Fourteen
A
Long-Ago Planet Named Orpheus
Frosty’s parents stayed for another week. Through a consistent
application of amiability I managed to break through Magdalena’s armor, causing
her to leak a few embarrassing stories from her son’s childhood. One of them
involved climbing bare nekkid to the roof of the carport at the tender age of
two.
Mom and Pop soon headed south to
the warmer climes of Huntington Beach (home of cousin Dixie), returning us to
our couple’s paradise. If anything, thanks to Frosty’s solid, lovely family, my
affections had grown deeper. (Alas, a peek at Jerry’s signature – after a meal
at Gilda’s – failed to reveal their last name, as his penmanship was
atrocious.)
This heightened feeling of union
came with an unexpected by-product. Watching all these warm-blooded attachments
made me long for my own family – most especially, my darling nieces. Lost in
our little campsite hideaway, I managed to dodge the Christmas carols and
Yuletide commercials, but December was getting old and my heart was pointing
south. Then my sister phoned me at the hotel to pour on the guilt. (Perhaps the
surrendering cry of “Uncle!” should be “Aunt!”)
But how was I supposed to tell Frosty?
As if I weren’t being scrambled
enough, the machinations of the cosmos had brought the moon closer to both the
sun and Earth than it would be for another 133 years. It was due to turn full
on the solstice. One immediate result was the lowest low tide I’d ever seen,
turning Knickerbocker Beach into a junior Sahara and wiping any frosted glass
clean off the slate.
Our afternoon hunts became
useless meanders. At the peak of our boredom, we caught sight of a festival in
the beach parking lot. After traversing the seemingly endless sand, we entered
the Hirshfield Solstice Arts Festival, filled with all manner of benign
wackiness. In this corner, a slim man in his late twenties juggling five white
Frisbees, flicking one of them high into the air as he kept the others going.
And here, a chunky man in his fifties performing dizzy revolutions on a
skateboard. Lastly, a surly-looking septuagenarian keeping watch over a series
of finely balanced stone piles, awaiting questions from his public.
The retail art was the usual
collection of well-crafted dreck: ceramic sea otters and dolphins, color photos
of inoffensive seascapes, kooky clocks framed by cartoon kitties. The
exceptions were a woman who made wind chimes from antique silverware and a guy
who assembled mosaics from cheesy collector plates (the same, in fact, who made
the tables in Gilda’s).
The real find was the Hirshfield
Art Center, which featured many-spangled creations from their glass-blowers,
and a fascinating group project. They had decorated two thousand Japanese net
floats (round glass bubbles that occasionally drifted all the way across the
Pacific), and were going to spend New Year’s Day setting them afloat ten miles
out to sea. Whatever came ashore was finders-keepers, no questions asked.
We got a basket of fried calamari
and made our way back to the beach. As we neared the lighthouse, we found that
the cliffs, which generally jutted into the sea, now sported a ten-foot collar
of open sand! We took it, one wary eye to the water, and strolled around to our
nudie-dorker cove.
We settled at the base of a
caramel-colored boulder, my head on Frosty’s chest as he played with my
hair. I watched the sun drifting behind
the clouds, filtering a montage of salmons, roses and pinks through the
overcast. This seemed like a good moment.
“I have something to tell you.”
“I know. You’ve been
telegraphing.”
I curled sideways to watch his
eyes. “Then…”
“You’re leaving. It’s Christmas.
You have family.”
“Then… what do you… Oh shit, I
don’t know – what do you think?”
Frosty nudged me out of his lap
and stood, walking into the wake of sun.
“Sorry. If you want the truth
from me, I have to be at least this far away. I have bad feelings about this.
I’m really afraid that you have this terminal attraction to the city – the
noise, the masses of people, the sense that things that happen there are more
important. I saw it when we went to Portland.”
I tried to raise an objection. He
stopped me with a look.
“I just want you to know that I
will wait for you. But not forever. And you need to remember this: life and
happiness are not constructed of popular opinion, or the achievements of
corporations, or the gathering of money and approval. Happiness is a product
you invent every day according to your own solitary definitions. This probably sounds strange, but…”
Frosty’s voice was shaking. He
turned and stomped toward the cliffs, raising protests to an unseen goddess.
“Dammit! What’m I supposed to do? Fuck!”
I couldn’t bear not touching him.
I raced across the sand and wrapped my arms around his chest. I was surprised
to find him quaking, to feel a tear splash my wrist. He continued cursing under
his breath, a pulse of consonants against my ribs. Looking over his shoulder I
found a slice of light peering over the cliffs, the brightest moon in my
lifetime.
“I read an article about the
moon,” I said. “This new theory that a
long-ago planet named Orpheus drifted into Earth’s gravity and collided with
it. The impact was tremendous. Some of what used to be Orpheus became part of
the Earth, while parts of both planets were sprayed into Earth’s orbit. The
pieces eventually gathered together to form the moon.
“I may be going, Frosty, but I’m
leaving a large piece of myself here.”
Frosty turned to me, tears
streaking his face.
“Okay,” he said. “But you’re also taking part of me with you. So do
well by me, dammit, because I want that piece back.”
I kissed his cheek, the tang of
salt on my lips. “I will. I promise.”
Photo by MJV
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