He called me Goose. Goose is what he named me, what he called me. He said what's for dinner Goose? He would yell, Goose! Goose! Where are you? He would yell into the dark night calling me to come home.
We were mated until life ends. And I was his Goose. Always following, always honking. A brown, black, and white creature. One with beady dark eyes and a comical waddle for a walk. Just a Goose, his Goose.
Love this. I live in a little town where two gaggles of geese stop the traffic several times a day as they cross the main road. Now I've read your lovely little piece I'm quite sure the gander leading the gaggle calls back over his shoulder, Goose! Goose! Where are you?
They agreed the living room should be white. Walls, ceiling, trim, everything, the same white.
I’ll pick up some samples this afternoon and we can try some tomorrow, she said.
We want a warm white, right?
Get whatever you want, I’m pretty easy on colors.
It wasn’t so easy at the paint store. The in house color expert told her there were infinite whites. Warm to cool and back again. Tens of thousands of whites, he said. Where would you like to start. Now this here, is Alabaster, and this one Easter Lace, and we can change those, you know, wherever you want to go.
She got rollers and trays and good China bristle brushes at $45 each, recalling how he’d bring home throwaway brushes that drove her crazy. She got rags, extension poles for the rollers, sand paper. And twenty seven quart cans of custom warm white samples.
She covered the dining room table with a drop cloth and organized all the supplies. She lined the cans of paint from warm to cool, as best she could figure out.
What the hell’s all this, he said when he got home.
Paint.
I see that but…..why all the quart cans?
Samples.
Sweetheart . . . .
What!
That’s great, thanks for taking care of all this.
After breakfast next morning they put some paint on the walls. It got confusing what was what. Some of the lids with the color written on got put back on the wrong cans. Etcetera. They painted samples all day and at the end had no idea what they’d done. They went out to dinner and drank a bottle of wine and had fish tacos made with halibut.
He got up around midnight and got a trash can from the garage and dumped the 27 quart cans into it and stirred it with the iron rake. He started painting at 12:45 a.m. He finished at 5:30, cleaned everything up, made coffee and sat down to look at his work.
She’d picked the colors, so he was fairly confident, not positively confident, she’d be happy with the results.
We had a painter who was really into white variations and how he liked painting test areas to make comparisons. I said he must enjoy watching paint dry. ‘I do”. Didn’t even crack a smile.
Love your story! All those warm whites! I remember painting the gallery for my first art show in 1973. Lesson number one: if you want your stuff to look warm you have to pick a cool white for the walls. I bought a can of white paint and added a little gray...
I went with Chantilly White in my last house. It was fantastic--but a lot of people prefer something warmer. I think Decorator's White or Simply White please just about everyone.
Such vivid memories - this one really resounded with me. It brought back so many little things from teenage years, my cheeks also often "aflame" with that particular brand of embarrassment you feel at that age.
This is great Christine. Our hunting season hats were blaze orange. I don't think there was hunting season for fawns. But it might have seemed that way. Legally you could only shoot the men deer. : )
Everybody knows that the Crips are blue and the Bloods are red but did you know that other gangs have more unusual colors? The 136th Street Sand Angels are alabaster white and their annual cotillion and tea party features gorgeous alabaster plates, teacups, Lazy Boy recliners and streamers. The Gold Dust Boyz are, of course, gold and they greet each rising sun with their gang sign and the waving of gold bandanas. The Nine Trey Gangsters are purple amethyst and they watch Prince’s Purple Rain every Thursday on a giant screen tv with plenty of popcorn. The Campbell Street Serpents have not yet chosen a color and have decided to refrain from criminal activity until a supermajority of members has decided on a color. The latest vote was 19 for puce, 12 for ultramarine, and 6 for cerulean.
Something about 'doing the dishes' but you haven't dirtied a cup yet....what it says about everyday minor anxiety over getting things done instead of sitting with the sunrise.
Red has a difficult time of it. The associations, I mean. Anger. Blood. Raw meat. Stop signs. Danger warnings. Fire. Communism. Although, of course, there are positives. Valentines. Roses. Strawberries. Tomatoes. Apples. Poppies. Firefighters. Other colors tend to be less intense. Take blue, for example. Summer skies. Blueberries. Placid mountain lakes. All rather relaxing. Although, of course, there are the blues, both the wonderful cathartic music and the miserable feeling. Some folks revel in the blues. I knew someone once who told me that he delighted in studying his own face in the mirror when he was in the throes of the blues because he was so beautiful when he was blue. The occasional person gets blue in the face, but that is more a matter of exhaustion than red hot anger. Consider green. Spring. Summer lawns. Dollar bills. Winter wreaths. Christmas trees. Green is quite positive. Except for sea sickness. In general, we have to say that green is not so intense as red. Spring and summer, money, winter decorations, even sea sickness are all so fleeting. Look quickly because the green will disappear before you know it. Purple thinks a lot of itself. Royalty. Bruises. Barney. Brown is a bit of an ugly duckling at times. Dead plants. Burnt toast. “If it’s brown, flush it down.” Nonetheless, brown is all the rage these days in men’s fashion. So, you never know. We could go on and on discussing this. How many colors are there? I read once that the human eye can distinguish 10 million different colors. So, we could stand here in this Home Depot paint aisle forever, I suppose. But, perhaps, just perhaps, the better alternative would be for you to pick whichever color most appeals to you for whatever reason or no reason at all and then we move on to the flooring section.
Ha ha. You'd be fun to decorate a house with Deborah. I think. I had a girlfriend for a while who owned a red Firebird she drove very fast. My cars are dull, like me, tan and gray and black. We didn't last.
(I don't have a title for this; suggestions welcome.)
A few days a week I volunteer at a day shelter for homeless men where I live. I wear a gold lanyard with the word VOLUNTEER printed on it in black letters attached to a green tag with my first name on it. Some days I sign men in at the roster at the front desk. Other days I answer the phone and hand out supplies. Supplies include ponchos, underwear, socks, hats, gloves, and belts. Ponchos are clear and neon green, yellow, and pink. The pink ones are always the last to go. Sometimes tightie whities are the only underwear available. These are less popular than neon pink ponchos. More often than not a man will decline a clean pair of tightie whities and continue to wear his dirty pair of briefs. One afternoon over the winter a man asked me for a hat. I pulled out a bright orange toboggan. Anything dark? he asked. Cops, he said. Another afternoon this winter a young man in a rust-colored Patagonia down jacket with a white hospital band around his right wrist came to the front desk. Where can I get a gun to go shoot some dogs? he asked. My first thought was, Am I safe? I decided I was. Staff were just ten feet away at the door. My second thought was, Is he seeing a dog or a person? I decided I could not answer that question. My third thought was my answer. You can’t do that here, sir, I said. He later took a bus back to his home a few hours away using a ticket that staff bought him. I think about those dogs every day. Yesterday at the shelter someone donated some leftover bagels from a bakery. Frankie lurked around the front desk eyeing them until Antwan took them to the kitchen for tomorrow morning’s coffee service. Even with his wild matted white-blonde hair and beard and general dishevelment it is easy to see that Frankie is a handsome man. He has flawless rosy skin and eyes as blue as the dot in the middle of the Chrome logo. Frankie lost his mind in a motorcycle accident that also killed his girlfriend. No helmet, Susan said when I first asked her about Frankie. Also yesterday one man asked for white ankle socks. I had only black crew socks. I’ll take what I can get, he said.
It kills me that people are not cared for because they had the bad luck to sustain a brain injury, or maybe born with mental illness or other trauma. This is so good, Polly. I don't have a title tho.
Thank you. From what I see at the shelter homelessness is a very complex problem and what works for one person won’t work for another. Every person is unique. In an ideal world every one would have a remedy tailored just for him or her but, of course, it is far from an ideal world.
Yes, here in my city we have people that are homeless who are working full-time, low paying jobs. And then other homeless people are schizophrenic. And on and on. So many different situations.
Yes, same here. And the shelter where I volunteer opened a permanent supportive housing complex a year ago, 80 apartments. I hear it is getting trashed because residents don't know how to care for their apartments or, because of mental illness or addiction or some other affliction, they are incapable. So even PSH doesn't seem to be working!
Ronnie has a lot to answer for, but the people who came after him could have turned it around. It’s going to take a lot to solve this multi-pronged monster. A title? That last line has possibilities.
Fascinating, Polly. While you many not always know what has brought clients to the shelter, they don't know how you're observing them, thinking about them, empathizing.
Yes, ALWAYS. I don't know how not to think about their situations and I have been fascinated with a few of the men, especially one who I saw a couple of weeks before Christmas walking by my favorite Dairy Queen just after dusk wearing nothing but white underwear and then a few days later I saw him at my grocery, fully clothed and considering items in the discount cart, carrying a gym bag that said Magical Spirits of Legendary Quality. Like Frankie is a beautiful man, tall and graceful, even athletic, and stark raving mad.
isn’t it? Maybe we need fun titles like that Niall? I saw some guy interviewed the other day and they asked What sort of books do you like? And he said Ones with long Titles. He’s drawn to long titled books and then tries finding brilliant long titled books. or just books with brilliant long titles. I used to have a book called
‘The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral mind’
and we called it ‘
The Oranges of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicaramel Mind‘
It is such a complex problem. When I was at the shelter yesterday I talked with a staff member who also works at the shelter's permanent supportive housing complex. It opened a year ago and it is getting trashed because the residents just don't have the skills or ability to take care of themselves or their property. I don't know what the answer is/answers are.
and maybe something abstract as the fifth option, in case people didnt want a word, everyone tries to keep this abstract idea positive - ( dystopian possibilities are occurring ) thats five with the three you mentioned and a between housing engagements nice phrase or words or letters. Perhaps some compassionate genius can help. Not needing any terms would be great
but even mentioning this stuff is a reminder of the heaviness of words. It's not a one size fits all situation
perhaps they could start with five options. gotta start somewhere. unsheltered could sound slightly vulnerable, we wanna cheer people up. something suggesting being in between housing engagements might be a thought
we need our best and brightest minds helping to protect the gentle and somehow help the people who are not good at living with people. anyone who’d destroy their own home doesnt know what home is
“Of course it is,” he says, waving the paint chip. “Won’t it be beautiful, a mango kitchen? It will show off the black appliances, and even those black and white dishes.”
He doesn’t like the black and white dishes. You wonder if it’s because you bought them with your first husband, or just because he loves bright colors. The intense color palette of his wardrobe intrigued you when you met him. Very few men have underwear in every color in the rainbow. You wonder if there’s a disorder called color-obsession. You’ll have to ask your therapist sister when you talk to her.
Mango is a smoothie, it’s chutney, it’s the fragrance of a fancy lotion your mother gave you. You like the taste of mango, and the smell. You know you will defer to him on the color for the kitchen. You made a deal with yourself to be open to everything for the next twelve months, just to see. You’re calling it ”the year of yes.”
Really, it’s his kitchen. When you moved in together, a scandalous four weeks before the wedding – you’re both divorced and over fifty, but of course your seventy-five-year-old mother disapproved – you discussed division of labor. He wanted to cook. He’s a good cook even when he gets ambitious, with souffles and fancy Asian recipes. You like washing dishes. It’s therapeutic, in some weird way. You asked your sister about it once. She said, “Yeah, for some people it’s soothing. But don’t you have a dishwasher? No need to get crazy.”
You wonder if your sister calls her patients crazy, or if she reserves it for family members.
You try one more argument, just for the sport of it. “We live in Manhattan,” you say, “where the newspaper was black and white until 1997. Mango are tropical, imported from Mexico. The people who pick them in intense heat get paid almost nothing. Do you really want to celebrate labor exploitation?”
“The paint isn’t actually made from mangoes,” he says.
Your mother will love the mango. Skeptical when you brought him to Passover after secretly dating him for seven months, she was won over when, the youngest at the table, he chanted the Four Questions with enthusiasm.
All you have to do is say “yes.”
“Yes,” you say. “I like mango for the kitchen. How about mint for the bathroom?”
1997 was when they published the first color photo on the front page of the NYT. It was a sports photo, but oddly enough not a NY team - “”The historic image featured Cleveland Indians baseball player Tony Fernandez celebrating his 11th-inning home run that sent the team to the World Series.”
OH! Got it--they included color photos at that time. I still get the Sunday NY Times and it's still black and white print, so I couldn't figure out what had changed in 1997!
I like the sister. I'd ask, what if you're with someone who both loves to cook and clean the dishes, one by one, one single step from the dishwasher. Is that crazy? I love his practical knowledge: The paint is made from mangoes.
“That was a good one. I never would have guessed. My turn. Guess how many days since I’ve looked in a box of crayons. Strange one, I know. But go ahead, guess.”
Kids play with crayons until they’re what, 10? 12? Inside the lines, outside the lines, no lines at all, kids pick red or blue or burnt sienna. They pick their colors and go to town, tongues tucked in the corner of their mouths, brows concentrated, minds frothing. Pink dog jumping an orange moon.
Sister Mary Rosary was my second-grade teacher. She wore black, all black, head to toe black. You only noticed her blue eyes when they picked you out of the class, summoning you to stand beside her desk, back to everyone else, hands on your head.
Hanging from her wide black belt was a long string of black rosary beads. You’d hear them clacking when she walked up behind you. You’d hear them clacking when she reached past them into the folds of her dress to pull out her wooden ruler. They’d go silent when she aimed the ruler at your hand or your arm or, if you were one of the Olsen twins, your head.
The classroom went silent. I kept my head down, putting the last touches on a farm scene with a red barn and a green tractor.
“What is that, mister?”
“Sister?”
“On your hand. What is that on your hand?”
“It’s a rooster, Sister. I was trying out a rooster before I put it in my drawing.”
“Roosters aren’t that color. You know that. Roosters aren’t purple. Eat it.”
“Sister?”
“Not in my classroom. No purple roosters in my classroom. Eat the purple crayon.”
Oh wow. Great story. My husband went to a school where the nuns whacked him across the knuckles with a ruler every time he wrote with his left hand, which evidently was an unholy thing to do. All these years later and he's still a south paw. I hope you can reclaim your love of drawing with crayons!
Suppose we don’t have favourite colours anymore. The younger people never did. Others have buried them with their long-lost innocence. It’s always been hard to tell where red ends and orange starts, anyway. And who decides the line between indigo and violet? It’s not that we don’t like colours. I’ll always relish the green of a fresh young coconut, the reddy-brown of a roasted coffee bean, the glistening gold of the conductive elements in a printed circuit board.
There was a shooting. Targeting just those wearing blue. Twenty-nine dead on that day. Two days later, just those in green – one hundred and eight. Then red, that bled into violet, pink and orange. Too many to count.
Parents began telling children not to share their favourite colours. Not to ask. Packets of crayons went unopened. Colouring books returned to stores. It became easier, safer, to draw in pencil.
But our world is still vibrant. This is not sepia-toned Kansas in the Wizard of Oz. This is real. We just don’t talk about colour. We get along fine. But if anyone swings open the door into a violent world by asking your favourite, it’s best to bow your head and say, ‘gun-metal grey.’
Once you were finally in the dorm where you’d complete your sentence, you wore blue, but when you first arrived, there was a two week quarantine when you were separate from the other inmates, and you wore orange. No one knew why this was done, but a lot of prison procedures had lost any connection to their original reason for being, and were virtually self-perpetuating.
A line of these orange-clad prisoners, when walking across the yard to chow, for example, stood out quite distinctly. One late afternoon, the sky was threatening what was sure to be a memorable storm, and the contrast of the brightly-clad men against the ominous dark clouds was striking. I nudged my bunkie. “Look at the uniforms against the sky. Beautiful.” He shrugged. Like most men in prison, he would not have known what to do with the phrase, “aesthetically pleasing,”
There were lots of artists in the dorm, but they were a literal lot. They only did portraits of wives or sisters or children that another inmate would pay soups for. The only artistic creativity I saw was in the design of tattoos, but even they were repetitive; barbed wire around a rose, motorcycles with buxom women, skulls and crossbones--you get the idea. Had I suggested they draw scenes from what they could see around them they would have looked at me as if I’d addressed them in ancient Sumerian.
No matter. I had realized it was completely possible to find beauty even in a place that seemed to have been intentionally designed to punish one's spirit with its ugliness. And I started finding it everywhere.
Her name was Imogene. Bright red hair gathered atop her head in a messy bun.
Imogene dressed all in green. Green floral dress in shades of green: pistachio, sage, jade, and bottle green. Minnie Mouse ears, glinted as she turned her head this way and that—the bowed, padded headdress studded with rhinestones and sequins.
And her shoes: Mary Jane’s laced with wide green grosgrain ribbon.
She held court in a forest green high-backed armchair angled toward the couch where Jesse collapsed onto in a heap, threw his head back, and closed his eyes.
Imogene’s captive audience for the first half-hour was someone—a daughter, he suspected—on the other end of the emerald green phone she clutched in her bright green claws—gold glinting in a thin line around each fingertip. He half-listened to the conversation he couldn’t escape, understanding in advance the role he must play when the interrogation ended.
His mind wandered. What did he care who her daughter chose to spend her portion of the inheritance on? Some man was probably having a very good time at Imogene’s expense. Some other man, his lips twitched. Not so different from me, he decided. An insect pinned on a wax specimen board.
Was he dry enough yet for display? He suspected he soon would be, her interest waning in the struggle he was having at the mid point in his novel. Struggle? How could he claim to struggle when he hadn’t written in—how many weeks?
“Jesse!”
He jolted awake, eyes wide. Mustn’t sleep. At least, not until—he shoved one hand in the pocket of his jacket. His fingers cradled the small bottle inside.
“Colin has left Deidre!”
Lucky Colin. Her dark green eyes sparked with impatient daggers and he wiped the thought from his face, tipped his head and voiced a sympathetic noise. Was it enough?
”Sorry, darling.”
He stood, reached one hand toward her and pulled her to her feet. She shook her head impatiently and he leaned toward her.
In that time before I lost my innocence, my world was vivid green. In our living room, I’d squeeze up to my brother on our forest green divan as he read aloud to me, finger running under the words of his school reader, until one day to my astonishment I saw the little black marks on the page form themselves into patterns and I realised I could read too. We had two green armchairs that matched the divan, and in the kitchen the table we ate at with our parents was green formica flecked with white and trimmed with metal, and the chairs we sat on to eat were bright green vinyl with an embossed paisley pattern.
But outside was where we wanted to be. Our wooden house was painted green, and my brother and I would busy ourselves scratching and picking the peeling paint off the timbers, then when we tired of that we’d roll tumbling and squealing down the soft damp grass that sloped away from the front of the house. We’d make sorties into the lush rainforest nearby with kids from neighbouring houses, winding our way through long wet spiky grasses and ferns with pearls of water caught on the end of each frond, down to the creek with its murky green-brown water, where we’d squat and catch tadpoles.
My mind has closed the door on what happened that day it all ended, and the harder I try to remember, the further away it retreats. Something bad happened. I have a notion there was a scary man, but that might not be true. My mind might have painted that picture, because we were always on the lookout for scary men back then. We’d make up stories about them.
All I remember is my father carrying my brother up from the creek, no life left in him.
My parents never spoke of that day again. They never spoke my brother’s name. They packed up the things in our house and we got into the car and we drove thousands of miles into the desert. Here we stayed, in this dusty place of browns and ochres and reds, a place where no tears were ever allowed to be shed, a place where the drought would never be broken. This is the place where I have lived out what remained of my life.
The descriptive contrasts in this from early life to life after whatever happened—so well painted. A poignant piece that could lead to a longer story of discovery, realization—it beckons to the reader. Nicely done.
The wall is painted white and in front there are three stone steps and on each step a terracotta pot. She had placed each with her fingers spread around the curve of the pot, as if upon a pregnant belly. She filled each pot with soft black earth, lowered the geraniums, and patted the earth over their roots with her fingers. The earth was dark along her fingernails, the pots sat warmed on the steps and the geranium petals were strong against the white wall.
She looked at the pots from the window and from the back door. She looked at the pots while she spoke on the phone to her sister. After clearing up the mess left by the neighbour’s cats, she stood with her hands on her hips and looked at the pots.
But one morning, one of the pots was lying on its side. She ran out of the backdoor and knelt next to it. Two unequal halves of the pot lay, one collapsed into the other, and black earth spilled from the wound. A rim of terracotta pressed against geranium stalks. Petals lay on the crumbs of earth.
She phoned her sister and said perhaps she’d nudged it close the edge when she was watering the geraniums the night before. Or surely it must have been the neighbour’s cat? Her sister said don’t worry herself. These things happen. Dad would have understood. He loved geraniums in those pots, but these things happen don’t they? He would have talked about how the red petals stood out against the white wall. It would have reminded him of their holidays in the Med. Did she remember? It’s the memories that are important anyway, not the pots he kept all those years. Did she remember how much he used to like swimming in the sea, hours floating about, with them all too. Did she remember his moustache dripping with the blue water, then walking back up the baked earth with Jack their little brother on his shoulders and to that villa with the archway through the white wall, Jack would have to duck his head, and the geraniums? He’d water them for the owners, he loved their red petals so much against the white.
These things happen. And anyway, there were still two pots left. It was like what happened to their brother, these things happen, it wasn’t really her fault, not really.
Last week I was at the Angel Front Coffee and Tailor Shop. I was having my suit altered. It seems strange to even consider wearing a suit in these casual times. My preference is to wear nothing. Well, clearly not nothing. That would cause more social problems than I am willing to confront. But I almost never wear anything more formal than slacks and a button-down. But Millie wanted to go to the Forensic Color Challenge Gala. I last wore the only suit I have at her father’s retirement dinner, and that was a decade ago, at least.
Surprisingly, the pants still fit around my middle. The jacket actually had to be taken a bit to conform to style. But the pant legs were a problem. I’ve shrunk two-and-a-half inches. I used to be a solid five-foot-ten.
So there I sat, waiting for my alterations while I sipped my blue cacao-laced coffee. Then Sarge walked in. I nearly spit out my last sip directly across the room and onto the seamstress’s worktable.
Sarge was wearing his university blazer. What the hell? How clueless could he be? He came in with the authority of a Roman centurion, straight and measured.
Taking a careful look around, he quickly sized up the situation, sauntered over to me, and asked, “Are you really going to wear that zoot suit?” He was nodding over to the aforementioned worktable.
Now, I happen to like the suit. And besides, it was the right color for the Gala. A warm mustard yellow with a forest green trim along the lapels.
“You will look redic…”. Suddenly, he stopped. Millie came out of the fitting room at exactly that moment. Both of us were dazzled. She was wearing her gown for the evening: a floor-length in lavender and salmon horizontal stripes – wide, the kind that might give a barber pole a severe case of vertigo. It had an enormous crinoline skirt so aggressively puffed that I would have to walk six inches to her left.
Sarge bowed. “Well, that does it. I guess I had better change.”
Young, recently married and newly arrived in Atlanta with a limited budget we needed a car. Nothing fancy, something solid and reliable. A co-worker, Randy, had an aunt, RuthAnn, up in Smyrna who was looking to sell her 1969 Ford Galaxie. She’d owned since it was new.
“It’s red, the family call it “Big Red”. It has low mileage and 260 AC.” said Randy
“Oh, is that good?’
“Sure, you crank down two windows and drive at sixty to get a good cross-breeze going. She wants $500.”
Everyone had a good laugh but the price was right so we became the new owners of Big Red.
Big Red was big - over seventeen feet long, six and half feet wide and weighed nearly two tons. The powerful eight cylinder engine drank gas and got 20 miles to the gallon. But he was solid and reliable.
The mileage was low, Ruth Ann barely let Big Red out of the barn. The rear seat belts were still in their original cellophane covers. She must have loved that car when it was new. The red was Candy Apple Red, a big hit in 1969. It took a Ford paint guy ten years to create the color from mixing gold and red paint and covering it all with a clear coat. By the time we had Big Red, the paint had faded. Maybe that’s why RuthAnn was ready to let him go.
Big Red was always chomping at the bit to be taken out on the highway. You’d stomp on the gas and he’d buck and growl into the merge lane. Other vehicles would always make room.
Big Red had one fender-bender under our watch when he was rear-ended by a VW Golf. The driver got out apologizing for hitting us, he’d been preoccupied and not braked in time. We walked back to assess the damage. The front of the Golf was stoved-in. Big Red had barely a scratch on his steel fender.
We traded Big Red when we moved down to Louisiana three years later, even 260 AC couldn’t handle the humidity. That’s when we bought “Black Bug……..”
He called me Goose. Goose is what he named me, what he called me. He said what's for dinner Goose? He would yell, Goose! Goose! Where are you? He would yell into the dark night calling me to come home.
We were mated until life ends. And I was his Goose. Always following, always honking. A brown, black, and white creature. One with beady dark eyes and a comical waddle for a walk. Just a Goose, his Goose.
This is so sweet, Ruth. And I know that you are more than "just a goose."
What else would he call you but Goose?
Kevin, he could call me Kevin
Ah! Lovely! You must live near these wonderful creatures.
we see them occasionally
and once they nested at the edge of a local slough
that was magical
Love this. I live in a little town where two gaggles of geese stop the traffic several times a day as they cross the main road. Now I've read your lovely little piece I'm quite sure the gander leading the gaggle calls back over his shoulder, Goose! Goose! Where are you?
i live in British Columbia, the closest town is Prince George.
YES! thank you
Reminds me of my ducks. So nice!
oh, i love ducks!
They agreed the living room should be white. Walls, ceiling, trim, everything, the same white.
I’ll pick up some samples this afternoon and we can try some tomorrow, she said.
We want a warm white, right?
Get whatever you want, I’m pretty easy on colors.
It wasn’t so easy at the paint store. The in house color expert told her there were infinite whites. Warm to cool and back again. Tens of thousands of whites, he said. Where would you like to start. Now this here, is Alabaster, and this one Easter Lace, and we can change those, you know, wherever you want to go.
She got rollers and trays and good China bristle brushes at $45 each, recalling how he’d bring home throwaway brushes that drove her crazy. She got rags, extension poles for the rollers, sand paper. And twenty seven quart cans of custom warm white samples.
She covered the dining room table with a drop cloth and organized all the supplies. She lined the cans of paint from warm to cool, as best she could figure out.
What the hell’s all this, he said when he got home.
Paint.
I see that but…..why all the quart cans?
Samples.
Sweetheart . . . .
What!
That’s great, thanks for taking care of all this.
After breakfast next morning they put some paint on the walls. It got confusing what was what. Some of the lids with the color written on got put back on the wrong cans. Etcetera. They painted samples all day and at the end had no idea what they’d done. They went out to dinner and drank a bottle of wine and had fish tacos made with halibut.
He got up around midnight and got a trash can from the garage and dumped the 27 quart cans into it and stirred it with the iron rake. He started painting at 12:45 a.m. He finished at 5:30, cleaned everything up, made coffee and sat down to look at his work.
She’d picked the colors, so he was fairly confident, not positively confident, she’d be happy with the results.
So hilarious. I chose between about ten whites for my previous living room. It was an exercise in insanity.
We had a painter who was really into white variations and how he liked painting test areas to make comparisons. I said he must enjoy watching paint dry. ‘I do”. Didn’t even crack a smile.
Ha!
it makes a big difference to how the paint will catch the light
Love your story! All those warm whites! I remember painting the gallery for my first art show in 1973. Lesson number one: if you want your stuff to look warm you have to pick a cool white for the walls. I bought a can of white paint and added a little gray...
Very fun. So many stories turn out to be relationship stories, no matter where we start.
Hmm. I never thought about it that way. But you're right.
cool turn at the end. Or it a warm turn?
We just repainted our place. I think your plan worked better than any we considered.
Fantastic ending. Love the specific details too - like the 27 cans, and the fish tacos. Great little piece. Also slightly triggering... ha!
Only slightly, though.
Hilarious! Would love to know how she reacted...
Alas! We'll probably never know.
I love this, Tod!
We had a big living room with each of the 4 walls painted a different white. It was wonderful.
I love 'Sweetheart...." "What!" "That's great,..."
Such great shorthand for their relationship.
Oh man. This! I've been dumbfounded trying to find the perfect white.
I went with Chantilly White in my last house. It was fantastic--but a lot of people prefer something warmer. I think Decorator's White or Simply White please just about everyone.
Keep trying. It's out there somewhere.
I think this needs a sequel - when she sees the results.
Easier to leave it hanging ) It's not a bad marriage at this point : )
I Remember Red
I remember wearing a red hat on the lane home
from school so the hunters wouldn’t shoot me--
hunters with their bows and arrows, stalking
poor defenseless fawns.
I remember red popsicles, their icy crunch against my teeth,
leaving blood-red lips and sticks stained on the ends.
Lipsticked with tiny tubes of Avon samples, Cherries in the Snow,
or Rose Geranium, treasures of a hoped-up fantasy.
I remember my red satin party dress,
red wool suit,
red striped pajamas,
made by my mother to brighten up my teenage years.
Red—droplets in the toilet bowl—red, dread, confusion,
a swirl of shame.
Red -- me on stage with my silver flute and red suit, cheeks
aflame fire-engine red. Tomato with flute.
I remember the shoes I bought with babysitting money,
red Pappagallo flats with a cut-out and a tiny bow.
I remember the cool girls who had days-of-the-week Pappagallo flats
in rainbow colors – green ones, pink on pink, yellow with navy piping.
I remember Dorothy’s shoes with sequins, vestige of a dead witch.
Red magic shoes. I remember wanting magic.
Love this! It immediately caused me to remember all the red things in my own life.
The details create a portrait of a living, breathing person, and then, wanting magic is a fabulous launch into another sphere.
gorgeous. And the end so moving and satisfying
So evocative! Love "Tomato with flute."
Such vivid memories - this one really resounded with me. It brought back so many little things from teenage years, my cheeks also often "aflame" with that particular brand of embarrassment you feel at that age.
This is great Christine. Our hunting season hats were blaze orange. I don't think there was hunting season for fawns. But it might have seemed that way. Legally you could only shoot the men deer. : )
Love this. I had red patent leather Mary Janes. My favorites. I miss them.
Everybody knows that the Crips are blue and the Bloods are red but did you know that other gangs have more unusual colors? The 136th Street Sand Angels are alabaster white and their annual cotillion and tea party features gorgeous alabaster plates, teacups, Lazy Boy recliners and streamers. The Gold Dust Boyz are, of course, gold and they greet each rising sun with their gang sign and the waving of gold bandanas. The Nine Trey Gangsters are purple amethyst and they watch Prince’s Purple Rain every Thursday on a giant screen tv with plenty of popcorn. The Campbell Street Serpents have not yet chosen a color and have decided to refrain from criminal activity until a supermajority of members has decided on a color. The latest vote was 19 for puce, 12 for ultramarine, and 6 for cerulean.
Wonderful!!
How do you know all this, Wim?
Aren't these colour words evocative: amethyst?
Well done, Wim, this is engaging... I'd definitely read on.
If the Campbells choose puce they'll have to change all their names to bruce, no?
Love this! Especially the gang having a tea party.
Brilliant!
I agree...brilliant.
Dawn, dawning
Suppose you wake up before daylight
imagining all the colors of dawn
while the sky is still asleep
wrapped in its midnight blue cover.
Suppose you imagine today is the day
you will accomplish everything
on your list.
Will you begin before sunrise
and do the dishes? Too soon,
you haven't dirtied even a cup yet.
Maybe start by doing laundry.
But wait, your daughter is sleeping.
Same goes for cleaning,
or taking the car in for an oil change.
No one's awake. So you sit by the window
and listen to the birds bring up the sun.
Blue wavelengths scatter as the longer
ones delight your eyes.
The glory of the fading blues give rise
to red, orange and pink, until at last
the sky is blue again.
Suppose you forget about your list
for a bit, and experience
gratitude for life itself.
Lovely.
Something about 'doing the dishes' but you haven't dirtied a cup yet....what it says about everyday minor anxiety over getting things done instead of sitting with the sunrise.
I noticed that part, too!
Thank you. Exactly right.
Love this, Sandra. One to print out for a reminder.
lovely.
Gratitude and the colors! So nice.
This is lovely.
Amen!
Interior Dialogue
Red has a difficult time of it. The associations, I mean. Anger. Blood. Raw meat. Stop signs. Danger warnings. Fire. Communism. Although, of course, there are positives. Valentines. Roses. Strawberries. Tomatoes. Apples. Poppies. Firefighters. Other colors tend to be less intense. Take blue, for example. Summer skies. Blueberries. Placid mountain lakes. All rather relaxing. Although, of course, there are the blues, both the wonderful cathartic music and the miserable feeling. Some folks revel in the blues. I knew someone once who told me that he delighted in studying his own face in the mirror when he was in the throes of the blues because he was so beautiful when he was blue. The occasional person gets blue in the face, but that is more a matter of exhaustion than red hot anger. Consider green. Spring. Summer lawns. Dollar bills. Winter wreaths. Christmas trees. Green is quite positive. Except for sea sickness. In general, we have to say that green is not so intense as red. Spring and summer, money, winter decorations, even sea sickness are all so fleeting. Look quickly because the green will disappear before you know it. Purple thinks a lot of itself. Royalty. Bruises. Barney. Brown is a bit of an ugly duckling at times. Dead plants. Burnt toast. “If it’s brown, flush it down.” Nonetheless, brown is all the rage these days in men’s fashion. So, you never know. We could go on and on discussing this. How many colors are there? I read once that the human eye can distinguish 10 million different colors. So, we could stand here in this Home Depot paint aisle forever, I suppose. But, perhaps, just perhaps, the better alternative would be for you to pick whichever color most appeals to you for whatever reason or no reason at all and then we move on to the flooring section.
Oh, my god, the flooring section. You'll never get out of there!! And Lighting is even worse....
This is great! I love the mix of examples, particularly sea sickness, twice!
Ha ha. You'd be fun to decorate a house with Deborah. I think. I had a girlfriend for a while who owned a red Firebird she drove very fast. My cars are dull, like me, tan and gray and black. We didn't last.
I love this! Also explains why there are SO MANY paint chips at Home Depot etc - because our eyes are capable of beholding so many.
(I don't have a title for this; suggestions welcome.)
A few days a week I volunteer at a day shelter for homeless men where I live. I wear a gold lanyard with the word VOLUNTEER printed on it in black letters attached to a green tag with my first name on it. Some days I sign men in at the roster at the front desk. Other days I answer the phone and hand out supplies. Supplies include ponchos, underwear, socks, hats, gloves, and belts. Ponchos are clear and neon green, yellow, and pink. The pink ones are always the last to go. Sometimes tightie whities are the only underwear available. These are less popular than neon pink ponchos. More often than not a man will decline a clean pair of tightie whities and continue to wear his dirty pair of briefs. One afternoon over the winter a man asked me for a hat. I pulled out a bright orange toboggan. Anything dark? he asked. Cops, he said. Another afternoon this winter a young man in a rust-colored Patagonia down jacket with a white hospital band around his right wrist came to the front desk. Where can I get a gun to go shoot some dogs? he asked. My first thought was, Am I safe? I decided I was. Staff were just ten feet away at the door. My second thought was, Is he seeing a dog or a person? I decided I could not answer that question. My third thought was my answer. You can’t do that here, sir, I said. He later took a bus back to his home a few hours away using a ticket that staff bought him. I think about those dogs every day. Yesterday at the shelter someone donated some leftover bagels from a bakery. Frankie lurked around the front desk eyeing them until Antwan took them to the kitchen for tomorrow morning’s coffee service. Even with his wild matted white-blonde hair and beard and general dishevelment it is easy to see that Frankie is a handsome man. He has flawless rosy skin and eyes as blue as the dot in the middle of the Chrome logo. Frankie lost his mind in a motorcycle accident that also killed his girlfriend. No helmet, Susan said when I first asked her about Frankie. Also yesterday one man asked for white ankle socks. I had only black crew socks. I’ll take what I can get, he said.
It kills me that people are not cared for because they had the bad luck to sustain a brain injury, or maybe born with mental illness or other trauma. This is so good, Polly. I don't have a title tho.
Thank you. From what I see at the shelter homelessness is a very complex problem and what works for one person won’t work for another. Every person is unique. In an ideal world every one would have a remedy tailored just for him or her but, of course, it is far from an ideal world.
Yes, here in my city we have people that are homeless who are working full-time, low paying jobs. And then other homeless people are schizophrenic. And on and on. So many different situations.
Yes, same here. And the shelter where I volunteer opened a permanent supportive housing complex a year ago, 80 apartments. I hear it is getting trashed because residents don't know how to care for their apartments or, because of mental illness or addiction or some other affliction, they are incapable. So even PSH doesn't seem to be working!
Yeah. It’s bad here. I blame Ronald Reagan. He really screwed us, all to save “taxes” for lord knows who.
Can't even stand to say his name. What a horrible president.
Ronnie has a lot to answer for, but the people who came after him could have turned it around. It’s going to take a lot to solve this multi-pronged monster. A title? That last line has possibilities.
Once you de-regulate, good luck turning that one around.
Fascinating, Polly. While you many not always know what has brought clients to the shelter, they don't know how you're observing them, thinking about them, empathizing.
Yes, ALWAYS. I don't know how not to think about their situations and I have been fascinated with a few of the men, especially one who I saw a couple of weeks before Christmas walking by my favorite Dairy Queen just after dusk wearing nothing but white underwear and then a few days later I saw him at my grocery, fully clothed and considering items in the discount cart, carrying a gym bag that said Magical Spirits of Legendary Quality. Like Frankie is a beautiful man, tall and graceful, even athletic, and stark raving mad.
Could you include that and call it Magical Spirits of Legendary Quality? its great
Magical Spirits of Legendary Quality is a wonderful wonderful title.
isn’t it? Maybe we need fun titles like that Niall? I saw some guy interviewed the other day and they asked What sort of books do you like? And he said Ones with long Titles. He’s drawn to long titled books and then tries finding brilliant long titled books. or just books with brilliant long titles. I used to have a book called
‘The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral mind’
and we called it ‘
The Oranges of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicaramel Mind‘
cuz we were hooligans.
Ha! Had to read those two twice. Your title is better. Totally. Yes. Totally.
I think you've convinced me already that excess in titles (perhaps only titles, perhaps beyond) is an objective good.
Yes, perhaps. I have written about this man in other piece about the shelter as well as the journal series I write here. Thank you.
How about " Inside The Kaleidoscope."
Brilliant. or even just Kaleidoscope. Both great options.
Beautiful. Possible titles:
- Last night at the shelter
- I'll take what I can get
- The pink ones are always the last to go
Maybe just: The Pink Ones? Thank you.
it's tragic. We'd had a homeless guy living on the roof of an apartment block for a few years and he was great and made the place safer
It is such a complex problem. When I was at the shelter yesterday I talked with a staff member who also works at the shelter's permanent supportive housing complex. It opened a year ago and it is getting trashed because the residents just don't have the skills or ability to take care of themselves or their property. I don't know what the answer is/answers are.
its too loaded to even talk about without training, anything seems like the wrong thing to say
We can't even decide what to call people without a home. Homeless? Unsheltered? Unhoused? Etc.
yeah, I guess people who’d recently lost a home would not want to think of themselves as homeless
Here, we use "unhoused," and I think that's a good choice.
and maybe something abstract as the fifth option, in case people didnt want a word, everyone tries to keep this abstract idea positive - ( dystopian possibilities are occurring ) thats five with the three you mentioned and a between housing engagements nice phrase or words or letters. Perhaps some compassionate genius can help. Not needing any terms would be great
but even mentioning this stuff is a reminder of the heaviness of words. It's not a one size fits all situation
perhaps they could start with five options. gotta start somewhere. unsheltered could sound slightly vulnerable, we wanna cheer people up. something suggesting being in between housing engagements might be a thought
we need our best and brightest minds helping to protect the gentle and somehow help the people who are not good at living with people. anyone who’d destroy their own home doesnt know what home is
“Mango isn’t a color,” you say.
“Of course it is,” he says, waving the paint chip. “Won’t it be beautiful, a mango kitchen? It will show off the black appliances, and even those black and white dishes.”
He doesn’t like the black and white dishes. You wonder if it’s because you bought them with your first husband, or just because he loves bright colors. The intense color palette of his wardrobe intrigued you when you met him. Very few men have underwear in every color in the rainbow. You wonder if there’s a disorder called color-obsession. You’ll have to ask your therapist sister when you talk to her.
Mango is a smoothie, it’s chutney, it’s the fragrance of a fancy lotion your mother gave you. You like the taste of mango, and the smell. You know you will defer to him on the color for the kitchen. You made a deal with yourself to be open to everything for the next twelve months, just to see. You’re calling it ”the year of yes.”
Really, it’s his kitchen. When you moved in together, a scandalous four weeks before the wedding – you’re both divorced and over fifty, but of course your seventy-five-year-old mother disapproved – you discussed division of labor. He wanted to cook. He’s a good cook even when he gets ambitious, with souffles and fancy Asian recipes. You like washing dishes. It’s therapeutic, in some weird way. You asked your sister about it once. She said, “Yeah, for some people it’s soothing. But don’t you have a dishwasher? No need to get crazy.”
You wonder if your sister calls her patients crazy, or if she reserves it for family members.
You try one more argument, just for the sport of it. “We live in Manhattan,” you say, “where the newspaper was black and white until 1997. Mango are tropical, imported from Mexico. The people who pick them in intense heat get paid almost nothing. Do you really want to celebrate labor exploitation?”
“The paint isn’t actually made from mangoes,” he says.
Your mother will love the mango. Skeptical when you brought him to Passover after secretly dating him for seven months, she was won over when, the youngest at the table, he chanted the Four Questions with enthusiasm.
All you have to do is say “yes.”
“Yes,” you say. “I like mango for the kitchen. How about mint for the bathroom?”
oh, the compromises we must make! I wonder if this match lasted... (Also, what became of the newspaper after 1997??)
1997 was when they published the first color photo on the front page of the NYT. It was a sports photo, but oddly enough not a NY team - “”The historic image featured Cleveland Indians baseball player Tony Fernandez celebrating his 11th-inning home run that sent the team to the World Series.”
OH! Got it--they included color photos at that time. I still get the Sunday NY Times and it's still black and white print, so I couldn't figure out what had changed in 1997!
I like the sister. I'd ask, what if you're with someone who both loves to cook and clean the dishes, one by one, one single step from the dishwasher. Is that crazy? I love his practical knowledge: The paint is made from mangoes.
Thanks, Kevin. The sister is one of the reasons this is on my "maybe more someday" list.
“That was a good one. I never would have guessed. My turn. Guess how many days since I’ve looked in a box of crayons. Strange one, I know. But go ahead, guess.”
Kids play with crayons until they’re what, 10? 12? Inside the lines, outside the lines, no lines at all, kids pick red or blue or burnt sienna. They pick their colors and go to town, tongues tucked in the corner of their mouths, brows concentrated, minds frothing. Pink dog jumping an orange moon.
Sister Mary Rosary was my second-grade teacher. She wore black, all black, head to toe black. You only noticed her blue eyes when they picked you out of the class, summoning you to stand beside her desk, back to everyone else, hands on your head.
Hanging from her wide black belt was a long string of black rosary beads. You’d hear them clacking when she walked up behind you. You’d hear them clacking when she reached past them into the folds of her dress to pull out her wooden ruler. They’d go silent when she aimed the ruler at your hand or your arm or, if you were one of the Olsen twins, your head.
The classroom went silent. I kept my head down, putting the last touches on a farm scene with a red barn and a green tractor.
“What is that, mister?”
“Sister?”
“On your hand. What is that on your hand?”
“It’s a rooster, Sister. I was trying out a rooster before I put it in my drawing.”
“Roosters aren’t that color. You know that. Roosters aren’t purple. Eat it.”
“Sister?”
“Not in my classroom. No purple roosters in my classroom. Eat the purple crayon.”
21,900. I’ll bet you didn’t guess that.
What I missed, not growing up Catholic.
What a story! And no, i never would have guessed that ending, which is why I love it
Did not expect this ending!
I love this disturbing story - great job. Reminded me of the line from Arrested Development - “has anyone in this family ever seen a chicken?”
Oh, I hope that this is not a true story. What awful things teachers used to do to us. In any event, excellent story.
no crayon eating in my past. Wooden rulers, yes.
I am glad to hear that!
Oh wow. Great story. My husband went to a school where the nuns whacked him across the knuckles with a ruler every time he wrote with his left hand, which evidently was an unholy thing to do. All these years later and he's still a south paw. I hope you can reclaim your love of drawing with crayons!
My brother was 'converted' to being a righty, but his left is still his preferred hand.
The colour wars
Suppose we don’t have favourite colours anymore. The younger people never did. Others have buried them with their long-lost innocence. It’s always been hard to tell where red ends and orange starts, anyway. And who decides the line between indigo and violet? It’s not that we don’t like colours. I’ll always relish the green of a fresh young coconut, the reddy-brown of a roasted coffee bean, the glistening gold of the conductive elements in a printed circuit board.
There was a shooting. Targeting just those wearing blue. Twenty-nine dead on that day. Two days later, just those in green – one hundred and eight. Then red, that bled into violet, pink and orange. Too many to count.
Parents began telling children not to share their favourite colours. Not to ask. Packets of crayons went unopened. Colouring books returned to stores. It became easier, safer, to draw in pencil.
But our world is still vibrant. This is not sepia-toned Kansas in the Wizard of Oz. This is real. We just don’t talk about colour. We get along fine. But if anyone swings open the door into a violent world by asking your favourite, it’s best to bow your head and say, ‘gun-metal grey.’
Scary times.
Indeed!
But gun-metal grey is a color too, and when will that be targeted?
Likely never... ha.
Well done. An interesting view (literally) into dystopia, and quite a metaphor for the current disrespect for difference.
Thanks Janet.
Wow. The starkness of this and the people left without colors. The contrast to the outside world. And that bleak final line. Nicely done.
Thank you Angela
Once you were finally in the dorm where you’d complete your sentence, you wore blue, but when you first arrived, there was a two week quarantine when you were separate from the other inmates, and you wore orange. No one knew why this was done, but a lot of prison procedures had lost any connection to their original reason for being, and were virtually self-perpetuating.
A line of these orange-clad prisoners, when walking across the yard to chow, for example, stood out quite distinctly. One late afternoon, the sky was threatening what was sure to be a memorable storm, and the contrast of the brightly-clad men against the ominous dark clouds was striking. I nudged my bunkie. “Look at the uniforms against the sky. Beautiful.” He shrugged. Like most men in prison, he would not have known what to do with the phrase, “aesthetically pleasing,”
There were lots of artists in the dorm, but they were a literal lot. They only did portraits of wives or sisters or children that another inmate would pay soups for. The only artistic creativity I saw was in the design of tattoos, but even they were repetitive; barbed wire around a rose, motorcycles with buxom women, skulls and crossbones--you get the idea. Had I suggested they draw scenes from what they could see around them they would have looked at me as if I’d addressed them in ancient Sumerian.
No matter. I had realized it was completely possible to find beauty even in a place that seemed to have been intentionally designed to punish one's spirit with its ugliness. And I started finding it everywhere.
Thank god, you could find beauty in such a place.
The hot bodies REALLY helped.
hahahahahhaahhahha!!!!
I love the life-affirming note this ends on.
Her name was Imogene. Bright red hair gathered atop her head in a messy bun.
Imogene dressed all in green. Green floral dress in shades of green: pistachio, sage, jade, and bottle green. Minnie Mouse ears, glinted as she turned her head this way and that—the bowed, padded headdress studded with rhinestones and sequins.
And her shoes: Mary Jane’s laced with wide green grosgrain ribbon.
She held court in a forest green high-backed armchair angled toward the couch where Jesse collapsed onto in a heap, threw his head back, and closed his eyes.
Imogene’s captive audience for the first half-hour was someone—a daughter, he suspected—on the other end of the emerald green phone she clutched in her bright green claws—gold glinting in a thin line around each fingertip. He half-listened to the conversation he couldn’t escape, understanding in advance the role he must play when the interrogation ended.
His mind wandered. What did he care who her daughter chose to spend her portion of the inheritance on? Some man was probably having a very good time at Imogene’s expense. Some other man, his lips twitched. Not so different from me, he decided. An insect pinned on a wax specimen board.
Was he dry enough yet for display? He suspected he soon would be, her interest waning in the struggle he was having at the mid point in his novel. Struggle? How could he claim to struggle when he hadn’t written in—how many weeks?
“Jesse!”
He jolted awake, eyes wide. Mustn’t sleep. At least, not until—he shoved one hand in the pocket of his jacket. His fingers cradled the small bottle inside.
“Colin has left Deidre!”
Lucky Colin. Her dark green eyes sparked with impatient daggers and he wiped the thought from his face, tipped his head and voiced a sympathetic noise. Was it enough?
”Sorry, darling.”
He stood, reached one hand toward her and pulled her to her feet. She shook her head impatiently and he leaned toward her.
”How can I help?’ He murmured.
”My smoothie!”
”Coming right up.”
Lucky Colin, and soon—Lucky Jesse.
Love the green, green, green and then the red hair on top of her head. Do you know of the Green Lady? https://www.instagram.com/greenladyofbrooklyn/
Thanks for the reminder about her. Love her hair!
Jesse is a great character...very entertaining that he's a writer who isn't writing. Got other things on his mind :)
An insect pinned to a specimen board. What a guy. I'm glad his luck is turning.
My life in green
In that time before I lost my innocence, my world was vivid green. In our living room, I’d squeeze up to my brother on our forest green divan as he read aloud to me, finger running under the words of his school reader, until one day to my astonishment I saw the little black marks on the page form themselves into patterns and I realised I could read too. We had two green armchairs that matched the divan, and in the kitchen the table we ate at with our parents was green formica flecked with white and trimmed with metal, and the chairs we sat on to eat were bright green vinyl with an embossed paisley pattern.
But outside was where we wanted to be. Our wooden house was painted green, and my brother and I would busy ourselves scratching and picking the peeling paint off the timbers, then when we tired of that we’d roll tumbling and squealing down the soft damp grass that sloped away from the front of the house. We’d make sorties into the lush rainforest nearby with kids from neighbouring houses, winding our way through long wet spiky grasses and ferns with pearls of water caught on the end of each frond, down to the creek with its murky green-brown water, where we’d squat and catch tadpoles.
My mind has closed the door on what happened that day it all ended, and the harder I try to remember, the further away it retreats. Something bad happened. I have a notion there was a scary man, but that might not be true. My mind might have painted that picture, because we were always on the lookout for scary men back then. We’d make up stories about them.
All I remember is my father carrying my brother up from the creek, no life left in him.
My parents never spoke of that day again. They never spoke my brother’s name. They packed up the things in our house and we got into the car and we drove thousands of miles into the desert. Here we stayed, in this dusty place of browns and ochres and reds, a place where no tears were ever allowed to be shed, a place where the drought would never be broken. This is the place where I have lived out what remained of my life.
Wow. Beautifully rendered.
Thank you Mary!
You had me at "sorties."
It's an under-utilised word, isn't it?
Not just that. You used it perfectly.
Thank you Sharon!
Oh my. Beautiful use of the color contrast to set the emotional tone.
Thank you Hanet.
The descriptive contrasts in this from early life to life after whatever happened—so well painted. A poignant piece that could lead to a longer story of discovery, realization—it beckons to the reader. Nicely done.
Thank you Angela.
Geraniums
The wall is painted white and in front there are three stone steps and on each step a terracotta pot. She had placed each with her fingers spread around the curve of the pot, as if upon a pregnant belly. She filled each pot with soft black earth, lowered the geraniums, and patted the earth over their roots with her fingers. The earth was dark along her fingernails, the pots sat warmed on the steps and the geranium petals were strong against the white wall.
She looked at the pots from the window and from the back door. She looked at the pots while she spoke on the phone to her sister. After clearing up the mess left by the neighbour’s cats, she stood with her hands on her hips and looked at the pots.
But one morning, one of the pots was lying on its side. She ran out of the backdoor and knelt next to it. Two unequal halves of the pot lay, one collapsed into the other, and black earth spilled from the wound. A rim of terracotta pressed against geranium stalks. Petals lay on the crumbs of earth.
She phoned her sister and said perhaps she’d nudged it close the edge when she was watering the geraniums the night before. Or surely it must have been the neighbour’s cat? Her sister said don’t worry herself. These things happen. Dad would have understood. He loved geraniums in those pots, but these things happen don’t they? He would have talked about how the red petals stood out against the white wall. It would have reminded him of their holidays in the Med. Did she remember? It’s the memories that are important anyway, not the pots he kept all those years. Did she remember how much he used to like swimming in the sea, hours floating about, with them all too. Did she remember his moustache dripping with the blue water, then walking back up the baked earth with Jack their little brother on his shoulders and to that villa with the archway through the white wall, Jack would have to duck his head, and the geraniums? He’d water them for the owners, he loved their red petals so much against the white.
These things happen. And anyway, there were still two pots left. It was like what happened to their brother, these things happen, it wasn’t really her fault, not really.
wow. That ending. Really well done, Niall.
Whoa! Beautiful.
oh Gosh that's beautiful Niall. I hope its not true.
I love red geranium, in terracotta pots. Id have to buy new ones every year.
I used to watch an English gardener Geranium guy who would bury his geraniums in winter, totally, dig em up and they'd flower again
I read in an article by I think it was Will Self some years ago, 'I don't read fiction any more. It's all lies'
ha. Right this second the song New Fiction by Little Dragon is playing - coincidence or much more or even less?
Last week I was at the Angel Front Coffee and Tailor Shop. I was having my suit altered. It seems strange to even consider wearing a suit in these casual times. My preference is to wear nothing. Well, clearly not nothing. That would cause more social problems than I am willing to confront. But I almost never wear anything more formal than slacks and a button-down. But Millie wanted to go to the Forensic Color Challenge Gala. I last wore the only suit I have at her father’s retirement dinner, and that was a decade ago, at least.
Surprisingly, the pants still fit around my middle. The jacket actually had to be taken a bit to conform to style. But the pant legs were a problem. I’ve shrunk two-and-a-half inches. I used to be a solid five-foot-ten.
So there I sat, waiting for my alterations while I sipped my blue cacao-laced coffee. Then Sarge walked in. I nearly spit out my last sip directly across the room and onto the seamstress’s worktable.
Sarge was wearing his university blazer. What the hell? How clueless could he be? He came in with the authority of a Roman centurion, straight and measured.
Taking a careful look around, he quickly sized up the situation, sauntered over to me, and asked, “Are you really going to wear that zoot suit?” He was nodding over to the aforementioned worktable.
Now, I happen to like the suit. And besides, it was the right color for the Gala. A warm mustard yellow with a forest green trim along the lapels.
“You will look redic…”. Suddenly, he stopped. Millie came out of the fitting room at exactly that moment. Both of us were dazzled. She was wearing her gown for the evening: a floor-length in lavender and salmon horizontal stripes – wide, the kind that might give a barber pole a severe case of vertigo. It had an enormous crinoline skirt so aggressively puffed that I would have to walk six inches to her left.
Sarge bowed. “Well, that does it. I guess I had better change.”
I have a feeling there's a lot more to this story!
Very fun.
Young, recently married and newly arrived in Atlanta with a limited budget we needed a car. Nothing fancy, something solid and reliable. A co-worker, Randy, had an aunt, RuthAnn, up in Smyrna who was looking to sell her 1969 Ford Galaxie. She’d owned since it was new.
“It’s red, the family call it “Big Red”. It has low mileage and 260 AC.” said Randy
“Oh, is that good?’
“Sure, you crank down two windows and drive at sixty to get a good cross-breeze going. She wants $500.”
Everyone had a good laugh but the price was right so we became the new owners of Big Red.
Big Red was big - over seventeen feet long, six and half feet wide and weighed nearly two tons. The powerful eight cylinder engine drank gas and got 20 miles to the gallon. But he was solid and reliable.
The mileage was low, Ruth Ann barely let Big Red out of the barn. The rear seat belts were still in their original cellophane covers. She must have loved that car when it was new. The red was Candy Apple Red, a big hit in 1969. It took a Ford paint guy ten years to create the color from mixing gold and red paint and covering it all with a clear coat. By the time we had Big Red, the paint had faded. Maybe that’s why RuthAnn was ready to let him go.
Big Red was always chomping at the bit to be taken out on the highway. You’d stomp on the gas and he’d buck and growl into the merge lane. Other vehicles would always make room.
Big Red had one fender-bender under our watch when he was rear-ended by a VW Golf. The driver got out apologizing for hitting us, he’d been preoccupied and not braked in time. We walked back to assess the damage. The front of the Golf was stoved-in. Big Red had barely a scratch on his steel fender.
We traded Big Red when we moved down to Louisiana three years later, even 260 AC couldn’t handle the humidity. That’s when we bought “Black Bug……..”
Love that ending! I'm ready for you to take off again with a new story!
So many cars are female…love that Big Red is a guy.