Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
UNANCHORED
Monday, December 28th, 2009
The first time I remember noticing her was one day when leaving the nail salon and there was all that hubbub about the old Victorian for sale across from the post office. She looked non-descript enough, kind of like an investigator in an old trench coat and old hat.
People in the neighborhood had hoped a buyer would be found who would preserve the old house but instead plans were made to tear it down and put up another small strip-mall type office complex. Merrick Road was full of such, so it wasn’t the presence of more that was such a tragedy. I liked going there. I found my way there everyday. After, I went to the nail salon, the post office, and walked up and down the main drag. Always I rushed past the telephone pole full of flowers and photos.
“I see you staring,” the woman in the coat said.
“It’s such a nice building. It’d be a shame to tear it down. Just there, that office, used to be a shoe repair shop with the quirkiest old guy from down south running the place.”
“I know,” she said. “You could barely understand him, but thought he told the darndest stories…”
“How do you know? Are you from around here?”
“No, I’m on business,” she said.
She fished an odd device from her pocket, it looked like a crystal rod, and waved it about. I felt very uncomfortable and wanted to go.
“Places have memories tied to them,” she said. “And when they’re gone, well the memories, and more, are just un-anchored, shall we say.”
Suddenly I could see what would become of the house. The wrecking crew and bulldozers. I saw myself in that house; saw the faces of all the people bringing flowers to that telephone pole.
“It’s alright,” the lady said. She kept waving the rod. “Its how I save the memories. The house will be torn down soon and then you’ll be unanchored.”
“Unanchored?”
“You’ll wander aimlessly, then eventually forget who you are until you dissipate.”
“How long does that take?”
“Hard to say.”
“What if that’s what I want?”
She didn’t answer and I didn’t have choice. The rod was pulling me, taking me somewhere and I could not resist.
“Don’t worry. You’re going to like it with us,” she said.
But I didn’t believe her.
– End of Part One –
Biographies
Monday, December 14th, 2009
Note: Although this story stands alone, this is part of the Pandora series.
Pandora had not known then what we today take for granted: Our houses are watching us: from the center hole in the ceiling fan, to the constellations of faces and creatures inhabiting spackles in the painted ceiling, to the creatures frolicking among the knots in the wooden paneling. So it was that Pandora was taken completely off-guard by the house’s incisive observations.
Pandora returned from the gym after a half-hour on the stair-master, which somehow felt like her work at Widget Manufacturing, Inc. She stripped to her Underoos and struck muscle-man poses in front of her bedroom mirror. She pinched her gut and slapped her jiggly thighs. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fattest in the mall?”
“Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really want an answer?”
Being self-conscious of her body and her silly underwear, it wasn’t the best of times to hear a strange voice in her bedroom. “Who said that?”
“Rhetorical, then. My father always said I couldn’t keep my reflections to myself.”
“Mirror?”
“Yes?”
“What were you saying?”
“Simply that you have a body-image problem. Just accept yourself.”
Pandora stared into her reflection and nodded at it, slightly. She wrapped herself in a fluffy pink robe and stepped into the bathroom. She undressed in the shower, washed, and wrapped her body in a towel before standing in front of the bathroom mirror. “So,” she asked, “you think I have a body-image problem?”
The mirror snorted. “That’s one way to put it. All you do is primp and preen: Is my hair perfect? How’s this shade of lipstick? Vanity, vanity. I’ve never known anyone so damn self-absorbed.”
Shell-shocked, Pandora stared at her steamy reflection. Then she walked stiffly into the bedroom and laid herself across the bed, face planted in a pillow. After a good cry, she draped her towel across the bedroom mirror, dressed in her pajamas, and lay with the covers up to her chin. She tried to read, she tried to sleep, but her eyes kept leaking.
“Excuse me, Pandora. I couldn’t help noticing your distress.”
“Who said that?”
“Me. The ceiling fan. Look, I know I shouldn’t interfere, but those mirrors don’t see you for who you really are.”
“Thank you.” Pandora smiled up at her ceiling through bleary eyes. “It’s nice to know I have a fan.”
“Sure. Your problem is laziness: All you ever do is lie around.”