A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [93]
In the summer, we escape to a cabin on a remote bay in the northern wilderness. “It doesn’t get better than this,” D says. The insistent invitation of his stare is like a knock at the door when you’d rather pretend no one is home. He lists the food, the wine, the trees, the light, the reflections on the water, as though I would miss it without his itemized list. As though I can’t feel the wine on my tongue or the breeze on my skin. As though I can’t see his face. As though I won’t remember.
I retreat to my three-by-five notecards inside the glass cabin, scribbling down thoughts, moments, scenes from Congo, shifting them around the table. I don’t have a film, but I wonder if I might have a book—if only I can find the narrative through-line.
In deep winter, we stand on opposite sides of a snow-covered bridge. We are silent as I watch the water flow past the last open patches of the stream crusted over in ice. He calls this meditating. We’ve walked for an hour in the snow, past farms and forest. I’m not sure if we’ve been talking; it felt like silence. And silence feels perfect. It’s early December. I would rather not speak. I didn’t want to come here, afraid soft and sweet would scrape at the edges of my raw state. Instead it feels like a refuge.
In early spring, we are in D’s townhouse bathroom. It is the most inviting room in his house, not because of the floor-to-ceiling marble, steam shower, or spa tub. It’s the light. In it, I can breathe.
We slip into opposite ends of the bath. Again with the insistent stare, he asks, “How have you been?”
Our eyes meet for a second. I could spill everything: I’m lost. Reeling. Empty.
“Good,” I say.
I shut my eyes.
We have plans to see each other before and after my trip out East. But for reasons too convoluted to recount, in a rapid-fire text message exchange, we end it. I’m on a subway in New York, with two valid e-ticket itineraries still sitting in my in-box, but I know which plane I’ll step on tomorrow, all the same. I won’t see him again and as I sit here, it seems fitting. As the dirty metal cars rock back and forth, faces shutter past like out-of-sync movie frames. I think of the unspoken undercurrent between us since we met at Orchid, the energy we’ve spent pretending things are casual, of how I have ignored the fact that when he looks in my eyes, I sense something rare. I write him a message, something like “life is too short to be so guarded.” I erase it when I realize the message is more like a note to self. The moment has come and gone.
WHILE DIGGING AROUND in the basement, I purge stack upon stack of plastic crates filled with stock photo props. They’re now destined for the local women’s shelter—the plastic flowers, white slipcovers, colorful dresses for little girls’ summer days with fake families. Mixed in among the props and Christmas ornaments, I notice water-damaged, mildewed boxes labeled LISA: CHILDHOOD. I remember a smaller, carved wooden box that is buried in one of these boxes. I picked it up in India, to keep important letters, photos, and keepsakes in. And in that box—it’s astounding I have forgotten it all these years—is a handwritten note from my father, the only one he wrote to me in my life, presented on the verge of my departure to India, when I was sixteen. My mom had corralled her New Age friends for a going-away “blessing ceremony” for me. This note was Dad’s effort to participate privately, without over-the-top ritual displays. I pull out the plain piece of paper with perforated edges; it was torn from an eighties dot matrix printer, folded in quarters, and labeled in barely legible man-handwriting:
A Blessing for Lisa
7-28-91
Writing a blessing or a deep wish somehow implies doubt, which I don’t feel. So I prefer to affirm the blessings, talents & characteristics that you already have clearly demonstrated, that I believe will serve