Not Sausalito

I watch my beautiful wife glide gracefully over our boat's deck and think for the thousandth time how much she looks like a puma -- golden tan skin, golden brown hair, small lean muscles flexing as she tightens a turnbuckle, inspects the rigging.  Nine months at sea have polished her body like golden teak.  The dawn light spills over my wife like God's benediction.  She's poised on the bow, checking the roller furling, and I'm sprawled belly-down in the stern, watching her glowing in the early light through the one eye I can still open.

The boat heels to port, and my stomach heels sympathetically.  I manage to turn around in time to vomit over the stern.  I had no idea there was anything left in there to heave, but life is full of surprises.  Tequila and beer and flank steak and bile dribble down the boat's transom, fouling her gold-leafed name, "Siren's Song." I hang my head over the stern, repulsed by my own breath.

                                            *  *  *  *  *

The Hans Christian is a beautiful boat.  Even non-sailors appreciate her graceful lines, her bow swooping up out of the water as if she were taking flight.  They make perfect live-aboards, beamy and comfortable, and the Siren's Song had been set up and used for just that purpose by her previous owner.

I had thought I'd have to work hard to convince Catherine to go on this adventure, but she had embraced my dream with all her heart.

"Your grandmother's smiling now, wherever she is," Catherine had said.  "I'll bet the only thing Georgie regretted was not living long enough to spend all her lottery winnings herself.  She'd want you to buy the boat, and see the world for her.  Can we rename it after her?"

"No, I'm sorry.  Renaming a boat is bad luck, honey," I had told her.

                                              *  *  *  *  *

I push myself to a seated position, take a deep breath and wince.  I lower myself back down on the deck as gently as I can.   I had been an X-ray technician before I inherited a huge chunk of grandma's money, so I've seen people in pain before, but this is my first intimate, personal encounter with it.

My thoughts seem to float a few inches away from my head, trying to escape my body.  I try to focus.  How badly am I hurt?  One eye swollen shut; possible orbital fracture.  Nose most certainly broken.  I move my jaw open and closed, side to side; bruised, but not broken.  The disorientation?  Probably due to hangover and pain; skull fracture possible.

I pause my woozy inventory and watch Catherine go below, my old white T-shirt barely covering the tops of her thighs.  Was it only two days ago she was sunning herself on deck naked, grinning up at me when she caught me staring at her?

She climbs back up the hatch, goddess ascending, arms full of clouds.  No, sheets.  Pillows.  She drops the load next to my face.  I watch her pick up a pillow -- the pillow I'd bled all over, Jesus -- and fling it over the stern into the ocean.  She watches it sink, then flings its mate overboard too.  As she picks up the crumpled bedsheet, the breeze catches it and it opens, fluttering, a white flag waving over my head, and I watch it leave her hands and fly as she turns away.  Catherine stops, strips off my T-shirt, tosses it overboard, and goes below.  I look over the transom and watch it floating in our wake before it sinks into the sea.  I turn my head and shut my eyes.

I can taste blood.  Vomiting opened the cut bottom lip again, and the cuts inside my mouth caused by my teeth, some of which are loose.  My body aches -- cracked ribs?  Many things are unclear, but I do remember that the man who did this to me was big.  He must have weighed two-ten or two-twenty.  Out of all the yachties at the harbor bar last night, he was the biggest.  I remember the icy beer, the warm tequila, the noise, the jukebox blaring, dancing with Catherine, the drunken laughter, the smoke, the need for fresh air.  I remember staring at the big brunette's huge breasts spilling out of her top, her red-lipsticked mouth as she laughed at me -- "They're real, mate.  I can prove it."

I don't remember taking her aboard, taking her below, but I remember the man's hand looming over her head, sinking itself into her hair and hauling her off me.  I remember thinking, "Oh, this is what seeing stars means," when the hand clenched into a fist and slammed into my left eye socket.  My left eye watched hundreds of tiny twinkling stars in a midnight sky while the rest of my body took a beating.

                                         *  *  *  *  *

My eyes are shut, but I hear Catherine walk across the deck toward me.  She puts a plastic bottle of cold water in my left hand.  I open my eyes, open the bottle, and drink, feeling the pain of the plastic against my split lip.  The day is warm, the breeze is light, the sky is clear, and it seems nature itself is mocking my misery.  I look up at Catherine; she cracks open her own water bottle, looking out to sea.  I say the first thing that pops in my head.

"I could die out here."

"Yes.  Yes, you could."  She sips her water.  "But you probably won't.  It seems he knew when to stop.  His buddy at the bar told me later he's had practice."

She looks down at me.  Her hazel eyes are as expressionless as sea glass.  "It's a game they play with the occasional idiot to spice up their marriage."

I flinch, and fight back another wave of nausea.  I'd like to say something, but there is nothing I can say.

"Me?" she says.  "I don't play at all.  And you knew that when you married me."

                                           *  *  *  *  *

I smell food.  I don't know if it's real or not at first, this smell of garlic and onions, but I awaken fully, stiff and aching from a night spent on deck, and the glorious smell drifts out of the open hatch.  My empty stomach growls.  I must be recuperating.  I'm so hungry, so empty.  I want to walk down the hatch, wrap my arms around my wife from behind, kiss her neck.  I want to grab a spoon and slurp the spaghetti sauce.  I want Catherine to shoo me out of the galley, laugh at me, tell me it's not ready yet, send me out with some crusty bread and a glass of wine while I'm waiting.  I want to go down those galley steps.  I want to hold my wife.

But I can't.

I want to so badly, my heart is going to explode.  It's only flesh and blood.  How will it go on?

The Purple House

By Liz Zuercher

Next door to my childhood home was a big Victorian house painted bright purple with white trim and a red door.  People on the street said it was an eyesore, but I loved it, especially when the jacaranda trees bloomed, enveloping the purple house in clouds of lavender.  But the reason I loved that house so much had more to do with the people inside, the Gillum sisters, Miss Emmeline and Miss Dot. 

I remember them as being ancient, but I’d guess when I was growing up they were probably only in their sixties or seventies, which is looking pretty young to me now.  I suppose the sisters seemed older to me because they were so thin and wore old-fashioned housedresses and oxford shoes.

They both had gray hair, but they had different hairstyles that matched their personalities.  Miss Emmeline’s hair was pulled tight away from her face and gathered in a bun at the top of her head.  Miss Dot wore hers long and flowing from a center part down past her waist, as if she had never cut it.  Maybe Miss Emmeline’s was that long, too, but I never saw it freed from the bun.

Both women wore glasses with skinny wire rims.  Miss Emmeline had hers on all the time, and they often slid down her slim nose to perch at the end.  She looked out over them at me when she talked to me, which was seldom.  Miss Dot’s glasses dangled from ribbons tied to each side of the glasses with a tiny bow.  She changed the ribbons to match her outfit.  I never saw Miss Dot put her glasses on to read anything.  They were more like jewelry.  Maybe she needed them to read, but didn’t want to admit it.  Maybe she didn’t need to read, because all the stories were in her head.

People thought the Gillum sisters were twins, but Miss Emmeline was really two years older than Miss Dot.  Yes, they looked a lot alike, but to me they were very different.  Miss Emmeline was quite stern and most of the time she had a frown on her face – a scowl really – that made me nervous when I had to talk to her.  I’d try to time my visits for when I saw Miss Dot outside gardening, because Miss Dot always wore a smile on her face, and her voice sounded like a song when she said, “Hello there little Miss Emma.  What can I do for you today?”

My mother used to send me next door to the purple house when she was out of sugar or if she had some cookies to share or if we’d gotten some of the sisters’ mail.  At first I was afraid of the purple house and the Gillum sisters, but once I set foot inside I was enchanted.

Inside everything was neatly in its place, which I imagined was Miss Emmeline’s doing.  But all of it was whimsical, which I took to be Miss Dot’s doing.  From the fanciful floral print slipcover on the sitting room loveseat to the shelved wall full of painted porcelain ballerinas in various poses, it was a feast to my eyes.  Even better were the stories that went along with each item.  I could sit for hours and listen to Miss Dot talk about her trips and how she’d come to have the Russian nesting dolls or the Indian hookah or the family of glass penguins from Argentina. 

When Miss Dot began to tell her stories, Miss Emmeline brought tea and tiny butter cookies.  Then she disappeared down the hall and soon I’d hear the purposeful clack of a typewriter.  Sometimes my mother had to come get me, because I’d been gone on my errand so long she thought the purple house had eaten me up.  Maybe in a way it had.  In the purple house I entered a strange alternate world where time stood still, a wonderful place where all the amazing things inside consumed me.  When I headed back home, I always dreamed of going to the places in Miss Dot’s stories.

I started going over to the purple house on my own, without an errand from my mother, just to hear Miss Dot’s stories and feel the warmth of her smile.  But in the end it was Miss Emmeline who had the bigger impact on me.

Miss Dot got sick and had to go into the hospital, leaving Miss Emmeline alone in the house.  My mother sent me over with some soup for her, and when I knocked on the door it opened up all by itself with the force of my knock.  I tiptoed in, careful not to drop the soup.  What I noticed first was that the place was a mess.  I’d always thought Miss Emmeline was the neat sister, but apparently it was Miss Dot who kept things clean and tidy.  What I noticed next was that the house seemed empty, lifeless.

I called out for Miss Emmeline, but all I heard back was the clack of that typewriter.  I followed the sound down the hall to a room at the back of the house.  It was the size of a closet and had no windows to allow the daylight in.  There was Miss Emmeline, her back to the door, sitting in a ladder-backed chair at an old oak table, typing away.  Stacks of paper were all over the floor of the little room like skyscrapers in a paper city.  A narrow path between the stacks left just enough room for Miss Emmeline to walk to and from her typewriter.  There was nothing else in the room – no porcelain dolls, no tea sets from China, no Persian rugs, not even an American ginger jar lamp with a crenellated shade.  A single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling bathing Miss Emmeline, the table, chair, typewriter and stacks of paper in a harsh light.  A cigarette burned down to ash in a plain glass ashtray next to the typewriter.

“Miss Emmeline,” I said.  “I brought you some soup.”

She kept on typing.

“Miss Emmeline?”

She continued typing.

I cleared my throat really loudly, hoping to get her attention.  I had just decided it would be best to leave the soup in the kitchen when Miss Emmeline spoke.

“What do you want?  Dot’s not here.  Can’t you see I’m busy?” All the while she kept on typing.  She hadn’t even turned around to look at me.

“I brought some soup,” I said again.  When she said nothing, I said, “I’ll put it in the refrigerator for you.”

She grunted and typed faster.

“The story’s not finished,” she said, more to herself than to me.  “She can’t leave now.  I don’t know the ending.”

That’s when she turned around and I saw her panic.  Wisps of white hair hung loose, but her glasses were straight on her face, magnifying the desperation in her eyes.

“Do you know the ending?” she said.  “Do you?”

“No,” I whispered.

Miss Emmeline searched my face then covered her face with her hands and broke into sobs.

“How could she leave before she told me the end of the story?” she said.  “I can’t finish it by myself.”

I was only ten years old, and I had never seen anyone so completely undone.  I didn’t know what to do.  What could a ten-year-old girl do?  I walked over to Miss Emmeline, put the container of soup down on the oak table next to the typewriter, wrapped my arms around Miss Emmeline and held her close.

“It’s okay,” I said.  “I’ll help you.” 

She looked up at me and smiled the first smile I’d ever seen from her.  Then she turned around and started typing again, while I went home to get my mother.

After that we kept a closer eye on Miss Emmeline.  I went over every day after school and worked with her.  She left the front door unlocked for me and I went right back to the typing room.  Usually, I brought some food with me, because my mother was afraid Miss Emmeline wouldn’t eat otherwise.  We didn’t speak much, but she seemed to like having me there.  I took a notebook with me and while Miss Emmeline typed, I wrote down all the Miss Dot stories I could think of in case Miss Emmeline needed to fill in a blank.  Maybe just knowing someone else knew the stories, kept her going.  I sat with Miss Emmeline like that for an hour or two each afternoon, both of us hard at work. 

Somewhere along the line I started making up bits and pieces of Miss Dot’s stories, embellishing a little here and there where the details were sparse.  I guess that’s when they became my stories, too, and I kept on writing after I left the purple house.  I worked on the stories when I was alone in my room after dinner.  I worked on them on the weekends when my friends were playing outside.  In two months I had a box of notebooks, filled with stories of places I’d never been, like an imaginary travelogue.

Then one day Miss Emmeline was very excited when I walked into the typing room.

“Dot’s coming home tomorrow,” she said with the biggest smile I’d ever seen from her.  “We have to have everything ready for her.”

Instead of writing and typing, she and I bustled around the house straightening up, dusting and vacuuming.  Outside, I swept the porch and picked some flowers to put in a vase for Miss Dot.  She loved flowers.  When I left that day, Miss Emmeline stood in front of the red door and waved goodbye.  That was the first time she had ever seen me to the door, whether to let me in or send me home.  I’d never seen her so happy.

The next day after school I ran over to the purple house to see Miss Dot.  I had my box of notebooks to show her. The red door was locked and when I knocked no one answered.  I peeked in the window, but saw no one.  Finally, I gave up and went home.  My mother was on the phone when I walked into the kitchen, and she looked away from me, concentrating on what the person on the other end was saying.  I took my notebooks up to my room and put them on my bed.  Sitting on the window seat, I looked out at the purple house and waited for the Gillum sisters to come home.

I remember so clearly the way my mother looked standing in the doorway of my room.  Her thin blond hair hung limp around her face and she clasped her hands together in front of the green and white checked apron she always wore when she was cooking.  Her face told the story before her words did. 

“Emma, Miss Dot passed away this morning,” she said.  She sat on the window seat with me and held me tight as we both looked over at the purple house.  It didn’t look happy anymore to me.

“What about Miss Emmeline?” I said.  “What will happen to her without Miss Dot?”

“I don’t know,” my mother said.

* * * * *

Miss Emmeline’s relatives from back east came to stay for a while, and I didn’t see her.  My mother said two cousins from Philadelphia had gotten rid of all the knick-knacks they didn’t want.  That’s what they called Miss Dot’s treasures – knick-knacks.  After they picked out what they did want, they went back to Philadelphia and left Miss Emmeline alone in the house. 

I tried to see Miss Emmeline and work on the stories with her, but the door was always locked and she didn’t answer when I knocked.  I could hear the typewriter, though, so I knew she was there.  After a few weeks, I put my notebooks in the back of my closet and went back to playing with my friends after school.

* * * * *

My worst childhood memory is the night the purple house burned to the ground.  I still remember the orange glow outside my bedroom window that woke me up that night.  Maybe it was that glow, a light that shouldn’t have been there, but maybe it was the crackling sound of the fire or the smell of smoke slipping through the thin slot of my barely opened window.  Whatever it was that woke me, it was all those things that grabbed me from my bed and took me to the window.

What I saw was horrifying – flames shooting out of the windows, gold and orange against the purple walls, turning them black.  I screamed and ran into my parents’ room.

“Fire!” I screamed.  “The purple house!”

My dad bolted out of bed and ran to my bedroom to see for himself.

“Call the Fire Department,” he yelled at my mother, as he put his shoes on and ran outside to see if he could help.

“Get everyone out of bed and dressed,” my mother said, and I rounded up all the kids while she called for the fire truck.  She was afraid our house would catch fire, too, so she made us all go outside, across the street on the opposite corner.  Just to be safe, she said.

We huddled together on that corner with our neighbors and watched as the fire trucks rolled in and got their hoses trained on the purple house.  Daddy came to join us, covered in ash and smelling like our campfires when we had just doused them.

“Is she in there?” my mother whispered to him.

He nodded his head.  “I think so,” he said in a sad voice.  “I couldn’t get past the foyer.  The flames were too intense.”

It’s funny what you remember about bad times.  I remember the flames, the smoke and the flow of the water from the fire hoses.  I remember the neighbors gathered together hoping that by some miracle Miss Emmeline had made it out of the house.  But what I remember most about the fire was that one of the neighbors gave us all cookies and lemonade while we watched the purple house burn and the firefighters work to put it out.  It was like a block party with a huge bonfire and refreshments, which seemed very wrong to me. 

I took a bite of my cookie.  It tasted just like the little butter cookies Miss Emmeline always gave me when I came to see Miss Dot and listen to her stories.  I started to cry right there on the street corner, eating my cookie and watching the purple house of treasures burn to the ground.

After we all went back to our homes, I sat on the window seat and looked out at the blackness that used to be the purple house.  I was feeling so sad and helpless until I thought of all my notebooks and the stories I’d recorded in them.  I dug the box out of the back of the closet and sat there all night reading, reliving those adventures I’d never had myself.  I made a silent promise to the Gillum sisters to always keep the stories alive. 

Renewal & A Poem of Loving for Good Friends

Thank you Susie Cameron. Because of your brilliant villanelle from several weeks ago, I've been playing with that very constrained form and feeling safe and warm in its grip - this is the first of two.

RENEWAL

A life entwined in pains that are long past

A hugging terror grips my clouded mind

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Afraid to speak my eyes avoid the mast

Where captain of my ship yells life is kind

A life entwined in pains that are long past

My frightened heart beats hard and much too fast

Always I feel like I’m so far behind

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Why does the part inside feel so miscast?

My role in life will it I ever find?

A life entwined in pains that are long past

I wake up from a dream and am aghast

Your heart’s locked in a drawer a deaf girl signed

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

Open the drawer for risk I am now tasked

It’s time, I say, my life is not defined

A life entwined in pains that are long past

Thinning clouds hint this fiction will not last

A POEM OF LOVING FOR GOOD FRIENDS

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

With histories that time’s heart always cheers

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

Through incidents that could have fostered hate

Forgiving hearts were bound by many years

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

Births and deaths all wandered through the gate

Familial bonds were sealed by flowing tears

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

They traveled far and not each found a mate

Loneliness through connections disappears

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

Old secrets lurk beneath and sometimes bate

And pain and anger’s head it sometimes rears

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

When old friends will show up with wine so late

The pain and anger fades along with fears

A friendship bound by laughter and by fate

For Loue, Emma, Georgie and Miss Kate

Dinner with Aunt Sissy

By Liz Zuercher

I was feeling sorry for myself as I drove up the coast for a duty visit to my great aunt in assisted living. My sixtieth birthday was looming, my husband had dropped dead of a heart attack a few months earlier and my children and siblings all lived too far away from my home in Troy Hill to provide more than an occasional supportive phone call.

How much fun could this be? I grumbled to myself as I pulled into the Sunset Villas parking lot, dodging an old woman with a walker. I was feeling guilty, too, because I hadn’t been here to see Aunt Sissy since James died. I just couldn’t make myself look death square in the face the way you do in a place full of old people.

But I’d forgotten what a pistol my father’s Aunt Sissy is, even at 94. Margery May Schneider Price, known to everyone as Sissy, greeted me with a big hug in the front lobby, the sweet aroma of her signature Chanel 5 engulfing us. As usual, Sissy was dressed to the nines. She wore white pants, a blue and white striped silk blouse and a jaunty red linen jacket. Her short white hair curled softly around her face. Her lips and fingernails were as red as her jacket. She’s a tiny woman, but she carries herself like a queen, her head held so high you forget how short she is. I think Aunt Sissy has grown taller and more regal in her old age rather than shrink like the rest of us. She’s fond of telling the story of how we’re all descended from a German baron who disowned his daughter for marrying a carpenter. Aunt Sissy likes the nobility part, but she really loves the spunk of the daughter who defied her father for love and ended up moving to America.

“That’s the kind of stock we’re from,” Aunt Sissy often reminds me.

Sissy sure has that spunk. She was always more like an older sister to my father than an aunt, but not the protective kind of sister. She was the one who would get him into trouble or take him on an adventure when she was babysitting. My dad just loved Aunt Sissy, and she doted on him.

Sissy showed her spunk after her only child was stillborn right before her husband shipped off to the South Pacific during World War II. She showed us what she was made of again, when he returned in a flag-draped coffin.

Sissy didn’t waste much time mourning. She was all about getting on with life, which she did with gusto. She never re-married, though she was a good-looking woman who had many suitors and never wanted for male companionship. I think she preferred to steer clear of deep commitments and the risk of losing a loved one again. She found a job in Kuhl’s Department Store selling cosmetics and twice a year she’d take a big trip with her girlfriends, or sometimes even by herself.

“I need to go someplace,” she’d say. “My feet are gettin’ itchy.” And off she’d go to India or Australia or someplace no one had ever heard of.

On Friday nights, before she moved to Sunset Villas, Sissy could be found at the piano bar at Steven’s Steak House singing along with whatever her entertainer friend, Jerry, was playing. Usually some time during the evening Jerry would give up the keyboard to Sissy, and between sips of Canadian Club on the rocks and drags on her cigarette, she’d play Gershwin songs by ear. Sissy knew how to have a good time. She still does – even at Sunset Villas.

I was just in time for dinner and Aunt Sissy led me to a table in the middle of the dining room where her usual tablemates, Joe, Charlie and Sal, rose to greet us and pull our chairs out for us. The three of them must be at least ten years Sissy’s junior, but you’d think she was the young one the way they flirted with her. I marveled at how she gave it right back to them, not missing a beat.

I'd never stayed for dinner on previous visits - James always wanted to get home - so I was surprised at how good it was. We ate filet of sole and sipped wine while the men took turns telling jokes that had Sissy and me holding our sides from so much laughter. After dinner we all retired to the lounge, which is what they call the common area. Sissy sashayed over to the piano, sat down, and with a grand arpeggio started the evening’s entertainment, getting everyone to sing along to upbeat big band era songs. I just had the best time. I don’t think I’ve felt so alive in ages.

As I drove back to Troy Hill, it dawned on me that Sissy has more spark at 94 than I have at 60. Well, I’ve got that feisty German girl’s blood in me, too, I thought. I punched the button for the CD player and Aretha Franklin started belting out “Natural Woman”. I sang along with Aretha all the way home.