Green Tea (Part 7, a.k.a. The End)

Shelli smiles at me out from under her hat. Not for the first time, her eyes remind me of hard blue marbles pressed into the chalk oval of her face. I set the tray down on top of the desk, needing to be free of the weight of it before it hits the floor.

“No problem,” I say, trying to mean it. “I have some things to catch up on, anyway.”

“See?” Shelli says, tapping your arm, flexing her red talons into the heavy wool of your coat.

She’ll need to change the color of her nail polish if the two of you continue to see each other. If she lasts longer than the ambassador’s daughter, or the dean’s wife, or the grad student with the white Jeep. Of course, the grad student was allergic to Leo and that was a problem. I remember running out of the office to buy Benadryl on more than one occasion when she was sneezing and puffy and miserable.

The two of you move toward the door. You open it with one hand and usher Shelli out ahead of you. I wonder if you will be in tomorrow, or if I should start cancelling your appointments in the morning. You have a meeting with the History Chair at 10 a.m.—he’s interested in pursuing a grant based on your findings in York.

At the last instant, you turn your great lion’s head back to glance at me. “Best cancel everything for tomorrow, Een,” you say.  “Shelli says it’s getting nasty out there.”

Een—that’s worse than ‘Miss Harris,’ if possible. Sounds like a horse or a dog or a faithful old retainer, patted on the head or the muzzle for a job well done. Shelli says something, her voice carrying in from the landing, her tone unmistakable.

“Yes, coming, darling,” you soothe, smiling out into the darkness where she waits. Turning back to me you add, “If it’s not too bad in the morning, you might just come in and get those notes organized for the presentation at Carlyle’s.”

I nod, dismissed, and you are gone. The door settles back into its frame with a wheeze and a sigh, tired of being held open on its elderly hinges. I am drawn to the window, lifting one slat in the blind with one cautious finger, determined to see what I have no desire to see. Scarlet and cinnamon entwined, oblivious to the swirl of snow that dances around them and flashes diamond-bright in the glow of the lamps that line the street.

Nothing left for me but the Morris chair and my solitary tea. Three cups reflect the shimmering firelight, mocking me. I reach for my own, accidentally knocking over the one that I set out for Shelli. It falls, its amber-green contents splashing out in a wet fan to darken the priceless Khibiri rug under the desk. The cup lies unbroken in the midst of the stain, its wide mouth turned to me in a grin.

I look at the cup. The cup looks at me. I think of you, Gil, and Shelli, somewhere together, drinking a hot, fresh cup that some stranger brought to you in a new pot with no history.

Three strokes, with my whole heart and weight behind them, and the fireplace poker makes its own sort of history with Shelli’s cup. You’ll be picking china shards out of your precious Khibiri for years to come, Gil.

Leo appears atop your desk, sure paws unsure atop the sliding stack of papers and charts and notes. After settling his haunches on a diagram of some tomb, he raises one front paw, the white-toed one, and licks it round and round to his satisfaction before raising it to polish his mysterious ‘M.’ It looks more like a salute than his usual self-absorbed bath.

Green Tea (Penultimate or “Part 6”)

“Be sure to set a cup for yourself, Enid,” you call from the office. 

At least you’ve dropped the Miss Harris business, but I wonder if it’s made any difference. I do not want to drink tea with you and Shelli. I want to drink tea with you and Leo, savoring the sight of your hands wrapped around a delicate cup that once belonged to an emperor. I want to watch you stir your scant half teaspoon of sugar into your cup with the curious motion you use—around and slow, back and around again. I want to see you balance your saucer—Tao Ling dynasty, ninth century—on one knee, Leo on the other.

Lingering in the kitchen, wiping off the tray, finding an extra mug, smoothing the napkins. Not knowing how Shelli takes her tea, I add a sugar bowl to the set. Leo ‘plays his cello,’ which is a whimsical-but-accurate description of the position he’s assumed atop the counter, with one striped hind leg hoisted over his head. He stops grooming for a moment to regard me. No use in stalling, Leo. It’s tea time.

“Here we are—“ I begin, balancing the tray on my hands and negotiating the narrow kitchen doorway with my elbows.

You are putting on your heavy coat, Gil, I see. The cinnamon-colored wool that came from a shop on High Street in Aberdeen, after the airline lost yours. It was the only one in the place that didn’t bind your shoulders, you told me, and you thought you’d get used to the color. (Of course you got used to it; you looked striking in cinnamon and everybody told you so.)  Forget the safety of camel or tan or charcoal—but you do clash with Shelli’s crimson.

“Sorry, Enid,” you say, snuggling the collar up to the edge of your beard.  “Change of plans—couldn’t be helped.” You ease Shelli’s strawberry curls out from under the brim of her hat—scarlet felt, what else?—and smooth them with the tips of your fingers. The tea tray dips forward, wavering out of my control for a minute.

Green Tea (Part 5)

I used it as a pitcher to water my Christmas tree, until I came to work for you, Gil. For the past few years, I haven’t spent enough time at home through the holidays to warrant a tree that needs water. You don’t keep a schedule during that time, but you have to be ready for each new year. You speak, you teach, you travel according to the master list I compile. Christmas time last year—alone here in the office, I sent you to Cairo and Alexandria for March. I re-organized the sculpture file labeled ‘Heads; Broken’ and cross-referenced it with ‘Limbs; Missing.’ I found a florist who would deliver parrot tulips to an ambassador’s daughter in Calcutta.  She, I gather, was the Shelli of Christmas Past.

The kettle hisses as the flame licks up underneath it. I don’t remember putting it on the stove, but awareness is not a prerequisite to boiling water. I lean beside the stove with my elbows on the counter. Leo jumps up to join me, rubbing his head against my chin. Leo, why is it that the men in my life—you and Gil—only need me because I have opposable thumbs? Gil finds my typing and filing and organizing to be of value to him, and you need me to operate the can opener and work the door handle that lets you come and go.

I put an inch of nearly-boiling water into the tea pot. No chipped enamel here—one of your admirers sent you a Japanese iron pot with a feathery pine needle pattern gracing its moon-shaped sides. A pot that was old when this country was new, and you call for it as casually as if it were of no value. I spoon green tea into the ceramic filter built into the pot—the Japanese have always known how to build a better product, it seems.

Tiny white jasmine flowers curl among the green leaves of the tea, shut in upon themselves until the water makes them bloom again. Out with the warming water, in with a fresh, furious boil that releases a cloud of steam. The kettle whimpers a little as I set it on a back burner. The kitchen smells green as the magic of tea begins.

Green Tea (Part 4)

It’s easier this way, now that I have a job to do. I wasn’t sure how to get out of my seat before, how to get past the two of you and slip out. My hands flex on the great carved claws that form the arms of the Viking chair. I push myself up, careful not to bump Leo. He’s endured enough for one evening. Carefully skirting the heavy edge of your desk, I move toward the tiny room that acts as a kitchen to your office on days and nights when we work in.

“Yes, half a tin at least. Of the tea. Half a tin of green jasmine.” 

Shelli turns at the sound of my voice, her face rearranging itself into the kind of look she saves for the women who work for the men who are her lovers.

“What a good idea, Gil,” Shelli says.  “It’s so damp out tonight…Can I help at all, Miss Harris?”

I smile her offer away, shuddering at the thought of her crimson coat cuffs dangling over the gas ring. An errant spark and poof—she’d kindle like a candle and go up in flames. Too risky to have her kind in the kitchen, even for something as simple as tea. Leo follows me, knowing the fridge holds greater promise than your office.

You settle Shelli into the recesses of your chair; I hear the faint squeak of the leather and the grate of its feet on the floor as you turn it toward the fire. Shelli protests your action with a low laugh, murmuring words that I can’t quite reach. As if I wanted to. Groping with one hand against the cabinets, I bat around in the dark to find the pull-string that turns the light on. Leo inquires of my progress with a single throaty note.

Blink, stutter, buzz—the florescent bulb flutters to dismal life at my command.  The tea kettle is a battered enamel one that I found at a junk shop; its hopeful little pattern of dented daisies made me unable to leave it behind. I imagine it was a wedding present once, boxed and bowed and presented with love to some happy couple. The wear and tear might have occurred over the years, or perhaps the bride pitched it at the groom’s head when he forgot their anniversary.

Green Tea (Part 3) (that rhymes!)

“How did Leo get his ‘M’ after all?”

Your hands flow over the cat in question, his striped and spotted fur rippling with occasional pleasure at your touch. Firelight has turned you to rusty gold, Leo to dull pewter.  I think myself pale and clouded as alabaster, the very stuff of paperweights and ash trays and souvenir chess sets.  The kinds of things people bring home from the airport for the people they remember at the last minute. I still have the pen holder you brought me from the Roman dig in York, just last year.

Your office door opens, without warning, with force. Rebounds on its hinges into the far wall and back, just shy of the tiny figure that propelled it. I say tiny only because Shelli makes me feel such a mammoth, lumbering around in a wooly sort of way.  Leo makes his feelings clear; he digs in, you wince, and he launches himself into the dark by the edge of your chair, jangling the fire tools in their stand.

“Gil, darling!”  Shelli’s bright lips frame the words, she arrows for you.  Arms open, coat swinging, all in motion. Rising from your chair, you enfold her, blotting out all but the color and sound of her. I think one of those dead lady poets said it best—the red racing sloop in the harbor, long-neck clams out of season. If I understood it, I could despise her even more. Instead, I watch as you break on the rocks that have lured you to her, as much a siren as ever brought a sailor low.

Leo stalks past my ankles, tail lashing, a cat scorned. I sit forward, soothing and smoothing his fur and his feelings. I know better than to try to hold him; his legs would bow out in scrambling resistance, his back stiffening into a curve of rejection. He wants little of me, except the brush of my fingers along his arching spine.

“Is there any of that tea left—the green jasmine?” you ask, not looking away from the woman in your arms.

(to be continued)

Green Tea, Part 2

Leo, I envy your position, secure atop the wide-wale corduroy trousers your master favors.  You great striped melon of a cat, smiling at me, winking your heavy-lidded half-moon eyes.

“And the landlady of the place kept some little mite in the kitchen—a scrubber and fetcher, I suppose.  Ragged but clean—I imagined her a gypsy, of course.  Not more than eight, I should think, but already wise,” you continue, rubbing your cupped hands along Leo’s jaws, marking him as he marks you.

“Every morning, she—her name was Zylya, I think—have it in a journal for sure—she’d bring a wooden cup to me.  Full of something the landlady brewed herself.  My Romansch isn’t much, mind you, but it seemed to be called ‘heart in a man’ or some such.  And do you know, after I drank it, I could go all day with nothing else till sundown?  Remarkable stuff.”

“And Leo’s ‘M,’ Gil?” I prompt you, curious now despite my intention to remain disinterested.  You always draw me in, always have.  I listen to your stories as often as you share them, resenting the hold they have on me, but greedy for them.

A small brass goddess lives on the fireplace mantel behind you, and I see her smiling down at the top of your head. Like Leo, the goddess has known the whisper of your fingers, touching the secret mark between her eyes. What caste, I wonder, suddenly desperate, must I belong to before you touch me? Which antiquity, which ancient land, which dusty collection would make you see me? Your indifference hangs on me like an albatross.

“So it was my final morning there—my bags waiting by the door—but no sign of little Zylya and her wooden cup.”  Your left hand absently smoothes the almost-sleeping cat.  A fluid line, unbroken from end to end.

Sometimes I dream that I leave you here, among your notes, looking out of your ivy-crowned tower.  Perhaps I’ll lose you in the past; the one place where your rounds of writing and speaking and dazzling the faculty at dull luncheons leaves you no time to be.  Pyramids might help me forget you, or the flames of a gypsy fire might burn you from my mind. Most likely, though, I will continue here, in this heavy chair that once knew a Norseman’s backside, watching you and Leo while I toy with the pearl buttons of my new primrose sweater.

I bought it for me, Gil, not you, I remind myself.  It was on sale, after all, and the day was gray and cold.  The first time I wore it, I put my elbow down on one of your charcoal sketches, erasing the face of the Sphinx more effectively than Napoleon’s soldiers managed to do.  But I digress—the only habit of yours that I am able to share.

(to be continued)

Green Tea (or loose leaves from a loose cannon?)

Just celebrated the end of a very odd, unsettled sort of day with a frosted ginger cookie and a cup of hot black tea with a swirl of milk in it–just the thing to settle nerves and induce a temorary anasthetic for pain inflicted by a Monday that was already off the rails before I left for work. In a fog of  darkly oxidized Camellia sinensis–plus a hint of Edwardian salons steeped in a bluestocking–it seemed infinitely proper to update my oft-neglected blog.

Nevermind, of course, that updating one’s own blog, after spending hours writing other things for other people, produces the following quandary:  I’ve spent all  my words and thoughts already; my mental wordbank is seriously overdrawn…and yet, there are still things I want to write–things that have nothing to do with anything but my own thoughts. (That may be a candidate for “most convoluted sentence ever” award!)

To inspire the smoldering wick of inspiration, I’ve decided to feature another short story through a series of updates. “Green Tea” was published in Potpourri several years ago, and it’s always been one of my favorites. . .Is it based on a true story? Parts of it are:  Leo is based on cat I once knew; Gil resembles a professor of mine who taught Scottish Literature; the iron teapot was offered for sale in a store where I once worked. Is the ending happy? Depends entirely on your perspective and who you’re rooting for, of course.  And so, in sections of approximately 250 words, I present–

“Green Tea”

Shadows lick up between your fingers, Gil, as you stretch your hands toward the fire for warmth.  For all their blunt size, those same fingers are as careful and sensitive as cat whiskers.  You love cats, especially the one in your lap now.  You stroke Leo’s face as if he were of immense value to you—one of your many artifacts that litter the walls, the shelves, the floors of this office.  Leo might easily be a cat of Pompeii, all gray-ashy and immutable.

“Yes, just here.  See?”  Your fingers tremble through the short fur between Leo’s notched ears.  “Every striped cat has an ‘M’ between its eyes,” you continue, smoothing the points of the ‘M’ without quite touching it.

How you always know such things is beyond me, but of course you will explain.

“It was in Romania—oh, years ago, now—I was looking into things there…”

You might as well tell me it was a dark and stormy night, too.  It always is.  If your stories weren’t true, I would hate you for them.  But you do not allow me the dignity of overlooking your exaggerations, and I must hate myself instead.  I listen to your words, absorbing them, because they come from deep inside, rumbling up as you remember.  Leo purrs in perfect contentment, enjoying the heavy vibration of your voice.  Two males in tune, at their ease in the depths of the shabby Morris chair that nothing would induce you to part with, or even re-cover. 

[To be continued…]

Terminal

Before I continue “North to Alaska,” I thought I’d add this post to the mix:

Terminal is a piece of short fiction I wrote several years ago. It was inspired by a wintertime visit to Mt. Pisgah…and the thought of how quickly things can change from delightful to…terminal.

(Terminal was published in the October 2006 issue of WNC Woman.)

Terminal

That last bottle of water was definitely a mistake…

Cotton batting clouds the color of baby aspirin wallow up and over each other on Pisgah’s folded shoulders; the frosted, foiled top of the mountain is the intricate dream of a celestial glass-blower.  Spangled, stiff-fingered pines—chandeliers of afternoon light—are interrupted where last summer’s sumac thrusts rusty arms up toward the sky.  All that dazzling-silver world, but no sound.  No nothing.

No sound, that is, except the hiss of hot pee punching a hole in cold snow.  I crouch, legs trembling as they sustain the necessary hover-mode to keep me from splattering my boots or jeans.  Hands folded into my armpits for warmth, leaning forward for better balance—again I regret the decision to down that final bottle of water before beginning this hike.  It’s a lot easier to access the bathroom when it’s in the same room with you instead of the edge of a cliff.  Who made up that eight-glasses-every-day rule, anyway?     

 When the leaves are gone and there’s nothing to soften the bones of the mountain, the narrow ridge rising in front of me seems inadequate to buttress Pisgah’s towering bulk.  It makes me think of—

–a waiter I saw once, expertly balancing a tiered wedding cake of sparkles and beaded crystal lace as he negotiated a path to the bridal table.  I’ll never see another wedding cake without the image of this mountain in the back of my mind. 

 Late day sunlight knifes through a gap near the top of the mountain.  Somewhere far off, some kind of bird chee-chee-chees to another; nature’s version of a pager.  It reminds me that there is still a world where time is not money, not product, not anything but time.  I tug at my jeans, fingers clumsy in the cold. 

I haven’t had to pee in the snow in what—years?—but the view from this position is worth the ventilation.   

I remembered, though, to scrunch my mittens out of harm’s way in the pockets of my coat, just like I used to do when I was a kid. 

Tomorrow, it’s back to the blah of public and private porcelain for another year until I earn two more weeks of freedom.  I wish I could take a piece of this back with me.  No, a peace of this.  That’s what I really mean.

My truck is less than a quarter of a mile from here.  I would have driven all the way to the trailhead, but I couldn’t get past the locked gates that separate the state’s narrow access road from the Parkway.  A quarter of a mile is pretty far in weather like this, when the rangers probably don’t even patrol more than once a week, just to check for storm damage and rockslides.  I’m glad it’s all mostly downhill to the place I’m staying, too, in case the truck takes a notion not to start.  

As the day fades and the light dwindles down to dull grape and pewter ashes, the slush on top of the pavement will start to ice up again.  Time to head back before it gets any harder to keep my footing on the increasingly uneasy surface beneath my boots.    

With its matte surface like a blacksnake’s hide, the road clings to the mountain, reversing its direction each time it wraps Pisgah in another loop.  This whole section of the Parkway from Cherokee to Shining Rock is still closed for bad weather—they get a lot more snow at this elevation than they do back in town. 

I guess it was maybe not smart to come up here by myself, without telling anybody where I was headed.  You never know.  There were those girls up at the Buck Springs Overlook a couple of years ago—they never caught whoever did that—

A shower of icy fireworks shivers down, disturbed by a movement in the branches arching over my head.  In one smooth sweep of dark wings above pale breast, a hawk launches itself into the empty space below me, banking side to side, held steady by the same wind that whistles through the gap between my jacket and jeans.  The hawk eyes me, a stranger in its kingdom, still standing spraddled above the evidence of my trespass.

My pants are no longer at half-mast, but the zipper defies my fumbling attempt to grip the flat, narrow pull and finish the job.  My fingers slip, shredding the skin over one knuckle.  Try again. 

There—at last it’s up!  Now to work the button closed and get my backside off the backside of this mountain before I start hearing sinister footsteps crunching up behind me—at least I won’t pee in my pants if I hear somebody coming and have to make a run for it.  How much more skittish you get when you’re in danger of being caught with your pants down!

 I must be out of shape, my legs are that stiff, I’m—

Caught on something?  Boot-lace snagged in last year’s matted underbrush?  What the—

The hawk veers away with a single, startled shriek.  Echoes my own, left behind in a frozen balloon drifting through empty air. 

Blink, blink again, try to open my eyes.  There is a sort of sound, after all.  A throbbing beat that I feel in my whole face; it matches what I guess must be my heart, still pumping underneath what is now the snagged, ripped ruin of my jacket.

Can I turn my head, even a little?  Blue blur pressed against my cheek?  So my hat is still with me—that’s good.  I let go of a breath I didn’t known I was holding.  Steam puffs up and a slow flood of something warm crawls over my upper lip, settles into the depressions on each side of my nose. 

“Uck,” I say out loud, disgusted by the mess clinging to my lip.  One numb hand goes up to paw at it—where are my mittens?  Birthday present; don’t want to lose them.  My fingers come away red and shiny, coated with a bloody bungee snot-line that stretches, snaps back cold against my face.  Double uck.  Hot copper taste blooms in my throat, drips backward.

If I turn my head the other way, I can see part of the gouged, wallowed track I left as I tail-over-teakettled down the slope.  The snow was a cushion, maybe, between the rocks and stones and stobs, but my jacket is still bleeding chunks of its lining through snagged rips and peeled-back flaps.      

The hawk swims in rippled rings of sky above my head.  Can it see me here, a footnote at the end of a blank page?  Can anybody see me here, fallen all the way to the bottom of the world?

Get organized, take inventory—that’s important. 

Hat?  Good.  No mittens?  Bad.  Jacket structure compromised?  Also bad.  As in not good.  As in, this is really not good.  Nose?   Like an overripe tomato, trembling, ready to burst its fragile skin in a minute.  More not-good. 

So—not-good currently outranks good.  Where’s the escape key to get back to good?  Problem is, command option is non-functioning.  Hands too cold; don’t want to work. 

I’d reboot… if I could feel my feet.

Surely there’ll be someone soon—a flash of warm plaid in the spaces between the trees or a bit of face showing between beard and balaklava as someone bends over me.  Surely I’ll feel bare hands, still warm from gloves, checking for a pulse against the underneath of my chin.  Not a ranger—I don’t expect that much—but someone that could call a ranger.  Please, someone?  

I’ll never go peeing again.  I promise.  The hawk knows what happened—surely it will tell somebody.  It just circles slow.  Circles slow; a toy bird on a tether, gliding in widening circles. 

Control, ALT, Delete.  System is not responding.  Wait twenty seconds.

Seconds tick by.  Ringing in my ears—no, in my pocket?  Doesn’t matter.  I’m not available; please leave any messages after the tone.   

Program has performed an illegal operation. 

Terminal error results in system shut-down.  

Snippet (and snails, and puppy-dog tails)…

Inspired by my little doglet, this is just an odd snippet to help put me back in the writing mood, after nearly a year’s absence from the blogosphere:

If Teddy had been the very proper British barrister he so resembled—after a night out, that is, in which his once-smooth moustaches and tidy Van Dyck bristled above his previously snowy cravat (now spotted and askew) like those of a defiant defendant in the dock; and of whose spotless gloves only one remained (the other discarded, perhaps, by mistaken habit into the conveniently waiting salver of a street-front wooden native proffering tobacco wares)—she would have poured him a cup of strong, bracing tea to help him restore order to his world.

He was not, however; Teddy was, in fact, a small black terrier with whorls of white in face and beard and one white-tipped front paw. He cared nothing for a cup of tea after a pleasant night curled in his basket, dreaming of excesses that his lack of opposable thumbs rendered impossible, but he was implacable and determined in his pursuit of the buttered toast that accompanied it. From plate to jam to lips, he was as fixed and constant in his vigilance as any member of the regiment, and twice as attentive to the possibility of being rewarded for his attention

Doesn't he look very proper in this photo?

Sideshow (Part VI)

“The ring, Jack?” Marko prompted, and Rosemary became aware that Jack was already there on the carousel, waiting for her. His long, cool fingers closed over Rosemary’s hand and she flinched, just a little, although he had warned her he grew his fingernails long as part of his act.

Rosemary heard footsteps. The Incredible Frog Boy–his name was Roy Pruett and he was forty if he was a day–shuffled onto the carousel and pushed something into Jack’s hands. Rosemary felt the flat, confused webbing that should have been separate fingers on Roy’s hand brush against her cheek, and then he was gone.

“By the power invested in me,” Marko intoned, “by the mighty auspices of the Blake Brothers Big-Top Bonanza Extravaganza–” his pause was well-timed, but the effect was shattered by Norah’s tremendous nose-clearing honk into the pillow-slip. Marko glared at the offense and Norah shrank back against the calliope, wringing her hands and batting away Thumbo’s further attempts to minister to her.

“–I now pronounce you RAT AND RAT-WIFE!” Marko said as Jack eased the ring onto Rosemary’s finger.

Rosemary’s heart skipped a little as Jack tucked her arm through his to guide her between the painted unicorns and bears toward the low-slung double swan seat on the carousel.

“Begin!” Marko shouted, stepping down from the platform as Norah, sniffling, fidgeted through the sheet music until she found something appropriate.

One of the roustabouts threw a lever and the carousel lurched into motion to the strains of “Love Makes The World Go Round,” complete with steam and leiderhosen.

Rosemary and Jack circled, circled again, and three times made their union complete in the eyes of the circus family.

*****************************************************************

“Greetings from Baraboo!” the card exclaimed in bright red letters above a picture of an old-timey circus wagon.

Aunt Fanny held it at arm’s length, trying to make out the message without resorting to her reading glasses. A photograph fell out of the card as she opened it. Groaning, Aunt Fanny bent to pick it up.

“Dear Aunt Fanny,” she read aloud from the card, “Congratulations to you–you’re a great aunt again!”

Aunt Fanny shook her head and glanced at the photograph. It was a picture of Rosemary and the two older boys, all smiling at the camera, and pointing toward the blanket-wrapped bundle Rosemary cradled across her knees.

“Hmmph…” Aunt Fanny snorted. “Just like the others. Looks like a drowned rat.”

She placed the card carefully back in the envelope, smoothing the ragged flap where she’d torn it open. She propped the snapshot against a ceramic clown that Rosemary sent from Sarasota the year before.

“Well, I never,” Aunt Fanny said, shaking her head. And she never did.