Poetic Illusions

The following excerpt is from a screenplay Liz, Nancy, and I are collaborating on about three women in their late fifties and early sixties who experience some disastrous life changes that force them to re-evaluate their lives. The characters are Emma, Georgie, and Louise. This vignette is between Georgie and Louise and is told from Georgie's point of view. Georgie is a witty, spontaneous, adventurous, but reality-based woman who sometimes lets her worst instincts and impulsivity get the best of her. Louise, a spiritual nymphette and former hippie, lives life under a little pink cloud, hoping to change the world for the better with a variety of new-age theories and do-gooder projects. The person she admires most in the world is Julia Butterfly, the woman who lived in a tree for months and months to save it from being cut down.

I lie all the time, so it’s hard to remember the last lie I told. I lie for a lot of reasons.

I’m particularly good at lying to myself so I can do something I want to do but know I shouldn’t. Like yesterday morning, I told myself that eating chocolate cake for breakfast is just like having a donut. In fact, I told myself, a piece of chocolate cake with a glass of milk is much healthier than eggs, bacon, and toast or pancakes, because if I total the calories from the fat and the grease in those things, not to mention add in the time to cook it all and clean it up, I’m really much better off with a piece of cake and a glass of milk. Moreover, milk has all that bone boosting calcium and since milk only tastes good to me with chocolate cake, I wouldn’t have had the glass of milk unless I had the chocolate cake, so I’ve actually enhanced my nutritional intake. I’m really, really good at lies like that.

Like everyone, sometimes I lie to protect another’s feelings, like my lie to Louise last week. The Boardman’s daughter is getting married next month in the bluff-top park overlooking the river and they’ve asked Louise to recite a poem. Louise bought a new outfit for the occasion and wanted me to see it. I’m not terribly interested in clothes and particularly the clothes that Louise wears because she always looks either like an ethereal fairy with diaphanous fabrics that drift and float around her like pastel swirls of fog or like an over-the-hill Heidi in peasant dresses with puffy sleeves and dangling ribbons, the shepherdess look.

When I went to see her new outfit, she answered the door wearing what was a new fashion statement even for Louise. I was transfixed, or perhaps paralyzed is more accurate. She wore gray silk stockings underneath a skirt of pale green sheer fabric that drifted in clumps to the floor. It looked somewhat like mosquito netting. Her blouse was a shiny brown satin covered with overlapping layers of limp silk leaves in green, gold, and silver.

My God, I thought, she looks like a tree.

Imagine my surprise when she told me her inspiration was the weeping willows and towering oaks that dotted the park. She wanted to evoke a graceful arboresque image. Arboresque, she definitely was. I could only think she’d have to be careful or someone might plant her.

There was nothing to do but lie so I said, “Louise, you look positively pastoral.”

“Oh no,” she said and grimaced with dismay, “I’m not supposed to look like a pastor. I’m not performing the ceremony; I’m just reading a poem.”

"Louise,” I said, “I mean pastoral in the sense of arcadian, verdant, sylvan.”

“Wonderful,” she beamed. “Do I also look poetic?” She spun around on her toes, the flimsy leaves on her blouse flapping in the breeze, her skirt billowing and puddling around her feet.

Well, she certainly looked otherworldly, but I’m not sure that equates with poetic.

Nonetheless, I said, “Absolutely. You are a transcendental vision. Wordsworth himself might even say rhapsodic, bucolic, or idyllic. He’d adopt you as his muse in a minute.”

Louise wafted across the room to give me a hug. Unfortunately, wafting is tricky for even the most accomplished fairies, not to mention one with yards of gauze gathered around her ankles. So, it wasn’t a perfect waft—she stumbled once or twice but managed to give me a bear hug.

“I want to strike an image of natural wonder and incorporate the setting visually to enhance my reading. I’m glad you approve.”

“Oh, Louise,” I said, “Not to worry. The guests will most assuredly be stricken, if not simply overcome.”

She gave me an affectionate pat on the cheek and smiled with delight.

I’m very grateful I have a good vocabulary. It makes lying so much easier.