dreams

Being with Georgette #18

Rick Mallery12 Comments

 

Being with Georgette #18

Georgette said, “Look, the moon.”

The full moon reflected off the wide, lazy bend in the river out on the flats south of town. The lone remaining span of the old steel bridge cast the shadow of its trusses into the flow of brilliant moonlight.

I drove to the end of the new concrete highway bridge and pulled the truck onto the wide shoulder at the bridge head. The fishing access parking lot below teemed with trucks and headlights and men milling around.

“What’s everyone doing here?” Georgette asked.

“Fishing season opens at sunrise.”

“Let’s get up the hill before the moon moves.”

***

The moon had moved by the time we reached the gazebo at the top of the hill, but it had moved to a more advantageous view from that vantage point. It flooded the river with light.

Georgette sat at a picnic table and said, “When is sunrise?”

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“Can you make a fire?”

“No.”

***

Our third-grade teacher, Mr. Turner, had jumped from the old steel bridge on St. Patrick’s Day. Steel bridges and leprechauns always remind me of the Mr. Turner and the old battle axe who took his place the rest of that school year.

Georgette snored. Her head was in her arms crossed on the picnic table.

I shook her and said, “Let’s get you home. You have school in a few hours.”

She stood and looked at me, then she looked at the moon and then back at me. “I don’t like what that place did to you.”

“There was no place.”

“You’ve been gone almost a year.”

“I went to my own place.”

“And you didn’t write me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I wrote to you every day, but I didn’t know where to send the letters.”

“I’d like to read them.”

“I burned them on our birthday.”

***

We crossed the fishing access parking lot, now lit by the growing pink light of dawn. Fishermen stood on the river bank waiting for the sun to peek over the mountains.

“There’s one already fishing,” Georgette said.

“The game warden gets a head start.”

***

Georgette climbed into the truck and gave me a clumsy kiss as I held her door.

“What’s that for?”

“No one else would have gotten up so early to pick me up.

“Your parents would have.”

“But then they’d know where I was all night.”

“They’ll know anyway.”

“I’ll tell them I was with you.”

***

When we rounded the bend in the highway near the garden center, the silhouette of the mountain range loomed before us.

Georgette let out a barely audible gasp when the first rays of the sun broke over the crest of the mountains.

She said, “It’s like the signal of a fresh start, a new beginning.”

I hesitated a moment too long before saying, “And it happens every day.”

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<< Story #17 | Index of Stories | Story #19 >>

Originally published May 9, 2021

More about the author, Rick Mallery.

Being with Georgette #17

Rick Mallery20 Comments

The wedge of darkness framed by the cream-colored door jamb and cream-colored door meant nothing to me for many years–other than indicating the passage to the basement below.

Then yesterday Georgette asked me to take the basket of jarred pickles to the basement.

***

The light bulbs flickered when I switched them on, and then at once they went dark with a pop.

I descended the steep steps clasping the basket of warm pickle jars to my chest, slowly doubting the wisdom of storing the spare light bulbs in the basement.

Without incident I found the workbench and next to it the shelves lined with jarred pickles. Georgette wouldn’t let a summer pass without putting up a dozen jars of pickles, but why she never eats them is beyond me.

The light bulbs had disappeared. Or been moved. So too had the spare flashlight.

My eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that, aided by the slim light from above, I could put the jars on this year’s shelf and take a jar from last year to the basement couch. And there, crunching on last year’s pickles, I remembered another dark basement, another slim light from above, and another voice joining Georgette’s in the kitchen.

***

Georgette said, “Because he’s cracked, that’s why.”

Georgette’s mother said, “He’s been like that since the two of you were born.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“It never bothered you before.”

“He’s charming when we’re at home,” Georgette said, “But he needs to leave me alone at school. You know how the other girls talk.”

“The other boys too.”

Georgette said nothing to that. I could feel her blush from all the way down stairs.

***

“Don’t eat all the apricots,” a voice said nearby.

I froze.

A small lamp turned on, flooding the basement with a dim, shadowy light. Georgette’s father sat in his recliner, his headphones in his hands. The arm of the record player lifted and swung out of the way for the next record to drop onto the turntable.

I said, “But they are peaches.”

“So they are.”

Rows and rows and shelves and shelves of glass jars full of apricots, peaches, pears, strawberry jam, and pickles lined one wall of the basement.

“I don’t know why no one eats them, but Georgette’s mother can’t let a summer pass without putting up something or other never to see the light of day again.”

I screwed the lid back on the jar of peaches and put it on the side table next to the lamp. Then I climbed up on the workbench and out the basement window onto the damp grass outside.

The lamp went out in the basement, but the light in the kitchen remained on, with two silhouettes on the blinds talking back and forth at each other, the shorter one gesticulating wildly.

I was more careful after that about sneaking into their basement to spend the night on the spare sofa. I learned to wait until the lamp went out and a third silhouette appeared on the blinds before letting myself in.

***

I searched again for the light bulbs, but found my old turntable instead and a lamp that had caught my bedroom curtains on fire because I had removed the shade to wear as a hat for Halloween.

I plugged the lamp in and it instantly flooded the room with a dim and shadowy light, casting the baseballs, footballs, and basketballs on its shade against the walls, against the shelves, against the shelving unit with six dozen jars of pickles, a dozen minus one on each shelf. The minus one accounting for the one jar I eat when putting away the next year’s jars.

I put one of Georgette’s records on to play and ate another pickle.

And as I lay on the basement sofa, dreaming about peaches, I wished I had a pair of headphones to hold in my own hands. 

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<< Story #16 | Index of Stories | Story #18 >>

Originally published May 2, 2021

More about the author, Rick Mallery.

Being with Georgette #16

Rick Mallery14 Comments

The red kite rose above the crest of the bluff and quickly flew out of my view from the desk inside the sliding glass door of our hotel room. The kite’s tail remained suspended a moment, jangling its yellow and orange bow ties she had folded out of the stack of napkins from the continental breakfast bar.

My writing stopped of its own accord, and my crutches appeared in my hands, unbidden. However, dragging myself to the door and opening it took my own effort, and was my own achievement.

The air was stagnant, and the ocean but a flattened sheet of glass.

And yet the kite flew higher and higher.

I stopped short when the right crutch knocked chunks of sandstone over the edge of the bluff. Four seconds passed before they crashed against the rocks on the beach below.

She giggled like a school girl. 

Her long, flowing dress fluttered in the same non-existent breeze that lifted the kite.

She had powers beyond my comprehension.

* * *

Her dark, opaque eyes fixed on me with impenetrable mirth.

She spoke, but I heard nothing from that distance.

She spoke again, and I could almost read her lips.

She repeated herself, and I leaned forward. I leaned forward a little too far and tumbled into the blue sky, the sandy beach, blue sky, sandy beach, red kite, and beautiful woman.

I reached for the tail of the distant kite, wondering how long four seconds lasted when falling in a dream.

* * *

I was already sitting up when I awoke with a start. I held her night-time pony tail in my left hand, a finger looped in its yellow and orange bows.

Her dark, opaque eyes fixed on me with impenetrable mirth, and her lips moved silently. Then clearly and distinctly, but still from the depths of sleep, she said, “I know I’ve always been your other Georgette.”

I let go of her pony tail and said, “But I love you.”

“I know,” she said, “That’s what makes it okay.”

* * *

Unlike my original Georgette, my other Georgette only left me once, but that was for good–and there was nothing good about it. 

* * *

In the dark times after her disappearance, that dream of the kite recurred frequently: the only difference being that I always woke to an empty bed. She was no longer there to accuse me, but I did enough of that for myself.

Wherever I am when I find the sun sinking in the sky, I look for a red kite to suddenly draw me tumbling back into her opaque and impenetrable life. But the deepest part of me knows that won’t happen until I fall the full four seconds and wake up with a start in another kind of bed, where I can finally comprehend the full extent of her powers. And her judgment.

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<< Story #15 | Index of Stories | Story #17 >>

Originally published April 18, 2021

More about the author, Rick Mallery.

Reading Ulysses in Montana #610

Delving Yardbarker3 Comments

With no further expectation than to see the smile of a mile of black turtles all tuttled together on the rocks by the side of the sea, Abigail found the strength to look between her fear-clenched fingers.

No stranger to the throes of wild blue yonders, Abigail asked her grandfather if he knew of anyone else with such a disposition. Grandfather said not in the position you are in concerning the length of the tuttle of black turtles ascribing sense to the senseless mess of the sea. Abigail said but what would you do. Grandfather smiled a vagus smile and thought about his days in the land of the tuttles of black turtles and wondered whatever happened to that black-haired girl he knew who could pet the black tuttle of turtles in between herding the lions who played on the beach at sunset–in her dreams no less. Grandfather said all you can do is smile and while away the day in the comfort of the sun.

Abigail went out to play in the rain near the tuttle of black turtles by the sea, and she dreamed how they knew what the lions would do when the sun came out in a day or two.