‘His obscure wife returns.’
ABOVE:
Is printed the last traceable thought Evelyn Hartwell will ever have. She muzzles her face into the dirt. ‘His obscure wife returns.’ That’s it. And something about really needing to warn others about the dangers of drinking two boxes of un-refrigerated Franzia Blush while tearfully warbling along to the Carpenters. Every fucking sha la la la and every whoa - whoa - whoa still shines, asshole. And she feels a budding remorse, ‘Yes, pissing on his favorite shirt during my sodden rendition of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft was probably an overreaction, but I have most certainly declared World Contact Day in a brave new light.’ All the oldies but goodies...
And then crawling up into her consciousness. STOP. This, she reflects, this act now, is a coiled thing, this ungating she knows she will perform, but which she has not planned. Th—
She hopes these words will save her yet. This time as she moves her lips, she eats dirt; it ain’t half the worse thing she’ll taste.
BELOW:
The grass swings its over fertilized hips towards the thrust of the slight breeze. It’s a green, deep, molasses melting summer evening. The flowers lush and overgrown are whorishly bright from the Technicolor cancer that skulks beneath the pungent mulch. And she knows some of her neighbors are out grilling; if only they could see her now. But they won’t. Not because of any supernatural protectorate. She's just a buzz kill, an inexplicable drunken bitch. The specter of Evelyn Hartwell face down in her backyard digging at the dirt of her flower bed with her French Manicure, if acknowledged, would maggot their burgers, crap in their coladas, and spread her toxic malaise on their fuckin’ silvery corn cobs.
It was this same tacit conspiracy of unseeing on which the Pularski family had embarked. Understandably, Susan Pularski, out on her freshly stained and water treated deck with Rob and the girls didn’t want to be forced to confess to her little Ginny that sometimes life is jackhammer up your ass. Who would want to look into Ginny’s wide and whimsical eyes and explain that some people learn to jive with the pound and pull and others fall the fuck off. And that clearly Mrs. Hartwell had fallen the fuck off and right hard.
There were no excuses to be had for Evelyn Hartwell’s behavior: her yard was lovely, her husband adorable, her ass tight, and her career decent. Mrs. Hartwell had simply been fisted by fortune and in that act something had shifted inside Evelyn Hartwell.
As of late, Evelyn often finds herself in front of her bathroom mirror, her lips recounting the story that will finally foist her face down into the sticky hum of insects. Only once during the telling of it does she come into Evelyn and thrust her tongue about in her mouth and wonder if she has, in fact, lived what this transplanted language recounts. She tries to stop the tale with her own native words: Think small. Hand held curler or bobby pin. Mud. Syrup, maple. Who stole the cookies? Think: field, horizon, isthmus. Giraffe. Riding a silvered cable car away from someone you could have loved. Think Evelyn, Evelyn. Evelyn, Eve- And then as quickly as she had found safety in this word Evelyn, she loses the very qua of this. Her lips are slipping past sentences the way children pray and old people lose teeth.
I can not see in. Behind the shadows the endless cornucopia of a traveler’s fare: cheetos, nachos, and mini taco rolls desiccated under hot lamp light. Twinkies, cupcakes, fruit pies and soda pop and coffee.
The conglomerate knows not my secret. I swing the door open. I am forming myself anesthetic, light, mystic. I bear the code. The attendant pivots on point, a gazelle in the country ballet, the bells affixed to the door still jangle across the aisles of convenient items.
I pause to wonder whether I still possess language.
“Lost?”
I answer.
I am surprised that I can move my tongue around in the dark hole where my secret teeth sleep.
“Where are you from?”
I answer.
“I left all my crap there, long time past.”
I answer.
He tells me where to find the water. He tells me I will have to go on foot. He tells me I look tired. He tells me his name.
I will find the child’s relic. My story will be altered. My teeth are as sharp as diamonds and as white as pearls. I will pass the electric company. Having a landmark is as difficult as having great promise early in life. Even here, where very few people live, there is glass along the roadside. The transformers are megaliths in the far off world that I am always approaching, never to touch. They force me to dwell on the ancient photographs depicting how I learned to kiss.
I approach. I am a lover stroking her stomach heading to her eyes, drawing my tongue along her backbone yet never getting to the mark.
I pull off of the road. I exit the vehicle. I place my body in the red earth. The water is just past the transformers.
And I in the middle of the path. I pull my sweater tighter around my rib cage.
I must find the water.
Susan Pularski screams; her glass plummets.
Ginny has made her way down to the Hartwell’s yard and is standing slightly to the right of Evelyn Hartwell whose face is pressed into her most prized flower bed and whose hands are digging huge trenches in the Hartwell’s new sod (They had been having trouble getting the area to really take off like the rest of the yard.) She chucks the dirt behind her.
Susan Pularski’s glass impacts the pavers below the deck; it shatters. Evelyn Hartwell and Ginny both jerk around towards her. Evelyn Hartwell's face is disturbed to say the least, but her eyes – the organs themselves – are so bloodshot they bloom like Valentine roses. Her cheeks are caked with mulch and blood. Her teeth stained black.
Susan Pularski, quite beside herself screams, “Ginny, get the FUCK up here!”
Ginny just shakes her head no.
Evelyn Hartwell rolls onto her back and goes limp; she drops her head to the right and presses her ear to the ground.
“Rob. ROB. Call 911.” Rob stares at Susan. “NOW.”
“Mommy, I think she’s talking.” Ginny crouches down too.
We are at the honey covered apex, the place where the ocean leaks out of the corner of the sky. I clamp your head in my hands and I put your mouth under the spicket.
Evelyn's lips stretch into an expansive O. Ginny leans down closer to pick the mulch out of Mrs. Hartwell’s mouth.
Golden roses grow from your hair. I have placed your jaw under the flow. Your head brims. The water spills out of your ears. The ocean dances out from your lips, like peasants in films, brightly and neatly dressed. There are fish in your eyes.
The automated sprinkler clicks on.
I do all this for you because your face will be the basis of beauty in the new order.
Evelyn’s gaze recoils to see little Ginny peering down at her and Susan springing across the yard like a rabid terrier. The child is completely undisturbed by the tick of the sprinklers.
“Ginny, do you hear sirens?”
“No. Just the girl.”
Evelyn’s mind is hitting on an almost solid point, “What does she say Ginny?”
“Something about night, about how the night here was.”
Susan Pularski makes her entrance grabs Ginny's wrist and pulls her back to safety. The paramedics follow fast on her heels.
Ginny is not safe. She can hear Mrs. Hartwell quite clearly as they strap her onto the stretcher.
She says:
Night here
was smoother
fell
like a hammer
swift swung
struck once
grown brave
Night
here was
Over.
Stop.
St—
