Excerpt from Tales from a Sweltering City
I hold the rock in my hand and marvel at its symmetry, the weight evenly distributed in a round flat mass - a perfect skipping stone. Smoothed from receding glaciers with only a small, notched imperfection chipped out along one edge. I caress the surface and delay relinquishing it, being somehow comforted by it. But a perfect skipping stone is only a concept, a hypothesis, a hunch until you throw it away and prove its worth. I struggle with myself. If I throw it I will have the proof of its virtue, its specialness, but I will never hold it again, never feel its cool composition. I will only know the truth of its substance.
I shift to the left, holding the rock firmly between my fingers - fingers that wish to rebel, to force the rest of my body to stop its movement. My elbow is tucked in close to my waist. With a twist of my wrist at the end of the motion, I release it in the way my father taught me. The rock flies low for a second or two, its shadow playing on the dusky, golden water, before it touches down once, then again and again. Six skip-hops before it slows and sinks below the lake’s surface. And I think, if I had thrown the rock and it had only skipped once I would not miss it so.
I’m a wanderer, I fear. I look for the greener grass and somehow it has led me here after twenty years, back home to the lakes of Minnesota. To the place where my parents and grandparents began their lives. Where, in turn, my life began.
My mother thinks I move about because I’m a Virgo. “Virgos are nomadic,” she tells me. “That’s why you can’t stay still.”
I think it’s because when you grow up in one place you grow immune to its beauty. I spent my childhood yearning to see the mountains, craving a view of snowy peaks and frozen glaciers, rushing streams with delicate wildflowers. then, when I went to hike among them, I had the desire to see the ocean. The ocean with its currents and tide pools filled with colorful creatures. After the ocean, I longed for the desert. The pale pink desert and its brilliant orange sunsets. It was the desert that allowed me to recognize how much I missed the rich farmland, and more importantly, the lakes of my youth.
Far out beyond the dock, I hear a loon’s haunting call and I search the growing darkness for it. The sand beneath my feet is not fine, but coarse, eroded rocks from the ice age, ground first into pebbles and then into a granular mixture. I stroll along the bank in search of a spot in which to sit and think. To write prose in my head that I hope will not evaporate before I’m able to place it on paper. Prose that is so rich it melts in your mouth, it keeps you wanting more, like warm chocolate chip cookies.
I wait for inspiration and listen to the soothing sound of the water lapping against the shore. Across the water from me I see small pinpoints of light flare, but here, where I sit, there are shadows. I rise, moving with determination, and remove my clothing, careful to hide my underwear and bra between the folds of my shirt. Then, shivering in the night air, I walk into the lake. Water that refreshes with it coolness during the humid August day warms me in the evening air, and I hurry to be surrounded by it - to surrender to it. I dive below the surface and move, pushing the water from my face - pushing cobwebby thoughts from my mind. How many summer days as a youth had I relished the feel of the water as it moved past my face and across my limbs?
I rise up and the moon greets me and I see that my white skin glows eerily below the surface and then the moon is hidden by dark, ghostly clouds. I hear a gentle splashing nearby. A fish? Or, perhaps, the elusive loon who sits regally upon the water, but wobbles on legs set too far back as it tends to its chicks on land? I tread water, dipping up and then down, in time with the rise and fall of the lake. It reminds me of evenings after sex, when I lay my head on my husband’s chest and fall asleep to the rhythm of his breathing. I’m quiet. Waiting. The splash comes again, louder and closer, and a boat suddenly slides into view with a silhouette of a man, oars lifted, as if he too waits for something.
“Oh, hello. Sorry.” I can’t see the shock on his face, but I hear it in his voice as he realizes he’s come too close to me in the water; so close, in fact, that I must swim to avoid the boat as it glides in my direction. The moon slides out from behind a cloud.
“Nice evening for a swim,” I say and I know he can see that I wear nothing.
The man’s shadow shifts and I notice the child beside him. The child leans forward before the man gently guides him back, under his wing, sheltering him, or is it me, in my immodesty, that he wishes to protect.
“We thought you were a fish,” the child tells me. “A big one.”
I laugh. So does the man.
“Not a fish, I guess, but a mermaid. Good evening,” the man says and they row by.
I wait until I can no longer hear the oars as they part the water before I leave the lake behind, a mermaid no more.
I’ve lived near lakes and mountains, oceans and the desert, and while I miss this place, I’m not ready to settle yet.
I do not wait to dry, but dress quickly. I see the rock as I bend over to pull on jeans over wet thighs. I stand with it loosely held between my fingers and throw it. I cannot see it, so I listen as it skips once, twice, three times. I’ve more skipping to do myself, I think, as I walk away.
I shift to the left, holding the rock firmly between my fingers - fingers that wish to rebel, to force the rest of my body to stop its movement. My elbow is tucked in close to my waist. With a twist of my wrist at the end of the motion, I release it in the way my father taught me. The rock flies low for a second or two, its shadow playing on the dusky, golden water, before it touches down once, then again and again. Six skip-hops before it slows and sinks below the lake’s surface. And I think, if I had thrown the rock and it had only skipped once I would not miss it so.
I’m a wanderer, I fear. I look for the greener grass and somehow it has led me here after twenty years, back home to the lakes of Minnesota. To the place where my parents and grandparents began their lives. Where, in turn, my life began.
My mother thinks I move about because I’m a Virgo. “Virgos are nomadic,” she tells me. “That’s why you can’t stay still.”
I think it’s because when you grow up in one place you grow immune to its beauty. I spent my childhood yearning to see the mountains, craving a view of snowy peaks and frozen glaciers, rushing streams with delicate wildflowers. then, when I went to hike among them, I had the desire to see the ocean. The ocean with its currents and tide pools filled with colorful creatures. After the ocean, I longed for the desert. The pale pink desert and its brilliant orange sunsets. It was the desert that allowed me to recognize how much I missed the rich farmland, and more importantly, the lakes of my youth.
Far out beyond the dock, I hear a loon’s haunting call and I search the growing darkness for it. The sand beneath my feet is not fine, but coarse, eroded rocks from the ice age, ground first into pebbles and then into a granular mixture. I stroll along the bank in search of a spot in which to sit and think. To write prose in my head that I hope will not evaporate before I’m able to place it on paper. Prose that is so rich it melts in your mouth, it keeps you wanting more, like warm chocolate chip cookies.
I wait for inspiration and listen to the soothing sound of the water lapping against the shore. Across the water from me I see small pinpoints of light flare, but here, where I sit, there are shadows. I rise, moving with determination, and remove my clothing, careful to hide my underwear and bra between the folds of my shirt. Then, shivering in the night air, I walk into the lake. Water that refreshes with it coolness during the humid August day warms me in the evening air, and I hurry to be surrounded by it - to surrender to it. I dive below the surface and move, pushing the water from my face - pushing cobwebby thoughts from my mind. How many summer days as a youth had I relished the feel of the water as it moved past my face and across my limbs?
I rise up and the moon greets me and I see that my white skin glows eerily below the surface and then the moon is hidden by dark, ghostly clouds. I hear a gentle splashing nearby. A fish? Or, perhaps, the elusive loon who sits regally upon the water, but wobbles on legs set too far back as it tends to its chicks on land? I tread water, dipping up and then down, in time with the rise and fall of the lake. It reminds me of evenings after sex, when I lay my head on my husband’s chest and fall asleep to the rhythm of his breathing. I’m quiet. Waiting. The splash comes again, louder and closer, and a boat suddenly slides into view with a silhouette of a man, oars lifted, as if he too waits for something.
“Oh, hello. Sorry.” I can’t see the shock on his face, but I hear it in his voice as he realizes he’s come too close to me in the water; so close, in fact, that I must swim to avoid the boat as it glides in my direction. The moon slides out from behind a cloud.
“Nice evening for a swim,” I say and I know he can see that I wear nothing.
The man’s shadow shifts and I notice the child beside him. The child leans forward before the man gently guides him back, under his wing, sheltering him, or is it me, in my immodesty, that he wishes to protect.
“We thought you were a fish,” the child tells me. “A big one.”
I laugh. So does the man.
“Not a fish, I guess, but a mermaid. Good evening,” the man says and they row by.
I wait until I can no longer hear the oars as they part the water before I leave the lake behind, a mermaid no more.
I’ve lived near lakes and mountains, oceans and the desert, and while I miss this place, I’m not ready to settle yet.
I do not wait to dry, but dress quickly. I see the rock as I bend over to pull on jeans over wet thighs. I stand with it loosely held between my fingers and throw it. I cannot see it, so I listen as it skips once, twice, three times. I’ve more skipping to do myself, I think, as I walk away.