Stories About Things (3 page)

Still, even after three years of marriage,
the audacious woman would call her daughter from time to time about
some attractive (and always well-off) young gentleman she'd met at
one of her clubs. Just last night she'd suggested one.

"He can afford an entire kitchen of cooks!"
she'd argued.

"But I love Caleb," said Cora.

"Oh Cora..." she sighed. "Forget him.
Please?"

Cora hung up.

That night, like every night, she fell asleep
thinking about him and woke to the same thoughts in the morning. In
the hazy moments before fully waking she felt the weight of his
limbs wrapped around her like a comforter. Her chin rested on a
hand as big as two of her own. And against her back, his soft chest
leaned like a pillow. She felt absolutely secure. In those moments,
she shifted in and out of the pre-dawn doze. Her thoughts lifted
her up lightly, like clouds, and she rested on them in lazy
contentment. Her mind entertained only one subject.

His teeth shown like alabaster - all of them
- when he smiled, and the rose in his cheeks never paled. His arms
were heavy, but gentle; her own barely reached around his waist.
She felt tiny in his arms, but safe. And always, the scent of
spices lingered in his hair and clothes and over his skin.

The house, too, was always full of their
perfume: steak sautéing in onions and peppers, spiced tomatoes,
stuffed olives, and herbal breads. She drank in the aromas in every
breath, and at night they wrapped her up like a comfort
blanket.

"I must remember to get cumin for the chili
tonight" she reminded herself before the shifting half dreams swept
her away again.

But as she drifted off, a lead dart punctured
the clouds she lay upon.

The smile she remembered had faded and the
cheeks dulled.

That day there had been no dinner.

Beans sat soaking on the stove but the soup
was never made.

The hospital had a dining room but it was not
the same.

She could not have eaten anyway with the
elephantine weight crushing her chest. Even breathing was hard.
Each breath seemed insufficient to sustain her until the next. The
blanched waiting room was like a lifer's cell; she could not
imagine the world outside it. Hours and hours pressed in on it
until it seemed no bigger than a closet. Beneath the petrifiction
that gripped her body, a tremor shook her heart.

Only when the news came did the scalding
tears fall from her frozen lids.

They were tears of relief: Caleb had
survived.

She vaguely remembered that there was a
person in the other car and that they didn't make it, but that
seemed inconsequential. Seeing her husband's face, the smile only a
little less broad, sent the drips from her eyes cascading onto his
gown and blanket. The color returning to his face lit up the room
for her like a torch.

When he walked again they walked together,
always. When he cooked she stood over his shoulder watching and
learning his secrets. When she shopped, they walked hand in hand
down the aisles picking out the perfect ingredients. And at night
she could smell the spices in her own hair.

Again her thoughts were like clouds, As
wakefulness crept upon her she kept her eyes closed still wrapped
in the delicious memories. Not for long though, for they could not
tempt her from the real thing.

But today he was not beside her when she
opened her eyes. As her mind woke fully to the daylight, the weight
of his arms and the warmth of his body disappeared. But as she
looked at his neatly made up side of the bed, she smiled at his
attention to detail.

Oh how much tidier he is than other
men,
she thought

However, when she sat up, he was not there,
and no sound from the bathroom or downstairs betrayed his presence.
The silence buzzed obtrusively and the room felt strangely empty.
The dresser top was cleared off, and only her dresses hung in the
closet. Then her eyes fell on a box, half packed by the door.
Caleb's comb lay inside, and a tie pocked over one side.

"Where are you going?: she called to the
house.

The empty room yawned around her like a
mouth. Legs with just a hint of tremors sought the floor. Down the
empty hallways she walked and the great mouth opened further to
encompass the whole house. She peered around each doorway
cautiously as if it were a tooth threatening to chomp down. Staring
down the stairs, she saw a slide that would whisk her away to its
dark end. She went down anyway and stood in the dim foyer.
Stretching her eyes, she tried to see the familiar hulking shape
dozing on the couch or coming around the kitchen door. A fluttering
hand touched the light switch, but as the room brightened the only
shapes that resolved were the tall bookshelves, the fireplace and
the furniture. On the fireplace mantle there was a curious vase
without flowers or clippings. She walked to it and stared at her
face in the polished brass. It had a lid which she lifted with one
hand.

Grey ashes the color of his sparkling eyes
stared up at her. The lid crashed to the hearth chipping the stone.
Her shoulders drew together so tightly they ached. Fingered pressed
on her brow as new memories tumbled over her, supplanting
fantasy.

Again, she remembered.

Again, the morning woke her to the memory
she'd fallen asleep to.

Only the hearth, chipped in hundreds of
places, where the urn's lid had crashed down again and again, knew
many times the memory had been forced back on her.

Another crash made her twitch and before she
could stop herself she called his name.

"Caleb?"

Then she felt herself blush and looked away
in disappointment as her mother walked in. Cora stared at the urn
before two manicured hands swept it away.

"Why do you stare at that like he's still
here? You should be moving on, forgetting the past. That's how you
deal with it dear; it's what they all say."

Cora had not found her mother's pop
psychology advice helpful in the least and ignored it now. She was
silent as her mother moved about the room brushing off tabletops
and straightening rugs She'd hidden the urn behind the
bookshelves.

"Honey, it's been three years. Honestly,
sometimes it's like you don't even know he's gone."

Cora didn't listen, she was still trying to
crawl away from the real memories. But they chased her down. Her
mind sat in the hospital waiting room--it really was a cell now.
Still waiting, waiting, waiting. But they wouldn't come home
together. She didn't look at her mother.

"Now, this one's a real gentleman so try not
to scare him away before the second date, okay?"

Date?
Cora flinched.
Not again. Not
Again!

Her mind crawled faster, away from the
memories of her mothers matchmaking attempts. She didn't know
whether her mother did this to remind her that Caleb was dead, or
to remind her of all the men she could have agreed to marry instead
.

"And please tell me you've cleared out his
things. The last thing he needs to see is another man's clothes in
your room. Come on now he'll be here soon."

"He?"

"Your date, hon. His name is Chris."

That wasn't the "he" she was thinking
about.

"Go get dressed, honey! He'll be here soon, I
told him to come for brunch."

She was tired, and didn't have the strength
to fight this. Without a word or thought, she went and dressed.

When the doorbell rang she opened it and she
looked into a pair of brown eyes. But all she could see was grey
ashes.

Standing in the living room, not listening to
her mother's chatter she looked at the new pair of eyes. They
seemed disembodied–they had no body that Cora could see, anyway.
She could not have said whether he were tall or short or handsome
or repulsive. It didn't matter.

The brown eyes swept over the shelves full of
cookbooks.

"Do you cook?" he asked hopefully.

"No." she said. "I don't"

S
EVEN

Those shoes!

To kiss those shoes... To bend over them,
brush a cheek against the jade toes... Velour? Velvet? Oh to caress
that fabric and find out! Just the shoes... Just the shoes.

The skirts don't match.

Yellow petals brush the green toes. Each
layer is translucent in the sun, but hung together, the piece is
opaque. Like a daffodil.

A slender yellow stalk sways above the skirt.
Dress... a dress, not a skirt.

"Don't take a pretty book home just cuz it's
pretty," Mom always said, "and a girl neither."

Somewhere above the shoes, above the dress,
there are eyes.

The flower smiles.

Not at him.

The flower has brown eyes, a bright brown,
almost-red. They smile. They don't shine
in
the sun. They
shine
at
the sun. A street sign, a bus shelter, a sidewalk,
cement cubicles a hundred feet high--a daffodil grows at their
feet. Oh to look into those eyes and see them looking back!

But no, he couldn't bear it.

Don't look. Don't look...
But it's
like hoping the sun doesn't shine.
Look. Please look.

They do.

Our children will have those eyes.

The sun is dumb beside them... shining down
stupid on the grey world. No understanding, no discretion, bright
only in color. But the eyes in the flower are bright. Intelligent.
Looking on the world, smart and kind. The street sign, the bus
shelter, the sidewalk, the cement cubicles--the flower makes sense
of it all.

The eyes say so.

So much in two eyes in a flower. So much...
Our children... our children will have them. Our children could be
doctors with those eyes. Lawyers, or inventors or scholars. Those
eyes could make a president.

"Don't take a pretty book home just cuz it's
pretty," Mom said.

"Why do you comb your hair so careful for the
interview?" he asked.

"First impressions count."

First impressions count.

How? How... To hear the flower speak! But
how? How...

The daffodil sways in the breeze, sways
away... away.

Stop!

No, that's not it. Maybe...

Hello. Are you lost? I can help you--

But she might say no.

What beautiful shoes--What's you're
name?...Does that come with a number?

No.

Hi, I'm lost, do you know where I can find a
map?

How... how to speak to a flower? to hear it
speak back?

The shoes disappear around the corner.

"Wait!"

Where ... ?

"Wait! What's you're name? I like your–your
shoes are–"

Already gone, already gone.

Part II. Fairies and Things: things of other
worlds...

ONE

“Never, never look into the sun. Don’t ever.
There are creatures in there, a fairy relative of the salamander,
and the sun is their circle. They don’t much like being looked at,
and if they catch you staring, they’ll snatch you up and carry you
off through their fiery ring, which is just as dangerous as any
fairy circle on the ground.”

Sal’s grandmother always warned him like this
when she caught him looking. His mother said this was silly, and he
was old enough not to be scared by fairy stories. If he looked into
the sun, she told him, he would go blind, and that was that.

He never understood how someone could say
that– “Don’t look at it.” People looked. If they could, they did.
Sometimes, Sal thought, if he wasn’t paying attention he could turn
off his hearing so when the lawnmower was going while he was
reading he wouldn’t even notice. He could turn off his nose too by
breathing through his mouth. Touch was a sense that everyone
ignored unless it was too bad or too good. Taste was the same. But
he could only turn off his sight by closing his eyes, and he
couldn’t go around like that. He had to look. He didn’t know how
not to. If he could see something, he would.

He tried telling his mother and grandmother
this.

“You keep your eyes on this world,” his
grandmother would say. “No, you don’t go looking into others, or
looking
for
them either.”

“You’ll go blind,” his mother would repeat.
“Why can’t you just look at something else?”

Sal looked at the sun anyway, but only when
it was dark orange and low in the sky. He would try to look when it
was high up and yellow, but it hurt his eyes. When the sun was
setting, he liked to make pictures out of the patterns it cast on
the clouds. When there were big, puffy clouds, they looked like
orange sheep prancing about a fiery pasture. When there were thin
stripes of clouds, they looked like rivers of flame running into
the sun – or maybe they were running out. Sometimes he saw eagles,
or herds of horses, or people, or creatures he had no name for.

Today, the clouds were patchy, some
voluminous, some thin and wispy, all criss-crossing all over each
other. Squinting into the aerial landscape, Sal began to make out
shapes in the clouds about the setting sun. He saw hills and fields
and rivers and even a forest.

There were animals today, too, but they were
in the smaller fields and he couldn’t tell what they were. Sheep
maybe, but you had to be careful with clouds; when they were all
white and puffy, they always looked like sheep. In fact, as he
looked closer, straining his eyes to the field closest to the sun,
he thought the herd was more cow shaped than anything. Their heads
were square and he thought he could see longer tails on some of
them.