monday muddlings: “advent: a parable”

It seems somewhat odd to start out the blog again with a short story about two prostitutes. Even odder to begin Advent this way. But I’m in need of writing some short fiction and Mondays are going to be now devoted to that endevor. Knowing my novel has intention form a publisher means spending time just writing other things as I go back to work on it. That is a kind of peace. So in the interm, I submit these little tidbits to you. It all started with a first line on Advent Sunday at 3 AM. So, there’s that.

—

Advent: A Parable

She had painted her fingernails jade for the holiday, but the reason seemed foolish now. There was no one to dance with. The punch was heady and tasted too much of cheap rum. A woman sitting on the other side of the room was laughing violently, falling into the obliging man next to her, who recoiled just enough at the sudden whiff of cheap perfume and let his eyes trace down her neckline, betraying his intentions.

“You could go to the clinic tomorrow.” Grace pulled a cigarette from the gold case she had lifted off a client some years ago, when she was still pretty enough to keep the lights on. “I’ll come with you, take you back when it’s done. No sense in waiting. If you start to show . . .” Her right hand gestured vaguely, communicating any number of possible futures. She lit her cigarette, took a drag, exhaled into Catherine’s face, and then crossed her legs. Like a lady, only with enough of her skirt pulled up at the corner that the tip of her garter showed. It was so practiced it seemed unintentional. But it was a sign. Somehow it let them know how much she would cost.

“I’m not even sure that I am,” Catherine said. It wasn’t much of a protest. She had counted and recounted the days for the past month. She was too young for it to be anything else; she knew what she had to do. She had been taught this when she first met Grace, when she was the one standing by her side, holding her hand, trying not to watch the doctor by looking to the attending nurse, who had an expression of vague detachment and mild disgust. Grace had told them her name was Helen. Like Troy. Somehow that had made it better, cast it in a more manageable light. Catherine wondered what she would call herself. Something honest, perhaps, like Sarah. Sarah wasn’t supposed to have a child either, Catherine remembered that much.

“You’ll be laid up for a few days afterward, of course.” Grace was looking at the man who had caught the laughing woman. Their eyes met. He seemed to show interest. Grace didn’t move, letting the smoke of her cigarette slowly wind up above her, beckoning. He licked his lips. She blinked. There was a moment in which he looked as if he would rise and cross over to her, play the part well and ask her to dance. They would negotiate a price during the song, he starting a bit too low and she high enough to communicate self-worth. They would meet somewhere in the middle. It would be more than he expected to pay, but her detachment made it worth it. He’d buy her adoration. It was like giving a girl a pearl necklace. Innocent in a way. They would pass each other in the street and offer casual tilts of the head. If anyone asked, there would be a slight laugh and a simple reference to days gone by. He would dream of her as a girlfriend, perhaps even as a true lover, something worth writing poems about. She would be to him everything he needed her to be, then and in the years to come, or so it was with a possession.

The woman who had been reclining against him made an awkward twist of her waist, trying to keep his attention. Her dress cupped and she exposed a bit too much of her chest to him. His attention moved to her and away from Grace. This woman would be easy. It would cost him emotionally and she would be engraved in his mind as a cheap whore, but at least it wouldn’t put him out in the financial way. He was a practical man and she was already close to being drunk. It was enough.

Grace watched them go. Catherine was muttering about being allergic to aspirin and having pains in her abdomen all day, while drumming her jade nails on the corner of her seat. The wood clicked defiantly underneath the constant motion. The man and the woman stepped out into the night, the man looking back just once—at least, it truly seemed that he must have—as the doors closed behind them. Grace took a drag of her cigarette, held it for too long, and coughed a bit as she exhaled.

“I don’t know where I’ll get the money.”

Grace looked back to Catherine as if seeing her for the first time. Catherine was unfortunately beautiful. It could have been damnable in someone more intelligent. This was advantageous for Grace, who liked the girl as a younger sister and took liberty of her on those grounds. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You will?” Catherine clutched the side of her chair. Her hand blanched. “It would take me a good week’s work to pay you back.”

“I suppose you could just wait a week then, couldn’t you, and pay for it yourself?” Grace flicked her ashes onto the empty chair next to her. The room was too warm and the people starting to become too real. Cheap liquor did that, made everything honest. Grace hated honesty. Honesty was such a cheat.

“I could.”

“Yes.”

Silence. Catherine looked across the room at a couple seated together. The woman wore a garish pink blouse and caressed the white collar of her lover’s shirt. Their faces were luminaries. Catherine touched the hem of her scarlet dress, fingered it idly, and then averted her eyes from the couple to the portly bar maiden, who was pouring a brandy. The family had been good enough to provide the punch, but not everyone could stand it. The matriarch noticed this as she carried the baby swaddled in the white gown back to her daughter. She would say something to her husband about it later. He would hear how the town was going to talk about their cheapness. Cheapness on such a celebratory day. It was unseemly, perhaps even unchristian. The woman in the pink blouse received the child offered to her warmly; a delicate hand reached up to grasp her finger. The man beside her beamed.

“Lydia has done well for herself.”

Catherine looked down at her lap, ashamed. They hadn’t spoken her name the entire day. Grace knew what the other had been thinking, she too had been disposed to such thoughts before. Fantasy. A child with a father, perhaps even a husband; a baptism, a reception afterward. It was seductive, a pleasant thought to entangle herself with in the middle of the night in the full but empty bed. It kissed her neck and promised her things, then left in the morning without the courtesy of an offering on her bedside altar. Over the years it died away and did not come to her bed as quickly, or dare to speak her name when it did.

“I hadn’t given it much thought.”

Grace shifted and took a deep drag. “No, of course you hadn’t.” It was suggestive enough to be cruel. She rose abruptly and tossed her cigarette into a glass that had been abandoned under her chair. There was a sizzling noise, then a tiny puff of smoke. It was gone as quickly as it began, like everything. “Come on,” she looked at Catherine with an austere detachment, “There’s no one left.”

The room was still quite full, but Catherine understood. “You could choose better.” It was out of place, too confident. “You can always choose.” But the words were spoken at Grace instead of to her, which left her hollow and aloof.

“It’s been a long time coming.” She opened her handbag and studied the contents. There was enough money for a taxi. She fished out something delicate and clutched it in her hand, snapping the bag closed. “I’ll be going now.” Announcing it to the dying music more than to Catherine, Grace turned and headed for the door.

The streets were cold and she didn’t have a coat. She wasn’t in the habit of needing to bring her own. Grace walked down to the corner then stopped. The moon was cast behind the steeple, split in two. A giant wafer, broken. Catherine had called out to her. Grace turned and looked back, aware suddenly of her mortality.

“You’ll be alone.”

Grace blinked. “I always was.”

Catherine felt a sudden pain in her abdomen. She winced. “It’s an awful thing to do to me.”

A car passed. A clump of snow slid from the branches of one of the trees and landed between them. Grace clutched tightly to the hope in her hand. “So was I, but you survived. You’re right, Catherine. We choose. We’ve chosen.” She stepped forward gingerly and then moved quickly. It was necessary, all of it, and the time was slipping away. “Take this,” she whispered, so the night would not hear. She seized Catherine’s hand and forced her clutched one into it. Dropping the remnant of her soul, Grace stepped back with a steady certainty. “We are a fiction.”

It meant something, Catherine knew, but she didn’t understand until much later. Grace turned her back on Catherine and walked away, into the darkness. The clock tower struck nine. Somewhere the choir was singing something from Handel. It would start snowing again soon. It would be the coldest night of the year. Catherine felt the sharp pain in her abdomen once more. Something dripped onto the earth, the sound of snow.

The 9:15 train was running two minutes behind. Grace didn’t care. She kept her back to the light, counted the chimes of the bell, and waited. There was a lullaby an older woman used to sing to her around this time every year. Grace sang it quietly into the wind, forgetting most of the words, but it helped the waiting. The last word was, “Israel.”

Catherine heard the train from the sidewalk. She hadn’t moved since Grace had walked away from her. Opening her hand, she realized she was holding a small necklace. Beaded. A crucifix on the end. Familiar yet foreign. A dream from a distant country that she had been exiled from. She clutched it fiercely, the way Grace had. Catherine had known for some time that this day was coming, but she hadn’t expected it to be so soon. It would be the same with her in five years time. She would hand this necklace off to someone else, the new Catherine. She, the new Grace, would slip away into the same darkness, wait for the same light, but never look at it directly. It was better that way, to not know it was coming, to be surprised by the suddenness of it all. It was like being a virgin again. Or it would be, when her time came.

The pain was too much.

There was no choice. There had been; once, in a world that was brighter and a friendly bedfellow. Lydia. There had been choices for some of them. Now the choices were made. Catherine turned to walk away from the church. She hated passing it at night, the graves always looked ready to burst open. It was horrifying and fascinating in a way, the promises engraved onto so many of them: resurgam.

She felt terribly weightless. She was crossing in front of the bar where the reception had been held when she collided with someone exiting it. The necklace fell from her hand into the street, slipping down onto the opening of a gutter and straddling it, hanging as it gently swayed. Catherine swore angrily and turned to accost the person who had run into her. Something had happened as she walked away from where Grace left her, a passionate sense of finality consuming her. And then there was her stomach. She felt so very light.

The woman facing her was her own age, unsettlingly calm. Catherine stared at her as she steadily gazed back. Her eyes spoke a language Catherine had heard once as a young girl, but had worked to forget. The young woman reached her hand into the void between them and placed it on Catherine’s dress front, which was spotted with blood. Warmth broke forth within her. Her knees buckled and she fell forward, seeing the thin trail of burgundy speckled on the snow that she had crossed. She was caught by the nun, who silently held her there, patting her head softly like Grace used to when Catherine had first given herself over.

“Lydia!” Catherine sobbed.

© 2010, Preston. All rights reserved.