted it to the alley, imagining the beauty it would bring to the starkness of the ugly passageway.
That was Dave. Clippers in hand, he cut the beauty and joy from life. She shuddered.
The old storm door stood open to let the dogs go in and out, a lazy habit that allowed Sam, who had a phobia about doors and would not go through one unless it was standing wide open, free access to the back yard. Otherwise, she stood on the step and yapped her frantic yap, please help me, unable to live unless she followed Martha wherever she was. It was frightening how dependent and adoring she was. Luke was contented in the backyard, and dug himself a dirt bed behind the forsythia bush, destroying a yellow Black-eyed Susan in the process.
Her sister Bobbie came to visit, bringing her clumps of perennials.
“Are you going back to school in the fall?” she asked.
“Of course,” Martha said. Bobbie couldn’t understand why she wanted to be a therapist.
“Some of us just don’t want to go into all that pain,” she had remarked.
Martha couldn’t help it. She was driven.
“You need to find a dog trainer,” Bobbie remarked as the dogs panted at her every movement. “These dogs need some discipline.”
Martha was relieved when she left.
The phone caught her totally off guard. Barry’s voice was soft at the other end. They made a date for him to come and look at her drawings.
Looking at herself in the mirror was demoralizing. “Hopeless,” she said to her reflection. “What should I wear?” she asked the dogs who panted at her with questioning eyes. She thought Barry was a vegetarian, bought things for lunch at the fresh market, barely slept the night before, body melting with anticipation.
She watched his lanky walk up the path to the front door. She was standing in the frame of screen. Dogs were in the back yard, safely out of the way.
“Hi,” she smiled, feeling awkward and cold.
“Hi yourself,” he had an easy smile, long thin face matching his frame, his eyes only an inch or two above her own. He touched her cheek. “Where are the dogs?”
She led him to the back door, and he greeted them. Her cheek burned where he touched it. She loved that he liked animals, was at ease with them. Dave always stood clear. “I don’t like to be licked,” he said, with the sensitivities of an eight year old girl.
She picked up the heavy portfolio of drawings. Barry hefted it from her, laid it on the floor. They leafed through them, one by one. Almost all of them were of nudes. They sat on the floor, shoulders touching. His eyes traced the curves of the bodies. She wanted them to trace hers.
“You’re very talented.”
She felt sad. He picked one out for himself at her urging. It was of a girl, sitting with her back to the viewer, nude, a pot of flowers on the floor beside her.
They ate slowly. He gossiped about others at school that lived near him.
“I love the mountains,” he said.
“Me, too.”
As she rose to clear the table, he rose, too. They carried the meals’ remnants to the kitchen. His hand brushed her arm. She turned, still as stone. He drew her close, kissed her. Her heart hammered in her chest.
She waited while he undressed her. His love making was gentle, hands kneading soft flesh, warm, then hard….
“I’m too old for you,” she said afterward. She was lying on her back, his body cupped around hers. She heard the dogs rustle in the back yard under her window. He kissed her again. “Shhh… shh….”
When he left she cried hot silent tears.
Martha spent the next day raking long grass and dog shit in her back yard. She trimmed with the weed-eater and lamented the absence of the lawnmower that was being fixed. While she worked the wind blew and black clouds and thunder and lightning threatened overhead. The dogs alternately barked at the thunder or scuttled to the back door. She eyed the weather warily and thought, Oh well, there are lots of ways to die and I'm not going to die right now. I'm not finished with school. So what, if Barry never calls again?
She swung the weed-eater viciously at the tall grass and took grim satisfaction in all the things she did for herself -- finish floors, wallpaper, paint, prune branches, mow. It didn't rain until she and the dogs were walking in the half light and so they waited under a Japanese maple in the front yard of a limestone house with green wrought iron trim and spider flowers. Cleome, Bobbie said they were called.
The rain stopped and they walked to the golf course. The clouds were thinner and the wind died down and they could hear the loud singing of the bull frogs along the edge of the artificial pond built for the golfers, and later the loud rock music coming from the country club. Martha was glad she was not there, dressed up and sweating and smiling and unable to talk over the music.
The summer passed and Barry did not call again.
Second year of school he was more distant. She’d known it would be that way. Truth be told, she couldn’t see herself with him. He was a secret moment of wonder. He had her drawing. Her back was to him, facing elsewhere. The memory of his lovemaking warmed her.
Someone wanted me, she thought, listening to her mother on the other end of the phone.
“And what is it you’ll do?”
“I’ll be a therapist, Mom. I’ll see people for an hour each week, help them with their problems.”
“Oh.”
“Graduation is next month.”
“Well you know I can’t come all that way.”
“I know, Mom. You know it’s a Master’s degree.”
“Yes, I know. Why not a PhD?”
Martha sighed.“You don’t need that for what I’m going to do.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t see him at graduation. It was in the gymnasium, totally dark except for the lights on stage. The noise was deafening, the way her friend Taylor used to describe being deaf and wearing a hearing aid. Echoes roared off walls, all sounds the same intensity, no modulation or ability to tune out one or the other for focus. She wore her pink suit and felt silly, as the others -- younger, more careless -- were in shorts or jeans and t-shirts under their graduation gowns. On the drive home thunder and wind and angry black clouds chased her up the mountain. The radio sputtered tornado warnings. She pulled into a rest area and waited a while, then drove home in the black night rain, sobbing all the way that there was no one there to wonder where she was, to worry about her safety. She knew this was why it had taken her so long to leave Dave, this vast wasteland of alone.
Next day she drove the dogs up the Parkway to Graveyard Fields – a strangely level plain in the mountains sprinkled with tree stumps and blueberry bushes and rhododendrons, a wide and gentle shallow steam meandering through grass and gravel. The dogs loved it. She was afraid a little, almost at the end of the trail. The sun had gone down and there weren't many people. “Well, Martha, if you can go to graduate school by yourself I guess you can climb a trail by yourself,” she said aloud, voice echoing in the silence, faint roar of water in the distance. And so she did and got to the waterfall. Along the stream on the way back, people were camping and a terrible loneliness swept over her. She felt bitter and sad as the dogs frolicked and played in the stream all the way back to the car. They absolutely adored her for doing this for them, panting their gratitude on the back of her neck as she drove down the mountain to her home.
A place to start
Starting these things is difficult because I never know what to say, but I want to record my thoughts and do some writing, so here I am. I guess we'll see what happens next.
While I was on a cruise with my ex husband, I took this picture. At the time it was fun, but later he broke my heart -- again. Oh well, so I should've known better.
While I was on a cruise with my ex husband, I took this picture. At the time it was fun, but later he broke my heart -- again. Oh well, so I should've known better.
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