You Were Born Lucky! You have to be lucky to deserve goddess-hood. It’s not for everybody. What is the greatest piece of good luck you’ve ever had? Your parentage? Talents? Home town? Best friend? A piece of advice? A special teacher? Think about it. Have you ever been offered a piece of good luck you couldn’t take advantage of, but wish you had?
How Lucky Do You Need to Be? Ever seen the faces of gamblers seated hour by hour at the slot machines, wearing special gloves so their skin doesn’t fall off? Seriously, who would want to be them? Is it luck itself that we give thanks for, or our ability to recognize good fortune? Perhaps goddesses should give thanks for our innate ability to take advantage of a piece of good luck when we’re offered one. All these memories have one thing in common- i.e. “ability”, which is not luck, which is YOU. Give thanks for these abilities. Being a goddess is a glorious privilege. Let’s learn to develop gratitude thinking.
Goddess Challenge – A different way of thinking about fortune is not all the wonderful things that didn’t happen, but the terrible things that COULD have happened – and didn’t. In other words, let’s try adopting a “glass half full” perspective and see how far that gets us.
Goddess Danger – Now that you’re committed to the goddess path, the danger is always the same – recognizing your power but somehow being tricked into giving control of it over to some other entity that almost certainly doesn’t have your best interests at heart. We’re usually not even aware we’re doing this. But when you want to “be lucky” what does that mean? In whose eyes? Let’s put ourselves firmly in the driver’s seat and take a look at the path ahead of us. Do we want to go there? Do we really trust these people? Or are we the dog throwing away a real bone to reach the illusory bone we see pictured in the watery reflection of Aesop’s Fable?
Goddess Opportunity – As we negotiate our mortal existence we have a unique chance to take advantage of serendipitous appearances and encounters. If we recognize it. Compare your path to the immortal framework of eternity and ask, How am I doing?
How Did We Get Here? Turns out your Goddess Map is only a suggestion, full of surprises to keep things interesting. We are mapping as we go along. However, life is even more exciting, it turns out, than our imaginations.
After the Storm – Comes the Rainbow! Every visible color – carefully separated out – forming an arch to give us a glimpse of heaven! If it didn’t provably exist, would we still believe in it?
List Your Rainbows – Clouds may or may not have silver linings. Rainbows are a complete surprise – unconnected to the storms that spawned them. Write about the surprises in your life in your Goddess Journal. How many were nasty? How many joyous?
The Universe Conspired – To bring you to this moment. You zigged, you zagged, you wound up here. Give thanks!
Models & Mentors – “Serendipity is when you find things that you weren’t looking for because what you are looking for is so damned difficult”
– Erin McKean
“Steer Into the skid” – Alysse Aallyn
“Here you are moving ahead bravely in spite of everything going wrong” – Rithvik Singh
“Take advantage of happy accidents” – Vincent van Gogh
Do Goddesses get time off? They need it! Are your reveries organized around beaches, vacations, relaxation, memories of happy times when you had nothing to do but enjoy yourself feeling only the moment? Goddesses have a heavier lift! We have to live in four time frames at once – past, present, future AND possible!
Is Peace Possible? Consider Serenity as an Idea, and an Ideal. Most of us are familiar with the “serenity prayer” written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right.“
The Serenity Prayer works as an inoculation against pointless worry, which it sees as “borrowing trouble.” The benefit of cultivating serenity is that it allows tender shoots to grow and broken limbs – and organs – to mend.
Goddess Challenge – Like meditation, serenity is a mental gymnastic that takes practice. Make a list of your most pressing concerns. Can you do anything about any of them today? If so, appoint a time when you will take a step towards resolving this concern. If you can’t do anything about it, put it forcefully out of your mind. Goddesses aren’t in charge of the universe! We are merely an upgrade in toughness and heroics. Imagine your worries as a bunch of balloons. Now let them go, one by one. Put each useless worry on a piece of paper and burn them slowly, one by one.
Goddess Mantra – Give yourself a “serenity mantra” a word or phrase you find comforting and centering, and repeat it out loud to yourself. St. Julian of Norwich recommended: ”All will be well”, Coué offered, “Every day, in every way I am getting better and better”, some yoga enthusiasts chant a simple “Om.” You can use a phrase from your own past said to you by a Beloved Person – “now you’ll be fine” “You’re safe” “You’re perfect” “Everything’s all right” or the tried and true: “I love you.” My favorite is from the Book of Revelation: “Every tear is wiped away.”
Goddess Danger – Don’t be tempted to become a mentor while you’re still learning. Goddesses usually want to be helpful but this can be a snare. Mentoring is an end-of-life honor, but you are still placing the oxygen mask on your own face so that you can stay on your plan. Not everyone has the steel to graduate to Goddess. You’re welcome to show friends the basics but don’t bother to walk them through it. You’re nobody’s nanny. You’re busy.
FOMO – We are all worried about “missing” something. Often that “centering person”, that reassuring person from our past is not just the one who gave us the relaxation code, but is also the same one who told us what to worry about: ie. ”Make sure all the locks are locked” “Have you done your homework?” There certainly are things to be concerned about (“Are you registered to vote?”) but there are plenty of worries we CAN’T address. Return to the serenity prayer and start weeding out – on paper – your Justifiable Concerns. One of the best things about Anxiety – and I mean this – is that it offers an opportunity to ask for help. Yes, I say “opportunity”! Because – remember The Lovers -life is all about RELATIONSHIPS.
Worries offer Opportunities to Forge More Meaningful, Worthwhile Relationships. Get ready to experiment. In every relationship in your life, your requirements, tolerance, communication goals will present as unique. Many people yearn to speak to a “professional” – therapist or life coach – and plenty of professionals out there are auditioning for a little – or a lot – of your hard-earned cash. An excellent place to start is with Proven Gurus like Tolle Eckhart or Pema Chodron who can be accessed for free from any library. See what you think. Evaluate their assistance. Inquire further.
Goddess Know What They Have to Do – Others will be envious that we have laid out a plan for our lives, as well as that it is flexible, that it is life-enhancing and that it gives us permission to Enjoy. Be humble and unsurprised about this jealousy.
You’re Entitled – Others also could find peace if they began to take control of the drama that rages within them. Point them in a hopeful direction but don’t get sucked in.
Meditation Looks Like Dreaming – The truth is just what they suspect: that there is enormous pleasure in being a goddess. You will finally feel confident, and when you know your own strength, and the value of your time, you understand your own value. This is what others yearn for. They can learn it, too. But in the mean time you are enjoying your hard-fought-for serenity.
We Need So Little To Be Happy – Here is the great realization. Do goddesses require entourages or enablers and sycophants, vast bank accounts, and acres of product and showcase? Or is one bowl, one mat, one dawn enough for us when we are fueled by our own power? Allow yourself to revel in the comfort of another’s presence or the private pleasures of your own thoughts and company. There will be the joy of another morning, the peace of another night’s rest. The confidence of maintaining a sharp, clear head. Welcome to the Universe.
Models & Mentors – “Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” – The Dalai Lama
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
“Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action make up the sum of life”
– Vita Sackville-West
“Enjoy the peace of nature and declutter your inner world” – Amit Ray
How Do You Gather Your Power? You need to find a way to hang on to those little ideas that keep flickering across your mind-screen. What inspires you? Are you waking up filled with exciting ideas you long to write down? Do you feel the potential of philosophical, profound revelations in your dreams which can never be captured in your waking state?
Your Subconscious is Calling Out to You – You are experiencing a split between your Rational self and your Prophetic Self, a split which is not only potentially destructive but completely unnecessary. Probably someone in your education blocked your inspiration by demeaning this interactive channel to the Collective Unconscious of Past and Future and warned you to ignore it. Often teachers think they are “protecting” us by pretending ignorance of the importance of intergenerational trauma, denying the importance of collective wisdom and its symbols. Education is a good thing when it teaches you to recognize, master and increase resources but it is certainly a bad thing if it countermands, neglects or destroys the yearning inside of you for a deeper connection to all the history of humanity.
Goddess Challenge – We can re-open this channel, but we will have to think about its potential in a more positive way. The great physicist said that all profound truths contain their opposite (i.e. are not dichotomous) and so linguistically require new theories about the Real and the Unreal. These ideas are not mutually exclusive. We must learn to flow with them, rather than fear them & block their bubblings of power.
Goddess Danger – “Either/Or” thinking is destructive because it requires we abandon vast methodologies of knowing. “Reductionism” reduces the world to “things” on the presumption that people are transient and “things” are more permanent. But if the magic of the universe encodes in relationships rather than objects then this reductionism kills true discovery & thought itself.
Goddess Opportunity – Accept and ready yourself to explore your inspirations. Learn to separate them from fears and wishes. Cultivate your intuition, that precious gut instinct that warns us who and what to trust and who – and what – to back away from. Accept that – like all good things, this is a Process – and thus endless (ie; to be enjoyed for all eternity.) Accept that it is a skill to be honed – one you will keep forever.
Goddess’ Gut – You sense things. After you sleep on it, you know things. Develop these instincts through drumming, foot massage, chanting, meditation, whatever activities bring you “out” of your head.
Confront Your Real Self – You can use a sauna as your own private ‘sweat lodge.” The goal is to locate your original self to ask its opinion.
All too often people in our consumer culture seek a psycho-active product for brain “transformation”. You will need brain “purifying” instead. Consider the substances you fear being without. Caffeine? Nicotine? Carbohydrates? Alcohol? Pain pills? Consider trying to go without for short periods of time to develop your tolerance. Try intermittent fasting under the guidance of a responsible nutrition coach. Track your emerging thoughts in your Training Journal.
Models & Mentors – “Intuition is the whisper of the soul” – Krishnamurti
“A good artist lets intuition lead him wherever it wants”– Lao Tzu
“Follow your instincts – it’s where true wisdom manifests itself” – Oprah Winfrey
“Intuition and observation are the sources for our knowledge” – Rudolf Steiner
Something’s Always Coming. Are you having bad dreams? Of natural disasters like storms, volcanoes and flooding? Do you fear war, robbery, violation, home invasion? Or do you dream about your loved one’s face turning bitter and their words cutting sharply? Conflict is inevitable. It is even necessary – birth pangs seem terrifying. In dreams we rehearse our fears until some of us fear to dream.
It Always Comes Before You’re Ready – Here it is – the reason you become a goddess. You must always be larger than the fight. You must embody the meaning of the fight, and to do that you have to discover what the meaning is. You represent the Principle of Life and have committed yourself to its immortalization.
Battle or go under. It’s not pleasant under there. The force against you is superior – unthinking – inhuman – so you will have to be wily and know when to expend energy and when to conserve your strength.
You are a Force Field. You are a magnet for desire, change, for evolution itself. This comes by virtue of your goddess decision making. Others may tell you to stand back, take your place in line or wait your turn but your appearance into this chaotic universe triggered no such guarantee. We are here to learn to use our power.
Conflict Makes a Goddess – Force stirs up resistance. Actions create re-action as we swing back and forth in our determination and direction. We clash and crash. Sometimes we regret it bitterly, “why did I do that?” Sometimes we fear loss or harm so much we become immobilized. The challenge is to assume your stride, elucidate your goals and plan a direction.
Goddess Danger – It’s all too easy to make others fear you. The one with the biggest weapon THINKS she the fight. But what looks like compliance to you could be revolution – you will be toppled and lose your heart’s desire.
Goddess Opportunity – Learning to use conflict constructively and creatively is a Superpower. Other people are force fields, too. If there is any way to blend these powers and head in the same direction, we become invincible. Welcome the knowledge provided by Storm.
Study Your Opponent – Some clever scholar has separated these opponents into groups & classes. Read up! Some opponents – physical contests, weather conditions – don’t even have a brain. So who – or what – are you playing against?
You Are Playing Against Yourself – your own fear, incapacity, beginner status. Seek mentoring so you have advice along the journey. Who is the sensei who will guide you? Someone who desires both your safety and your growth.
Reward Yourself – The best place to do this is your training journal. Think hard about every contest and how you performed. Assess your challenges and accomplishments. Way to go!
Models & Mentors – “I used to tell myself, boy, if you can survive this, you can survive anything” – Tom Lichtenberg
“Laughter is the proof that our tragedies don’t define us. Laughter is the survivor’s language” – Josh James
“Cancer didn’t bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet”
– Michael Douglas
“If you want to awaken humanity, awaken yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering, eliminate what is negative in yourself. Your gift to the world is our self-transformation.” –Lao Tzu
Can Goddesses afford to relax? Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Well, Lesson #1 is that being a goddess is Counterintuitive. Other people rush away from the burning building – planning on being EVEN MORE SCARED the next time. Well, we are going to master our fear. We are going in.
Everybody Panics – I had a panic attack at age 5 (I got lost outside a movie theatre) and another at age 11 when I descended deep, deep, deep into a cave. (I think the guide was deliberately trying to scare us.) I didn’t know at the time what these episodes were – my parents and sisters saw them as embarrassing annoyances – but looking back it’s clear what was happening to me physically as a result of what was happening to me mentally.
Relaxation In the Face of Panic – Learning to tolerate psychic dissonance, to be interested in it and challenged by it is what we’re all about. It’s a sign that we’re in the presence of the Deep Stuff – the things that galvanize our deep subconscious and if we can just seize control of that, we’ll access our true power.
Learn Relaxation Techniques – There are so many and you should experiment with all of them! Learn what works for you and – key – what you enjoy. You will find yourselves using these techniques all the time. To get to sleep, to get through difficult experiences or just to access your subconscious when you have a question.
Breathe Deeply – The very first thing is mastering control of the breath. Pregnant women learn all kinds of helpful breathing techniques in Lamaze; panting, counting; deliberately slowing down and speeding up your breathing. In yoga you will learn Lion Breaths to make you feel powerful. They are very similar to the gasps and shouts in martial arts and will affect your opponents. Watch the Maori war dance on YouTube.
Get Out Your Training Journal – write down the techniques and your reactions. Appoint a time to practice these every day. Your breath connects you to the universe and all living things.
Models & Mentors: “The first thing to learn is the breath.” –Confucius
‘Breathe In. Let Go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure, and give thanks for that.”
– Oprah Winfrey
‘Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor” –
To Become a Goddess Is to Accept Your Power. But power is fearsome. We are all familiar with fires that escape control, rage-fueled emotional spirals, explosives that blow up their wielders and the dangers of endlessly escalating weaponry. Once the Goddess’ unleashes power, much can go wrong.
The Power is there whether you claim it or not. To abjure your power is to deny your personhood – something women and marginalized groups have always been commanded to do. If you try to get in touch with your personal power, won’t you tempt established Power to come after you?
Power is About More than Control and bending unfriendly circumstances to your desire and will. It is the process of fulfilling your natural growth pattern, becoming the person God always intended you to be. You have an immortal mandate but you must claim it.
You Are Iconic –Goddesses invoke more than magic, they exemplify the inherent magic that is especially, irreplaceably Individuated Self. You have a power no one else has, incorporated in your being, your possibilities, your desires and your memories. This takes a lifetime to accept because we all nervously want to be Someone Else and experience existence through the armor of Having only an Outside instead of just the very vulnerable Inside in which we all feel imprisoned.
Only Illegitimate Power Will Fear You – The Universe that God created accepts a glorious new creature fulfilling their immortal mandate, while stolen power – the desire to crush, to control and to drain – will be forced to reveal itself in the fullness of its jealous evil.
Dreams Will Instruct You – Your dreams bring all these passions together as psychic poetry, elucidating what you think you want, what you hope you want and what you are afraid you want. The ultimate magic is to seize conscious control of this potent power source.
Goddess Challenge – The challenge is to truly connect with others, reveal our world Inside, and avoid blasting their apparently impenetrable Outside with our terror, our longing and our fear. As the demons come after you, you will deploy the skills and techniques of dissembling, transmutation, transformation, mirror-magic and emotional mastery. The demons are hungry, pathetic in their eternal emptiness.
Goddess Danger – We cannot take hostages and we must never become a hostage. Freedom is a fine line to walk. If we wish to reach out, we must treat those struggling to stand upright with respect and demand like respect for ourselves. Accept your “experiments”; do not fear them but allow them to take you where you need to go.
Goddess Opportunities – There will be stumbles and terrors aplenty, also successes that LOOK like stumbles and terrors, but which we only realize on reflection were real leaps forward. This is why we must carefully assess our daily efforts without being harsh with ourselves. Speak gently to yourself as you would to a most beloved child. You are the Universe’s Own Beloved Child. It is not selfish to commit to this belief, it is simply placing the oxygen mask over your own face FIRST so that you can administer this life-saving force to others. Find someone with whom you can share your journey, without fear or judgment. This connection will teach us everything we need to know about how to connect with others.
Fear & Trembling: Where would we ever get the courage to become goddess? Human history begins with an enormous fear of the Almighty or whatever is causing all that lightning, those earthquakes and striking everybody down. Killing small helpless, pretty things was meant to be flattering and propitiatory to this God (I don’t get it either.) Then Jesus arrived with a message about how God was really loving, generous and wanted the best for us. We know how that turned out.
Becoming a Goddess: As children, we struggled to understand where we fit on the power spectrum. I tried killing a snake, and experimented with bullying other children the way I was bullied. I didn’t care for it. The only relief was in thinking about, researching and understanding the philosophical concepts about what was going on. My earliest researches, as for many children, were in astronomy and dinosaurs. The cold magnificence of the planets and the complete wipeout of the dinosaurs gave me a way to stand back from the immediate suffering of the schoolyard. I then moved on to the early Egyptians who tried to solve their problems through magic and art. The art was visually appealing and the magic was emotionally soothing.
Pick Your Battles: I saw that most schoolyard fights were a reaction to the immediate suffering of pain or confusion, and that they magnified, rather than solved, those problems. There was a manifest holiness about this discovery. It rescued me from the torture of everyday life and elevated me to a plane where every other contributing thinker had already become immortalized.
Study & Strategy: I read everything I could get my hands on in history and biography (research) and in fairy tales (magic). When I fell in love with the novels of C.S. Lewis and Rumer Godden, the world judged my taste good – when I discovered Agatha Christie, it did not – but it turned out everyone else was reading her too. Agatha is a short course on human nature (original sin) and a proponent of both the scientific and Socratic methods. She’s great training for a Goddess. I wrote it all down in my Training Journal.
Claiming Your Power: By the time you’re a teenager you can see you have some power – some mental, some physical. The question is developing it and finding appropriate gurus. It is key to step out of the dominance/submission game.
Keep Going – Recognize that you have been touched by the goddess and honor her by being grateful for the glorious gifts of life.
Models & Mentors: “I did not deceive you. I permitted you to deceive yourself.” Agatha Christie
“An Indian proverb says everyone is a house with four rooms – physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. Most of us live in one room or the other but if you don’t visit each room each day you are not a complete person.” – Rumer Godden
“You are never too old to dream a new dream or set a new goal”
Those who sleep alone risk scarifying dreams. I dreamed I’d had the baby, and it was some kind of hideous ordeal. Call it a “trauma trigger”. I came back into myself hospitalized, bandaged head to toe and in traction. At first I was so disoriented I thought I was upside down, floating on the ceiling, but the ceiling was stainless steel and it was my reflection that I saw. The nurse approached from a long way off, carrying something in stiffly held out arms. That nurse’s face was so familiar, but who was she? I had only seen my uncle’s housekeeper once so why should it be her and not merely one of those recycled faces that haunt our dreams? The bundle offered was a fish.
I knew she expected me to reject it – call the maitre d’ it and demand a replacement, but I don’t do what people expect. Besides, it had very human eyes, big and sad, with tears woefully a-boiling in its depths. With great effort I wrenched out of my bandages and out of my traction, grabbed my baby and ran away. Obviously this was a terrible hospital, where people give birth in traction and your baby is a fish. A carp, from the look of him, and
not the lucky kind.
He said, “Mummy, mummy,” but whether he recognized me or commented on my bandages I couldn’t say. Hard work running through sand, because that’s where I bogged down. A bunch of golfers grabbed my baby, tossing him into the air with jeers and screams. The baby looked at me imploringly with its chocolate brown eyes, but what could I do? They had cleats and
clubs and all I had bandages. And I was losing strength, keeping only just enough to wonder, why golfers at the seaside? They tossed my baby in the ocean but I wasn’t having it. Waded right in after him but to my shock I soon was drowning. Can’t swim in bandages. You’d think the fish would return the rescue favor, but no. He was nowhere to be seen. It seems you can’t rely on anyone.
When a dream becomes this disgusting you know it’s past time to wake up. I was fighting my way out when I encountered Arnold’s eyes. Looking at me as if I were loathsome.
right.
help me.”
“You’re all over blood,” he said. And he was I said, “That blood was our child. Help me, But it had been too late from the first. The
hospital had a stainless steel ceiling; how could I have guessed? Time seemed to loop; there was a panic-driven moment as they wheeled me conscious right to the operating table. Is “awake till the end” the punishment for being a bad wife, bad hostess, or bad mother? Behind the anesthesiologist’s mask I thought I saw my uncle’s eyes. I was out before I could ask what “D & C” stands for. Diddled, then cauterized?
SEVEN – HAUNTED
Arnold was enormously relieved that I was no longer pregnant. I was enormously relieved that Stan and Willette went home. Arnold was further relieved that the satellite guy installed the dish the day of my return; I was relieved that without a special dish it seemed we could get no local stations. Bait and switch, said Arnold.
But it meant I could pretend I was no longer here. Didn’t matter that this was my own ice floe; freely chosen. Somehow, even dead and stupid, my uncle had won and I had lost. Money meant nothing. The stupid dead had scored again.
“We played strip poker because you went to bed so early,” Arnold defended himself. Thus the guilty flee where none pursue. “Jealousy does not become you.”
But had I become jealousy? The better to consider this possibility I turned down the sound on the plasma TV, then finally the picture. It was more fun to watch the raindrops slide together. Raindrop sex. Boy drops and girl drops, maybe even gay drops. Meeting and joining. Becoming one.
“You know it takes a village to maintain a marriage,” huffed Arnold. “Bartenders, bankers and stand- up comedians.”
And pretty, pretty grad students? He didn’t say. I ignored him till he said the magic word. The magic word was “drink.”
He said, “No reason you can’t drink now.”
Over a baloney sandwich and a glass of Chianti I began to feel forgiving. Someday I would have to go on a diet, find out if my body was still there, but not today and not tomorrow. Percocet enhances Chianti wonderfully. Without that dualism, if you scrape away the op layer of pain, deeper pain just bubbles up from underneath.
“I’ve seen your ghost,” said Arnold. “It’s a guy in a lumberjack shirt.”
But he had never seen my uncle. Not even a picture. “Describe him.”
“Hair the color of driftwood with a widow’s peak, and olive drab pants.”
“Did he look at you? Speak to you?”
“Looked through me. Came right into the study when I was working. I think he was looking for
you.”
That was just mean. Utterly uncalled for. He was punishing me for my jealousy by making all this up. Why would my uncle’s ghost appear to him? I bet Arnold read my diary while I was in the hospital, helpless. It was just the kind of thing that he would do. People without gifts batten on the bounty of others.
“That diary is private,” I warned him. “You’re the one saying married people don’t share everything.”
“Bet he thinks that this is his house,” mused Arnold, relentless. “Since you bought it with his money.” He rose, whistling cheerfully at freedom from the sickroom. “I’d better get back to work if I want to have something to show my agent.”
“Leaving me, are you?”
“Just a day trip to town on Friday. That is, if you’re feeling better.”
He didn’t bother to invite me. Me, who had done so much for him!
“You be careful,” I threatened, “You’ve got “Not me,” he sneered. “I’m a modernist.” Could it possibly be that easy? If
“modernists” were truly ghost-blind, maybe you need a conscience to see ghosts. He should at least be haunted by his fishbaby. Find the meaning, the challenge was always the same. Without meaning everything’s just another trauma trigger. What do refrigerators and meatsafes have in common? They slow down time. If Time truly has no meaning, don’t you see? It means we are free. We always have been free.
I climbed out of bed, awkward because my limbs still belonged to someone else, and checked my underpants. No blood. Maybe all my blood was gone. If I was a ghost that explained everything. Arnold couldn’t see me because he was a modernist. So it was up to me to tell him what we all had suffered. Being ghostly gave me such a rush of power I finally understood how hard it is for them to leave.
I took time to gather flies’ wings as I walked. Little boys tear the wings off flies; ask anybody. I thought they’d stir to life beneath my hands, but they stayed dead, so perhaps they’re only unshed tears. I’m a beginner at this. What do I know?
I pushed open the door to Arnold’s study. There was a bad smell in there and it was Arnold. He hummed Wagner as he worked; a classic song of triumph. On the wall were blow-ups of my diary, in my private, loopy handwriting, my private, private words. Tabloid articles he’d pasted to the wallpaper; “Mom Kills Twelve”; “Satan in Miami”, “BatBoy takes a Bride”.
The wallpaper was so beautiful in this room; it was the best in the house; a Morris pattern of leaves and mulberries and I hadn’t grudged it. It was priceless, probably irreplaceable; and this what I get. Anger postponed becomes rage and rage is truly liberating. I picked up the scissors from a pile of newspapers. Stupidly he’d placed his desk in the window embrasure, allowing me to walk up behind him. “Modernists” are ignorant of fear.
“So what’s it called?” Peeking over his shoulder.
He jumped a mile, scampering to close and save, frantic, busy, ineffective. But the printout lay right next to him. MOODY BITCH SEEKS KIND, CONSIDERATE MAN. I laughed because it was funny.
“It’s a comedy,” he said defensively.
“Aren’t I laughing?” I agreed. The cold fire that doesn’t burn consumed me. I opened my fist to shower unshed tears along his keyboard and he saw the scissors. He went so white. I loved that finally he saw me as someone to fear. Now I knew what turned my uncle on. I opened my mouth to speak but my uncle’s dust boiled out of me and I can’t remember what I tried to say.
That I had bled and now it was his turn? That it only hurts for the first five seconds? That the living are as deserving as the dead? I should have told him it’s the little things…the glasses of wine, the band-aids, the unshed tears – still breaths of life that spark the dying air; these are agents of the dead rescinding time and looping it backwards. Back towards them. Because time’s the thing they’re so jealous of, the only precious thing that we have left.
The phone man said the best that we could get was a party line. No real privacy – ever. I was dumbfounded. “There’s no real privacy on them other lines neither,” said Mr. Sterling, the phone man. “You just think there is.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Arnold told me, right in the phone man’s presence. “We’ll get our phone through the Internet like all sane people. The land line is only for emergencies.”
Sometimes when the phone rang we weren’t supposed to answer it because it wasn’t our “ring”. Maybe Arnold can ignore a ringing phone: I can’t. Especially if it goes off in the middle of the night. No counting a “ring pattern” there – not with the echoes of sleep rattling through your head.
“Who could be calling at this hour?” I demanded of my husband. Rhetorically.
But he said, “Cows. Bears.” In his dream or on the phone?
As usual it was up to me to answer it. “Hello?” I quavered. A sharp intake of breath but no one spoke. I
had played this game before. Could we have brought our own ghosts with us?
‘That you, Gayle?” I boldly inquired. “Just checking up on us? We’re fine. The baby’s fine. Arnold says hi.”
155 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn
It was only afterwards that I wondered if the caller was my uncle’s “housekeeper”. The unpaid one he swore would be compensated in his will. Who else would be angry enough to hound us? And there was always the possibility that it was my uncle himself, wanting to complain about the way I’d spent his money. It would be just like the stupid dead to initiate calls they can’t complete.
FIVE – MEATSAFE
Our first visitors came when before we were ready (as visitors will). Before the cable was connected. Willette had streaked her hair with an unbecoming dissipated rock star red which, considering her coal black eyebrows and pointed chin made her resemble Sarah Bernhardt in her coffin. She had two legs, however. Willette had always been High Maintenance. Compared with her, Stan, a little plumper, somewhat balder now, seemed refreshingly cooperative and easily amused. In honor of our upstate move he wore a sweaters with a vaguely Chistmassy theme.
“Snowflakes! Moose!” he genially exclaimed. “What’s not to like?”
“You’re not missing anything in the city,” said Willette. “We’ve been burgled.”
take?” Stan. “Better glasses don’t help.”
“Omigod,” I sympathized, “What did they “A Cuisinart and my reading glasses,” said “Those instructions are rough,” I agreed.
“We told the cops to be on the lookout for a bandit with severe left eye astigmatism,” Stan joked.
“Not that they’ll look,” said Willette gloomily. “They never do.”
“Until the guy kills somebody,” agreed Arnold.
“They don’t even care about that now,” asserted Willette. “They bargain murders down to “accidents” just to skew their crime statistics. Fighting crime from a desk chair.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” echoed Arnold, a sociable host refilling wineglasses.
They had been stuck in traffic so we were dining at nine-thirty, a distinct hardship for anyone with my raging metabolism. I had eaten the cheese and crackers all by myself and was forced to smack together some distinctly unappetizing crudités. Zucchini slices with sour cream, anyone? Fortunately it didn’t matter. They wanted dinner and dinner itself hardly mattered because the dining room was so dark. Without windows, but six doors, there were constant and mysteriously unaccountable drafts; the candles slanting first one way and then the other. Over Martel and coffee conversation languished. No Martel for me. No wine. I was trying to be good. Trying to be good does not a dinner party make.
“I know,” I roused myself. “Let’s play
Icicle.”
“Icicle?” they all wanted to know. “How do you play that?”
“One person hides and everyone goes looking for him. When you find him you have to squeeze in as close as you can get. Last person left is the icicle.”
“That’s sardines!” scoffed Arnold. “I’ve played that.”
But Willette was intrigued. “Good game for this house,” she said. “We’ll find cubbyholes and corners even you haven’t seen.”
“I’m warning you, I’m the world-class champion sardines player,” said Stan. “I once won hanging for an hour in a garment bag.”
With a challenge like that, he had to go first.
“Basement off limits!” shouted Arnold. “It’s dangerous down there.” Was that an implied waiver of danger elsewhere? We listened to his footfalls clatter up the stairs and wander overhead.
“Sounds like there are three of him,” said Willette. Of course we weren’t bothering to count.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I teased. “Real estate agent says this house is haunted.”
Willette seemed unintimidated. Stan I could have impressed.
“Our refrigerator tried to eat the delivery man,” said Arnold, getting into the spirit. “Both recovered and doing fine.”
“And there’s kind of a bad smell coming from Arnold’s study.” I suggested.
Arnold gave me A Look. Ooo, snap! Talk about burning with a cold fire! I pulled out the Big Guns. “Oswald Pewlett saw a fireball.”
“I feel a fireball coming on myself,” said Arnold, shaking the empty Martel bottle.
“Maybe it’s an animus.” said Willette. “You know, like a malignant spirit that attaches itself to unfinished business.”
I didn’t know. Upstairs a door slammed. Hard. We took that as a starter’s pistol. I let the others rush straight upstairs, elbowing each other like a middle- school recess, pretended at first to follow, then ducking behind a door.
World Champion Stan could not make it this easy for us, not even in an unfamiliar house. If it was me I would make a lot of noise going up the front stairs and then sneak quietly down the back. How he slammed that door I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound difficult with our drafts. If you balanced something on it and opened a window…
Outside had to be off-limits. I heard an unpleasant rustling in the rhododendrons. Think far enough outside the box, fall off the edge. I allowed myself to be seduced by the kitchen broom closet. It’s as narrow as an ironing board but runs the depth of the room, thus making an ideal crawlspace. And there was someone inthere. I could hear him breathing. “Is that you, Stan?”
The shadow rippled towards me. “I’ve missed you, Sharl.” That could have been my sigh, me just talking to myself. But then the voice spoke unmistakably and said the most surprising thing: “Time has no meaning.”
That’s not a message I would ever give myself, and it was my uncle’s voice, I swear it. I backed out in a panic, slammed the door so hard the doorknob fell off. The ghost was locked in, ha ha. Serves him right for refusing to play dead.
Willette and Arnold were upstairs together, looking equal parts smug and guilty. Like I couldn’t figure out what was going on. And they couldn’t say exactly where they’d searched. “Please yourselves,” I yawned. Maybe if I found Stan, he would show a sudden yen for pregnant women. Unlike everybody else.
“He’s not downstairs,” I declared, so it was time to inspect the attic. My flashlight revealed footprints in the dust along the steps. I pursued a faint tapping sound. In the dark, Stan had locked himself in the old meatsafe. Dumb place to hide! And he wasn’t happy about it. Like it was our fault. Willette, feeling a bit one down after the exposure of her skirmishes with Arnold, seized advantage like a wolverine protecting its mate.
“What if he had an asthma attack!”
Then you’d be a merry widow, I thought. But honest Stan said, “I don’t have asthma.”
“But an experience like that could give it to you,” said Willette. “Trauma triggers, they call it. “Traumatic inception”. Someone needs to take that door
off at the hinges.”
mandarin .”
“Don’t look at me,” said Arnold. “I’m a
The game was over. “Maybe in the morning,” I told Willette. “I’m gravid and I need my sleep.”
When Arnold finally came to bed – could Stan possibly have agreed to a threesome? I refused to let him in. “You’re the icicle,” I told him.
When I discovered one house on the list was haunted I gave the real estate agent no rest until he took me there. Honestly I had to do that man’s job for him. It was raining so heavily that morning that his car was like a bathysphere.
“I want to at least look at it. Cheer up; if there are leaks we’re sure to see them.”
“That’s it.” The agent still seemed very depressed as he reached for his golf umbrella. “It’s been empty fourteen years. No modernization whatever.”
Better and better. The bathrooms and kitchens I’d been seeing were like lip-sticked hogs in toe- shoes. There might even be original paneling. Peering out of the window I could see nothing through the darkening rain. “What’s it haunted by?”
I saw his wattles quiver in battle with his chin. Was I interfering with the real estate agent’s code?
“Various things.” Unadroitly he tried changing the subject and actually selling. “It has a view of the river. And it’s a real bargain.”
“Like what things?” Not reaching for my own umbrella or putting up my hood might tempt disclosure. I saw him wondering he could talk me out of going further.
(Sigh) “Oswald Pewlett saw a fireball.”
I was entranced! Had he searched his memory for the spectre least likely to queer a deal? “There
was a fire?”
He hastened to reassure. “A green fire.cold fire that doesn’t burn.”
A Delicious! I had to see it now! I pulled
galoshes over my ivory heels. “Let’s go!”
Perched above the road, the house was reached by a corkscrew of steps. The porch was an addition, so it was full of leaks, but the house was solid as a rock. Silent. High ceilinged. Original paneling. One bathroom for seven bedrooms, a marvelous thirties kitchen with no appliances, and a single light bulb in the exact center of every ceiling. This could be fun.
The real estate agent ensconced himself by the library window with its view of the river and refused to go upstairs. “I’ve seen it,” he said, pulling his fishing hat down over his ears as if assaulted by inner rain.
Upstairs there was no fireball, but the floors were littered with little glittery shards that turned out to be flies’ wings. No flies, mind you, only their wings. Thrifty spiders, I suppose who dine on all but isinglass. Is that how fairy legends started, I wondered. Fairy wings and flies’ wings – hard to tell the difference. I’m on the side of spiders. They can have all the flies they want.
And that’s how I bought The Old Chase Place.
THREE – DELIVER US
I should never have told Arnold the place was haunted, but I couldn’t resist bragging. “It has everything,” I sang.
“Air-conditioning too, so it seems,” he groused. He was always out to ruin my good time.
“That’s just the wind off the river. A natural chill factor. And real oak, too.”
“I’m not complaining.” He couldn’t help but warm to so much wood. In the city everything is “faux”. Alas the rooms were rather small, and in strange juxtaposition. Not a rich man’s house, you wouldn’t say, but perhaps the warren of a worrier.
“This will be my study,” said Arnold. He chose the one room in the house that still had a working fireplace – the others had been fitted with hideous stovepipes. But I didn’t argue, because at last he was smiling.
We were having a picnic lunch when the Sears truck drove up with the appliances. I didn’t see the accident because in my condition, meals are serious events. If I’m going to spend all morning nauseated then I’m going to spend all afternoon eating. (And all evening sleeping it off.) So when Arnold rose to show the hirelings what a forceful homeowner he could be, I pulled the fried chicken bucket closer.
When I heard a crunch and a hoarse cry I did run to the window. The ramp had fallen off the steps, tossing the refrigerator and pinning a delivery man. His mouth was open – I could see blood – and he was gasping for air. He reminded me of the fish my uncle caught on his
many unsporting ventures into the wild. He loved watching creatures die. He once presented me with a still- beating fish heart, saying, “It’s only the stupidest that go on living after they are really dead.” The fish, the headless running chickens — I guess the joke was on them, if they didn’t know they were dead. But the delivery man was not dead; we all affirmed the fact.
There was a flurry of activity while the driver jumped into the truck to call for help – we didn’t have a phone yet and cell phones don’t work out here. The fire and rescue truck arrived after about ten minutes to take over. Arnold had to help the second delivery man move in the appliance. “Get a camera,” he hissed.
He wanted me to take pictures of the ramp and the steps to show, although our porch was in sorry condition, it was the ramp anchoring that was at fault (them) and not the steps (us). That’s because it’s so important in life to figure out whose fault everything is.
“He’ll be all right,” I offered. “He had a lot of meat on him.”
“Jesus, Sharl,” said Arnold, “I heard his bones go crunch.” And that was the end of that picnic.
At least I had a brand new oven, refrigerator, dishwasher and washer/dryer. I went back to applying the coat of dark green paint to make the room picture-perfect. Hunter green for Hunter (boy or girl); a super-infant guaranteed to make all his mother’s dreams come true.
Andrew looked up from the Food section of the Sunday Times. “Did he jump out of his coffin and give everybody the finger?”
“No.” I sat down on a Brazilian leather cube impersonating a chair. “He left me a lot of money.”
That made Arnold sit up straight. Finally I had produced something worthy to compete with three- melon risotto. “How much?”
“A lot.” Two beats. “All of it.”
I hadn’t seen Arnold this excited in a long time. “This is the uncle we never once went to visit, even though he only lived in New Rochelle?”
“He’s the one.”
“And there are a lot of other relatives…” I saw the penny drop. “Is this the same guy who used to feel you up when you were little?”
“He’s the one.”
Arnold whistled. “Wow!” he said, “Break out the champagne! Let’s drink to old fashioned Calvinist guilt!”
But I couldn’t drink. “There’s an unpaid
housekeeper who says she’ll sue.” I tried dismissing that
ugly scene from my mind. But ugly scenes don’t go so easily.
“Screw her,” he laughed, “Doubtless the old man did. To the one who got away!” he snorkled. “With…” drum-roll on the glass coffee table… “all the money!”
“I could split it with her,” I said thoughtfully. “Except that I need it all.” And if I divorced Arnold, I’d have to split it with him.
His eyes narrowed over my unusual decisiveness. “Sounds like you’ve made a plan.”
“I have. I’m pregnant and I’m moving.”
He rose to pursue me to the kitchen. I was the pursued one now.
“Rich? Pregnant? Moving?” He banged his palm against his chest. “It’s a lot to handle for one afternoon. Where are you going, oh helpmeet?”
“Upstate. The country.” There was no champagne. Of course not. There had been nothing to celebrate for so, so long. I poured us each an apple juice. “You could come with.” Two beats. “But you’d have to give up your girlfriend.”
Surprise! I saw him try to toss it off and keep on dancing. “What’s that? Getting jealous are we? Symptomatic of your condition?”
“Gayle.” I leaned forward, giving back the name. “She sent me such a charming letter.” In which she stated her utter non-comprehension of why the moody bitch wouldn’t just step aside and let the poor, kind, considerate man go free. Ugh. Apple juice is disgustingly sweet. I’ve never understood how adults can covet the provinces of children. Poor little sugar addicts, they are ruined before they start. I tried adding powdered tea from a mix. Still bad. The no-liquor lifestyle is a tough sell.
He was sputtering like a damp firecracker. But it was not Arnold’s turn to speak.
“Screwing students is the beginning of the end for a teacher. You’re lucky she notified me and not the superintendent.”
Unfortunately I could always read Arnold’s mind. He really needs to get some more interesting thoughts. I saw him deciding he’d better stop aimless denial until confronted with the evidence against him.
“Why upstate?” he bartered, testing me. “Why not, say, Europe?”
“Because,” I answered, “I like to get something for my money.” That alone made me my uncle’s worthy heir. Glittering silver dollars lit the darkened rooms of memory. I persisted — for I’m nothing if not persistent — “Haven’t you heard of the curse of the lottery winner? They spend it all and then some. I want a property I can buy outright – debt-free.” Wouldn’t it be heaven owing nobody nothing?
He toddled toward the window on his be- jeaned insect legs. He looks much better in big-boy pants. Was he trying to imagine life without me? Or without New York? So I sealed the deal with a siren song. “You could finish your screenplay…”
Alysse Aallyn 