The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Four. {fiction}
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Amy grabbed the paper bag of dinner from the passenger seat and pushed open the soft wood door of the cabin with a motorcycle-booted foot.
Light filled the quiet little space, it fell in from the windows and the french doors of the living room. It fell in glittering sheets like it was being poured from golden pitchers from heaven. Amy stepped into it, and in the light remembered God. Or at least, a meeting with a presence that felt like God.
She had been in Paris at seventeen years old, on a trip with the money her mother had left her when she died, and she had trekked up Montmartre in hiking boots and khaki shorts and a thin coating of sweat to Sacré-Cœur, because it was what one did, when they were in Paris.
As much as she hated doing what one did just because it was what one did, she didn’t know any other way. It felt like there was a way out she had yet to find, a secret door out of the mundane that beckoned yet stayed hidden.
She had entered the church on her tip toes and sat in a back pew alone; she had taken in its enormity, the marble, the stained glass, the flickering candles, the silence that felt anything but empty.
She had never felt very welcome or comfortable in church, always like a repenting daughter who could never quite please her father. But this church had felt different, she realized, even as she sat there, tapping her foot, like, okay, check this off the list, how long do I have to sit here?
But then, as if being moved by an invisible force, with an exhaustion that had been waiting in the wings for what felt like an eternity, she had closed her eyes and fell to her bare knees and she had started to cry. And then she started to speak — to whom, she had no idea.
“I know this is crazy,” she said. “I don’t know if you can hear me. If anyone is there. But I’m so scared. I’m alone and I’m so scared. Can you tell my mother I miss her? Can you tell my mother I love her? Mom, are you there? I miss you. Will you come back?”
And the Presence came — a calming energy that filled her heart, that raised flesh bumps on her skin, that slowed her tears, that made her feel she just might not die, that things just might be okay. And that was the meeting. But it wasn’t the first meeting, it was the second.
The first had been the day her mother had left the earth. She had come home from the hospital in her mother’s clothes, in her black silk pants and her blue and black striped sweater and no underwear or bra, which, as a young girl, felt radical.
No one had done laundry in the house in weeks, in the final descent; none of the people who came by to help had remembered, when faced with the bigness of the end. Little things, the everyday details, shattered in the face of death. Who could think of laundry in a time like this?
Amy thought maybe she’d been in that same emergency mode, ever since. She wanted only to wear her mother’s clothes that still smelled like her, for the rest of her life.
She would sit in her mother’s closet, surrounded by her shoes, smothered by all of her dresses still smelling of Tresor, and slide the door closed, till it got so dark she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face.
It was her personal tomb, or maybe, a womb, a dark safe place, where she could still be with her mother, and she wanted to stay there forever. Sometimes, when things got too much, Amy still sat in closets and closed the door, like waiting out life in a war bunker.
That first night home from the hospital, after her mother’s last breath, Amy had walked up the stairs to her bedroom and fallen back on the bed and begun to wail.
And when the wailing stopped, when she had nothing left, she had just stared at the ceiling, in slack-jawed awe of the pain that was ripping her apart, like a soldier wounded on a battlefield, like a patient on an operating table.
And that was the first time she had felt a presence that she couldn’t see. And it was something she hadn’t told anyone about, because it was the kind of thing that made one seem crazy.
But she had been lifted up, the way you pick someone up off the ground — carefully, but sturdily, one hand under the knees, one hand on the upper back, in that place where it feels like our wings once were.
And she had laid there, suspended between the bed and the ceiling, suspended between this world and some other one. And it had only been for a moment, but she had remembered it ever since.
And for some reason she couldn’t understand, she was reminded of it by the light that fell in this rented cabin on the cliff.
She stood in the living room, where a driftwood coffee table and a white cotton couch sat on a peach and blue Turkish rug. To the right was the kitchen, with a small silver island on a dark wood floor, and a big porcelain white sink sat under a window over looking the sea.
She walked up to the sink and opened the window, and she could hear the sea sighing in and out like someone breathing.
She set the brown bag of dinner on the white marble kitchen counter, and walked to the sliding door at the back of the living room. She looked out onto a porch with two soft beige recliners, and past the porch, just that endless horizon of possibility.
The sun was sinking across the water like a peachy egg yolk. Her therapist was right. It was all anyone could ever need. She flicked on the kitchen radio to the local station, where John Hiatt was singing Lipstick Sunset.
The best radio stations had an uncanny, Truman Show way of soundtracking the moment.
She uncorked the wine from Al’s, and found a brown and blue pottery mug in the cupboard. She poured the light pink rosé in the dusty mug. Dirt never bothered her. It was cleanliness, where you could see everything down to the bone, where you could see your own reflection, that scared her.
She took the mug and the bottle out onto the porch, and she lay down on a recliner. Recently, when she went to sleep, she half hoped she could sleep forever; that would be the way to go, just sail off to sleep and never wake up.
When she closed her eyes, she had visions of her own burial. Of herself inside a coffin, lifeless and stiff, all her chances gone. She saw a handful of people standing around her grave, throwing dirt on her coffin the way they had on her mother’s — a traditional but terribly cruel thing for a child to watch.
And it didn’t even seem strange, to see that, to see her funeral. That felt like exactly like what was happening.
The Next Day.
Amy opened her eyes to the morning. She was in fetal position on the white couch, with a gray chenille blanket over her shoulders; her bare feet had burrowed under the cushions.
She needed coffee, and something to eat to soak up the alcohol. But there was nothing in the fridge, there had never been a full fridge in any house she was ever in.
She groaned. She had to go into town, she had to, as Joni Mitchell sang, Belong to the living. She pulled a black fedora over the rat motel of her hair and she wore what she had slept in — James’ band hoodie and tight black jeans.
She didn’t wash her face, black makeup was smeared around her eyes like she was going to a Day of the Dead party. But if her current life was a party, it was the worst party she had ever been to. And she had been to a lot of parties.
Her friend, Monica, a celebrity stylist and fashion writer, was always saying things to her no one else would dare say. Because when people did tell Amy the truth, she had a way of bringing the pain. She pulled that card that made people afraid to tell her the truth.
She would turn hysterical and defensive, and lash out, even though beneath her anger was only fear — fear of abandonment, fear of not being loved. But that was a dangerous card to play, because eventually they stopped telling you the truth. And then you were all alone with your lies.
But Monica was a tough Jewish girl from the city, and she wasn’t scared of Amy. They’d been in the trenches at Rolling Stone together, and they knew who each other were beneath the masks of designer clothes and fancy magazines and famous acquaintances.
And truly, as much as her ego hated it, Amy longed for the truth. The truth made her feel momentarily alive and she had this feeling that’s all anyone longed for, to feel like they were really alive. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the last person you haven’t scared away,” Monica had said. “Do I get a prize?”
Monica and Amy had spoken on the ferry over to the island; Amy was on the top deck halfway across the sea, and all she could see was blue. She had the phone tucked into her neck and she was drinking an airplane bottle of cheap chardonnay she had bought at the ship’s food counter.
She was watching families and lovers cuddle together for windswept vacation photos when Monica had said, “Don’t get mad, but…”
Amy inhaled, Monica continued.
“I would be super bummed to be headed to a New England island for the winter. I mean, our chances in the real world of finding a man are hard enough, let alone in a Narnic frozen tundra.”
“But I don’t want love right now,” Amy had said, slugging from the little plastic bottle. “Love almost killed me.”
“Well, I do, and everyone does, so I think you’re lying, but I wasn’t finished. I was going to say, in your case I actually think it’s good. It’s like the Universe has grounded you. You’ve been sent to your proverbial room. I mean, think about your life. Your first job was Rolling Stone, your first interview was Mick Jagger and your first boyfriend was a Smashing Pumpkin. And then you were married to a rock star, and you have literally been at a party for the last ten years of your life. Not just A party, the after-party, and then, normally, the after-after party, where you weren’t not having sex in bathrooms with a substance up your nose.”
“What’s your point?” Amy asked.
“That maybe this is good. Maybe you need a time out.” Monica had said matter-of-factly.
Amy sighed. “Well, it feels anything but good right now.”
“Give it time,” Monica said.
“I don’t know how much of that I have.”
She heard Monica sigh. She’d been a good friend, to hang in through Amy’s armageddon. As the benefits of being Amy’s friend had died down to nothing — no great parties, no guest list access, very little laughter — her phone rang less and less. Yet Monica had hung in there, without the perks.
But now, nudging her to save her life was pushing it.
“I have to go fit Lana Del Rey for her Nylon cover,” Monica said. “You’ve got this.”
“If ‘this’ is the cover of People on my divorce, then yes, I’ve got this.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I can. I’ll check up on you.”
“If I don’t answer, I’m dead,” Amy had said.
“Ugh, I can’t,” said Monica. Amy could feel her roll her eyes. “Look. This morning, there was a man on the Today show, he said something and I totes thought of you. His family had survived a hurricane and lost everything. Even their dog. He said, like, ‘in the darkest of times, you can either let it destroy you or let it create you.’ So maybe, maybe try to let this create you instead of destroy you. Think of your life as a blank slate.”
“How?” Amy had asked, desperate, scrounging for hope outside of herself, the tears coming again, and she didn’t know if she was crying for herself or the lost dog in the storm.
“Well,” Monica paused. “Maybe write that book…”
“Don’t mention the book.”
“Well, my therapist would say, if you can’t talk about it maybe there’s something there.”
“Thank you, Monica. And Monica’s therapist. And the Hurricane Survivor Guy on the Today Show.”
“You’re welcome,” she had said. “From all of us. Shit, I seriously gotta go. Love you.”
Amy fumbled for the keys to the jeep and swung open the door. The Band’s The Weight, which just happened to be her mother’s favorite song, was playing on the radio, and she cried. Again.
She wondered if most people cried when they realized the stark difference between what they had dreamed their life would be like as a child and what it had become.
Something was happening — life had cornered her here at the edge of the world so she might finally face everything she had been running from.
Her whole body shuddered from the tears. Well, this is getting old, she thought to herself, wiping the inky black deluge away with the back of her hand.
She hadn’t cried so much since she was a baby, but back then someone would stick a pacifier in her mouth and rock her. Now there was no one around to touch her at all. This is why, she thought, she took all those pills. To suppress the river of tears that was always pushing at the dam within her.
Well, now that dam was officially broken.
“Fuck,” she whispered. “This hurts.” She could see her mother in white jeans dancing to The Band in the glow of the living room lamp. She could see James at the grill on their honeymoon here on the island, smiling at her like they had found the answer, unlocked life’s secret.
She could see that there was no victim and there was no villain. Just a tragic love story. It had been so much easier to play victim. But what if it was just really, really sad and there was no answer, no one to blame? Fuck.
She chugged along the dirt road until she got to Al’s, where she stood in the icy freeze of the dairy cooler for a good five minutes. Did she want eggs? Did she like eggs? Were they cage-free? Had the chickens been happy?
Decisions were never her strong point. They took knowing what she wanted, knowing where she wanted to go. For years, she had left them up to James. Now she was stranded at sea, no one to captain her ship.
A voice croaked behind her.
“You going to pick something, or wait till something just picks you?”
Amy jumped and turned to see an older woman glaring at her.
“We’ve got about one ice cap left for those poor polar bears to stand on,” the woman said, her long white hair flowing over ample breasts that pushed up beneath a worn grey cashmere sweater.
“Sorry,” Amy said.
“Don’t apologize, that’s wasting more time. Just do something.”
Suddenly Amy grabbed a carton of eggs, shredded cheddar cheese and some Half and Half for coffee. It felt good — no, mildly triumphant. Like progress had been made. Like she had moved her own boat. Or at least, stuck a hand in the water outside of her stalled boat and begun to row.
She turned around, but the woman was gone.
This is an ongoing series from a forthcoming fiction novel by Sarah Durham Wilson of DOITGIRL.
Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Transformation of Amy Lunaro’.
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