French party.

Sun fractured. Teeth, sharp.

Mama says her history is similar to mine. That we’re sisters. That my mother is capable of being my sister. I believe it.

Mama used to have gorgeous blonde hair and fierce green green eyes.

Before daddy, mama was not alone. She fell in love one sleepy November with a neighbor. They hadn’t grown up together but they were like family.

They were both from New Mexico but met at school on the West Coast. She’d go for cigarettes and orange juice in the morning with her friends and he’d be there early, alone, aloof.

He wasn’t strange, but he looked like a stranger. Tall and inviting, his hands present.

Mama would toss her hair and her laughing eyes would flirt. Not with the story-teller, but with the story. She’d wink her way into the plot, tongue the outskirts of narrative, and enjoy a tall glass of creamy twists. Sounds like a pastry, she’d burst out. Creamy twists.

Yes mama, pastries.

Now, mama always knew she was beautiful. Always knew she was special and stunning. Dark like Madalena inside. Twisted and mangled and bright sharp sharp sharp (flash flash) outside.

She met him one evening during a French language social. They all showed up with dictionaries and bundles of Rousseau tied up with Voltaires. Each impressing the other. A room full of sweaty palms, rolled r’s and warm bread.

He just showed up. Dressed like petty gentry, warm, silent, all-knowing.

She was glowing in a gold and green dress, with her hair aflame and down. Past her shoulders, nestling in between the nooks and crannies of bone, flesh (flash flash) and gold jewelry.

The social was held in an alumni’s summer residence. Parisian and Provencal memorabilia arranged with naiveté around the living room and near the fireplace.

Odd angles for knick-knacks and chipped, unpaired tea cups in a vulgar orgy beside recamiers.

She didn’t understand the arrangement and took to it with the childish sweetness of a girl. She loved the pastoral allusions painted on the upturned saucers and enjoyed the misaligned gold-leaf on the centerpieces.

He didn’t bother. But he saw her. He saw her the way a doctor sees a terminally ill patient suffering from a fever that adds to the lovely temporality imposed by the disease.

He wanted to care, to know, to cure, to understand and appreciate a little while.

Mama wasn’t sick; she was just being mama.

So, while she was observing gold-leaf on a mischievous little tea cup from the third reich he spoke to her. No, he spoke within her.

“Nettoyer?”

Silence. Then, explosion. A thousand pieces of broken laughter rose and then carefully arranged a beautiful mosaic around them. Because she understood.

“I just love love these tiny people on these tiny tea cups you know?”

“Why?”
“Because they don’t know they exist and they’re so lovely”

“Like mannequins”

“Like us”

“We know we exist”
“You’re generous”
“You’re a mystic”
“You insult me”
“I’m trying to get to know you”
“Let’s not”

So, instead they did something else. They made a pact. They pretended they were engaged and that they were contemplating their honeymoon and that they had in fact accepted the [quite incredibly generous] invitation to attend such an illustrious evening frequented by such bright minds as Molly Fletcher (the girl holding honours in French Lit) or Professor Rinoire writing a comparative paper on the distilled life of Matisse. Or such influential minds as Colonel Warsh(currently rewriting the impulses of war), etc etc.

And indeed it worked out well for them. Accompanied by visceral understanding and a hungry lusting, they waltzed from room to room pretending to have known each other for years, and expectant, nay indeed, welcoming more.

People believed them. They nodded and smiled, and were merry. They embedded literature in their repertoire, and they were dipped in a truth at once blinding and liberating. That is to say, that knowledge of another can transpire in a second of mutual partnership where the abrupt juxtaposition with those against whom no such understanding is possible makes it all the more enticing. Like a storybook chapter, things unfolded the way they do. The same mannerisms and mechanisms of behavior employed that have been animating children’s minds by torchlight when reading fairy tales past bedtimes felt as good as it felt naughty.

The night was lovely and aging. He had kissed her upturned palm. The inside of her core, tiny piece of mama. Uncomplicated, linear, intact.

She thought him clever and unlike most of the characters in her life.

They tried for a year or so to make it work. She was hungry for more because she was being mama. Because she was about to participate in society.

Of course, as is always the case, he had other ideas. He wanted to tear himself from the known world and invite the unknown and begin a new project on the fringes. He wanted to pioneer, to matter, to make matters better. He did.