Symmetry
Edited!version of FH's Xmas present, brought to you by teh snowiness of Michigan weather. AF fanfic, Insangeline with a side order of Arty. Notes at bottom.
Symmetry.
He doesn’t like her blue dress. He never did, he’d much rather have it burned, replaced with something else, like periwinkle or lavender, something soft and warm and motherly. He remembers looking up from her limp arms and seeing her face, that catatonic-catastrophic blankness that belied the little wet tears that fell on his fat baby shoulders as he lay there, cradled in merciless blue.
But he remembers all kinds of things. For instance, he remembers that the two hundredth and seventy fourth digit of pi is nine, he remembers that it took him six thousand five hundred and fifty six brush strokes to perfectly duplicate his former view of the womb, and he remembers that he liked the pecan pie he ate when he was one year four months five days six hours eight minutes nine seconds old.
Such things are only helpful for the purpose of distracting from the helpless past. He does not want to remember how Father smelled that time, one of the times he made Mother cry, that rancid sharpness of old vodka, or how Juliet once held his white fingers in her gold ones and told him not to play piano while she was watching her wrestling, crushing so hard that tears were squeezed from his eyes, or how the falling snow had disappeared into the green of the ground and how it had felt upon his face, futile points of sharpness, needles to sew the sky and land together but they break upon him and it didn’t seem right.
He doesn’t want to think of these things. That is why he has his numbers, periodic tables and variable star periods.
Mother does not have numbers.
She has a blue dress and she has her memories and that is too much for her. Sometimes she just sits in the tired grand chair by the window and watches the road, He’s coming, he said he’d bring me diamonds, I don’t want diamonds but I don’t tell him that, sometimes she walks through the garden with her flowers and she tells Butler what to grow, I want blue roses, can’t you get me blue roses?-what about black?, sometimes she lays in the center of the bed and she says she’s not going to wait any longer, He never comes, never could, it’s not his nature and I wouldn’t love him if he ever made me happy, that’s why he never comes, he loves me, sometimes she refuses food and drowns herself in water, or tries to but can’t because she’s less than human, she’s an animal and she wants to survive but she doesn't know that. When he has her stopped with numbered chemicals she curls into a blue ball that would not be moved, all the birds are gone because of you, please, they’re all flying away without me, please…
Most of it she makes to do with Father. She recalls his flaws with aching sharpness, and his traits with flippant clarity-and both with a tender resignation that makes him turn away and retreat into his numbers: one in three attempt suicide to escape Them, one in ten succeed and pass it on to their children-
-but when?
She’s sitting in her chair. Her face is to the window, the symmetry perfect: ghostly reflection and ghostly perception, looking inwards from a lush green world and looking outwards from a verdantly troubled conscience. She creates and she does not wish to create: she does not want to be God of her own lonely world in her head any more than she wants to be part of the lonely world of God, any more than she wants to wear her blue dress and sit by the window staring into horizons that are not the ones that he would see, unless-unless he were to look closer-
Their faces, father and son, so similar. He closes his eyes. She touches his face sometimes, and though she says nothing he can only draw away, pretend that her pain was the pain of a mother and not its reflection across an axis different than that of father and son.
Even with his eyes closed, he can see her: the world lacks all color but for her, how she sits there waiting for the world to end, she sits there and she’s wearing her blue dress, and it is the color of his eyes.
.
No, I'm not completely certain that the 274th digit of pi is 9.
I had some brilliant way to fix this and make it perfectly coherent that occurred to me about a day after I sent this off to FH. But then I couldn't find the time to fix it and I promptly forgot what it was that I was going to do to make it really click. As is... I think it's "getable" if you squint at it, most of it is in the diction and minute structural things, but... meh. Could be a lot better. I like the opening and the ending, but the middle is just not right. Wide open to concrit, as usual. Most of what I did was diction stuff anyway.
I sorta want to post a recording of this, because... it's more of an oral story, how the rhythm and the sounds work out. Dunno, though.
Oh; Angeline's characterization was vaguely inspired by Regina Spektor's song Lady, fuzzy saxophone and all. (It was more obvious in the first draft, which was about ten times longer and had flashback sequences and stuff. I sorta-kept some of them, but all they really did was take up space with descriptive writing to set moods, so. Plus... it sorta evolved. Which is a good thing.)
Lady lights a cigarette, puffs away, no regrets,
takes a look around, no regrets, no regrets.
Stretches out like branches of a poplar tree,
she says, I'm free,
sings so soft as if she'll break,
says, I can sing this song so blue
that you will cry in spite of you...
Little wet tears on your baby's shoulder...
Little wet tears on your baby's shoulder...
Symmetry.
He doesn’t like her blue dress. He never did, he’d much rather have it burned, replaced with something else, like periwinkle or lavender, something soft and warm and motherly. He remembers looking up from her limp arms and seeing her face, that catatonic-catastrophic blankness that belied the little wet tears that fell on his fat baby shoulders as he lay there, cradled in merciless blue.
But he remembers all kinds of things. For instance, he remembers that the two hundredth and seventy fourth digit of pi is nine, he remembers that it took him six thousand five hundred and fifty six brush strokes to perfectly duplicate his former view of the womb, and he remembers that he liked the pecan pie he ate when he was one year four months five days six hours eight minutes nine seconds old.
Such things are only helpful for the purpose of distracting from the helpless past. He does not want to remember how Father smelled that time, one of the times he made Mother cry, that rancid sharpness of old vodka, or how Juliet once held his white fingers in her gold ones and told him not to play piano while she was watching her wrestling, crushing so hard that tears were squeezed from his eyes, or how the falling snow had disappeared into the green of the ground and how it had felt upon his face, futile points of sharpness, needles to sew the sky and land together but they break upon him and it didn’t seem right.
He doesn’t want to think of these things. That is why he has his numbers, periodic tables and variable star periods.
Mother does not have numbers.
She has a blue dress and she has her memories and that is too much for her. Sometimes she just sits in the tired grand chair by the window and watches the road, He’s coming, he said he’d bring me diamonds, I don’t want diamonds but I don’t tell him that, sometimes she walks through the garden with her flowers and she tells Butler what to grow, I want blue roses, can’t you get me blue roses?-what about black?, sometimes she lays in the center of the bed and she says she’s not going to wait any longer, He never comes, never could, it’s not his nature and I wouldn’t love him if he ever made me happy, that’s why he never comes, he loves me, sometimes she refuses food and drowns herself in water, or tries to but can’t because she’s less than human, she’s an animal and she wants to survive but she doesn't know that. When he has her stopped with numbered chemicals she curls into a blue ball that would not be moved, all the birds are gone because of you, please, they’re all flying away without me, please…
Most of it she makes to do with Father. She recalls his flaws with aching sharpness, and his traits with flippant clarity-and both with a tender resignation that makes him turn away and retreat into his numbers: one in three attempt suicide to escape Them, one in ten succeed and pass it on to their children-
-but when?
She’s sitting in her chair. Her face is to the window, the symmetry perfect: ghostly reflection and ghostly perception, looking inwards from a lush green world and looking outwards from a verdantly troubled conscience. She creates and she does not wish to create: she does not want to be God of her own lonely world in her head any more than she wants to be part of the lonely world of God, any more than she wants to wear her blue dress and sit by the window staring into horizons that are not the ones that he would see, unless-unless he were to look closer-
Their faces, father and son, so similar. He closes his eyes. She touches his face sometimes, and though she says nothing he can only draw away, pretend that her pain was the pain of a mother and not its reflection across an axis different than that of father and son.
Even with his eyes closed, he can see her: the world lacks all color but for her, how she sits there waiting for the world to end, she sits there and she’s wearing her blue dress, and it is the color of his eyes.
.
No, I'm not completely certain that the 274th digit of pi is 9.
I had some brilliant way to fix this and make it perfectly coherent that occurred to me about a day after I sent this off to FH. But then I couldn't find the time to fix it and I promptly forgot what it was that I was going to do to make it really click. As is... I think it's "getable" if you squint at it, most of it is in the diction and minute structural things, but... meh. Could be a lot better. I like the opening and the ending, but the middle is just not right. Wide open to concrit, as usual. Most of what I did was diction stuff anyway.
I sorta want to post a recording of this, because... it's more of an oral story, how the rhythm and the sounds work out. Dunno, though.
Oh; Angeline's characterization was vaguely inspired by Regina Spektor's song Lady, fuzzy saxophone and all. (It was more obvious in the first draft, which was about ten times longer and had flashback sequences and stuff. I sorta-kept some of them, but all they really did was take up space with descriptive writing to set moods, so. Plus... it sorta evolved. Which is a good thing.)
Lady lights a cigarette, puffs away, no regrets,
takes a look around, no regrets, no regrets.
Stretches out like branches of a poplar tree,
she says, I'm free,
sings so soft as if she'll break,
says, I can sing this song so blue
that you will cry in spite of you...
Little wet tears on your baby's shoulder...
Little wet tears on your baby's shoulder...