Incomplete fiction

The cloud cast years of my youth can be found in few photographs as, even we, spent little, sometimes none. My legs were thin, tiny little girl legs never touching. I sat at the dinner table knees knocking, a valley in between, and my blonde curls hung heavy on my shoulders like the branches in the peak of August outside our summer home with the punished hills and all their grass-forsaken land.

My memories of the city before the siege feel far away, the coast of an imperial colony I have never visited, only seen in brochures and on tea tin labels. The streets all cobbled, all bustling. The flowers blooming from windowsill pots. Sunlight streaming into my eastward window on mornings when kitchen sounds trickled down the hall--Father lacing his boots up tight and Mother ladling breakfast onto our plates, the ceramic bowl swanning under the faucet.
In the threshold to my bedroom there lay a loose floorboard. I would take a wide step over it when sneaking to the bathroom late at night after hours of reading under the blankets my father's boyhood adventure books, the pages all humid jungles with my hair stuck to neck, mosquitos in my ear and a brave native leading the way through the fleshy thicket with his machete chopping. This specific memory may have been born in a movie I saw later in life, but time has made it, like so many other things, only mine.

My mother grew up in the estate far past the railroad lines, near the southern sea, and it was there we stayed out the war. I recall only the fragments of how we arrived there.
Father left his job with the Louvre--his last days were spent emptying its halls. My mother and I would bring him lunch--a ham and butter sandwich with an orange, the last of our reserves--and instead of playing hide and seek in the sculptures, I sat back against the bare wall of the Greek wing. Men wearing thick black belts around their middles circled Winged Victory and wiped their brows as even more men made way planking wood down the stairway to her throne. And then she was inched down that steep incline, no head, no arms, only wings trembling, each thousand particle a threat. Father stood over me, watching the descent from over his shoulder. Mother gasped as the statue almost toppled all together and Father, his eyes closed, as if to remember her in her place, turned to us and said, "Surely, we will never see her again."

Sirens sang through the afternoon hours, and my days were spent listless. It had been weeks since the schools were shut and the battle line was drawing nearer when Father pulled in front of our house in his big black car rather than his bicycle. My mother came into the foyer were I was lying on the ground, content with watching the rainbows refracting inside the chandelier above. She held my camel colored suitcase in hand and told me, "Colette, you must be a good little girl. You will be staying with your Aunt Therese in the outer city for the weekend, and then you will get on a great big train and come out to the country. Your father and I will be at the station to pick you up, you understand?" She said, "Colette, do you understand? You must be a good little girl for us now." Mother had the hiccups that day. I remember the sun warm in the kitchen as Father and I sat at the table, the boiling water on the stove the only conversation. Mother wiped the counter in large sweeping circles, weeping and hiccuping with her mouth closed.

My aunt's thick black hair sunk far past her freckled shoulders. Her house was much smaller than ours and the backyard had a brown and white rooster. When I arrived she sliced a baguette and held out a piece to me. "Colette, has your mother told you about--" she said before trailing off, her gaze focused some place out the window, skirting the horizon. "Something terrible is happening in the world, Colette," she said. "We must pray to Mother Mary." And then Aunt Therese placed my hand into hers, snaked with veins and loose with age.
Mother Mary, lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth. Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace. Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.

Aunt Therese's eyes were shut tight for a long time after she had stopped speaking. "Colette," she said. "You know the Hail Mary, yes?"

Before I could answer, she was frantic. Aunt Therese took both of my hands, pulled them into her lap and unloaded a white Rosary into my palms and then pressed them shut, pressed them so hard that the beads made pockets in my skin.

"You will be safe where you're heading--"

"Safe from what," I asked but she didn't answer.

"If those awful men come to your house with their sharp tongues, I want you to stay completely still and silent. I want you to take these beads and say your prayers. Please Colette. You must."

"I will," I promised and with that Aunt Therese walked out into the backyard, away from her uneaten bread, and began to lay out the rooster's feed.

Other than that, all I can see is the view from my train seat and her long thin arm waving farewell from the platform below. The land was flat and then it lolled and the stations in between had bricks both red and grey. With every stop, passengers would leave the train but none would enter. The attendant wore a black hat with gold trim and served chocolates with my tea. The corners of his eyes folded when he smiled, sneaking the treat into my tiny hands. Silver stubble gilded his jaw-line. My father would have been his friend.

Last stop. End of the line! rang in my ears as the conductor made his slow way down the aisle. I climbed onto the seat and pulled my suitcase down. Outside the train my mother stood waiting in a pink dress with white lace on her hands. "Oh, Mama!" I said, so tired and happy with the end of my travels. She carried my suitcase to the car with her arm around my shoulders. The station sat beside a field of grass long as my legs and heavy under the wind, saturated with the sun's light. Father started the engine and I climbed into the back seat and we drove into the sea of orange waves, the setting sun, the dark of the night.

I woke in my father's arms as he carried me from the car to the porch. The moon was bright enough in the country to light acres between the house and the sea. All possible futures stretched before us in this new home. Mother said, "Everything will be fine ," tussling my hair as Father opened the front door. My eyes sat heavy with sleep and I climbed into the master bed, ready to dream, to feel everything fine.

In the morning Mother showed me what would be my room. "Now Colette, I must tell you. You will be sharing your room." Following her up the circling staircase, I imagined a young nurse on leave in the country, or perhaps a distant relative holed up at the estate. Flashes of late night talks, morse code across the floorboards, learning how to braid, scandalous stories of dance halls full of soldiers--all things I lacked as an only child all fell to the floor when Mother opened the door to a room empty besides the furniture and a painting.

There she sat. Mother introduced her as Grande Odalisque. The gentle slope of her bare back, the sad smile hinted by her eyes, the feathers in her hand. Mother said it was our family's job to protect her, it was father's duty. She seemed obscene, a spine impossibly long, but I liked her. She could listen to my stories and tell me hers. Someday I would look like her, hips wide and waist nipped, all the unknowns kept inside my lips.


The Odalisque, born Martine, sleeps with her bed pushed up against the window. Instead of drapes she keeps thin red silk, samples she found in market stalls, layered across the glass. The red intensifies the morning sun and wakes her up, brow slick from sweat and cheeks flush. Martine, the odalisque, is a hot blooded girl. Her mother used to say Good morning my hot blooded girls as she pulled off the covers each blue-black morning in their small country home. The odalisque rises with the sun and the grumble of her stomach. She waits for the water to boil in her kettle and rubs the sleep out of her shoulders, her ribs, her calves.




We slept like sisters with our secrets, my back turned to her. Branch shadows slid across the ceiling, tiles of tin screwed in by hand so long ago.

point of view

1. It's my first bathroom without a window. It's our first bathroom as man and wife. The pipes heat up the small steamy room and I have to blow dry the mirror to get past the fog. I've grown accustomed to these new things, to my naked morning routine. I was never one for being naked, I'm still not, but the heaters on have made this bathroom a steam room. I'm standing in front of the mirror and I'm almost done with my routine. Last is where I trim the split ends. This is new too. I have found new ways to deal with my new life and I am surprised that it involves the eradication of split ends. I can hear Paul in the hallway, shifting his weight. I can see his little shadow in the crack under the door. Paul is wearing his navy robe and he wants to shave and shower before Jane arrives. I don't feel guilty for making the bathroom steamy and I don't feel guilty for trimming my split ends and I don't feel guilty for calling Jane Jane and not Mom. These things are natural. Being a good wife is not in my nature. A good wife would walk out of the bathroom and stop cowering. A good wife would give her husband a kiss on the cheek. A good wife would please for Christ's sake call her mother-in-law Mom.
I think sometimes I test Paul because I wait for his knock and his soft, Oregon, non-confrontational voice, "Hey hun, you okay? I need the shower and Mom will be here in half an hour."
I open the door, still naked. Man and wife have hardly anything special between them. There is a pot of coffee on the table by the morning paper. I used to read the paper front to back. I used to skim it even. Then for a while I got the idea what the headlines where referring to. Now it's all these stories I am out of touch with. It could be the news from another century, for all I know.
"Hey babe," Paul says. "When you trim those hairs could you please rinse them down the sink?"
"Sure," I say. "Sorry." This is a weekly exchange.
I walk through the living room into our little bedroom with the too firm mattress and the closet for the both of us. I slip on a soft sweater dress and the boots I wore the night we met. I've been trying to wear them as much as possible lately. After I have the baby they won't fit, at least that's what my sister told me to expect. I'm curling my eye lashes when I hear the buzzer.
"Paul, she's here," I say, sticking my head into the bathroom. I'm waiting for his directions, like I don't know how to let somebody in. "I'll buzz her up, okay?"
"Great," he says from the shower. "I'll be out in just a minute." This is probably true, the water is turned off. I don't understand people who towel off inside the shower. People who towel off inside the shower were never an archetype for me until I became a cohabitant.
I press the door button, not realizing until afterwards that a friendly "Hi!" would have been appropriate. Judging from delivery boys, the journey between the front door and our doorstep is between 45 seconds to one minute. Jane is getting up there, so it'll be closer to one minute. Paul dashes from the bathroom to the bedroom, his short hair almost dry. I hear the knock at the door and my stomach turns to knots. It makes me even worse when that happens now, it doesn't seem good for the baby.
I open the door with a smile and hug Jane or Mom and take her coat and hat and gloves. Her cheeks are flushed and her glasses are foggy, but she looks happy to be here the poor thing. As I'm putting her things in the closet, I pull out my coat and hat and gloves.
"I forgot english muffins Paul will be out any minute have a seat," I say in one breath, before she has a chance to argue. Neither of us care about english muffins and Paul has a wheat allergy. I step outside to the first snow of the year. It's eight a.m. on a holiday and the street is empty. Cars are hiding beneath blankets of white and the only footsteps on the sidewalk are Mom's, heading in the opposite direction as mine.

2. My days start in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee. Hannah used to be next to me, sipping her cup as we looked out the window at the skyline through branches. Now she wakes before me, leaves me standing by the bathroom door in the morning blue dark of the hallway. There is a thin rectangle of yellow light coming out around the door. Hannah, I miss her and her wide mouth and the secrets we used to keep. I feel the hot air pouring out from behind the closed door; I didn't think being a husband would mean closed doors. But that is romantic, I guess. My wife is her own person with her own secrets and her own time in the mornings. She has her own time this morning especially. I knock on the door, say, "Hey hun, you okay? I need the shower and Mom will be here in half an hour." I can't stand confrontation.
The door swings open to her, naked (which is still exciting), and she breezes past me into the living room. She smells a fresh sort of soft, like baby's hair. I want to touch her. I need to shower and shave.
In the bathroom she's left a mess. Little hairs cover the counter, sink, and floor. Sometimes I feel like she's my sister.
"Hey babe," I say. "When you trim those hairs could you please rinse them down the sink?"
"Sure," she says. "Sorry."
We both know nothing will change.
I do the same thing every day. I shave dry and then I take a shower. I wash my face then my hair then my body. I am done in less than five minutes. In this time I think about the day at work ahead of me or the assignments I have to do or the conversations to have with Hannah or the phone calls home to make. Today Mom comes in for the holiday. It's our first year without Dad and my first year as a husband. I towel off and wish Hannah would tell me whatever it is she is keeping. I hate confrontation.
She peeks her head into the bathroom. "Paul, she's here,"she says. There's a pause. Have you let her in? I'm about to say. "I'll buzz her up," she says.
I scramble in the bathroom, throw my robe over my back and run into the bedroom. Hannah looks pretty in a dress and her favorite boots. I think I'll wear my sweater that matches. From the other room I hear the door open. Hannah sounds sweet, like the girl I met, and my mother sounds tired. It's a long train ride from the suburbs, I don't know how she got up early enough. There is a short exchange followed by the door opening and shutting. I step into the living room to see my mother sitting alone on the sofa. I sit down next to her.
"Hannah will be right back," she says.
"Sure," I say. "Sorry."
We both know nothing will change.

3. I wake up without an alarm each morning at 5:30 a.m. I eat a bowl of oatmeal, take a shower, and get dressed for my day. Today I drive my car to the train station and board the first city bound express of the day. On the train a mother and daughter sit across from me. The mother is telling the daughter all about how to behave at Uncle Robin's house. Tomorrow, right after breakfast, they will go to the shopping mall to visit Santa Claus. The daughter has never done this before. Yes, there will be elves there. No, no reindeers they like it better in the North Pole. It's too warm down here.
I exit the train and walk out of the downtown station into the street. Fat snowflakes are falling. I hail a cab. It's a fifteen minute drive to their apartment. They still don't know what neighborhood they live in. I'd like to find out so I can tell my girl friends at Bunko Night. I'm a little early--the streets are deserted because of the snow. I pay the nice cab driver and ring their doorbell. I can see my breath in the air fogging up my glasses each time I exhale. The door buzzes letting me in and I walk the two flights of stairs up to my son's apartment. I knock on the door and my daughter-in-law answers. She is not the prettiest girl my son has dated, but she was the kindest. She smiles and takes my coat, hat, and gloves. I remember the pumpkin muffins I had made. They're sitting on the kitchen counter. I knew I would forget something.
Hannah too has forgotten something and steps outside. I try to tell her that all the shops are closed, but she is down the stairs before I can. The two have a beautiful little apartment, not as small as I was told to expect but again not as big as they deserve. I hope they don't live here when they start a family. There is never any quiet, never any privacy. The children would be so frightened by a dark black silent night by the time they experienced one.
I sit on the sofa and wait. My son comes out of his room, shirt untucked, pants uncreased, defeated.