Tropic Magazine, The Miami Herald
November 22, 1987
Reprinted in The Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
March 20, 1988
Reprinted in The Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
March 20, 1988
On the night of her 41st birthday, three weeks into their summer apart, she decided she wanted to marry him.
As Oregon's early morning chill crossed the old kitchen, carrying the soft party sounds and a smell of sweet incense, she closed her eyes and tried to evoke the heat and light of her Miami home. It eluded her.
She walked to the doorway. These people of her past were all paired now: Allen had exchanged his overalls for a wife and baby and a pair of Reeboks; Judith (Judith!) had introduced the man she called her "life partner"; two younger women from the radio station sat shyly in the corner holding hands. "I want," she announced to the room, "to get married."
She accepted the amused disbelief that greeted her pronouncement; for five years, each of them had received long letters extolling the virtues of her tropical singlehood: the freedom to bang on a typewriter at 3 a.m., windows open to the breeze off Biscayne Bay; an evening of three French films at three different theaters (from the front row); delayed dinners of frozen yogurt and a bagel, sitting cross-legged dead center on the bed. Greeting dawn in silence, one-to-one.
But here, where warmth came from a hand clasp, light from a friendly smile, these other satisfactions were elusive. In her first week, before finding an opening in this big old house and its community of friends, she had often felt she might never be truly warm again.
Now she jogged up the path behind the old house on drizzly mornings, her feet in pine-needle silence. Energized for the day, she would grab her backpack from the hook by the front door and walk across the bridge. She stroke through downtown Portland, fueled by espresso and hot croissants; she sampled herb teas and organic cookies, and wandered through galleries with Indian names. From the outdoor crafts market she bought him a blue ceramic cup, and an embroidered Vietnamese pillow for the house they might share.
When the thin sun centered itself over the courthouse square, she sat with the office workers and young parents and bicycle racers, and tried to recall the weight of tropical daylight. Yet day by day, Miami retreated.
The suddenly the rhythm of the big house changed: Autumn had arrived. She took one full day to sleep, knowing that once behind the wheel she would be pulled to drive for hours past her sharpest skills.
And indeed, the Cascades and then the Rockies unreeled in easy rhythm, two hour rest stops renewing her reflexes. She had bypassed California, choosing an oblique line south, sure she could feel the breath of winter on her neck.
At New Orleans, much of the urgency gone, she called an old friend, who offered dinner and a sofa-bed. He refused to offer advice. "The world tells you what you need to know," he said. "Just look for it." He patted her hand. "Best advice I ever got was off an aspirin bottle: Keep Away From Children." She had forgotten how he could make her smile. "I rented a car once," he went on, "and a message appeared as if by magic in the side mirror. THINGS . . . ARE . . . CLOSER . . . THAN . . . THEY . . . APPEAR."
"But I can't decide what to do," she pressed. "In Portland I was so sure, but it seems the farther south I go the more I feel myself vacillating."
"Ah, Vacillation," he pronounced, flipping a crepe. "Vacillation is the lubricant of life." Laughing, she put her feet up, and was asleep before dinner was ready. She was on the road before he woke for breakfast.
The thick air embraces her as she climbs from the car; she has forgotten this sensation of air as substance. She unlocks the studio, an takes her notebook to the dock. Pen motionless in her hand, she watches until finally the sun seems to drop of its own weight into the bowl of the central city. Evening comes quickly, turning the crooked palms flat and black as kindergarten cutouts. Behind her a palm frond detaches itself with the rude sound of Velcro parting. The silence finally torn, she goes inside to call him.
Seeing him framed in her doorway, she feels as if doctors have just removed the bandages from her eyes and handed her a mirror. He smiles, and she feels herself soften and open, like a Japanese shell that is soaked to release tiny paper flowers from within its parted lips.
Afterward, they stand on the dock. The moon plays games across the surface of the bay, tossing down a sparkles of silvery jacks to be swept aside by little hands of water. She knows he must be leaving soon. But as she leans back into the embrace of the wet, warm air, closes her eyes and slowly fills her lungs, she can not imagine a greater contentment.
She does not think to mention marriage.
Laura Pelner McCarthy, PhD