But we’re poor, and stupid, and blind to the demolition notices. We’re the kind of people who press our noses against the glass in museums containing dioramas of old-fashioned houses. Remember those carved wooden creatures we saw in one such museum? They were made for a child long ago, many pairs of animals marching around the nursery and into a toy ark—we would’ve put them in this house, lined up across the mantelpiece, walking slowly to safety.
mistake #5
Because I’m told that in order to find him one must walk the entire way, I leave the city in August. I walk northward alongside freeways. Trucks honk desperately; I nearly die. Throughout the autumn, I walk. There are orchards, farmhouses, sunsets like cream. The nights grow short. Snow falls. Thankfully my parents raised me for hardship; I know to wear four pairs of socks, and am accustomed to snowflakes grazing my eyeballs. Still, it’s not easy.
Eventually I reach the North Pole. Seventeen factories release black smog. There are no wooden signs nailed, sweetly off-kilter, to pine trees. There’s no cheerful blizzard, no log cabin, no fireplace, no copper teakettle, no mistletoe, no gingersnaps. It’s enough to make one cry, and I do, standing there in that vast treeless expanse.
He’s in the sixteenth factory, sitting on a plastic stool. His black hair comes to a violent point above his narrow eyes. He’s skinny, slouchy, indifferent, like any factory foreman. He doesn’t wear red. He drinks black coffee. His eyes don’t widen at the sight of me.
Then—through a doorway—comes a woman who does not disappoint! She wears wooden shoes, long striped socks, green petticoats. She smells of cookies. Her cheeks resemble apples. She looks like the happiest wife in the world. I love her, and want to be her; indeed, I’ve come to request that exact kind of goodness. She stands before him, radiant. “For Chrissake, Clarissa,” he says, “take off that stupid costume.” Shivering, she flees.
“The gift . . . I want . . . , ” I begin, terrified, “is ... intangible . . . I was told . . . intangibles . . . could only be requested by people . . . who’d walked. . . .”
“You poor fucking idiot,” he says; it’s possible that compassion flashes through his eyes.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I say wearily. He gestures with his thumb. In the cold dirty stall, I find a long striped sock. I tie it around my neck, lose hope, and head south.
the brides
bride #1
On March 19, 1949, from his Army post at Camp McGill in Japan, my grandfather wrote to my grandmother’s father in Asheville, North Carolina: “Perhaps the fact that she and I have spent so much time together has led us to believe that we are in love, whereas we have merely afforded one another much-needed companionship in a strange country and have mistaken our feelings. I really cannot say that we haven’t made that mistake.”
A pair of porcelain Japanese dolls sank into my grandparents’ cake. No one traveled halfway around the globe for the wedding. The photographer accidentally destroyed the film and only one picture remains. This picture could be an advertisement for skin cream. They look so young and so flawless. Filled with hope and fear.
Now, fifty-eight years later, my grandmother’s wedding dress hangs on a rod in the middle of our apartment. At times, it’s an angel, hovering seven feet off the ground. Other times, it’s a ghost and frightens us. Yesterday, we fought: he thought I should put the dress away before the guests arrived; I said there was no room in the closet for such a precious thing, and why would we want to bury my grandmother—you mean your grandmother’s dress—away? Though all along I agreed with him.
My grandfather wrote: “Letters to someone who is more or less a stranger always seem to be difficult, especially letters that are particularly important. I’m afraid this will be such a letter.”
I remember my grandfather telling my grandmother to put the ice cream away. I remember him ordering many martinis. I remember once overhearing him say he loved her.
Soon, I will marry someone who says that life is a series of intersecting lines, that there is an infinite number of possible intersections, that we have arrived at one such intersection and that it is, all things considered, not such a bad intersection. In fact, quite a good intersection.
That dress, he says, is a phantom point at the place where two lines intersect.
bride #2
In this version of the story, the bride wishes to disappear into the faux groves at the plant nursery. Someone has had the idea of placing two slender white-barked trees on either side of the altar so it will look as though the ceremony is taking place in a delicate forest. Perhaps it was her idea. But now, hearing the others discuss it with the plant nursery employee, she finds it offensively stupid. The bride walks away, toward the trees with their roots aboveground and wrapped in white plastic; white fabric will swath her head twenty-four hours from now. She strolls among the rows. Her heart cries out like a drowning fish. She hears them yelling in the distance, but chooses to attribute the mournful repetitions of her name to the trees themselves.
The rows end at the beach. She steps out onto gray sand where gray waves hit again and again. A chubby mermaid sits on the beach, her tail as pungent as fishskin in a trashcan. Her hair is the color of pennies and she uses a rock to draw cryptic symbols in the sand, diamonds inside circles. . . . Getting weak coffee in a fishy little seaside café this morning with her parents and future in-laws, everyone talking, making plans, the bride noticed on the wall above them a bad painting of a mermaid drawing cryptic symbols in the sand, the mermaid’s arms thick and awkward . . . The bride discovers that the mermaid has vanished from the beach, along with the cryptic symbols. Her heart cries out like a drowning fish.
There are whales in these waters, whales with hearts the size of cars and heartbeats loud enough to be heard two miles away. Naked in the gray water, the bride goes under and listens for whale heartbeats. They find her there. They give her tea, put her to bed, swath her in white, place lilies in her hand, and send her down the aisle toward an altar framed by two slender white-barked trees.
bride #3
I decide that I should like to be married in a straw hat, a straw hat so huge it verges on the ridiculous, and a long red dress with scenes of Japanese tea gardens printed all over it in white, and a pair of large green hoop earrings, and a pair of rhinestone shoes bought on the beach in Los Angeles, and enormous sunglasses with rims the color of Coca-Cola.
I’m sorry, but this is simply what I want to wear when I get married. I refuse to wear anything else. So: I must go out and find these items. But not a single store in New York City has a straw hat as huge as the straw hat in my imagination. Why, why, why, does this always happen? Reality lags so very far behind everything else.
A long red dress with scenes of Japanese tea gardens printed all over it in white? No such luck. There aren’t any hoop earrings in the particular grassy shade of green I envision. I live 2,793 miles away from the beach in Los Angeles where they sell rhinestone shoes. And, of course, no sunglasses are as much like Coca-Cola as the sunglasses I desire.
Exhausted from marching around in the obscene murky heat of June, from visiting every single store in New York City, from the music these stores play to manipulate the unmanipulatable imaginations of patrons such as myself, I go back to the miniature cottage where he and I live. The rooms smell of rosemary cooking in olive oil. He is nowhere to be seen. Laid out on the bed is a straw hat; a long red dress; a pair of hoop earrings; a pair of rhinestone shoes; a pair of sunglasses. A confession: none of these objects is quite perfect, none of them aligns flawlessly with the picture in my head—yet suddenly my imagination reshapes itself around these new objects, the objects he has gathered, and now these objects are precisely what I have been thinking of all along.
bride #4
Charlie Chaplin loves me because I throw bananas to the poor, and because I roller-skate backwards. He thinks I have the kind of beauty that will appeal to people of the future; in 100 years, they’ll cherish my photograph.
I think
he’s a small man, and ridiculous. Still, I follow him. We leave New York walking. ‘Penguin,’ I call him in Harlem. But, obviously, he doesn’t say anything. The sun transforms the sidewalk into a desert. Eventually we come to a real desert, and then to another city.
We lie down on the suburban grass. We imagine a home with flowered wallpaper and a cow sticking its head over the geraniums, eager to deliver cream straight into our porridge.
But in fact we live alongside a shallow lake filled with tadpoles. If you slam the front door, the back door topples. Spiders and shingles fall onto the table during dinner. It’s difficult to eat with one fork between us. He tries to make the best of things; playfully, he dives into the lake. He gets a concussion and emerges covered with leeches.
I leave and get a job as a dancing girl. He finds me at Mel’s and I convince Mel to hire him. I didn’t mean to leave Charlie Chaplin, after all, it’s just that I fear spiders. He doesn’t know how to wait on people, so I pull him onto the dance floor partway through my routine. Unexpectedly, he whistles a French song and dances like an accomplished penguin. Suddenly I love him and want to be his girl.
When the police come for us, we run, though we can’t recall our crime. We run until his tuxedo is in rags and a piece of tumbleweed makes off with my dress. I sit on the sand of Nevada to cry for hours. He stands there blocking the sun and, silently, coaxes me out of it.
I stand. Charlie Chaplin takes my hand. We walk down the red road like two old people. There’s nothing up ahead, just nothing.
the mothers
mother #1
We the daughters of the twenty-first century are not mystified by Persephone’s behavior. In school, we learn that Persephone is frolicking in a field when Hades kidnaps her and takes her underground. Persephone’s mother Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, freaks out. Every plant in the world dies. Eventually Persephone is found, sitting beside Hades on an obsidian throne. He’s drinking something from a wooden goblet. She looks anorexic. Hades says she can leave if she must but first why doesn’t she eat this.
It’s not till she emerges into the weird sunlight—it ’s not till she’s in her mother’s kitchen sipping pumpkin soup—it’s not till Demeter sighs with relief to know her daughter didn’t eat anything down there—that Persephone makes her confession about the six pomegranate seeds. Her mother smashes plates, slams doors. Meanwhile, Persephone sits, quietly disliking the freshness of the day, the soft winds carrying the smells of plants growing.
What Persephone will never mention is the rich unending night, the earthy smell of scotch on his breath, the way he mocked the universe and everyone in it but was so tender with the dead, with her, with beasts and ghosts. How low his voice got when he told her attempts would be made to separate them.
Now we the daughters of the twenty-first century are going to marry men our mothers don’t quite love. These men seem dark to them, dangerous, lacking in good posture. We sit at our mothers’ tables, trying to explain why we have chosen to settle in distant, inhospitable cities where the gray days outnumber the sunny. We try to explain that our future husbands are at once cynical and compassionate. We fight bitterly over wedding invitations and veils, as though these are matters of life and death, which they are. We suggest to our mothers that they read a certain Greek myth; they raise their eyebrows at us as they always do nowadays; the grass begins to shrivel in the ground, and in the orchard the apples sicken on the branch.
mother #2
The bride, the groom, the groom’s mother, and the mother of the bride find themselves at the old carousel. There is no long line of children shrieking out their cravings and frustrations. The empty evening carousel whirls to the melancholy sound of its own cheerful music. The groom’s mother, a woman who has made her share of rhubarb pies, suggests they take a ride. The mother of the bride, who resists silliness, hangs back; but already the groom has bought tickets, and here they are stepping onto the carousel, and the bride straddles a black horse, and the groom selects a chestnut, and the groom’s mother finds a pony, and the mother of the bride must mount the unicorn. The bride looks at ease, as though she is still a child, and still capable of delight. She strokes the horse’s frightening glass eyes; she discovers that the mane is real horsehair; she has no difficulty being happy; she hisses something delightful to the groom. The mother of the bride finds it awkward, adults sitting on these creatures built for children. None of this is right, none of it at all. Slowly, the carousel begins. The mother of the bride recalls something: the bride, age four, clinging to the pole of a carousel, a frozen white stallion rearing under her. But now this carousel accelerates, and the ocean breeze blows in, and the mother of the bride stops thinking about anything except the brass ring, reaching out again and again with her half-century arm—all is well! All is well! The carousel whirls, life is a joyful and colorful endeavor, it is not impossible to achieve the sensation of flight, bless these young people and bless their mothers, all’s well, and where’s that blessed brass ring because the mother of the bride is starting to believe. Jubilation, the bride has been saying lately, and the bride’s use of this word has irritated her mother; now she wants to say Jubilation too.
But it is not she who gets the brass ring.
mother #3
My mother, during any conversation about a sad or complicated situation, sighs and says, “Well, that’s just the nature of the beast.” It’s impossible for the discussion to progress beyond this point; her pronouncement always silences me.
However, I should like to know more about this beast! What is it, and what exactly is its nature? Based on context, I can tell the beast has terrible luck, is continually embroiled in conflict, doesn’t appreciate what it’s been given, forgets to have its oil changed, gets pregnant too frequently, and generally blunders through life. Poor beast!
The beast is three times the size of a regular sow. Thick hairs grow out of her thick hide. She has many sagging nipples. Two offspring clamor for each. She has six legs and an enormous, friendly rhinoceros head. Her teeth are yellow and sharp, but her lips are tender. She shuffles them along the spines of her babies. Her hooves are delicate; upon them she moves in a stately manner down sidewalks and through woods. She walks back and forth across this great nation, hoping that someday we’ll understand her nature. At night, she and her children lie down in public parks or behind barns where, in a better world, they might be cared for by a farmer with no fear of beasts. The beast never shuts her moon-colored eyes. Her nature is tranquil, strong, maternal, and benevolent.
I don’t know how to tell my mother the truth about the nature of the beast. I fear what might happen if she were not able to attribute so many problems to it.
My mother and I are driving on a superhighway at dusk. Someone we know has done something awful and irrational. My mother explains that this is the nature of the beast. In the fading Western light, sunset orange and gray over mountains, dying daylight versus manmade floodlights, I spot the beast trotting along in the shoulder. Her children cling to her belly and back. But the wonderful beast—she just keeps trotting and trotting.
mother #4
In this version, I like my mother and my mother likes me. We walk together, her arm around my waist and mine around hers, and she is not embarrassed; we walk together, leaving the city. My mother is no longer brittle and no longer skinny; she reminds me of a buttery corn muffin, the likes of which you never would have found in the bran-infested kitchen of my childhood. “Don’t drink orange juice,” my mother said back then. “It’s an empty drink.” I didn’t understand, and I didn’t drink orange juice.
My mother who is no longer brittle leads me into a field. Thousands of miniature orange flowers grow in this field. Our eyes are no longer bloodshot. My mother sighs with joy. She sits. She instructs me to place my head in her lap. All my headaches vanish. “Never call me Mother,” she says. “Only call me Momma, or some other nice thing.”
This mother of mine has things to tell me about marriage
. I say “Oh!” to everything she says because everything is a revelation. She bestows upon me certain facts that bear repeating, such as: On the wedding day, you must adorn your bare head with waxy white yucca blossoms so the rain won’t melt you and your husband, and There is no fight that cannot be resolved by boiling cloves and orange peels in water on the stove.
She says to me, “What a beautiful fat girl you are, my daughter.” I say: “I am not fat. Look at this skinny hip.” She says: “Darling child, what I mean to say is that you are fat with life.”
And then I notice that all this time her fingers have been working, and she has woven me a garment from the miniature orange flowers, and caterpillars are crawling all over this garment, and my fat wise mother is laughing, laughing, and she is laughing, and she is saying, “Where is the groom, where is the beautiful fat groom, ah my daughter is ready, my daughter is ready!”
And Yet They Were Happy Page 6