Mayflies (7 page)

It was after midnight when she crawled behind the heavy willow tree. Its trunk was large enough to hide her entire body. She sat there and watched the lagoon slosh over smooth black rocks. She sat in the mud. The tree was completely covered in insects. They hung on the branches like strange breathing leaves.

She soon fell asleep. The water continued its motion, the insects increased their shrill drone. When light shone purple on the horizon, she began to wake. She did not understand where she was or how she got there. She was covered in mud and her hands looked unfamiliar. She could not open her mouth.

From beneath water I see light.

It is morning, there is a chill in the air. They looked all night but gave up after several hours. Soon, another search party will get into their flat-bottomed boat and four men and one woman will glide slowly through the backwaters and lagoon. The woman—young, with long red hair and a white dress—will have a rooster on her lap. They will row and wait for the rooster's crow that tells everyone that they have found me.

But the rooster will not crow today. They are rowing down the wrong river.

I am applying myself to the mornings. At sunrise I wake and run onto the front lawn. The purple light is alarming. It makes the house look so old. Through the dark windows I see them walking in their heavy skirts and somber suits. I hear the low hum of their voices caught in the old brick. Every morning I wait. I apply myself to the morning. I sit patiently. It will happen. One day they will emerge from their history and speak.

“Try to remember…”

She sat on the sofa. Her eyes became heavy. She stared at the portrait of a serious young girl with big eyes in a dark dress and white collar. Something in the girl's lap glowed. The light nearly obscured the girl's face.

Each night she follows the black rocks as if nothing happened. She is both herself and a photograph. She remains these past days in several bodies. Her hands are windows. She studies the picture where someone is walking. Another soft sun. She verges on a blur. No or yes. One woman but many costumes. It is incomplete. Someone asks when she will leave. She will leave each night. They will follow.

Are you here? If you could send me a sign or give notice that you still remain. Something small. Something I can see in the atmosphere.

I am leaving this place. Everything is packed and ready to go. I have managed to trim my belongings down to one large suitcase. I feel light, as if recovered. As if I had been trampled by a herd of horses and the sharpness of the hundreds of hooves on my body has finally faded.

My ladies linger. They aren't ready. I told them over and over that today is the day. They are a swirl of chiffon and sparkles. They haven't spoken to me all week. I am standing at the threshold of their room and I am invisible to them. They are otherwise occupied with their movie star magazines, sharing secret cigarettes, removing curlers from their hair. They laugh and screech at each other.

The window darkens. The window makes me a shadow.

She was so tired. Lately, it was difficult for her to stay awake through a meal or conversation. She found she could sleep through anything and worried about perishing in a house fire, tornado, flood. Some days were entirely lost to her. It was difficult.

Her ladies tried to help through various methods of waking. They flicked cold water onto her face, they shook her shoulders, coughed loudly, yelled “Hey!” inches away from her face, slammed doors and windows. Once they waked her, they tried to keep her occupied with their dance routines and costumes, their singing and reciting, their games of cards and memory.

“Just let me rest, I need to rest,” she said. Everything ached. She felt jostled. When she looked in the mirror she couldn't recognize her face. Her features seemed altered.

Her dreams were faint and dark. Everything seemed to take place at night and through a thick fog. She felt as though she were walking through mud.

If you have the sense of someone sitting beside you, or the feeling of someone else nearby as you gaze out the window, if there is comfort in solitude, and if the solitude seems full, if there is the sensation of a cool hand upon your brow while sleeping, if your dreams seem like forgotten events from your life long ago, if there is the question of whether that shadow was something alive, if there is someone walking past who looks familiar, if this person looks into your eyes with knowing but keeps walking, and if a moment passes before your vague recognition of this person, and you suddenly stop in the middle of the sidewalk to contemplate and turn around and look for that familiar face, and if you turn around and the person you think you know has vanished, and if you continue to search for her and actually succeed, then:

A crash of cymbals, a soaring phrase of violins, a low rumble of drums. I made my way quickly down the hallway. I did not glance back once. I was looking for something strong and reliable and found nothing but the edge of winter and concrete, a path that lead down to the water.

The weak morning sun brought no warmth. I felt a headache coming on. I was so tired. It was difficult to walk when I was so tired. I kept my steps and my breath even. I counted one, two, one, two. The wind whipped my hair around my face. I was blinded by hair.

My ladies watched me leave. They stood at the window in their nightclothes, each of them holding a hand to their mouths, holding a hand to their breasts. They seemed not to know if I would come back. I did not know.

Many were taken out. The bodies. Violent shaking. The effort of water to extinguish. The bodies must be cleansed and described. Take them to the nearest house, clean their mouths and noses of mucus and froth with a feather dipped in oil. The whole is procured, is stiff and cold and moved along. Pit of pulsations, pit of agitations. Breathe into these mouths, be very patient. It is necessary to be restored. Air into lungs. A cup of hot brandy. Common salt. A robust remedy is to introduce water back into the lungs of a living person. A drowned person may be a person with the cold of living. Sudden operations and speedy shocks, gently cover with nettles, cover with warm grains. Press down on the chest. Remove what is lodged there.

In the dream I grow smaller and flame-like. Smoke glistens as I walk and decide whether to move through another tunnel. The balustrades where my ladies stand are held up by heavy metal spikes. We are so isolated. No one can remember arriving but we all continue to wait, our arms crossed over our chests, and everything we need is here.

Walk into a photograph. Enter into a real that is no longer. A time of other time. The effort to place yourself there. This is different than the real world.

Someone hands her the glove she's dropped. A flock of geese honk overhead. The traffic light switches green. Things are going forward, every car, every bird, every person, every dog, every gust of wind, every headache, heartache, sadness, every leaf, flower and insect, everything goes forward.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors who first published excerpts of this novel (sometimes in very different versions) in
1913: A Journal of Forms, Bombay Gin, Octopus, Sleeping Fish, Tarpaulin Sky, Thuggery & Grace, Trickhouse
, and
Web Conjunctions
.

Enormous gratitude and special thanks to Laura Davenport, Laird Hunt, Bin Ramke, Selah Saterstrom, and Lesley Yalen for their invaluable suggestions and insights as this book went through its many drafts, and for their continued guidance, support, and friendship.

About the Author

Sara Veglahn
is the author of three chapbooks,
from The Ladies
(
a novel excerpt
) (New Herring Press),
Closed Histories
(Noemi Press), and
Another Random Heart
(Letter Machine Editions). She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a PhD from the University of Denver. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014, text by Sara Veglahn.

ISBN: 978-1-4976-5847-9

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the MCACA.

Dzanc Books
1334 Woodbourne Street
Westland, MI 48186
www.dzancbooks.org

Distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com

FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.DZANCBOOKS.ORG

FOLLOW US:
@DzancBooks
and
Facebook.com/DzancBooks

Dzanc Books is one of a select group of
publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.