The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Eleven. {fiction}
{source}
Leanne had sent her off wrapped in warm white towels fresh from the dryer, smelling of lavender.
She had one on her head, one around her body, and she drove home that way, blasting the heat and Bonnie Raitt on the local radio. She almost wanted to get pulled over, just for the story of it. Stories like that are what people who really live tell, she thought.
“I got pulled over on a full moon in a storm, wearing nothing but a witch’s terrycloth towel, and had to explain, that I had been dancing naked in the rain.”
But she made it home safely, and poured herself some Kava tea, and then she ran a hot bath. She still had three hours before she had to be at Danny’s for the moon circle.
“Go home, and mix some olive oil with rock salt,” Leanne had said as she shooed her out of the door.
“Smoothe it all over your skin, then slough it off in the bath. And bathe yourself with the gentleness you would a newborn. When you rise, let the old self run down the drain, and let her go with love and forgiveness.”
She made the special salve and rubbed it all over herself gently. She put on Nina Simone in the living room stereo and she turned her up so loud that Nina’s haunting soul filled the house.
She turned off the lights and lit the candles in the bathroom, and when she stepped into the tub, Nina was singing Plain Gold Ring. She felt like she was part of an ancient ritual of rebirth, full of hope for her new life.
Immersed deep in the oily, milky water, submerged but for her nose and mouth, she could only hear her heartbeat and breath.
She was remembering a watsu treatment she had done in Hawaii when James had played a festival there, of being held by a large Hawaiian man in a big dark tank, just limp in his arms, and he had said, “This is how God holds you, you can let go now,” when she heard her phone receiving a text in the bedroom.
Every bone in her body knew who it was from. She rose from the womb of her bath and made a swampy path to where her phone lay on the bed.
“Hey,” James wrote.
“Hi.”
Maybe this shivering solitude of a nightmare is over, she thought. Maybe he’s coming back.
“You should know before you hear it,” he said.
“Hear what?”
“Cassandra is pregnant.”
The phone fell from her hands and the glass face shattered when it hit the wood floor. She fell, soaking wet and naked, into the bed. When she caught her breath, she reached for more, more pain from him, despite the little girl within her calling out, “No, please no.”
She was hanging halfway off the bed as she slid the phone toward her with her index finger and slowly, with sickness in her throat, asked, “Are you marrying her?” Her fingers trembled as she typed.
With baited breath and the story of them reeling in the movie of her mind, every memory and every dream they had, and all the hopes she’d stored, that she would get her shit together and then he’d come back, she waited.
It felt like seven days passed.
And then:
“Probably,” he wrote, with all the tenderness of a serial killer.
Nina’s crucified heart was moaning through You Can Have Him, when Amy pulled the covers over her head and sobbed like a woman at a funeral for her dreams.
As if through a black mourning veil, she saw The Story of Them and she watched herself bury it, she watched herself throw dirt on its casket, and then watched the casket as it was lowered into the dark flesh of the ground.
And when she came up for air from the visions, gulping through the rivers of tears she whispered, “Take care of him, Cassandra. Please take good care of him.”
Two hours later, with Danny’s moon circle swiftly approaching, she wished time would just freeze so she wouldn’t have to make a decision about going. The clock above her bed ticked away, loudly, impatiently, like that hourglass of our lives Leanne had talked about.
It waited rudely, tapping its thin second-hand while she struggled to make a decision.
But she never did make one. And then time made one for her. And she thought, that indecision was a decision in itself, that way. It was almost as if indecision was like deciding not to live, or not to move forward, at least. But moving forward was living.
And then she realized, when you don’t make a decision, time makes one for you, and you don’t get that choice back.
Defeated by time, she dug for the remote under the covers and clicked on the TV. Then she rolled over and stared at the wall. She felt pain for the loss of the not-yet-quite-born friendship with Danny, but she couldn’t move. Grief sat on her like a twelve-million-pound elephant.
Night fell as Olivia Benson interrogated another sex offender in the cold grey room of the SVU precinct. She’d seen the sexy brazen detective hand it to about five bad guys since she had gotten into bed.
She fell asleep as Benson banged the table with her fist and said, “She was someone’s daughter,” to the greasy angry perp in the tan Member’s Only jacket who hissed under his breath, “Yeah, well seems like everyone in this world belongs to someone or someone belongs to them. Everyone but me. For once I wanted something that was mine.”
I get it, she thought, repulsing herself for relating to the sex offender in the pervy jacket.
Ten hours later, she woke to a knocking at the door. The TV blinked across the room, there was an infomercial on, a woman with dead eyes was selling more plastic for the landfills. She jumped up in her black lace underwear and scrambled for a sweater on the chair.
It was Danny, with a large wicker basket draped over her arm. The basket was full of eggs, green peppers, a loaf of bread, and two Tupperware containers. With her long brown braids and over-sized red fleece, she looked like Little Red Riding Hood.
Amy had never seen anyone in real life carry a basket laden with goods, and opened the door apologizing.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, wrapping the frayed black cashmere sweater tighter against the morning chill. “I…”
Danny just moved on past her, towards the kitchen. She walked gracefully, like someone stepping lightly over clouds.
“The girls laid some good ones this morning,” she said, gingerly removing five large brown eggs from a red and green plaid hand towel. “And Jay-Z and Beyonce gave us fresh chèvre,” she said, peeling open the Tupperware and revealing a large scoop of soft white cheese. “Those are our goats.”
“And this bread just came out of the oven. Feel it, it’s still warm.” She put it against Amy’s face, looking into her eyes for the first time since she’d arrived so unexpectedly. Amy closed her eyes and smelled something like the most warm loving home she’d only ever visited.
She watched as Danny whipped the eggs and poured them, sizzling into a pan, chopped the green peppers and then dropped them and the cheese into the bubbling yellow liquid. She opened the window over the sink and looked out to the water.
She stopped for a moment, closing her eyes and breathing it in. Then she sliced the loaf and toasted the bread. She moved around the kitchen like she was born in it.
“So, I would have called you, I just don’t have your number…” Amy said, still trying to apologize as Danny split the omelet in two and buttered the toast.
“Did you make that too?” she asked of the butter.
Danny laughed. “No, I bought this.” She handed Amy a plate. “I assumed you wouldn’t have any.”
Amy nodded. “Astute.”
“You look hungry,” Danny said, taking her in, stopping at her hips. “Nice undies. I should spice it up in the bedroom. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing underwear I’ve had since eleventh grade.” And then, softly but firmly, she said, “Eat.”
“Thank you,” Amy said.
“You like to cook?” She asked Amy.
“I can slice open a pizza box pretty well.”
Danny shook her head. “That’s not going to nourish you. You’re starved.”
Amy looked at her like she was crazy. “Um, I don’t think so.”
“For nourishment. For life. For your own love. For real deep comfort. You have to learn to receive it. You have to know you’re worthy, of receiving it.”
Amy forked the fresh eggs into her mouth.
“Oh my God. These are the best eggs I’ve ever had.”
Danny nodded. “Eat things straight from the earth. From the Mother. She’ll nourish you.”
They sat on the bar stools at the silver kitchen island. Amy crossed her legs and her right foot tapped nervously against the wood of the island.
“Should I put on some music?” Amy asked.
“I’m okay with silence,” Danny said. “I like it.”
“Oh,” she said, putting her fork down and turning to her basket. “I brought you one more thing,” she dug into its endless depths.
“A lamp?” Amy joked.
Danny looked up at her.
“You know, Mary Poppins.”
“It’s a journal,” she said, handing her a small leather bound book. “I know you used to write, well I read that… in People. Isn’t that how you and Jimmy Jackson met? You interviewed him? You were a writer?”
“Yes,” she whispered. Her heart remembered with a raw howl, like a wolf who’d lost its pack, crying out to be found.
“Maybe you could, I don’t know, start by writing down your dreams.”
Amy took the gift. “Thank you,” she said. “You mean, from sleep? I don’t really have those. Well I do, but I’d rather not remember them.”
“Well, what about the ones you have for your new life?”
Amy shrugged. “Gosh, I don’t really have those either. I feel sort of… dreamless.”
“Oh. Like that place between sleeping and waking. I think that’s kinda where you are. You know, in your life.”
“That feels right,” Amy said. “You’re very wise. This island seems to be overflowing with wise women.”
“We breed here. By the dozens. It’s thick with witches.”
“There’s that word again,” Amy said.
“We’re just aligned with the earth and the moon. We listen to our internal wisdom. We’re one with nature. Nothing scary about it.” She finished her toast and licked the butter from her strong fingers.
“Sick of people thinking that there is. Some people pray to God, some to Goddess, some to both. Me,” she shrugged, “both.”
“I do have one dream,” Amy said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, not a dream. Just an interest. I saw a really, really handsome man the other day.”
“You left your house?” Danny smiled.
“I deserved that. I’m so sorry about last night… I can explain.”
“Nah,” said Danny. “I know you’re in your… situation.”
“I saw him at Al’s. His name…” something told her not to say it, but she did so anyway. “His name is Jack.”
A darkness passed over Danny’s eyes.
“Shoulda known.”
“You know him?”
Danny shot her a look, like “Come on.”
“Dumb question, huh?”
“You were here what, two weeks, and we met? There’s just two thousand of us in the winter. Only a few of us under fifty. Funny thing about people thinking they’re coming to hide here. If you wanna hide, stay in one of your anonymous big-ass cities.
Everyone knows everyone here and everyone sees all. I think, really, people come to truly see themselves and be seen, despite what they tell themselves.”
“Did you grow up with him?” She couldn’t contain her curiosity about Jack.
“You could say that. I’m not gonna tell you to not t go for Jack Fletcher. I’m just gonna tell you, be careful. And, you know, you should be your dream. Not some guy.”
“You’re absolutely right. I’m great at distractions.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what did happen with Jimmy, or James, I mean?”
“It’s okay. Well, he said… he said ‘I never came true.’” Amy no longer had an appetite. She pushed her plate away, pulled her hair back from her face and longed for a big dewy glass of white wine.
“Well, what the hell does that mean?” Danny asked.
“Like,” Amy breathed in deep and wrapped her arms around herself. “I didn’t feel real to him.”
“What, like not a human?”
“I guess not.” She looked up at Danny. “You’re… you’re a good human,” she told her. “Coming over here, with breakfast, checking in on me. That’s, that’s maybe one of the nicest things someone’s done for me in a really long time. I don’t know how to do things like that.
I’ve always thought people like you were…”
“People like me?” Danny asked.
“You’re real. People like you, who do things for others, who know how to really live, you’re more real than me.”
Danny reached over and pinched Amy lightly on her arm.
“You’re real, Amy.”
Amy smiled.
“I don’t feel very real.”
“I just live how my mother taught me. She taught me to be humble, have compassion, forgive, reach out to people in need, let God fill my heart with love. I’m not saying it’s easy, I’m just saying it’s something I try to practice. Being human is a practice. Love is a practice.
I think being human is practicing love.”
“Maybe I don’t know what love is.”
“Everyone knows what love is. It’s what we deeply are and what we deeply long for.” Danny got up and took their plates to the sink, and began to wash them in slow meditative movements. She did everything slowly, sensually, like she relished being in her body.
“So… why didn’t you show last night?” she asked, keeping her back to Amy.
“I… I heard from James.”
“Oh really?” Danny placed the dishes in the drying rack and moved on to the pan.
“He and his new girlfriend are pregnant. They’re… probably getting married.”
“Ouch,” Danny said. She dropped the sponge into the sink and swirled back around. She looked Amy right in the eyes.
“Look, I know this happened just a few months ago. But I just, I just hope you don’t make this ‘your story’. Do you know what I mean? If it becomes your story, you get stuck in it. It defines you. Then no other wonderful stories take place.
You’ll plug every new guy into the character of Jimmy and you’ll be stuck in an endless spin cycle of being left by Jimmy, even though it will be a different face. Same story. Same, ‘I got left and everyone is always going to leave me’ bullshit fucking story.
I know, because my sister Emily did that. And it’s been so painful to watch. Her husband left her, and now she’s been telling herself and everyone else the same story for five years. It was awful, yes, but she got like, addicted to it… it’s like she became it. Like she’s under a spell.
He, he moved on. She didn’t. He’s alive, he’s living. She… not so much. She’s trapped under glass, like Sleeping Beauty.”
Amy felt punched in the stomach with resonance. She was terrified. And then she said quietly, “I don’t want to do this for five more years.”
“Well,” Danny said, “that’s up to you. So learn what you gotta learn, so you don’t keep doing what you did, but don’t forget to keep living, don’t stop taking chances. Don’t keep telling yourself this story of victimhood and rejection.”
Amy gulped. “It’s funny, well not funny, I just can’t think of a better word. But for a moment last night, there was a second I thought he wanted me back and I wouldn’t have to do all this… work on myself. And all the work of being alone.”
Danny sighed, and rested her elbows on the island and her head in her hands.
“If you don’t mind me saying…”
“Oh no,” Amy said.
“What?”
“Just that that’s how a lot of things you don’t want to hear begin.”
“Ah,” said Danny, but she carried on anyway. “It sounds like things went south in your marriage when you stopped… doing the work. Caring for yourself. And being true to yourself and following your dreams. You know you have to do that with or without a relationship, right?”
“It’s just that he was…”
Danny interrupted her. “As long as you’re talking in the past, you’re living in the past. And the present is the only place anything is really happening. There’s no Someday, Amy. There’s really only Today.”
Amy shut up, and then found herself lost in Danny’s sea-green eyes and pillows of lips. She was something from a dream. “You really are amazing to look at,” she told her. “Like crazy pretty. You’ve seriously never modeled?”
Danny smiled and began to pack up her Red Riding Hood basket. “Nice transition. I have to go help Ray with the animals.”
“Right,” Amy said, standing up from the bar stool. “I should go running. Thank you. I really can’t thank you enough.”
“De nada,” said Danny, crossing through the living room as Amy followed her. She turned to Amy in the door way. She leaned in for a hug and Amy received it. Danny was so… warm.
“The truth is,” Danny said, pulling away and reaching for the door, “I did model. But with all that attention on me, I became a real asshole. You think you want it, but really, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Everyone treated me like I was so special, and then I began to feel… different.
And it got really lonely, actually. I got really isolated on my stupid fucking pedestal. For a moment I forgot, well, you know, how to be human. And I forgot that I was just like everyone else. And that being like everyone else wasn’t the bad news, it was the good news.”
“I knew it,” Amy said, “that you modeled, I mean.”
“And so are you, Amy. You’re just like everyone else, too. And that’s the good news.”
“You know,” she said, “you can’t turn your back on yourself just because someone turned their back on you. You’ve still gotta hold your own hand. Always.”
“Thank you,” Amy said. Danny walked out of the door, and the wind was blowing cool and soft through the trees, whose leaves had turned gold and red, never so beautiful as right before they died. Somehow that felt cruel, that they couldn’t stay like that forever.
And then Danny stopped and turned around.
“Oh… one trick to being human,” she said. “Leave the house and let people see you and let them love you just as you are. Even when you’re not feeling perfect and your life isn’t perfect. Because if you wait for that, you’ll never leave the house and you’ll never let yourself be loved.
And then your life will be over and you won’t have lived. All because some dude left you.”
She fished her keys out of the pocket of her red fleece. “Okay, enough lecturing. You can tell me to shut up. I get on my horse sometimes.”
“No,” Amy asked, “What else?”
“Huh?”
“How else do I be a better human?”
Danny opened the door to her enormous grey truck and put the basket on the passenger seat.
She turned the key in the ignition and the radio softly hummed. She turned back to Amy, standing waiting in the door way.
She thought for a moment.
“Okay, well. Think of others, more than you think of yourself. And don’t just think about them, take action to show them you’re thinking of them. Call them up and say ‘I love you’ and then tell them why. Send people cards on their birthdays and when the big things happen. Death, weddings, births.
Show up when they are sick. Bring soup. Be humble. Always. Be grateful. Always. Stay curious about everyday and everyone. Believe in people, they really are genuinely good. Believe in miracles. Give to the poor. Let the world break your heart. And then do something about it.
Remember, you’ll be a speck of dust sooner than you can blink. Be of service. Be a sensible person. Use your words, and don’t be nervous.”
“Hey!” Amy laughed. “Now you’re just quoting Medicine for the People.
“Ha, you got me,” Danny laughed. “They’re playing on the radio.” She leaned in and turned up Manifesto.
“Dance,” she said, moving her hips to Nahko. “And don’t be so serious!” she raised her voice with her arms over her head. “If you’re not having fun, you’re missing the point. Let joy be your North Star. Only from a place of love can we serve.”
They shook it together a little like that, Amy only a bit more clothed than she was the day before, dancing in the open air. They laughed together in the wind. Then Amy breathed in deep and felt serene, she felt like her self, whoever that was.
“I love the things you say to me as you’re leaving, Danny.”
“That’s when the best stuff seems to happen, you know? Right at the last minute. It’s why you can’t ever give up.”
Danny jumped in her truck and pulled away, beeping at the end of the driveway. Amy walked back into the empty house. It was too quiet. She wanted Danny back. She noted in herself the shift from wanting to be alone to wanting company. That felt… human.
She switched on the radio to fill the void.
Tracy Chapman was singing.
“I had a feeling that I belonged.
I had a feeling, that I could be someone.”
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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