Good morning,
Plush green fools me into believing that I have been
transported to a mountain retreat. I face away from the street,
ignoring the occasional rumble of a passing vehicle, keeping the
gardenia plant on the table fully in view. The begonias, nearly
overgrowing their pots, frame the perimeter. Cold smooth wood under my
feet; chilly iron against my back; the occasional squawk of a blue jay;
the gently swaying branches of a flowering bush, past its bloom but
still lovely.
I only need to close my eyes, breathing long and slow, and I
am again in Arkansas surrounded by the gentle rise of the mountains. I
stand outside a makeshift market constructed from four by eights and
plywood, with piles of organic vegetables for sale, bring your own bag.
It's 1988. I am alone in the height of the season, for reasons I no
longer recall. Perhaps my first husband, who dragged me to Arkansas,
had taken a short contract in Little Rock. Perhaps he was on tour with
one of the theatre companies for which he freelanced. But there I found
myself, a city girl, in Newton County, Arkansas, with only a group of
faded hippies and organic gardeners for company.
I trace the outline of a potato and ask the stand's
proprietress what kind it is. She tells me that it is like a Yukon
Gold, buttery and sweet, good mashed. I put it down and select a few
tomatoes and a late-season bunch of lettuce. She tells me I can eat the
tomatoes like apples, and I nod. I give her a couple of dollars and
get back into my Nissan Sentra, following the road down to our small
house in town.
No one has come to my home-office while I have been away.
I'm not surprised. I haven't done much law work since leaving Kansas
City in July of 1987. My promised job with the AG's office fizzled with
the AG's indictment. Chester's position with the Arkansas Opera
vanished with a new General Manager who hired an entirely new staff. We
landed in Jasper in a rental house and he took up contract work. I got
a part-time gig as the county counselor only because there were four
governmental lawyer positions and, before me, only three lawyers. They
greeted me with subdued enthusiasm.
That day, I put my vegetables away and decided to drive to
Murray Valley. Past Parthenon, a town so small it barely exists, along
the paved road along the East Fork of the Buffalo River, Murray Valley
lies on one side of Mount Sherman, flanked by a mountain which has a
name, but now, twenty-five years later, I cannot remember it. I've lost
other names, including one of the two women to whose home I drove that
day.
But I have not forgotten them, nor the quiet drive to their
house, nor the calmness of the summer surrounding me. Only the
occasional bird call, brief twitters, break the stillness of the warm
morning air. The trees on either side of the highway rise with a quiet
confidence. They grew before my birth and would survive my death, they
whisper. My eyes sweep up the lean trunk of the tallest of them, which
does not need to speak but merely stands confidently on the ridge as I
drive past.
I almost miss the driveway. It happens, in the mountains.
In the city we want you to find our driveway, cut boldly through the
neat squares of lawn flanking the street. We place statues at either
side of the entrance and tile placards proclaiming the numbers of our
addresses. But in the country, a driveway serves as the last barrier
between the sanctity of home and the harshness of the outside world.
The letter carrier doesn't even traverse that last stretch, but stays a
respectful distance away, leaving your mail in a box at the driveway's
end.
This driveway, on this day, has barely parted the lush
growth of trees and undergrowth. I pull onto the gravel and park beside
a pile of stones. I do not lock the car; I toss my keys under the
seat.
One of the women whom I have come to visit stands on the
stone stoop. She has short black hair and wears a sleeveless white
blouse and knee-length pants. Her skin has deepened to its summer color
of something just shy of walnut. Her smile widens as I get out of the
vehicle and she calls, "We've just made tea, come on up". Without
waiting for me, she goes back into the house, and I follow.
Everything about the house says comfort. Rustic woods,
heaps of quilts, vibrant pieces of stained glass, cedar trunks and
punched tin on the ceiling. One large room, with a loft, and each
function of the room defined by the positioning of its furniture: the
inviting table, the poster bed, the wicker chairs, the wide windows.
Though it is June, the house feels cool. I sit down and pull a mug
towards me. They did not know that I would arrive, but there is always a
mug on the table, awaiting company.
The two women sit close together. The second, heavier,
more rounded, with long red hair twisted in a leather clip, crinkles her
eyes at me. She asks if city life had got me down, that I'd come
slumming in Murray Valley. We laugh. Jasper has under six hundred
residents and can scarcely be called a city but I know what she means. I
tell her that my husband is away. She leans forward, and places one of
her hands on mine. Hers is a bit gnarled, mostly from honest labor but
possibly from a bit of arthritis. She tells me that if I ever get
tired of my husband, I can come and live with them. I think she means
it.
We drink our tea and then walk a little on their land.
They sit above an unsullied sweep of mountainside, and we cannot even
see another house. I fill my lungs with long draws of freshness. I tie
the laces of my shoes a little more tightly and venture down a steep
slope with the leaner of them, the dark-haired one whose name has
slipped into time, holding my hand. She wants to show me something.
We dip our hands into a small stream of water and pull a
couple of flowers from a scrubby little bush. We look at a grotto that
someone has built, then climb back up to the house, quietly talking
about who that someone might have been, and whom the grotto might have
been intended to honor, with its stacks of carefully balanced stones.
When we get back to the house, my companion's partner has made lunch.
We eat in the kitchen, at the table for four, with light streaming into
the house through the gauze of the embroidered curtains which flutter
when the breeze rises and lie still when it falls.
After we have eaten, I decide it is time to go home. They
stand close on the stoop as I walk down to my car. In that year, 1988,
these two women had been together for more than a decade. Their stance
seems natural, comfortable, almost careless. They wave as I carefully
back around a broken kennel that someone has left near a tree. My last
sight of them, as I pulled out onto the country road, was of two radiant
smiles, two bodies seemingly melded into one, a lean arm slung around
muslin-clad shoulders and the summer sun glinting on their shining hair.
My coffee has grown cold and the newspaper has been read.
As far as I can tell, our nation took one step backwards and two steps
forward this week. Though others might disagree, I like to think
progress towards full equality for everyone is always a good thing. As I
take another sip of wretched, dank coffee, I strain to remember that
other woman's name. One was Carole, I know, but I just cannot recall
the other. I wonder if they are still together, in this golden summer,
so many years later, or if, like me, they have moved past that
marriage and live with one another in their Murray Valley cabin only in
my memory.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
No comments:
Post a Comment