The Sagging Orchid
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Cutting the pine
He looked downcast. “Show it to me.”
She grinned impishly, her brown eyes taking on a caramel-like glow. “Over here.” They walked some 200 feet farther away from the track, where a modest-sized pine stood between two larger ones.
“What do you think?” she beamed.
“It’s nice.”
“Should we tell them?”
“We can just get the hatchet.”
“Bonnie will like it, I hope,” she cautioned.
“She doesn’t fuss about it,” he waved off.
Clarisse stepped away, volunteering herself to fetch the blade. Taylor lingered beside the tree, wondering what the three others were up to. Five minutes, seemingly all day, dragged by. She returned with the hatchet, black blade looking harmless in the mist. She didn’t waste any time, just stepped to the pine’s left and gripped its handle. “We’ll take turns,” she said, “but I shouldn’t have any trouble.” She squared the hatchet with their tree and swung it back, as if in slow motion. The thump of first impact sounded, followed by thump, thump, thump, and a hollow whack. Splinters flew, a ridge grew wider in the trunk until a crackle blurted out and the pine fell.
“We’re going to miss having you here,” Taylor joked as they carried the tree back to their car, side by side. Clarisse flexed her thick lips into a grin, eluding the topic. “We might not have enough room for both of them,” she remarked.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Second Section, First Scene (1st post)
Gretta and Aaron - German second cousins - joined them at the fairgrounds to find a Christmas tree. The fairgrounds were a mile harness track without grandstand and a five-acre field, all surrounded by evergreens. In exchange for planting a new one and paying a town tax, a family was allowed to pick out a small tree for the season.
Aaron, German in his own way, was the son of a mine switchman. He was born in Revere and started a book business that took four years to yield a profit with. Taylor liked books, but not in the ways Aaron worshipped them. Aaron, though, was damn good at running a business and kept faith in himself. Taylor couldn’t overlook his side. Gretta was Aaron’s bookkeeper for some time, before she got tired of her role and Aaron got tired of her being tired. Nowadays she was playing small-town socialite; she had the charm and the voluptuousness to win over anyone.
They went to the fairgrounds at dawn in Aaron’s roadster, getting there just before the dew-clouds sank into the ground. There was no sunshine, only a dim, gray vesting of the sky. The trees were a well-distributed bundle of columns in silence. They spread out, imagining each one in their living room.
Ten minutes passed with nothing. Then Gretta called out. “Aaron?”
“Yeah?” he returned
“How about this one?”
Aaron couldn’t hear her. “Wait a minute,” he yelled back. He walked his way between trees to a clearing. “Where are you?” he called out.
“Over here.”
“Where?” insistently.
“Over here.”
Aaron picked up the pace and found his mate. Their shouts died to muffled small talks. In the meantime, Clarisse was skitting about, more interested in daydreaming about trees than finding one to cut down. Taylor and Bonnie drifted apart in the rising mist. “Where have you gone off to?” Bonnie shouted.
Taylor answered with only two suitable words. “Over here.”
“Well, I’m going to stay over here.” she returned. They could hear the muted wisecracks of their so-called friends.
“This way,” a nearby voice whispered. It was Clarisse’s musical tongue. Taylor hunted her out through openings.
“Which way?” he said annoyingly.
“To your left.”
“This way?”
“No,” she instructed, “way over more.”
“Here? This one?”
“No, more.”
“Here?”
“No, you passed it,” in a minor cadence.
“You make me dizzy,” he barked.
“Do you know a perfect pine when you see one?”
“I wasn’t raised in the Alps.”
“Neither was I.” She stepped into an opening.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Second scene (2nd post) / End of First Section
“Give her some more philosophy.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“It’s the people she knows. She doesn’t know anyone there.”
She tossed her hair, a habit whenever she was frustrated.
“I thought after what she’s been through,” Bonnie posed, “she could handle anything.”
“Nothing’s ever a rule.”
“She has talent and she’s afraid to use it. If I had talent like that-”
“-It hasn’t gone to waste. She’s young yet. She’s our age for Christ’s sake-”
“-Then she should decide on her own. Which you told her, to your credit.”
Taylor found her evaluations annoying. It put him back in grammar school.
“Anyway,” she went on, “Gretta and Aaron are coming oven.”
He gazed out the window, onto the bare, pulsating shrubs. “Gretta-”
“-And Aaron. They’re coming Saturday.”
“They are?”
“We’re going to the fairgrounds. You look spaced out.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s all you seem to be doing lately,” she put mildly, “Did you deliver the washrack?”
“Yes,” Taylor moaned, “What have you done today, anyway?”
“Take a look around the house.” There were fresh hyacinths in a vase on the living room’s mantelpiece, within plain view.
“Anything else to let me know about?,” he asked.
“Not off-hand.”
A faint bubbling sound rose from the percolator. Bonnie leaned against the sink and looked at the ceiling.
“I can’t help it,” she pondered, “but I think that girl is out of control sometimes.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“I don’t mean out of control as in wild, I mean she just can’t stay on the tracks. She keeps falling off.”
“She’s chosen a lifestyle. She has to ride with the waves.”
Bonnie was in the mood for sarcasm. “Do we ever agree on anything anymore?”
“No, we don’t,” she answered.
“We have minds of our own now.”
“What brought this on?”
“Every time we take a position, we’re on opposite ends.”
“On small issues.”
“Small one leads to big ones. Clarisse’s future isn’t a small issue, anyway.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
The wind, shaking window panes mildly, had a sobering effect. She stepped in front of him, embraced him, and pressed themselves against the wall.
“What is it between us, hon, what?,” she asked.
He gazed at no place in particular. Steam began to jet out of the percolator spout, coffee clouding up its bell.
Monday, December 29, 2003
First Scene (3rd post) / Second Scene (1st post)
“Chicory,” she teased.
“Will you be alright?”
“Yes,” she moaned, “You’re not sore, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
She walked towards the coat rack. “You’ll say hello, won’t you?”
“I will.” Clarisse held his coat open and Taylor slipped in his arms. She wrapped her own arms around his waist and again, the head on his shoulder.
“Remember in the field, that day?,” she asked.
He grinned. “Yeah, I do.”
Sandwich had plunged into night when Taylor arrived home. There were winds, but the storms were on the Cape’s south end. His roadster crept into the dusty driveway, leaves rattling underneath its wheels. He unlocked the front door and stepped in. “Bonnie!,” he yelled.
An answer came from a stairwell in the middle of the house, leading up to the bedroom.
“Taylor?!”
“Yeah.”
The staircase was a ladder going straight up. Taylor saw her feet and the bottom edge of her robe touch its highest rung. She descended.
“About time,” she said passively. Her drape of auburn hair came into view.
“Oh, that woman,” he emoted.
“What’s her problem now?”
“She’s been offered a job in Boston and can’t make up her mind.”
“Really?” Bonnie was impressed. “Where at?”
“An art school headsman has an in for her -”
“That’s great!,” she interrupted, “What’s wrong with it?”
“Identity crisis, why am I here, that stuff.”
“Oh, she should take it and run with it.”
“I told her to spend time thinking about it.”
“You didn’t tell her to go?”
“I didn’t want to boss her.”
“Some brother you are.” She headed towards the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what’s giving her the urge to stay here.” She took a can of Maxwell House from the cupboard and a percolator from the range.
“Her family’s here,” Taylor said passively.
“Pseudo-family,” Bonnie corrected, “We’re close to her, but we’re in place of, we’re not the real thing.”
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
First Scene (3rd post)
“I don’t have much time to decide,” she said.
“How long?”
“They want someone working by January 10th.”
“For the spring semester.”
“Yeah.”
“Start thinking now and don’t stop,” he advised.
“And if I don’t know?” She moved closer, a look of mild fear in her eyes.
“Do what your intuition tells you. It’s for the best.”
“My intuition is telling me a lot of things at once,” she lamented.
Clarisse lightly embraced him and rested her head on his shoulder. He was welcoming.
“It will sort itself out,” he replied, “Things will fall into place. I know it.”
“I’ve heard that once, too many times.”
“Then hear it again,” Taylor joked. She mildly laughed.
“So, are you going?,” he advanced.
“Give me another week,” Clarisse answered, lightly breathing on his neck.
“Fair enough.”
Taylor swayed his stepsister back and forth. He had the urge to run his hands over her shoulder blades and thought better of it. Clarisse slowly broke away and went to the radiator. “I’ll make some coffee,” she offered, checking for heat through the ducts.
“No, thanks. I have to get back, really.”
“Already? That’s it?”
“Well, I’m just glad it wasn’t anything serious - life-threatening, I mean.”
“Will you be safe getting back?” She pulled her wrap tight again and stepped back towards him as the window panes clicked from being pushed inward by the wind.
Sunday, December 07, 2003
First Scene (2nd post)
“Art isn’t art until you’re alone,” he comforted, “It frustrates them.”
“True,” she replied.
He stepped cautiously into the living room, his loafers sounding on the wooden floor. Clarisse was stationary, her black hair haloed by the nearby lamp. Her arms were folded, clutching her shawl, as she looked through the white, brocaded curtains at the trees shaking wildly.
“I’ve been offered a spot in Boston.”
He was tentative. “Really,” he asked, “By whom?”
“Choate. An opening has come up.”
“Well, that’s not a chance you’re going to pass up, is it?”
Silence for a moment.
“It would be a long move,” she remarked.
“After where you’ve come from?,” he countered halfheartedly.
She turned from the window, now looking towards a radiator in the near corner. A soft pinging sound was heard in its pipes as the heat came up. “Choate is the only person I know in Boston,” she said.
“But you were complaining about your students here -”
“- Not complaining, just remarking,” she insisted. She grew slightly annoyed and looked straight into his eyes. “Everyone I know is on the Cape. What do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” he answered elusively, “But you’ve always talked about going to a city.”
She calmed down, remembering whom she was speaking to and lowering her head in regret. “Yes, I have talked about that. In the past. But things change.”
“How good a job is he offering you?”
“One of the smaller studios and tutorial work. It’s not bad.”
“So, then?” The prospect sickened him. Clarisse paused.
“You have to paint for an audience. This could bring me one.” She stepped over to the hi-fi and checked for dust. “This could bring me one,” she said again, “I admit that.”
Reason got the best of Taylor’s urges again. “You have to let go of your roots to get what you want sometimes.”
Clarisse folded her arms and looked at him suspiciously. “What do you really know about my roots? Hm?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
Her thick lips went into a devious smile.
“It’s a serious business,” she joked.
Taylor looked away as he grinned. “Yeah, heh.”
Their bond was reaffirmed and she became serious again.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
First Scene
Two days later, Thanksgiving not enough, Clarisse called Taylor and asked him to visit. He agreed and drove next afternoon to her house in South Yarmouth. His black Studebaker graced the roads under dense gray clouds, pounding anxiously yet withholding its hurry. He arrived by early evening, when the winds began to pick up from high tide and the eternal threat of storm cast first glance. Clarisse sat in her living room until he pulled into the driveway and knocked. She opened and took his coat as he rubbed his shoes on the hall mat.
She was pensive for a moment. “How was the trip?,” she asked with a diminished frankish accent.
“The roads were fine,” he contrasted, “The skies look very bad.”
“Threatening,” she added, hanging his coat on the rack.
“Exactly that.” His Massachusetts twang was thick.
“Care for anything to drink?,” she asked.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.”
Clarisse looked to him briefly, flashing her brown eyes. She forced a smile with her thick lips and looked away, hiding under her tasseled gray wrap. She had a blue cashmere and skirt underneath. On her feet were soft brown loafers. Taylor pretended to sense nothing.
“How have you been?,” Clarisse posed. She stood in the adjacent living room, looking into that windy night.
“Fine,” he answered, “I’ve thought about you a lot.”
Her feelings stirred within. “I’ve thought about you, too.”
But she could not look at him again.
“Have your lessons gone well?,” she asked.
“They could be better. More enthusiasm.”
She pulled her shawl back tight, shuddering at the wind.
