Cynthia Robinson's Blog, page 2

Bad, Bad Love Was A Bad, Bad Momma

The priest is tipsy–Marta got him that way, or he let himself be gotten that way, or however you choose to word it. Her daughters are watching her through the window, which maybe she knows, maybe she doesn’t. Either way, they’re learning at the knee of a master… Herewith, Installment XXII (if you’re wondering where dinner is, it’s coming, it’s coming) of The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known as A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen). Two of the four characters present in this scene are about to give in to their absolute worst impulses…in a week or two. After a lot more mulberry wine (Pearl makes big batches, and the house is never without it).

So bring a glass, pull up a chair. She’ll pour you some too. And if you’re recently arrived to the party, or would just like to remind yourself of exactly how we wound up at this sad pass, you can travel effortlessly back to the Beginning of it All by clicking right here

~

And Marta was desperate now. Even Livia was old enough to understand that. Marta wasn’t going to marry the lawyer after all. Danae had whispered to Livia earlier that afternoon, as they were washing their hair in the big bathroom upstairs, that the lawyer wouldn’t be knocking at the door any more; he was moving back to Cincinnati. Danae had overheard Marta, a furious Marta, as she confided in Pearl over the last of her coffee, in the sitting room. Pearl had gone in there to check on Marta, and Danae had followed her, hiding behind the sitting room door that was always open in case there was a breeze.

The lawyer had lied (all men lie, Pearl said). The lawyer had told Marta he would marry her. Marta had “given herself to him”; Danae added, for Livia’s benefit, that this meant that they had slept in the same bed and, well, who knew what else…maybe even that. Last night, Marta hadn’t had a chance to tell Pearl because she had come in very late from their date, and even Pearl had gone to bed. Last night hadn’t been like most times; they’d gone to his hotel first instead of afterward like they usually did.

There had been a couple of silent seconds; Marta would have been raising her right eyebrow. Danae filled in the gesture even though she hadn’t seen it—Danae was going to be an actress. Livia was astonished, almost as though she had never noticed it before, by how much her sister resembled Marta; she could be Marta if she wanted to. Marta’s voice was full of injury, well, Danae’s voice, but it was so like Marta’s that it could have been hers. After the hotel, at the very cotillion, right there in front of the bar just like he was talking about the weather or something, Clive had told her that that would be their last date. He had thought Marta would enjoy the cotillion, especially since it was their last date, but she would ruin the whole evening, the oily voice hissed—Danae, imitating Marta, imitating the lawyer; Marta could have been an actress too, if it weren’t for them—if she made a scene right there in front of all of Baton Rouge.

Clive’s case in Baton Rouge was finished (the voice, slow and oily again), and he would be heading back up to Cincinatti and well, Marta knew how those things went, his wife… His wife! Marta’s voice had risen, almost to a shout. Oh, but Marta should have known, he’d argued, pleading with her to keep her voice down; how could she not have known, a man of his age? Danae put a hand on one newly rounded hip and thrust it out, ashing a make-believe cigarette with the other. All men his age were married, and a woman of her age, a woman of her age with two daughters, well, they just had to take what they could get, didn’t they. Clive had placed his finger over Marta’s lips and left it there a few seconds, in order to assure himself that she would be quiet. Then he’d told her again, slowly, that they wouldn’t be seeing each other any more. He was leaving day after tomorrow.

Danae-as-Marta drew a deep drag–an imaginary cigarette. Livia could practically smell the smoke. Even there in the salon, with Pearl, with the early afternoon just outside the drawn window shades, waiting to get in and ignite her dull headache into a blazing fire, even there—Livia could just see her mother, practically spitting the words, like Danae was doing right now—she could still taste that cotillion. All of those people, those men, had seen her, seen her in her silly ignorance. Hanging on Clive’s arm, just like she was his fiance or something. Those men had known, they had all known. Marta had just systematically eliminated each and every one of her possibilities. Why pay for what you could obviously get for free.

He’d given her a necklace, a cheap thing on a chain, a heart, it wasn’t even gold (Aunt Pearl had promised to try to help Marta pawn it). And he had left her at the end of the path. That was the worst part of the whole thing, Marta’s voice complained bitterly, Danae’s voice.

She’d had to walk all the way up the path in her high heels, with her stockings twisted around her legs, just the way his hands had left them when they had finished with her. There was a halo of cigarette smoke around Marta’s head; that was all Danae could really see, but she could imagine the rest. Marta never smoked in front of Aunt Cornelia, but she was sure smoking then, chain smoking. But it was okay, it was only Aunt Pearl. Danae wasn’t sure, but she thought that even Aunt Pearl had been smoking.

Danae told Livia that their mother had not cried, not even one tear. If a man did that to her… Her sister’s dark head lowered menacingly.

Livia wondered how Danae could possibly have any idea about the things men did, or what she would do if they did them to her. Nope (Danae’s voice grew harsh, just like Marta’s when she complained about her boss at the diner), not one tear. Maybe because she was embarrassed in front of Aunt Pearl.

~

And now Marta was out on the porch with Father Clanning, with that expression on her face, the one she used when a man was present and she wanted to get something out of him. Danae and Livia both knew that that something was money. And they both knew that Marta would get it (Marta always got whatever she wanted, especially in the short run). They both knew that Marta would leave; once she had that money in her hand, nothing would stop her. The priest would extract a wad of bills from within his cassock at some moment during the evening, and he would give it to Marta–of that Livia and Danae had not one doubt–and then nothing would stop Marta, not even if the wad of bills had come from the collection plate itself.

Danae was smiling to herself; she never once took her eyes off Marta. Danae, Livia knew, was imagining herself in their mother’s place, getting money so that she could leave. It was only a matter of time before Danae left, too.

Marta leaned forward in her rocking chair, toward Father Clanning, filled his glass as though she were telling him a secret. She bent down to place the bottle beneath the chair (it wouldn’t do for Cornelia to find Marta and the priest drinking mulberry wine together on the porch; then came Marta’s laugh, low and sure, followed by the priest’s hesitant one). From her position at the window, Livia could see her mother’s breasts when she bent down. She was sure that the priest could see them too.

Father Clanning leaned forward, toward Marta. Livia and Danae could hear their mother telling Father Clanning in a low, confidential voice about how she had to get away from the farm, it was driving her crazy–there was nothing to do, no way for a woman like her to get ahead…Hopeless. Marta’s voice was hopeless as she pronounced the word, almost whispered it. Her lips lingered over the “p”, and her heavy lids drooped.

There was a brief silence while Marta refilled their glasses and Livia could hear the crickets singing. Father Clanning’s tired eyes were wide open, his brows arching up over them, his expression an unconscious mirror of Marta’s.

“Unless…”

Danae and Livia held their breaths, waiting to hear what Marta would say after “unless”. Neither of the sisters was conscious of feeling abandoned by their mother, or angry, or betrayed (she hadn’t left yet, but she would, it was perfectly clear). The fact that Marta would, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, walk down the dusty path toward the bus stop and never come back again was accepted by both (after all, they had Pearl and Cornelia, even if the latter didn’t count for much). That was how it had always been–their mother pulled along in the wake of events (usually orchestrated by, or having to do with, men), events over which she, after the initial setting-in-motion accomplished by her lips, her breasts, and the mulberry wine, seemed to have no control. And Danae and Livia had always been pulled along behind her.

But not this time. Danae was getting old enough to be considered competition–she, perforce, would be left behind, although there might have been moments during which Marta fleetingly considered taking Livia along to New Orleans. It was almost as though Marta were aware of their shadowy presence, there on the seat behind the open window, there in the darkness (it was finally dark), as though she were taking advantage of the opportunity to explain herself without having to directly confront them. Another Marta specialty—avoidance.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

Connect with Cynthia on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, find her book Birds Of Wonder here and learn more about Cynthia here.

 

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The post Bad, Bad Love Was A Bad, Bad Momma appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love Pours the Priest A Drink

This cannot end well. Of course it can’t. But that’s in a week or two. For the moment, just be glad we’re back, Bad, Bad Lovers, we’re back back back! A week off for novel maintenance, over in another corner of the writer brain. Across the ocean, in a haunted hotel. But good things come to s/he who waits: herewith, Installment XXI (that is indeed twenty-one, Bad, Bad Lovers, we have officially come of age) of our scrumptious little serialized novella, The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known as A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen). We’re still on the porch with Marta and the priest, and there’s still that nagging sense of something not quite right. If the hair’s standing up along your forearms, you’re the sensitive type, and you should know that your ornery arm-hair is not wrong.

               If that hair ain’t standin’ yet, it will be soon.

               And if it don’t ever, there’s something wrong with you.

               So dig on in, by all means, and if you’re not quite ready to taste the bitter, there’s some leftover chocolate tarts on the counter. Long’s your soul’s not the lost twin half of Livia’s you should be good to go. And if you’re really in need of sustenance, you can always go back to the very beginning by clicking right here.

~

Mulberry Wine

But Marta wasn’t sweating. She looked cool and fresh–the skin around her nose was a little shiny, but her forehead was dry. Father Clanning could feel himself moist and clammy inside his cassock, watching Marta rock gently back and forth in the rocking chair, lazily observing the sky’s preparations for sunset, unimpressed. And unperturbed, by all appearances, at the silence that had settled in between them; she made no attempt to pick up the flimsy thread of conversation he’d left hanging. A listless breeze had come up; Father Clanning felt grateful for it as it touched his cheeks. As though it were tired, but not entirely averse to doing a kindness, so long as it didn’t have to go out of its way.

There was a scent, too, flowers, or fruit, maybe; he was uncertain, as about so many things. Elusive, it came and went, sometimes faint, sometimes aggressively present, almost tangy in his nostrils. Maybe wafting under the eaves on the fitful breeze. But no, it was too close, it had to proceed from somewhere within the semi-enclosed space of the porch. Finally, there. The sweet smell was not generated by Marta’s body. Something he had considered, remembering blond Alice’s surprisingly musky scent. Perhaps dark women like Marta emanated a floral scent. A scent that would seem to sit more comfortably with the clarity of white skin and crystal blue eyes.

No, the scent did not emanate from Marta herself–body warmth, did, though, and he could feel it every time he moved an inch further to his left, so he shouldn’t do that, though he did, just once more. The scent might not come from her, but it came from close by. From beneath her chair, to be precise, fanned up toward his nostrils on the minute gusts of breeze produced by the motions of her rocking. In search of the source of the smell, Father Clanning’s unsuspecting gaze stumbled over Marta’s feet and got stuck there. So small and perfectly formed, the dainty toes a little dirty, they could easily have belonged to a child. A good excuse to continue looking at the feet: he had to wait for the rocker to tip backward, several times, in order to see what was underneath it. A glass, he finally made it out, a glass with a bit of amethyst-colored liquid clinging to the bottom, behind it a curiously shaped bottle, three-quarters full with the same amethyst-colored liquid. It looked thick, syrupy. The bottle had no label.

Marta had followed Father Clannning’s gaze with her golden-brown eyes (the fact that the old man’s watery eyes had lingered over her feet had not escaped her). She met that gaze blatantly as he looked up, embarrassed, knowing that she had seen him. The glass, the bottle; the dainty, dirty feet were there, as though protecting the objects half-hidden beneath the chair.

“I put it all under there when I saw you comin’ up. Thought maybe priests didn’t approve of that kinda thing.”

She raised a Greta Garbo eyebrow and turned the malicious smile that threatened to spread across her lips into a pout. She hadn’t even bothered to ask him what he was looking at (the feet–they led up to ankles, the glass–there was only one; the bottle). Father Clanning half-smiled, sheepish; she had found him out. But also glad he could drop the pretense. He feigned a long look at the bottle, as his eyes traveled once more from instep to ankle and back again.

“Mulberry wine. Homemade. Not by me, though, don’t worry.” A laugh, it was harsh, it hurt his ears, he hadn’t been expecting that. “Can I get you some?”

Marta put her hands on the arms of the rocking chair, to push herself up, out of it. The loose folds of the dress tightened hard across her full breasts. Father Clanning swallowed uncomfortably (breasts, straining beneath flimsy fabric, a glass, its interior cavity filled with wine and Marta’s eyes questioning).

He did want one. A drink. He wanted a drink. Even though the wine was surely warm. He wanted whatever she was having. Whatever she chose to give him.

She didn’t wait for his answer but, smiling to herself–she knew, she knew–disappeared into the house. An unhappy little smile, Father Clanning thought, what could possibly make such a superb creature unhappy? He listened hard, disappointed he couldn’t hear the sounds of those bare feet, only a little dirty, on the wooden floor of the hall leading back to the parlor (the mulberry wine was kept in the parlor).

She returned more quickly than he would have imagined possible–he could only picture her moving slowly, languidly—with the delicate stem of a crystal wine glass held between her fingers. The nails on her hands painted the same color as those on her feet, the polish on the right thumb chipped. Her smile was the Reims angel, the Mona Lisa. Enigmatic and teasing, perhaps mocking.  He tried not to stare at the glass as it was filled, at the hand with its pink nails (like those on her feet). When he tasted it the wine was bathwater-hot, sweet and cloying, just as he had imagined it. He didn’t know why it tasted good, in that heat, in the mugginess of the early evening with only the fitful breeze to cool things. But, before he knew it, he was well into his third glass.

They conversed, Marta and the priest, amiably, in low, unrestrained voices, about the heat, about Pearl’s culinary talents, about how Marta was trying to save up enough money to move to the city–not Baton Rouge, but New Orleans.

~

Danae and Livia were watching Marta’s seduction—because that’s what it was; they might not know the word yet, but they knew what they saw when they saw it—of Father Clanning from the window seat, just to the left inside the door. They’d giggled when they first saw him chatting with their mother, with that look on his face that all men got when they talked to Marta, somewhere between menacing and stupid. He didn’t look like that at church.

When the door banged open, even though they’d known it would, and that Marta would come inside to get a glass for the priest, because they’d heard the whole thing and seen it too, they started and held their breaths. She’d surely see them, sitting there in the false twilight of the unlit hallway. She’d be furious, say they were always listening to things that didn’t concern them. “Concern” was one of Marta’s grown-up words. She had a few others, and when she used them, Livia knew that she was invoking her adulthood, their lack of it–hers and Danae’s–and her fed-up state with having the two of them to consider as she planned her life.

They were each wearing one of their new school dresses. School wouldn’t start for another two months; usually the dresses were not to be touched before the first day of September, and it was only June, but Marta had been especially eager for them to make a good impression on the priest. Danae had hissed to Livia as Aunt Pearl was helping them dress an hour earlier that they had to look nice for the priest because Marta didn’t want him thinking she needed to go to mass, too. Livia snickered. Danae always thought of wicked things to say, true things, things that Livia sometimes thought to herself, but it was always Danae who said them. Pearl looked away, but Livia had seen her smile all the same.

Danae’s dress was blue. The blue looked darker than it was because it would be night soon. There was a belt at her waist–Marta had said to Pearl that she might as well show it off, since she was getting one. Danae, tall, statuesque Danae. No one would ever suspect Marta was old enough to have a daughter in her second year of junior high; all Marta would ever say was that she had started early. She would never tell anyone, not even Danae or Livia, how old she was.

Something in Livia, a thing recently awoken but not yet able to fully speak for itself, knew that, if Danae were a little older, she could sit outside on the porch with the priest and mesmerize him just like Marta was doing, and offer him wine. He would drink the wine if Danae gave it to him; if the offering were held out by her own hand, Livia wasn’t so sure.

And Danae would be able to get money out of him, just like Marta. Because it was perfectly clear what their mother was up to. One of Marta’s favorite axes to grind, those dirty old priests squirreling away all their money–they never had to spend a dime. Everybody always cooking them supper, and they didn’t even have to buy clothes, they just wore those awful old cassocks all the time. She wouldn’t mind being a priest herself for a while—this always after her third glass of mulberry wine, or fourth—so she could squirrel away some money. What wouldn’t she do if she could squirrel away some money.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

The post Bad, Bad Love Pours the Priest A Drink appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love Waits on the Porch

She waits on the porch, that is, for trouble to come, and come it does. Boy, does it. Of course, you could also argue that Bad, Bad Love herself is trouble. And in this, our first-foot-into-the-tender-twenties episode (20, already!), of our trouble-on-a-slow-simmer serialized novella, The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen), you would find plenty to back you up (and if you were to ask Father Clanning, he would no doubt agree). We’re headed to a bad place, Bad, Bad Lovers, and I’m not even mostly kidding.

But we’ll get there slow. Consider this chunk a first dip of the toe.

If you’d like to fortify yourself before this swim in choppy waters, you’ll find an all-day snack buffet down in the lobby, just scroll back through our offerings. Or click right here to be sent all the way back to breakfast. Alcohol not included (some a’yall are big drinkers, so the bar tab’s separate).

~

Welcome Committee

Father Clanning arrived early. From the front porch, Marta watched him move with short, shuffling steps up the dusty road. He wore a cassock and, when he got closer, she could see the thin film of dust that had settled around the hem. He was carrying a bible with a brand-new cover. It looked hard, like it would resist if you tried to bend it.  Marta wondered if this were in lieu of a bottle of wine or bouquet of flowers, the sort of thing most people brought with them when someone invited them to dinner. Back in the days when she went to dinners, Marta had always picked up those things just around the corner from her hostess’s house. Some instinct of self-preservation didn’t seem to want to allow her to forget entirely. But maybe priests were exempt–they weren’t supposed to drink anyway–and Marta had never had dinner with a priest before.

The whole man, Marta thought contemptuously, was gray. As the stooped figure shuffled its way out from under the apple trees, Marta noticed that the priest was muttering to himself. The thin, shapeless lips moved ever so slightly, and low, unintelligible words reached her ears across the narrow expanse of the front lawn. He was probably not accustomed to dealing with people, except from his pulpit.

The dusty cassock dragged over the lush, emerald-colored grass (emeralds Marta would never recognize, never see; emeralds over which the almost-old man shuffled without looking down). There were patches of deeper green, too, like fabrics much too rare ever to have been seen anywhere along that dusty road, priceless brocades woven by the trees and their shadows, their shadows that made coolness, their leaves that flirted with diffuse patches of late-afternoon sunlight, chased them.

And Marta and Father Clanning were oblivious to all that beauty. Marta plotted (even though she herself was unaware of her plotting), plotted as she sat there in the rocking chair, on the porch of Pearl and Cornelia’s house, as she watched the priest come toward her, as though in slow motion, as though suspended in some strange liquid melted by the heat. Marta didn’t see the trees because she looked at them all the time, they were just trees, and because she was listening to a small but very sure voice inside herself, telling her that the moment had come. The priest didn’t see the trees and their beauty because of his mutterings. He was listening to them at the very same moment at which he produced them, and this required all of his concentration.

The porch was dark with shadows made by the overhanging roof, and Father Clanning didn’t see Marta until he almost tripped over her bare feet as he approached the screen door, ready to press the doorbell embedded in its wooden frame. He looked down and froze with a hand, a gray hand, outstretched toward the doorbell.

“It don’t work.”

Marta’s brown eyes, with their touch of green-gold, glinted strangely, like those of some animal gifted with night-vision, a quality Father Clanning lacked. Marta was a lioness and the priest was frightened. He was lost in the jungle, and just as he reached out his hand to move aside the thick leaves of some plant whose name he didn’t know, just as he almost touched the foreign, rubbery surface of those leaves, he looked down. There was a lioness there, a lioness with brown-green-gold eyes, slanted eyes. The eyes glittered, sparkled with something like malice, but buried beneath the deceptive stillness of the dark pools, fleeting, maybe not even there at all.

Marta enjoyed the priest’s surprise, his discomfort–he had thought himself alone with his Bible and his mutterings, and then there she was, all dusky amid the early evening shadows of the porch. She had on a loose-fitting, square-necked dress with nothing underneath. It was too hot for underwear; she had been going to change before dinner, but here he was already, so she wouldn’t bother. Father Clanning’s faded gray eyes were all pupil as they traversed, respectfully but lingeringly, the soft mounds of olive-skinned flesh clearly discernible beneath the neckline of Marta’s dress, her painted lips, the hard eyebrows (lines like the chiseled arch of a bird’s wind far away against the sky very early in the morning). The loosened hair.

Marta was quiet—she’d decided that was how she’d be tonight—self-possessed, a touch of irony flitting back and forth over the edges of the Mona Lisa smile. That old priest couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was used to having that effect on men.

“Why don’t you have a seat?”

Father Clanning sat down in the rocking chair next to Marta’s. He was close to Marta–the arms of their chairs were almost touching. Marta was rocking back and forth, slowly, rhythmically, pushing off anew at the end of each forward dip with an unnecessarily precise, almost impudent, movement of her bare toes. Her toenails were painted pink.

Father Clanning made the obvious introduction, turning awkwardly in his chair in order to face Marta. He held out his hand to her. She hesitated for just a fraction of a second, and then Father Clanning felt the cool, dry skin of her palm make contact with his. Strange how skin could be so cool. He was conscious of the dampness of his own skin, of the miniscule beads of sweat that hid amid the creases of his palm and made it, perhaps, disagreeable to touch.  He noted that she seemed reserved, if not displeased altogether, as she murmured her name. Father Clanning was conscious, also, of having arrived early, and was not sorry to delay his entry into the shadowy interior of the house, but he could think of no suitable topic of conversation with which to engage Marta, so he stammered a bit, getting the obvious out.

“I don’t b’lieve I’ve ever seen you in church.”

Marta was suddenly innocence, a little girl, her skin fresh like when it had glowed against the peach chiffon of the perfect dress in which she had left that very same porch, the night before, for the cotillion.

“Well, you wouldn’t have. I work on Sunday mornin’s, real early, in the diner on the main square. So I don’t have time to go to church.”

Father Clanning thought Marta a victim of the cruelest of circumstances; such a lovely woman serving coffee to strangers early on Sunday mornings; it seemed somehow unjust, almost obscene. The dinner hour would be one thing, but there was something even more disturbing about the early morning, with its deceptively pure, fresh light, the way everything looked cleaned up and ready to start all over again. Men would look at her as she moved around behind the counter, as she bent to pick up a fork or knife someone had dropped. Some would look covertly, out of the corners of their eyes, sheepishly humble before her beauty. But others would stare openly, one side of their mouths curving up in a knowing grin, the mouth full of half-chewed eggs or toast. They would ask for more coffee, or something else they didn’t really want or need, just to bring her over in front of them, and Marta would have to answer them, do their bidding, even though she had clearly read the pretext behind the request. Father Clanning’s faded sense of justice (he had lived a long time isolated from most things) was offended:  she probably even had to take the bus into town.

The priest’s desires for such contact as Marta’s face and body suggested to the minds of most men had long lain unrecognized, suffocated beneath years of cassocks and hymnals, church suppers and elderly parishioners. Those years had almost completed their process of making him elderly himself–his hair had lost its beautiful chestnut color, but gradually, so that he had hardly even noticed. The once bright blue of his eyes had dulled to a tinny, milky gray. He had begun to stoop. All this had come on slowly, though; the process had been almost painless.

Once, just after he was ordained, he had almost allowed himself to be tempted. He had been young and lonely in his first, isolated parish. She was blonde, not dark like Marta, but her body was rich and musky. She was unhappy with her husband, and came to him for consolation, advice; there was a certain tantalizing scent of warm flesh when she walked into his office. He knew the smell was there, around her, when he saw her seated on the wooden pew–left side, third row back–every Sunday. Alice. Alice all alone. Alice’s husband played poker on Saturday nights, so he always slept through church on Sundays.

The moment of greatest danger had come, like now, in the midst of summer; like now, with the agonizing heat, the suffocating humidity. Once he had been mesmerized by tiny pearls of sweat resting like dew on the almost invisible blonde hairs of Alice’s upper lip, mesmerized in the early twilight of his office when she had appeared unannounced, without an appointment, with the secretary already gone home. The lips with their thick coating of red moved gently around the syllables of her unhappiness, of her misery. She was afraid of her husband, of Andy, afraid he might hurt her, and the sweat had formed as he watched. He could see each individual pearl materialize out of her pores and sit, like a precious jewel, on the soft down that silked over Alice’s skin. He had been that close to her.

They’d transferred him to another parish at the next June conference. Father Clanning had been relieved, and devastated, and he’d cried as he packed his grey belongings. He’d cried and he’d smiled and he’d wondered if they knew.

He didn’t say goodbye to Alice.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

The post Bad, Bad Love Waits on the Porch appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love’s Still Stuck On Her Momma (You Would Be, Too)

Time for Sweet XIX! The nineteenth episode, that is, of our most delectable, crunchy-on-the-out-side-and-tender-within, serialized novella, The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen). Livia’s still up in the air, the Valium and the bourbon are still mixing fumes, and the grocery list she’s scribbling on the back of her airline cocktail napkin is well nigh illegible. So she just lets the memories take her. Like we all would, and do… a longish flight, you’re a little high, somehow you got the whole row to yourself…

And it’s so easy to find yourself Right. Back. There.

Where Major $**t went down. Major $**t that, whether you knew it or not at the time, would dictate the way your life turned out, right down to the kind of gravy you like on your chicken. If you eat chicken (I do not). $**t you took with you everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, whether you wanted to or not. $**t you’re still hauling all over the place, stuffed into your overweight baggage, it’s a wonder they didn’t charge you extra at check-in.

Livia, like you, and like me, has a $**t-ton of baggage. And over the next few episodes, you get to see what she’s been dragging around…

If you’d like a bite to eat before we proceed to the unpacking, and maybe you want to wet your whistle too, this here link will take you right back to the pre-dinner drinks. Hint: you might want to make yourself a strong one…

~

Dinner Then, Dinner Now

Peach schnapps. What was wrong with her? She’d almost forgotten the peach schnapps. Livia added it hurriedly, as though she might forget it all over again, to the cocktail-napkin shopping list. Her handwriting was a mess. She was scattered, distracted. The Valium, and the bourbon. And the memories, hovering like guests who’d arrived early to a dinner party, waiting politely to be acknowledged. She took another sip. She might as well let them in. She might have known Danae’s fortieth birthday dinner would summon up that other dinner, twenty-five years earlier.

Although no one had known it at the time, that dinner had immediately preceded Marta’s apotheosis. Her graceful exit from the stage of her life, grown dusty, jumbled with piles of rickety furniture that needed repairing, even replacing.

But no one ever spoke of the stage once she’d left it. Marta’s graceful exit, when it happened, the hauntingly lovely apotheosis, had made everyone forget about Marta’s rapidly diminishing possibilities.

~

While they lived with the aunts, it had seemed to Livia that her sister was just biding her time, waiting for the right moment to come along. The moment when Danae would show the world what she was made of (Danae would know it when it got there, and when it did, she’d leave). According to Danae, life’s possibilities were infinite, and Livia agreed, especially when she listened to Danae talk about them while they lay in hammocks on the back porch, while the moon climbed up to the top of a dead oak just behind Pearl’s vegetable garden.

Because the oak had no leaves, even in summer, you could see the whole moon through the strangely shaped gaps between the branches. Danae ran lovingly over the litany of her possibilities while the grass was silver, while the bushes wore black velvet robes. Movies, plays, New Orleans, Los Angeles. She would marry a producer. The producer would make her famous. Danae was beautiful.

Livia and Danae talked about possibilities (mostly Danae’s–Livia wasn’t convinced she had any, at least not of the sort her sister had) in whispers, so that their aunts wouldn’t overhear them. The aunts, Danae declared in her older-sister voice, full of confidence in the power of her already-heavy breasts, in her lips that were always moist like she had just finished eating a peach, didn’t have possibilities anymore.

That was why they lived together, that was why they didn’t have any children, and that was why Marta was going to leave, even before Danae did. Danae knew it, Livia should just wait and see.

~

Cornelia was the only member of the household who regularly attended church. Whenever she could convince them, she took Danae and Livia with her–there was an ice cream parlor on the corner, they would go as soon as services were over. Danae could have a new ribbon for her hair, any color she chose; Livia could have one, too. Livia always wondered if they could see it, if the sad-faced statues knew they’d been bribed. Or maybe those other people at church with their starched shirts and dresses, with their hats and gloves.

Livia wondered if they could see the ice cream and the ribbons in her face, or in Danae’s eyes, the wheedling promises with which Cornelia had coaxed them into the solemn space, cool even in summer, that smelled like funerals.

Cornelia had earned the shuffling priest’s esteem through her constant, regular production of knitted garments, sent by the church to New Orleans, where they would be sorted, and then given, along with other homemade offerings, to the Needy. Aunt Cornelia didn’t have the imagination or the curiosity to ask herself about the faces or hands or feet her scarves, socks, and mittens might eventually warm.

The Needy were simply a mass of indistinguishable faces and bodies, inadequately clothed, fed, and washed, to which she was (perhaps a bit self-righteously) happy and grateful not to belong. Father Clanning, a simple man whose accumulated years hovered somewhere between the last gasp of middle age and the beginning of the inevitable descent toward being old, did not analyze the motives or inner psychological machinations of his parishioners; he held Cornelia to be among the finest and most upright of Catholic women.

During one of the most memorable moments of Cornelia’s life, he very cordially accepted her long-rehearsed invitation to dine at her and Pearl’s table the third Thursday evening of the following month.

~

Another event, closely related in importance and sequence to Cornelia’s long-awaited dinner. The evening preceding Cornelia’s dinner, Marta had a date. She’d been invited to a cotillion at the Baton Rouge Country Club by a lawyer, a handsome lawyer with white teeth and a very square jaw, with whom she had been spending a noticeably large amount of her free time. Marta had fretted over her dress for the better part of a month before Pearl found the peach chiffon in the attic, but once she’d seen that, it all fell into place and she did nothing but smile.

The day before the cotillion, she had her hair done. Since they’d left the handsome man’s house in Biloxi, Marta never had her hair done. Both Livia and Danae were conscious that something momentous, even irrevocable, might happen that night.

Livia now knew that this event, Marta’s date, was (or would be) inextricably intertwined with the dinner being prepared for Cornelia’s priest. Whatever had happened at the cotillion (and after it) had influenced the tone Cornelia’s dinner had taken and had, irrevocably, dictated the course of events leading up to Marta’s apotheosis.

But that was all knowledge gleaned from hindsight, the most useless kind, the nearsighted Cornelia had often declared while seeming to enjoy some misfortune that had befallen someone else. And it was true, Livia was forced to acknowledge, at least in the case of Marta’s apotheosis. None of the wisdom she had gained since then (sometimes it felt like a lot, others like very little), none of it, would really do Marta any good now. But maybe it would help Danae.

~

On the night of the cotillion, Marta was perfect. Her hair looked almost black and her eyes were wide and bright. Gazelle, fawn. Venus. The lawyer had brought her a large bouquet of hothouse gardenias when he came to pick her up. Pearl’s gardenias, Livia thought, were a thousand times more lovely, more fragrant. She didn’t understand why the lawyer hadn’t saved himself some money and picked a bunch of gardenias off the bushes next to the back porch. Pearl certainly wouldn’t have minded.

Marta’s face was delicate and young against the billowy peach chiffon, her shoulders were bare, dusky shadows around the tops of her breasts. Marta was a prom-queen, a debutante, and her family, dressed as though they themselves were going to the cotillion, was seated and motionless in the salon, waiting to inspect her date. Aunt Pearl was even wearing shoes.

The lawyer’s eyes—although it must be said, again, that he was very handsome—were the color of weak tea. He would need glasses soon; he spent a lot of his time scrutinizing small print. The weak eyes gave him a vulnerable air, defenseless before Marta’s deadly beauty. He had a slight paunch. Livia noticed it, even though it was clear he was trying to suck it in; the paunch made her, for some reason, feel squeamish.

But the lawyer smiled and laughed and showed his white teeth as he produced red roses for the aunts and a box of candy for Danae and Livia.  Filled chocolates; Livia didn’t like them because you never knew what flavor would spurt into your mouth when you bit one. Danae could have them all as far as she was concerned. Danae took the box of chocolates to her room.

But anybody could see that the man, Clive, was crazy about Marta. Pearl pronounced the verdict with satisfaction–for Pearl was truly capable of being happy about the good fortune of others–as soon as the front door clicked shut behind the departing couple. Marta, clearly, still had possibilities.

~

The day of Cornelia’s dinner, the morning after the cotillion, was inexplicably hot (suffocating, and it was only June). Marta had stayed home from work that day; she didn’t come down from her room until after lunch. When she did, she had barely a word for anyone. Only a terse good morning, well, good afternoon, to Pearl. She didn’t speak to Cornelia, or to Danae, both of whom were at the kitchen table finishing their lunch. She made coffee for herself and took it into the sitting room.

Livia was on the back porch reading. She didn’t feel like lunch; it was too hot. She had helped Pearl for most of the morning with the beginning stages of the dinner, but just before noon, Pearl had gently asked Livia to leave her alone for the rest of the process. This was a very important occasion, and she couldn’t afford to have anything, anything at all, be even the slightest bit off. Livia had been a bit hurt, but she supposed she understood.

Pearl had been in the kitchen all day, since the cool hours before breakfast, when the darkness was just deciding whether or not it should give way to the new day. Now she was completing the sauces and glazes, the part that separated the wheat from the chaff in cooking terms. The priest would be coming in a few hours. Livia wondered whether he’d be wearing his cassock. Maybe priests didn’t wear anything else.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

Connect with Cynthia on Twitter, Facebook,  Goodreads , and  Instagram , find her book  Birds Of Wonder   here  and learn more about Cynthia here.

The post Bad, Bad Love’s Still Stuck On Her Momma (You Would Be, Too) appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love’s Still Stuck On Her Momma (you would be too)

Time for Sweet XIX! The nineteenth episode, that is, of our most delectable, crunchy-on-the-out-side-and-tender-within, serialized novella, The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen). Livia’s still up in the air, the Valium and the bourbon are still mixing fumes, and the grocery list she’s scribbling on the back of her airline cocktail napkin is well nigh illegible. So she just lets the memories take her. Like we all would, and do… a longish flight, you’re a little high, somehow you got the whole row to yourself…

And it’s so easy to find yourself Right. Back. There.

Where Major $**t went down. Major $**t that, whether you knew it or not at the time, would dictate the way your life turned out, right down to the kind of gravy you like on your chicken. If you eat chicken (I do not). $**t you took with you everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, whether you wanted to or not. $**t you’re still hauling all over the place, stuffed into your overweight baggage, it’s a wonder they didn’t charge you extra at check-in.

Livia, like you, and like me, has a $**t-ton of baggage. And over the next few episodes, you get to see what she’s been dragging around…

If you’d like a bite to eat before we proceed to the unpacking, and maybe you want to wet your whistle too, this here link will take you right back to the pre-dinner drinks. Hint: you might want to make yourself a strong one…

~

Dinner Then, Dinner Now

Peach schnapps. What was wrong with her? She’d almost forgotten the peach schnapps. Livia added it hurriedly, as though she might forget it all over again, to the cocktail-napkin shopping list. Her handwriting was a mess. She was scattered, distracted. The Valium, and the bourbon. And the memories, hovering like guests who’d arrived early to a dinner party, waiting politely to be acknowledged. She took another sip. She might as well let them in. She might have known Danae’s fortieth birthday dinner would summon up that other dinner, twenty-five years earlier.

Although no one had known it at the time, that dinner had immediately preceded Marta’s apotheosis. Her graceful exit from the stage of her life, grown dusty, jumbled with piles of rickety furniture that needed repairing, even replacing.

But no one ever spoke of the stage once she’d left it. Marta’s graceful exit, when it happened, the hauntingly lovely apotheosis, had made everyone forget about Marta’s rapidly diminishing possibilities.

~

 While they lived with the aunts, it had seemed to Livia that her sister was just biding her time, waiting for the right moment to come along. The moment when Danae would show the world what she was made of (Danae would know it when it got there, and when it did she’d leave). According to Danae, life’s possibilities were infinite, and Livia agreed, especially when she listened to Danae talk about them while they lay in hammocks on the back porch, while the moon climbed up to the top of a dead oak just behind Pearl’s vegetable garden.  Because the oak had no leaves, even in summer, you could see the whole moon through the strangely shaped gaps between the branches. Danae ran lovingly over the litany of her possibilities while the grass was silver, while the bushes wore black velvet robes. Movies, plays, New Orleans, Los Angeles. She would marry a producer. The producer would make her famous. Danae was beautiful.

Livia and Danae talked about possibilities (mostly Danae’s–Livia wasn’t convinced she had any, at least not of the sort her sister had) in whispers, so that their aunts wouldn’t overhear them. The aunts, Danae declared in her older-sister voice, full of confidence in the power of her already-heavy breasts, in her lips that were always moist like she had just finished eating a peach, didn’t have possibilities any more.

That was why they lived together, that was why they didn’t have any children, and that was why Marta was going to leave, even before Danae did. Danae knew it, Livia should just wait and see.

~

Cornelia was the only member of the household who regularly attended church. Whenever she could convince them, she took Danae and Livia with her–there was an ice cream parlor on the corner, they would go as soon as services were over. Danae could have a new ribbon for her hair, any color she chose; Livia could have one, too. Livia always wondered if they could see it, if the sad-faced statues knew they’d been bribed. Or maybe those other people at church with their starched shirts and dresses, with their hats and gloves. Livia wondered if they could see the ice cream and the ribbons in her face, or in Danae’s eyes, the wheedling promises with which Cornelia had coaxed them into the solemn space, cool even in summer, that smelled like funerals.

Cornelia had earned the shuffling priest’s esteem through her constant, regular production of knitted garments, sent by the church to New Orleans, where they would be sorted, and then given, along with other homemade offerings, to the Needy. Aunt Cornelia didn’t have the imagination or the curiosity to ask herself about the faces or hands or feet her scarves, socks, and mittens might eventually warm. The Needy were simply a mass of indistinguishable faces and bodies, inadequately clothed, fed, and washed, to which she was (perhaps a bit self-righteously) happy and grateful not to belong. Father Clanning, a simple man whose accumulated years hovered somewhere between the last gasp of middle age and the beginning of the inevitable descent toward being old, did not analyze the motives or inner psychological machinations of his parishioners; he held Cornelia to be among the finest and most upright of Catholic women.

During one of the most memorable moments of Cornelia’s life, he very cordially accepted her long-rehearsed invitation to dine at her and Pearl’s table the third Thursday evening of the following month.

~

Another event, closely related in importance and sequence to Cornelia’s long-awaited dinner. The evening preceding Cornelia’s dinner, Marta had a date. She’d been invited to a cotillion at the Baton Rouge Country Club by a lawyer, a handsome lawyer with white teeth and a very square jaw, with whom she had been spending a noticeably large amount of her free time. Marta had fretted over her dress for the better part of a month before Pearl found the peach chiffon in the attic, but once she’d seen that, it all fell into place and she did nothing but smile. The day before the cotillion, she had her hair done. Since they’d left the handsome man’s house in Biloxi, Marta never had her hair done. Both Livia and Danae were conscious that something momentous, even irrevocable, might happen that night.

Livia now knew that this event, Marta’s date, was (or would be) inextricably intertwined with the dinner being prepared for Cornelia’s priest. Whatever had happened at the cotillion (and after it) had influenced the tone Cornelia’s dinner had taken and had, irrevocably, dictated the course of events leading up to Marta’s apotheosis. But that was all knowledge gleaned from hindsight, the most useless kind, the nearsighted Cornelia had often declared, while seeming to enjoy some misfortune that had befallen someone else. And it was true, Livia was forced to acknowledge, at least in the case of Marta’s apotheosis. None of the wisdom she had gained since then (sometimes it felt like a lot, others like very little), none of it, would really do Marta any good now. But maybe it would help Danae.

~

On the night of the cotillion, Marta was perfect. Her hair looked almost black and her eyes were wide and bright. Gazelle, fawn. Venus. The lawyer had brought her a large bouquet of hothouse gardenias when he came to pick her up. Pearl’s gardenias, Livia thought, were a thousand times more lovely, more fragrant. She didn’t understand why the lawyer hadn’t saved himself some money and picked a bunch of gardenias off the bushes next to the back porch. Pearl certainly wouldn’t have minded.

Marta’s face was delicate and young against the billowy peach chiffon, her shoulders were bare, dusky shadows around the tops of her breasts. Marta was a prom-queen, a debutante, and her family, dressed as though they themselves were going to the cotillion, was seated and motionless in the salon, waiting to inspect her date. Aunt Pearl was even wearing shoes.

The lawyer’s eyes—although it must be said, again, that he was very handsome—were the color of weak tea. He would need glasses soon; he spent a lot of his time scrutinizing small print. The weak eyes gave him a vulnerable air, defenseless before Marta’s deadly beauty. He had a slight paunch. Livia noticed it, even though it was clear he was trying to suck it in; the paunch made her, for some reason, feel squeamish.  But the lawyer smiled and laughed and showed his white teeth as he produced red roses for the aunts and a box of candy for Danae and Livia.  Filled chocolates; Livia didn’t like them because you never knew what flavor would spurt into your mouth when you bit one. Danae could have them all as far as she was concerned. Danae took the box of chocolates to her room.

But anybody could see that the man, Clive, was crazy about Marta. Pearl pronounced the verdict with satisfaction–for Pearl was truly capable of being happy about the good fortune of others–as soon as the front door clicked shut behind the departing couple. Marta, clearly, still had possibilities.

~

The day of Cornelia’s dinner, the morning after the cotillion, was inexplicably hot (suffocating, and it was only June). Marta had stayed home from work that day; she didn’t come down from her room until after lunch. When she did, she had barely a word for anyone. Only a terse good morning, well, good afternoon, to Pearl. She didn’t speak to Cornelia, or to Danae, both of whom were at the kitchen table finishing their lunch. She made coffee for herself and took it into the sitting room.

Livia was on the back porch reading. She didn’t feel like lunch; it was too hot. She had helped Pearl for most of the morning with the beginning stages of the dinner, but just before noon, Pearl had gently asked Livia to leave her alone for the rest of the process. This was a very important occasion, and she couldn’t afford to have anything, anything at all, be even the slightest bit off.  Livia had been a bit hurt, but she supposed she understood.

Pearl had been in the kitchen all day, since the cool hours before breakfast, when the darkness was just deciding whether or not it should give way to the new day. Now she was completing the sauces and glazes, the part that separated the wheat from the chaff in cooking terms. The priest would be coming in a few hours. Livia wondered whether he’d be wearing his cassock. Maybe priests didn’t wear anything else.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

The post Bad, Bad Love’s Still Stuck On Her Momma (you would be too) appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love Goes Back to Her Roots (And Her Momma)

You’ve missed them, we know you have–missed ’em so so bad. So! Fret no more. They are back. Marta, the mother of Bad, Bad Love itself, and Aunt Pearl. Maybe not everybody needs a Marta in their lives, but we all need an Aunt Pearl, and if you didn’t have one (poor, poor you), well, this is your chance to live vicariously, as we offer up, for your reading delectation, Installment XVIII of our serialized novella, entitled The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen).

Wherein Livia, with senses already dulled (or heightened, depending on what you want to use your senses for) by two Valium, declines lunch on her flight and opts instead for a bourbon.

Wherein Livia and the Valium and the bourbon begin to meditate on the morrow’s dinner menu, for Danae’s 40th birthday celebration.

Wherein the mind wanders, as Valium and bourbon are wont to make it do, especially when combined. And the most logical place for the mind to wander, when journeying to meet a sister, is to the past…

If you’d like a refresher before proceeding to the new course, this here link will take you right back to the hors d’oeuvre phase, from whence you can nibble your way forward at your own damn pace.

~

Peach Chiffon

Chicken or lasagna? Neither. But she would have a glass of white wine. Dry, please.

“We have a Chablis,” responded the steward. There was the slightest hint of an apology in his voice; Livia took the hint.

“Bourbon on the rocks.”

The steward nodded approval.

Livia was fond of flying. She was fond of airplanes, of any form of long-distance transportation that required no effort from her. Time stopped; it was suspended, arrested, motionless. Livia could think with astonishing clarity when she was in an airplane. Well, maybe not today. She had taken two Valium and she was sipping bourbon. She wondered if Danae, on the day before her fortieth birthday, had looked at the tiny, labelless bottle yet. She probably had. Several times.

Her seat was beside the window, and there was no one else on her row. No seatmate, good–she was not eager to engage in any form of conversation. The idea of an airplane conversation was particularly distasteful. The Valium and the bourbon took her mind a-wandering, and it was soon rehearsing the menu for the following evening–lobster and leek in dill cream (very light on the dill, she reminded herself), en brioche.

The herb packet for the first course would go into the filling, hopefully not darkening its creamy color, although Livia was willing to sacrifice aesthetic appeal if it would prevent Danae from taking the tiny bottle from her dressing table, removing its stopper, and swallowing the contents, irrevocably.

The second course, Livia had decided, after much deliberation, would be baked catfish stuffed with crab and crayfish, heavily spiced with filet and cayenne, like in a gumbo. One had to take advantage of local specialties whenever possible. Wanda’s herbs would go into the filling. They would be completely invisible, Livia congratulated herself, because of the dark earthy tints of filet and cayenne.

She would have enjoyed placing before Bretton something he absolutely detested. But the herbs were for Bretton as well as for Danae. With heavy regrets, Livia had abandoned the idea of partridge in raspberry marinade for her main course. She had chosen, instead, rack of lamb, roasted with baby potatoes, tiny carrots, shallots, and crimini mushrooms. The herbs could be mixed unobtrusively into the garlic and rosemary marinade; the meat would have all day to soak up their benefits.

Livia smiled, imagining Bretton’s enormous nose (which did not, she reluctantly admitted, detract from his sexual appeal), the meaty lips, the pointed white teeth. Bretton was enamored of red meat. He would undoubtedly ask for seconds.

Dessert. The only unresolved problem.

Chocolate. Something chocolate…Tarts? No. Wanda had said absolutely no tarts. Livia assumed that this restriction also applied to tarts made with sugar instead of with Wanda’s liquid. She felt a hopeful throb in the hollow at the base of her throat at the mere thought of the tarts. No, definitely no tarts.

Chocolate mousse? Chocolate mousse in paper-thin pastry cups, swimming in creme anglaise? Livia’s mouth watered, and then there was a faint taste of something sweet. Drowsily, she allowed herself to savor it.  Rosewater…her stomach tightened. And the faintest hint of chocolate. She should probably stay away from chocolate altogether. Livia signaled to the steward.

“Could you add a bit of water to this bourbon, please?”

Perhaps it would be better to stick to local fruits, something light after the meat. What was in season? Strawberries. But strawberry shortcake was so down-home, not really an appropriate forum for her talents. Peach cobbler? It was a little early for peaches, but if you cooked them… they’d likely already be showing up in the market. Peach cobbler was Danae’s favorite dessert; she always said it made her think of Pearl. And Livia’s cobbler was every bit as good as Pearl’s. Which stood to reason–Pearl had taught Livia to make it.

But cobbler was hot, and you just about had to serve ice cream with it. Too much, after three courses and salad, and it had a crust. There was already enough starch in the menu. But she liked the idea of peach.

Peach chiffon. Perfect. No crust, just light and sweet, peach-sweet. Sprinkled with Grand Marnier.

Peach chiffon. Like the last significant dress Marta had possessed.

~

Marta had fretted for days – for the better part of a week, actually – over what she would wear to the cotillion. She didn’t have any money, she never had any money, and the dresses so proudly displayed in the windows of the downtown boutiques were, in her words, so damn tacky. Pearl sensibly suggested that she have one of the beautiful gowns hanging beneath layers of plastic in her closet dry-cleaned, those dresses are gorgeous, Marta, you’d be the most stylish one there. But Marta sighed and reminded Pearl that those dresses were years old, years out of fashion (even if they had been brought in from New York and Paris by the handsome man before he’d wound up face-down in the swamp).

She was about to start a new life, and she needed a new dress. On the drawing room couch, Livia and Danae were determined not to miss a minute of the conversation, or of the glamorous preparations for the evening on which, as Marta had told them over dinner the night before, their mother would receive a marriage proposal right there at the Country Club, in front of all those people she had served for three years at the diner. Although they privately agreed with their mother–such a portentous occasion deserved a new everything, even panties–they waited breathlessly for their aunt’s pronouncement.

Pearl thought for a moment, and then stood and said she would be right back. Her bare feet pounded up the stairs. Livia could hear her hurrying across the landing of the second floor, and then the third. Maybe she was going all the way up to the attic.

When Pearl returned, both Marta and her daughters gasped in delighted surprise. Pearl’s tanned face was hidden by billows of peach-colored netting and tulle that threatened to spill from her arms to the floor and fill the entire sitting room.

“Something I had stuck away in a box.” Pearl held the fabric up to Marta’s face, just beneath her chin.

Marta’s dark beauty came alive instantly, like a wilting bloom stuck into a glass of water, and her possibilities glowed. Pearl took the pair of scissors she always carried from her apron pocket and told Marta to climb up on the footstool. She began to wrap the waves of peach chiffon around her niece’s body, this way and that, snipping here and pinning there, looking for the most stunning effect possible.

The dress would be absolutely original, unlike any dress ever seen at a Country Club cotillion in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It would be peach chiffon, and it would be perfect.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

Connect with Cynthia on Twitter, Facebook,  Goodreads , and  Instagram , find her book  Birds Of Wonder   here  and learn more about Cynthia here.

 

The post Bad, Bad Love Goes Back to Her Roots (And Her Momma) appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love Goes Back to Her Roots (and her momma)

You’ve missed them, we know you have–missed ’em so so bad. So! Fret no more. They are back. Marta, the mother of Bad, Bad Love itself, and Aunt Pearl. Maybe not everybody needs a Marta in their lives, but we all need an Aunt Pearl, and if you didn’t have one (poor, poor you), well, this is your chance to live vicariously, as we offer up, for your reading delectation, Installment XVIII of our serialized novella, entitled The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen).

Wherein Livia, with senses already dulled (or heightened, depending on what you want to use your senses for) by two Valium, declines lunch on her flight and opts instead for a bourbon.

Wherein Livia and the Valium and the bourbon begin to meditate on the morrow’s dinner menu, for Danae’s 40th birthday celebration.

Wherein the mind wanders, as Valium and bourbon are wont to make it do, especially when combined. And the most logical place for the mind to wander, when journeying to meet a sister, is to the past…

If you’d like a refresher before proceeding to the new course, this here link will take you right back to the hors d’oeuvre phase, from whence you can nibble your way forward at your own damn pace.

~

Peach Chiffon

Chicken or lasagna? Neither. But she would have a glass of white wine. Dry, please.

“We have a Chablis,” responded the steward.  There was the slightest hint of an apology in his voice; Livia took the hint.

“Bourbon on the rocks.”

The steward nodded approval.

Livia was fond of flying. She was fond of airplanes, of any form of long-distance transportation that required no effort from her. Time stopped; it was suspended, arrested, motionless.  Livia could think with astonishing clarity when she was in an airplane.  Well, maybe not today.  She had taken two Valium and she was sipping bourbon. She wondered if Danae, on the day before her fortieth birthday, had looked at the tiny, labelless bottle yet. She probably had. Several times.

Her seat was beside the window, and there was no one else on her row. No seatmate, good–she was not eager to engage in any form of conversation. The idea of an airplane conversation was particularly distasteful. The Valium and the bourbon took her mind a-wandering, and it was soon rehearsing the menu for the following evening–lobster and leek in dill cream (very light on the dill, she reminded herself), en brioche. The herb packet for the first course would go into the filling, hopefully not darkening its creamy color, although Livia was willing to sacrifice aesthetic appeal if it would prevent Danae from taking the tiny bottle from her dressing table, removing its stopper, and swallowing the contents, irrevocably.

The second course, Livia had decided, after much deliberation, would be baked catfish stuffed with crab and crayfish, heavily spiced with filet and cayenne, like in a gumbo. One had to take advantage of local specialties whenever possible. Wanda’s herbs would go into the filling. They would be completely invisible, Livia congratulated herself, because of the dark earthy tints of filet and cayenne.

She would have enjoyed placing before Bretton something he absolutely detested. But the herbs were for Bretton as well as for Danae. With heavy regrets, Livia had abandoned the idea of partridge in raspberry marinade for her main course. She had chosen, instead, rack of lamb, roasted with baby potatoes, tiny carrots, shallots, and crimini mushrooms. The herbs could be mixed unobtrusively into the garlic and rosemary marinade; the meat would have all day to soak up their benefits.  Livia smiled, imagining Bretton’s enormous nose (which did not, she reluctantly admitted, detract from his sexual appeal), the meaty lips, the pointed white teeth. Bretton was enamored of red meat. He would undoubtedly ask for seconds.

Dessert. The only unresolved problem.

Chocolate. Something chocolate…Tarts? No. Wanda had said absolutely no tarts. Livia assumed that this restriction also applied to tarts made with sugar instead of with Wanda’s liquid. She felt a hopeful throb in the hollow at the base of her throat at the mere thought of the tarts. No, definitely no tarts. Chocolate mousse? Chocolate mousse in paper-thin pastry cups, swimming in creme anglaise? Livia’s mouth watered, and then there was a faint taste of something sweet. Drowsily, she allowed herself to savor it.  Rosewater…her stomach tightened. And the faintest hint of chocolate. She should probably stay away from chocolate altogether.  Livia signaled to the steward.

“Could you add a bit of water to this bourbon, please?”

Perhaps it would be better to stick to local fruits, something light after the meat. What was in season? Strawberries. But strawberry shortcake was so down-home, not really an appropriate forum for her talents.  Peach cobbler? It was a little early for peaches, but if you cooked them… they’d likely already be showing up in the market. Peach cobbler was Danae’s favorite dessert; she always said it made her think of Pearl. And Livia’s cobbler was every bit as good as Pearl’s. Which stood to reason–Pearl had taught Livia to make it.  But cobbler was hot, and you just about had to serve ice cream with it. Too much, after three courses and salad, and it had a crust. There was already enough starch in the menu. But she liked the idea of peach.

Peach chiffon. Perfect. No crust, just light and sweet, peach-sweet. Sprinkled with Grand Marnier.

Peach chiffon. Like the last significant dress Marta had possessed.

~

Marta had fretted for days – for the better part of a week, actually – over what she would wear to the cotillion. She didn’t have any money, she never had any money, and the dresses so proudly displayed in the windows of the downtown boutiques were, in her words, so damn tacky. Pearl sensibly suggested that she have one of the beautiful gowns hanging beneath layers of plastic in her closet dry-cleaned, those dresses are gorgeous, Marta, you’d be the most stylish one there. But Marta sighed and reminded Pearl that those dresses were years old, years out of fashion (even if they had been brought in from New York and Paris by the handsome man before he’d wound up face-down in the swamp). She was about to start a new life, and she needed a new dress. On the drawing room couch, Livia and Danae were determined not to miss a minute of the conversation, or of the glamorous preparations for the evening on which, as Marta had told them over dinner the night before, their mother would receive a marriage proposal right there at the Country Club, in front of all those people she had served for three years at the diner. Although they privately agreed with their mother–such a portentous occasion deserved a new everything, even panties–they waited breathlessly for their aunt’s pronouncement.

Pearl thought for a moment, and then stood and said she would be right back. Her bare feet pounded up the stairs. Livia could hear her hurrying across the landing of the second floor, and then the third. Maybe she was going all the way up to the attic.

When Pearl returned, both Marta and her daughters gasped in delighted surprise. Pearl’s tanned face was hidden by billows of peach-colored netting and tulle that threatened to spill from her arms to the floor and fill the entire sitting room.

“Something I had stuck away in a box.” Pearl held the fabric up to Marta’s face, just beneath her chin.

Marta’s dark beauty came alive instantly, like a wilting bloom stuck into a glass of water, and her possibilities glowed. Pearl took the pair of scissors she always carried from her apron pocket and told Marta to climb up on the footstool. She began to wrap the waves of peach chiffon around her niece’s body, this way and that, snipping here and pinning there, looking for the most stunning effect possible. The dress would be absolutely original, unlike any dress ever seen at a Country Club cotillion in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It would be peach chiffon, and it would be perfect.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

Connect with Cynthia on Twitter, Facebook,  Goodreads , and  Instagram , find her book  Birds Of Wonder   here  and learn more about Cynthia here.

 

The post Bad, Bad Love Goes Back to Her Roots (and her momma) appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love is Back, and She Brought You Roses

We’re back, we’re back, from a long break…the holidays, and Livia is used to having most of the month of January off (frequent in the hospitality sector, unless you work somewhere warm with a beach). Be that as it may, water under the bridge and all that, today we offer, for your reading delectation, Installment XVII of our serialized novella, entitled The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen). Wherein it is no longer possible for Livia to deny that weird $**t is happening, or that said weird $**t is almost certainly related to what she did. With that guy. And to where she slept. Last night. And not even lack of sleep and a hangover are enough to explain away the ghost of the scent of roses that dogs her throughout her apartment as she throws stuff into her suitcase, where she knows, even without looking, that there are no roses to be found…

A NOTE TO REGULARS: Livia’s creator and boss-ess, id est, Moi, is madly trying to finish a novel, to give to her agent. She and Livia have agreed that future chapters will come bi-weekly instead of weekly. We know you understand. There’s a ton of leftovers in the fridge to tide you over between hits, and of course for those who might want to rewind all the way back to Day 1 (a little VCR-era humor for you), this here link will take you right back to the very beginning, from whence you can either dive in or find your favorite bits and reheat ’em.

~

The apartment was silent, still. It felt earlier than it was, and she had exactly fifteen minutes to be out the door again. In her bedroom, the bower of the empress, Livia emptied the contents of the black canvas bag onto the bed. She then filled it again with a haphazard combination of jeans, black shirts, white tee shirts (she was vaguely conscious that it would be hot in New Orleans. How hot, she wasn’t sure, but hot). She opened the lingerie drawers of the armoire and extracted a random handful of bras and panties and threw them into the bag. Her lingerie, not the lingerie for sex.

Livia stripped off the suit and the corset and picked the ruined stockings up from the floor where they had fallen. Ruefully (the ensemble had cost her quite a bit of money), she threw all of the garments into the trash can. She hesitated over the black jacket and skirt (after all, the corset had been between her skin and the suit), but decided to follow Wanda’s instructions to the letter. For Danae. There was a soft, swishing sound as the stockings made contact with the plastic liner inside Livia’s trash can. The pulse point at the base of her throat throbbed painfully. Livia chose not to think about it.

She left her bag in front of the bathroom door while she showered; as she finished with each toiletry item, she threw it into the bag.  Livia dressed in a white, collarless man’s shirt and black leather pants (the habitual coolness of a New York April had returned; the day was cloudy, it might even rain). The last two items into the bag were Anaïs Nin’s diary (for the plane) and Wanda’s package.

Before heading down the stairs, Livia took a glass from the shelf above the stove, turned on the tap, and filled it with water. She was thirsty; she was still, depsite Wanda’s breakfast, terribly hung over. As she gulped the water, her eyes fell on the shelf. There, half-hidden, forgotten, behind a jumble of miscellaneous kitchen implements–spatulas, wooden spoons, vegetable peelers, was a bottle of Valium there, for emergencies. The entire weekend which lay before her constituted, as far as Livia was concerned, an emergency; she needed, at the very least, to get a nap in during the flight. The top of the bottle, Livia noted self-righteously, was dusty; the prescription was even out of date. She extracted three capsules. She would allow herself no more than one on each day of the weekend. She would leave the bottle at home, to avoid further temptation. Although she knew that her sister would, if the request were made, supply her with tranquilizers enough to last her the rest of her life. Livia wrapped the three capsules neatly in a tissue and put them in the hip pocket of her pants.

As she reached up to replace the Valium, Livia noticed the first of several strange things she was to notice throughout the day. The shelf was the same shelf where she kept the plates for her candles, the passionate and tempering candles. The red wax (now she remembered; she hadn’t been able to scrape it off the day before) had melted. It had run off the shelf and dripped onto the stove. It had, Livia reminded herself, been unseasonably hot the day before. The melted red had also spread laterally (that was curious…melted wax was generally heavy enough to respond only to the downward pull of gravity). The red wax had covered the spot where the tempering yellow drippings had been. Livia chose not to think about it.

She gathered her bag, her sunglasses and the deadly, varnished chopsticks, vaguely conscious of a sweet smell, a smell she did not usually associate with her apartment.  It was an outdoor smell, like a field in summertime. Composed of several different scents: grasses, evergreen, flowers, even, perhaps, some fruits. She put down the bag; a minute or two wouldn’t make a difference as far as the plane was concerned–she wasn’t planning to check anything. By Manhattan standards, Livia’s apartment was quite large, but it was small enough for the identification of the source of an unaccustomed smell to be relatively uncomplicated. Livia walked slowly through the kitchen, past her table. She didn’t look up at Ophelia. She had had quite enough of Ophelia for the moment–Ophelia really should not have allowed Livia to fall asleep on the chaise-longue.

The aroma was becoming stronger. Livia’s highly-trained olfactory sense began automatically to dissect it, to identify, incredulously, the individual scents that composed the bouquet.  Laurel, yes, definitely, there was laurel; and gardenia…how sweet, how unbearably sweet. There were no gardenia bushes (at least none of which Livia was aware) anywhere in her part of Harlem. There were the botanical gardens… Gardenias, she remembered, had been Marta’s favorite flowers.

The botanical gardens were not even remotely close by. She was tired, and sleep-deprived, and hungover, and she was confusing the smell of gardenias with something else. Livia’s steps echoed as she crossed the dining room. Perhaps the bowl of apples on the table… but her infallible nose had not detected any trace of apple in the wonderful bouquet. There was, indeed, a hint of fruitiness, but Livia would be more inclined to identify that component as lemon. No, the aroma was definitely not proceeding from the bowl of apples. Livia made a mental note to take two of the apples on her way back to the kitchen.  She would put them in her bag, for the plane. Airplane food was, most often, unacceptable.

Livia glanced into the salon, just across the darker hall from the dining room. It was bathed in blueish light. The walls were white, but the Hudson was visible though the large windows; it played strange tricks with the white walls sometimes, particularly on warm April days when the sky was gray. Livia liked the blue tones. She found them calming. The salon was unquestionably an attractive, inviting space, but it was devoid of possible points of origin for the aroma. And the aroma, Livia’s nose had decided, was proceeding from her bedroom.

The beautiful, field-like aroma was overpowering in the shrouded half-darkness of the bedroom…overpowering, but fresh, as though it wafted into the room on a delicate spring breeze, through a window open onto a field or a garden. But there was no window in her bedroom, there was no garden, and she was going to be late. The smell was beginning to try her patience. Livia looked around the low shelves that surrounded her bed, with its Pompeii-red comforter and peacock-blue cushions. Nothing was out of place; everything was in order. There were no gardenias. There were no lemons. There were no grasses.

The sandals. The strappy, stiletto-heeled sandals. They were on the bed, terribly black, seductively shiny against the red comforter.

“Mierda!”  Livia was irritated by her own inexcusable lack of thoroughness.

There was a suggestion of a throb in the hollow at the base of Livia’s throat. Livia ignored it. As she bent forward, reaching out a hand toward the sandals (they would join the rest of the ensemble in the trash bin), the aroma increased in intensity, to the point of being almost unbearable but, as had been the case with the indescribable taste of roses and chocolate the night before, the intensity was not disagreeable. Far from it. Alarmed, Livia felt the pulsing beginnings of something she definitely should not be feeling, in the vicinity of her heart. A gust of breeze blew an aroma-laden bit of air toward her nose. Despite herself, she inhaled deeply.

Livia’s eyes moved upward along the low shelves (a practical addition to her bedroom, she had congratulated herself when she thought of them), searching for…something, a lemon, a gardenia, something. There had to be something.

Nothing.

Livia’s eyes reached Wanda’s faithful replicas of the paintings which had adorned the bower of that other Livia, the emperor’s wife.  She caught her breath. Laurels and evergreens, their greens deep and secretive against a hazy blue sky. Lemon trees and a garden wall. Several lemons rested temptingly on the white surface (probably gesso), inviting Livia’s outraged hand to pick them up, teasing her insulted nose to inhale their scent. And gardenias. Gardenia was now definitely the dominant note of the aroma. There were gardenia bushes on the walls of Livia’s bower, of her bedroom. As she stared, open-mouthed, the leaves of one of the gardenia bushes moved. There was an especially strong waft of the gardenia scent; she felt the breath of a breeze on her face.

An exclamation, inarticulate, enraged (what the hell was going on here, anyway?  She had a flight to catch), escaped from the cupid’s-bow mouth.  Livia grabbed the offending sandals, turned, and exited her bedroom.  She slammed the door behind her. The scent of lemons, evergreens, laurel, and gardenias (especially gardenias) followed her diligently down the hall to the kitchen.

Livia opened the cabinet beneath the blue shelf and tossed the sandals into the trash bin. She slammed the cabinet door shut and turned to reclaim her bag, the chopsticks, the sunglasses. But. She paused, sniffing, seduced again by the game (what game?  well, whatever game it was that was clearly, unmistakably being played in her apartment). The aroma had changed. Yes. Livia breathed a bit more deeply; it was faint, but there all the same…she had it. The gardenia scent had been replaced. Roses. Livia was furious.  Fucking roses. Whoever, whatever, was playing with her sleep-deprived senses was going entirely too far.

She began to stalk about the kitchen, sniffing like a terrier, a bloodhound. Under the table? No. The floor under her table was always scrupulously clean. The refrigerator.  No, that was stupid.  The sink?  No, but close…beneath the sink. The trash bin. Livia opened the cabinet. There was the trash bin. Emanating from its interior, Livia was forced to recognize, was the very faint (but nevertheless distinctive) aroma of rosewater.

When Livia closed the cabinet door this time, she didn’t slam it. She shut it very carefully, very gently, with a barely audible click. She reached inside the pocket of her black leather pants, her impatient fingers ripping at the carefully folded tissue. On her way down the stairs, Livia swallowed a Valium. Two. She would get some more from Danae.

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, IN TWO WEEKS’ TIME, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

The post Bad, Bad Love is Back, and She Brought You Roses appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Love and Grief Make Your Backpack So Damn Heavy

Two roses had given up the ghost overnight, a red one and a coral one, gifts from my love. I was up (too) early, to catch a train. They’d been fine, my roses. Straight and tall, heads up proudly, when I’d turned out the light.

Yet there they were, not six hours later, listless and drooping. Way beyond fresh water. The London sky out the window only barely bright along the edges, little Christmas lights blinking among the plastic (but classy; this hotel has all the stars) spruce needles garlanding the fireplace, giving my roses a twinkly little send-off into nowhere.

*

Death can come so quickly when you’re not looking. Even in a 5-star hotel.

Maybe especially there. Just ask Madeleine, the protagonist of my novel-in-progress. She knows all about death. And she died in a 5-star hotel.

*

By the way, if you’re wondering where Bad, Bad Love and Livia the Badass Chef, and Witchy Wanda and Dramatic Danae, and Aunt Pearl and the shoe avatar all went, they’re taking a vacay until mid-January. Livia hates the holidays, and Wanda just uses them to cast spells. They’ll be back in a few weeks, suntanned and rested up, laughing at you as you play juggle-the-credit-card and wonder why the hell you thought an air-fryer would be just the several-hundred-dollar thing for your Xmas turkey.

*

Back to death in a 5-star hotel in London. I was there for several reasons. To see my love, who has recently lost one of his own loves (W.H. Auden knows, just like Mad Nijinsky did, that we are never the only ones, and if we think we are, we’re fools). Whenever we bedded down, grief was right there with us, en menage à trois—you get used to it after a while, even start to be okay with it, in a melancholy kind of way that can feel weirdly close to happy.

But we don’t actually sleep where we old dogs lie—habit and years of living alone and all that. We toss and turn (neither sleeps as good as we used to—that’s age, too, and maybe grief) por separado, and so I was alone with my drooping roses, on Wednesday, in the dark dawn.

*

The drooping roses were an omen. One I should have heeded as I sipped my room service Café Americano, and headed for the email inbox. (An aside: I will absolutely not apologize for ordering room-service breakfast. There was a time in my life when such extravagance would have been beyond my wildest fantasies, I didn’t even possess a credit card, but that time is no longer. As in, that time has passed, as time does, and death has drawn much nearer, as death does, and so I will order room service breakfast for as long as I shall breathe, as often as I goddam well please.)

*

In my inbox was an email from a neighbor with whom I am friendly–more with his wife, actually, but him too, I like him–announcing the sudden death of another neighbor, with whom I am, or was, equally and pleasantly friendly. Collapsed, said my neighbor’s email, suddenly, beside his car. I think it’s okay if I say that my neighbor’s name was George, and that he was sixty, which isn’t old at all, and looks less old with every passing day. George was a reporter, he was smart, and he was funny. Lots of people liked him. And he loved his dogs.

My first thought, even as I read the email, was, where will the dog go? Though I’m sure she’s gone somewhere nice, my town loves animals, a lot, and the neighbors in the particular part of our town where I live love them especially a lot, I still worry about her, and I want to know where. As I threw my sundry day-trip things into my bag for my excursion—I was going anyway, even though my eyes were full of tears and my hands unsteady, splashing coffee—I hoped the dog had been inside the house, warm, when George collapsed, instead of in the car, maybe, waiting for him to open the door. Or already out, her leash dropping from his hand when it went limp, as his soul left him for somewhere else, wherever it had decided to go.

And then what would she do, poor, sweet dog, and what would happen to her? How terrible, for a dog, to watch her beloved person leave the earth that way, leave her, when nature and the laws of time usually force things to be the other way around, and god knows that’s hard enough, but at least we humans understand the big picture, the what came first and the what will come next, or what can, when we’re ready—George was living a new love with a relatively new dog, after grieving a dear, long-loved one for so long as only a true dog person can. This dog will surely find a new person-love, she’ll make a great match for some lucky person after George loved her up for almost two years, but how can a dog possibly know those things? She can’t, of course, she couldn’t, and that was why I was crying.

*

And also because I won’t see the weird, funny colored lights—never knew what the hell those were—shining from my erstwhile neighbor’s downstairs picture window (he lived only two doors down), late at night (why am I walking around outside late at night? None of your goddamned business), out across the narrow strip of grass that separates us all from the wild, wild wood, but not too far and we like it that way, turning the wintry, bare-naked trees first orange, and then magenta. And what the hell were those lights, who knows, but they were really cool, so who cares what they were, I just know I will miss seeing them.

And I will miss finding his clothes in the communal dryer, and feeling mildly superior as I empty the lint filter and pull out shirts and jeans and socks and towels. Which he didn’t separate into lights and darks, like my mother told me to, and his probably did too, but he couldn’t be bothered, who has time, and they didn’t look the worse for the wear, so who gives a shit, really? Is that an important thing in life, I think to myself, separating your clothes (even as I know I will dutifully separate mine this week, tomorrow probably, soon as I unpack my suitcase)?

But George couldn’t be bothered to separate his clothes and good for him. I’d deposit them, wrinkled as they came, into the waiting basket he always positioned thoughtfully to one side of the dryer, because he knew he would be leaving them there for hours, maybe all night. Because that’s how he was, he didn’t care, but maybe some other, more fidgety neighbor who does care about her clothes, and who separates them—but why, in the great scheme of things, when colored lights in the night are so much more fun, should she give two mouse turds about separating her clothes?—might want to use the dryer.

George also had great-smelling laundry detergent. I will miss that, too.

*

I gave the roses an indecent burial in the trash can, because what else can you do with them, trusting housekeeping to remove them before my return so I wouldn’t cry. I made it down the stairs, into a taxi, and, still wiping tears, to Victoria Station, only to discover that the infallible ticket machine so touted by National Rail on its no-nonsense website was, in fact, all too fallible, refusing, time after time after time, to yield up my prepaid tickets.

And so I missed my train, and the people behind me were getting quite restless, so I gave up on the machine and went to stand in the queue to speak to an actual person about getting some other tickets. Where I fell into conversation with a mildly heavyset, but very pretty, youngish woman traveling alone, weighed down by a giant backpack, on her way first to Istanbul, where she planned to shed two of the three layers of bulky sweaters she wore. It’s cold in Istanbul, she grinned–she was missing a tooth, about halfway back, which made me notice her weathered skin–“but it’s very warm in the part of India where I’ll be spending the winter. I’ll have no need of sweaters.”

And because of George, and also because she was nowhere near as young as I’d first thought her—there’s something unquestionably off about a woman over forty traveling with all her worldly possessions in a pack on her back, alone—it did occur to me that there existed—that there exists—a definite possibility that she, too, could drop dead. Boom, gone, just like that—women’s hearts can give out too. It could happen on a beautiful beach—not Goa, she was very firm about that, Goa is for tourists, she was going somewhere else, she never told me the name, maybe keeping the secret on purpose—in India. After which she wouldn’t need her backpack anymore. Or have to carry it. Which might, initially, as the soul leaves the body behind, seem like a relief. It looked heavy.

*

As we chatted, and the line advanced slowly, the announcements began to come. All the delays that had been stacking up—there had been quite a number, one after the other after the other—were turning into cancellations, because there’d been an incident, on the tracks.

Someone had gone down and not come up. On purpose. I wondered who and how and why. Planned or sudden, long slow slide or things suddenly just Too. Damn. Much. And it didn’t seem fair, or right, that some people got to end it at the time of their own choosing, while others, who undoubtedly wanted to go on, at least for a while, just dropped in their tracks, forced to leave their dogs to grieve. It occurred to me to wonder why some sort of cosmic exchange couldn’t have been worked out beforehand, between the person on the tracks and my neighbor George. His dog would have been in favor.

A jumper, my queue-buddy said, sagely, shrugging her shoulders as well as she was able beneath the weight of the pack. Happens all the time. And always at rush hour. Trains to the airport will be fucked up for hours. She shrugged again, she had time, she said, all the time in the world. She went off to get a coffee, seeming almost to welcome the contretemps, or at least not to be all that bothered by it. She wouldn’t, she said, be going anywhere for hours.

*

My new train, however, though I too was headed in the direction of Gatwick, was somehow allowed to depart, only a (slightly surreal) half-hour after the one I should have caught in the first place, had it not been for the drooping roses and for what came after.

And so off I went.

*

Death, though, was not done with me, not yet, not even for the day. It next flashed its gap-toothed grin in the taxi I caught in the rank at Lewes Station, in the middle of the South Downs, in the form of a frankly macabre conversation in which I engaged with my very droll taxi driver. About rocks and pockets and the depths of rivers at different times of the year, these things varying so widely with the rains, and what it would take to keep someone down—someone slight, say, like Virginia Woolf—long enough to do the trick. A subject to which he had clearly devoted no small amount of thought and systematic speculation.

We were headed, you see, to the Firle-district farmhouse known as Charleston—a bare seven miles, as the crow flies, from Virginia’s rocks and her river—where Virginia’s sister Vanessa lived out decades upon decades of unrequited love, long after her troubled sister had left this earth, in close proximity, oh so close, to the one who didn’t love her back, not that way, or at least not enough. In a house with wild, pretty gardens at the back (that’s one of them, up there in the picture), with whimsical decorative features that he helped her build.

But when have gardens ever, ever been enough?

*

Charleston Love is Love that is oh-so-important to my novel-in-progress, my friends. Oh, so important. Which is why I got up at such an ungodly hour, in order to traipse down and back in the day and be there waiting when my own love came to find me as the sun went down, bent under the weight of his own stones and grief and sorrow.

A load I aimed to help lighten, as I do, if only a little, and for only a little while.

*

And Charleston Love is just my kind of love: Bad, Bad, Bad. Its own sort of death, really, slow and painful and shot through with blinding moments of bright hope that make all the rest of it worse, worse, worse. So you know I had to go down there in search of it, Bad, Bad Lovers. You know.

*

And so I did. My eyes tearing up every few minutes the whole damn day, every time I thought of George and his laundry, and his colored lights and his poor dog. Any my roses, go figure. My poor, drooping roses. Because, contrary to what you probably believe, it doesn’t take much at all to make me cry.

But this is getting too long for a blog post, my friends, the SEO is going to be mightily unhappy avec moi. So we will leave off here, and pick back up there, next week or the next—as the spirit me doth move—down in Charleston.

While Livia the Badass chef enjoys her time off. She tells me she’s been using the kitchen of her Air BnB to make chocolate tarts.

*

Connect with Cynthia on Twitter, Facebook,  Goodreads , and  Instagram , find her book  Birds Of Wonder   here  and learn more about Cynthia here.

The post Love and Grief Make Your Backpack So Damn Heavy appeared first on Cynthia Robinson.

Bad, Bad Love Gets More Help Than She Deserves

What does a lie matter, in the great scheme of things? Especially if that scheme includes a higher purpose (say, stopping one’s sister from downing a lethal dose of laudanum on the night of her fortieth birthday…)? Badass Chef Livia, in this Installment XVII of our serialized novella, The Will of Venus (Otherwise Known As A Fairy-Tale for Superwomen), is about to tell a whopper. We shall find out later, Bad, Bad Lovers, just what the consequences are. In Livia’s defense, it *is* just one. One lie. But she tells that lie to Wanda…

If you’ve just discovered Livia and Wanda and all the rest of the drama, clicking here will take you back to Venus’s earliest days, and you can start from the very beginning.

~

Breakfast (cont., now with saints)

“Livia!”

Livia turned. Wanda’s petite form, wrapped in a gauzy black dress and a fringed shawl, was approaching. A thin arm raised, a hand (the one that had held the scissors, to cut Rubén’s hair) waving frantically.

“¿Adónde vas? You’re early.”

They met exactly in front of the door to Wanda’s building. Wanda was wrestling with difficult keys. Over her shoulder was a large black leather bag, too large for Wanda’s small body. Livia smelled coffee. She realized that she was ravenously hungry.

“I thought you were coming at ten. I got some buñuelos. And some coffee. I thought we could have breakfast…Oye, you dress up for flights, huh? Where’s your suitcase?”

Wanda let the keys hang in the lock for a few seconds and turned again to face Livia. There were dark circles beneath her dark eyes, shadows of a sleepless night; there were lines beside the Madonna mouth. The violet-shadowed eyes took in every sordid detail of Livia’s appearance–the unaccustomed formality of the suit, the stiletto-heeled sandals, no stockings. It was too cool for no stockings. Waves of guilt returned to torment Livia’s unsettled stomach.

“Ay, diós…lo jodiste pero bien, bien, didn’t you? You really fucked up.”

Livia opened her mouth to say something, anything, to deny the accusations of Wanda’s violet-shadowed eyes. She shut it. The hollow at the base of her throat was throbbing painfully. Perhaps (Livia winced) visibly.

“You obviously stayed the night with one of them. Don’t deny it. Ni te molestes. I know…”

Wanda and Livia entered the building and began to climb the four flights of stairs to Wanda’s studio. Livia was glad that the semi-darkness of the stairwell hid her face; she didn’t even bother to counter Wanda’s statements. She had no energy and, besides, Wanda knew. Maybe–the morbid thought entered Livia’s head–she knew everything. If she did, there was no way Livia was getting the filter or anything else. Danae would drink the laudanum.

“Oye, Livia. I don’t want the details of what you did. All I want to know is if he liked the tarta and if you let him kiss you where you shouldn’t…donde no debes, ¿sabes?”

Livia was silent for a few seconds while she considered her response. As she followed Wanda into the studio, the sad faces of the icons, the somber ghosts of Wanda’s paintings, stared accusingly at her, eyes boring into the hidden cavities of her soul. They were aware of her deception, even if Wanda wasn’t.

“He certainly liked the tart.” He had liked the tart incommensurately, immoderately, unusually. But Livia kept those qualifiers to herself. “And no, I didn’t let him kiss me there.”

It was true. Livia hadn’t let Rick kiss her in the shadowy, throbbing cavity at the base of her throat. She hadn’t let him reach her soul, the twin of his, through that most potent of places. He had done it without her permission, while she slept–which she had never intended to do–while she was vulnerable. Leaving herself vulnerable had, in fact, been Livia’s only crime. Livia straightened her spine; she felt worthy again of her friend’s help.

“The only thing I did was sleep there, but I was drunk, Wanda, totalmente borracha. I’m not even sure whether we had sex or not.” Livia tensed; Wanda, if she looked at her face, would see the lie.

But Wanda was occupied in making coffee, turning on the gas-plate, plugging in the toaster to heat the buns. Livia checked her watch; only five minutes to nine. She relaxed.

“Bueno, Livia, but don’t ever do that again. You shouldn’t get drunk with them–it makes you vulnerable. Y justo antes de lo de tu hermana…You should think about your sister. This is very, very delicate. I absolutely forbid you to make any tartas while you’re in New Orleans. Ni una. And when you get home, throw those clothes in the trash. Hasta la lencería…panties, too…” Livia blushed. “Everything. A la basura, no sirve. You can’t use them again, they have his energy. And take the time to take a shower.”

They sat down at Wanda’s small, rickety table. Wanda had to push aside paint tins, brushes, a bottle of paint thinner so that there would be space for their plates and coffee cups. Wanda drank her scalding coffee in a single gulp. She didn’t touch her bun.

“Ay, qué cansada estoy, Livia. I’m exhausted. I wasn’t even here last night. I was at the santero‘s, waiting for him to finish the spells…”

Wanda extracted a bulky package wrapped in brown paper from her bag. She placed it on the table before Livia.

“Escúchame, Livia…this is muy, muy potente. Do exactly, exactly what I tell you. Everything, to the letter. But before I tell you, I want you to swear to me, por tu santa madre, on your mother’s holy grave, that you didn’t let him kiss you there.”

Wanda’s tiny hand reached out toward the hollow at the base of Livia’s throat. The touch burned, as though a lit match were held between Wanda’s thin fingers. The hollow began to throb. Wanda took her hand away and Livia was relieved.

She hadn’t let him.

“I swear…te lo juro.”

“Por tu santa madre.”

Livia swallowed. She wouldn’t exactly have described Marta as a saint, but it was a formula. She shouldn’t think too much about it.  Her theorizing had already gotten her into plenty of trouble. She took a breath. “Te lo juro…por mi santa madre.”

“Bueno.” Wanda didn’t sound entirely convinced, but she sat down again, lit a cigarette, and offered one to Livia, which she lit.

Pointing to the package, Wanda said, “Ésto representa la vida de tu hermana. Livia, your sister’s life is in there. Her very life.”

There was a short silence while Wanda drew a drag off of her cigarette. The import of her last words sank into Livia’s chest like a lead weight.

“So. Listen very carefully. The first night…tonight, no?”

Livia nodded.

“The first night, there are two things. First, there are three packets of herbs. They should be at the top of the package. One is wrapped in pink cloth, one in green, and one in black. The pink one, you hang in your sister’s dressing room, as close to the laudanum as you can get it. The green one or, depending, the black one, are for the underwear drawer, you know, de calzoncillos, of her husband.

Use the green one if you think that things between them stand any chance of being repaired whatsoever. What-so-ever, Livia, como sea…I know you hate him, but you have to be objective–otherwise, no me hago la responsable. Who knows what might happen…the black is if you are absolutely certain that there is no love left in him for your sister. None. And…”

Wanda got up to pour more coffee.

“The second thing for tonight is this. Just below the herb packets are a bunch of fresh herbs, different kinds, tied with a green ribbon. Those you boil in six cups of water, no more, no less. You make, like, a tea, sabes, una infusión. Then, with the white cloth–they’re wrapped, in the package, in a white cloth–you scrub every inch of the kitchen with the tea, every inch. ¿Me oyes?”

Livia nodded her comprehension. She was feeling better–the coffee and the bun had helped. With the large package of antidotes in front of her, she felt invincible again. The hollow at the base of her throat only throbbed occasionally. And very faintly.

“Y Livia. Para mañana. For tomorrow. Very simple. Four white candles, one for each course of your dinner. Four bags of herbs, in white cheesecloth, tied with white ribbon. You burn the white candles, a different one for each, while you are preparing each course. If you are working on food for two different courses at the same time, don’t forget that both, or three, or all four candles should be lit. The bags of herbs, one for each course. And don’t worry, they have no taste, no tienen sabor.

And that’s all. Muy simple. But. Danae needs your all of energy right now, so no chocolate tarts. No men…nada de hombres. Ni uno. Don’t even think about sex, and especially the sex of last night. I mean it. I don’t know what happened, but I see in your face that it was fuerte…I hope you’re telling me the truth…”

Wanda’s Murillo Madonna face was sombre.

Livia nodded. She hadn’t let him.

“You could really hurt your sister if you mix these two spells more than you already have.”

“I’ll be fine.” Livia stood. Nine thirty; she needed to get going. She would be fine. She embraced Wanda, surprised by the fragility of the tiny body she enfolded in her arms.

“Gracias, Wanda, gracias de verdad. I can pay you when I get back…”

Wanda pulled away.  Her face was horrified.

“No, Livia, no…ésto no se paga. You can’t pay for this. I do it for love. The santero also has to do it for love. You have to do it for love. If you pay me, it doesn’t work Cook me dinner.”

~

More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.

Right here, next week, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…

Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.

~

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