Clara at the Edge

by Maryl Jo Fox

  Arianna smiles coyly. “This is my surprise. Let’s keep looking.”

  In the second frame, the forests gradually turn sepia, then gray, as if some bleaching process has set in. An occasional green tree survives among the dying ones. Then we come alongside a grim Clara hunched inside a dusty U-Haul that trails behind a twelve-axle flatbed truck with a small white house anchored to it. Inside the black trailer cab is Frank, looking exhausted. A close-up of Clara shows her jawline clenched and firm as her pinioned house lumbers ahead on the flatbed.

  Amazed, she turns to Arianna. “How did you do it?”

  “I talked to Frank. He told me all about your trip down from Oregon.” Seeing Clara’s puzzled look, she adds, “Don’t worry about how we did it—tinting, inserted images, lots of tricks even up to last night. Frank showed me the pictures you and he took when you stopped by the side of the road and people would wave.” She checks her watch. “How about if I talk to you two tomorrow? I’ve got a meeting with the curator just now. Enjoy!” She hugs them both and slips away.

  At that moment, Frank rushes into the room, embraces his mother, and shakes Haskell’s hand. “Let me catch up with you.” Clara and Haskell stand to the side and watch as Frank examines the first two sections with a smile on his face. “Whew!” he says. “Arianna listened well.”

  In the third section, people in pickups and cars and SUVs wave and honk at Clara and Frank as they pass them. Sunburned men and women give them thumbs up and V-for-victory signs from their own ancient vehicles, as if the Breckenridge caravan has made them remember simple and wonderful things from their own past and they’re grateful to Clara and Frank for awakening these memories. These people hang from car windows, stare raptly at the unlikely mother-son caravan until their vehicles disappear from the frame. The cars are mostly weather-beaten and filled with kids. Grinning, murmuring, Clara and Frank walk slowly together—arms loosely around each other’s waists now—exclaiming about these travelers, how they both loved their startled good cheer.

  In the fourth frame, shots of clear-cut forests in earnest now. Oil derricks pumping on denuded slopes, a close-up of her house shuddering past dead and fallen trees, their trunks and branches strangled by a strange orange fungus. The three of them are silent, unsmiling. Haskell falls back some, to give Clara and Frank more privacy. He senses the crucial mother-son meeting unfolding before him.

  Next is a group of 10x12 interior shots of Clara’s house, as personal to her as her own naked body. Outraged, she sees these in a blur—the green Formica table and chairs, the sagging navy couch, the old Singer sewing machine, Frank’s narrow bed, her own worn bed and faded quilt—all the particulars of the plain house that Arianna was so taken with. To see her private house in these public photos hits Clara like a punch in the gut.

  Frank murmurs, “What’s so special about the furniture anyway?”

  She shrugs, trying to hide her anger. “Part of the story, I guess. The hidden part.”

  The sixth panel features Clara herself in an oversized black-and-white portrait taken in harsh desert light. She stares directly at the viewer, eyes hostile, as if protecting her house from invaders. She frowns with pursed lips, arms folded across her breasts, all her wrinkles emphasized in the unforgiving shot. Viewers gather silently around it. To some she might be an avenging angel, judging everyone’s material folly. But to Clara, the portrait shows the angry fear of someone teetering over a precipice—about to obey a creature that can’t possibly exist, that will make her reveal secrets that will destroy her.

  Frank stares at this portrait. “You look powerful. Did you know that, Mother?” She looks at him, saying nothing. He’s never said anything like that before.

  Last we see a close-up video of Clara crouching beside the two beef jerky jars in her closet. The imprisoned wasps are swarming—dense, furious, wild with life, the original sixteen wasps she brought from Eugene. Her hand lies protectively on the glass. The wasps grow calm under her touch. Side battles erupt among those that can’t get close.

  Now a misfit appears among the crew, a healthy wasp with lavender wings, lavender stripes, and an enlarged purple head. Other wasps, yellow and black, gather round this alpha wasp, nosing its thorax, stroking its wings. At first its color seems to be a freak of light—the glass jar glints in pale sunlight. But the color stays, no matter the angle. A close-up of the purple wasp shows its mouth opening and closing, as if it’s trying to speak to us in urgent monotone, incomprehensible to humans. Viewers stand entranced. Haskell and Frank stand closer to Clara, knowing how private she is about the wasps.

  Furiously she whispers, “I never wanted the wasps made public. I must have signed my rights away! Your niece will do anything for publicity, Haskell.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll check. But by God, Clara, the wasp is purple, I can see it.” Unless Arianna tinted it, he thinks, desperately trying to hold onto reason. Yes, that’s it—that must be what she did. But he sees no evidence of tinting. The wasp is an overripe purple, a freak of nature.

  Clara folds her arms. “So I’m not totally nuts.”

  “As far as I can see, no.”

  “I can see it too,” says Frank. “The wasp is purple. Like grape juice. This is nuts, Mom.”

  She smiles, then suddenly holds her breath. Finally on the entire adjacent wall, we see the whole house from the rear, untouched by fire—and to Clara’s great astonishment, the sight she came across the entire country to see.

  The lower half of the siding is clotted with paint stuck with powdery dead lilac petals turned beige, rust, sepia, and gray. These wispy petals look torn from thin stems, scattered and smeared among imprints of whole lilac branches, their stems incised in the pale yellow paint. Old careless paint jobs mar the siding everywhere until dingy white dominates the higher you look. The shredded lilacs swirl more wildly before the eye, as if the ghostly blooms are about to revive and sway again in the wind. Gradually, through the photographer’s art, the lilac petals do enlarge and separate from the house—until they take on a life of their own, transformed now into huge living lilac sprays that fling themselves about in the wind, ungoverned and hallucinatory and rapturous. She grasps Frank’s hand for a moment, and they find a bench to sit on.

  It all comes back to her. Haskell listens quietly. Frank and Clara trade details. They lean toward each other, looking dazed.

  Lying on quilts in the dappled summer light, the four of them would watch the swaying lilac canopy over their heads as if they were hypnotized. In these backyard picnics, they drank Clara’s homemade lemonade from thick, sweaty glasses and gorged on her fried chicken, Darrell’s potato salad, and sliced tomatoes laid out on thrift-store china plates. Then Darrell would plop onto his back, spread his arms wide for Samantha and Frank to array themselves on either side of him, everyone blinking and sleepy in the muted light, hidden from the hot summer sun by the lilacs, the wasps circling lazily above them. After she cleared the food away, they would all doze off together, arms and bodies entwined, each parent nuzzling a child. As the sun faded, they woke and munched on slabs of cantaloupe and homemade spice cake with powdered sugar frosting or homemade brownies with strawberries and blueberries they had all picked together at farms just outside of Eugene that same morning. In the mottled shade, they laughed at their blue-stained tongues and teeth, and they rubbed their cheeks with strawberry juice. Then the four of them would bunch together in the lawn swing to watch the falling sun sink below the horizon, one child on each parent’s lap. Clara would nuzzle her children’s hair, closing her eyes to imprint the smell of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo when they were small; later Frank’s Palmolive, like his father’s, and Samantha’s Prell, like hers. When the kids were little, each parent carried a child to bed. Then Clara and Darrell returned to the lawn swing and sat wrapped together, talking, not talking, inhaling the luscious lilac stink. Sometimes Frank and Samantha got out of bed and spied on their parents. Sometimes their parents went back inside, turned the record player on low, and danc
ed to Glenn Miller. It all seemed to happen a day ago.

  She and Frank share these jumbled stories. They try to be quiet in the museum, but they get noisy with memories and must move to the hall and then outside. Haskell is silent in their torrent of words. His eyes betray a longing hurt—for times like these he never had? In confusion, she wonders if he’s getting too much information. She sees his discomfort and feels new again to the skills of relationship after years of nunlike isolation. Even so, joy at seeing Frank makes her remember crazy details, like the time they went overboard with the strawberries and smeared strawberry juice on each other and ruined their clothes. Clara ran inside to get the camera for a fast picture. That picture was burned up too, along with everything else.

  With sudden foreboding, she peers into the fabric bag that hangs from her shoulder. Lenore, desiccated and naked, barely stirs. She is down from about ten to four inches. Only a smidgeon of lavender skin remains on top of her swollen bald head. The rest of her body is gray. Frightened, Clara looks around and quickly closes the bag, as if she’s guilty of a crime. She takes a deep breath.

  Seeing the amazing video work makes her feel like a whole person again—as if her living family, the lilacs, and the guardian wasps still surround her under the drowsy sun. The joy of it makes her feel hot and sleepy. Then her decades of silence and stiffness around Frank, with no explanation as to why, come crashing around her with a cold chill. How could she have mistreated him so much without even realizing it? She’s got to explain things to him before it’s too late.

  Her heart thumps. “You loved those picnics, didn’t you, Frank?”

  “I remember everything about them.”

  Clara and Frank have left the museum and are sitting in a quiet area of the steps. Haskell strolls over to a snack cart, gets a lemonade, and stands there sipping it. Clara and Frank signal they don’t want any.

  She is saying, “When you and I were the only ones left of our family, I didn’t know what to do or how to act, and neither did you. All those years, you must have wondered why I was so distant after Dad and Samantha died.”

  He’s silent for an eternity, looking down at his shoes on the steps. She holds her forehead in distress, dreading what he might say. He speaks slowly, his voice grave and measured. “I did wonder, Mom. It was strange. I didn’t know what to think. I really didn’t. I thought I had done something wrong.”

  She laughs in bitter surprise. “But I was the one who did something wrong.”

  Haskell returns and asks if they want something to eat. They look at him, distracted, noncommittal. He is insistent. “It’s two o’clock. We’ve got to eat. I know of a good restaurant on the corner of Eighty-fourth and Madison,” he says, sounding cheerful, perhaps overly so. They decide to do it, walk there and have some food. The three of them have little to say, but the physical exercise lifts everyone’s spirits after such an intense show and the needed conversation beginning to unfold between Clara and her son. Haskell intuits that something grave and important is unfolding between them. The restaurant is quiet, the service attentive—it’s the perfect choice. They sit at a table near the front. Other customers are tucked away in dim corners. The two men tackle paninis. She picks at a salmon pasta.

  Back at his place, Haskell makes tea for them, says he’s got errands to run and they should make themselves at home. They thank him, and he goes downstairs on the big elevator. Frank and his mother sit on the couch and look out the window.

  The swollen unhealed stings on her forehead are near to breaking. Whatever is inside her head is gnawing, stamping, pounding on the bones of her head. And it won’t stop. It won’t stop. She begins.

  “I had a lot of difficulty with your father’s death, Frank.”

  “I could see that. You just sat at the table or in your rocker all the time—when you weren’t cleaning house like a maniac. You became a zombie workaholic, Mom.”

  She smiles. “It was that bad?”

  “You wouldn’t talk to me, but the house always smelled like Clorox or lemon oil.”

  “I wanted to take care of you—protect you, Frank.”

  He cocks his head at her, smiles. “With Clorox and lemon oil?”

  She flinches. “Actually, Frank, I think it was guilt.”

  “Guilt? But you didn’t cause Dad’s death.”

  “No, but I was crushed and lonely. So what happened was I got involved in an affair shortly after he died.”

  “Really? You, Mom?” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Do you want to tell me just a little bit about it? Not too much now.”

  She looks at her son, so surprised and trusting, as Samantha’s Brain Room splits open in her head. In the afternoon light, flashes of that hellish day roll before her eyes, as if for years she has looked through cloudy plastic. The collar of Martin’s shirt—her lover’s shirt, the collar frayed at the points, his shirt the color of veins on the back of an old white person’s hands. A purple shirt that a dealer in Vegas would wear. A shaving nick on his chin, a blackhead on his nose, the suffocating smell of his shaving lotion. She was standing at the intersection with Martin, and she wanted to run. She looked hard at his shirt because she didn’t want to look down.

  Little Myra, the patrol captain that week, had come pounding on Clara’s office door. She and Martin hastily composed themselves. “An accident, there’s been a terrible accident,” Myra said in her high, sweet voice. She smelled of urine. Her shoes were sloshing with urine. Myra was Samantha’s best friend, and she had wet her pants as she came running into the school. The three of them ran out to the four-corner intersection and stood there. Clara refused to look. She could smell Myra’s urine and Martin’s shaving lotion. She didn’t want to look down at the pavement. And she didn’t want to stand that close to Martin. She had left her light blue panties in his car last night. She wanted to run from him. But she looked down. She couldn’t avoid looking down at the pavement. She screamed. She must have screamed. She doesn’t remember.

  On the pavement, Samantha’s cooling form, her daughter’s open, parched mouth, her eyes permanently open, her body unnaturally twisted. She never saw Martin again. He moved somewhere else. So did Myra. The truck driver was charged.

  She looks at Frank now. “There was this teacher,” she says softly, then looks away. “I taught with him a number of years before I became principal. He was moody, charismatic, rotten marriage, wife an alcoholic. All the women were in love with him. The kids were fascinated. His standards were very high. He was the student patrol advisor. Everyone wanted to be on patrol.”

  “OK, OK, that’s enough, Mom. I wish I had known about this. I would have knocked his block off.”

  She is touched. “Oh, Frank, you are very sweet. Thank you.” He is quite ruffled. He sets his tea down to pace around the living room, staring at the floor, pursing his lips. “He took advantage of you, Mom! What a jerk! You didn’t talk to me because you were involved with a jerk! Look, Mom”—he gathers his breath—“I can understand you having an affair. You just lost your husband. You were very vulnerable.” He pauses, looking at her. “You haven’t been carrying this for all these years, have you? Thirty-eight years?”

  “The affair is the least of my worries.” She looks at him. “Do you want to hear more, Frank? There’s more.”

  “OK,” he says. “So what is it?”

  “Do you remember Samantha and I had a big fight the morning of the accident?”

  “Not really. I could see you both were unhappy about something.”

  “She wanted to work on her Alexandria report in my office after school. Then she could ride home with me. So I lied. I was going to meet Martin, but I told her I had a committee meeting in my office, so she had to study in the library after school. She threw a tantrum. She said she wanted to work in my office because it was quiet and she could ask me questions and consult the encyclopedias I had there. We got into a big fight. I said it would be too
noisy in my office because of the meeting.”

  She covers her face with her hands. Her head is almost bursting with Lenore’s continued stomping. The creature has gathered her last strength to shrink herself and crawl inside Clara’s brain and make her speak. She has trouble catching her breath.

  “And another thing. For about a week, Martin and I had started meeting at night. The day before the accident, we were out till almost midnight. Think, Frank. On a school night. When Samantha was eleven and you were nine. With no father there, no babysitter. I thought you’d still be sleeping.” She shakes her head. “You kids were still up when I got home. You were scared and crying, running around the house. I had never done such a thing before, staying out late with no babysitter for you. Anything could have happened. Anything. It’s unforgivable. Do you remember it, Frank?”

  “I do. It was kind of scary. We wondered if you got kidnapped or in an accident.”

  “I was so stupid. I’m so sorry.” Eyes brimming, she tries to catch her breath.

  “So the next morning, on the last day of her life, Samantha asks me why I don’t want to be around you and her anymore since Dad died. ‘Maybe you’d like it better if we died too!’ she shouted. I was stunned, couldn’t speak. She stormed out of the kitchen, was silent on the way to school. I had already put her bike in the trunk. You were silent too in the back seat beside her. Before you both got out of the car, I told Samantha she couldn’t always have her way. Adults had things they needed to do too. I got her bike out of the trunk for her. She didn’t say a word, and she didn’t go to the library. She was apparently going straight home.

  “If only she’d gone to the library! Or my office! If only I had cancelled my date with Martin, the accident wouldn’t have happened, and Samantha would have been safe. I left my parents’ home to be safe, came clear across the country to be safe. And I failed to keep my own kids safe. Instead, I pushed you into danger!” She covers her ears with her hands. “So it comes down to this: On the day of the accident, I ignored your sister when she needed me. If I had done what she wanted, the accident wouldn’t have happened. She would have been in my office. I would be answering her questions. We could go home together and have milk and cookies. Live the dream. The perfect mother. The perfect daughter.” She holds her forehead again. “Oh, Frank, I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know how to deal with this affair and your father’s death and you kids all at once.”