Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart by Walker Alice

Author:Walker, Alice [Walker, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: San Val
Published: 2000-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

THERE WAS A RIVER

There Was a River

There was a river, and they were sitting beside it. It was the only river Marcella had seen in New Mexico. Actually it looked like a canal, it was so straight, as was the path beside it, as was the wooden bench on which they sat. Wordlessly, as if all three had reached a common realization about straightness and man-made designs, they stood up, walked a few steps to the right of the bench, and sat down carefully in the dry grass, balancing gingerly against the pull of the sloped bank.

“We felt we must talk about things,” said Angel. He was short, pale, and closed in, his mouth tense, as if he anticipated unpleasantness. For a long time now Marcella had felt he lacked radiance. Even now, as she looked at him, she wondered: Did he ever have radiance? Or did I create it for him because his mother named him Angel?

Sally, plump and the luscious darkness of a ripe fig, sat between them, her large eyes filled with pain. She had wept so much already she thought no more tears would come. Yet, as Angel spoke, she felt them start up behind her eyes. Damn, she thought.

Marcella also felt out of control. Here she was on a riverbank in the middle of nowhere, between her lover and her best friend, compelled, she thought, to choose between them. There was no doubt in her mind that she loved them both, and that to lose either would be devastating.

It had all started because Sally had had a dream in which she’d replaced Marcella in Angel’s arms. Marcella had simply disappeared.

“But where did I go?” Marcella had asked, as Sally told her, laughing, about the dream.

Sally didn’t know where she went. If she did she never told Marcella.

One evening when the three of them were together in Marcella’s house, with its green shutters and wine-colored walls, Sally acted out the dream, flinging herself into Angel’s arms and lying back as she’d seen Marcella do. It had been painful to watch, amazingly so.

Now Marcella struggled to articulate a feeling that seemed ridiculous, even to her.

“When you didn’t know what happened to me, I felt abandoned.”

“But it was only a dream,” said Sally, pleased that her tears had decided not to flow. Partly, she knew, because her emotions had changed. Angel, as usual, having introduced the agenda, left the two of them to pursue it; suddenly he appeared so vacant it was almost as if he were merely a form. A male form without substance, sitting between them. She wanted to smack him, and say something deeply vulgar and cruel.

Angel was in fact wishing he were someplace, anyplace, else. Marcella, whom he knew so well, was clearly suffering. Her eyes were sad and her voice shook. He felt how awkward his position was: a straw man, a hollow man, between two flesh-and-blood women. Why could he not feel himself, as he was at least capable of feeling for

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