septemberist

Sloan wooed me unconventionally by telling me that I was not pretty, really, nor was I beautiful. Still, I had drunk enough that when we escaped from the smoky apartment out onto the balcony, and he traced his fingers around my lips, across my cheek, and into my hair, I leaned into the sensation and into him.

It was one night and probably should have remained so. But months later, when Sloan asked me to drive to Austin for the weekend, I said yes. That first night, we were barely friends. The following morning, we walked through the park, avoiding grackles and kite-fliers, and touch each other lightly, electrically, constantly. We told shy secrets about ourselves, accelerating into the dance of courtship. In the evening, still brushing lightning with fingertips, our secret-telling became bolder.

These encounters are what I page to when re-reading the summer of 1995. Sometimes, I’ll read further, to the night of the fireflies that danced halos over the statue of St. Francis in the garden, or the absolute stillness of him as I traced the back lines of the cross on his back, or even the endless games of Hearts played with Noah and Rebecca as the afternoon sun woke showers of dust in the air. I try to stop before the day that Sloan left or when he came back, when the rhythm of secrets and laughter was broken, and when instead of brushing sparks, our fingers only drummed an ending.

Posted by erica at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thea could hide the pink bills in her purse as she brought them into the house from the mailbox. No one could see the DISCONNECT notices from a driving-by car, a peek out the kitchen window, or even walking the family dog down the street.

Six months had passed two times, and still the water kept pouring in over her. She could hear the whispers of her friends, Thank God there are no children to think of. Thank God, indeed, she echoed, not even closing her eyes anymore as she submerged.

Thea lived on the first floor of a two-story house. Upstairs were three bedrooms, two with doors open. In one was a jumble of boxes half-unpacked, books and photos and notebooks flowing in a stream of dust at sunset when the sun’s last rays flickered through the prism of warped glass and cracked shade. Another door exposed a bed unmade, covers caught wrinkled in the midst of a floe. An alluvium of clothes and shoes littered the edges of the still mattress pond.

The third door remained closed.

Thea would stand at the sink in the kitchen, eyes staring unseeing out the window, deafened by the rush of the tap water. Each day, she dirtied one bowl, one spoon, one plate, one fork, and one glass and washed them all each evening in the kitchen sink, rinsing each far longer than necessary. When the dishes were cleaned and rinsed, Thea placed them on the counter, spoon in bowl, fork on plate, glass next to plate.

When the sun had truly sunk and all color had drained from the sky, she turned out the light in the kitchen and moved to the sofa in the living room. Somewhere between the kitchen and the couch, two talismans appeared in Thea’s hands. In her right hand, she carried a man’s watch, heavy and silver and silent. In her left hand was something small. The main of it was clenched tightly in her fist, invisible, but if a car drove by on the street outside, its guide lights might illuminate something pale blue between her fingers. A ribbon, perhaps, tied to a small silver charm, perhaps.

Thank God there are no children to think of. Thank God, indeed. She no longer fought to breathe when she submerged.

Posted by erica at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When my father took us fishing, he would drive down to Linley's, the gas station store at the turnoff from the highway to the shale road where my grandmother's and grandfather's houses were, to buy a bucket full of minnows. Once we got older and braver, we would ride our bikes up and down the hills of that shale road to buy grape pops and Big League Chew bubble gum (all except for Brad Cooper, who at 8 years old was already chewing real tobacco). But when Dad wasn't with us and we wanted to fish, we'd raid my grandfather's old refrigerator for American cheese and baloney. If my brother, Matt, could be convinced to ask, Grandpa would give us bacon, but because he was the only boy among us, Matt had an early sense of entitlement and often couldn't be cajoled in doing anything for us girls.

When we were very young, we had cane poles with line, bobbers, and hooks, and not much else. Later, we would all have cheap reels and a tackle box, but that wasn't until at least one of us, probably Matt, was judged responsible enough for a fishing knife.

Fortified with our slimy bait and cane poles, we would tramp through the pasture to the ponds Grandpa had the county dig when they mined the shale. Most of the ponds were seeded with perch or catfish, and we could fish from those all we wanted. Further back were two bass ponds that we could only fish in with Grandpa's permission. Of course, generally only Matt, being the only grandson at the time, was invited to fish the bass ponds. Stacey, the de facto grandson when Matt and I were back home in the suburbs, often fished back there. But not when the true grandson was around.

Instead, we'd fish the perch ponds with our baloney and American cheese and give Matt hell for being Grandpa's favorite. Of course, later, Matt would go into town with Grandpa to get an ice cream cone and watch him play cards while we burned our bare feet on the hot shale road walking over to Grandma Marie's for ice tea and store brand sandwich cookies.

Posted by erica at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I believe in fresh starts, clean slates. As such, I’m starting at least this tiny recording of my life over. I’m not kidding myself about the wear on the record or even the ragged edge of the stylus. I expect to warble, slide, and skip.

Over the past few weeks, events occurred and decisions were made that have opened my eyes to just how out of focus I’ve become. Part of that blur, I think, may result from the lack of words in my life. If you know that I edit things for my job, then that might not entirely make sense. But it’s not just words that I’m missing; I’m missing my words.

So I’m going to write again and teach and learn, but I want to do it differently.

Like every American soul my age, I find myself referencing Say Anything more often than I should (even if it is just mentally--or in conversation with my husband, which is very similar). Nevertheless, I’ll embrace my inner trite and use the words of the inimitable Lloyd Dobler to explain why I chose to take down the words of the last few years:

"Maybe I didn't really know you. Maybe you were just a mirage. Maybe the world is full of food and sex and spectacle and we're all just hurling towards an apocalypse, in which case it's not your fault. I'm been thinking about all these things and . . . you're probably standing there monitoring. And one more thing--about the letter. Nuke it. Flame it. Destroy it. It hurts me to know it's out there. Later."

Posted by erica at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the first vibration, the girl lifts her chin from her arms and her arms from the windowsill. Her grandmother’s house, the kind of gray that white paint becomes after too many summers of wind and not enough rain, sits back from the crumbling sidewalk on a street too close to the train tracks. The rumble of the cars on the tracks, the startle of the horn, are all too loud and too often. For the girl, however, the summer weeks she spends here in this old house with this old woman of a grandmother are made tolerable only because of the train.

She sits on the edge of the bed, bare feet reaching for the vibration through the worn plank floor. Her fingertips just rest on the window glass, feeling there the motion too slight for the floor to relate. She curls her toes, flattens them.

From the front room, she can hear the whir of the mantle clock preparing to strike the hour or quarter hour. She doesn’t know, doesn’t need to know. Of what use was clock time? She strains to hear through the walls to her grandmother’s room. Would she wake?

There. Her feet begin to tickle from the slight movement of the floor. Slowly, she rises from the bed, wincing at the moan of the bedsprings and at the stretching of the new scabs on her chest and belly. She was too old to be climbing pecan trees, especially with no shirt on. And why she couldn’t climb down the same way she climbed up was some mystery, anyway. But that was how she had always climbed, how he had taught her.

The window glass rattles as she moves barefoot silent toward the doorway, down the hallway. Clock chimes conspire with the girl as she pushes past the squealing hinge of the screen door and onto the crumbling concrete porch. Out here, she can’t feel the earth vibrate, but she doesn’t need too. Already, a faint grumbling can be heard in the evening sounds of the small mill town.

The girl steps to the edge of the porch, her hand grasping the metal column, ignoring the ants that travel across her fingers. She hears his voice, Not yet, feels him pulling back on her t-shirt, holding her back.

If we go too soon, someone will just stop us, tell us to stand back.

So instead of running, she walks, down the steps and the grass-grown walk way to the sidewalk. She turns, looks back to the window of her grandmother’s room, to the screen door.

The air is no longer grumbling but beginning to shout. The leaves shudder as the girl walks, more quickly now, hands balled into fists at her side. She won’t run. A dove coos—no, it is an owl—no, a dog howling. It is the horn.

The girl begins to run, the slap of her feet against the pavement inaudible now. He is running beside her, urging her onward. He used to be faster, his longer legs pulling him ahead.

Longer and louder, the horn races the girl to the crossing. A shriek of pain tears through the arch of her foot as she runs over the dusty glass of a broken bottle, but it is overpowered by the horn, the thunder of wheels against rails. Faster, she sprints off the cracked pavement onto the gravel at the edge of the rails.

He has pulled ahead, as always. One, two, three steps ahead, his foot finding the chunk of pavement knocked by time and weather from the street to the gravel, wedged into the thirsty dirt by some forgotten rain storm. He stumbles, pitching forward. She pushes herself against the roar to him, reaching out to grab his shirt, to pull him back.

The girl’s fingers grasp only dust, close over only air as she her screams are lost in the wake of the train.

Posted by erica at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)