Our shadows stretch and come together against the pines and I am very tired. I finally see it. Paul's mother's house - a Greenwich CT beauty of about seventeen bedrooms and eleven gorgeous bathrooms.
The party bellows from upstairs where beautiful little lights escape behind curtains and fly out to their small deaths, smashed on the cobblestone, on the fancy front entrance.
The party bellows from upstairs where beautiful little lights escape behind curtains and fly out to their small deaths, smashed on the cobblestone, on the fancy front entrance.
I am wearing a very small rose shimmery dress that seems to itch me everywhere. Paul is wearing a tweed suit with bow tie. We look like we have been unwrapped from crisp paper and brought out from behind the vitrine.
"Fancy fancy how typical of you. I only have anxiety about my mother not liking our present," he's holding a 19th century mounted globe like some piece of astronomical furniture. A seat for an earthly god.
"Paul, I feel a bit overdressed like where are we going my love?"
"Nah, you haven't met my mother's crowd" I'm not sure what he means by this as I've not met his family yet.
"Well the present is beautiful really. A Louis Quinze for the extraterrestrial with green skin and smouldering shoulders"
"You just described my mother"
I try to suppress a chuckle but I just end up laughing so hard that I need to stop and kneel and resist the feeling of crawling on all fours and wait it out as I inspect the gravel underneath my sparkly shoes, tiny jagged pebbles and pieces of glistening ice mixed with it all.
"Nah, you haven't met my mother's crowd" I'm not sure what he means by this as I've not met his family yet.
"Well the present is beautiful really. A Louis Quinze for the extraterrestrial with green skin and smouldering shoulders"
"You just described my mother"
I try to suppress a chuckle but I just end up laughing so hard that I need to stop and kneel and resist the feeling of crawling on all fours and wait it out as I inspect the gravel underneath my sparkly shoes, tiny jagged pebbles and pieces of glistening ice mixed with it all.
"Please Joce, try and compose yourself. We're going to be late"
We are not late.
As I walk in, a quite petite little blonde takes me by the elbow and guides me gently, sugary perfume perfume perfume, to the Kitchen Fiasco. She says in a small Rudolph the Reindeer voice: "Well look at this right mess!"
Czechoslovakian crystal in shatters everywhere and jewelry pouring out of sauce pans making wretched noise amidst bubbles bubbles bubbles bubles of detergent towering above so many proper little ladies.
The music pours out like champagne and the whole mansion creaks and sighs from its parquet lungs all the way to its pampered brick façade. Cheap trick I know.
Czechoslovakian crystal in shatters everywhere and jewelry pouring out of sauce pans making wretched noise amidst bubbles bubbles bubbles bubles of detergent towering above so many proper little ladies.
The music pours out like champagne and the whole mansion creaks and sighs from its parquet lungs all the way to its pampered brick façade. Cheap trick I know.
"Jocelyn, Jocelyn wake up"
Paul walks up beside me with a mouth full of eggnog and Christmas cake with bits and pieces all around the little beard he has grown for the holiday season.
I wake up in a different time, in a different place than I remember before falling asleep mid-sentence. I see Paul in front of me, clear as day. Waving his fork frothy with cake bits.
**The phone rings the second time and I see it shaking in the hallway with melodic anxiety. Ring ring rrinngg.
"Yes?" I manage to put on one leg worth of stockings. The dress will have to be black with some sort of twist in my hair and maybe a brooch. No sequins, nothing light, nothing reminiscent of the sun, all dusty muted hues of black to remember a horrid time videotaped in obscurity.
"Joce, what are you wearing tomorrow?"
My heart stops. It's him. Half the accent gone. Nothing left, nothing intact.
"Some odd skirt"
"No sequins?"
"Nothing light"
"Nothing reminiscent of the sun"
A long time ago we strolled through the forest in the middle of my first novel. I didn't believe in myself and I could no longer bear staring at the half-eaten digestive biscuits and half-cream coffees stood there since half past eight. Not hot, nor warm. Not even pleasantly chill. Just boring room-temperature. He'd have read through piles and piles of disordered manuscripts. Red pen the whole while.
"Aren't you bored of it already?"
"It's always a different heartbreak"
"Proust was obsessed with finding similarities you know?"
"Yes, but not across personal timelines. Across perhaps various art forms and observers' realities"
"I can't remember what London feels like. Describe the air"
"You'll have to come visit"
"Well keep it smoggy for me. True T.S. Eliot style, rejecting the New for the Old Country"
"What a dweeb"
"Don't knock Eliot"
"I need some sleep, P"
"I know. Stay bright. All well here. The days go by. What joy, what luminous reverie"
"Good night"
We hang up again. The days bleed into one blurry rainy evening by the window.
I know only that the manuscript is ready and packaged neatly, with a reading tomorrow. What shall I wear? Do I leave my hair down? I fall asleep with a knot in my stomach.
Paul walks up beside me with a mouth full of eggnog and Christmas cake with bits and pieces all around the little beard he has grown for the holiday season.
I wake up in a different time, in a different place than I remember before falling asleep mid-sentence. I see Paul in front of me, clear as day. Waving his fork frothy with cake bits.
**The phone rings the second time and I see it shaking in the hallway with melodic anxiety. Ring ring rrinngg.
"Yes?" I manage to put on one leg worth of stockings. The dress will have to be black with some sort of twist in my hair and maybe a brooch. No sequins, nothing light, nothing reminiscent of the sun, all dusty muted hues of black to remember a horrid time videotaped in obscurity.
"Joce, what are you wearing tomorrow?"
My heart stops. It's him. Half the accent gone. Nothing left, nothing intact.
"Some odd skirt"
"No sequins?"
"Nothing light"
"Nothing reminiscent of the sun"
A long time ago we strolled through the forest in the middle of my first novel. I didn't believe in myself and I could no longer bear staring at the half-eaten digestive biscuits and half-cream coffees stood there since half past eight. Not hot, nor warm. Not even pleasantly chill. Just boring room-temperature. He'd have read through piles and piles of disordered manuscripts. Red pen the whole while.
"Aren't you bored of it already?"
"It's always a different heartbreak"
"Proust was obsessed with finding similarities you know?"
"Yes, but not across personal timelines. Across perhaps various art forms and observers' realities"
"I can't remember what London feels like. Describe the air"
"You'll have to come visit"
"Well keep it smoggy for me. True T.S. Eliot style, rejecting the New for the Old Country"
"What a dweeb"
"Don't knock Eliot"
"I need some sleep, P"
"I know. Stay bright. All well here. The days go by. What joy, what luminous reverie"
"Good night"
We hang up again. The days bleed into one blurry rainy evening by the window.
I know only that the manuscript is ready and packaged neatly, with a reading tomorrow. What shall I wear? Do I leave my hair down? I fall asleep with a knot in my stomach.
No comments:
Post a Comment