Belly Up Read online

  MY YELLOWSTONE CABIN SAT a small walk away from another cabin that contained another artist, a composer, a man about my age, maybe a little younger, whom I would peek out my window and see, lights on, working through the night. His name was Barclay Rowland and he requested I call him B. I asked why he had two last names and he said, good question. He was very quiet, and very slim and wiry. He looked like he knew how to hike, so I asked him if he would like to go on a hike, and on a hike we went. We became friends, and in the evening I’d invite him over for vodka and lemonade on my small front porch. Each of the artist’s cabins had a rocking chair out front and, one day, finally, about a month into our three-month stay, B hiked his rocking chair all the way from his cabin to mine. He said, I am tired of sitting on the floor! I need a chair to have my vodka in! Of course we slept together. Sleeping with B, sleeping with a man other than Ray, was not what I thought it was going to be. B walked me inside my cabin and took off my collarless shirt (the strength still worked) and kissed me very softly for a very long time, too long of a time perhaps, and I began to get worried, like a teenager, that we would never get past second base. He did, eventually, put his hand in my pants and the rest was quick to follow, but it wasn’t urgent, and it was a bit belabored, and I found myself, more than I wanted, looking past his shoulder, to the opposite side of the room, my mind wandering elsewhere, away from me, into some far-off space.

  B AND I PARTED WAYS very amiably. He wrote frequently, at first, and said he wanted to come visit, we could have another adventure together, but I wrote back reluctantly and eventually stopped my reply. The canvases I had worked on that summer had almost all been portraits of Ray, all fourteen of them. I was evasive with B about my work, when we were together. I only showed him a couple pieces, pieces steeped in symbols that could, I knew, be taken as graphic pieces, so I never had to explain to B what they were about, what I was circling around during our summer in the woods. B asked, of course, what they meant to me, but all I said was just that they were the images I saw in my sleep, dream sequences that came to me when I was between consciousnesses. I have, since that summer with B, slept with other men. But sleeping with other men has always been a bit tricky. I think the trickiness has something to do with my problem of understanding my own identity, which parts of it are me and which parts of it were Ray, and which parts of it were me that only developed because Ray was there with me. Sleeping with these other men, B and beyond, I just can’t help thinking during the act that they are fucking Ray and me, together, bringing us both pleasure, that I am somehow the physical embodiment of both myself and Ray at the same time. It’s not that I feel Ray is in the room, watching me, no, I feel that Ray is inside my chest, occupying half my brain, sharing the body that is taking place in the physical act. This is especially strange because, when Ray had been alive, when I had had sex with him, I had always been sure of my body, that it was mine, that I was in it, just as sure as I had been of his. So, to be compromised this way, unsure of who exactly was in me, was alarming, although, with time, I have grown used to experiencing this feeling and it no longer inhibits me, ever, from doing anything I desire to do.

  ONE OF THE ROTTEN THINGS about having a body is that you don’t realize how many parts you have until they’ve all gone wrong. Aging has been fine, I don’t mind the looks of it and in a lot of ways I appreciate being able to look the way I feel, looking very old and very tired gives you a certain edge on things. And, also, being able to look heroic. I’ve been told I have that look about me now and I expect that I, old woman that I am, very well should. There is part of me, though, that suspects I have always looked this stoic, and now I am just old enough where a feeling of removed superiority is an acceptable attribute to possess.

  I LIVE IN A HOUSE, now, that is surrounded by other houses inhabited by other people of an advanced age and a middle-aged woman named Maria comes in the mornings to help me get dressed and take me for a walk. Adrien comes and visits frequently with his wife and their little girl and small dog and I paint the lot of them in a family portrait at least once a year. I refuse to show Adrien the paintings, which is silly, I suppose, at this point, but Adrien’s wife, Ella, likes them, and makes sure they sit for me each year which makes me feel good, like I still have to do something, another year with Molly, their daughter, sitting patiently in the painting, another year where Adrien still has hair and that smile of his and his expertly placed arm. They offered to let me live with them when I admitted that I needed some help. No, I said, no. You have your lives and I have mine. I have my paintings, which as you know, I am deep in these days, and how would I get any work done with you there to distract me? Peering over my shoulder or around my side? In my home, which the staff calls Cottage 18, I do have a nice place to sit and paint. I still am drawn to painting portraits. I paint Sophia, my main nurse, and some of the other residents, like Demetri, an ex-contractor, and Gary, an ex-banker with expensive clothes. It is notable, however, that for the first time in my life, I have been moved to paint self-portraits. When I paint myself, I can feel Ray at the edges, around the back of the canvas, in between the paint and the thread, in between myself and what I really am. You hear all this talk of souls, especially in places like these, places for the elderly. They try to convince you, or they think it is comforting to hear that there is something within you that is unchanging, something that has been in you since you were born and that will live on after you die. Though I am not drawn to the idea of an unchanging essence, there does seem to be something to the idea that there are things that can change you, people who can place themselves in you and never leave. I mean, Ray’s been dead for decades, enough time for a whole other life to be born and ended, enough time for someone to completely change who they are and what they see when they wake up and get out of bed and walk out of their home into the street. I don’t tell Adrien this, but it still feels that there is a part of Ray in me, that he left something in me that I can’t shake off. Which makes me think about what I would be if I wasn’t what I am, what I would be if I wasn’t just Fran. Perhaps the couples were right, those old friends that needed so badly the idea of something, the idea of Ray and Fran, to invite us on their vacations and onto their front lawns. I resented this want of theirs so badly. I was myself, and I wanted it to be known. But maybe the idea of us was always the reality, the Fran, the mother, the painter was none without Ray, her level-headed mate, and maybe that’s why the self-portraits keep coming out like this, with ghosts in the corners and Jello boxes and rainbow trout fish. Or, maybe, I am truly just Fran. Ray died and left me. There is nothing of him within me. He sat down in his easy chair and closed his eyes and left through the top of his head. In that case, everything I see creep in at the edges of myself is only a wanting, only a desire to not be left with myself in Cottage 18, a desire to be more than a single person trembling, a wish to be forever coupling so that I am not just simply alone.

  NAVE

  MY FATHER TOLD ME that our church had a belly. It was named nave and sat at the very center of the cross, in the meat where the two structural lines crossed. I never saw anyone feed the nave and feared it was hungry. When we went to church I brought it things I thought it would like. I stuffed almonds in my pockets and gummy bears in the backs of my shoes. I whispered things to the floor, sure that the nave could hear me. I said, “I know you must be hungry because all the adults bring you is money.”

  I pulled my profferings out and stuck them under the rug and mashed them up a bit with my foot so the nave wouldn’t have to chew. I brought it raisins and cereal and sometimes even honey. I hid the food in my jacket and when the adults weren’t looking, I fed the ravenous nave like my parents fed me.

  I always sat in the same seat because I liked the smell of the rot the nave gave me. No other children would sit next to me, and my parents did not like that I sat alone. After several weeks the adults began to sniff and told me the place where I sat was stinky.

  “I am having private time with God,” I lie
d to them. I knew I had made the nave too dependent. I knew that if I didn’t feed the nave, I would be the nave’s next feed.

  At home one Sunday we ran out of snacks and I threw a fit. I refused to attend church, but my mother had none of it and I was dragged out to the car, down the road, and into a new seat in a pew between my parents.

  The whole mass I could hear the rumblings of the church’s belly. The nave yelled and screamed. It wanted a granola bar. It wanted goldfish. It wanted all of the snacks I had ever brought it and it wanted them now.

  Knowing that the time before the nave would eat me was near, I began to cry. I readied myself for the ground to open. For the thin red carpet to rip and split into a fleshy cavern filled with thousands of teeth that crescendoed from smallest to biggest, so that there were daggers at the opening and a dense white center in the bellows that circled a tiny hole where all the fluids of the masticated people were slurped down and funneled directly into the stomach of God.

  ARMS OVERHEAD

  MARY READ to Ainsley.

  “Don’t pause between the pages,” Ainsley instructed. “It interrupts the story. You have to read ahead a little or slow down your speech while you’re flipping, so you can say the sentence that straddles the pages without a noticeable break.”

  Mary read, “The ouroboros slays, weds, and impregnates itself. It is man and woman, begetting and conceiving, devouring and giving birth, active and passive, above and below at the same time.”

  “That’s right,” Ainsley said. “That makes perfect sense to me.”

  “Does it, though?” said Mary. “How can it mate with itself?”

  “It puts its tail in its mouth, that’s how.”

  “So, it metaphorically reproduces,” said Mary.

  “Don’t be dense, Mary,” said Ainsley. “It’s science.”

  Mary continued to read and Ainsley continued to listen. Mary was sitting cross-legged, balanced on a stool. Ainsley was lying flat on the wood floor, limbs and hair spread all around. They were both smart girls, but were young enough and pliable enough that it was not yet clear who was smarter. They were the only two people they knew who read a significant amount of books, so they read a great deal together, but they also took long walks in the forests that surrounded their houses and, during the summers, frequently swam and sunned themselves at the community pool.

  They thought of themselves as many things, but mostly as humans who other people seemed to identify as young women, which appeared to come with a great many problems, most of which they knew, but some of which they were still in the process of discovering. They had a private joke between the two of them that they were not girls, but, rather, vegetation, plants whose souls were mistakenly rerouted toward the incorrect vessels, and that is why sex made very little sense to them, and why it required a great deal of discussion. In line with their vegetal alter egos, the girls sometimes called each other Red & White, in reference to their favorite fairy tale, because Mary had the dark, tight curls like Rose Red and Ainsley had the pale, blonde, water-straight hair like Snow White. Also, they lived in a part of the country where one had to walk through the woods a great deal to get anywhere, which seemed to them how things were in the story, and they were, always, traversing the pine-needle paths to get to each other’s houses, so it seemed like a good joke, but also something kind of nice to fantasize about, the two of them someday shape-shifting into flowers and ending up in the same bouquet.

  “How can something be above and below at once?” said Mary

  “If it’s inside something else,” said Ainsley.

  “Oh, I see.”

  Mary’s mother came into the living room where they had been reading. She was weathered and weary-looking in her pantsuit, her hair slicked back into a tight ponytail, her lipstick settled in between the cracks in her lips.

  “What do you think it means to try and eat yourself?” Mary asked her mother.

  “What would you like to eat for dinner?” Mary’s mother said. Ainsley brought her knees to her chest and pushed herself off the floor. Mary got down from the stool. Ainsley and Mary followed Mary’s mother into the kitchen.

  In the kitchen was Mary’s father and little brother and a dining table that housed a bowl of oranges. The little brother was barely old enough to chew and sat strapped in a seat that had a built-in tray for catching all the food he wasn’t able to slather all over his face or insert in his mouth.

  “Thank you for having me over for dinner,” said Ainsley.

  “I can’t believe they are closing down another office,” said Mary’s father.

  “Please, can’t we talk about something else?” said Mary’s mother.

  “Ainsley,” said Mary’s father. “Are you looking forward to going back to school?”

  Ainsley was not looking forward to going back to school because she had been forced to enroll in Physical Education, a class Mary was not required to take because Mary planned on participating in several group sport endeavors including soccer. Ainsley didn’t like sports. Mary told Ainsley she should try something solitary, like running or swimming. It’d be better than having to sweat in between classes and change in and out of gym shorts. Ainsley, though she was dreading PE, was unsure which option would bring her more displeasure, and, stuck in a fit of indecision, had missed the deadline to sign up for any sports teams and was, therefore, automatically enrolled in PE.

  “I am very much looking forward to being in high school,” said Ainlsey. By which she meant, she was tired of being a child. Which wasn’t totally the truth, because she suspected that she was also tired of being an adult. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter, because Mary’s father went back to talking about offices and what he wanted from his company, and what he thought his company wanted from him. Mary noticed the way her father talked into the air like a spore-releasing perennial. He looked at Mary’s mother when he spoke, but when his words came out of his mouth they landed everywhere, all over the kitchen, in a kind of indiscriminate spray that struck Mary as very foul.

  “It would be a strange thing to try and eat yourself,” Ainsley said as she bit into a leg of chicken. “Just because we don’t have tails doesn’t mean we couldn’t, obviously. I mean, it would be more of a disjointed endeavor but surely it could be done. Of course, how far you get is another question. But with the aid of drugs and things, I think you could get very far.”

  “It seems to me more like a metaphorical consumption,” said Mary. “It’s about knowing yourself, maybe? But there is violence in it too, I suppose. The idea of having the capability to destroy yourself, perhaps.”

  “I think it’s a question we should ask ourselves. Could I eat myself? Well, like I said before, it’s really just a question of how far.”

  Mary and Ainsley excused themselves from the table and washed their dishes. They went back to the living room where they got on the family computer, went to the town library website, and searched for and subsequently reserved several books on the subject of cannibalism.

  “As roses,” Ainsley joked. “Eating yourself would be super hard!”

  “I guess you’re right,” Mary giggled. “It isn’t like we’d have the convenience of mouths to put ourselves in. We’d have to somehow convert our bodies into light and then find a way to devour the sun rays.”

  “That sounds a lot more fun than eating yourself limb by limb,” said Ainsley.

  When it was 9:00 p.m., Ainsley said it was about time she went home. Mary hugged her and walked her as far as the back porch where she waved Ainsley into the woods. Ainsley’s golden-white hair hung behind her in a steady swinging. Mary’s eyes followed Ainsley’s illuminated locks deep into the trees.