NOG 10

Interlude

בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת

The physical impact that accompanied these words came like an ocean wave. Grace was caught up by the wave and then sucked down into the wild undertow of the sea. She was tumbled in the whitewash of force, arms and legs flailing, no up or down, no air for her lungs. Panic came, as it always did when she got caught in a power too overwhelming for her personal strength. She began to feel lightheaded and faint from lack of air, slowly the world turned dove grey, grey, slate, charcoal, obsidian. Her bones flushed of all calcium as if she were a chicken-egg-in-vinegar experiment gone terribly awry. Her body collapsed, her frame leaving no support.

She fell but didn’t land. She fell and fell and fell. She fell some more. Days and nights passed, years passed, a millennium passed and she continued to fall.

Later, she landed on a hillside of grace, soft as a whisper. Her eyes opened and she saw cedar branches arching overhead like timber rafters. A scent of something, myrrh–

I don’t know what myrrh smells like

—licked its way past her nostrils. She turned to see her companion with his arm under her head, he reached his left arm to embrace her. She lay enraptured for as long as she had fallen.

Again later, there was a table at her feet. Rough hewn giant planks worn smooth by the ages formed a low table around which were strewn beautiful cushions of purple, blue and crimson. Voluptuously languid, she barely lifted her head and the edge of the table, embedded with jewels, caught her line of sight: jasper, sapphire, carnelian, chrysolite, topaz, jacinth, amethyst, chalcedony, beryl, chrysoprase, onyx, emerald sparkled brilliant flashes at her. As she counted the beautiful stones, twelve on each side, she wondered how she knew some of the names. A casual jewelry maker, she was a little familiar with gemstones from sporadic visits to the local bead store but she was pretty sure she had never heard the word chrysoprase and jacinth before in her life. It seemed as if this mysterious place imbued her brain with a wealth of information.

On the table were seven bowls. One looked to be hammered out of gold into the shape of an almond tree flower, one was of silver engraved with a tree growing next to a river, one was translucent, like alabaster, capturing and holding within its walls the unique golden light of this pasture. Another bowl seemed to be made of a pearlescent shell or maybe even a pearl of giant size, seamless and pristine. The last large bowl was carved from the fallen branch of one of the cedar branches overhead. Around the inside lip were carved lovely characters:

וְנָחֲךָ יְהוָה, תָּמִיד, וְהִשְׂבִּיעַ בְּצַחְצָחוֹת נַפְשֶׁךָ, וְעַצְמֹתֶיךָ יַחֲלִיץ; וְהָיִיתָ, כְּגַן רָוֶה, וּכְמוֹצָא מַיִם, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-יְכַזְּבוּ מֵימָיו

The remaining two bowls were smaller; handcrafted pottery so beautifully manipulated and glazed that Grace wondered if the potter had been possessed of supernatural powers.

These observations rushed to Grace with an unusual combination of clarity and celerity as she was escorted from her verdant bed to this nearby banqueting table. Her body moved, in tune with her escort, with unprecedented fluidity of motion. In unison they sank into the softest of raw silk cushions. Her host pulled the two smaller empty earthen bowls closer, placing one before her and one before himself. Grace wanted to jump up and serve her companion but he restrained her with a glance and reached for the golden bowl filled with apples. She watched him move as if in a ballet. He touched an apple and it fell into sections.

Wait, what happened?

Some sleight of his hand had cored and sliced the apple in the, literal, blink of her eye. He placed half of the slices in her bowl. She watched him lift the food, she thought, to his own mouth and instead he offered it to her. She bit and the crunch against her teeth was crisper than a brisk autumn wind, refreshing, surprising, so beyond anything she had ever experienced. The taste shocked her tongue. The sweetness was unbearable but she was saved from it by a balancing act of tart juiciness. It brewed up a fleeting picture of tousled haired children bobbing along in a red wagon being pulled through the paths of a small orchard, jewel toned leaves falling everywhere. Oh! how to describe the bounty of a single bite of apple. It seems like the most mundane act of alimentation and yet Grace knew she was experiencing the joy of life as it had been meant to be lived, food as it had been meant to be tasted.

They continued exploring with each bowl of food, her host leading her on a culinary adventure. Next he pulled over the silver bowl filled with raisins. Raisins in the red little boxes should be embarrassed to share a name with these giant, plump, red, gold and sable beauties being offered to Grace’s communicant mouth. These were edible gemstones, something out of Narnia, perfect droplets of heaven communicating the Maker’s brilliant genius. Grace was overwhelmed. Each bite brought a new thought of awe and wonder at the creator of such delight.

In the next wave of grandeur, he brought the pearlescent bowl filled with figs near. She wanted to shake her head and refuse these fruits. Grace never liked fresh figs, only the dried ones. But she couldn’t bring herself to say no to his kindness. So she opened her mouth and received his offer. So soft, such a surprise: Grace was astonished. This was nothing like any fig she had ever tasted. She couldn’t describe it even to herself.

Heaven.

Though different, it was familiar; the lovely little crunch of seeds was still her favorite part. Here the seeds served to punctuate and syncopate the rhythm of consuming a piece of paradise.

The fruit was so rich, Grace knew she should be full. Instead she actually salivated as if starving when the nourisher drew the next bowl near. Upon closer inspection, the alabaster revealed a slight reddish hint behind the reflected golden light to be pomegranates. He took one in his hand and the fruit stripped itself of its rosy leather jerkin as if in obeisance to its liege, revealing perfect rows of light filled ruby teardrops, sparkling, begging to be consumed in a culmination of existence.

Fruition.

Her companion fed her, drop by drop. She felt a tear form with every seed that entered her mouth: tears of appreciation for careful nurturing. The bitter afternote on the back edges of her tongue sang a melancholy requiem for the source of all nourishment and the cup of bitterness he had swallowed.

As a tear splashed on the rough hewn plank of the table, her companion pulled one last bowl toward them. She looked inside and saw a strange fruit she didn’t know. It was the green of a granny smith apple. The sides were faceted like a giant jewel or a grenade depending on whether you tend toward Athena or Mars.

“It is a chirimoya.” He explained as he split the fruit with his hand as if splitting a hunk of bread off a loaf. “It comes from one of many reminders of Eden.” Grace was enthralled by the juicy, creamy inside spotted with big dark teardrop shaped seeds. “Take, eat.” He offered a wedge of the milky flesh, into Grace’s mouth. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, submerged in the newness of flavor and texture. It was like a slightly tart, vanilla custard.

No, that isn’t quite right.

Again Grace did not have the vocabulary sufficient to describe eating the divine. Another picture erupted spontaneously in her mind, this time of a beautiful couple, naked and unashamed, sharing a delectable treat while sitting on a mossy hillock in a lush jungle, blackened magenta orchids hanging in ropy tendrils from a cool fortress of shading trees. The other fruits had been a new taste of an old fruit. This was a new taste of a new fruit and Grace thought she could die now, complete. A thought inspired by his reference to Eden budded in her brain,

“You know the story of Adam and Eve?”

This time his chuckles were flavored with apple, pomegranate and chirimoya.

“Okay, so you know it. I’m thinking about the part where they get thrown out of Eden. I remember there was a second tree. An angel was put on guard in front of this tree because it was the Tree of Life right?” He nodded for her to continue. “Do you think God didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat that fruit and be stuck living forever in their ruined state?”

As he nodded, Grace stopped to contemplate her own words. She had never thought of the banishment of the original couple in terms of mercy. Always before, she had envisioned the defeated couple skulking, slope-shouldered, away from a furious angel pointing his fiery sword away from the garden.

“That was weird, I don’t know why I said that. Where did that come from?”

“Haven’t you noticed that my presence has brought you increased wisdom tonight? Now, here you are in the anteroom to the inner sanctuary of wisdom. This is a place where your questions can begin to be answered.”

Grace nodded her head up and down hypnotized by the fact that this information had already been in her brain before he answered.

“Do you have other questions?”

Grace hesitated. Maybe if her questions could be answered, she shouldn’t waste hers on these new ideas popping into her head. Maybe she should be rummaging through those top pantry shelves, retrieving the items she’d been looking for all night. Grace tried to focus on her old questions but could only think this new thought about the fruit she had just been fed.

“That fruit you just gave me, the chirimoya, is that the fruit of the Tree of Life?”

“No Grace.”

In the tsunami of silence that followed Grace felt she needed to find somewhere to hide from what was coming. There was nowhere to go. There was nothing she could do but stand in the face of his answer.

“I am.”

The two words trembled the earth around Grace, causing it to roll and undulate like the sea. Still a mediocre sailor, Grace lost her legs immediately and fell on her face. She lay in awestruck and uncomprehending wonder.

What do those words mean? They have the power to throw me facedown into the grass. It’s all so strange.

Am I dead?

Maybe I’m dying was one thought that had fleetingly passed through her mind along with twenty other arbitrary guesses as to how she had begun tonight’s strange journey. For the first time she seriously considered that she might actually be dead dead. Why hadn’t she questioned the ramifications of all these incredibly bizarre events? She had floated along passively absorbing a visit from a beautiful stranger, traveling though time and dimensions she could not fathom, watching her life flash before he eyes, without any substantive analysis. Most of the journey Grace held in the back of her mind that this was all one giant drug induced delusion or dream. The new and very real possibility of her death excited her. Faced with the obvious idea of a new life in death, she hoped it could be true.

If this is death, then kill me now.

NOG 9

image from http://feastonthis.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/angel-food-cake/

5

Grace woke as if falling, arms flying out to catch her illusory descent.

“Did I fall asleep?”

“Yes.”

“What about the trip? The magic?”

“That was it.”

Then she noticed that she was rested. Really rested. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in three months. Cocaine tends to keep a person awake. Often she would lie in bed until the night turned to grey dawn and the time would come to get up. Even on the nights that she did fall asleep, that sleep was disturbed, haunted, full of fitful movements. Now the constant soreness in her muscles had disappeared. The endless buzzing feeling in her nerves had quieted. Hollow guilt that incessantly plagued her had bowed out for this act.

“How long was I out?”

“You could say: For the distance between the past and the present.”

The thing on the back of the shelf again, this time Grace didn’t bother to reach for it. She didn’t need to grasp it. She only wanted to enjoy the sensations of well-being. It had been so long.

“I feel like I could face anything–no matter how bad it is.”

She looked out to see a volleyball game in progress, one of her own. She relaxed her guard a little but not entirely. Though the court was a refuge for her: tensions and worries forgotten in the wash of adrenaline, sweat and lactic acid, she knew from experience that any situation could turn ugly without notice. He had warned her.

But really, how bad can it be?

“This one might not be so bad.” Her companion didn’t answer her hopeful prediction, watching as the other Grace crushed a ball down the line. “That was good hit. Don’t you think I look pretty good out there? Those briefs show everything but I don’t look horrible.”

“Grace, you are beautiful to me, especially when you’re healthy. You are strong like bull.”

Grace laughed that he had borrowed the Russian accent her mom affected when she said the same thing, making it sound more like ‘st-dawng like booll’. In the wake of her laughter she grew immediately uncomfortable with the compliment she had so brazenly solicited. She waffled, “I guess I could lose five pounds. Still, I look okay right?” Grace cringed at the desperate need in her voice. She might just have well have said, ‘Please like me. Think I am pretty. Reassure me!’

Pathetic.

“I do like you. You are pretty.”

Nice.

Grace had begun to notice that she was unable to differentiate between real and imagined, even within the confines of this fantastical scenario. She didn’t know whether her companion had actually spoken or whether she had wished the words into her own hearing. She was too embarrassed to ask him directly, ashamed at her need, afraid the words hadn’t really come. For now, it didn’t matter. Real or imagined, she basked in the warmth of his favor.

The game she was playing ended. The crowd started clapping. Grace watched herself walk over to the players bench and grab some sweats. Pulling up her pants, the team went into a stretching warm-down ritual that was really just an excuse for the coach to blather endlessly. If talking made for good coaching this lady would have been coach of the century. Grace didn’t enjoy listening to her yammer in real life, she wondered if their time was best spent listening to her now.

“Um are you sure this is where you want to be? We could probably skip this part.” As those words departed her mouth, Grace caught a glimpse of the person standing near the bench talking to their trainer. The trainer was laughing and batting this person’s arm, twirling some trainer’s tape around her finger in her usual come-hither stance. All the volleyball players called her See-through Sally behind her back and sometimes to her face. Although the University issued heavy duty white polos to all its training program staff, somehow Sally’s always managed to be see-through. There was an actual betting pool, guessing how she had achieved this transparency: she washed the shirt with a washboard, she sanded the shirt to a paper thin fiber, she bought a different polo and reaffixed the trainer’s insignia to it. In order to win the pot, somebody was going to have to ask for her secret.

At this point, Grace felt a sudden and inexplicable rush of jealousy at Sally’s unabashed petting of the stranger’s arm. He was wearing the red sweats particular to the school’s soccer team. But Grace didn’t know anyone on the soccer team.

“Hey, is that–?” she cut her query short, reluctant to draw attention to her interest. She felt a chuckle drop on her and was startled by a sudden shifting of perspective and speed of motion of all the people around them. “Oh wait, are we leaving? Where are we going?” she felt swift disappointment.

“I thought you didn’t want to listen to your coach.,” his pleasant laughter rippling speculatively.

“I don’t, it’s just that–I don’t know.” She didn’t want to articulate this thing, so ancillary, maybe even frivolous, on such a crucial journey. Embarrassed, she shut her mouth.

They watched as sweaty Grace moved up the bleachers to where her parents sat with her sisters Honey and Molly and her brother Ben, her number one fan. At some unseen command, the speed of movement tripled and then quadrupled as if everything were fast forwarding.

Talk about your Universal Remote.

High fives and hugs moved in a blur, her family filed out of the gym at a run, got into the car and gained momentum that jumped over the ride home and stopped in the kitchen of Grace’s home.

“Neat.”

Back at normal speed, Grace stood, leaning against the smooth soapstone of the kitchen counter, breathing in the baked vanilla of an angel food cake, fluffy and pure, a prim virgin queen on a cake-plate throne. Across the counter her mom and dad were seated at the kitchen table with Molly and Honey. Beyond the kitchen table over in the den section of the great room, Ben lay on the couch, mouth open, air raking across adenoids. The sound of his rasping breaths caused one of her momentary bouts of panic. Ben’s frailty was able to leave her weak with fear.

This fear had started one gorgeous day when the bay had frozen over. Such a huge body of water didn’t often succumb completely to the cold so it was kind of a big deal. Ben had never been out on the frozen bay so the whole family had gathered to take their precious cargo for his inaugural visit. Everybody was there: Annie with her husband Charlie, even Wendy had come home for Christmas. All the siblings had scrum rummaged in the closet under the staircase, each person looking for the right sized skates. Ben waited patiently like little Lord Fauntelroy on the bottom step. The sisters tumbled out of the closet en masse, bestowing the double-bladed learning skates on their little brother like a benediction. Each one of them had used those red laced skates as her first. His juicy lips had twisted into a smile of delight lighting up his face with the glow of excitement for his first day of ‘eye-kay-dee’.

Glorious sunshine glinted off the ice, guiding colorfully sailed iceboats across the endless expanse in a crunching shoosh. Between the cold and the beauty, it was literally breathtaking. Unforgettable. Each person fought for the right to hold Ben’s mittened hand and guide him through his first day out. He didn’t do much actual ‘eye-kay-dee’, mostly he just walked around and then finally everyone took turns holding him. Ben didn’t want to leave but his nose had turned Rudolph red and signs of green had begun to tell in the line of mucus from his nose. Time to go home. That night he had been rushed to the hospital with sudden onset of pneumonia. Safe at home, Grace had tried to pray for Ben’s rapid recovery but fell asleep instead.

That night she dreamed that Ben had died at the hospital. The crushing desperation of loss had been stunningly unexpected, leaving her paralyzed. She couldn’t remember all the details of the dream, just the overwhelming hopelessness of never seeing Benjamin again. In her dream she had cried with the rawness of agony she had only felt once before, in another dream.

During the summer approaching seventh grade, young Grace had read almost all the books in the bookshelf in her living room. She was nearly finished the most daunting collection of butterscotch leather books, each classic title listed in gold leaf on a rectangular field of a different jewel color. After exhausting every other resource she had reluctantly settled on the emerald bordered Faust. Always one to judge a book by its cover, Grace had already decided she didn’t like this one but read on with dogged determination. The story disturbed her deeply and as happens in Grace Land, her mind translated the disturbance to dream. While sleeping, dream Grace made an unremembered Faustian trade that consigned her to hell. Though most details were misty, she woke with a sharp remembrance of herself kneeling in the auditorium of her Middle School, waiting for final, eternal judgement to be passed on her.

That night, she cried the same black wretchedness that had followed her dream of Benjamin’s death. Both times the tears in her dream had finally crossed over into her real life and she had awoken with tears soaking the pillow, sobs clutching the air around her. She remembered the raw panic of irrevocable loss in her first moment’s awakening,

Am I going to hell?

Is Ben really dead?

She had raced down the stairs to find her precious brother nestled between her parents in their giant bed. Relief nearly dropped her to the floor at the door of their bedroom. Still she couldn’t forget that sinking feeling and was often unsuspectingly besieged by the panic of that memory. Her eyes rested protectively on her favorite little piece of angel food cake as he lay peacefully sleeping where she had deposited him on the cushions, looking over the head of her father whose glasses were busily twirling in her periphery. Grace watched herself flare her nostrils and roll her eyes as her Dad began his nightly ritual of reading the bible to his family. Distracted from Ben, she turned microscopic attention to the greasy smudge marks on his bifocals while she and her other self made a pact to tune out his words. She would rather be listening to her coach.

She deliberately diverted her attention again, picking up a knife, plunging it into the golden exterior of the pristine cake. Carefully cutting a generous portion, she grabbed a fork and stabbed the tines full of lovely white sponge. Hungry, as usual, from her game, she was poised to eat when words penetrated the barrier she normally erected in these situations.

“Are you sure you want that?” Her father’s voice grated her ears in every dimension. Grace could tell that she and herself were equally annoyed when she saw the snarl that distorted her face. “Don’t make such an ugly face. I’m just trying to help. I saw you in those briefs and they don’t hide much.”

“I’d like to see you in a pair of briefs Mr. Angel Food Cake.”

Grace mumbled, barely above her breath. Her father didn’t catch the response but she and her companion did. Lilting drops of joy fell from his mouth, landing on Grace’s ears with gentle healing. Grace was almost willing to get another barb from her dad if the reward was that laughter.

“Interesting response.” He nudged her, distracting her from the tears that threatened to join a pool being formed by the other Grace in the sisterhood of hurt feelings.

“If I thought he knew me better I would think he was deliberately pushing my buttons. The truth is worse: my buttons developed over time in specific response to him. Without even trying, everything he says makes me overreact wildly. He doesn’t even know he’s driving me insane. If he did, he wouldn’t care. Nobody else can get beneath my skin like that and make it itch like a thousand insects invading. His helpful little remarks instantly make me feel horrible, small and fat at the same time. I wish I could say the perfect thing to let him know how it hurts me and then hurt him back in equal measure. Instead I just trip over my own words, tongue-tied and miserable.” She leaned in for comfort against his side, ribs and muscle a soothing fortress.

Grace knew from not too distant memory that she had immediately lost her appetite but watched as she spitefully and deliberately shoveled that forkful into her mouth and a second gigantic portion to chase it down. Sad to see herself force feeding a huge chunk down to her churning stomach, she noticed her mom making furious grimaces at her father.

“Huh. I never saw that.”

“I guess you were busy proving something.” he pointed out.

“I was hungry before he said that. I had just finished playing a college level volleyball game. That burns calories you know. Do you know how much fat there is in Angel Food Cake? None. What the heck? Can’t I get a break?”

“So, instead of repeating these facts in a rational way, you decided to force feed your fugitive appetite to teach him a lesson? Again, this is a very interesting response. I don’t see how it helps you. I don’t see how it makes him understand you better.”

“I told you, I get tongue tied and if I try to say anything I end up shrieking and crying and then I get in trouble for being disrespectful. That’s the worst part, when, all of a sudden, I’m in trouble for doing absolutely nothing besides eating a piece of cake. Did you notice that he interrupted himself reading the bible just to share that nugget of helpfulness? Is telling me I’m fat supposed to be more important than his precious bible?” She challenged, once again shifting the object of his scrutiny.

“Grace, be fair. You weren’t even listening to him.”

“Oh yeah, I know. I can tell you what he was saying though: ‘Blah blah blah something about sacred man-loins, something else about head coverings, a happy tale of children being stoned at the gates of the city for disobedience, a recitation of the need for a millstone to be tied around the neck of somebody—probably me, and why? because I bear a striking resemblance to a lady named Jezebel, witch of the Old Testament. We finally get somewhere when he reads out in his giant booming voice, so full of conviction: ‘if you love me you will obey me.’ Only he isn’t talking about obeying God. He’s always talking about obeying him. Small g god of our family.”

As if to bear witness to Grace’s stream of invective, her father’s voice carried across the kitchen, swelling in her ears with what she called, 'oulde thyme religion.' She even spelled it that way in her mind.

“I am God’s representative to you on this earth. That's why He gave you parents. You weren’t beamed down from a spaceship. He gave you to us so you can follow us.”

Grace turned to her companion. “How can anyone justify that? What kind of God would let that be His representative? Not a good cosmic marketing plan if you ask me.” Grace looked into his dark eyes with her challenge and saw profound sadness.

“Why did you?”

“Why did I what?” she quizzed him despite knowing exactly what he meant.

“Why did you let him be the only representation of God you relied on?”

“I guess I wasn’t interested in what was being sold. If I was in the market for anger and hypocrisy I might have kicked the tires. But, surprise surprise, I was all stocked up.” Grace despised the petulant weakness of her own response. She was deflecting, once again focusing on cartwheels in a supermarket. Still, she felt marginally justified as she turned back to the familiar kitchen table in time to see her father pick up the bible to read a choice morsel of what seemed to Grace to be furious condemnation. She saw his face twist and watched as spittle flew from his mouth.

“That,” her newest and loveliest friend placed himself between Grace and the contorted visage, “does not justify you never getting to know God for yourself.”

He looked at her, commanding her attention.

“Grace, let’s imagine you’ve met someone you find attractive. You are intrigued. Wouldn’t you look for opportunities to see this person? Wouldn’t you want to know more about him? Hear his voice, examine him more closely, learn his features, find out about his character to confirm your initial reaction?” She nodded, her head bobbing on the ethereal waves of recent discovery. She had been blindsided by that desire ever since the stranger in the Ceramics Studio. More importantly and to her complete surprise, she wanted that very thing with this stranger by her side. The more she knew about him, the more she wanted to know.

“Would your dad have to drag you, sullen and reluctant, to see that person?” She didn’t bother agreeing in the negative, they both knew an absurd notion when they heard one.

“Would you need your father to act out a perfect pantomime of this person, to be sure you were interested, to know he was really attractive, to know if you liked him?”

She made a little retching noise,

“Okay, I get it, you don’t have to gross me out to drive home your point.”

“Grace, I don’t think you do get it. Imagine you began to fall deeply, madly, wildly in love with this person. You’ve discovered his beauty is exactly what you’ve always waited for, that his love is profound and true.” Again, her head nodded in acknowledgement of something she had begun to learn this night. “He has sent you letters detailing his past, present and future plans for the two of you. He has sent ardent letters and poetry declaring his love, your exquisite beauty in his eyes, how he could move mountains for you and walk on water just to be by your side.” Her eyes filled with tears remembering the assurances, the kind words, the gifts he had already shared with her.

“Would you wait for your father to read those letters to you?” She reared her head back against that absurdity. “No, you would anxiously await the moments until you could rip open this person’s letters and devour his words. Even if someone else did get hold of those letters, reading only the parts that made you feel confused, in a voice that irritated you, wouldn’t you want to see for yourself what the letters actually said? Read them with his voice in your mind? Make sure his words sounded like the person you had come to know and understand?”

Grace nodded, reluctantly fascinated by the questions following each other out of those compelling lips,

“Finally, once you knew him, wouldn’t you want to spend time with him, listening to him, letting him listen to you, just being together in the quietness of bliss? This could be the love of your life. Wouldn’t it be worth the effort to really get to know him?”

Grace, interrupted the trance induced by his words. A desire for control always wanted to cut in on the new dance her companion was teaching her. After all, this conversation had started as an indictment of her father and the one who put him in charge.

“I get it.” her voice sounded curt and rough to her own ears.

“So why didn’t you bother to get to know me for yourself?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. In this lovely fantasy picture you’ve created I’m supposed to have been magically attracted and intrigued. What about real life? In that reality I felt no interest or attraction.” She paused letting that sink in, “Never once did I even come close to falling deeply, madly, or wildly in love. I get your point, but it presupposes me discovering you as the love of my life. That’s never been the case and I don’t think one night’s journey is going to make up for it.”

In the words of the singer, Grace can be viciously unkind. At some point she had chosen to be annoyed that he had challenged her excuses and turned them upside down. She was so busy trying to be right that she didn’t even notice they had transitioned from the third person to the first person. His word picture had brought out his truth into the simple, clear light, for the billionth time, outshining the darkness of her complaints against her father but she was petulantly angry that he deftly stripped her of all pretense. The part of her that still wanted to control this situation designed her half-truths to hurt and punish him for finding the giant error in her logic and blasting it to kingdom come. She knew they had hit their mark when his hand trembled. She turned defiantly to him and saw tears standing in dark pools of pain. Grace was suspended in horror and maybe, yes, disgust.

How pathetically needy.

The words sprang to her mind and while causing guilt they gathered momentum.

Is he so desperate for me to love him?

“Grace I am wildly, deeply, madly in love with you. I have walked across a sea of stars to reach you, changed my form so you could comprehend me, accepted death on your behalf and stormed through hell and back again just so we could be together. You are beautiful to me. You are the love of my life. I could spend an eternity with you.”

NOG 8

Interlude

שְׁבֹּת

By his words, Grace was seated, on what, she had no idea. It seemed that a force equal and opposite to every angle of her seated body was holding her suspended in space. She felt like she was floating in a swimming pool filled with jello.

Not really jello, there’s nothing there. But I can feel something like the soft supportive density of jello.

This confused and woefully inadequate description confirmed that Grace really didn’t have the vocabulary to describe the grandeur of the unknown. Maybe somebody better with physics and concepts of force and matter could have explained it. On the flip side a poet might have lent some insight. Grace, regular plain Grace, had to rely on a trite phrase,

Floating on a cloud.

As if floating on a cloud wasn’t lovely enough, her friend–

Hmmm friend, this is what the word friend is supposed to mean.

Grace became lost in the recognition of a friendship so unexpected.

Her friend sat down on the cloud right next to her. He still hadn’t let go of her hand. As they rested, an image appeared before them. The sudden picture had the feeling of an eight millimeter film projection. Different from old home movies which are characterized by graininess and randomly occurring marring scratches, this picture had the pristine crispness of sharper-than-life clarity. As a scene began to unfold, Grace understood that her initial identification with a home movie was provoked by the oddly stuttering articulation of the progressing story, as if every individual and object had been rendered slightly robotic when translated to film. It was like a flip book of incredibly clear pictures.

Not that I would know anything about home movies. Nobody ever bothered taking any of me.

“I know,” his voice interrupted her silent self-pity, “that’s why I want to show you this. I know the desires of your heart. This is my gift to you.”

As they watched, a girl walked up a beach boardwalk. Her Shirley Temple curls bobbed as she made her way up the meandering path. The grey weathered boards nestled between hillocks of sand. Tufts of dune grass sprouted to break the pristine cleanliness with sprays of green, yellow and brown. The fronds whispered in the breeze mimicking the more distant sound of ocean waves whooshing onto the beach. The girl was skipping barefoot on dry wood, summer tough soles impervious to the daggers of splintered silver cedar that threatened each footfall. Her skin was carefree gold against the red terry cloth of her two-piece. Her fingers worried the frayed edges of an embroidered whale on the left breast of her bathing top. In the right hand, she held a piece of red stained-glass shaped like a school kid’s plastic ruler, three inches long and shrinking with its every trip to her artificially rosy mouth.

“Did she get that at the old snack shack? Gosh I loved that place. Didn’t they tear it down because of dry rot or something? The new snack shack was never the same. Can you show me the old one?” She interrupted one thought with the next, “Jolly Ranchers! Watermelon! You can’t find them in those long sticks anymore, only the little suckers or sometimes a stubbier version of the original if you look hard. What is it with me and the candy? You know I don’t even like candy that much. This must have been before the candy embargo. Or am I sneaking again? I thought this was supposed to be a gift”

His laughter interrupted her onslaught of words and he nudged her.

“Look at you. So happy and worry free. No guilt, no skulking. This was definitely pre- or post-embargo. Even though it seemed like forever to you, candy prohibition didn’t last as long as you remember.”

“It did seem like forever.” She didn’t pause, catching up quickly with her own meandering thoughts. “I loved that bathing suit, so soft and comfy. I wore it every day, I think I might even have slept in it. It would be lovely to be her again; smile on my face, sand in my bed. Unmitigated happiness.”

The girl reached the end of the boardwalk. She stood at the head of tall stairs that led down to the beach. Tucking the whole candy into her mouth for safekeeping, she unceremoniously hurled her body off the edge of the top step. Her hair lifted in the breeze as her arms and legs splayed out in star formation. A pink grin of untarnished delight spread across her face, suffusing the air around her with joy. The happiest flying starfish. Grace held her breath for that suspended moment of flight. Her self hit the sand with a dull thud and continued to roll down the hill of alabaster grit until she was completely breaded in sand. Losing the momentum of her roll, young Grace leapt to her feet and headed toward the ocean in an all-out downhill sprint. She whizzed by an older lady, distracting her from snapping the chinstrap of her blue hydrangea-flowered bathing cap under the left ear, kicking up sand and drawing a furious glare. Oblivious, the wild girl reached the shallow water, slowing slightly only with the hindrance of water. She dove headlong with complete abandon into the first curling wave her small body could fit under.

“I miss that so much.”

“The beach is only ten minutes away. Why should you miss it?’

She was sad with inexplicable loss, “I am not the same. I can’t be her anymore. She was fearless, wild, fun, free, adventurous. Not ruined”

“You’re right. She was fearfully and wonderfully made. You’re also wrong. She isn’t lost forever. You can find that pure girl again. Every morning there are new mercies waiting for you. I can make all things new for you.”

Grace wanted to believe him. What he said was so tempting. Unfortunately she knew there were things she could never recover, never recover from, never rediscover.

He doesn’t understand.

A perfectly synchronized pause and the scene switched abruptly, as home movies like to do, to the next vignette. The smell of diesel fumes mixed with briny bay wind wafted into Grace’s brain, calling her, Oh little playmate, into the apple tree of recollection. She jerked her head sharply to see the sun and sea twisted mop of her own childish hair whipping against the force of wind generated by a ferry cutting across the water. The toasty sand waif was huddled at the back of the boat, in the coveted corner seat of the bench where one lucky passenger could lean a head back and be exposed to the full expanse of late afternoon summer sky.

Again, the hand of loss reached and wrung another twist in Grace’s heart, squeezing out salty tears. With limbs gathered to her chest, the child nestled into the corner and lay her head on the cheek height ledge, feeling the vibration of the motor buzzing her head, soothingly irritating. A huge green-headed horsefly landed on an exposed ankle not covered by the tattered gray sweatshirt pulled over her knees. A guerilla hand eased out and hovered over the biting fly, waiting for the perfect time to slam a punishing assault down on the offending intruder. Crack! Precision strike, the corpse fell to the greasy grey painted floor of the boat, joining a mass grave of his compatriots.

“Nice shot. How many is that?” A voice inquired.

Grace quickly counted the round and raised, red bite marks on her legs and subtracted the number she had failed to kill.

“”I’ve gotten eight so far. How ‘bout you?” She lifted her cheek off the buzzing ledge to hear the answer, hoping she was ahead. The inquisitive neighbor could have lied about her kill count but there is an honor code generally hallowed among ferry riders.

“Only six, they’re really fast today.” Grace nodded in agreement. Some days the winged enemy just sat there, dull and bloated, seemingly suicidal. The afternoon had sent a brisk breeze, sweeping away the muggy and turgid, adding a spring to the step of each horsefly and making combat a little more challenging.

“Why can’t I think of her name? I’ve known her all my life. I just saw her at the deli the other day when I was grabbing a breakfast sandwich.”

“A strange thing has been happening to you lately Grace. If you haven’t noticed, it seems like you have been relinquishing all the good things in your life— just letting them go like so much dead weight. You have taken on heavy ballast with your recent activities and you have to make room. Sadly you have let go, one by one, all the sweetest memories, even names of the nicest people you’ve known.”

“Yeah, I noticed. It’s like the Nothing in The Neverending Story. Have you ever seen that movie?” Despite the question seeming ludicrous, he nodded his head. “It’s taking me over. Chunks of me are just falling by the wayside. And I feel numbly powerless to do anything but watch. It’s horrible”

“Yes, it is horrible.”

“How is this supposed to be a gift?”

“I just gave this memory back to you. By the way, her name is Lauren. Remember?”

As if his question were a command, a flood of memories came back: bike riding, roller-skating, heads up seven up, HORSE in a driveway basketball court, crack-the-whip ice-skating, sucking nectar out of the back of countless honeysuckles, crabbing on the dock at night armed only with raw chicken legs on a string, a flashlight and expert net scooping skills.

This provoked one particularly clear memory of a night on the dock under the full moon. Unable to sleep in the heat, her parents had let her stay out late. She and Lauren had raced their banana seated Schwinns down to the bay. Flying down the hill at obscene speeds, the night wind blessed their sweaty brows. Round the bend and down the straightaway, Grace had arrived first at the end of the bulkhead. Deftly tying the string to a raw chicken leg pulled out of the white plastic bucket, she let it plop softly into the inky water illuminated beneath a yellow street light. Another race ensued in which she and Lauren fought to see who could tie the most lines before all the chicken parts had disappeared. Grace secretly let Lauren win this time, already satisfied with her biking triumph. By the time they returned to the first line, it was taut, indicating a crab had taken the bait. Together they shone their flashlights on the chicken. There was nothing more exciting than watching a blue claw try and drag a monstrous chicken leg through murky waters. Grace giggled at the furiously industrious delicate paddles located behind the claws and legs at the back of the razored oval body. As Grace slowly, slowly, slow-ly lifted the line, Lauren readied her net. Grace pulled, Lauren lowered the boom with stealth; the two girls moved in the perfectly synchronized ballet of practiced understanding. Swoosh, the crab was netted, still trying to tear chunks from its prey, unwitting that he had now become the prey. Whispered whoops issued from the two huntresses over the first catch of the night.

Grace was washed in the thrill of finding lost treasure. Backing out of her mind’s eye, she recommenced watching the fantastical ‘home movie’ of her young self and her recaptured playmate enjoying a round of cat’s cradle with a chinese jumprope that magically appeared out of someone’s pocket. They collapsed on each other, laughing hysterically as their hands became hopelessly entwined in a kaleidoscope of geometric designs.

“Thank you, that was fun. I had almost forgotten how great my childhood could be.”

“You’re welcome. Only be careful, and watch yourself closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart for as long as you live.”

Despite this momentary reprieve, she could feel the inexorable tug of the quicksand haunting her, waiting for her. The sinking mud offered no support. Instead, it seemed to want to suck her down into its vortex, covering over her head just like that horse in the movie.

Artax.

The last three months were only the culmination of a thousand poor choices that chipped away at the integrity of her life. Why had she made so many bad choices? There must be something intrinsically wrong with her that she had fallen into the pit so easily. Why hadn’t she been looking where she was going? Why hadn’t she gone the other way? Why had she dived headlong into the most abominable looking mudpile she could find? Wallowing in the Pit of Despair, she had walked into the nightmare of epic fable.

But who will come to save me with a name?

“Grace.” His word interrupted her tailspin. Completely engrossed, irritation buzzed her like a one of those nasty horseflies.

“You should check that tendency. I have known too many people so enamored of their own tragic grandeur that they choose to stay broken, refusing to get better.” Grace knew he was generalizing to soften the blow. His light pierced the truth of who she was. She loved to roll her sadness over her tongue, savoring its taste. She didn’t mind using props to enhance the experience: sad songs, tragic poetry, verse in a foreign language—a particular indulgence—facilitated a specific brand of anonymous self-pity. Having sufficiently worked herself into an emotional frenzy she would then enjoy the fruits of her labor by watching herself cry in the mirror until the redness made her eyes shine green. He continued with searing insight,

“There are people who choose to remain ill when there is a great physician waiting to heal. Even worse than refusing treatment, the longing for the intoxication of drama becomes so great that some individuals will deliberately and continually sabotage themselves in a sort of spiritual Munchausen’s syndrome, perpetuating the agony, the madness, the sickness.”

He doesn’t understand.

The scene changed one more time. Deposited onto the mainland by the five o’clock ferry, beachspent Grace ambled, alone again, up the patchy asphalt of road. Suddenly energized by a spurt of youth, she broke into the padded run of calloused bare feet, catching the faded stripes of the towel tied around her neck on the wind of her speed. She put her arms out wide in front of her, waiting to be taken onto the wings of the air. Ten seconds later, unsuccessful in flight, she slowed down and then quit altogether. Pooped by attempting Icarus, she took a sharp right and hopped over the split rail fence that bordered the road because using the opening a foot away from her vaulting point would have defeated the purpose of the steeplechase. Grace hit the grass and stopped to assess the small orchard of five trees.

She stood staring at the trees for a considerable amount of time, swaying almost imperceptibly to the rhythm of the slightest movement of branches. Grace knew what was happening. Having done this so many times, she immediately fell into the familiar ritual along with little Grace. She let her eyes go loose, unfocussed like searching for a Magic 3-D picture. Under her near cross-eyed gaze, the trees began to transform. Holes, knots and swirling bark clarified themselves into eyes and a variety of features whose placement would have made Picasso proud. The gnarled and twisted branches morphed into beckoning arms with many jointed fingers. The shoulders, elbows, wrists bent again and again at broken angles with arthritic swelling at the joints. Slow fingers crooked, calling Grace to come taste their wares. Each tree had become a tiny wizened ancient person, welcoming and familiar, vying for Grace to pick his shoulders to sit on and taste of his fruit.

This was a strange realm that Grace’s mind entered on many a lazy summer afternoon. Usually able to work herself into a tizzy of fear over an elaboration of her imagination— an anonymous hand shooting out between the slats of the cellar stairs, sinister eyes lurking from the crack in the bulkhead that keeps the bay from washing the shore away, the muscular arm of late summer’s swirling undertow holding Grace down indefinitely—oddly, the tiny grove of wrinkled mutated treemen seemed friendly, not frightening.

Today, she chose the nearest tree whose lowest branch was just the right height for a limber kid to swing up with agility born of desire. She straddled the branch and shimmied backward into the crook, where trunk meets branch. Settled in safe and snug on a favorite set of strong shoulders, Grace lifted her legs up into a balanced lotus pose that comes naturally only to children, Gumby or Ghandi. Finally and perfectly comfortable, she fell to her task of picking and eating mulberries.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that she’s all by herself? You’d think everybody in the neighborhood would have been in those trees. A murder of crows swarming and devouring.”

“Not weird. I would just say it must have been nice for you to have time alone to look at the water, watch the sunset and enjoy the fruit.”

“Yeah, that’s a much better way of putting it. Still, it seems like I’m always alone.”

“Grace, you were never alone.”

The mulberries were perfect. Deep crimsony-aubergine mounds comprised of smaller globelets of juiciness. All of the fruits were not fully ripened; there was a rainbow of readiness ranging from tartest green, sungold, fire-orange, almost luscious scarlet, not quite burgundy, perfected purple. You definitely had to be a pro to pick the perfect mulberry, careful and patient. Still, there seemed to be an endless supply. Every day that she climbed up the tree, she would climb back down sated, fingers, mouth and (who knows why) soles washed in purple berry. Grace watched herself, sitting and munching, enjoying the end of the day, oblivious to anything but the goodness of it all. Knowledge loomed that she could not go back and climb into that tree and enjoy the simple act of picking berries. The void was an unbearable hollow ache inside her. She poked at it absently, relishing the pain of the wound.

“Stop Grace, this is supposed to remind you of the goodness in your life-- not cause you an endless reverie of the bitterness of loss. Remember the good things that will give you joy and bring gladness to your heart.”

He doesn’t understand.

This betraying thought, voiced internally a third time, provoked a dawning somewhere. Words crowed:

That’s a lie. He does understand.

He understood her better than anyone else, probably better than she ventured to understand herself. Could she trust him? Could she believe him? Did she dare to hope? At that moment, Grace noticed that, as they watched the movie, she had reclined against his chest. She felt secure, safe, comfortable.

I am falling in love.

This startling recognition made her sit upright. Repose abruptly ended, she noted with bittersweet longing that her show had ended also. The reel was over, a non-existent tape slapping in an endless circular rotation and they sat watching nothing but the stars. Grace didn’t know much about constellations but she was almost sure this was a different sky than she was used to seeing.

“The past is over. It is time to move on.”

Grace had a moment of panic in which she thought he might leave her. She clutched hard at his arm, marveling that this was the same arm she had refused to touch such an endlessly short time ago. Where she once feared intimacy she was now terrified of losing it.

“I don’t think I’m ready for this to be over yet. I know there’s more.”

She couldn’t articulate her desperation to know him better and find out what this night was all about. She couldn’t express her fear at returning to the street, alone, full of drugs with nowhere to turn. She didn’t want to be back in her own bed if she was just going to wake up and go back to that street at the end of the day.

“Don’t worry Grace, I’m not finished with you yet.”

A hiccuping sob noise of relief popped out of her mouth before she could cover it over with her hand. Leaning back into his arm, she barely heard his voice recede into the muffled folds of her consciousness,

“Don’t forget how you trust me right now Grace. We are moving into ugly territory. You’re going to feel ashamed. Know that I love you.”