La Vague Journal - Danielle Dutton

In August of X, when the days were only slightly less stifling, the afternoon light beginning its reach into long-neglected corners, rounding edges, dappling turf or mountains, I went to buy a pair of stockings I’d seen in a window downtown, my hands at my sides, of gray vines on yellow, in the hope of dispelling the feeling of emptiness that had infected me all season. My life, everything, not far from the ocean, its fish.

I wore a short checked woolen skirt, despite the heat, and cream-colored stockings with creamy stiletto glassine boots that pinched up to my ankles, a cream-colored blouse encircling my neck (despite the heat), and a chunky plastic necklace dangling over my chest, banging my breasts as I walked. I’d found it in the sand:

a dirt road, a honey-smelling cactus, then sudden summer rain, bees, gulls, and down a pitched wooden staircase to slimy rocks in pools, a purple anemone, a starfish—the ocean, its mist—a towel half-buried, an abandoned wicker chair. I sat on the chair with a stranger’s umbrella protecting my head. The inevitable, the obvious, the expected: a bright plastic necklace in the sand, now banging my breasts as I walk down the sidewalk. Yet today is, I think, unruffled.

So I make my way, smooth sailing, rapid solo, until SHE appears at a quarter to ten, in front of the bank, at the curb in her trekker, its pearled paint in the sun. WAIT, she cries, slowing and waving a thin arm through the window. Wait, wait. I owe her money, my busted life. 42, she thinks. 24, I suggest. She steps out and steps back in. She needs a spot, and talks at me through her open side-window, shifting gears, releasing the break, her head to the side: 42, she says, 24, I remind her, and step alongside as she rolls.

This bank’s the perfect backdrop to what she’s talking about, I think, its boarded-up entrance streaked with white from gulls who nest on the ledge above, and me like a high-stepping sand martin, my high-heeled boots, stepping alongside and making little progress. Then comes a sound like BUSTED GLASS, right from the front of her trekker. A taillight, maybe, some dented chrome. She actually shrieks and claps shut her eyes. It isn’t so bad, I say, but she won’t look, so I watch alone as another door opens and a man rises up and onto the sidewalk, unfolding and unfolding, a ruler of a man, nearly seven feet tall, at least seven, leaning over me now on the sidewalk. Hello, he says—he naturally addresses the one of us with eyes. Hello, he says. And the same to you, I say. Hello, he says again, smiling. Hey, she says at last, HEY. He turns to her. She points at the wreckage. Hello, he says, as if to a crying baby, shush, shush, and turns back full of tact and savoir vivre and all the rest. Hey, she says, HELLOOO? But he only gestures to a nearby café. Good morning? he says. It’s a cubbyhole of a place but I can see a silver teapot. No, I shake my head. No. No. Because a seven-foot man was not what I came out for. I toss 24 in her portal, back on my way to stockings. Hello? he calls after me. Hello? she says. But I only wave over my shoulder like a clam, snap, snap, and carry on walking behind my own distended shadow, poor little devil, sweeping the dirty sidewalk with her hair.

Between decrepit towering buildings I discern white sails of ships, vague memories of girlhood, abandoned caves, pirates. It won’t always be like this, I think. Soon the passersby become less frequent. The road empties to my right, a silent rippling current of empty windows to my left. But I float on down the sidewalk for a while, thinking like a phantom, thinking, glancing, balancing—then suddenly there I am. But the store is a hole, rubble. Delicate shreds of lingerie waft in the blown-out void: gossamer minnows, pink lace, fish nets, frosted slips. Well, I reel, right there on the sidewalk, unspooling and reeling, for minutes at least, until a young man in a hat comes up and asks if he can help. No, I say. I recoil. I’m terribly upset. I just need a rest, I say. He has the largest hat I’ve seen in the city, a hat like a river barge. I watch him walk away. I watch his hat and look away. I’m sad. Sad little shop, one of the prettiest, maybe the last. But just as well. Just as well, I say aloud and walk. For what’s a girl to do? There are at least seven others whom I owe, some as harmless as she, her 42 or 24, her generous lapse, but the others who might dream of a bang on the nose, even, and me dressed up like a doll, in satin skirts, smirking with a trickle of blood on the divan.

Back in my room, I’ll tell you a secret: I have a habit of pulling my fingers through my hair, fishing for strands, tugging, until a loose nest is resting in my palm. Then I rub and rub. I force the strands into a tightly misshapen sinister ball, only to discard it on the floor, disgusted, and watch as it twitches itself open like some startled unfathomable bug. Of course I never do this out at parties, never at work, my hair swept into a towering mass, my paper petticoats rustling. Only alone in the red-shaded gloom of my apartment, the radio on the sill, but it means there are patches, spots, which my long hair only mostly hides. But a giant hat, his hat had got me thinking—there on the sidewalk in August—his hat like a river barge would surely warm my cockles, my tiny barnacled heart, and hide those ugly patches. An enormous hat, I think.

I think, chipping away at my machine, my machine thrumming softly in the gloom. A thick red carpet sits at the center of the floor, which I stare at at that time of day when everything stands still, seeing red flowers blooming in its weft, the yellow sun in one fine slice along the wall, the next-door neighbor’s babies finally asleep in their cribs. In the thrum, thrum, thrum the flowers grow fine and large, changing, distracting, whispering up my neck—and then a KNOCK comes on the door—the one damn moment you thought you had to yourself, recollecting a different pattern, of the snow-white crests of waves, and the little dogs, bad-tempered, who nipped at your heels as you ran across the deck—but no use making a fuss, the pattern lost—it is only the rather good landlord bent over in the hall. Never mind, he says, when I begin to cry, look here, he says, please don’t. All of it going under. I saw the news, he says, every inch of the earth a grave, and inches his way down the hall.

Still I retreat to my bed to put my head under a pillow, my hair pooling, slick and black. Under the mattress is a box. Inside are reproductions: postcard-sized, slick with pigment. On the lid is this: The Light in Early Industrial Revolution Painting. The actual paintings were large and infamous and my father, the pirate, once traveled across an ocean to see them up close, in a museum, standing for hours, copying what he saw: morning rays, streaks of shining gold, red-toned hills, hues of dawn, patterns and atmospheric distance, the beginning of it all: steal, iron, waste, accents, brambles, radiance, fog, differentiated moonlight and stars. The box was a gift for my birthday, ten. Small is beautiful, he’d said, and I was then. He tied a knot and showed me how. Stroking his beard, the lessons, he said. But I can’t remember now. I sit on the bed with nothing, no hat, no stockings, no money, no boat. I need a job, I think, and then I get a call.

I see churches, fisheries, windmills, sky-scraping swaths of two or three miles, financial towers, shipyards. I wear a dress in the darkest imaginable blue, so dark it’s black, the blackish-blue of midnight at the center of the sea, a see-through knee-length jacket, and down at my feet my silver-bangled slippers slipping along the sidewalks, slipping, chiming, the sun at its height, a great blue parasol hiding my eyes from the glare. I am heading for a building halfway up the street, an apartment on the second floor, a job, making my way past a deserted stucco cottage, when around the corner a cluster of men comes into sight, a dangerous cluster, and moving. There is nowhere to hide in the brightness of the day. I think of the stories, more frequent, of orphans forced to jump from bridges, a woman dragged alive into the dunes. I imagine a villain grabbing the back of my head, his filthy knuckles scraping my skull. Here it comes, I think. Here is my violation, waiting, every inch of the world a grave. I am frozen on the sidewalk, but then I hear a noise, a door unlatching in the cottage, not at all deserted, its white stucco and thatched roof, it opens out, the door, and standing before me on the uncarpeted floor is the seven-foot man from that prior day’s collision, his pleasing crooked teeth, his foreign accent. Hello, he says. Hurry. He folds his body inside.

He shuffles the kitchen making floral tea in loose loafers, his pants too short, wide cuffs on his sleeves. Well, I want to go to bed with him, I can see that right away. His petals unfold in my porcelain cup as he hums some song I’ve never heard. He seems not surprised to have found me, and glad, his dark eyes obscured by glasses. I stare. I abhor surgery, he says, explaining, I think, the glasses. Have some meat, he says, and pulls out two blue plates. I eat a few mouthfuls. He watches me chew. How do you do, he asks. I swallow. Oh, well, I say, and shrug, then look around the room. A thin yellow dog is motionless on a carpet. Trees lean in in a friendly way right through the kitchen window, white mulberry trees, in fact, which I haven’t seen for years. What’s that, I ask, and point. He is writing a book, he says. How quaint and queer, I tell him. He has them all over the room, too, on shelves, in stacks. He tries handing one to me but it only makes my fingers feel ancient and dry.