The Woods by Janice Obuchowski

Author:Janice Obuchowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sylvia Who Dreams of Dactyls

SYLVIA WAKES THINKING of dactyls as if they’d been spilling out across her dreams. Washington, Dumbledore. She stretches, throws back her comforter, opens the curtains, and lets ashen light bathe her. Some subterranean part of her head engaging in pattern assessment. Bothersome: yes. Trigonometry: no.

In the kitchen she drinks coffee from a mug glazed cobalt—dusted sunshine about her shoulders—and looks out to her back fields. In the distance a slim streak of lake is silver blue, and the mountains are August lush and serene. Gesturing, cluster fuck. This abstract clutter, this part of herself not making sense to herself—pursuing its own avenues of nonsense inquiry. A nighttime devoted to syllabic count.

Soon, a late morning of tennis with her neighbor. Veritas, festering. She makes a light breakfast: toast with butter and marmalade. Marmalade. If it would work, she’d shake her head like a swimmer clearing droplets of water from her ears. Mucinex, Bessemer. Hexagon. There’s no languor in this kind of thinking.

Already it seems beyond her to lead a rational day. Joshua. She showers, steam and mist hotly fogging the room, and with various cleansers scents herself with orange blossom and sandalwood. Then to anoint herself with serum and slather herself with creams. Slavish, lavish these rituals of older middle age. Joshua. That must be it. Her head engaged in fractal logic, tiny shapes mimicking—at least in sonic apparition—the large one. The one that comes at her from these absurd, oblique angles.

Her wrist extended, racket out, she whacks the ball, a great return just over the net, but has to drop her racket because she’s hurt her wrist. John comes to her. She’s worried her mouth is open in a tiny o, a silly shape that does no justice to her pain.

“You’re okay?” Even-keeled, concerned neighbor. They play occasionally as the weather holds. He’s a veterinarian, and she always wonders what his days are like, what mix of joy and heartbreak comes his way as he engages in new pets, sick pets, happy families, sad ones. If he feels all happy families are alike, etc. He touches the underside of her wrist—less assessment and more reminder of his presence. “Let’s get some ice on that,” he says and trots off to the Harbor Club’s dining room.

She walks off the court and sprawls in an Adirondack chair. He returns with a bag of frozen peas, which he foists on her. “Maybe a sprain,” he says. “Ice now and certainly Advil later.” He sits in the chair beside hers and pats her knee—perhaps as he’d pat the head of a golden retriever. “You weren’t paying attention.”

“I was,” she huffs. She wasn’t. Dactyls, fractals, Joshua. Thoughts that cling as lint on a dress. Beyond them is the lake, with its little shivers, shimmers, its lack of placidness. The air is thick with moisture. Her wrist throbs and gives off heat despite the cold wet plastic bag of peas. Questioning, darkening. John is chatting about some volunteer work he’s doing tomorrow, registering crew teams for the Dragon Boat Festival.

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