The Crossings

by Deborah Larsen

  “I have.” And then she said, “While you’re here,” and pointed to her one of her two narrow bookcases. “I’ve even started doing experiments.”

  He turned. “Experiments.”

  On a shelf at eye-level was a tall glass jar. Standing next to books by Sebald—Vertigo, The Rings of Saturn—it had a red lid with holes punched in it and it contained greenery.

  Jack stepped over to the jar, took off his glasses, and stooped to examine it. Then he said, “The larvae of the White-lined Sphinx Moth.”

  “Yes. I gathered some up. They were on my jasmine and so I put them in here with some of the jasmine twigs and the leaves they were eating. Uh—an experiment. I was hoping for pupae.”

  Polly said, “Poop-ae is right. Look at the bottom of that jar. Thick with poop.” Sophie couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

  Jack straightened and looked at her. He put his glasses back on.

  “Uh—I suppose you might think it funny that I did this.”

  “No,” he said. Then the slender bookcase at the other end of her study caught his eye.

  Here three white ramekins sat on three mismatched china saucers—mismatched save for a common theme of tangled ivies of different sizes and varying greens. In the ramekins, seeds of different shapes floated in water.

  Sophie said, “An experiment.”

  Jack turned back to the larvae. “Two things,” he said. “These larvae create their pupae underground. They burrow. And they have a drive to move. They cross stretches of sand; they cross roadways.”

  Sophie said, “Oh, they do? A drive to move?”

  Right.

  That evening she took her jar outside, unscrewed the lid, tipped it, and released the larvae. Her heart went out to them and she told them to go. “Move. Enjoy moving. Go and do something to the earth.”

  When she came back inside, Polly said, “That Jack man, that Jack, has weirdness in his body.”

  “What?”

  “Cells-gone-wild. Smelly cells. I can smell them. Running around in his body. Trouble-bubbling. Whereas I smelled it when he was in the house for so long. Didn’t you smell it?”

  “You’re making that up. You don’t like him.”

  Forbidden Pleasure

  Perfume. No one knew how much Sophie loved it. And now it was practically forbidden in her new environs. A forbidden pleasure. Worse than smoking.

  There were signs everywhere:

  “For the sake of our patients, please refrain from wearing scents of any kind in the waiting room.”

  “This exercise facility is perfume-free.”

  “Many people at our church have respiratory ailments and allergies, so please refrain from wearing perfumes or scents to worship.”

  There was a point to all this; Sophie had seen one obituary where a nurse practitioner had allegedly died of complications from an allergic reaction to perfume. If she persisted in wearing perfume here, she could see herself walking into University Medical Center and settling into a chair: an elderly man would rise, clutch his throat and fall over dead in an instant. In JJ Agave, people would topple over, one after the other, left and right at her approach as if they were on a parade ground in the summer heat.

  But the East, she wagered, didn’t care. Sometimes, Sophie found herself yearning to be back in New York, in Washington—Soho, Times Square, The Metropolitan; Foggy Bottom, The National Zoo, Georgetown. There, in New York, in Washington, in elevators, in board rooms, in Senate bathrooms, in bistros, on the trains she could find everything—every scent—everywhere, on many people.

  Sophie wanted to enter that East Coast cloud; the cloud of smells oriental, floral, woodsy, musky. Once again she could be jolted out of her own tired ruminations into diverse realms of pure fragrance; perfume had the same effect she had now from opening The New York Times on her computer. They were both, for her, the clouds of knowing and unknowing that lifted her right out of herself.

  But no wearing of perfume around town. And then she had a thought. She was in her own house at the moment. So long as she was here she could wear perfume. And with that and knowing she had no errands to do that day, she went into the bathroom and sprayed herself from her neck to her toes with the last of her favorite perfume

  She even sprayed her knees. The seven-year-old Isabelle had once said after church that she thought the soul was located in the area of the knees.

  Polly sneezed and then she coughed, but Sophie ignored her. She looked at her mistress balefully. Did she remember that Charles knew well that dogs do not like perfume?

  A Gift, Not a Murder

  Sophie thought about Charles’s theory and the processes that shaped all species. She thought about change and difference.

  She thought about what Jack must have learned to identify a Botteri’s Sparrow, distinguish it from Cassin’s. Now she had a Droid and an iBird Pro application which she had to discipline herself to use sparingly; otherwise, her project would go by the wayside.

  She saw that he needed to know its range, its song, its coloration, that it had an unmarked throat and breast. That it did not have white tips on the outer tail feathers. That the singing with the trill at the end late in the breeding season meant it could well be Botteri’s.

  If there were no novelty and no suffering and death in creation, in evolution, then there would be no Botteri’s to behold. Change was the constant after that first expansion of space 13.8 billion years ago. No continuing change, Sophie thought, then nothing moves. True, nobody gets hurt; but then nobody exists—including those small bodies called sparrows.

  No Botteri songs, no range, no faint eyeline, no buff-gray throat, no throat at all. No rounded-wings, no pink-gray legs—no pink and no gray for that matter. It would have no preferred habitats such as grasslands, savannas, and desert scrub—there would be no such habitats.

  At last, at the end, species were mutable and this was the condition of growth. This was a gift, not a murder. Theology, until now, had not been ready to receive the gift.

  Charles had drawn near, he had looked—even when he felt ill—and he had done something to the earth. And he had changed Sophie’s life. She had shucked off her Catholic fear of the world and drawn closer to all that exists. Just as Charles with the infinite patience of a creator in his fierce passion for a new creation had shucked nuts and peas; a dexterous removing of husks, pods, shells. For the sake of the new. For the sake of the novel.

  For this, a certain humility was crucial. Humility in the face of the novel.

  Katharina von Bora and Alan Greenspan

  And I’m thinking about a separation from Lily.” Michael had phoned to ask if he could come over for a few minutes.

  They sat across from each other in Sophie’s living room. She stared at him. “A separation.”

  “And I’m leaving Green Valley for a while.”

  “Leaving.”

  “That’s right. And I’m taking Katharina von Bora with me.”

  She had discovered that it was not out of fussiness that Michael never shortened his dog’s name when he referred to her. He simply liked, the first time he had read of her, the sound of the language that was her name.

  Katharina von Bora, Sophie learned, had always been fascinated with Alan Greenspan. She later ignored Ben Bernanke but every time Mr. Greenspan had appeared on television, Katharina von Bora went right to the screen and sat down to watch him. When his appearance was over, she grew bored and trotted away. Would she miss seeing Alan when she was on the road?

  “Michael.”

  “Yes?”

  “Michael. Why?”

  “I need to get out of here.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you told Lily?”

  Michael lifted his hand and rubbed one side of his face. “You ask a lot of questions all of a s
udden, Sophie, for somebody who mostly listens. Do you think I’m an idiot? Of course I’ve told Lily.”

  He drew back a little. He was warning her not to ask what Lily thought.

  “Have you tried counseling?” He held up his hands: stop.

  She tried a different tack. “Maybe you could try some other church, Michael.”

  “Oh God,” he said. “Now? Not now. Not right now. But by the way, you yourself might like St. Philip’s. I mentioned it to you before. The one across from the Plaza. Michael considered for a moment. “Uh—Jack goes there.”

  “I did go there once for foot-washing. But what did you just say? Did you say that Jack goes there to church?”

  “I did. But he doesn’t usually talk about it. Then, of course, he doesn’t talk about much of anything.”

  “Oh.”

  Just before he left, he turned to her. “So.” he said.

  “So?”

  “What did you think?”

  “What did I think of what?”

  “My sermon.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “I realized you would never comment without my asking.”

  “Well, then, I thought—I thought it was too much for them all at once.”

  “I only had one goddamned shot at it, Sophie. And I knew I’d be out of there afterwards.”

  “It was still too much. Think of your audience. You can’t say all of what you think all at once to people. You can’t do it all at once: you can’t throw out hell and talk about taking sledgehammers to certain structures all at the same—”

  “Yes, I can. And I did.” Michael’s cheeks had turned a blotchy red. “And you. What about you? You’re on the other end. Too little. You say way too little about what you think. You know what you do? You keep yourself at bay. It’s trying to be judicious but it also has a tinge of being smug.”

  Now Sophie flushed. Smugness was one of the things that drove her crazy in others. She had seen enough of it in some bureaucrats and in academic life and in churches and in a few of the aggressive unchurched to last her a lifetime.

  “I’m not saying you’re smug. But I’m saying be careful. Or, rather, I’m saying don’t be so careful all the time.”

  “And I have something to say, Michael. I think you are depressed. Discouraged. A little off balance. That’s why I started to bring up—”

  He turned and he walked out and he actually slammed Sophie’s front door. Sophie went after him and opened the door.

  “Don’t you slam my front door, Michael, goddammit. Slam your own front door, not mine.”

  I have sworn at a clergy person.

  Right.

  That Vile Trogon

  Hello, we can’t come to the phone right now. If you wish to leave a message, please do so after the beep.

  Sophie had come back from the post office and now looked up from her toast. She was so absorbed in her reading that she had taken to not answering the telephone at all.

  “Sophie. Jack. The listserv this morning says that you might be able to see an Elegant Trogon about 225 meters up from the Wrightson picnic area. It’s apparently a solo trogon, a male.” A pause. “That is—unmated. I’m going. Call me back if you want to meet me up there. I’ll be leaving in half an hour.”

  Unmated. How did the listserv reporter, the person who measured in meters, know that the trogon was single? Sophie wanted to see this bird, who appears on the front flap of The Sibley Guide to Birds.

  But Jack. His presence, his very bigness, his brief phone calls were a huge distraction. Not to speak of his silences. She couldn’t read him. “I don’t want to read him,” she said to Polly. “I’m not going.”

  Polly said, “Good. Who wants to see an old Elegant Trogon. Trogons smell like moldy old sawdust.”

  Jack was also retrieving his mail. He looked over at her and said, “How’s Darwin?”

  “Fine. Did you see the trogon?”

  “I did.”

  Sophie waited to hear more but Jack only nodded and said, “I’m off to Tucson.” He walked back toward his house. Was he angry? When she came in with her own mail, Polly said, “I smell that man out there.”

  “He was merely getting his mail.”

  “Did he see that vile Trogon?”

  “He did.”

  “Well?”

  “He said nothing about it.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hmm,” Polly said. And after a few minutes she said, “It’s all right.”

  Her dear face now rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running down stairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me, her whole form radiant with the pleasure of giving pleasure… . So, again, she would at almost anytime spend half-an-hour in arranging my hair, “making it,” as she called it, “beautiful,” or in smoothing, the poor dear darling, my collar or cuffs, in short in fondling me. She liked being kissed; indeed every expression in her countenance beamed with affection & kindness, & all her habits were influenced by her loving disposition.

  … .

  All her movements were vigorous, active, & unusually graceful: when going round the sand-walk with me, although I walked fast, yet she often used to go before pirouetting in the most elegant way, her dear face bright all the time, with the sweetest smiles.

  … .

  In the last short illness, her conduct in simple truth was angelic; she never once complained; never became fretful; was ever considerate of others; & was thankful in the most gentle, pathetic manner for everything done for her. When so exhausted that she could hardly speak, she praised everything that was given her, & said some tea “was beautifully good.” When I gave her some water, she said “I quite thank you”; & these, I believe were the last precious words ever addressed by her dear lips to me. . . .We have lost the joy of the Household, and the solace of our old age:— she must have known how we loved her; oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still & shall ever love her dear joyous face. Blessings on her.— April 30. 1851. 17

  —‘Our poor child, Annie’

  [Darwin’s reminiscence of Anne Elizabeth Darwin]

  Monstrous

  At six in the morning, Darwin’s ten-year-old daughter Annie vomited “badly.” The liquid was an intense green.

  Then she seemed to relax. The fever left her.

  Her father noted then that he was “foolish with delight” at what they hoped was a rally. He wrote that he imagined her up and “making custards (whirling round) as, I think, she called them.”

  After two more days, she died.

  Did his skeptical thoughts about a traditional God stiffen after his daughter’s death? From what Sophie read in various and contradictory accounts, there was no real way of proving that.

  To her own way of thinking, death must not have been a personal affront in Darwin’s family. Wouldn’t it be monstrous to think that if there was a traditional God, that God might at least spare their children, the children of the British upper class?

  That concept, that figure of God is more like an obelisk—the monolith or the dagger. Capricious, that God was; thin and hard and anthropomorphic; not the God beyond all Gods.

  The traditional notion of God, Sophie wanted to tell someone, is not enough for me, either. But that old figure-in-the-sky still crept unbidden into her own consciousness.

  It was hard to shake. It clung to her like a gila monster might cling in biting. It wouldn’t let go. There are folktales about trying to detach the monsters—who generally avoid people— from arms or legs by waiting until night comes or waiting until it thunders.

  Apparently, staff in emergency rooms have indeed seen the gila monster still attached to the patient. Methods for dealing with this include prying its jaws open with a stick or a metal instrument, putting a flame under its chin, and/or submerging
it in cold water.

  Gila monsters were peanuts, though, petty change compared to rattlesnakes and bark scorpions. Children are especially vulnerable to the latter.

  What did you do to treat for a scorpion bite or sting? What do you do when you see a child in respiratory distress with her limbs thrashing and with involuntary eye movements? Sophie had once looked on the University of Arizona website and learned that these symptoms were characteristic. The website she found was the Viper Institute. At the Viper Institute you learn how people swing into action.

  Both children and adults were walking along the world’s streets suffering from such eye movements, such thrashings—the humiliations, the anxieties, the paralysis of doubt that stops breaths. Things that were mostly psychological, mostly invisible.

  How about swinging into action to help with the mental and emotional distress caused by fear of a vengeful, continually judging, and punishing God? That caricature was as primitive as the gila monster or the bark scorpion looked.

  The faithful needed the gumption and energy of dedicated doctors. Bring the stick, the fire, and the water into sanctuaries and go at it. Don’t wait for nightfall or thunder.

  You talk big, Sophie said to herself. Think about Michael. What if you were a clergy person? And your salary depended on the congregation. And what would you say when faced with the real teeth in the mouth of the gila monster—all the suffering and pain and mental illness in the world’s history. What are you, Sophie Nordlund, going to do about it? What are you going to do to show the face of compassion, justice and mercy.

  Headed Toward Death

  Sophie sat in her study meditating, if not praying. In the east, just a shred of a cloud this morning above the foothills of the Santa Ritas. The shred the grayish-white color of the kittiwake’s quill feathers. Now, even as she watched, a hidden sun began to rise. Sophie had heard somewhere that there was a Cloud Society and she had recently joined it, if only for the sheer love of its name.