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(Milliways. No time, No place. Alba is 24.)

Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Time measured by the hands of clocks, by the sinking shadows of a setting sun, by the days crossed off in angry red strokes on a calendar's page. She was normally so good at telling it (never at keeping it -- it slips past her, always) until she lost count of how many days she had been bound.

That word feels like iron (heavier than responsibility to the woman who always runs away to elsewheres and elsewhens) shackling her.

Bound.

She doesn't know why.

The physical time (days) and psychological time (it feels like years) drag on so--

s l o w l y

--that she doesn't bother going downstairs into the common room of the bar.

She leaves her room. She goes to the library.

She leaves the library. She goes to her room.

Ten days pass like this.

She feels so heavy (although she can tell that she is not: her eyes are bleary and dark from lack of sleep and her skin feels papery, her throat dry) and she realizes that being able to escape time (no other word describes this --) is itself a kind of sustenance, a kind of recreation. Her capacity for temporal endurance is inherent, and it reminds her (all too keenly) of those numb years between sixteen and twenty.

When she agreed to the therapy.

(Milliways. No time, No place. Alba is 24.)

She's sitting in a train compartment.

It's old but well-kept. The burgundy seats are plush and firm. There are overhead racks to keep personal possessions from underfoot and allows all six seats to be occupied. It's comfortable, organized, and feels just like a train going to Paris should feel: timeless.

Sitting across from her is a (dark-haired, with a dramatic face: a full mouth, wide eyes, and short hair) woman (Annette Lyn Robinson) her grandmother. She smiles, and grandmother Annette smiles back.

Alba has memories of her, as a child she traveled to watch her sing Madama Butterfly at Lincoln Center. Up close, she is so much more of a person, so vivid and so real, and the familial resemblance is (however slight -- Alba feels it's like comparing the original to a plagiarized copy) there. Before she has the time to laugh at the suddenness, to say something, to ask why --

(it's him)

--he's sitting next to grandmother (his great-grandmother) Annette, this (towheaded, with sharp green eyes and a chipped-tooth evident in his smile, looks less of her and more of someone else) boy who will never (she saw to that - Alba changed her future in the only way she knew how) be. He is holding something in his hand, a toy, that he holds out for Alba to take.

It's a red checker piece.

"Fire before smoke, right?" She asks him.

The boy grins, and nods in the positive.

(It's a house rule - contrary to the standard.)

"What's your--"

He stops her, shaking his head.

"Oh, okay."

It doesn't make any sense to ask his name.

Instead, they play a game of checkers.

The trains sways gently on the track. Back and forth. Back and forth. She runs the checker piece over her knuckles. The movement is lulling, irresistible. After that, she doesn't talk, she listens to them talking. Laughing over inconsequential things. She gazes out the window at fields and forests and small towns that go speeding by. To talk would be to ruin time. Their time. She understands that.

The lack of words aside, she is deeply content.

They already share a common language, after all.

["So, my room will have to do."]

Alba unlocks the door with the

etched onto the brass plate and steps in first, tidying up as she goes, "Don't mind the mess. I can pick it up as I go. Always do."

It's mostly clothes that get scooped up and tossed into the white-washed wooden wardrobe. She closes the door to it with a bump of her hip, tosses the key onto her desk, and arranges the books into a neat stack. An odd assortment of subjects: from Norse mythology to quantum theory.

She couldn't care less about the bed -- it's big, plush, and with all of the piled pillows and duvets looks just perfect all tousled up -- it makes no sense to her in making something you sleep in night after night, anyway.

(September, 2024. Alba is 23.)

On the autumnal equinox, they curl up together on a quilt in the dining room, because Alba hasn't bought a proper table.

(One is a dove; a glorified pigeon. Heartbroken girl. One is a false dawn; lying with a smile. Rebound girl.)

"It's your turn now. Truth. Would you leave?"

"Maybe, I--" the answer hovers over her tongue.

"Wait. You've got juice staining your cheeks. It looks like. . ."

Alba offers lazily, "Blood?"

"No, blush," a tan and slender (far more delicate than her own, she thinks, like the bones of a bird) hand touches her chin.

(yielding foolishly to the urge, reckless and feckless woman)

One daring and one curious, takes a kiss for a pomegranate. A bite for an apple. The rules of the game all sound the same in a gasp or a whisper - and hint of darker things. Alba calls her name, Paloma, sweetly to counter the tang of grenadine and cider. She falls asleep listening to the feathery sigh of her breathing.

If she answered, she would have barely smiled and said:

Remember it was six seeds that separated them. It was her choice. I suppose that she forgot that you need to let go of what you love the most to have that chance to return.

Or not.

According to this:

Snake

Philosophical, wise , calm and understanding, though often fickle or self-indulgent. Elegant to the point of being ostentatious. Can behave selfishly if crossed. A Snake lady is also charming in personality and elegant in dress. She is receptive and a deep thinker and likes to judge by intuition. She is fortunate in wealth through her life.

Philosopher, theologian, political wizard, wily financier - the Snake person is the deepest thinker and enigma of the Chinese cycle. She is endowed with an inborn wisdom of his very own; a mystic in her own right. Graceful and soft-spoken, she loves good books, food, music, the theater; she will gravitate toward all the finer things in life.

A person of this sign generally relies on her own judgment and does not communicate well with others. She can deeply religious or psychic, or on the other hand, totally hedonistic. Either way, he trusts his own vibrations rather than outside advice. More often than not. . .she will be right.

Metal:

This type of Snake will be gifted with a calculating, intelligent mind and forceful willpower. Armed with discriminating tastes and a keen eye for locating opportunity, this Snake person can be a scheming loner. She likes to move quickly and quietly. She will establish himself in a solid position before you have a chance to stop him.

Metal combined with her native sign will make her crave luxury and easy living. Thus, she will devote himself to the pursuit of wealth and power. Her vision is clear and farsighted and he will aspire to the best of everything.

The Metal Snake is also by far the most secretive, evasive and overconfident. Consequently, she often suspects others of hidden motives -- sometimes to the point of paranoia.

In spite of her ability to wield power and influence, this Snake will have an envious streak in her and will try constantly to outdo the opposition, either by fair means or foul. She finds it hard to ever accept defeat or failure.

Possessive, domineering and, at times, strangely uncommunicative, she will mark out his path early in life and stick to it with dedication. She can be generous and cooperative with others, but always in a guarded sort of way.

And according to the Greek zodiac, she is a Virgo. Which doesn't fit her personality at all.

(October 11, 2023. Alba is 22 and 15.)

"We danced away all of the lights. We've always been out of our minds. We're rain dogs."

"What does that mean?"

An older Alba, with her foot elevated on the arm of the couch, explains to an Alba that is eating pear cobbler leftovers with burnt caramel ice cream.

(like a dog caught in the rain -- with her trail washed away by the water -- who wants nothing better than to get home)

"I want to know where I belong. . ."

* * *

(November 18, 2023. Chicago, Illinois. Alba is 22.)

In the time it takes broken (hearts) bones to heal, she tries again.

(October 11, 1977

She's too late.

He has a stranger's face.
He has her eyes.
)

* * *

We lie on the flat futon mattress and watch the popcorn ceiling sky and the glow-in-the-dark constellations we created. I become the cartographer. You were the undiscovered country. By the light of those stars, I discover and map your body until it's as familiar to me as the freckles on my arms.

I move into that one-bedroom garage apartment. The one I couldn't really afford on a bookseller's salary -- but we like it because it was so close to those houses resting on those sloping streets. Houses that we drove past at two o'clock in the morning. Made up stories for ourselves in those homes, what colors I would paint and what things you'd build.

(you with your strong hands that didn't balk when you sliced your thumb moving the fridge -- you still played)

Me, and the cold feet that I curl against your legs at night. Trying to curl up against your back. So close until I was your inhaled breath. Vital. Migrating in your veins with oxygen. I'm sorry that you'll be waiting for me to come back -- I can't keep making you do that. You'll be wondering where I'll show up next, and in what condition. You'll be wondering what happens when I don't come back at all.

For now, all I am is an indent in a pillow.

A cool wall.

A goodbye note on a yellow napkin.

* * *

Peter,

You were different. I liked you.

I'm so sorry.

Alba

(October 11, 1977. Alba is 22)

It's a 1975 Cadillac DeVille. Dark green.

-- shortly before 11 p.m. Wednesday near the junction of--

(So many details are wrong. It's Tuesday. It's five minutes 'til. Or less. Couldn't find a watch. Didn't ask for the time. Only the clothes stolen from the trunk of a parked car. Layered and ill-fitting. Barefoot.)

Four hundred and ninety-nine point eighty-eight cubic inch, eight cylinder engine.

One hundred and eighty horsepower.

(When it happens --

She can immediately tell he's like her.

It's his first time, traveling.

His first time-traveling.

Like her.

In his hand, he's holding something.

Not like her.

She needs to stop this.

Needs to run nownownow--

She runs.)

Five thousand and forty-eight point six pounds of ignored traffic signal.

-- 10-year-old boy was struck by a car when he appeared in the middle of the road south of --

(Her feet burn. Her scream is strangled. She can't see him.

She disappears.)

--witnesses report that the driver was southbound when the boy was in the road. The woman was unable to avoid hitting the boy. The boy's condition is unknown because the first responders could not locate--

(It all happens so fast.)

(October 8, 2023. Chicago, Illinois. Alba is 22.)

She drops back into the dazzling blue-white light of midday, bleeding on the bone-colored wool rug in her boyfriend's dining room. The air in the apartment is warm and heavy with citrus and pears - the cobbler's still baking and the timer hasn't gone off.

She was gone for ten minutes.

She swallows, hard. Scrambling to her knees and avoiding any direct eye contact with her own feet. Quietly, her voice sounding so small to her own ears:

". . .Peter?"

There's the familiar (heavy footfall from the kitchen, the bedhead tousle of sandy-colored hair, the hawkish nose, the gravel-rough voice, her baking cellist) return of her call,

"Alba. Oh, damn it, Alba."

No scrambling, no dropping of dishes, no shattering glasses. Simply there. Warm, safe, and comforted. He's already waiting for her. He is so used to it. He shouldn't be so calm and methodical. She shouldn't cry. She should want him here. She bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes copper. She lets him pick her up and carry her into the bathroom.

He will apply antiseptic and pick out tiny slivers of glass and gravel with a pair of tweezers.

He will bandage her broken toes together.

He will kiss that place on the apple of her cheek where it tastes of salt and thumb the tears from her eyes.

(The scent of lemon peel and clove spice lingers.)

"I'll have to try again. . ."

"I can't take this happening again. . ."

Soon. She knows that she leaves him.

(It's what she wants to hear.

She closes her eyes.)

(August 2021. Alba is 20)

He speaks of outdated ideals and antiquated love affairs and letters written on violet-scented paper, and the rain beads up on his hair and trails down his neck. The chalky cotton shirt looks as waterlogged as he does. Soaked through to the skin and shivering. He starts to walk again and turns to me and says,

"Every now and then, one must be nostalgic about the days when a stamp cost forty-six cents."

* * *

"Peter, how is it that you can tell me you'll catch me when I fall," and she kissed him on the mouth.

(Bitten red with resentment and the burn of cinnamon gum.)

She was gone before he could react, and he watched her shadow lengthen across the sidewalk.

"When you expect me to give you the net?"

Death is a distant rumor to the young.

- Andrew A. Rooney

(August, 2011. Henry is 5, Alba is 10)

She was a few years older than Henry and had dark hair in wavy curls. Her smile was a little sad.

(She reminded Henry of his mother.)

When she arrived, she knelt down and settled her blanket over his shoulders, and delicately wiped the tears from little Henry's face.

"Sh," she soothed, "What's your name?"

Henry's chin quivered when he told her his name, but once he spoke he sobbed and the tears flowed freely. The fact that he was forced to form the words choked him up and his tears doubled in force, cutting him off.

". . .You can cry. If you want to, you can tell me what's the matter."

"I miss my mother," Henry was finally able to say. ". . .my father. . .I don't know where I am."

She stood and offered him her hand, to help him up, and Henry curled up in the bed beside Alba. He cried until he was exhausted.

"What's your name?"

"My name is Alba," she said.

"You aren't--"

"No. You don't ever have to be sorry about missing your family, Henry."

(We miss you too.)

(10 minutes later)

"Mama?"

Clare's heart lept, and she left her bed in a tumble of tangled red-gold hair and red-rimmed eyes,

"What is it, baby?"

"Daddy. . ."

Alba's cry was smothered, hidden in the blanket that still held the smell of burnt things.

"Tell me about your father."

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
-Hal Borland.

(Chicago, Illinois. May, 2025. Alba is 8 and 16 and 24.)

From here.

From here.

From here.

It's hard to keep track of them.

The groom's side (two daughters and one son, with four grandchildren among them – including a set of twins) do not ask any of the other reception guests why their father's new bride, one Clare Young née Abshire, has three lookalike daughters when their father had informed them that she only had one.

(Gomez smirks and says nothing.)

After the first half hour of the party, it hardly even matters.

Everyone comments amongst themselves (she is dazzling, isn't she? she has her light back, surely. after all these years it's about time she's moved on with her life--) and compliment the new couple with smiles, handshakes, and airy kisses to either cheek. There are toasts to health, happiness, and love ever-enduring over any and all obstacles.

(Gomez raises his glass and says nothing.)

Charisse performs a poetry piece for her best friend, told entirely in binary code and a few dead languages that leaves everyone (excluding Clare, Alba, and her husband Gomez) scratching their heads in confusion. Clare assure them that Charisse means well, has always meant well, and they hug tightly at the end.

(Gomez still says nothing.)

* * *

Clare doesn't wear white.

It's an antiqued ivory dress with a little bit of lace trim at the sleeves. Alba had removed the lace from one of grandmother Anne's handkerchiefs and a tiny line of pearl buttons down the back that Mrs. Kim had given Alba to add. She's wearing a pair of pale peach pearl drop earrings and a bracelet borrowed from Charisse and there is a blue bird that little Alba had cut out of paper and put into Clare's right shoe.

Something old,
something new
something borrowed
and something blue.

Alba (in all ages) thought her mother's never looked any more beautiful than she does right now.

* * *

One Alba (16, in those hideous high-tops and that royal blue nightmare) vanishes before the reception.

One Alba (not-8, in yellow and pink) is halfway through her apple juice before she falls asleep and vanishes.

The last Alba (in emerald green and pointy-toed shoes) stays and dances and dances and dances until the music ends and her mother's packed off to Barcelona with David for two weeks.

Then, she disappears.

* * *

(May, 1989. Henry is 41. Alba is 24.)

She spies her father down the hill from Meadowlark house, in the field, waiting.

She dresses (she keeps clothes hidden in the gardening shed) and runs down to meet him.

Under the shade of the tall, tall grass she tells him what today was.

She dreams of getting lost.

In a place that's neither here nor there -- but caught in between where the darkness is icy sharp, and the blackness is a tangible mass -- and she dreams about this darkness possessing her and stealing her away.

She usually wakes up from this thrashing, teeth clenched, and in a cold sweat.

(She doesn't sleep much.)

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

(New York, New York. July 1994. Alba is 16.)

She doesn't know where she is right now.

She's light-headed, listening to the drone of the crowd, shoved against the graffiti-covered wall in a hazy place that's more fire hazard than a club. It's overbearingly hot and smells like stale sweat and cigarette smoke. Dimly lit except for the spotlights that flood the stage -- and she stares until there are bright spots floating in front of her eyes -- lights from the flashes of disposable cameras. There's a grungy man with blond hair and torn jeans that keeps snatching all of them within arm's reach, stomping them beneath his boot-heels until they cameras explode, tiny pieces of plastic flying out across the stage. The audience seems to approve of this and raucously spur him on.

When the show starts, she sees the same blond man suspended six inches from the ground.

She squints, pushes her way through the audience, and tries to see if it's a real straitjacket that he's strapped into.

(She doesn't know the difference.)

--And she disappears before he makes the escape.

* * *

(Atlantic City, New Jersey. May, 1960. Alba is 9 and 24.)

They sit on the Boardwalk facing the beach.

"Is she happy?"

"Yes, very happy."

"Good. You need to let Mama be happy. She's so sad. I heard her crying."

"I know."

Under the shade of an striped umbrella-topped table in mismatching clothes that they stole from matching red leather luggage from the room of a hotel. Monogrammed: E.A.L. (Elizabeth Anne Ladwig. Older Alba leaves her money to cover the cost and little Alba writes an apology.) They wait, playing checkers until a waiter comes by to take their order: one chocolate malted and one egg cream. After that, they both turn and watch the waves rolling in.

"Have you seen Dad?"

"Yes, I've seen Daddy a lot."

"What does he say?"

"He's teaching me how to take a wallet without anybody noticing."

"I remember that. Those were fun times."

Older Alba finishes her egg cream and flickers her fingers to wave just before her younger self giggles, vanishes.

It's past her bedtime.

(She'll still have sand between her toes when she wakes up for school the next morning.)

Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities?
What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down
on the north wind in September, acres of birds spotting the air going south?
Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?
-Carl Sandburg

* * *

(Chicago, Illinois. September 22, 2024 Alba is 23. Clare is 53.)

In the social sciences section of Sandmeyer's Bookstore (on Dearborn Street and just down from the bistro where she eats lunch on Fridays) she removes an Oxford English dictionary that's been hurriedly shoved in between Scams and Sweethearts: A Sociological Study of Fraud and Mr. White-Collar. She tips sideways on the step-stool, tries to regain her equilibrium, and the book slips out of her hands --

She kneels down to pick it up, eyes catching one very particular definition:

terra alba: n.

1. Finely pulverized gypsum used in making paper and paints and as a nutrient for growing yeast.
2. Kaolin.

[New Latin : Latin terra, earth + Latin alba, feminine of albus, white.]

Her coworkers don't ask what makes Alba smile throughout that entire morning shift.

When your past knows about your future, everything around you is subtext.

* * *

We meet for dinner at Violette's at eight.

She says it's important.

There's an increased gravity in the request that is lacking from her usual invitations, so I know I have to go.

So we sit here, silent behind leather-bound menus. I don't ask her to translate the French anymore, the way she did years ago. Now I know what canard aux pommes and sorbet citron vert are. She asks what I recommend. "Try the bouillabaisse, I tease, and she laughs. The last time we were here, I offered her some of my seafood soup because it had saffron in it and she told me, "It takes 225,000 hand-picked stigmas from the saffron crocus to make a single pound."

(Three years ago I told myself: The world's most expensive spice was nothing more than the reproductive organs of a female flower.

I liked the sound of that.)

We started to talk the same old talk, of that parental familiarity that's taken years to develop from that of mother to friend -- until she reached the point of the topic, reaching the cusp of what she wanted to say -- that she was thinking about getting married again. It slipped away from me. The tone that I didn't mean, the harshly asked: "What? Are you serious?"

I never expected my mother to be like Penelope; imprisoning herself at Ithaca, waiting faithfully until (her) Odysseus returned from sea. He never would. (Not until the end. He told me so himself when I was ten.) I remember that she'd was accepting invitations to college theater productions, gallery openings, birthday parties, and a niece's graduation. It was a seamless transition from friends to more -- I didn't mind that they were dating. He was a nice guy. This photographer, David.

I didn't want him to marry her.

It's like being a ghost and watching someone else living life.

I didn't want --

(Listen. David is a nice guy.

He's not the one I'm going to call Dad.)

In this way, it's self-exile.

No, no, no.

I overreact. Childishly so. Flipping the menu closed and throwing it down on the table, already pushing away to escape the situation. My first thought it to hide in the bathroom until it passes. I can't hear her calling me back to the table, I try to -- all I hear is the white noise rush of the blood pounding in my own ears -- the same sound you hear when you hold an empty seashell up to your ear.

My footsteps echo on the tile of the bathroom, a desperate tarantella.

(not here, not now)

I don't get any farther than the sink when I vanish.

* * *

(Chicago, Illinois. September 25, 2024 Alba is 23.)

When I return, it's dark.

The marble tiles feel like ice under my body. I feel sick to my stomach. Dry-heaving produces nothing but a dry throat and the bitter taste of bile at the back of my tongue.

Later, I learn that I was gone for three days.

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Page generated Sep. 16th, 2026 02:38 am

world enough and time --

I'll try to keep it forever.

Recent Entries

a fine and private place

Conversations with Dead People

[milliways-ish]

and to her lips, say nothing --

[out-of-character: oh, the horoscope]

raindogs

notes

to break your fall

falling without a net

a distant rumor

changing of seasons

dreams and nightmares

this time, like all times

something finished, something new

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November 2010

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