Selma In The City

Thanks to Writers Island for the prompt.

This week - torrid.

Alice was used to looking at life in terms of what she couldn’t have rather than what she could. She lived in a two bedroom apartment with her sister which they had inherited from their hapless father - a man left startled by unfulfilled desires not just of the physical kind but the emotional, the spiritual. ‘You can’t always get what you want,’ he was noted for saying. ‘It’s important to learn to settle for second best. It keeps disappointment at bay.’

At night Alice watched the lights on the river, liquid green like the wheatgrass juice the young girls in the office favoured. Alice had tasted it once and was instantly repulsed. She’d rather have a cup of tea.

Every night she sat up well past midnight while her sister slumbered, sedated with pills and single malt whiskey. Once you got used to the night it was not as bleak as you imagined. Regal purples and rich browns whorled through the black until it was a microcosm of sombre beauty. Alice had grown fond of the night.

She met Alex at drinks after a work function about management strategies that left her longing for the time where she could brew her favourite tea and watch the river, face pressed against the glass, surrendering to the night.

He was 35, a ‘mover and a shaker’ and so good-looking she felt like her heart would burst when she looked at him. Alice, at 46, was ashamed to feel what she didn’t want to say out loud but knew was lust, for a man so much younger. She felt pathetic, out of her depth. How many times had her father predicted she would end up a spinster, that she didn’t have the looks men wanted.

To his credit, Alex didn’t seem to mind. He pursued her in a relentless manner that made Alice breathless, kissing her so passionately on their first date she saw coloured lights like she’d been hit on the head with a blunt object. It was astounding. It was miraculous. It was the way she had felt as a child when she plunged her entire face into a hibiscus flower and emerged having lost all sense, the scent of the flower so deeply embedded it stayed on her tongue for days.

Alex began to stay over at the apartment - once a week, twice, then every night. ‘It’s disgusting at your age.’ Her sister was peeved. ‘I can hear you through the walls. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks. I don’t know what the neighbours must think.’

Alice didn’t care what the neighbours thought. Or what her sister thought for that matter. She was wrapped in a magical, dreamlike blanket. Her euphoria made her love the world and everything in it. She was surprised she had gotten more than she’d dared to hope for and shocked that she wanted more and more. And more.

‘Don’t hold back,’ Alex said when they were in bed together. ‘This is it. This moment. This is what life’s all about.’

Alice was partly enthusiastic, partly embarrassed. This passion, intensity, was torrid, scorching her fingertips, leaving her thirsty and shaking. She felt like she had shed a thousand skins and was walking reconstituted in the dusty streets where people regarded her with a knowing eye.

All she could see was the colour of her ardour, everything else swam in blandness. The lips of the girl in accounts, smeared with vermilion, assailed her. The rest of her appeared as a line drawing that had been partly erased.

The strawberries in her fruit salad jumped out at her, like rubies set amongst glass. She spent an entire hour watching a blouse with magenta buttons whirl in the dryer.

Everywhere she looked she could see it. It was all she wanted to see. Red, carmine, damask, crimson. The colour cupid and the devil knew in equal measure. It was as if by seeing the colour of her passion, her secret, secret life, it became more real.

‘It’ll never last,’ her sister said. ‘He’s just using you.’

Alice found she didn’t care. She barely thought about the future, plunging into the present with a lack of restraint that normally would have unnerved her.

She took to wearing daring dresses with plunging necklines, red shoes with six-inch heels. She got her hair styled and coloured. The responses of friends and work mates were favourable:

‘You look years younger.’

‘I’ve never seen you look so well.’

In her lunch hour she read Byron, feeling she would swoon over all the talk of sex and death. She went to the bathroom and in the mirror the colours of her face blurred until all she could see were two spots, deep as burgundy, lodged on either cheek.

One morning she woke and the red in the world was gone like it had been sponged off in the night. She held her breath, panicked. Was this the end?

I love you. Alex said as he awakened. I’m yours for the rest of my life.

Alice rushed to the window. She saw colours that had been hidden for months. A little girl danced in the morning wearing a blue dress. A boy pulled a green cap on his head. Her neighbour hung washing on the line in whites and yellows.

‘You love me,’ Alice said. ‘As no one else could. And the world is vivid and bright.’

Last night we took part in Earth Hour at 8PM, turning off all our lights and getting the candles out. Jake loved it, claiming it was like a return to the good old days. (Incidentally he has just started his own blog called Seb Said It, so if you feel so inclined, stop by and say ‘Hi.’ I know he would really appreciate it.)

I was heartened by how many of our neighbours joined in. There was a simplicity in the darkness, a pleasure. The night hadn’t grown colder, just longer and wider.

I stood in the garden. Remembering moments as a child in the Highlands of Scotland or rural Ireland where all the lights in the village were out after 9 o’clock and a cloak fell softly over the land, gentle as a quilt made from goose down.

Hello Earth. I whispered. It’s me. We’re trying to save you. Many of us care, most of care, but we are frightened our efforts will be too miniscule to make a difference. We want to make a difference, you have to know that.

I’ve probably never told you, Earth. But I love you. I stroll through the park and your trees shade me, their leaves made up of the most perfect daubs of green. Even the most seasoned of painters would be hard pressed to capture the endless variety of greens that make up a tree.

Some days I get up and I feel low. There is a darkness in my heart that won’t go away and then I walk outside and see the sky. The blue appears, unwavering, effortless. Psychologists who study such things have agreed about the calming effects of such a blue. I love you for that too, Earth. We get all that tranquility for free.

Then there is the ocean. Some days I gaze out at it and the waves are flecked with white, like a thousand little pixies are swimming there, each wearing a white bathing cap. Once, a friend and I did some charity work and we took some disabled kids to swim with the dolphins. After seeing those dolphins up close I was awestruck, and the kids - they knew the true meaning of joy. I love you for that too, Earth.

And for the animals. All of them. Even the nasty ones like snakes and bugs, for they are all part of the cycle of life. I thank you for the dogs and the cats. The horses and the bears. For the fish in the rivers and the birds which wake me on summer mornings. How would my heart continue to lift without them?

And flowers. When I go to my friend’s garden and her roses bow to meet me in their pink, white and yellow shirts I feel like royalty of some kind. Then I see the tulips stand in faultless orange, facing the sun like little fairy goblets. And the jasmine pops along the fences like Christmas lights, filling the air with incense.

Oh, and Earth. I’ve probably never told you that I love the wind. The wind is your music, your voice; cooling us, calming us, sometimes warning us. Sometimes when it’s so hot that the blue hydrangeas on the front porch wilt like old ladies after a sherry and the air is so heavy I can almost gather it in handfuls, the blessed wind comes and blows away the dust of the afternoon. It is a thing to love.

People make up the world too. Good and bad. I thank you for the people I know and love and the people they know and love. I thank you for all of us. And I hope you can see that some of us have courage and tenacity and believe it is not too late to make a difference. Many, many people see your beauty. I am not the only one. We are probably all standing here in the dark, collectively, saying Hello and thanking you for all that you are.

And we mean it, dear Earth. We want things to change. We want you, the Earth, to be a better place. So we are going to start by turning out just one light. And so it will go on. And so it will go on. And the darkness will give us the power not to give up. For we know, dear Earth, that you are the only world we’ve got.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all….

A woman in Kansas has spent the last two years sitting on her boyfriend’s toilet. She had spent so long sitting there that her skin had grown around the toilet seat, so she became adhered to it. The toilet seat had to be surgically removed.

Every day her boyfriend brought her food and drink and asked her to get off the toilet but her reply was always the same: ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ After two years he decided to call the police telling them he thought something was wrong with his girlfriend.

Police found the woman looking ’somewhat disoriented.’ I’ll bet she was. Questions abound. How did she get stuck to the toilet in the first place? Didn’t anyone in her family notice she was spending an inordinate amount of time in the loo? Why did her boyfriend wait two years to do something about it? Where did he go to the toilet for two years?

My favourite headline definitely is -

WOMAN RECOVERING FROM TOILET ORDEAL

If I had an ordeal in a toilet, ie. I was stuck on there for two years, I don’t think I’d ever recover. What was her boyfriend thinking??????

The woman is receiving counselling to help her address the various emotions she’s experiencing -

Yeah, she’s feeling a little flushed. (Sorry, I couldn’t help it.)

Already, she’s tired of being the butt of everyone’s jokes. (I know. I know)

She’s really worried her relationship has gone down the toilet (Rimshot.)

It’s a crazy, mixed-up world.

Meleah at Momma Mia, Mea Culpa tagged me with this meme ages ago. So sorry I took so long. Basically, what you have to do is take a look at the photo below and write a poem, a story or whatever you like about what the message in the bottle might be.

This is my story. Thank you, Meleah. It was so much fun to write.

THE EVENING TIDE

The water was silver as it brushed the sand. As a kid Ronnie had loved this part of the bay where the sand was soft and whispery on the breakwater. Mermaids’ Rest they had called it because of the cluster of rocks grouped like a throne that faced the open sea. ‘It’s where the mermaids stop before they head out to the deep water,’ she told Jess once. He laughed in that way he had that made you feel what you just said was the most wonderful thing in the world. ‘You don’t really believe in mermaids do you?’ he said laughing again. Ronnie loved that laugh of his with a fierceness that surprised her. She had never felt strongly about someone’s laugh before.

Jess’s father worked at the marina. He owned the marina. The local fishermen and dock workers gave him respect, he had come from nothing; his success was worth acknowledging even if his wife did drive a convertible Mercedes with the top down all year round so people could see her blonde hair fly in the wind like gossamer. She had fake nails with real diamonds in them that had come all the way from South Africa. This meant she had to hire a housekeeper, for if one of her diamonds fell down the sink while she was washing the dishes, there would be hell to pay.

From the start Ronnie and Jess were inseparable. Kindred spirits. Soul mates. All those words that sound whimsical until you experience them for real. They never said it but they knew they would be together forever.

They started sending messages in bottles experimentally, an SOS to the world just like The Police song. After several false starts they discovered the evening tide carried the bottles back and forth within a couple of hours; resting at the jetty that led to Jess’s waterfront mansion and the entrance to the canal which Ronnie’s house backed on to.

The messages were gushing, sentimental, without a trace of insincerity or regret.

I will love you forever. You light up my life. If you ever need me I will be there.

Ronnie kept every message in a shoebox under her bed, a talisman against misfortune.

One day Jess fell ill with the flu. His mother wouldn’t let Ronnie see him, claiming he was contagious. Ronnie didn’t see him for two weeks, for three. In the fourth week she went round to the house on the water demanding to see him but Jess was gone, shipped off to school in America – Yale or Harvard.

‘You can’t see him again.’ Jess’s mother was adamant. ‘We have other plans for Jess that don’t include you. Your situation is too unsuitable.’

Ronnie knew what Jess’s mother meant by her situation. It was her father. He drank all day and painted all night on canvases big as billboards in colours as muted as those found on the sea bed. He lined up each week at the employment office, lost, wandering, begging for mercy. He was kind-hearted but he never got a chance to show it. Despair coated his feet with tar, leaving him stuck like a paper doll on the wrong page.

Jess’s mother meant what she said. He was gone. Ronnie lay down on the breakwater, the sand moist as partly-cooked cake, and waited for a message on the evening tide. She hurt so much she thought she would die. The message in the bottle never came.

Ronnie was forty now. She had not been home for twenty years. Her father was ill. ‘I’m on my last legs, Ronnie girl,’ he said, his delicate painter’s fingers shaking with a palsy that broke Ronnie’s heart. ‘I’m sorry for everything. It hasn’t been much of a life for you.’

‘It’s been a good life,’ Ronnie said. ‘The only life I wanted.’

‘I heard Jess is back,’ her father said. ‘His father died. Left him the house. It’ll be worth a fortune by now. The mother pissed off years ago, married a Duke in Europe or something. She always did fancy herself as something special.’

When it grew dark Ronnie made her way to the mouth of the canal carrying one of her father’s old brandy bottles. There was a message inside.

You said if I ever needed you, you would come. Well, I need you now.

She released the bottle into the water, sobbing in great gulps that felt like a beating on her chest as the bottle caught the tide and drifted off into the night. She was mute, yearning for something she had decided long ago could never be hers, surrendering the last piece of herself she was able to give to the dark water.

She waited until the night was so black she couldn’t make out the shapes of possums sifting through the fig trees for fruit, squealing like children. Until the stars were smaller than gravel flung from land.

Ronnie’s legs ached from the wet ground. Lorikeets began to stir as the sun streaked the ground with splashes of scarlet and tangerine.

The walk to her father’s house was brief but she felt like she had climbed a mountain. She was tired, old. Not maddened by grief, just wizened.

Her father was up. He had the radio on. The BBC World Service. He got it on the internet. Her father was all that mattered now.

Her father was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea with a smile on his face. A man sat across from him. An empty bottle of brandy formed a centrepiece between them.

The man stood up when Ronnie entered the room. A man she hadn’t seen for twenty years but whose face she knew as well as her own. ‘I got your message,’ he said. ‘I thought I would deliver my reply in person.’

He handed her a bottle with a message inside. Ronnie tipped the bottle up, shaking it to release the message. It was damp, the ink smudged, smelling of salt, but the message was clear.

Here I am

It was all she had ever wanted to hear.

I’m late again for Writer’s Island this week.

The prompt this week is deja vu.

Here’s my story -

SOMETHING UNCANNY THIS WAY COMES

Amy dreamed disconnected images, disjointed as a slideshow waiting to load. Weird things, unrelated things. Black shoes in white cupboards. Red handbags in pale pink bathtubs. Yellow bunches of roses drooping in laundry tubs.

Sometimes the dreams were all one colour. The green was nice, a walk through a summer forest. The pale blue was joyful, like being part of the sky. The black wasn’t as scary as expected but the grey, the grey was mournful – sad mouths on pretty girls, dull hats on old men.

Amy had a recurring dream. Just one. It always began with an image like those promotional travel films from the fifties, made on reel –to- reel tape, the images jumping around and splitting before your eyes. Welcome to Paradise, it said. Once you visit you’ll never want to leave.

Children were playing on a yellow beach, all blonde, all wearing varying shades of blue swimsuits. Their lips were scarlet as if they been sucking on ice blocks. The shot swept to the boardwalk where couples walked with linked arms, men in brightly coloured shirts and Panama hats lounged on wooden benches reading newspapers. It was a happy scene, an idyllic scene except for one thing – the palm trees planted on the boardwalk, fronds dragging on the ground, encased in concrete.

The dream segued to Amy’s old house, her childhood home where her mother still lived. She pushed open the dense oak front door with the door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Something was wrong. A feeling laboured in her chest as she stepped over the threshold, she couldn’t define it but it had the ponderous pull of desolation. There were primroses in the hallway in those heavy crystal vases her mother favoured. One of them had fallen onto the floor. The painting of the ducks on the pond done in oils hung crookedly. There were blue balls of dust lining up against the skirting boards making a lie of her mother’s usual fastidiousness.

There were voices coming from the kitchen. She brightened as she pushed open the door, anticipating the usual smell of sage and oregano, the luscious sting of freshly-sliced tomatoes, the welcoming sound of cups chinking on saucers. She moved forward, keen for gossip and tea. Two men stood there with clipboards drinking instant coffee. The kitchen was packed in boxes. Crates blocked the door to the garden.

‘My mother, where’s my mother?’ Amy asked. Her heart was flipping in her chest like a fish pulled out of water. ‘She’s gone,’ the men said, leering at her, their teeth yellow. ‘She’s gone for good.’ She ran to find solace in the garden; a man stood there, the typical demon man of dreams, tall, good-looking with dark hair and a beard. He looked at her directly, raising an eyebrow as if questioning her place in this house that belonged to her mother. And then she woke up.

At least three times a week Amy dreamed this dream that felt like prophecy. Each time it felt more real. She asked colleagues at work if they believed dreams were a way of seeing into the future; if you had a dream often enough could that give it the power to become real, but they scoffed. Dreams mean nothing, they said. They’re just dreams.

She rang her mother several times a day until she knew she was bothering her. ‘I’m not seeing anyone, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve been alone since your father died. Stop worrying.’
Amy couldn’t switch off the dread that kept gathering and regrouping at the base of her throat, questioning her mother’s friends, her Art History group. She heard people muttering that she needed help, that she was delusional. Then one night the dreams stopped.

As the weeks passed Amy began to relax. She dreamed now of clean, green fields and birds in trees, waking refreshed and uplifted. She left her mother to her own devices, calling her only twice a week. She started language classes, learning how to conjugate verbs and ask for directions to the nearest railway station in French. She coloured her hair and got it cut to just above her shoulders so it swung around her cheekbones, earning her appreciative wolf-whistles from men on building sites. She was happy; the air around her fizzed and crackled like someone had poured champagne into the sky.

Two months later Amy’s mother announced she was going on a date. A man she had met online. ‘He’s a toy boy,’ she joked. ‘Ten years younger than me. He’s 55.’ The image of the man in the dream swept into Amy’s mind but she discarded it. There was nothing to fear. She was pleased for her mother; she had been alone for too long.

Another month passed. Then another. Amy was promoted at work. Her levels of productivity were the envy of the department. She had all but forgotten about her mother’s date. Then she got a postcard in the mail from Hawaii. Call me impetuous, it read. But Edward and I are married. We are so in love. The palm tree on the postcard stood back from the beach, on the boardwalk. Aloha it said, its green fronds waving invitingly; its roots encased in concrete.

Amy dropped the postcard. ‘It’s déjà vu,’ she thought. ‘Nothing more. People have experiences like this all the time. Seeing things they’ve never seen before that seem really familiar but aren’t. I’m jumping to conclusions thinking that this has anything to do with my dream.’

She called the number her mother had included on the postcard, a hotel. ‘Mrs. Fortune is unavailable,’ the clerk informed her. ‘She has taken a boat cruise to see the turtles. Very popular with tourists.’

‘And Mr. Fortune?’ Amy asked.

‘He is with her,’ the clerk replied. ‘They are inseparable. He calls her his good luck charm. Last night he won five thousand dollars in the hotel casino. He is definitely fortune by name and by nature.’

Mrs. Fortune. On her honeymoon in Hawaii. Amy’s mother. A woman who believed that being impetuous was tantamount to being foolhardy. Who scoffed when she heard other women say I would do anything for love. A woman whose most reckless behaviour to date was having two glasses of wine with dinner instead of her usual staid, responsible one. A woman who recycled her paper and plastic, and always paid her bills on time.

That night Amy had trouble sleeping. Just before dawn she felt into an unsettled half-sleep that left her feverish and cranky.

When she got to work there was a message for her from her mother. ‘I’m so happy, darling,’ it read. ‘Hawaii is glorious. Edward is glorious. Marriage is glorious. Please don’t worry. We’ll be home soon.’

Amy tried to convince herself that anyone who used glorious three times in a row must be happy; but she could feel clouds of doubt assembling.

Two weeks passed. Three. Four. Eight. She and her mother had exchanged faxes, emails, text messages but had still not spoken directly. Amy had booked a flight to Hawaii. She was leaving in two days time.

On the way home from work she drove past her mother’s house. A For Sale sign stood in the driveway. The door was wide open. The hallway was dusty. The pictures were crooked. Primroses drooped with neglect in their crystal vases.

Amy heard voices in the kitchen. ‘Mother,’ she shouted, breaking into a run. ‘It’s me, Amy.’ The kitchen was full of boxes. Crates blocked the exit to the garden. The kitchen was being packed away.

‘What’s going on here?’ Amy cried. ‘Who are you people? Where is my mother?’

A man emerged from the garden, long legs climbing like spiders over crates to get to her. A handsome man with a dark beard. ‘This can’t be happening,’ Amy thought.

‘Ah, there you are Amy,’ said the man as if they knew each other, as if they had met before. ‘I’m Edward Fortune. Where have you been? Your mother’s been calling you for weeks.’

‘I’ve been trying to call her for weeks. She hasn’t responded. What are you talking about?’

‘We’re selling the house, moving permanently to Hawaii. We’ve bought a little guest house there, a holiday inn. Your mother stayed behind to oversee the decorating. She trusts me to settle things here.’

‘Trusts you. She barely knows you. What right do you have to be here?’

Edward handed her a document. A letter from her mother’s lawyer outlining that the house, in accordance with her wishes, was to be sold and that Edward was to handle the sale. It was signed in her mother’s angular hand.

‘This isn’t real,’ Amy muttered. ‘You aren’t real.’

‘Your mother said you had been fraught lately. Delusional. She warned me you might be difficult. I can assure you it’s what she wants. She’s giving half of the money from the sale to you. You’ll be rich. Doesn’t the thought of that make you happy?’

‘The only thought that makes me happy is seeing my mother again. In person. Unless I get to see her in person I am getting the police involved.’

‘That would not be a good idea.’ Edward pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter, leaned on his elbows. His eyes were opaque, stone black. Amy felt like she was being observed by a bird of prey. ‘You see your mother is gone. For good.’

Edward killed Amy quickly with a spade like she was a rodent or a snake. It took him four hours to dig her a grave in the garden by the primrose bush.

The next day the removalists came, men with yellow teeth and clipboards who had frequent breaks to drink instant coffee. They noticed nothing untoward in the garden.

When the house was empty the shadows descended like monsters painted on the grass. Lizards scrambled for flies. A radio sounded in the distance. The sundial in the corner by the peach tree shifted to night. Birds twittered lullabies to one another. And the world rested as if nothing had changed.