fiction: Februa
the Valentine's day story I wrote in October in anticipation of the holiday.
Februa
It was Friday the thirteenth, and she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. She preceded Lupercalia, she walked through the streets naked. She blessed the pregnant women and flagellated herself, she cried her name to her mother. I am Lucy, she said, and in the February air there was no love returned. There was frost and there were ice crystals forming between her toes. All over town the little signs she had been waiting for were happening.
The signs came to her in the night, they came all at once. It is time, they whispered, it is time, you must go. This Friday they all occurred at once and so, in the middle of a snowstorm on the day before Valentine’s Day, Lucy walked out onto the train tracks wearing her mother’s fur coat, stepping on the cross-ties until she disappeared from sight.
The first sign: She awoke at 6am just in time to hear the church bells down the street begin to play. The song was Ave Maria, ringing out like an aria across the cold, cracked winter sky.
The second sign: her transmission fluid froze.
The frost turned to snow. The fine, cracked-crystal-ice covered her windowpanes in sinister grins that didn’t melt in the light of day. One of the pipes had frozen but not broken and fearfully, not knowing what to do, she turned the handle on the kitchen sink just a bit, so that if they unfroze the water would drip out, splash into the stainless-steel sink and make tracks down the side. Moving water can’t freeze, whatever is moving cannot be frozen still.
She got her mother’s fur coat out of the hall closet. As soon as she stepped outside her fingers started tingling, the tips like marbles, weights but not sensations at the end of her hands. Her car wouldn’t start and she was obliged to walk the twelve blocks to work, her face prickling up like pins in the chill.
The third sign: A young girl dressed all in black gave her a rose, for love, at a street-corner on her lunch break.
The fourth sign: Victor proposed to his new girlfriend, Annabel. The ring was large and ostentatious.
“I wanted to it tomorrow, for the holiday, but I just couldn’t wait,” he told her, his face ruddy with excitement. “I know it’s only been three months since we broke up but Lucy, I hope you’re not mad, I thought we ended on such good terms, you were so understanding about me and Annabel that I knew you couldn’t be upset. I just feel so lucky to have found her-”
Lucy smiled and said no, of course, she was very happy for them both.
The fifth sign: the snow on the trees in the painting on the sixth floor melted, dripping a puddle down onto the marble floor. She wiped it up with a corner of her scarf.
The sixth sign: the vending machine ate her first dollar and then, with her second, gave her grapefruit juice instead of cream soda. It was bitter and filmy, acid and not sugar on her tongue.
The seventh sign: at 3pm, she watched the gargoyle in the top of the building across the street yawn, stretch, and shake himself before he flew away, disappearing into the gray clouds. In his place was left the carcass of a dead pigeon.
The eighth sign: during the board meeting, water poured from the air vents near the ceiling, filling up the room. She watched through the glass walls as the water climbed a ladder up the venetian blinds. The people were listless, droopy, half-focused on the speaker and daydreaming into their paperwork. They didn’t notice as the air was expelled from their lungs in bubbles that reflected the fluorescent lights, their last breath floating up to the ceiling where the waves lapped at the chalky square tiles. They didn’t scream, only folded quietly over their paperwork, their hair standing out from their heads and waving in the silence.
The ninth sign: on the way home, a truck on the side of the road was selling peaches, their skins firm and fuzzy, the most delicate shades of red and yellow. She bought a basket for Victor, from habit, and only realized when she got home that there was no reason. She cut them into slices and fed them to the cat.
The tenth sign: the cat threw up behind the still-frozen radiator and crawled on top of the mess to die
The eleventh sign: at the diner, two girls dropped a quarter in the jukebox and danced up and down the aisle to the song that played at Lucy’s mother’s wake. They were young, pretty: one blonde, the other brunette, with tight-fitting clothes over their hard, curvy bodies, showing the inch of seamless skin between their belly buttons and the tops of their low-rise jeans, wearing dark eye makeup that looked too heavy on smiling eyes, sticky, shiny lip gloss on singing mouths.
Lucy sat in the booth, staring at her club sandwich with tears in her eyes, unable to chew the food in her mouth. The girls were young, vibrant, typical, their long hair swinging with the music. The cooks leaned on the counter, their eyes following the girls’ breasts and hips, and the waitress at the counter gave a tired smile as she rang up an old lady who counted out pennies. Whey they had finished, the cooks clapped and whistled for them. The song went off and in the momentary silence Lucy felt the threads of her life snapping, one by one.
The twelfth sign: walking home, she saw a dead greyhound on the side of the road, its lovely thin face crushed in but the delicate rib cage still intact.
“Bea says hello,” he told her. Beatrice was the greyhound her father ran over when she was six. Lucy stopped, wanted to ask is she happier where she is? but instead closed her eyes, jammed her hands into the deep pockets, kept walking.
The thirteenth sign: Chimes at Midnight was playing at the little secondhand theater downtown. She bought a ticket to the eight o’clock show, and a bucket of popcorn. The lead in her belly and metallic taste in her mouth made it hard to swallow and the food sat, heavy and salty in her mouth.
She was alone in the theater and halfway through the movie she gave herself over to weeping, burying her face in her knees while the black and white film poured over her. She wept for this, the thirteenth sign, for her mother’s soft voice encased in metal and dirt, for the pigeon plucked meatless, the stomach of her cat, the lovely face of Beatrice crushed under the wheels, the golden-froth of cream soda and the lies that Victor used to whisper in her ear after sex, for the ritual cleansing that always preceded spring. She wept for her mother’s ragged fur coat and the boardroom full of drowned bureaucrats, and she wept for all of the things she will leave behind her when she goes.
Falstaff died. Henry V became king. The movie ended and she left the theater on unsteady feet, clutching her mother’s fur coat. The moon was cold and bright on the new snow, and in silence she walked to the railroad tracks, set her feet on the ties, took a final, unsteady breath. Far in the distance, a train whistle blew. Lucy pulled the coat close around her body and began to walk.
Februa
It was Friday the thirteenth, and she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. She preceded Lupercalia, she walked through the streets naked. She blessed the pregnant women and flagellated herself, she cried her name to her mother. I am Lucy, she said, and in the February air there was no love returned. There was frost and there were ice crystals forming between her toes. All over town the little signs she had been waiting for were happening.
The signs came to her in the night, they came all at once. It is time, they whispered, it is time, you must go. This Friday they all occurred at once and so, in the middle of a snowstorm on the day before Valentine’s Day, Lucy walked out onto the train tracks wearing her mother’s fur coat, stepping on the cross-ties until she disappeared from sight.
The first sign: She awoke at 6am just in time to hear the church bells down the street begin to play. The song was Ave Maria, ringing out like an aria across the cold, cracked winter sky.
The second sign: her transmission fluid froze.
The frost turned to snow. The fine, cracked-crystal-ice covered her windowpanes in sinister grins that didn’t melt in the light of day. One of the pipes had frozen but not broken and fearfully, not knowing what to do, she turned the handle on the kitchen sink just a bit, so that if they unfroze the water would drip out, splash into the stainless-steel sink and make tracks down the side. Moving water can’t freeze, whatever is moving cannot be frozen still.
She got her mother’s fur coat out of the hall closet. As soon as she stepped outside her fingers started tingling, the tips like marbles, weights but not sensations at the end of her hands. Her car wouldn’t start and she was obliged to walk the twelve blocks to work, her face prickling up like pins in the chill.
The third sign: A young girl dressed all in black gave her a rose, for love, at a street-corner on her lunch break.
The fourth sign: Victor proposed to his new girlfriend, Annabel. The ring was large and ostentatious.
“I wanted to it tomorrow, for the holiday, but I just couldn’t wait,” he told her, his face ruddy with excitement. “I know it’s only been three months since we broke up but Lucy, I hope you’re not mad, I thought we ended on such good terms, you were so understanding about me and Annabel that I knew you couldn’t be upset. I just feel so lucky to have found her-”
Lucy smiled and said no, of course, she was very happy for them both.
The fifth sign: the snow on the trees in the painting on the sixth floor melted, dripping a puddle down onto the marble floor. She wiped it up with a corner of her scarf.
The sixth sign: the vending machine ate her first dollar and then, with her second, gave her grapefruit juice instead of cream soda. It was bitter and filmy, acid and not sugar on her tongue.
The seventh sign: at 3pm, she watched the gargoyle in the top of the building across the street yawn, stretch, and shake himself before he flew away, disappearing into the gray clouds. In his place was left the carcass of a dead pigeon.
The eighth sign: during the board meeting, water poured from the air vents near the ceiling, filling up the room. She watched through the glass walls as the water climbed a ladder up the venetian blinds. The people were listless, droopy, half-focused on the speaker and daydreaming into their paperwork. They didn’t notice as the air was expelled from their lungs in bubbles that reflected the fluorescent lights, their last breath floating up to the ceiling where the waves lapped at the chalky square tiles. They didn’t scream, only folded quietly over their paperwork, their hair standing out from their heads and waving in the silence.
The ninth sign: on the way home, a truck on the side of the road was selling peaches, their skins firm and fuzzy, the most delicate shades of red and yellow. She bought a basket for Victor, from habit, and only realized when she got home that there was no reason. She cut them into slices and fed them to the cat.
The tenth sign: the cat threw up behind the still-frozen radiator and crawled on top of the mess to die
The eleventh sign: at the diner, two girls dropped a quarter in the jukebox and danced up and down the aisle to the song that played at Lucy’s mother’s wake. They were young, pretty: one blonde, the other brunette, with tight-fitting clothes over their hard, curvy bodies, showing the inch of seamless skin between their belly buttons and the tops of their low-rise jeans, wearing dark eye makeup that looked too heavy on smiling eyes, sticky, shiny lip gloss on singing mouths.
Lucy sat in the booth, staring at her club sandwich with tears in her eyes, unable to chew the food in her mouth. The girls were young, vibrant, typical, their long hair swinging with the music. The cooks leaned on the counter, their eyes following the girls’ breasts and hips, and the waitress at the counter gave a tired smile as she rang up an old lady who counted out pennies. Whey they had finished, the cooks clapped and whistled for them. The song went off and in the momentary silence Lucy felt the threads of her life snapping, one by one.
The twelfth sign: walking home, she saw a dead greyhound on the side of the road, its lovely thin face crushed in but the delicate rib cage still intact.
“Bea says hello,” he told her. Beatrice was the greyhound her father ran over when she was six. Lucy stopped, wanted to ask is she happier where she is? but instead closed her eyes, jammed her hands into the deep pockets, kept walking.
The thirteenth sign: Chimes at Midnight was playing at the little secondhand theater downtown. She bought a ticket to the eight o’clock show, and a bucket of popcorn. The lead in her belly and metallic taste in her mouth made it hard to swallow and the food sat, heavy and salty in her mouth.
She was alone in the theater and halfway through the movie she gave herself over to weeping, burying her face in her knees while the black and white film poured over her. She wept for this, the thirteenth sign, for her mother’s soft voice encased in metal and dirt, for the pigeon plucked meatless, the stomach of her cat, the lovely face of Beatrice crushed under the wheels, the golden-froth of cream soda and the lies that Victor used to whisper in her ear after sex, for the ritual cleansing that always preceded spring. She wept for her mother’s ragged fur coat and the boardroom full of drowned bureaucrats, and she wept for all of the things she will leave behind her when she goes.
Falstaff died. Henry V became king. The movie ended and she left the theater on unsteady feet, clutching her mother’s fur coat. The moon was cold and bright on the new snow, and in silence she walked to the railroad tracks, set her feet on the ties, took a final, unsteady breath. Far in the distance, a train whistle blew. Lucy pulled the coat close around her body and began to walk.