The Revolving Heart by Chuck Augello

Author:Chuck Augello [Augello, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781684334773
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2020-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

. . . . .

During my tenure as an unattached struggling playwright in New York, those what-the-hell-am-I-doing years after Amy married Clyde, I briefly dated an actress who never broke character—whatever her role, Brianna pretended to be that character in every aspect of her life. Though sometimes fun, it was mostly exhausting, and we broke up after she landed the lead in The Sound of Music at the Bucks County Playhouse and started yodeling “The Lonely Goatherd” at 6:00 AM.

Amy’s daughter Jill wasn’t that bad, not yet, but when I arrived at the house she was already in character, standing on the porch with a sly grin, an empty champagne glass wobbling in her hand.

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket; I have things up my sleeve,” she said, stepping toward me as I exited the car, her voice strong and confident. “But I am the opposite of a stage magician. She gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

She closed her eyes, pursing her lips before kissing the night air, her bare legs crossed as she leaned back against the porch railing, the hem of her dress climbing her thighs as she cocked her hip, inviting me forward with a graceful sweep of her arm. Her silhouette painted the wooden planks, her shadow stretching from the front door to the edge of the top step, luring me toward her as I walked up the driveway carrying the lasagna. It was impossible to ignore the tight slope of her dress, a short sleeveless pink jersey with an open back and gold beaded trim.

I knew that dress well.

Twenty years earlier in a motel room in Wildwood Crest, free HBO and a continental breakfast for $79 bucks per night, I’d unhooked the back button of that dress and watched Amy shimmy out of it, The Cure’s “Just like Heaven” playing over the radio, 106.3 FM, our favorite station; I remembered falling to my knees, like I’d seen someone once do in a bad movie, my hands grabbing Amy’s hips as I kissed between her legs, my tongue tracing goose bumps on the inside of her thighs. It was prom night, a prom we happily shunned, the prom too suburban-Molly-Ringwald-flick for the likes of us. We made our own prom—that dress was seared into my memory, the way it accented her hips, the way it opened in back, Amy’s tan skin peppered with freckles beneath the arc of her shoulder blades. Somehow that dress had survived, time-traveled twenty years. It fit Jill perfectly; her resemblance to Amy had never seemed stronger, but maybe it was only the dress playing tricks on me. Or maybe it was Amy playing tricks. Why else would she give that dress to her sixteen-year-old daughter, knowing that my fingers could recall every stitch of the fabric, every golden bead along the trim of its neckline?

“To begin with, I turn back time,” Jill said.

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