The first time

that Jocey moved out to Maine was followed by two heavy, contemplative winters in emotion. The big sweeping days filled with light and the facetious sunsets that seemed warm from afar. They were nothing but illusions. Gorgeous mirages coaxing her forward to the water's edge, to the sun's edge.

She felt an eyelash drop in her lap.
Too morose.

She felt the movement of a swan's neck.

She was untouched. An island.

Paul's edits in red all over her manuscript. 

The first time she saw him in his element, she remembers it clearly. 
She had been invited to his newspaper right after they met in New York that warm evening. She saw him coming down the corridor with his white shirt looking dishevelled. Rolled up sleeves to his elbows like he was really going to get to work.

"Why are we trying to incorporate this Ada and Adam story?" He hadn't read it fully by then but she had told him the background of it all at the party.

She liked his attitude and his demeanour. Paul had character. He was upfront because he cared and she could already feel that.
"Well, I'm trying to track down the history of a family but in symbol"

"So you don't know if this is how it happened??"

"I don't think we ever know how things happen."

Perhaps a newspaper editor was the wrong choice of audience. 

A clipping adorning her mirror that evening when she gets back home, in calligraphy:

Paul has a curiosity that moves our conversation forward. I tell him a little about myself and he doesn’t blink. He just says, let’s get a drink after work this week.

I meet him at a bright hole in the wall on Oxford Street and I immediately notice how bright his eyes are. None of this feels romantic at all.

-

The first time I asked mama about Grandad’s obsession with wild horses, she only kept smoking her Marlboro lights in between sips of lemonade. She didn’t even want to get in it, into the heart of the mess, the heart of it all. Daddy kept on banging away at the dining room table and she kept on smoking those damn cigs. I knew then that our family was doomed.

-

Look Joce, I feel like I’m going to be reading Faulkner and I don’t like Faulkner. I’m more a Huxley gentleman.

I laugh. Paul is accompanied by a blonde wearing tweed and bright orange lipstick or something. I don’t understand any of it. I don’t even know why she’s here. Her hair is strawberry blonde and she’s so beautiful. The blonde immediately chuckles as well. She is programmed to behave accordingly in society.

Paul gives us both a look of indifference as he drifts in and out of the conversation he seems to be carrying effortlessly albeit half-asleep. I bore him. She bores him. This is all turning out to be a bit of a disaster. I smoke one more and start packing up. I make the motion for the bill and Paul laughs, saying he’s going to be staying longer with the B.Londe anyway and how about him and I catch up alone ..next week or something. He says this as he pretends to look upon a busy week’s calendar in his mind’s eye.

I say I’m not sure and I pack up my heaps of papers and huge Shakespeare bible. Why did I bring Shakes? I’m so disappointed. They say we make the men we want to be with but I just feel defeated.

*
I stay up that night almost the entire night. I start tossing and turning and I keep thinking of me and him. I keep thinking of Orpheus and his lack of faith, his lack of trust. Daddy took me to San Francisco one time. Just him and I taking on the city, the sea, the sights. He would tell me long stories on the streetcars back to the hotel from the beach. Ancient Greek myths, biblical stories, stories about the Egyptians. Orpheus stayed with me. Orpheus tried to save his wife from the Underworld and couldn’t do it. It eventually drove him mad.

It occurred to me that Adam and Eve was not the first story about romantic love. It wasn’t; it was a story about companionship.

The first story told about romantic love was Orpheus and Eurydice. When we feel ghosts haunting at our footsteps, we know we’ve been visited by Eurydice. The elusive, gorgeous promise of what a full life would have looked like if only we kept our resolve.

I feel myself falling asleep when the birds start chirping. My last few thoughts are images of fragmented sunsets, a very long corridor stretching out into a fiery haze, and a young woman not knowing which way to go. The last breath of air crackles underneath my voice, choked, algae blossoming from ocean spray and birds filling the sky.

*
“So, this is our last townhouse available at the consideration preferred”, a very cheery real estate agent smiles maniacally through heaps of lipstick and clipboard movements. Mama is smoking and Daddy is staring incredulously.

It’s a house for crying out loud. Who cares that the carpets are matted and mustard coloured and that the sofas are pre War. Pre..Great War, I laugh about later with Daddy. He doesn’t find it funny.

We’ve been on the road for half this calendar year. When I last touched New Mexico land, it was summer. Now, there are Christmas wreathes everywhere. We have a family meeting and decide to stay in New York City. Bunch of hicks in the city. Mama always hates that. “Old money” she keeps saying over and over as if any of that matters now. As if it matters that we were an ancient clan, so powerful and mystical. So all-knowing and fierce, crossing oceans and slitting throats.

I begin unpacking in my favourite room on the upper floor. Mama and Daddy have taken the downstairs master bedroom beside the dining room. They give me this room because they know I’m a romantic. I love the old Victorian fireplace, and the bookcase left behind by the petty gentry who lived here before us. I set up my mattress and put away my clothes in the bookcase. There are barely any books left. One is a fresh Faulkner edition.

*
I’m wearing a very tight black dress. I feel like Paul is burning a hole in my forehead. He hasn’t said anything in about 5 minutes. He’s just been drinking his rum quietly and listening to the jazz. I don’t know if I should stay or go. I forgot what time I got here. Have I been here for several hours just staring at him stare at me? Has he forgotten how to speak?

That evening we walk along the pier and he reaches out to hold my hand. I feel normal for the first time in a long time. I think of rosebushes sparkling in the sun. I think of counting telephone towers on a long car journey. 
*

The rosebush sparkles in the sun. Adam sees the glorious garden stretch out in stately forest green. Impeccable. Dazzling. Ada, reclining on an Indian garden chair, reading Marlowe. 

Hero and Leander? he asks.

What else, really? She smiles in frames.

They are frozen; she never moves beyond these few quadrants - the mansion, the estate, the gardens, the mazes, various theatre houses, various carriages. She remains the same.