Cityality Stories by Bruce James Wilkinson

Author:Bruce James Wilkinson [Wilkinson, Bruce James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bruce James Wilkinson
Published: 2020-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Pretty When You’re Mad

Some people will always miss an angle in the course of time. Opportunity and danger. Fast asleep, they won’t see the curve soon enough and will not make it. Risk is sharpened both by missing and making the turn, but opportunity only by following the new direction. Risk either way. Road signs hidden or missing.

Not this time. Not this angle clearly marked for anyone paying attention.

All night, conscious and not, a change in direction has pulled Ellen’s mind along rails of imagination. Her dreams speaking to her as Oracles; her distractions and worries as Seers. Words and images rewound and played again. The mystery of her second mind informing her first in a dialog of leapfrogs.

She whispers aloud at one moment, as she did when she was a child, filtering two leading roles through restrained, leafy hisses. Interrupting herself, correcting, one over another.

Matthew doesn’t stir. If he did, would they whisper as they used to when curves came into view in their individual roads, or the one they shared?

Anyway, he doesn’t. They don’t anymore. When she does fall asleep for good, fighting like a child, it’s very late and quite early. It continues without her in the place where knots unravel for morning.

Elaine eats cereal and milk in the kitchen.

“You’ll be here for a little while?” Ellen says.

“Until usual. Why?”

“A word before you go.”

Her last look at her daughter before a shower. Petulant and curious. Defensive and groggy. At fifteen there is never enough sleep to support all that happens.

*

“What, Mom?”

“Good morning to you, too.”

Hunched over her bowl, her hair the color of newly peeled chestnuts and sunlight, wild with sleep. Standard sleep gear: basketball shorts and a cotton top, Elaine looks like a cat with clothing, young and stretched thin, the structure all there and waiting to be filled out. Lean, slender, suspicious, a leaf spring always under compression. She is the most beautiful animal Helen has ever seen, preparing for a long hunt.

“Do you have plans this evening?”

Elaine is not often asked about her plans. To be asked about plans is to be noticed beyond the usual.

“What kind of plans?”

“I’m asking you, but that’s an answer, I think. I want to go out for dinner. Just you and me. Somewhere nice but comfortable.”

“Is Dad doing something tonight?”

“He may choose to do something. We haven’t talked yet. It isn’t about him.”

“Why?”

“I just want us to talk to each other for a while. Catch up with each other.”

“You’re being mysterious, Mother. Do you want me to imagine bad news all day?”

“No. It’s not bad news at all. I want to talk with you is all.”

“Are you and Dad getting a divorce or something? Is one of you sick?”

“Nothing like that. No bad news. None at all.”

Elaine’s eyes are taking alertness from sleep like soldiers take a hill from the enemy. A little food; distance of too few minutes from the warm dishevelment of bed. Snapping to attention under duress.

“Then why the mystery?”

“It’s not mystery. I want us to talk to each other longer than we usually can is all.

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