The new method sounds promising. Anna could be one of the lucky ones. She may be a candidate for the new treatment. No mastectomy for her. No radiation. Not like Liza.
The first time I saw Liza after her breasts had been removed, she told me it didn’t matter. The nurse had motioned me to go in. I had opened the door, just a crack. Liza had smiled, just a slant of her eyes and a stretch of her lips, pale as stone. The scene unfolds in my memory.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers.
I nod.
“It doesn’t,” she says. “I don’t need them any more.”
It had taken me a few moments to realize what it was that didn’t matter and she didn’t need.
Next time I walked in she wiped her eyes, quickly, practically scraped her skin off.
“Blossom, dear. It’s such a lovely day. Lovely. You look lovely.” She was smiling so hard, I thought her skin would crack.
The rash from her chest had spread on to her cheeks and she looked as if she had plastered blush all over her face. It was the turquoise-turban day, the colour of her eyes. Her eyes looked huge. The more weight she lost, the larger they became — reminded me of lagoons we saw some years back when we spent our summer in Pula on the beaches of the Adriatic.
I wished she didn’t try so hard to hide her tears. Now I wish I had told her. I wish I could tell Anna it’s okay to cry.
I wonder if Anna will try to smile all the time as Liza did. Liza looked so ridiculously cheerful she made me want to scream. So I screamed in my head. Anna may be able to escape the fatigue and diarrhoea and the hair loss. Although, Liza’s hair loss hadn’t bothered me as much as all else. I think it had to do with turbans. Liza spent so much time choosing the right colour and folding the fabric, she hardly had time for anything else — at least I hoped so.
I hope Anna doesn’t have to wear turbans. I turn my attention back to the news.
My body jerks. I open my eyes and realize I had fallen asleep in my Laz-e-Boy recliner. The television is loud and the commercials are erratic. I wait for them to end. The program I’ve been watching is most intriguing. I need to see more. But it’s David Letterman’s face that appears on the screen. The gap between his front teeth is widening with age. Something does not seem right. I flip the channel and go to the next, and the next. I cannot find the program on deep sea fishing.
A quick glance through the TV guide confirms no such program was listed during this time slot. I turn the television off and try to recall the details.
Was it a dream? Yet it was clear, and it was on the same TV screen I am now staring at. I am here in the same chair, and the screen is filled with the cauliflower-like corals. A white statue of a woman is hopping along the ocean floor, from one mound to another. Now fully alert, I remember — it’s that stone woman dream that keeps coming back. I glimpsed her breasts in profile, and they reminded me of Benvenuto Cellini’s “Cornucopia,” the horn of plenty — small pointed breasts of a young woman. I always thought Cellini’s title did not fit — the expectation was of a large-breasted, mother-nature type of a female figure — the horn of plenty.
No, I had not seen her face. I am sure of it.
CHAPTER 32
SITTING AT SCULPTURE Hill, my back against Flower Power, I take out the tattered scrapbook Liza had put together during the Symposium. I flip through the photos of the sites under construction and try to envision the park as it might have been back then. As the art work grew, it drew crowds from all around.
My mother once said: “When the sculptures were done, they blossomed.”
She’d gaze into my eyes with that special motherly look and say: “You were born the spring after the Symposium. I gave you the only name that could come close to doing you justice. First time I laid eyes on you, I felt as if the whole world was in bloom.”
From the photos she showed me, and from my memory of the pieces, I knew Flower Power did “bloom.” And so did No Shoes, the same artist’s piece, just down the hill. As I sit inside Flower Power and gaze into the crisscrossing I-beams above me, I wonder about the age-old mystery of the healing powers of the pyramids. In ancient Egypt, people who were ill spent the night in a pyramid, in hopes of curing their ailments. A whole new generation of healers focused on alternative medicine has been designing therapeutic tools using pyramidal structures. Could the straddling red girders of the installation I think of as peace symbols also have restorative properties? Hippies used flowers as symbols of peace, as protest against war. What might does Flower Power embody? Did the artist hope to heal the nations of violence?
I pass my hand along the gritty surface of the I-beam extending high over me. When I was a child, I spent many afternoons here with my mother. It all comes back to me in a flash. My name is Blossom, I hear my own childish voice. And I can lean my back on “Flower Power” if I want to. My eyes land on the yellow tape cordoning off the sculpture now for many years deemed unsafe to park users.
“Some rules are made to be broken,” Liza would say, smiling mischievously.
I knew what she meant. When I was in grade school and didn’t feel like going in, I’d fake a stomach ache.
“Being a civil servant may not be the most exciting job in the world, but it has its advantages. Time to dip into my sick-days account,” my mother would say and take a day off work.
We’d go to the museum or the art gallery, or we’d shop and have lunch at a quaint restaurant. Every once in a while she’d ask me if I was feeling better. “Still a little queasy,” was my usual reply, as I gulped down delicious morsels prepared by a mysterious chef who knew the magic recipes for Fettuccine Alfredo and Baked Alaska. Many years later I realized just how transparent my act must have been.
At times I wonder what formative value those days instilled in me. Did I grow up as a spoiled brat or an inconsiderate user of other people’s good will? And after some soul-searching, I have come to realize there was no harm done. We simply needed a break from everyday routine, and she made it special.
As my mother’s illness progressed and she lay in the hospital with a different colour turban each day — she said life was meant to be lived in colours, she tried to impart some of her philosophy on, in her words, that precious commodity called life. She knew she wouldn’t be there for me much longer. We both did. Sometimes we pretended she would not only beat the demigod we called Hades, but she would go on forever as if immortal, as immortal as Demeter.
When I was a child, she used to read me stories from Greek myth. Once she was bedridden, I made up my own plots and played out my own scenarios. I played the game of Demeter and Persephone — mother-daughter, Liza and Blossom. I tried to make a deal with Hades.
“Take me, instead,” I’d say to him. “I am the daughter, aren’t I? You did take Persephone, not Demeter.” I guess he wasn’t listening. Or perhaps I wasn’t convincing enough.
My mother and I used to sit at this very spot, and she would tell me that the sculptures celebrate the hippie era. They instil the notion of the free spirit. I can still hear her words: “They have colour, vitality, life of their own.” She used to bring the same scrapbook and explain that di Suvero’s installations are painted a vibrant red to symbolize the spilt blood of the soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Now, the red is a bit faded, but the colour is still there.
I flip to the newspaper clipping she had slipped into a clear plastic jacket. “See, No Shoes had four free-swinging logs and people used to swing on it. They called it, taking a ride on the sculpture.”
She’d go on to explain that this was the sculptor’s way of encouraging people to interact with his pieces.
The year before she died, the sculptures were declared unsafe and were cordoned off as a precaution. The paint was peeling and the City received a number of complaints. The top part of Flower Power was removed, as well as the swinging logs of No Shoes. My mother took it hard — as if a friend was ill — and wro
te a poem she pasted in her scrapbook. I open the page and read it, although I almost know it by heart:
Flower Power and No Shoes
by Liza Grant
Born of steel. Rising from the barrel of the gun,
you crown Sculpture Hill. Sentinel to relentless strife,
call to peace, end to mindless war.
Your youthful beauty ordained by human toil,
withered by scorching sun. Skin orange-red
as soldier’s open wound. As petals of peonies.
Now blistered, the open wound harbours the hopes
of the flower child. Not what the jaundiced eye
can see, but the ideals of the just and driven,
chanting their call of freedom.
After my talk with Joan of Arc, who in the birthing pains
that gave you life paced the rutted paths of napalmed huts,
cradling her sister’s child swaddled in ribboned flesh and skin,
I paid my visit to you and asked: Why so forlorn?
On this morning of frosty air, crisp with hope, you answered:
I am off limits to passers-by, fenced off for safety.
Mothers with strollers, joggers, and dog walkers,
point to the crown removed from my temple,
unlearned of causes that have danced about me.
I’m Mark di Suvero’s Flower Power, a construct
of steel cables under tension: Interlocking triangles
and orange I-beams — a monument to the hippie era,
now affronted as if I were Rochdale.
No Shoes is my barefoot sister, ambling down
the hill. Same orange I-beams, same anchors.
Swinging on steel cables, four wooden logs
lovers once rode on — are no longer there.
Mothers with strollers, joggers and dog walkers,
point to her bare feet calloused from blazing sun
and winter frost, unlearned of the ideals she
stood for.
You know us. We’re two of the standing
seven, atop Sculpture Hill.
One of the people in the photo from the newspaper clipping looks a bit like Chester. I still have not talked to him— I have not mustered the courage to explain. Deep down I think I want him to give up on me. Yet, the little voice in my head nags and wants him to call me. Hopes he’d call me.
I drop the last report on the stack of the already graded ones. Within a few hours I have marked one whole class. An inner glow that goes beyond my satisfaction with my students’ good work fills me. I know it has to do with my being here, at Sculpture Hill, sitting on my old quilt, back against the red I-beam of Flower Power.
CHAPTER 33
“HELLO, BLOSSOM,” CHESTER says, looking at me as if he has something on his mind he is reluctant to tell me.
An image of a lobster being dropped into a pot of boiling water pops in my mind. The lobster is really me, the squealing and all — all inside my head. My face is burning. I turn slowly, as if I were rolled over by a large metal spatula, my nose wrinkled up, shoulders scrunched.
“God, Chester. You’d never believe. No point explaining. Honest. I wouldn’t believe me if I didn’t know it’s true.”
He laughs. His white teeth are as perfect as Chiclets. I catch myself looking for the sparkle of a diamond — a scene I recall from an old James Bond movie — but it doesn’t happen. Everything about him is handsome as if he has stepped off a movie set. Is he immune to aging? And he is a few years older than me. Hard to believe. It must be some secret male genes.
“All right, all right. Since you feel so bad, you’re forgiven,” he says, chuckling.
He is behind me in the line-up at the University library waiting to check out a stack of books under his arm. I step up to the counter with my pile of research material. Another station opens up, and Chester is done before me. By the time my books are checked out, he is gone.
I head for the office and keep myself busy for a while. A bit later I walk back to the library hoping to see him there. Then I mosey over to the cafeteria where we often had lunch, and sit at our table. I spread out some old exams and work on compiling a make-up test, at times imagining when I look up, he’d be standing next to me, or looking over my shoulder with that mocking smile that usually makes me laugh. Then I imagine he might walk in by chance, the way we happened to see each other earlier on at the library. I thought he’d show up, somehow.
Another week goes by, and our paths don’t cross. When we finally bump into each other on campus, we exchange pleasantries, brief complaints about the end-of-semester deadlines, and that is it. As if the time we did not see each other had turned into a gigantic block of ice that wedged itself between us, cold and impenetrable. Earlier today, I said to Jane: “I really miss those late night walks. Chester’s the only one who also enjoys them. Or used to enjoy them.”
Jane and I had an early morning meeting and shared our desk for about an hour before it and some time after. Then we thought we might as well have lunch together and share the table at the cafeteria since we’re so used
to it.
“What are you afraid of, Bloss?” Jane asks, chewing on her roast beef sandwich.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say and take a bite of my falafel pita.
“He’s a nice guy. Unless you don’t like him. Then it’s different. But if you do, what’s stopping you?”
“Just not ready for commitment, I guess. And neither is he.” Then I tell Jane about the huge block of ice that has set itself between us. “He really is a very cold person, you know.”
She laughs. I know what the laughter means — that twinge of sarcasm. It has to do with being single at my age. And about that same block of ice, or that guy who is in reality a snowman with a candy heart, I’ve told Jane about a number of times in the years we’ve known each other. The block of ice that, in Jane’s words, sets itself between me and any man who tries to get close.
I want to remind her about the two failed marriages and the three children she’s raising all on her own. But I know she has no regrets. She would do it all over again. “Those kids make life worth living,” she has told me many times.
“It’s end of semester. You and I should take a trip this summer. Bring the kids with us,” I say. “Show them the beaches in Pula. The island of Pag. See the beautiful Adriatic. You haven’t seen beauty ‘til you see the Adriatic.”
“Sure, Bloss. Cash their educational fund?”
I blush in embarrassment. How right she is.
“Besides, you’re changing the subject, Bloss. Next you’ll tell me we should go swim naked with the dolphins. We could do all that. So could you and Chester.”
“Chester?”
“That is what I just said. Why don’t you give him a call? Instead of waiting to bump into him.”
“I don’t really think he’s interested in the Adriatic.”
“Sure Blossom. You can play your games.” She takes a large bite of her sandwich and gives me that look of hers. “Just for the record, I think he is interested. Very interested.”
CHAPTER 34
IT IS EARLY morning, the best time for jogging in High Park. The sun has just risen, its rays spilling gently over the treetops. From my home on Gothic Avenue, I pass by a cluster of high-rise condos on the north side of Bloor Street. They are strung along the subway line that links the condo dwellers to the city core. As I cross Bloor Street and proceed southward on Colborne Lodge Drive, the crisp morning air is invigorating and I am peaceful — all tension and schedules left behind. With every stride, the buzz of rush-hour traffic along Bloor behind me subsides, until I veer off the road and enter my refuge under the tall canopy of the park. The farther I run, the more muted the city noise becomes until I will myself to tune it out and listen to the gentle thud of m
y running shoes on the damp wood chips covering the path along the Spring Creek nature trails that loop through the Black Oak Savannah. I wish the forest would go on and on, but soon I find myself crossing one paved road and then another and looping back toward Sculpture Hill, drawing me like a cathedral draws the pious.
The shade remains deep over Hubert Dalwood’s “Temple.” I clasp my hands as if I were a praying mantis and bow respectfully before gliding sideways into the sculpture. Weaving among the stainless steel cylinders, I remove the mother-of-pearl barrette holding my ponytail and the open metal clasp is now a baton I tap on the convex surface of each pipe of the installation.
The cylinders, still covered in dew, make faint musical sounds. I wait for the resonance to dissipate. When Glenn Gould was a child, my mother once told me, he liked to strike piano keys and listen to their decay. I draw the clasp along the stainless steel poles as if they were piano keys and wait for the vibration to evolve into thin humming I hear long after it seems to have faded away.
There is just enough room to slowly edge through. I close my eyes and make believe I am in a maze. Not any hedge-maze I have seen in parks and read about. I am in Castlewellan’s Peace Maze in Northern Ireland, the largest in the world. I have been hoping to visit it since it opened some ten years ago. Its design resembles the human brain, symbolic of the thought processes in search of peace. It is made up of six thousand yews, trees that can live up to four thousand years. The maze was planted to teach people how to face choices and deal with disillusionments and compromises. If Anna were to find herself in this maze, which way would she turn?
I open my eyes. This is not a maze, I remind myself. This sculpture is, and has been for a long while, my problem-solving place. It is also a favourite spot for children as well as small dogs that seem to play hide-go-seek with their owners. I visit the “Temple” during quiet times.
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