The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Twenty Six. {fiction}
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Her jeep was packed and she stopped at Al’s for one last cup of coffee before making the boat.
She stepped out into the sunshine of the dusty parking lot and squinted in the bright March air. Then crossed the porch through the screen door, and it slammed behind her as she moved across the creaky floor boards where she first met Jack Fletcher. She could almost see the ghosts of them, banging heads over the dropped carton of juice.
She shook her head, watching the movie of them. Girl, she thought, you have no radar for trouble.
She poured a lukewarm cup of coffee and doused it with soymilk. Then she winked at the girl behind the counter with the gleaming pentagram pendant.
“Sandra, right?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Amy,” she reminded her, pointing at herself. “Any Ostara plans?” she asked Sandra. The Spring Equinox was coming up and you could feel it, like a boiling beneath the surface of the earth, and Amy felt it in herself and others — an excitable, awakening energy. Like life was about to begin again.
The girl was taken aback for a moment.
“What?” Amy smiled, “do I have to be wearing a black pointy hat?”
“Ha,” Sandra blushed. “I don’t get to talk about it much in the open, is all,” she said. “Just a picnic at the beach. Maybe an egg hunt.”
“Beautiful,” Amy said.
“You?” she asked.
“Well, I’ll be in Maine, but I’ll definitely be outside,” Amy said.
“That’s all you have to do,” Sandra nodded, then she waved Amy’s two dollars for the coffee away. “Are you going to Maine forever?” she asked her.
“I don’t know,” Amy said. “I just know I’m going right for now.”
“You’re the girl Leanne looked after this winter, right?” she asked
“I sure am,” said Amy.
“You all better?”
Amy thought about that, about the last time she had been to Al’s, and when she met first Leanne, and she was circling her like a cat, waiting for someone to notice her. She hadn’t been sure if she were even visible anymore. She felt like a ghost in limbo, trapped between here and the afterlife.
She had hoped to die, but hadn’t the courage to do anything about it. And she’d been hungover, on a break from a Law and Order marathon.
She looked into Sandra’s eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.” There were power in those words, and they both felt them.
“Well, blessed be,” Sandra said.
“Blessed be,” Amy blushed.
The ferry line was short; there wouldn’t be long lines until the summer season roared in, when the island sagged and groaned beneath the weight of a population that swelled to nearly 150,000. She parked right on the white line at the front of Lane Six and waited to be ushered into the steerage of the boat. She switched off the jeep engine but left the radio on.
The Lumineers started singing, “I belong with you, you belong with me/You’re my sweetheart.”
“That’s what you think,” Amy thought. She wondered when she’d become a 400-year-old woman completely disenchanted with love. She looked in the mirror and still barely recognized herself. 10 pounds thinner, but no makeup, and the black hair dye had drained out and left her hair straw-like and mousy brown.
She reached for a hair tie that was circling the gear shift and pulled her hair from her face, wondering if she would ever feel sexy and desirable again, or if that time had passed and she shouldn’t have taken it for granted.
“Took a bus to Chinatown,” The Lumineers sang, “I’d be standing on Canal and Bowery.”
She remembered standing in front of the Bowery Ballroom venue a million times, under-dressed, over-made-up and teetering in heels, getting her name checked off the list for a show before she headed in to drink 10 free vodka cranberries in the air-conditioned dark backstage, make eyes with some guy from the opening band, leave with him, tangled up in a taxi, end up in an after-party bar, making out in a booth, then in his hotel room.
Then she’d go into work like that the next day and puke in a bathroom stall. Then she’d repeat it all over again that night.
She did that, of course, until that final time she walked into Bowery Ballroom, the night James played, before she got swept off on a tour she didn’t think would ever end.
She thought she’d found her ticket out of real life and responsibility; she thought she’d found her passage to Neverland. James and his band were Peter and the Lost Boys, and she happily played their Wendy. But even Wendy eventually grows up.
She wondered if love was the worst or the best thing that had ever happened to her. She realized Leanne was right. Often the worst things turn out to be the best things, and the best things can turn out to be the worst. She closed her eyes and slid down a little in the driver’s seat, when there was a rap on the window.
She rolled down the window. “I must have summoned you,” Amy said.
It was Leanne, wearing a long tattered grey sweater over her white nightgown, holding a crinkled paper bag.
“What do you call that look?” Amy asked.
“Witch chic,” Leanne snapped back.
“I love it,” said Amy.
Leanne reached through the window and cupped a turquoise laden hand tenderly beneath Amy’s chin.
She looked Amy in the eyes. “Fuck you,” she said.
Amy didn’t flinch. “Why?” she asked.
“Because all night I couldn’t sleep thinking about you, and I broke my own ‘No Goodbye’ rule just to see this face one more time. In case I never do again.”
Amy’s eyes watered a little.
“Danny said that’s impossible,” she told her. “She said once the island has a hold on you, it never lets you go. She said I’ll be back in four full moons or less.”
Leanne shrugged. “It’s a nice prediction, but no one really knows. Maybe you’re strong enough to break the spell. That’s what life is about, being strong enough to break the spells we’re under. But you know,” she said, “sometimes you gotta leave to come back.”
Amy kept an eye on the ferry attendant, the boat was leaving any minute. “I’m glad you came to say goodbye, Leanne,” Amy said. “It means a lot.”
Leanne shoved the paper bag through the open window.
“Betcha didn’t pack any healthy road snacks.”
“Nope,” Amy said. “I still haven’t been domesticated.” She raised the paper cup of coffee. “I’ve got this though.”
“Well, if you want more wrinkles and early menopause, drink up,” Leanne said.
Amy rolled her eyes. “No one wants either of those.”
“Gotta line up what you want with what you do.”
“Noted,” Amy said.
“Well, here’s some fresh carrots from the garden, with an apple and a little Tupperware tin of my latest batch of hummus.”
‘Thank you, Leanne.”
“Listen, you’ve learned a lot this winter. But you ain’t out of the woods yet, kid. It’s one thing to think about these things. To talk ’em. It’s a hell of another thing to walk ’em. It’s real fire-walking. And it ain’t for the weak.
Stuff is gonna come up; the gnarly shit, like fear and discomfort and conflict and rejection and abandonment, and you’re gonna wanna go back to sleep and react and fall back into blame and numbing and running and shit like that. Don’t do it. Call me.”
Amy felt defiant. “Well, I think I’m ready for the world again,” she said, as she watched the cars in the lanes ahead of her begin to roll forward.
“What I’m saying, kid, is it’s all a process. You learn this shit, you read all the books, you talk about it, you think you know it. But it’s just in your head, it’s not in your body yet. It’s easy in your head, in your room. It’s different when it’s living breathing staring you in the face.
And you’re gonna know what’s the right thing to do because it’s going to be the hard thing. It will probably be uncomfortable. So sometimes you’re gonna fuck up. And that’s okay. Get up and try again. It’s a practice. Like exercise.
You don’t just go to the gym once and then you’re fit. No, you gotta go everyday. You gotta practice love everyday. So just don’t be one of those assholes who just talks it and doesn’t walk it.”
Amy sighed and started the jeep again. “Thanks for one last loving bitchslap from the Goddess, Leanne.”
“You betcha.”
Amy reached for Leanne’s hand and squeezed it. “I’ll call you when I get there.”
“Do or don’t. Not gonna be waiting by the phone.”
“Okay,” Amy said, attempting to pull her hand away, but Leanne kept squeezing it tight.
“So,” Leanne said, clearing her throat, not looking at Amy, instead watching a flock of seagulls swarm over the boat.
“Yes?” Amy asked.
Leanne looked down at Amy then back over her shoulder.
‘”Hey Johnny,” she called, to an old man in a red pick up.
“Leanne,” Amy pressed.
“Well,” she said, turning back around and squinting into the sun. Then she let the words topple out of her mouth really fast, like apples toppling from a sack. “It’s just that if I ever had another daughter, I’d want her to be just like you,” she said, then she dropped Amy’s hand.
Amy felt a throb right in her mother wound, then a childlike glee that gobbled up the long-sought approval, and she felt part of her wanting to jump out of the car and be held. But she didn’t. Instead she rubbed her own heart where it ached, and she said to Leanne, “The old me wants to crawl into your lap and howl like a baby.”
Leanne looked around, as if suddenly she didn’t want to be seen.
“Please don’t,” Leanne said.
“I won’t, is the thing,” said Amy.
“That’s right, I forgot. You’re a goddamn grown-up,” Leanne said.
Amy laughed. “Yes. I done grew the fuck up.”
Then they both stared straight ahead, into the gaping mouth of the ship.
“You know what that always looked like to me?” Leanne asked Amy.
Amy sipped the coffee that had gone cold and shuddered it down with a grimace.
“What?”
“The belly of the whale.”
“It does,” Amy agreed. Then Leanne leaned down and kissed Amy’s cheek.
“Bon voyage,” she said. Amy smiled softly at her, then she put the car in gear and drove straight into the dark mouth.
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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