We were almost at the lookout point when a breeze parted the trees. I smelled a summer storm first before I saw the rain-heavy sky. When we reached the top and stepped out of what should have been the shade of the trees, the darkness remained. Against the graying horizon, the leaves waved their silvery undersides.
“We have to find cover,” Travis said.
I leaned into him. He would not let anything happen to me. “Will the boat be okay?” I asked.
“I tied it tight. It’ll get a little wet.”
We had seen a few people walking down the trail but did not see signs of life at the top. We were alone. A deserted island. I was too eager to see the romance of this moment.
Beside the lookout deck sat a tiny picnic pavilion. We ran for cover just as fat drops of rain began to kick up the dust of the trail.
“Want a sandwich?” I asked once we settled ourselves on top of one of the picnic tables. The sandwiches were more than a little squished, but Travis took one out of the sack. At the end of the pavilion that butted up against a maintenance shed, a Coke machine glowed an eerie red. We dug quarters out of our bag and fed them into the machine. The cans clanked out.
“I can’t believe someone lugs up cases of soda to refill this machine.”
“There’s a service road over there.” Travis pointed down at the view of a bridge. I immediately flushed with stupidity.
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t need to ask about the electric supply.
The storm that followed was nothing short of spectacular. Thunder cracked behind us. Lightening struck down a tree nearby, and we felt an underground current that shook the table on which we were sitting. The red Coke machine, a bright heart in the storm, suddenly darkened, and its hum stopped. I scooted closer to Travis.
Even in the cool of the afternoon I knew this storm for what it was—a poltergeist, the spirit form of my reluctance to enter adulthood. I was in love with Travis and eager to find out if our relationship would mature, but I was unwilling to move into a future that in all probability would tear us apart. And it would happen—sooner rather than later. For the forces of nature were at work not only on our island but also in a hospital room, miles away. What we witnessed as shards of electricity, lightning, and a loss of power was also the soul of the Reverend Ernie Platz, testing its belief in the afterlife.
PART TWO
Dredging the Blue
♦ 34 ♦
MY SECOND HOMECOMING to Mulberry Street was no less wary than my first. While rains greeted us after our arrival in June, my July welcome came in the form of a wet heat that tattooed a permanent sheen to my skin. In an ordinary July, I would have succumbed to the heaviness and slowed my work, but solitude plays tricks on an unoccupied mind.
Even in the torch of midday, I kept busy in the metal studio. I allowed nothing to penetrate my thoughts except for my work, a masterful set of silverware I was creating for the alumni art show. I would not think of my last hours with Sam at the pool or the as yet unpacked trailer in the barn or the divorce papers that I had signed cordially enough. Too cordially, Karen had said (even though she had advised me to do just that).
My new table setting was everything to me in this hard sequence of moments. I was an alumna with a reputation to uphold. I had been that student who put a glow on a teacher’s face. The pupil to brag about. My teachers did not realize this until my final semester, however, but my bachelor of fine arts show had changed all of that. It had spawned a yearly event that continued to this day.
Even I will admit that I had not been a remarkable artist. I did have a unique perspective, however, and more important, I knew what words to spew at our critiques: form, flow, elemental, juxtaposition, functionality, aesthetic. I could recite lines of poetry and recall reviews of similar pieces and say all the things that my stumbling craft could not. My art professors, more realists of snug academia than artists of the world, came to admire my commentary. I would have walked away with a B average and a beginner’s anonymity had it not been for my thesis show.
Right before my final semester was about to begin, my mother discovered the lump. It’s probably nothing, her gynecologist had said. You’re so young. But before I started classes, the C word hushed all of us.
Bryce and I had been married for six months at that point. Not that it mattered. Bryce was studying for the bar exam, and I was spending most of my nights in the metals studio. We met each other for frenzied sessions of lovemaking that sometimes had to be combined with a shower for the sake of time. With damp hair and a damp crotch, I would return to my rolling stool at the studio where I hunched, bleary-eyed, over pin findings and bezel settings.
During one of my all-night studio sessions, I found my inspiration. In a corner of the studio, freshmen and sophomores were playing cards while waiting their turn to anodize aluminum in the huge tanks by the back door. The sound of the shuffling took me back to the summers I spent at my grandmothers’: the card clubs, the poetry readings, women talk.
Then it hit me. I would turn my bachelor’s degree show into a card party. I would serve tea, invite the brightest poets from Philadelphia to read, and showcase my art. The idea flowered in the hours when my critical mind was already sleeping. I outlined a plan of action to make this event into a fundraiser for breast cancer: FemininiTEA.
Lana Franklin at the local cancer association had been invaluable. She set me up with letters asking suppliers to gift me with art supplies so I could auction my pieces for the cause. Female poets clamored to be included, and I found three like-minded artists to fill out the program.
For my part, I crafted dozens of unique teaspoons to be used during the tea, auctioned off at the end of the evening. The spoons were a beautiful parade of figures with the hollowed scoops as faces and the handles as flowing bodies. I duplicated some of them as cast forms, but some I cut and forged as one of a kind.
Of my fellow artists, a ceramist made teacups, a fiber artist contributed table linens, and a graphic designer did the promotional work. When the university staff got notice of this happening, publicity became a nonissue. I, known by then as Bobbi Ellington, became the star of the art department. Recruiters used me as an example of the kind of dedicated artists for which the school was known. The Philadelphia Inquirer even covered the story in the weekend section.
My parents came up from Richmond for the event. Nonna supplied all the pastries, even though she was officially retired. And Bryce came for the opening night only, which was just as well because he bristled at one poet’s allusion to man as “woman’s poor counterfeit.”
The success of the event resounded for months. Orders for more spoons overwhelmed me. And though I got plenty of money from the transactions, a percentage of the sales went to fund mammograms for women in a low-income bracket. From there, I branched into a line of pins and rings. Occasionally, when asked, I contributed articles to magazines such as Ornament or Metalsmith. American Craft included me in a collective profile of emerging new talent.
For five years, even after we moved to Michigan, I continued to host FemininiTEA each year in Philadelphia, and extended the event to Detroit. Student and professional artists alike donated their efforts. In 1997, three years after Sam was born, the American Cancer Society honored me at a national awards banquet. I took Mom, beaming in her newest wig, as my guest. In my acceptance speech, I thanked baby Sam, my mother, my father, and my grandmothers. It wasn’t until later that I realized I had neglected to include Bryce. He wasn’t in the audience, so it didn’t seem to matter.
The idea for this new place setting had come to me on my first evening home from Michigan. I was fumbling with four diamonds, almost juggling them with my fingers. I had removed the two stones from my grandmothers’ engagement rings, one from my mother’s, and the final one was my own. Those diamonds represented the range of possibilities: a broken engagement, early widowhood, divorce, and a long and happy marriage.
I wanted to use the stones to represent the lives of my family members.
I considered jewelry, but these diamonds had said all they could as rings. I decided to take them out of the realm of the ornamental and bring them to purpose. A place setting would bring me full circle and remind the art community of my service. Most importantly, the project was challenging enough to keep me from missing my sandy-haired son.
I would have worked well into the night if my senses did not perceive the heavy, succulent smells of grilled meat. The scent brought me back to my corporeal self. When had I last eaten anything? I walked into the yard with Jules at my heels. Travis was standing as governor over Lena’s ancient grill. I did not register surprise, but thought myself a very powerful conjurer to have him before me. I had wanted so much to see him, but without the ploy of my son, I felt shy about calling.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said.
I walked over to him, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Travis leaned over and gave me a light kiss on the lips. Then he poured some cabernet into a small wineglass.
“These will have to do. I couldn’t find any red wine glasses.”
“That’s because they are still packed away with all the other goodies I got in the settlement.”
“It went well? You signed? He signed?”
Was it my imagination or did Travis seem pleased?
“You would not believe how well it went. We even went out to dinner afterwards as a family—like we were celebrating. It was surreal.” I took a sip from my glass, the tannins of the wine playing softly on my tongue.
Travis looked quizzically at me. “I was really nervous for you. I guess it’s because my own experience is still pretty new. Are you okay?”
“Travis, I don’t even want to think about it. I may be in denial, but I can’t think about my divorce. I have to spend all my energy not missing Sam, you know?”
“I can imagine what you must be going through; the bond between parent and child isn’t something I know much about,” he said quietly.
He was right, of course, and I felt stupid for talking about Sam.
“I’m sorry, Travis.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Travis could not possibly know. He understood the lessons of a failed marriage, but he had never had the opportunity to miss a child.
“It is quiet around here without my little buddy.” He smiled, a seduction unto itself, and I knew that even though Travis had been nursing his own childless void for years, he could share my pain. Beware this man; he is sensitive. Travis flipped the steaks on the grill. The loud hissing filled the silences so neither of us felt obligated to speak.
I traced the edge of my wineglass with my finger. I wanted to trace my own lips, but that would betray exactly what I had on my mind. I had signed the divorce papers. Sam was not an issue. Why wouldn’t Travis want to test the boundaries with a kiss? But maybe he wasn’t testing. Maybe he already knew.
I looked at the man standing before me. I could have handled his attractiveness, even basked in it, but why did he have to be so generous and emotionally available? Already I could sense the complications of having a mere affair with such a man. Something about him already had too much depth for that.
I was not ready for the alternative, a serious romance. I felt that my skin was barely intact over my delicate organs. What would it be like to brush up against someone when I felt this raw and exposed? The friction alone would send my body into agony. Red wine did not help. I could already feel the warmth as the tips of my ears colored.
“So your trip was okay? You had no troubles?” Travis asked.
“Actually, I did get busted for speeding on the way back,” I answered. “When I told the cop I was just returning from getting a divorce, he commiserated with me. I am not sure, but I think he asked me out.”
“If you think he asked you out, he probably did.”
“He won’t get my address from my Michigan license. Still it would be funny if he called Bryce.”
Travis chuckled, and I laughed, too. The flush spread to my cheeks.
I hadn’t told Travis everything, which would have added a new level of humor to the anecdote. But I wasn’t ready to share that side of the story, filled with my foolish superstitions. On the drive to Michigan, I had noticed the St. Christopher medal stuck to my dash. The patron saint of travelers, a gift from my father, had been with me since I bought my first clunker in college. It was still working its charm four cars later. The craziness was that I had renounced God and Mary, but I could not rid myself of the lesser saints. Mine had always been a religion built on details, smaller parts of the whole. In the past, whenever I misplaced my keys or purse, I petitioned St. Anthony, the saint of lost objects. And when I met a particularly steep hill while jogging, I had cried, “Little Flower, give me power,” a prayer to St. Thérése. Though I tried, I could not shake those habits, those superstitions, any more than I could stop brushing my teeth.
I knew I was being silly, especially with St. Christopher. I could not travel without my dashboard protector when Sam was in the car. It felt too risky, as if I were provoking God—in whom I had lost faith—to strike down my firstborn. When Sam was no longer a passenger, I put St. Christopher in the glove compartment. I considered throwing the medal away at the first rest stop in Pennsylvania, but I didn’t, and the cop stopped me twenty miles down the turnpike. My first driving offense, ever.
After the police car drove away from me, I had pulled the charm from the glove compartment.
“Okay, you can stay,” I had said to the medal. “But let’s agree on some terms. From now on, none of this saint stuff. You are just Chris. Got that?” The remainder of my drive home transpired without incident.
TRAVIS SLICED THE STEAKS and layered them on top of salads he had prepared earlier. Lettuce, tomato, grilled peppers and onions, cheese and ranch dressing. I would have been more impressed if my hunger had not been such a distraction and if my head had not been swirling from the wine.
“You do realize that I am totally at your mercy, don’t you,” I teased Travis, hoping he would catch the guardedness of my voice.
Travis didn’t smile. “You signed your papers, BJ. You won’t be at anybody’s mercy ever again.”
“Divorce hardened you that much?”
“If it didn’t harden you, you didn’t do it right.”
“Well, Karen tells me I had it too easy.”
Easy. It had not been easy to sign those papers, on my birthday no less, but the pain was lessening. How easy it was to sit with Travis and wait for August to wash over me with the return of my son. Travis would make such a lovely distraction. I reached up and touched his face, unaware that the action had become something other than pure notion. When he looked at me, I panicked and pretended to remove a trace of dressing from his mouth.
It had to be the wine. I scrambled to remember the saint to call upon to keep me from drunkenness. Amethysts were stones that were said to have such power, but I didn’t own any. Dionysus came to mind. The god of wine. Was there one drop of Greek blood in me that caused me to enjoy the ceremony of a good meal and its accompanying drink?
Travis and I ate and talked, but mostly we ate. The food was nourishing and delicious, like the meals I used to eat on Mulberry Street. I recounted details of my trip, and Travis told me about his activities during my absence. He had found a house to buy, but he had yet to put in an offer. We didn’t discuss the reasons for his reluctance, but I knew. Divorce had a way of making you second-guess yourself, like driving a car after a bad accident, when you are too skittish to even make a left turn ever again.
The day’s sky began to fade; the horizon wrinkled with purple clouds. I hoped that somewhere in Michigan, Bryce was reading to Sam from the collection of Thomas the Tank Engine stories he had brought along. I hoped Bryce would make sure Sam brushed his teeth before bed, and I prayed (to nobody in particular) that none of Sam’s little teeth would fall out while he was away from me. No scabs. No haircuts. I wanted wholeness to return to me next month. Wholeness and the per
ception that I had missed nothing in Sam’s young life. Travis sat observing me from across the table. From the sympathetic look on his face, I knew he must have been reading my mind.
“Come on,” he said at last. He grabbed Jules’s leash from the hook by the door. “Don’t worry about the dishes. We’ll get them after our walk.”
In silence, we walked toward the lake.
♦ 35 ♦
AFTER I HAD UNLOCKED the security box and found my grandmothers’ diamonds, I had overlooked the remaining contents. Four weeks later I emptied my bag and found twelve savings bonds, Lena’s death certificate, an additional life insurance policy, three Indian head nickels, a driver’s license that expired in 1968, and two spiral notebooks wrapped in a newspaper article, bound with a rubber band. I immediately recognized the newspaper article. What serendipitous force had brought it into my life at this time?
I removed the old rubber band. It crumbled into dust. The newspaper article wasn’t just yellowed; it was brittle and unreadable in the spots where the print rested against the metal spirals of the notebook. But here it was, nine years later, the article from the school newspaper on my BFA show. Was Nonna sending me a message from the grave? How strange that it should appear now as I was planning my college homecoming.
I opened one of the small notebooks. The pages crinkled in a way that comforted me. I had a different reaction to the content.
I did not want to see Nonna’s lilting script as it laced each page. I had only to recognize two words at the top of the first page to know that the stuff inside would rust away the remaining armor I had worked so hard to position.
Dear Judy. This was a letter to Nonna’s daughter, my mother. It might contain thoughts that Judy would have passed along to me as her daughter, but then again, this might be the kind of thing that a mother would take with her in death. Now, I was holding the notebooks in a queer leapfrog of information. If the contents of these epistles were not for the generations, then I was trespassing on my mother’s grave.
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