Splish! Splash!
Blue water, topped with foam, scented with something floral. This isn’t the ocean, but a tub of warm water, colored by bath oil beads, and serving as home not to fish, but to an orange sponge shaped like a sea-star, and a conch shell dish of pretty soaps. A lime candle flickers prettily on the edge of the tub, making the light move with the water.
And me? I’m the mermaid, clad in nothing but foam, my hair loose, damp, but not bothering me at all. Why tie it up in knots, I wonder, when it’s just as comfortable hanging down.
I flip my feet, my pink-painted toes eerily blue in the not-quite-opaque water. Do I wish for a fish-tail. Only in my dreams.
Image from IStockPhoto.com.
Written for the January Project at CafeWriting. Option 2: Pick Three.
“Race you to the jetty!” I yell and take off without checking to see if Sam is running or not. I don’t much care if I win, I just love the way the sand feels under my bare feet, warm at the surface, then colder beneath, and I love the way the blood surges in my veins as my legs move and my arms pump.
Breathless, the wind and ocean in my ears, face, and hair, I can’t really hear his footfalls, but I can feel his presence a little bit behind me, closer to the surf. Just as in the scene from Atalanta, we reach the jetty together, and sprawl in the sand near the slate blue rocks.
“You cheated,” Sam accuses, his stormy eyes meeting my darker brown ones. He reaches out to tickle me, and I scoot backwards in the sand to avoid his fingers.
“Maybe a little,” I confess, but there’s no shame in my voice.
We are silent for the next few minutes as we watch the tide come in. The sun is sinking, and as the sweat evaporates from my skin, I shiver.
Sam takes off his faded blue sweatshirt and tosses it to me. I pull it on over my tank top, and pull my ponytail out of the neck hold. “Thanks,” I say, and flash him my most impish grin.
He reaches out to ruffle my hair - I allow this - and then something changes, and he’s caressing my face, cupping my cheek in his calloused hand that never smells like fish, even though he works with them all day.
I open my mouth to say something, but before I can speak he’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him, and suddenly, I’m not cold any more.
We kiss for a while, but when the sun has dipped completely below the horizon, we both get up. He captures my hand, and we walk back down the beach, up the stairs to the boardwalk and then across the street, where he has to go straight to get to the apartment he and his mother share, while I have to turn right to get to my grandparents’ old house, three down from the corner.
“So,” he says. “Meet you by the steps tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I say.
We kiss again, in the damp evening air, under the glow of the stoplight at the corner, until finally I have to stop, because there’s this feeling welling up inside me and it might burst.
He senses it too, for he ruffles my hair again, and starts toward home. I watch for a moment, then walk toward the warmth and light of the old house with the wide porch, where my grandmother is waiting, reading a novel by porch-light and citronella candle. She raises one dark eyebrow at me, notes my attire, and lets her lips curve into a gentle smile.
“I was cold,” I say, and walk inside.
Once a week, the maids come and go while she is out at work, and when she arrives home at the end of the day, not merely tired, but weary down to her soul, she is greeted with the faint scents of pine-sol and lavender. The former is cleaning fluid, she knows, the latter she has to think about, but each week it comes to her: linen spray she was given as a gift and keeps in the closet. They change the sheets, these maids in their blue t-shirts and khaki pants, and give the pillows a spritz of lavender, “for lucky dreams,” as her grandmother would have said.
They used to come on Wednesdays, but she changed the date to Friday because she leaves her office an hour earlier on that day, and likes coming home to spend the weekend in a sparkling-clean home. She’s grateful that she can afford the maid service, because they vacuum and dust and do all the things she never seems to, but her favorite feature is that she arrives home every night to a bathroom full of bright, white, welcoming porcelain and chrome.
It has become a ritual of sorts, to usher in the weekend with a bath. She begins by turning the space heater so that it faces the tub instead of the shower, and then she turns out the lights in the room, leaving only the hi-hat on over the tub, and a small lamp on her dresser in the adjoining master bedroom. She turns the radio to NPR, lights the candle that she keeps on the false wall at the end of the tub (it is vanilla), and starts the hot water, waiting for it to be completely heated before she closes the drain. A dash of cold water is added to the stream filling the spa-sized tub, and bubble bath that smells of tamarind and peach is poured beneath the tap. A fluffy towel is left on the sink, a bath-pillow affixed to the “head” end of the tub with suction cups, and a hand towel, washcloth, book and bottle of water are placed within reach.
She strips in the bedroom, walking into the bathroom without benefit of a robe, but wearing fluffy white slippers. Her long hair is pulled into a pony-tail then twisted into a bun on top of her head, and her watch is removed.
As the radio drones on, interspersing news, talk and light jazz, she steps gingerly into the hot, sudsy water, first her left foot, then her right. She turns around, then sits in the water, swishing it around a bit before she settles into a reclining position, adjusting her head against the pillow, and drying her hands before she picks up the book.
On Sunday, she will repeat this ritual, with wine instead of water, preparing herself for the week ahead, but for now, she is content to read and soak, until the water turns uncomfortably cool.
Written for the December Project at Cafe Writing.
Written for the October fiction project at Cafe Writing: “Let some things remain mysterious.”
“There are footprints in the bird seed,” I announced at breakfast one morning.
“Of course there are, dear. The birds stand in it while they’re pecking up the seeds,” came my husband’s dry tones.
“No,” I said, “not bird prints. Mammal prints. Or maybe a lizard. Something with paws. Or at least proper feet.”
“Birds don’t have proper feet?” His voice had that bemused tone that never fails to exasperate me. The one he uses when he’s baiting me, and I know he’s baiting me, and I rise to it anyway.
“You. Know. What. I. Mean.” I bit out each word and spit it at him.
“Maybe it’s a possum,” he said, after I’d glared at him for several seconds.
“Maybe,” I agreed. I went outside, and shook the pan of birdseeds, resolving to invest in a proper tray feeder with a cover. The small table over the tray which sits on the large table is ridiculous, as well as being largely ineffective.
I watched the tray through the window for a long time, sipping my coffee while my husband flipped through the paper. When I’d reached the bottom of my mug, I let the dogs into the yard for their morning business, and checked the tray again. I hadn’t seen anything near the picnic table where it lived but sure enough, footprints - paw prints - were there again.
I went back inside, flanked by dogs who were understandably upset about not being allowed to track the scent from below the table.
“There are more,” I said to my husband, “paw prints in the birdseed.”
“I thought you were watching,” he said.
“I was,” I confirmed.
“Well, dear. It seems you have a mystery.”
Sometimes, men are no help at all.
From CafeWriting:
Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.
Write either three short verses or one long stanza about these three things - fear, love, and loss. Any form of poetry is fine - haiku, a sonnet - whatever works.
I’m not a poet. I dabbled in verse ages ago, but I generally think in sentences. Still, it’s a good exercise to play with other forms once in a while. I don’t post verse or fiction to my actual blog. That’s what this is for.
I. Fear
Monsters with headlights whizzing by
Cold rain falling from the sky
Hiding for naps
Begging for scraps
Constantly running on tiny feet
This is the life of a stray on the street.
II. Love
He reminds me of the childhood poem
About a little shadow
Up and down the stairs, he’s at my heels.
In the kitchen, he’s underfoot
On the couch or in bed, he curls against my hip
Puppy kisses tell me what he feels.
III. Loss
Day by day, I’m seeing him fade.
He’s withdrawing from us a little
As if he knows his clock is winding down.
His muzzle is grey where it once was black
The “eyeliner” that helped earn his name is nearly gone
He’s taken to barking at the other dogs in town
Ten isn’t old for a Chihuahua, they say
But they forget the epilepsy, the years on the street
And the dental issues, and the heart disease.
They just see the spry little man with the sickle tail
Ears erect, nose a-quiver, eyes all big and round
Like a plumber, the vet never hears him sneeze.
I know our other dog feels second best,
Which is ridiculous because I love them both
Differently, because MissCleo is a dog for play
While Zorro, my little man, is content to be quiet
Always near, his quiet presence warming my heart,
I don’t know how I’ll deal when he finally slips away.