• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 478 0

on the planet, had speeded up and speeded up until peace was rarely possible. Always there was movement, noise, inevitable and constant distraction. Even if you managed to steal a day of quiet and expected no one to call the quiet place you had chosen, there would be the harsh ring of the phone you forgot to unplug and a solicitous voice—not the voice of one’s children or lover—asking you to subscribe to a newspaper or to change your telephone service. A madness had seized earth. The madness of speed. As if to speed things up meant to actually go somewhere. And where, after all, was there to go? The present is all there ever is, no matter how you lean forward or back. Standing beside the river, realizing that the water of earth is recycled forever, she deeply understood this: that there are two “presents.” One is of the moment. The other is of a longer moment—the “moment” that includes the history and knowledge one knows. So that, she mused, if the tears shed by the mother of Isis are now part of this river then I am somehow connected to her in this longer “present” that I am able to envision and that contains both of us.

A straw had stuck in one of her waterproof sandals. She bent to pull it out. It was the sundried spike of a yellow flower. The voice of her body urged her to put it into her mouth. To chew it. She did so. Immediately her stomach calmed. The dizziness left her.

Was it wild chamomile, she wondered.

What is this called? she asked the oarswoman of their boat.

At the moment that she asked, the woman, frowning, did not recall the flower’s name.

And she realized she did not care. She did not need to know the name humans had given the flower. To herself she called it friend and from then on looked for it along the banks of the river and felt concern for its health.

That husband had shoved her in the back when she told him she was leaving. They had been hiking in the mountains when she told him; she was just ahead of him on a particularly rough part of the trail. Jagged rocks had been pushed up during the last winter; some so sharp she felt they might pierce the soles of her stout walking boots. They skirted a ravine, and a drop of more than two hundred feet was to their immediate right. She had been working up to telling him gradually; later on she would almost smile to think how like a coward she’d started out feigning cheerfulness down in the flatland, near the parking lot. She’d even rapped their trusty gray Dodge smartly as they were leaving, a signal that it was to be there, trusty as ever, when they returned. He’d smiled at her good-luck knock, and they’d felt companionable; at least she had felt that way. She’d wanted to talk, she’d said, and he’d suggested combining it with a hike through mountains they’d hiked often before the children came.

I don’t see how we can go on like this, she’d muttered over her shoulder, as they climbed. He could barely hear her.

What? What did you say? he called, as she, always more nimble climbing than he, moved easily ahead.

I need more of my own life, she replied.

Your what? he said.

They’d stopped for breath. Admired the majestic view. She’d taken off her hat, shaken out her locks. Her back was still to him as they resumed.

I need to live alone, she said.

She felt him stop. She paused and was about to turn, and he, at the same moment, pushed her. It was a blow, but with the flat of his hand, against the small of her back. She scrambled to keep her footing on the narrow ledge. She might have fallen to her death. Steadying herself she turned to face him; he was staring at her as if she’d turned into his worst enemy.

She very carefully relieved herself of the backpack she was carrying, old and mauve and endearingly worn. She’d had it, she thought, even before she met him. And when she’d run off from the dorm to spend nights with him, she’d packed nightgown and toothbrush, jeans and a change of panties, in it. He’d told her she needn’t bring a nightgown. She had though, because the backpack felt ridiculously light and flat without the flannel nightgown as filler.