Encounters A Novella

                                 The Mission

        The padres had blessed the site, well satisfied with nearby water and undeveloped land for growing and grazing. With help from their military escort, they put together temporary shelters, simple huts for themselves, the soldiers, and especially the locals, recruited to plant the fields, to nurture the budding pecan trees, and start the building of the mission on a small plateau overlooking two valleys and the surrounding rich grasslands.

        Then the travelers continued on their religious journey of exploration, sworn to follow a path of poverty, chastity, servitude, and obedience, and leaving behind the fields, trees, inexperienced workmen and crude materials, and the beginnings of a mission -- a mission never to be named, a mere stopover on the way to more official postings, an afterthought in the church's planned march to lay a sacred trail throughout the waiting desert. 



       The wind came out of the southwest over the border in the early predawn hours, swirling dust devils over the desert floor. The wind climbed over mesas and slid through mountain passes, rustled the smooth green leaves of the giant cottonwoods along creek beds and river turnings. It pushed the tall, golden grasses of the highlands in rhythmic waves, as on the ocean, toward the mission, which had stood through the seasonal violent monsoons that poured over the horizon, through Indian uprisings and religious settlement, through abandonment and forgetfulness, and finally, random rediscovery.

       Showing its two hundred years' wear and neglect through cracks and repairs in the thick adobe walls and in the crumbled remains of the surround wall, gates and outbuildings, the history of the mission could also be read in the vague outlines left of a tower which had once held three forged bells, brought by cargo ships from Spain, and then carried overland from Mexico. The bells, through time had called the faithful to services, meals, work, and sanctuary. With the collapse of the tower, the bells had been carefully moved to the ground to the right of the mission's massive front doors. where they were hung in a separate white-washed frame, topped with a hand carved wooden cross and enclosed in a circle of stones.

       Raised quickly and practically, the mission was formed with a long simple nave, altar and sacristy at one end, and at the other, an entrance area defined by iron railings. The wood doors were bordered with iron strips in the shape of a cross  and opened with intricate carved iron handles coiled like  snakes. 

       Inside, desert dust continuously fell silently in slow motion. A mud wasp nest was tucked away in a corner near the north facing windows. Regardless of season, one could inhale the combined scent of desert flowers, candle wax, faint remains  of incense, and even soot, along with the old ingrained smells of passing years, could see old patterns left by moving feet and spy evidence of previous lives hidden in shadowed corners. The wooden bench pews had been built and rebuilt and yet were well worn. Empty wall niches still waited for saints' statues that had never come. Iron racks held candles, which were also lined along the walls. On the rough hewn table, inside the doors, were bowls for water and small metallic charms called Milagros. The mission's planked floor creaked with memories of ghostly conversations.

      The single sign of people coming through was on a board leaning against the south wall. There, attached with pins, tacks, tape, even gum, were photos, letters, notes, dog tags, religious medals, prayers, hair ribbons, and torn bits of paper showing addresses, phone numbers, and pleas for help.

       There was a back room --table, bed frame, cupboard --left from the days when a priest was assigned to the mission full time. Now, a religious cleric came once a month, staying at  a nearby ranchero, and officiating for weddings, funerals, baptisms, and blessings for the crops.

      Volunteers cleaned the mission, stabilized the ruins, tended the pecan groves, ramada and small cemetery, just as their grandparents and parents had done before. As their children someday would.
    
      Visitors to the mission were mostly wanderers in from the main highway, or winter residents on tour buses headed to nearby vineyards for wine tasting festivals and then, the few to whom the mission was their sole destination  -  those who were searching or searched for, those hoping to be foond, those waiting for the final reveal.  










                                           Kathryn




    The woman, heavy in body and spirit, sat on the rough wooden bench, and as the hours passed, she continually turned the small, metal house between her fingers, finding comfort in the contrast of the hard surfaces and rounded edges.


    The house, or Milogros, a votive or promise, was like a child's gingerbread house with a heart for a window, flowers and trees as a border. Gentle. Never harsh. Promising good things inside to those who were lost.

    Lit candles cast wavering shadows on the mission's night walls. Here, for the woman, the dark at last was welcome.

    She wished upon the small metal house for just such a house. Where she could be sheltered and safe from the voices within and without. Where she could go through doors at will. Where open windows would usher in sun and fresh breezes. Where lights were not trapped in wire cages and people would not record her every word, her every breath. A house where there was chocolate.





    Kathryn had green eyes and dimples that entranced and long legs that seemed not to end. Her high school yearbook sang, 'The dimples that her cheeks contain nearly drove us all insane.'  She married the man because he was so smart, so well liked, and adored her above all else.

  He married Kathryn because she had green eyes, dimples, long legs, brought unpredictability into his all too predictable world, and because he loved her above all else.
   
   For seven years, they lived happily ever after, except for having little money and her  husband's unexplainable desire for children.


    She disliked the child from the early Saturday morning hour the baby finally decided to be born. 

   Kate (she preferred Kathryn as in Hepburn, but everyone insisted on Kate, or worse, Katie) felt she had luckily escaped the 'ickiness' of having a child through miscarrying twice accidentally. But when her husband began the adoption business, she decided to just have one of their own instead of a stranger's. Better the 'ickiness' known.
  
    Of course, the baby came out a girl. Daddy's little girl. And Kathryn's game began, with her only finding out through the passage of years that the game is fun until it isn't. 



    She was hungry. And tired. And understood that they, whoever they might be, would be looking for her everywhere. But not in this dark place. She liked this dark place. Kathryn had tried to remember how she had come here, but the voices told her that this was of no interest. Just that it was important she be here. Now.

    

    Back.
   
  They were dancing. She could almost hear the gentle music and hummed along. An afternoon tea dance in another, more gracious age. The young men wore suits and tight collars, the young women, ankle-length, soft, flirty dresses, and wide brimmed hats. 

    His first words, "I haven't even seen your face. It's that hat."

    So she tilted her head back, looked up and smiled. Green eyes. Dimples. A swirl of dark curly hair.

     And that had been it.
   
    He could not, would not, look away, and by the time he did, years later, reality had upended their love, and their lives. The joys of Kathryn's smile told everyone the wrong story. Never the one they should hear.  




   "Are you all right, senora?' Elva asked. She was worried about this woman sitting so alone in the mission.

       The woman looked startled as out of a sound sleep, and smiled. A lovely smile. "Oh, yes," she said. "I'm waiting for a friend."

        Elva continued cleaning, placing fresh wildflowers on the front altar, adding new candles, and then left by the side door which led out into the yard, the pecan groves and on into the nearby hills. 




       They named their daughter after her grandmothers. Kathryn felt rather complete as she had fulfilled what was expected of her - marriage and motherhood, but she had no idea what to do next. No one had prepared her for anything more. How could a life be finished at twenty-nine?

      Motherhood came as a shock. So time consuming. The child grew and grew. And grew some more. There were school activities, she was smart. Of course. Church. Brownies and Girl Scouts. Kathryn found it was in the little things, where she would make points. Sending the daughter off to school in hand-me-down dresses that were too short for her height. Enrolling her in ballet classes with a French teacher and a dozen petite blondes who giggled. In the first recital, the daughter, in  green satin and an orange coolie hat, portrayed a Chinese bridge - bending backward to the ground while the other dancers twirled around her. That was good.

     When the daughter moved toward adolescence, forgetfulness became the key. Such as never explaining to her what menstruation was, letting her discover that first blood alone.

       And, it was about this time that the voices came calling, voices reassuring and approving of Kathryn. She now had something that understood. However, when they talked a lot, she became physically tired. They told her a part of her loved the girl and the other half was not hateful, just indifferent, as though watching a slow motion film from the last row of the balcony.

     "I'm so tired. My head is filled with tired. I feel little doors in there closing down one by one, He's gone five days during the week and there is too much to do,  And I forget things," is what Kathryn told the doctor.

      "Your daughter could be a help."

      "She's a child."

     "Well, Katie, I think you should probably cut back on some activities,. Get more rest and let's concentrate on you for awhile."

      She was pleased.

    And to her husband the doctor said, "To help her sleep at night, try giving her a tablespoon of whiskey."

     "Whiskey?" her husband whispered.

     "Just think of it as medicine, son," he said patting him on the shoulder.


     In time, the whiskey was as needed as the chocolate.  




     "Kathryn. Kathryn. Wake up!"

     "No," she murmured.


    "You must wake up, the daughter will be home soon from school. It's after three. You must be the good mother now."

     "She can take care of herself."

     "She is very smart like her father, they say."

     "Yes, yes. Yes. I know."

     "Wake up. Now. Kathryn."

     "No. No. More whiskey. That's all I want." And she struggled off the couch.

    "The whiskey is only for the night. Now, the daughter is coming home. You must be happy. The good mother would be."

      "I only wish..."

     "What?"

     "...that I could do one thing well." 


     "I'm telling lies. I can't remember what is true."

     "Lies are the only way you can survive, Kathryn, and you've learned how to lie so well. The better liar you become, the more people will think you've grown up. And," the voices told her gently, "sometimes you can lie just as well with silence."


     Then for a time, the voices went away and she was not so tired.



     Kathryn had not wanted a child. She wished to be the child, the center of his world. Always the young girl with green eyes, dimples, and long legs. Because now when he looked at the daughter, talked with her, and laughed so spontaneously and happily, Kathryn knew her world had turned in another direction. And the silence was all.

     She tried within this quiet to remember the past, to remember the trues. What she did recall did not seem to be the way things actually were.


     One usually thought of a mother with a small, growing child as showing the way, pushing aside obstacles, explaining what was to come, sharing good and sad, setting the way toward the child becoming an adult. 

     "That sounds like a Hallmark card," Kathryn would say.


     Her mother, with happy cooperation from her older sister, Helen, told anyone who would listen that it was good Kate was pretty becuase she surely was not smart and, "we feared we'd have to burn the school down so she could graduate."

    The mother, a little coarse, and a lot angry, would throw cast iron pans when the mood erupted. She would yell, "You're just hopeless, Kate, you know that." Other days, calmer ones, she would simply declare, "Except for your looks, girl you really are a disappointment. Best marry that boy quick before he knows you too well. Looks don't last long, I know."

     So Kathryn did.



     Night was coming. Dusk out and dark in.

     The heavy door to the mission opened, quickly and easily, for the person entering. Alone and sitting in the back.

     For Kathryn the doors had almost signaled the end of whatever this was. She had pulled and strained until at last with a heavy, almost human moan, the doors had moved.



     She thought it was probably because of the knife.

    It was a rainy Thursday night and her husband and the daughter were taking her to another hospital. They called it a hospital, but she knew this was a place for crazy people. She had threatened to throw herself out of the car, but someone was holding her tightly from behind.

     And all because of the knife. 



     The woman talked slowly, emphasizing each word as though Kathryn was in kindergarten. She was a social worker at the hospital and this was an interview.

     SW:  "Kate, do you know  why you are here?"

     K: "Because of the knife.....is that the right answer?"

     SW: "There is no right or wrong here."

     K: "There is always a right and wrong."

     SW: "What made you go to the kitchen and get the knife?"

     K: "The voices."

     SW: "What voices?"

     K: "The voices I hear. They take care of me. Tell me how to be."

     SW: "To be?"

     K: "To be. So that no one will know who I really am."

     SW: "And who are you, Kate?"

     K: "I only know what they tell me."

   SW: "Do  you think you would have hurt someone with the knife? Yourself? Your daughter?"

    K: "I think I wanted to. Things got confusing. I stared at her for a very long time.  No voices told me what to do so I went to sleep."

     SW: "When did the voices first come to you?"

     K: "Oh, always. Always with me. When I was little, they would sing. Sometimes they go away."

     SW: "Does your husband know about them?"

     K: "No. No. Voices would be a bad thing for me to hear. They warned me."

     SW: "Do you think they're bad?"

     K: "People wouldn't understand that they help me be."

     SW: "Does your husband talk with you. Does he listen?"

     K: "He listens. He doesn't hear."

     SW: "Men are often not good listeners. How close are you two? Is there affection? Does he like you as a person?"

     K: "He's a perfect husband."

    SW: "Um, Kate, there's five to ten percent devil in all of us. Believe me, your husband has his share......Were you close to your mother growing up?"

     K: "She said I was disappointing."

     SW: "Your father?"

     K: "He died."

     SW: "You have a sister? Older than you?"  

     K: "Helen. She's always been the smart one,. Serious. She's an accountant. Helen's always been an old person. When she does laugh, it's not real."

     SW: "Do you have a close female friend?"

     K: "Not anymore. When people know you're sick they go away. In high school and after, I had so many friends." 

     SW: "Tell me about your daughter."

     K: "I really don't know her. Can I go to sleep now? My head is tired."

     SW: "Very soon. How can you not know your daughter?"

     K: "She hides herself. From me. I think she's afraid."

     SW: "Kate, why would your daughter be afraid?"

     K: "Because of the knife. Other things."

     SW: "Are you loving? Do you hug her?" 

    K: "I call her 'honey'. Or 'sweetie'. Or 'baby'. But I don't like touching her because I think she can feel I don't really like her."

     SW: "When, Kate, did you begin to dislike your daughter?"

     K: "Way before she was born."

     SW: "But you didn't know the baby was a girl."

     K: "I knew." 

     SW: "What if the baby had been a boy?"

     K: "I knew."



     A nurse took her to the room, the room with two narrow beds with lavender spreads, two small dressers, a closet, a barred and locked window, and a caged ceiling light. Kathryn laid down, hoping for the voices to come, to explain how to be in this place. The only voice that she did hear during that long night was the other woman, talking to herself, almost inaudibly over and over. "Daddy, I'm not crazy." 

    Kathryn hated the hospital until the day she realized she didn't. Safe. Finally. From hell hole to something. She would meet with the doctors and the doctors would talk. There were group discussions, one she walked out of when somebody said, "booby hatch'. There were snacks like popcorn, soft drinks, and the best, graham crackers with chocolate, and games, even square dancing. Decisions were made for her -- go here, follow me, sit, eat, don't move, take this medicine. No whiskey, just pills.

     Always more talk. Always more questions.

     "When you have fears, what do you do?"

     "I look for a quiet place, but when the quiet sees I'm there, it goes away."

     "Do you ever feel lost?"

     "I'm trying to find the road back. I am. I can't. The voices are gone and I've been in this dark hole so long." 

     There were good days.

     There were the others.     

    She thought she might have done a bad thing when she called the daughter at her job, telling her, "I hate you. I want to see you dead."

     That had been on an other day.



     The man in the back had gone. She hadn't noticed at the time.

     A couple had come into the old building simply to light candles and leave.

    The evening had shut down and Kathryn felt the annui seeping into her tired bones. She lay down, still grasping the metal house in her hand and waited for a friend to arrive.



     Hospital.

     Home.

     Back again.

     The daughter went to college and told everyone she would be a writer.

     People seldom visited and when they did, Kathryn saw and heard them through a medical haze. Their words had echoes. Their eyes focused somewhere over her shoulder. And they smiled. A lot.

     Her husband continued being perfect.

   She carefully watered the whiskey and happily learned that liquor stores delivered. A tablespoon became ancient history. 

    After college, the daughter traveled for work and went on vacations. Each time, Kathryn threatened to 'do something' and each time the daughter went and each time no one died. Finally, the daughter left the home and Kathryn cried until she was out of sight.

    The husband decided they should move from the Midwest's winter cold to Arizona sun, where he would play golf everyday. There was a new hospital. Palm trees, pool, Mexican  food, and more talking. She was relieved when the voices moved with her and asked them often if people ever ran out of words. "No" was their concise answer.

    And now she had tests. Counting by threes to one hundred and back, ink blots that all looked like climbing plants or spiders. Word meanings like 'edifice', which she didn't know, and 'compassion', which for some reason she thought she should.

     

     And here she was.

     In an old Mission, lit by candles, waiting for the friend the voices had promised.

    Kathryn watched as the individual flames stood high and as the night waned, so did the small fires. Down into hot liquid, spitting, dying, springing back to life, disappearing, fluttering,  gone, gone, then alive yet again. Struggling to breathe. And finally, out. 



     "It's time, Kathryn. Time to end."

     The voices had never been so gentle in her memory.

     Gray was showing over the eastern mountains into a budding dawn sky.

     "My favorite hour of the day," Kathryn said back to the voices. "When I was a little girl in Iowa, I used to love lilacs in the morning when they were heavy with dew. They smelled to sweet." 

    One foot in front of another, she was guided through the side door, through the pecan trees and through the swaying golden grasses. Her imagination, combined with their rhythmic movement and with the shadows of fast traveling clouds, created a momentary scene -- unseen -- except by her. Animals running, waterfalls splashing over red rocks, lilac bushes laden down with lavender and white, trees where there were no trees, and then, waiting for her, just for her, on the low hillside, a house.


     "My house," Kathryn whispered, no longer a question.


     "Your house," they said.


    Yes, it was her house with doors open to let in the sun, breezes flowing through open windows. On the walls paintings from fairy tales -- a beautiful princess with curly brown hair and green eyes and a lovely smile.

      One chair. Her chair. Where she sat, now exhausted. Now, home.

     Kathryn stayed still for a long while, inhaling deeply from the warmth and the wind. The tiredness in her dissolved into a near state of bliss. She slid to the floor, resting against the chair, and her eyes gazed upward to an intensely blue sky with a small puff of a cloud sailing past like a heavenly oasis.  

     A voice.

     She heard just one voice.

     A single, clear voice, sounding so familiar, yet long unused.

     "I'm sorry I was crazy," it said.  











                                                         Joyland









     Eight characters in search of a winery.


     His name was Logan.

     Just Logan.

     In this part of the country, so recently new to him yet forged as it was out of an ancient land, last names were excess baggage. Centuries before, family names had led to prestige, reputation, land holdings, and wealth. All that had blown away on the monsoon winds swirling up from the equator.

     Now, it was a handshake, if that. Maybe a first name and a hometown,. These strangers in this strange southwestern desert were here solely for the promise of fair weather and fun. No one was looking for a lifelong friend, time had become too short and lifelong resided back in winter's country.

     Logan was a white-haired man, wiry and slight, and he walked with the familiar forward stoop that accompanies age's downward descent. Wearing knee length khaki shorts, green knit shirt, high white socks,  and sensible sandals, his step was determined as was his gaze.

     Passing through the huge Wal-Mart parking lot, he said to his wife at his side, "You know I don't drink wine. Only brandy and water. And here I am, spending hours in a van with strangers so we can go look at grapes?"


     Joyce was tall with brown hair, remarkable brown eyes that almost fell into black, and a steady nature, entirely comfortable with the grumbling man next to her. She walked straight, slowly and firmly, giving no evidence of a bad right knee. She had been an elementary school teacher back in Illinois, complementing Logan, who retired from teaching high school English.

     "You have a book. You always have a book," she said. "And you love grapes."


     Molly was the all-too-familiar sixteen going on thirty. A smart-mouth with a brain to match. A Scandinavian blonde with clear fjord blue eys that missed little and questioned everything. She had no problem putting her doubts, criticisms, and judgments into words that anyone could hear if they chose to really listen.
     "So, mom, don't you agree people should always be honest with each other? Really?"


     A born-again redhead, mom was Vanneau, called Van, which she detested. Divorced, with a teen daughter, who asked too many questions, either obscurely philosophical or on the mark explicit. Van, equally bright but lately unsure of herself, was always ready with sarcasm edged with a variety of expletives in three languages.

     "Molly, sweetheart, while I applaud your hopefulness for the human race, everybody lies. Everybody. Most days I can't even be honest with myself. Trust me. Accept it, Makes life more interesting." 


     Frances, grandmother, mother, widow of long standing and short memory. She was a small, yellowed, wizened woman seemingly made out of leftovers from other people. She had graphic words to describe the golden years and most often just said, 'I'm an old woman. Don't waste my time.'

     "Van, if you were honest, you wouldn't have to ask anyone to trust you."


     In his mid-forties, Wil had a sleek, bald head  (bald my choice). The creases in his face were imprinted there by his continual expression of attentiveness. His eyes seemed seldom to blink or his mouth to smile. When he did speak, words were concise with a middle European accent.

     To no one in particular as he witnessed life through the tinted window, "If God created this country, he did so with no joy in his heart."


     Wearing plaid pants and a yellow golf shirt, Arnie (nee Arnold) was big, but not yet bulky, loud but not obnoxious, Unmarried twice, he was now living with Irene, his partner in the touring van he drove to casinos, canyons, missions, Indian ruins and the border vineyards for wine fests. Good driver. Bad businessman.

     "Country used to be known for cotton, copper and cattle. Nowadays, it's more climate, casinos and chimichangas."


     And Rene, a woman of delicate build, especially next to Arnie. She had lost her husband ("He passed six years ago. I like to say 'passed', it leaves the door open.") Her children grown, she had headed to the sun and year round golfing. On the rare rainy day, she made up crossword puzzles and always in her shoulder bag she carried a paperback thesaurus. Part of her charm was sometimes talking in riddles.

     "The past of tomorrow. The future of today," was a favorite.


     The day was early, desert sun's first rays shooting holes through the grayed clouds laying on the eastern horizon. Three lumbering casino-bound buses were leaving the lot enveloped in billows of black exhaust, not to return for twenty-four hours to spit out sensory-overloaded snow birds.

     As their blue van eased out onto the interstate, it passed row after row of cookie-cutter houses of two and three stories with poorly planned east-west exposures.

     "So folks, the prize goes to the one who can spot a house that's not some sort of brown."

    "Hah," France said, "They keep sending me postcards of flowers and palm trees and swimming pools and all I've seen is dirt. Now look, they even build houses with it. You know for this, Van, I could've stayed in Oklahoma."

     "Frances, can I call you Frances" Arnie said without waiting for a reply. "It's the law, you have to build with colors from the desert. And you're right, you're right, they all look the same. And a guy comin' home drunk some night is gonna made a hell of a mistake. Excuse the language. But you know, you can find about anything you want around here. Mountains, lakes, forests, vineyards, cattle even. Fact is, where we're goin' there's ranchers and miners whose families have lived there for generations."

     "Find everything except a good bookstore and all the missing g's."

     The girl behind Logan leaned forward. What are g's?"

     He turned stiffly. "Just listen - borin', missin', runnin', knowin'. No g's."

     "Who - are - you? A teacher I bet. Right?"

     "English. High school."

     She settled in, "My favorite subject. I love 'Wuthering Heights'."

     "Of course you do."

     "Were you this patronizing with your students? And, oh, there's a 'g'"

     "If you're referring to the children occupying the desks in my classroom, possibly. But since they were listening more to their raging hormones, they probably missed the implication."

     "How - old - are -  you?"

     "Sixty-one."

     "I'm sixteen."

     "Well, I'm sure we'll find much in common to discuss."


     Since moving to the southwest, Logan and Joyce had named this part of the country, Joyland. Southern nights, clear skies, no snow, ice storms, or tornadoes, learning to like tequila. And yes, hot temperatures. Really hot temperatures. But they would move from a/c to a/c in cool comfort, living in shorts and sandals through the three hundred days of sunshine to be endured each year. 

   
     Joyce gave Logan a wife-jab in the side whispering. "Can't you behave?" Then, "Where do you take tourists? What are their favorite places?"  

     "Well, you see, they're not always visitors. Some live here. Like you guys. But we cover Flagstaff down to the border. Tombstone and Bisbee are good ones. Sedona. We hit this two lane blacktop up in red rock country and I tell you, Joyce, I was full expectin' to see John Wayne ridin' over the hill with the cavalry right behind."

      Rene added, "Up there, you can almost see history come alive."

     "There is a sense of the forlorn about this land," Wil said.

     "Forlorn?" Young girl was back, tucking herself between Logan and Joyce, but aiming at Wil.

      "Loneliness."

     "Where you from?"

     "All over. I tend to travel. Often."

     "You have an accent."

     He smiled.

     "So, why are you here?" as she settled in, more questions lining up in her active brain.

     "Bird watching." Wil answered and turned back to the window.

     "Birds?"

     "Over one hundred species, I'm told."

     "Sit back, Molly. Inquisition is over."

     This prompted the look, the look combining impatience and dismissal that can only pass between a teen girl and her mother.

     "Yeah," Arnie said continuing right on. "Lots happenin',  we're just a little baby state as things go."


      They turned off the  interstate onto a narrow road with a certain riding rhythm. And there were the mountains,  guarding the passages to Mexico. Wildflowers and cottonwoods outlined rivelets of water through the grasslands, waist-high and moving as a single tide in the winds that blew through like a guiding hand.

     "Oh, this is beauatiful."

     "Not like desert at all."

     "I'd guess only about half the state is real desert," Arnie said.

     "One wonders how many geneerations have worshipped these golden grasses," Wil added.

     And then, "All right. I'll give you that. This is better than dirt."

     "Nice, grandma."


     "What's that up ahead?"

     "Old mission."

     "Name?"

    "No name. Been here forever. People from the villages and rancheros keep it up," Rene said. "They say the mission was more a way station in the old days. A priest comes once a month for services. It's sad. Forgotten. Except for the locals and they  do tell stories."

     "Stories?" Now Logan was interested.

     "Oh, like if your votive candles burn all night, your prayer will be answered."

     "Then I'd say better be careful what you pray for. Time for us to stop?"

     Arnie turned left on to a gravel road between towering sunflowers leading to the building's decaying outer wall. "So, let's stretch a little."

     "You can hear the wind."

     "What does that mean?"

     "Gram, just listen."

     "All I head is the ringing in my ears."


     "These doors, they feel like they weigh a ton. And built so long ago," Logan grunted just enough to find the strength to move them.

     "Heavy wood. iron cross bars. Crude materials probably used by inexperienced workmen. But," Wil said, "some artist was there. Just look at the sculpted door handles." Stepping across the threshold, he felt the pull to the past, and a simpler time.


     "What are these?" Joyce asked Rene, fingering a small metal figure she had taken from a reed basket by the doors. In it was a collection of metal images -  faces, legs and arms. broken hearts, animals, clouds, rainbows, praying figures, each attached to a circle of red thread.

    Picking up a small child's head, Rene said, "These are miracles. Milagros. Religious charms, mostly  from Mexico. If you are a believer, you carry one for protection or good luck. Or maybe, because it reminds you of someone or something."

     "What about those hanging on the wall?"

     "If you have a special need or prayer, you hang one in a religious place with your promise to the saints, in any language, Joyce. Milagros says 'please' or 'thank  you'. Often, 'help me'. 
Sort of a covenant between me and Thee."

     "A book?"

     "Learning."

     "Lips?"

     "Words."

     "Dialogue," Joyce suggested.

     "Yes. Or a kiss."

     "Even better. And the body parts?"

     "I'd guess a plea for health or healing for a loved one. Or for yourself."

   "These are beautiful. So simple, and yet moving. A tiny reassurance held in the palm of your hand."


     "Gram, what are you doing?"

     "Reading these notes."

     "Just  don't touch them. What are they about?"

    "Where's my daughter? My son? Bless my family. Asking all kinds of questions God doesn't have time to answer."

     "You believe in God?"

     "Molly, girl, I'm on borrowed time. Most people my age  run back to what they believed in as kids. God. Angels. Heaven."

     "But, Gram, we're all on borrowed time from the day we're born." As she started to walk away from the message board, cluttered as it was with old photos, flowers, scraps of paper, even soldiers' dog tags, the young girl was stopped by these words, scribbled on pale pink paper, "Mama, I'm so very lost. Where are you? Find me. Please." And, for some unconnected reason, Molly thought randomly, "Maybe next time I'll come back as a man. If these is a next time."


     "Pretty narrow in here."

     "I understand that the width of the buildings was determined by the length of the wooden beams. These walls," Wil pointed, "they're adobe. Would not withstand much weight. Or pressure." Then he smiled as if embarrassed at having explained too much. "I read."

     "As do I. Books? Real books?"

     "Yes, of course."

     "Just asking our of academic curiosity. Most readers I meet seem to be attached to some electronic device that constantly needs recharging."

     "Electronics, I think, for all their benefits destroy silence. That silence we need to hear our inner voices."

     "You staying in Phoenix?"

     "Tucson."

     "City new to you?"

     Wil shrugged. "I find at night most cities look the same. Is this country all you expected?"

    "How could it be? All we'd seen was Arizona Highways. But when you're sitting in the middle of your third winter blizzard and sub zero temperatures, you want to believe. I liked the newness. Come to find out though, this desert demands a lot from you.  Sounds crazy, but I find myself wishing for a cloudy day. So, did all the pretty color photos bring you here?"

     "No, the birds did, And actually I like black and white photos. Color explains too much."


     "Mama. I'm so very lost. Where are you? Find me Please."

     "Oh, God," Joyce gasped. Her face contorted, filled with pain. "That could be our son."

     Van moved in close. "What do you mean?"

     "I know. I know it's not," she stammered. "He's out there somewhere." She looked at Van, trying visibly to make her understand "And I can't touch him."

     A moment passed. Without words.

     "He dropped out of college after his junior year. Said he wanted a year off and promised to come back and finish school. His last postcard was from Arizona, showed a resort where he said he was working as a waiter. Two years ago. "Again, she moved away. "You are so fortunate to have your daughter. Hold her close. Everyday."

     But Van followed, wanting in some way  to hold her close as well.

     "After my divorce, I was going wild, acting out, blaming him, his parents, his women, his life before me. Then a friend told me, 'Van, you only own the time you two were together. Not before. Not after. You own the time, not the person.' Sounds simple, it's not. But, Joyce, your time with your son was from the day he was conceived to the day he left. That's your time. No one can take that away. Except you." 


     "My mom talked. Dad didn't listen."

     "Oh, hon," Rene said. "that's a man. I think they tend to hear what they expect to hear. Or maybe want to hear. And, we go along with them and tell them what we know will satisfy them." 

     "Then, how....?"

     "Don't have a clue."


     Wil, looking at the emotional collection on the back wall, read, 'I adventure alice thru the fairy tale of life', hand printed in red ink, and he marveled silently at the vagaries of the world.

     "You know, sometimes the best thing to do is tie a young person down and tell them the truths about life," Arnie said from behind.

     "What truths would they be?"

     "Well, I guess they'd be different for different people. Right? Some see the glass half full, some half empty. Me? I just ask what's in the glass." He gave a satisfied chuckle as he wslked outside.


     The two women sat.

     "I find it hard to think of sixty as a beginning. It's all done. There will be no do-overs."

     "Or," Van said, "realizing that all will go on exactly the same after we've gone."

     "And, on a more serious note," Joyce returned. "I wonder if anyone will love my cat in quite the same way I do. Logan says after he dies, he wants to come back as my cat -------- being divorced. A tough time wasn't it?"

     "Oh, for so many, many reasons. Why are we women such sad creatures? I mean, look, we've got good common sense, smarts. We're attentive and giving and able to take pain that would flatten any man. Yet, we're still all about them. Even now, at my time of life."

     Joyce said, "Well, I'd say history and out mothers can take the dubious credit for that. From the time we're old enough to recognize that boys are different, we're told over and over that we're not real women without men."

     With a dry laugh, Van came back, "True. But somehow men are always men, aren't they?"

     "You ex?"

     "I'll always remembers his honey bourbon voice. I never really thought of him leaving me. Then, one fine day, I could see from the look in his eyes when he touched me, his love wasn't being taken away. It was being shared."

     "There was more to know?"

     "Certainly. But should I know was the question. No, was my answer."

     "How many years?"

    "I'm going to be forty-eight. So five. And I was sort of hoping I was done with all the business of being a woman. But", she said, " habit dies hard. Your husband's a teacher?"

    "So am I. Or was. We're still together after a long time. I hate to say this, but it's comfortable. We understand each other's foibles. The need for quiet."

     "And that's it? Is mellow enough?"

     "Pretty much. The main thing I guess is, I like him." 


     "There's a note over there," Molly said to Logan, "says, 'Mama, I'm so very lost. Where are you? Find me. Please.' Hurtful, don't you think? Why are you lighting a candle?  Who for? You don't like people much. Do you?"

     "Take a breath, girl. You just don't give up, do you? Stubborn. Always get your way."

     "I'm not stubborn. I'm persistent."

     "And the difference being?"

     "I win."

    "Well, you can talk, I'll give you that. I'm lighting the candle for a young boy I used to know." And he paused. "Maybe for all the lost young people. Including the one in that message. Tough world. And a short life." 

     "Gram always says it's a short life so eat dessert first. You a believer?" she nodded toward the candles.

     "No."

     "Then why?"

     "It never hurts to hedge your bets."

     "You really don't look or sound like much of a betting man. I'd say you always have a plan A, plan B, and so on."

     He looked over his shoulder and without expression, "This is my plan B."

     "You've been maarried a long time."

     "That a question?"

     "I guess."

     "Yes, I have."

     "Do you still love her? That's a question. Is she your soul mate? Question."

     "Now, you're being a smartass."

     "Smart, maybe. What's your stand on the soul mate theory?"

    "One person among billions in this world to complete you? No, I think there are people who are right for you and those who are wrong, The woman who would have been my so-called soul mate at eighteen, not for me when I'm fifty. We mature at different rates. We change, evolve. That is, if things are working right."

     "I had a boy tell me one day that he'd loved me since one o'clock that afternoon. What do you think of that? Did you always want to be married?" 

     "Hey, one at a time. One, can't begin to comprehend. Two, never occurred to me until I met Joyce. That's the way it happens with most men. Specific, not general."

      "Not your destiny?"

      "No."

    "Well, if marriage isn't a man's destiny, why sould it be mine? Your marriage good? A success you think?"

     Silence.

     "What does a successful marriage look like anyway. You have a lot to tell me."

     "No. I don't," he said.


    "Time to move on, folks. Wine's waitin'." Arnie was holding open the doors for the eight travelers.

     Wil, alone.

     Molly, near to Logan, but neither in each other's space.

     Rene, Frances and Van walking together.

    Joyce, last, stopped at the basket and took a small metal image of an angel and slipped it into her pocket.

     The mission doors closed slowly, as  a sigh, behind her.














                                         Artists' Eyes


      
     
                     


     He came for the woman. But stayed for the light.

     He was an artist.

     His name was Ryder.

     And the woman's face changed again and again, but the light, his light, remained constant.


    His arrival had been uneventful. He was simply there one day and had not been the day before. 


    The small village was one of two discreetly tucked into the hills above the sea of grasses and the Mission,  yet close to the spreading grove of pecan trees that the villagers and their ancestors had tended for centuries,. Here, people, third and forth generations, were living with the land and off the land, protecting the Mission grounds, the small cemetery, the inner building and the broken down surround wall, all showing evidence of the ravages of weather, revolution, treasure hunters, and history.

     Tourists were rare and usually lost. Further along the road heading south, they would find vineyards, wineries, cattle herds, ghost towns, artists' hamlets with galleries, working studios intimate restaurants, bed and breakfasts, coffee houses and golf.

    And so, it was out of the ordinary when the young man and his woman moved into the village of two hundred and settled into an empty adobe house built around a small courtyard. And stayed. More than out of the ordinary was when an older man, an artist of some repute in Europe it was said, along with the tall, angular, spectacled writer from the east, followed. And did not leave.


    "I paint because I can't not paint," he said as he stretched the large canvas. "I'm just an artist, a simple artist, who can't be distinguished from his work. Each and every painting I create is like a Tarot card, telling a little of who I am." He looked at her. "None of this will make sense until the paintings are all put together. Seen in their entirety," and turned back to his life, uneasy with so many spoken words.


   Ryder moved with an air of elegance, even grace. Always a minimum amount of movement, so each one had meaning, as if an excess of activity would in some way diminish his art. A handsome man of indeterminate age. he could be twenty, he could be forty. His hands were strong and knew what they were about, whether holding a brush, a pen, or a woman. His mouth was approachable,but not his eyes. They were what ruled his space. Warm, and sensually alert at times, cold and prohibitive on others. His brown eyes seemed to have no pupils because they were almost black. She could read his rage, his restlessness, his puzzlement, in his face and body. Never in his eyes.

     She said to him, "Often you just sit and stare at nothing."

   He smiled. "No, baby, I sit and stare at something. It's just that my something means nothing to others."


     "When I paint, I paint what I know is there, not necessarily what you see. Artists see what others don't."

     Abruptly, she answered, "Often you artists can't see what's right in front of you."

     And abstractly, he returned, "If artists and writers are doing their job, they never bring harmony to the world."

     The woman's face changed yet again. 


    "You artists say sweet words when they're called for, but at the same tine, you're checking the light," Henry said as he sipped tequila. His elongated, almost whimsical face, barely masked his resigned-to-the-world as it is approach to life. His long fingers constantly adjusted the tortoise shell frames magnifying already large blue eyes. Arms, legs akimbo managed crooked movements like a puppet on a string. But, his mind was always clicking.

    Ryder came back, "Painters check for light. But you poets and writers check for meter. Right, Max?"

   "I'll agree, but too often you both forget the heart." His medium, compact body was hunched on the sofa. Close cropped dark hair framed a face with no trace of innocence in the hazel gold eyes and economical lips that let slip the faintly melancholy remnants of his English past.

     "You are out of the past, old man."

     "And your ignorance of me is astounding. You are an amateur."

     Henry, not to be left out, said, "We're all a bunch of amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else. Except of course you, Max."

     "So,  Ryder, are you saying an artist must reinvent himnself in order to belong to the time he's in?"

     "No, Max, I paint for the moment. My moment, not someone else's. The future belongs to others. I'm not interested." 

    "Is art as a career even viable? I mean with all these special effects. Certain things we just take for granted. The sun will rise, love will last, art will always be alive and well. Maybe this is an emotional wake-up call - art is being created inside a computer,"  Henry said. "Can art in the old way merge with technology? And then, if so, exactly what would the result be?"

   "Two ways to go, gentlemen, You can build on what came before or destroy what came before. And, yes, I am an old fart," Max concluded.

   "All I can say, Henry, is that I'm not making art with a mouse. And the only place where the past has meaning for me," Ryder said too quietly, "is inside the doors of the Mission."

    "You never tire, drawing or painting that place. When will you be finished?"

    "I can't finish, you understand that? Artists never do. I can say 'this painting is done', but  it is never finished. To finish would be the end. Some call this passion. Others, obsession." He looked at a painting, "Or insanity."

   "So," Henry said, "change your passion. Artists want to be writers, writers want to be philosophers, philosophers want to be rock stars. Ryder, my friend, all stories eventually come to The End. Even, I'm afraid yours."



     A dot.

     Another dot.

     Clean the pen.

     Wipe. 

     Dip in ink.

     Another dot.

     Clean.

     Wipe.

     Then, three lines.

     Narrow, unable to stand on their own, but strong together.

     Clean.

     Dip.

     Another dot.

     And, as time passes, shadows and lights appear, forming an image on the paper.


     Ryder drew in pencil and pen and ink. The ink drawings were his meditation. Time for total concentration, time to put other thoughts away.


     Another dot. Another line.



     His paintings, however, were large and intense, large and introspective. For money, he did small commissions from clients in Phoenix and Tucson - portraits, landscapes, even one of a man standing in front of his airplane. Mostly from photographs. But his own artist's hours and works were found in the faces of the villagers around him, the mountains and golden grasslands, and, of course, from day one, from the beginning, the Mission. Although it was the light that had first seduced his artist's eye, and that relationship remained strong and erotic, the Mission had become an addiction.

     Art was his first love, and had captured him as a child when his mother bought him his first Red Chief drawing pad. Booze and drugs had been tried and abandoned as substitutes along his way. Nothing filled the gap, just art.

     "I'm no longer a separate entity from my art. I have become the canvas," he said to Max in frustration, hoping he'd understand. 

     "Neither of us is what our parents expected, I imagine," Max said. "Art is our life and both are complicated. And of late I've come to think that maybe art will be the last thing we can do simply because we want to."

     "Complicated, you say?"

     "A simplistic response."


    Max said, "Ryder can paint the mythology. He paints that building, inside and out, over and over again, but each canvas is different. His technique is incredible. It's not what he puts in the painting, but what he leaves out, what he leaves for us, the viewer, to assume." He sighed. "There's an almost spiritual other worldliness to the effect. He leaves it to us to discover his truth. If we can."

    Henry said, "Truth to one person is faith, faith to another is superstition." He paused, "Purely from an intellectual point of view, you understand, I have to ask, doesn't art create bondage? I don't expect an answer."


     And what Ryder did put in each drawing or painting of the Mission was himself, whether an indistinct figure, a silhouette, a face in the shadows, the man himself standing in the trees outside the Mission, or, lit by candlelight, kneeling.



     "Celine said, 'No art is possible without a dance with death.' What does that mean?" Linn asked.

     "What are you reading?"

     "Just art stuff. You know."

     "Art ------ stuff?" Ryder repeated softly.

    She laughed. "I knew that would get your attention," as she looked at him, vulnerability evident in her eyes. 

     Linn was the woman now. He had seen her when she was hiking one of the many canyons eight months  ago. His being an artist in the high desert had worked its magic. Ryder liked her. She was intelligent, free with opinions, and had a face he had not tired of waking up to, or sketching.

    He, of course, knew what she wanted, that which he did not have the passion to give. That had already been claimed. Passion was only for his work, something women never, never comprehended. They could not accept that they were not to be number one in his life. Ever.

   Sexual passion? More a sexual curiosity. Anything that moved became a possibility. Depending on what he needed. Diversion. Release. And, yes, Ryder knew he should care for another and some part of him wanted this, but up to now, he had chosen not to.

    He remembered the parting salvo from a woman in Oregon, "There should be a special room in Heaven for any woman who has loved an artist -- overlooking Hell, where that artist will be."

     Ryder had replied calmly, "I haven't believed in Hell since I was seven."

     "What happened when you were seven?"

     He said nothing.


     "Did you ever do paint by numbers?" Linn asked Max jokingly.

     "No, dear girl. I rarely keep track of numbers in any quantity, human or otherwise. But I did know a very talented artist who painted by only theory  because he was color blind."


     Even with his distance, Ryder made a woman feel special, chosen, until that day she came to understand that this was like a doctor's office and soon the nurse would come through the door, and say, 'Next'. And her turn would be over.

    He created his own universe, created his own conscience, He told Linn one late night that he'd had an erotic relationship with death from the first time he'd had sex. Then, with his particular reality, said, "I learned to fuck when I was fourteen."



     "Are all artists amoral?" Linn to Max, a worldly man who had constantly pushed the envelope of life, a man with too many moments, remembered and not.

     "All artists are amoral," he answered, rearranging the words. Taking the woman's hand, he went on in his lightly accented, pleasing voice, "We put our art before anything human. When one does that, whether for power, wealth, or the creative process, there seems to be no problem in crossing moral boundaries. Now, Linn, know that my sins are my own. I earned them. I deserve them. I cannot answer for Ryder. Being melodramatic, as only I can, the creation process is what binds us more than anything else. Creating something out of nothing. A kinship, if you will, with the Gods."


     You are too thin. Eat."

     Chicken tortilla soup. Salad with red onions, orange slices and jicama.

   So, eat he did. Because Elva was a force, and he was hungry. Elva was Ryder's housekeeper, cook, village voice, and his personal judge. She and her husband, Alfonso, guided the villagers in work to be done, in cleaning, repairing the Mission and its grounds, and tending the trees.  

   Pausing before a large easel, she put hands on her ample hips, frowned, and said, "Another? Why all these paintings of our Mission? Different. But the same. And there," she pointed, "there is you. Always you. Are you suppose to be God?" And she crossed herself quickly.

     "Not me, Elva. Never me. I don't know why. I have to be there. It's where I choose to be."



     "Chupacabra is back!"

     "Chupa...?"

     "The goat sucker. He's back. I tell you this," Elva said in fear to Linn.

     "A chupa.....?"

     "He's a terrible monster and drinks the blood of animals. He's about this high," she said, holding her hand up about four feet. "Sharp spines on his back. And," she lowered her voice, "he smells like the Devil himself."

     "Have you seen him?"

    "No, but some village people have and they found a dead horse this morning, with no blood. Hah!"

     "The chupacabra are back," Linn told Ryder, who shook his head and said, "Urban legend in the country."

     "We are in the middle of the desert. Maybe I should go to the Mission with Elva and light a candle."

     "Light one for me."

     "One? You're joking, right?"



    "Urban myth. Village religious heresy. And, we descend into the Kingdom of Night and the Dead," Henry scoffed. "At the end of the day, we are just eighteenth century people wkth  twentieth century tools. Or as one of my more caustic acquaintances, a novelist, of course, claims, 'religion is based on garbage and the delusions of a bunch of sheepherders'. But, I say, this is a magic country, a spiritual sandbox. And we should play. So, bring on the goat sucker."

     "A novelist. You're denigrating a novelist?"

     "There's no explaining."

     "You're an essayist, a poet, of sorts. A speaker of truths?" Max questioned with a glint in his eyes. "You're a writer who makes love to whatever you need to fill the empty page."

     "Every artist or writer is essentially a whore. We're being paid -  when we are paid - for our special talent. However, the good thing is, it's usually more than by the hour."

     "And, you're just getting started?"

    Henry went on, without pause, "After all, artists were the pornographers of old., They painted dirty pictures for rich patrons."

    "Oh, for rich patrons," Max said. "Let's drink to rich patrons, especially those with a disdain for censorship. To art, our harsh mistress."

      "No." said Ryder joining in. "To art, the fucking bitch."


    On one of the rare storm-filled desert nights, Ryder and Linn lay side by side, bodies cooling on the bed.

   "I don't understand this constant need to explain or label every relationshp," he murmured.

      "To give meaning," she said.

     "Why does there always have to be meaning? What if there is none? What if it just is? Life is only now. Not when. Not then. You are a strong woman Linn, not to be defined by your relationship to a man., Any man." And he moved to her.

     
     Sex was never that important to him, she knew. But he did enjoy the process as a release from his art, or simply to fill time that lingered empty.

     Ryder had an assured routine of arousal. He knew where the sex would begin and where it would end, and was not welcoming to surprise along the way.

    The sex was good, sometimes tender, sometimes not, but it was known. And once in awhile, Linn longed for the unknown, just as she longed to see him somehow create his art  out of chaos.

    Linn cared for the man, not the artist. Ryder said someone would have to destroy the artist in him to discover if there was a man remaining.

      She accepted him as he was with her, but one day, she knew, it would be different.



    Ryder faced the woman on the pillow beside him, memorizing her sleeping profile, watching her, his eyes noting every breath, sigh, slightest movement, wondering anew how shoulders and arms could be both angular and curved, or how breasts could be both soft and hard, and how, inside her, he was enveloped in white hot heat and honey. He loved her smooth skin and the long, lithe legs, that wrapped around, him, guiding him home.

      For now.

     One day, he knew, it would be different.


     "Light. The light. All you artist talk about the light," Elva said. "What light?  There is sun or there is no sun."

     "Elva, the light in this place is special. Cleaner, more golden, more life giving. Shows you things in a way you've never quite seen before,. Opens my eyes to new possibilities. It illuminates."

     "And, senor Ryder, if you look too long at the sun's light, it will blind you," and she actually stomped her foot.


   The commssion came in for a painting, from a nearby rancher. A landscape. He was explicit. "I want the mountains to the south, cottonwoods along the creek, sunflowers, and the grasses."

     "The Mission?" Ryder asked.

     "No, no buildings," he responded. "Just the land. My family has lived here for generations. The land has taken care of us well."


     The painting would be large as was its subject. 

     Ryder began with pencil sketches, then started the under painting of the canvas. Laying in the darks and lights, the composition, blocking in color. This took three weeks. And, it was on a Wednesday, in the early morning hours, when all was silent except for the birds, that he gathered the brushes on the table, smallest to largest, side by side. He set the canvas on a perfect right angle on the huge easel. And only then did Ryder see it. The faintly drawn outline of his Mission, placed into the world of mountains, willows, sunflowers and grasses.



     His leaving was uneventful. He was simply there one day. And the next, he was not.




     The villagers blamed the chupacabra.

     Alfonso had no opinion. "These things are in God's hands."

     Henry said Ryder had just moved on, as artists and writers are want to do.

     Max believed he had found a more redeeming light.

     Linn  had known that one day it would be different. "There is the man. There is the artist. No woman will find them both."

    And Elva told the visiting priest, "I think he went into one of his paintings to see what lives on the other side."


     Later, when cleaning the adobe house, built around a small courtyard, for the last time. Elva leaned in close to one of the massive Mission paintings.

     "Are you there?" she whispered. 














                                  
                                     Unmet Friends 






     Clare had measured her sixty-one years in birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, semesters, menstrual cycles, and wrinkles. But not in real time.

     As a woman, an intelligent, well-educated woman, she found a step forward was usually followed by two steps back. The language spoken around her, whether at home, on the street, or at university, was the language created by men, and was too often the language of stereotypes.

     Now, at this age, she realized a set-in-stone reality, there was only so much time and each time could be the last. Each first could be the last.

    Other than this new time fixation, she was amazed, and amused, to find sensual responses had increased, not decreased. Dreams of sexual surrender, of sexual encounters that had never happened, dreams of her as a younger self physically doing things that were improbable, if not impossible. Dreams. Not real time.

    And this, she thought was so wrong. This age should be a time for reflection, relaxation, a finish to furiously emotional, perplexing possibilities. A return to basics with the complications of life and living decided by years,  health, and plain common sense.

    But underlying all this, she did carry a vague apprehension that one day she would awaken of a morning and find nothing left to imagine.  Nothing. 


   The interstate before her ran smooth and fast edged by desert vistas of Joshua trees, chollas, oleanders, saguaros, with off ramps leading to foothills and far-off shadowed mountains to the south. Her destination.

    She drove onto a long, narrow ribbon of black that moved with a steady beat between signs leading to small, hidden towns and gentle hills topped with vineyards, and, out of her Midwest past, there stood a solitary windmill silhouetted against the intense blue sky. The turn came quickly and in a breath, there it was, alone and unheralded, the Mission.


     "Stop at the old Mission on your way. There is, I know, a magnificent mission near here, but why it does not affect me in the way this nameless one does, I cannot understand," Elle had written. "Maybe you will. 

    "It's not on the regular snowbird map. Rough, crumbling. Yet, the old building fits so naturally into the land around it. Someday I imagine it will totally fade to dust and blow away into the hills, vanishing forever. There is something about the place. Is the Mission protected by a deity or a curse? The Quiet there is filled with voices."

     
     The approach to the building was golden, just as Elle had described. "First, I was enchanted by the light. The vast harmony of goldenness , and then by the depth of the land's solitude. I find these high desert golden grasslands to seem always pristine, young, almost virginal, untouched by time. Or man. Van Gogh would have painted here."

     And later in her poetry:

             'Hot western sun/searing flesh

             with burning grace

             of sombrero afternoon

             cactus artist storing water of creation

             while spilling endless field of gold'


     No other word, but golden would do.

     Mot juste.

    Gold. Golden. Glowing. Here in this place even the sun seemed to be surpassed by the grasses shimmering in rushing, roiling waves, and by the statuesque sunflowers framing the graveled car path leading to the Mission's disappearing surround wall.

     Clare was again made aware of how certain words and phrases from her friend's poetry, her power with words, repeated in her mind - 'golden approach', 'wrapped in the wild wind from the equator', 'many, moon-shadowed miles', and more. Words from this new desert land, the land for which Clare and her husband had left behind the canyons of an eastern city. Concrete and glass canyons for red canyon


     As for Elle (nee Michelle), she remembered well the first time she had met Clare, years before. Met, but not as normal people met. They had only come together through their shared passion for language.

     It was in the pages of the book by the English Lit professor. All about women and their writings, her expression was unsentimental, sometimes bordering on caustic. She deftly avoided the pitfalls that awaited every female writer in those years. To not be angry or bitter. To not be emotional or personal. And, above all, to not be political.

     Then, the two women lived just a few hundred miles apart - she in Massachusetts, Clare in New York. Elle wrote her first letter to the author in longhand in dark blue ink on ivory paper (a gift from her mother-in-law). Clare promptly and politely answered on yellow legal sheets in number two pencil (the way she always wrote first drafts and correspondence). Back and forth, over time, they discovered similar pasts. Expensive women's colleges. Grad school. First jobs in eastern cities. Their marriages (which they agreed had seemed to be the thing to do at the time), and children (again, the expected life path, but also unexpectedly deep  emotional responses to motherhood).

     The two had mujch familiar to share, but mostly they each had an unwavering compulsion to write.

     Elle - "You're a woman and find you have the need to create works of art, be it writing, painting, composing. This need is not casual, it brings intensity, even fear. It's a compulsion that cannot be denied. But you will pay. If you turn your back and walk away, you will truly go mad. And, if you accept it, then you will forever lose part of yourself as a woman." 

     

     Their correspondence continued and they started calling themselves the Kitchen Table Writers. Elle encouraged Clare to move out into fiction and away from conservative observations on other's writings with supposed insights into their lives. The imagination was where she needed to live. And, Clare, the next year, with tentative footsteps, sent back two short stories without a woman writer in them. She continually enthused over Elle's provocative lines that so captured city rhythms. saying she could only wish such a life --


                                     'This fire escape of night

                                      feels raindrops splash

                                        upon rusted metal

                                      & hears the Thunder of

                                         naked bodies

                                      that only know the smell
  
                                      of rotting fish, rice &

                                             cheap wine'
           


     Elle - "A life you can only imagine? Friend, I just finished putting together a Halloween costume and baking cupcakes for my daughter's school party. That 'Thunder of naked bodies'.....that happened in someone else's faraway fantasy world.

     "Save for these open written conversations with you, I feel separated from other women and their thoughts. This, I think is one of our obstacles - women have been kept apart which has added to their sense of dependency. And aloneness.

     "We women have been defined by our marital state - or non-marital. I am known as my husband's wife and my children's mother. Just look at obituaries. Mrs. John Smith dies. Not Elizabeth Smith. When did she disappear?

     "And, on top of that, people tell me I read too much."


     Clare - "To be a writer is what we aspire to. A writer, but never a woman writer. In a world free of labels, not a world where women 'know their place'. We win prizes and gain some notice in university which is acceptable within this restrictive world. But I remind myself often that my father insisted on my taking typing and shorthand courses so that I would be employable before finding a suitable husband and putting an end to the nonsense of becoming a writer. And, I considered him an enlightened male in those days. Fortunately, I met and married a man who has remained interesting to me to this day.

     "The day I decided to teach was when I realized I had not had a woman teacher in higher education and how few women writers were deemed worthy of reverence by the professors I did have."  


      Elle - "We have been too long in the traditional female role. We marry and have children, all with love I must add, yet our writing ends up as a personal journal scribbled late at night when tiredness overwhelms. If we write at all, I'm thinking there will be more, hoping there will be more. But, at what cost? Women have a different way of encountering reality and there will be guilt, especially if we chose to rewrite the play."


     The end of the footpath brought Clare to the Mission doors. Wood and iron. Heavy, darkly aged rude wood. Rusted iron bars forming a cross when the doors closed. Daunting in size, in design, and weight. Almost forbidding.

     Dim and muted, the space beyond was like the night desert, full of subtle sounds. Buzzing. Chirps. Murmurs. Scratchings in the corners. Unseen life ongoing. Exactly what she hoped for herself. Ongoing life. This although Clare had mentally and emotionally concluded long ago that life was basically impossible, filled as it was with mental tugs of warm, psychic wounds, unbending attachments to old habits, the always present temptation to withdraw, and entanglements with spiritual paraphernalia.

     
     Think.

     Decide.


    How far to you really want to go - in miles, in action and thought. And, as Elle had once asked, at what cost? Always the inevitable question. And is this a new beginning - or is this where the end begins?

     Air around her now suddenly seemed listless. Unlived in. There it was. A life lived. Or a life unlived.

   Dust motes floated on invisible wings before landing on the rows of wooden benches, waiting as they had waited for centuries. Some candles were lit and the wildflowers on the altar were fresh. 

    Sitting in the back, Clare tried to sense these surroundings through Elle's eyes. A poet's eyes - eyes that had at first given sight to nature, young love, then art, the sounds and passions of her city, and had, over the years, ever so slowly turned to issues and politics. ("They warned me this would coarsen my voice," she had said), and, sometimes again , love, this time not innocent, but knowing.

     Elle - "I've had men and some women inform me that poetry is a luxury, like I'm
decorating the world with words - and that I'm not effective politically and certainly not economically. To that I say, I'm not a business or a candidate."

     And then, there was no going back for Elle.

    Comfort and safety were no longer pert of her language. She joined others in saying no more stereotypes, not for her. She opened the door, stepped through, divorced, left the city and discovered the southwestern desert, and she admitted in an e-mail, had thoughts of death -- "and yes, I think of Death (we poets so often speak this foolishness)."



     Clare's side of this relationship was the conservative one, with her periodically glancing over the threshold, but not yet stepping into unknown territory. Her treatises on women writers, and especially her lengthy study of 'Jane Eyre' were valued for their crispness, insight and lack of emotion (read female hysteria, she thought). Intelligent, often witty, she assumed it was far easier to do what was expected in literary circles, then cross over the line and live with apprehension.

     Clare - "I feel I'm lingering in a doorway. Possibly being. Possibly becoming. Writing is so like painting in that you have in your mind an image - or words - but when you move that image to canvas or paper, something is lost."

     Elle - "It's in the translation and is never the same. It may be the entrapment of words or images between edges or covers. The life goes. The light disappears."

     Clare - "I've been wanting to attempt fiction. Do I hear a gasp of disapproval?"

     Elle - "More a shout of hurrah!"


    Clare's book two years later, an Americanized English country mystery in the locked room genre, showing her previously denied love of adjectives, received good reviews from critics and readers amid disparaging remarks from professional colleagues at the university. It reached eleven on the Times' bestseller list. A few critics questioned should not a heroine be beautiful? To which Clare responded, 'Read Jane Eyre'.

   With the initial exploration of fiction, Clare found she still maintained her emotional distance. There remained a sterile no man's land, a perpetual safety zone between characters and the author. And this was a zone she had no enthusiasm to enter, although she did feel a resident sense of loss.

     Elle - "Your detachment, Clare, is still evident. At least to me, but let go. Think what your writing will do for you, not how it will affect the world. think what - you - want to do next. Now, I take what I can out of my past, use it, and continue on. My choice of words changes as my voice changes."

     Clare - "I picture a long hallway - a door, another door, and yet another. I know myself. If I open that first door, it will be impossible not to open all of them. Always that first door determines my life."


    A woman came through the side Mission door, a woman not young, slow moving with the slightly stooped walk of one whose body has its own demands. She wore a long skirt, a purple fringed shawl. Her dark hair, tinged with gray, was braided in a crown around her head. Leaning precariously forward, she crossed herself and continued on to the candled tables. From her wicker basket, she replaced the burnt prayers ends with new waxen hopes. 


     Clare watched this and saw it as a centuries-old scene played out by this woman, her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. The clothes, the quiet, the correct reverential movemens. And, in the ageless ritual, she felt there must be deep comfort in being part of such a tradition.

     Tradition.

     Comfort.

     Safety.

     Patterns.

    A friend, into such things, said that patterns might not just come from early conditioning, but possibly from a former life we don't remember. Clare did not disclaim this out of friendship, but rather favored the notion that some people are frozen in time, repeating a memory of earlier years, or one that gives them comfort from that which is known.

     Yet the idea of comfort, the security of repetition, could be a siren call. Seductive safety.

    As was usual, her mind took over. The Spanish woman was moving around the religious items on the small front altar, touching each with a tenderness born of deep religious feelings. Patterns, rituals. Not the same and yet - yes.


    Clare - "Elle, what I find most difficult at this age is accepting the absence of rituals. A woman's life has such landmarks - graduations, birthdays, first job, marriage and children, possibly a career marked by both success and failure. Just how many rites of passage must we endure before we've accomplished a full life? I remember smiling more when life was giving not taking away.

    "Now quite unexpectedly I see nothing. I do not wish to impersonate youth. I have words, ideas, writings to think about and explore. But, my body no longer arises to new challenges. I no longer recognize simple things like the texture of my own skin. And, my mind, my singular strength, is beginning to feel the pull of the past. Questions are occurring less often
and I have always questioned." 


     So, this had to be the place and the time

    Halfway between two lives. To remain comfortable, wrapping life around her like an old robe was safe, although  she felt it would be beyond sad to find that habit alone was the glue that held her world together. But, alternatively, hard decisions should be reserved for when your eyesight was clear, hearing acute, movements steady, mental acuity active.


     Clare - They, whoever they happen to be, are overly fond of saying that whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Agree?"

     Elle - "So not true. Everything bitter, dangerous, worrying, takes a small chunk out of your body, out of your mind, and invades your very being. Each invasion leaves its footprint on your soul. And, yes, I do believe in the soul. However, I find it one thing I cannot translate into meter."

    Clare - "My concern is that I may have stayed too long in the service of the traditional female. Often denying the imagination. And yet, the humor of it is that it does take imagination to keep tradition alive. Would that we would have met early in our young lives and my road might have been different."

     Elle - "Different possibly, but not necessarily better. And no, my dear friend, back then we were both works in progress."


     The woman had finished her Mission day, now kneeling without sound in the second row, beads in hand, mouthing ever familiar words, eyes closed to the world around her.


     Clare - "You once said you believe in 'soul'. Do you pray? Do you envision a deity?"

    Elle - "When I say 'soul', I suppose I'm thinking more in artistic terms. As far as God is concerned, we have not had a serious talk since I was thirteen and death entered my life. After fifty, we come to accept (not all that gracefully) that the death sentence applies to each of us. But, back there, entering my adolescence, I had to find someone to blame."


     The Mission was all Clare's now and she began to understand solitary. She had never feared being alone because she had always had someone. Simply open the door and call out his name and there he would be, baggy navy sweater, perceptive brown eyes framed by black glasses with a tendency to slide.

     And the words came, words that had been following her footsteps for the past few weeks. "What are you so afraid of, Clare?" 

     She had mailed Elle that very question for she was the one who had adventured out into whatever waited, which turned into green hills in the desert, to a small artists' community near the border, and  a new companion, a woman sculptor originally from Switzerland.

     Elle - "Fear is so real and hard. Along with guilt. It haunted me for some time. One day, I just knew so clearly that it was time, past time, for me to leave that cocoon of comfort, and embrace, albeit with trepidation, that which I could no longer avoid, excuse or ignore. Each day offers us a new step if we are aware and accepting.

     "I do although fear being known as that 'woman poet'.

    "And on this (yes, I am rambling on as I only seem to do with you), explain to me the categories of 'major poet' and 'minor poet'. The same, of course, applies to artists and writers. Museums feature major talents. Anthologies star great writers and poets.

     "Who the hell decides? Critics, someone would suggest. Well, then, who chooses the major critics and the minor ones?

     "I would never claim greatness or major. Talent is given. What becomes of the gift is up to the individual.

     "I just refuse to be named a poet du jour. And I will be a poet, even though some claim poetry is only a garnish."


     She should move.

     This, after all, had been her choice.


     Clare - "Should we meet? We should meet. We have never met. In person. Why have we never met? Over these years, I have had conversations with you as with no other. Even my husband, although I'm not sure marriage is the best way for people to really know each other.

     "Before the unfortunate day arrives when I feel the better part of my life has passed, I think I would like to see your face, the expression in your eyes, as you talk. I have only heard your voice through your words - the poetry and letters. Yet with these, I have felt closer to you than friends I've known since college."

     Elle - "Dear Clare, this is your step to take over the threshold. My thoughts are there - it is nice, yes nice, to be friends with someone who has not known you forever, one who does not continually speak to a younger version of yourself. We met because of words, a purity in a way. No judgment of appearance, manners. economics, or surroundings.

    "Words. They do matter. They contain friendship, love, exploration of strange worlds, even bravery and power on occasion.

     "I am here. And will be here. Whatever choice you make."


     And here she sat.

     Forward or backward.

     Back to her world. Or down the blacktop road.


    A few days before, her husband in a care-filled tone had commented, "Think about it, Clare. You and Elle have corresponded for years. You may not have met her - but you do know her. Through the strength of your words. Through your writers' voices. You know her, as she does you, in ways not apparent to outsiders. She is your unmet friend, and, I'm not entirely sure that unmet friends are ever meant to test the tenuous bridge between them. It is such a bridge of trust."


     Too long.

     She  had been here far too long.


    Clare tightened. And then relaxed. Sartre had said that not to choose was to already have chosen. Today, she understood.


   In disappointment, frustration, or relief, Clare strained to push open the outer Mission doors against a sudden wind,  leaving behind two candles burning side by side on the table.

   And as she walked the path to the car, she found herself confronted by a confusion of yellows. 



















                                       The Daughter

   

     So here I am.

     Where I never planned to be.

     Somebody said never say never.  Well, I'm sure someone said it. Sometime.

     I drove past the golden grasses and huge sunflowers that looked back at me through the car window as I passed by. The far off mountains stood as dispassionate sentinels guarding the place, the place not to be found on any map. The place no one thought meaningful enough to name. The building was so old and crumbled and still and isolated, and, this place was where Kathryn had come to die.

     The wooden doors were heavy, so hard to move, with iron trim and handles curved like coiled snakes. The pamphlet I had on Arizona missions told me that the round window above the doors was called a Rose window - or a Catherine window. Named after a saint. Interesting. When I had lived in New York I once in awhile went to St. Patrick's on my lunch hour to light a candle to St. Catherine. At that time of my life, this ritual seemed somehow Romantic. I used to be a Presbyterian.  


   The writing on the envelope I knew. Small, readable, with a measured rhythm, yet leaving an impression of a hand unsure of its welcome.

   Yes. That writing I knew.

    The writer? Not at all.

    Nor did I want to.

    The letter, dated years before, had fallen out of an old tattered "Joy of Cooking" book on a high cupboard shelf. More fluttered to the floor. I've no idea why they were there, and not long ago tossed in the trash. 

     The words were from Kathryn.

        'Dearest little one,' she had begun.

        'It has been forever since I have written you, honey. I just don't  know

        but it seems like I have so much  to say to you, but one good long hug

        to hold you tight would say it all. I just can't wait to see you.' 

     There was more.

     And ended with, 

        'I love you. I love you.

        Hugs and kisses oxoxoxoxox'


     There it was.

      Love.

     The universal credit card.

     The get out of jail free card.

     I love you because you are you.

     I love you because you will save my life.

     I love you because you are my way out of pain.

     I love you because I cannot be alone.

     I love you because they say I should

    Love, I was to learn, usually the hard way, came in many guises, often delivered with payment due. I wondered do we need to be loved or do we need to love. And aren't we asking too much from this supposedly simple emotion. And more, why even in my daydreams was there never a happy ever after? Something or someone always screwed ever-after up.

     So, love you. Love you. Love you?

     
     Take two steps back, and look and listen closely


     Did I mention, I am Kathryn's daughter? 



     Family story.

     They were dancing. At a tea dance back in the day (did they really serve tea?).

     From under her wide-brimmed flirty hat, Kathryn had tilted her head back, looked up at her tall partner, and he was lost. Later, Dad said he could never quite get past those hypnotic green eyes, dimpled smile, and mass of brown curls - never enough past to glimpse the turmoil churning within her.


     So, they married.

     So, they had one child.

     A daughter.


   I looked like my dad, thought like him, and had the same weird humor, humor that Kathryn could never quite grasp. But, then, humor to her was more making fun of people and events and not making fun of life. Which I think is the only way to approach life and survive. 

    When I was young and my favorite books were fairy tales, I questioned several child-like things. Why so many of my heroines had no mother, or, one like mine? What was a mother supposed to be, what should she do? Didn't they have names? I had no one to ask, no one to compare mine to. And then, of course, the important wonder. I wondered if my fairy godmother was going to make a magical appearance someday, wave her sparkling magic wand, and make me shorter and graceful and pretty. And an orphan.

     The reason for the first two wishes were simply because I grew. Taller and taller, just like Alice after she tasted of the 'Drink Me' bottle. I was teased about my short hand-me-down dresses, and my long, skinny legs. Kathryn said I was too tall, but hopefully would grow out of my awkwardness. She said I had 'Danish farmer hands', and would sit beside me on the sofa and pinch my fingertips hoping for a tapered miracle.

     School was my refuge, grades my savior and books my escape. I found the only cure for sadness was to learn something.

    Only much later did I come to understand that through all my formative years, I was preparing for war. Not love, and certainly not tenderness or trust. Which probably goes a long way in explaining my eclectic love life.


     I decided to light a candle. To St. Catherine. Then I lit another for me, one for Dad, one for all the what-ifs of my life, and finally, one for Kate - Katie - Kathryn, which brought to mind an image of her sitting alone, so all alone, in this religious place five years before. What did you do, Kathryn? Were you afraid?  I never wanted you to be afraid. Or did you finally find the Quiet?


     Sitting there was uncomplicated.

     I felt no need for words with others and less with myself. It had all been said, thought, or railed against. But that damn door inside my head crashed open and unwanted demons spilled out. Things locked away back then.

     Scenes.


     Nighttime.

     Dad came into my room. He was walking heavy and breathing deep.

     "Need to talk with you, little girl," he said and sat beside me. His job took him away five days a week so any talk was special to me.

     "Our doctor says your mom's health isn't so good. And he wants her to rest more. You and I need to take care of her," he paused, "so we can't bother her with our problems. You understand? If something's wrong, please save it for the weekend and we can figure it out. Together."

     I nodded, but not in understanding.

     As days passed, Dad taught me how to lock up the house before bedtime. He left a secret envelope with some money in it in my dollhouse for emergencies. He showed me where the whiskey bottle was so I could pour a tablspoon for Kathryn each night. And he left numbers to call if she got worse.

     He left.

     I was eight years old.

     My game began.


    A group of ten people came into the sanctuary. They were whispering. Why I couldn't understand until I saw they were moving in a wide circle around me, where I was sitting. No, folks, I'm not praying I wanted to shout. Or confessing. Sorry, but I left the whole God thing in an Iowa church when I was thirteen and  my Danish grandfather died.

     I would have liked to say, "I'm just waiting for one of Kathryn's voices to show and tell me what happened with her. Or to her."

     I had never actually heard her voices, just a lot about them. I needed a voice to ease me back down that black top road.

     The quiet and the dark were welcome and I thought of Kathryn. How could I not?She had been front and center in my thoughts in some lopsided way since I was old enough to have a thought. Did she ever find peace? Or was she lost? What voices were there in her head? Did they tell her what to do - or - did they fail her at the last? I do know they were the closest thing she ever had as a true friend.

     Every so often during the last year, I had taken out a photo of her, studied the set face, the eyes so unreadable, the mouth forming a straight line, clenched as though to lock secrets in. I had always hoped for some connection. And always come up empty.

     "You have such anger in you," someone who had once loved me remarked, waiting for a reply. An explanation. Silence had been my answer. Anger was very difficult to maintain, that anger of mine for someone, because of someone, I just couldn't know or comprehend. But I managed. It filled the empty space where caring should have lived.

     Another friend asked, "Can you talk with her, yell at her? Knock her into a wall?"

      "No."

      "Then let it go."

      Could it have been that easy?


    I became a writer. I knew the power of words. I loved words. I love words. My imagination and memory could take over and, as I progressed through life, a series of scenes, much like one act plays, would flash through my mind complete with characterization, props and settings. These made the real thing bearable. Sometimes.


      Act One: Scene One

     I had just had the best week of my eleven years.

     Camp.

    
     Me, in the woods. For a whole week.

    You could smell the trees through the open bus window before the tall pines ever came into view. Their scent was wispy and light at first. Then heavier, more pungent. I had thought it must be like coming to the sea, just a touch of salt and seaweed tickling your nose. Then the spray, and finally, the roar. And the majesty. The freedom.

     Camp.

     One week of clear water streams, running cold and clean, hiking, ghost stories at bedtime, s'mores at campfire, braiding plastic key chains, jumping into a swimming pool through a thin film of ice, oatmeal and stewed prunes for breakfast, peeling potatoes in the camp kitchen.

     It was wonderful.

   When Paarents' Day came, I was the happy camper, sitting on the hill, eatng an O. Henry bar, and watching families. Talking, laughing, teasing, touching. I knew one family who would not be there and I was right.

     On the bus ride home, I had held on tightly to the large pine cone in my jacket pocket and promised myself, if I could have one week a year like that, I could put up with everything else. 

     Scene Two

     The second night home, I went into the bathroom to wash.

     And there was blood. My pink underwear showed blood.

     Of course there was.

     After a near perfect week, I had come back to die. A strange numbness settled inside me. I'm dying. Should this really be a surprise? That was life. I am ready.

    I remember being so very calm. There were tears, however. I stuffed a rolled-up towel between my legs, put on my flannel pajamas, and crawled under the covers, being as quiet as possible so I wouldn't bother anyone. I waited there in bed, not knowing exactly what to expect from death. You see, I'd never seen Gene Autry die.

     Dad came in.

      
     "What's wrong little girl?" he asked. "Don't you feel well?"

     "I'm sorry, Daddy, but I'm dying."

     "You're what?"

     "I'm bleeding." This in an embarrassed whisper.

     "Jesus Christ!" he shouted.

     And he left. Again.

     Then, Kathryn made her entrance, Crying, wailing. Her hands to her face.

     "My baby. My poor, poor baby. This is just terrible for you."

     And yes, there were explanations, reasons why, reassurances not to worry.

     But, you know how it goes, the damage was done.


     Act One, Scene One

    I had to go to work that Saturday and dragged myself up in the cold and dark, stumbled into the shadowy hall, hoping not to wake my parents.

     And heard, "Hon, sit down, Sit down now."

    I think I sort of laughed, until I saw my Dad standing there, as he said again, "Now." Sharp, no humor.

     Then, her voice.

     "If you go, I will kill myself. If you move..." The words were strained, unfamiliar. There she was. Kathryn. On the floor. Red nightgown. Unmoving. Green eyes unblinking. Her hands rested in her lap and lovingly held a long kitchen knife.

     I fell down.

     "I will kill myself," she repeated. And yet, and yet, even in my brain freeze, I could see the knife was pointed at me.

     "I'm going for help," he said, and as I looked at his back as he disappeared, I said silently, "Why are you always leaving, Dad? Why?"

     And I was eight again.

     Three hours I sat on that hard, cold floor, across from a woman with a knife in her hand, and dancing demons in her eyes.

      Three hours.

     Not a word was spoken.

     When she fell asleep, I took the knife in my shaking hand.

     And Dad came home. Alone.

     The police said they'd come as soon as she hurt someone. The doctor told him to make an appointment for Monday. The minister said they would put us on the phone prayer chain the next day. And blessed him.

     By the next week, Kathryn was in a special hospital where she would be taken care of and her voices stilled.


    Act One, Scene Two

    Social worker - "When did the changes begin?"

    Daughter - "A long time ago. When I was young."

    SW - "But you're young now."

    D - "Younger."

    SW - "Describe her condition as you see it."

    D - "She says she hears voices. She drinks. She doesn't like me."

   
   SW - "What kind of mother was she? What exactly do you remember of her when you were a child?"

    D - "She never held me unless other people were around. She said I was clumsy. Everyone who didn't really know her, loved her. Especially her smile."

    SW - "Has she let herself go?"

    D - "No."

    SW - "Was she popular in high school? Any close friends now?"

    D - "Dad said she was. He smiles and says she flirted a lot. Close friends? I don't think so. She mostly talks about her characters on soap operas, like they were friends. Or daughters."

    SW - "Is she overly protective of you?"

   D - "She never wanted me to go anywhere away from her. Like on vacation. Kathryn threatened to kill herself. But, I don't think she was being protective."

   SW - (pause) "You call her Kathryn?"

   D - "That's how I think of her."

   SW - "After this past week, are you in any way afraid of her?"

   D - "She wants my life."


    A nurse came into the social worker's office and asked me to go to Kathryn's room, where she was already sitting on the bed. Her stare never wavered. She didn't utter a sound as I searched her belongings, removing any hair pins, safety pins, belts, and shoe laces.

    It rained that night. It was a Thursday.


    I realized I was hungry and found a small box of raisins in my purse and ate them, one by one, in that all-alone place.


    Act One

    I fell in love once when I wasn't looking.

   
  I was never in the habit of romanticizing my past for obvious reasons. A shiny coating doesn't make a life more digestible.


  But, and this was true, our eyes met across a crowded ballroom in a fine old hotel in a strange city in the middle of a blizzard.

    It was instant and he was my first love.

   English, tall, big city with a slight world-worn air. A man a tux was made for. And I was small town Midwest, in a requisite little black dress. Hair long, legs long, defenses non-existent. My memories of that week were sad, slapstick, gentle, and mixed in with flashes of 'Casablanca', 'Lassie, Come Home', and Frank Sinatra singing 'Moon Love.'

    
    "Having sex with someone, a stranger?" she had asked accusingly.

   "I know, I know. Parts of me shuddered and tingled over what was to come (no pun intended). My neck felt vulnerable and moisture was where none had been before. However, you'll be relieved to know that at the same time my reasonable side was whispering, 'They'll find you gutted in the snow'." 

    "Yet," she continued, "you did it anyway?"

    "Well...yeah."

    "Was he beautiful?"

    "Yes."

    "Just remember, for the future, sweetie, beautiful men do not deliver pizza or sex. They've never had to. They simply wait for country girls to fall in love with their English accent."

   He and I had lasted seven months across the miles, meeting at out-of-the-way hotels, eating hamburgers and drinking wine in bed, talking books, carnival in Rio, Christmas in Katmandu. I loved him wildly. I did. As he did me. He said.

   Then, as life usually does, reality showed and messed it all up. And, he broke my heart, right on schedule, as first loves are supposed to do.

     Kathryn smiled, but refrained from 'I told you so'. That was nice of her.

     After that my choices were easier. I just picked the ones I knew would hurt the least when life went all wrong. 

    Again, my friend, Annie, was there. "Don't worry about the people in your past. There's a reason they didn't follow you into your future."

    Of course there is. Somehow, there is always a reason, isn't there?


     Act One

     Kathryn had died.

     On a hill,  near where I was sitting, still being hungry.

     I had flown to Arizona from New York. Dad needed me. Again. There, at his apartment, I settled in on a bed surrounded by her past -  clothes, underwear, old handbags filled wth wads of Kleenex, costume jewelry - clip on earrings, a fake pearl necklace with rhinestone clasp - a drawer full of white gloves, all lengths, a half full bottle of "Shalimar", four empty boxes of Russell Stover chocolates, and two long-gone bottles of whiskey.

     I chose a navy blue print dress, undergarments, and black shoes for Kathryn to be buried in. 

     Even imaginary one-act plays come to The End.


     When I look over all this, I see a banal litany - a crazy mother who sipped cheap whiskey from a tablespoon, a father I most often remember as seeing his back as he walked out the door, a first love that didn't last the year, and on and on. Happiness? The scary part. Camp at eleven. Joy. Then, not much until me, walking down a springtime New York City street with trees all green and brownstone houses out of storybooks, and the sound of my all grown-up heels clicking on the sidewalk and knowing, knowing at last, that I was where I belonged. Then the fear came. Because I finally had something precious someone could take away from me. Something I cared about. For the first time.


     I should go.

     Past time. Or passed time.


    I looked down again at the tiny metal house - the Milagros Kathryn had - but its edges were blurred. Just when you think there are no tears left.

     Tears? Really?

     
     Home and Kathryn had died for me a long time ago.

     And then came the sobs. I was shaking and crying for a woman I never really knew and for a father who always seemed to leave. Crying for a lost love who went away when I bought a book on Brazilian cooking, and, for me, the daughter who could spell the word trust, but had never had any first hand experience with that emotion.

     
     I moved to the tables and this time lit all the candles, every single one, sending shadows rushing back into the corners where they lived.

     Why, you might ask?

     Why not, my answer. 


     I let myself out the side door and was met with such beauty, the path through pecan trees and golden grasses, accompanied by the sounds of softened high desert winds.

     The house was there, only now a pile of broken walls and somebody's one-time dreams.

     Kathryn had died here. Alone, as I thought she always was. An intruder had painted 'All Dead' on the only standing wall.

     "Not yet, my unknown friend. Not yet."

    I said my first, and final, goodbye, dropped the metal charm to the floor, and returned through the beauty to my car.

     
     There is no such animal as closure.


     An artist I know says that his work can never be finished, but it can be done. Again, we are left with Words. Not bad. We are done, but not finished. Done with the stupidities, the often unintentional comedy, accepting with patience  the near hits,  solid misses, and few startling successes. At this time, I will suggest that life should not be looked at too closely. Dreams, lies, even delusions, may be the best ways to survive.

     And as for the Daughter, Kathryn's Daughter, she has been left with a heightened sense of the absurd, some helpless laughter, an ounce of hope, and an insatiable longing for chocolate.















                                   The Mission


      

                                                 

     
     
    The padres continued on their spiritual quest. leaving behind the skeleton of the nameless Mission, rising on a small plateau overlooking the sun-filled grasslands.

    At the final stop on their religious path, a little north and west, they began the building of another Mission, one that still stands, tall, gleaming white and gold, above the southwestern desert.

    The inner walls of this Mission are alive with frescoes. Over two hundred angels and one hundred saints have been honored in watercolor, sculpture or bas relief.

   More than 200,000 wanderers, tourists, and seekers come to the Mission each year. Milagros charms, along with postcards and prayer books, can be purchased in the small gift shop. With its own website, the church will accept prayers and requests which will then be printed and placed with the appropriate saint.

    The church continues to minister to the needs of those who enter.

    And the doors are always open wide.


    

  
     

       

      
         
                                                       fin