The Sadness of Spirits

by Aimee Pogson

  I haven’t thought about what I want to say, and so when it’s my turn I hesitate for a moment. “You don’t have to share,” Hilary says. “Sharing is optional.”

  The other participants turn toward me. They are mostly women in various stages of their lives, and I imagine that regardless of their life experiences, they are united in their judgment of me. I am less than. I am the woman who must be blind. And I am in their therapeutic cooking class.

  “It’s all right,” I say. “When I was in high school I took a childhood development class, and we had to take care of an egg. You know, one of those hard-boiled eggs that you draw a face on and pretend it’s a child. Mine had a big smile, and I also drew it a tie. Anyway, I dropped it and failed the project.” I shrug. “That was a pretty sad day.”

  The other women stare at me, unsure if I’m crazy or mocking them, and I feel like I should add more, but the words are no longer there. Instead, I see the egg on the ground, cracks radiating from its broken middle. I set it on top of the car so I could get my bag out. I turned my back for only a minute.

  One minute. The shortest longest space of time that ever was.

  I’m worried someone is going to ask a question, probe a little deeper, but luckily Hilary turns to the next person, asks her to share, and I stare into my lap. I wonder what a broken egg can be paired with to make it better. My first kiss? My first high school dance?

  When I look up I see one of the women watching me. Her hair is fine and gray, and she is wearing big grandmotherly glasses despite the fact that she is probably too young for them. She smiles slightly when she catches my gaze, and I smile back, reflexively. She’s probably seen me on the news. She knows that an egg is not just an egg, and she wants to know more.

  She won’t. Not tonight. I work alone, stirring sweet and sour sauce, concentrating on each swipe of the spoon, hoping that the meditation of meals will transport me to a state of mind that is far, far away from my own.

  The following day I am out on the water with Clark, my boating partner, conducting random safety inspections, ensuring that boaters have all the necessary safety items: flares, lights, life vests for everyone on board. For the most part, the inspections go well. The people are polite. They have what they need with a few exceptions. The September sky is blue, and my mind drifts to memories of Miles. We first dated under a September sky. We got married under a September sky.

  The cool air brings back sensations of peach picking, drinking white wine.

  I am remembering a place where Danny is not, and the realization startles me. Just like that, he is back: swimming in his wading pool, pulling his dinosaur hood over his eyes and pretending to roar, scattering Legos across the living room floor for us to step on.

  I close my eyes against the sunlight and wonder what this means. Can a mother truly forget? Is there a part of me that can exist separate from grief?

  “Are you all right?” Clark asks. “Is it another headache?”

  I feel a surge of affection for this man who would think to ask about my well-being. We’ve worked together enough for me to confide to him about the pain that rattles me, the way I often can’t sleep at night. He is sometimes slow and clumsy, a dangerous combination on a boat, but I don’t mind. “No,” I say, forcing a smile. “I was just thinking.”

  I turn my attention to the water, the waves that move as if guided by a hand, catching the sunlight and shredding it into a million sparkling shivers. There are sights that will comfort you if you let them, that allow you to feel as if there is something more than what meets the eye. I remember a story my dad once told where he asked his great-aunt if there was a god and she pointed to the autumn trees, the fall sky, and said how could there not be?

  How could there not be? How could there be? There are so many contradictions.

  “Hey,” Clark says, interrupting my thoughts. “My girlfriend just sent me a text saying she’s dropping off my lunch. Do you mind if we go back to shore?”

  I don’t mind, and a few minutes later I’m waiting as the boat’s motor thrums beneath me. Clark’s the kind of person who can’t pick up a lunch without saying hello, inquiring into the other person’s day, and I have time to kill. I think about the cooking class and what we might prepare next. I think about the dish that might hopefully be good enough to bring home to Miles, the dish that might make him smile and set him talking.

  That’s when I spot an aluminum fishing boat resting too low in the water and think: people would ruin a moment like this.

  The boat is propelled by a small motor, and though it’s moving, it’s not going especially fast. Still, Clark could spend a small eternity talking to his girlfriend, and who knows what kind of shenanigans these people are trying to pull on the lake. I weigh the options and decide to approach them alone. It’s against the rules, but as far as I’m concerned rules are arbitrary. Nothing ever follows a plan, so why should I?

  I pull up next to the boat, flash my badge, and list the items I need to see. Already I can tell the boat is over its weight limit. Three aging men with hair in various shades of gray and white and mottled in-betweens have positioned themselves on exactly one fishing chair and two upturned fishing buckets. Dried blood stains the boat’s floor, and a listless fish floats in the one bucket that is right side up.

  “You don’t have any right to search our boat,” the man on the chair says. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “I have every right to search your boat.” I keep my voice low and contained as I always do in situations like this. Overhead, a seagull swoops and swerves. Beyond us, the lake stretches like a silent goliath, and I imagine it consuming these men, their bodies becoming yet more debris for us to fish out.

  “Why don’t you pretend like you didn’t even see us?” The man grins to his buddies. “Let us go on our merry way.”

  “There’s no need to make this difficult. I just need to see your flares, your lights, and your life vests.”

  “What if we don’t have life vests? What if we said we were just going to swim to shore?”

  They speak the language of measured ignorance I grew up with: Boys who defied teachers and came to school in the orange and camo of their morning escapades. The male patrons of the diner I worked at as a teenager while saving up money for college. “What are you going to do after you graduate?” they asked me as they smoked cigars and cigarettes and drank cup after cup of coffee.

  “I’d like to go to college and major in biology,” I said, all honesty.

  “Right,” they said and laughed. “Someday you’ll know what women are good for.”

  I see those men now in the presence of these fishermen, and the anger of those afternoons waiting tables rushes back, makes my hair stand on end. I stay calm, though. I keep my voice low and collected. “If you don’t show me your life vests right now,” I say, “I’ll have to write you a ticket.”

  “Write us a ticket, then,” the man says. “We don’t have life vests.”

  I pull out my tablet and pen. “Can you give me your name, please?”

  “Simon,” says the man to the laughter of the others. “Simon says leave us alone. Why don’t you run on home where you belong?”

  “I need your real name please.” I wish Clark was here, but at the same time I don’t. I don’t want him witnessing this ridiculousness. I don’t want him to immediately take control of this situation just by virtue of being a man.

  “I’m giving you two seconds,” I say, making eye contact with each and every one of them. “Then I will be writing you an additional ticket just for being difficult.”

  “She’s going to punish us more.” The men laugh. “She’s going to write another ticket.”

  I close my tablet. I’m done trying to write these assholes a ticket. “Fine,” I say, which according to Miles is a dangerous word, the most dangerous of them all. “I’ll be finding your bloated bodies washed up on shore, then. Your wives and I will dance on your graves.”

  They are quiet, stu
nned by this unexpected insult, the bitterness in my voice. Then, as if in slow motion, the leader of the group leans forward and spits directly in my face.

  I am in the closet, my wine glass nestled on the floor, and I am going through box after box until I find my old paints and canvas. I have never been spat on before, and in retrospect I think I handled it well. While the men laughed, I slipped my hand into my sleeve and wiped away the spit, being careful not to make any contact. Who knows what kind of diseases a spitter might carry? Then I took down a description of the boat and the three men in it to pass on to the authorities. I said nothing. Why waste words on a lost cause?

  Then I went home and poured myself a large glass of wine. Miles raised his eyebrows, but I ignored him. He’s never approved of my drinking, even though I like a glass only every once in a while, mainly on the days I’ve been spat on.

  Most of the paints are dried up, leaving me with canary yellow, lime green, and sky blue, despicable colors, but I guess they’ll do. I carry the paints back downstairs, spread them around me on the kitchen table, and pick up a brush.

  I have no idea what to paint. While I’ve always enjoyed art and taken some painting classes here and there, I’ve never considered myself especially creative. That link between the heart and the canvas that some people seem to possess has never existed in me. I float in my own lonely cloud.

  I begin with yellow. I paint a canary-yellow oval and begin filling it in. Miles leans over my shoulder, tracking my progress. “What’s that supposed to be?” he asks.

  “I don’t know yet.” I open the green, try blending the two colors together. I’m left with a very rotten mess.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asks.

  “I just feel like it.” I don’t see why I have to explain myself, especially when we once called ourselves soul mates and vowed to understand each other.

  He sits down across from me and takes a sip of my so-sinful wine. “You feel some strange things,” he says.

  I don’t answer. He has no idea.

  The silence falls around us, and I wonder why we don’t listen to music anymore. We should pull out our old CDs, hook up the CD player, but I can’t bring myself to move or to speak this request to Miles, who is adept with household electronics. As oppressive as the silence is, it’s sacred and I need to immerse myself in it even when the less disciplined part of me wants music, singing, dancing.

  “How was work today?” Miles asks.

  I’m surprised he’s asking, but I say, “It was fine.”

  “There’s that word. What happened?”

  “Someone spit on me.”

  “Someone spit on you?”

  “He was upset about his ticket.” I neglect to mention the wife-dancing-on-his-grave part.

  “I don’t understand that.”

  Miles wouldn’t understand because he’s never been angry, at least not angry in a way I can relate to. He believes time can heal pain. Cooking can erase sorrow. People can accept with dignity what destiny doles out to them. Meanwhile, there is so much that’s not to be understood: three men tempting an unpredictable lake without life jackets, a man spitting on a woman who just wants to help, people interfering in a life that isn’t theirs. Spitting. Touching. Pushing. Taking.

  A little boy could be on the front lawn one moment. The next he could be gone.

  A world is a big place, and a little boy could be anywhere. We could construct a map, search all the places, but it would do no good. There are too many rooms, basements, secret places.

  And where does that leave us? How do two people move on when a child could still be alive, could still be clinging to thoughts of the past?

  “Are you going to report him?” Miles asks.

  I shrug. “I took down the boat information, but I didn’t turn it in. I kind of lost my temper with him. Sometimes I just don’t understand why people can’t show some respect.”

  “To you?”

  “Not to me.” I don’t know how to put it, and so I paint grass around my rotten egg. I paint a sky. “I’m not very good at this.” And by this, I mean everything.

  “You’re doing fine. I’m going to start dinner.”

  “Do you need my help?”

  “No. Keep painting.”

  I listen to his movements in the kitchen, the clattering of spoons and silverware, running water in the sink, and I think there’s too much space here, I need to see him. They are wild thoughts that overtake and make my heart skip a beat, but I focus my attention on the egg. I add black magic marker eyes and a wry smile. I add a lime-green tie.

  Humpty Dumpty.

  Humpty Dumpty with a stomach bug.

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Attendants of a doomed undertaking. Failing to put the pieces together again.

  There is too much symbolism in an egg, especially when I pair it with my child. Eggs and fertility and birth and boys growing up with nursery rhymes. All the fractured parts of my life. Once upon a time, parents had as many children as they could stand so that if they lost one there would be a replacement. Broken pieces could be stitched over.

  I’m not sure I will ever have a child again.

  My first may still be out there somewhere.

  This could be a pairing, too: Humpty Dumpty and hope. I could serve it with pancakes and sausages, little breakfast links, but that feels unnatural to me. At heart, I am practical. I know clouds cause rain and all that I love will die. I’m not easily fooled by words like hope and optimism and joy and brighter tomorrows.

  I am out walking the peninsula. I was supposed to be on boat duty with Clark, but Clark told our supervisor about the spitting incident under the guise of helping me. “You’re under a lot of stress,” he said. “A break can help.” I was told to stay on dry land and check for fishing violations. I am sure more consequences are coming, but not today and today is all I’m concerned about. For once my head feels fine, and I am taking one step after another, enjoying the trees and grass, the quiet that occurs in the slow time after summer and before the cold of late fall and winter.

  When I get home, I will turn on the radio and make Miles his favorite meal.

  I will take another cooking class. This time not for therapy, but to learn, to make casseroles and breads and soups that are actually edible.

  I will protect this park for all it’s worth because it’s a rare, beautiful thing.

  I turn the corner, and my thoughts are interrupted by a familiar man fishing alone. He is one of the men from the overcrowded fishing boat, not the one who spat on me, but his friend. His back is to me, but I recognize his gray hair curling at the nape of his neck, the green John Deere hat with the fishing license hanging off the back, the big blue cooler filled with his latest catch.

  I could turn around now and he would never know I was here, but I’m not the kind of person to walk away from my job. I approach him quietly, waiting until the very last moment to speak and disrupt the calm that has descended on me. No matter what I do, it seems, there’s always some event that draws me back to the anger that has gripped me.

  Not today, though. I focus on the waves lapping against the beach, the birds calling in the trees. The middle of September. A crisp day of blue.

  “I’m from the PA Fish and Boat Commission,” I say, stepping up beside him. “I need to see your fishing license.”

  He turns and grins wildly when he recognizes me. “You again,” he says. “I thought you would have given up after the first time.”

  I’m not sure why I would give up or where I would go. I’m just as much a failure in other aspects of my life as I am here, but I try not to think about it. Waves, I think. Birds.

  He takes his hat off, flings it at me, and I catch it clumsily. I can feel that burning sensation deep in the pit of my stomach, but I push it away and turn the hat over in my hands, reading the license. “Thank you,” I say, handing the hat back to him. “Now I’ll need to see any fish you’ve caught.”

  He studies me, still
grinning, and for a moment I think he’s going to fight me on this. I will have to wrestle him for the cooler just because he can’t manage to show me the one or two fish he’s happened to reel in. I’m not slow. I know the fishing hasn’t been great around here and there’s no way he’s over the legal limit.

  But he surprises me. “Sure,” he says and pushes the cooler toward me. He lifts the lid and inside is one of the smallest perch I’ve seen in a long time, resting at the bottom of the cooler, its gills moving feebly.

  I pull out my tape measure, make my verdict official. “This fish is under the required length,” I say. “You’re going to have to throw it back.”

  He continues to smile, and I don’t understand. I don’t understand malicious fishermen who only need to follow the rules. I don’t understand people who slow down in front of yards, scoop up kids, and take them away. I don’t understand need. The greed of taking a fish that’s too small, a child who isn’t yours. The crushing of vegetation. The spitting. The attitude. The voyeurism.

  I just want to be happy again. I just want my son to grow up kind.

  Still smiling, he pulls the perch from the cooler, drops it on the ground, and crushes it under his boot. I hear the crunching of bones, real or imagined, and the day swims before me. “There,” he says, stepping away. “Now maybe it’s the right length.”

  I can’t move. I want to rip him to pieces, but I don’t have the required strength or claws or sharp teeth. His eyes, his lips are fragile, and I could lunge for them, but the seconds pass by, and he laughs quietly while the fish rests silently on the ground, its organs crushed, its eyes blank.

  There are two ways I can go here, and I feel that everything hinges on this moment.

  I step forward and it’s not the man I go for, but the fish. I lift its broken body carefully, balance it in my hands, and walk to the edge of the water. In the distance, the lake meets the sky and it all fades together, the edges brushing, completing each other. I take a deep breath, then another, allowing myself to fade into this place that is both beyond and inside me. I think of Danny. I think of all the memories I’ll never have and all the hopes I’ll never see fulfilled, and I hope that above all he’ll learn to find a tranquil place of his own and dwell there. Then I lower the fish into the water, say a silent prayer, and set it free.