is waif
CEMETERY SOULS/STAR MACHINE
Not a soul in the cemetery.
Ha, she thought, as she passed by the gravestones.
She knew she was surrounded by souls.
As a child she had pitied people who believed in ghosts.
These days she conceded they’d been right.
Ghosts were all around and that was just fine.
—
She was living in a new and less densely populated city when the pandemic struck.
“It’s easy to self quarantine when you don’t know anyone!” she’d joked to friends
back home.
In truth, she was relieved so many people were checking in on her and felt less
lonely with the pandemic afoot than she’d felt when she first moved.
“How are you doing?” her friends asked in that freighted way people ask when they
already know the answer.
“I’m actually ok!”
And in strange ways she really was.
“You’ve been through so much...and now this,” they pointed out.
She couldn’t disagree on that count.
She rounded a bend of the cemetery’s path.
She’d only passed two other humans this morning.
One had said hello, one had not.
It was hard to tell what was six feet.
On a somewhat narrow sideway she’d seen one stranger’s exhale in the air as she’d
approached. The way that happens in winter, like a puff of smoke. And she’d
proceeded to run right through it because even with the pandemic it was a busy
road.
“As a child she had pitied people who believed in ghosts. These days she conceded they’d been right.”
It was nearly the end of winter where she now was.
Well, technically it was spring, but her new city was seasonally behind her old city.
(Artistically too.)
She missed her old city but was glad to not be there now.
Her friends seemed really wigged out.
Her stomach hurt less today, which she realized half-way through her jaunt.
She didn’t call these outings “jogs.”
And she certainly did not call them “runs.”
Her fashion sensibilities didn’t jive with serious exercisers.
(She didn’t own Lycra or see-through spandex.)
Her jaunt outfits were perhaps her most bohemian “lewks.”
Today’s ensemble included a pair of Nike “running” shoes, a pair of socks she’d
owned since the sixth grade, leggings she’d purchased from Kmart—which her
sister had once mistaken for being from Everlane. Layered over the black leggings
were a pair of gray “booty” shorts, which had been purchased with her mother at
Marshall’s one summer back when she was still a virgin, an old and tattered Muji
striped shirt her sister had given her for Christmas some 10 years ago, a sweatshirt
she loved dearly that she’d bought in high school at an old thrift shop, a pair of dark
brown workman’s leather gloves that had a hole or two, a tissue tucked up the
sweatshirt sleeve for eventual congestion, a baseball hat from the city she’d grown
up in.
Yes, to her this felt very bohemian indeed.
Her ex had loved the word “bohemian.”
She thought of him now.
He had recently informed her over text message that he’d lost 25 pounds in the
quarantine. She remembered fondly his loose relationship to numbers and was
having difficulty imagining him toned and sculpted. She mildly resented how,
whoever was with him next, would get a better version of him.
She’d texted her sister about her ex’s weight loss and her sister had replied:
“Did you ask him if he’s looked more deeply at his addictions?”
(Her sister was fierce.)
Her sister had visited her in the new city before the pandemic.
Her sister was allergic to nostalgia.
She didn’t just burn bridges; she torched them.
She was somewhat envious of this, though, as “Yoga with Adriene” on YouTube had
taught her in recent days—yoga isn’t about becoming some other person. You’re
already you. And you are enough.
She accepted her nostalgia as a sort of life’s project. In this way, she was an eternal
teen. Big Mood. Though, she still wished her hamstrings were more open. So she
knew she would never be full Yoga.
In any case, her sister’s gale force enthusiasm for the new city she was living in had
had a lasting and salubrious effect on her psyche.
And for this she was grateful.
—
In the cemetery the cardinals were chirping and between the lone car or two that
passed on the road that had once been busy you could even hear waves.
She was living near a body of water that had at first creeped her out because it
wasn’t an ocean but was growing on her immensely with every passing day.
She wondered how people were getting by who didn’t live near bodies of water
during all of this.
Approaching the cemetery exit she passed by a pair of pink fuzzy socks, the kind
they sell at the register at CVS. They lay crumpled on the edge of the cemetery grass
and cement cemetery path. She wondered what the story behind those was.
The sirens were moaning in the distance.
Not a soul in the cemetery.
The cemetery abutted a number of residential apartment buildings and the sound of
hammering came from them.
Surely all hammering not in service of building temporary hospital beds is
unessential! she thought and remembered how she wanted to hang two framed art
prints in her new apartment, which would require a hammer.
She thought of the make shift hospital tent images she’d seen in her old city.
Two days ago, on an early morning bicycle return from the grocery store while
wearing a homemade mask she’d fashioned out of stained handkerchiefs, an old
sock, binder clips, and hair ties, her bag precariously nestled in a basket, she’d been
horrified to see through her rain bespectled glasses, that landscapers were doling
out mulch on the lawns of mansions she passed on Lakeshore Boulevard.
Surely mulch is not essential!, she had seethed.
And as she began the new cleaning precautions upon getting home she considered
spinning her outrage into social media content but got distracted with a snack.
—
Of late she gave a lot of thought to real estate, as a sort of escape from the sirens.
The real estate in her new city, suburb of a city really, was quite lovely to gaze at.
A balm for afternoon walks.
The best apartment she’d seen yet had belonged a Bulgarian warlord. Well, not a
warlord, really, but he was definitely dangerous.
Could she be really the mistress of a person who lived in such an absurd apartment?
One that resembled that of a nouveau riche Russian oligarch? Frosted vaunted
ceilings and all?
She and the warlord had FaceTimed the previous night and it had been good.
They’d had three pre-pandemic dates—technically the third date had been after all
the restaurants had closed, which felt slightly reckless, but they had not yet slept
with each other, though he’d been vocal in requesting this.
She now slightly rued not having taken him up on the offer when there’d been the
chance. It was two and half weeks since she’d last been touched by another human,
him, but she knew it had been right to abstain.
She was moderate after all.
Regular and orderly in her ordinary life, so that violence and originality could erupt
in her artistic toils!!! Or something like that. (She wasn’t so interested in violence.)
Communication between her and the warlord had waned after their third date.
This was in part because he believed he had been exposed to the virus, but had told
her in a weird and puzzling way over a text message.
On FaceTime, after they had joked a sufficient and maniacal amount in the way that
new couples can, talk had turned to the pandemic.
She’d asked if she could give him a bit of “feedback.”
“Next time you’re in a pandemic and have gone on three dates with someone don’t
tell them over text that you’ve maybe been exposed to the virus but frame it as a
spat with your ex about seeing your kids.”
“What??? Oh my god. I had no idea you were so concerned!” He seemed genuinely
apologetic. He explained how he didn’t actually know the co-worker who had tested
positive. The news for him was tantamount to being told, “Someone in your city has
the virus.” It all made sense to her now in his rush of words but none of this had
been clear from his text. And it felt like too huge a topic to even broach over text so
she’d given it a wide berth.
“So you’re shy,” he’d said.
They returned to maniacal jokes but FaceTime was on the fritz, and when they
switched to just phone she decided to ask a more serious question.
“So. What are your vulnerabilities? You must have a few—you’re human.”
And he had talked about how people either like him or don’t like him and that he’d
wished people who didn’t like him didn’t have to be around him, and she’d sensed
there was a lot more to this—and wanted to know who didn’t like him and all the
ways in life which he had been wounded—but she knew she had to leave this for
another time.
He asked her how she was vulnerable.
She paused. She didn’t know how to answer.
“I guess I am just a vulnerable person,” she eventually said.
“But this shouldn’t be confused with ‘victim.’ I think these can get muddled a lot.”
He agreed with her.
“But I am also pretty confident,” she added.
He said, “Do you know what a unique combination that is for a human being to
have? To be both vulnerable and confident?”
“No, but I think it’s pretty unique I am wearing snoopy pants!”
She’d laughed at this joke, and he did not.
And in his silence she had felt special.
—
But he was complicated. And drank a lot. And had two kids from a previous
marriage and wasn’t yet divorced. And his fame—well fame in his field of applied
mathematics—was also something to pay attention to.
(And for the record, he wasn’t a warlord, not at all, calling him a warlord was just to
signal that he was trouble and would probably break her heart. Was it problematic
to call him a warlord? Yes. Was she about to stop? No.)
Her ex had also contended with a kind of fame.
In fact, recently one his fans had written a comment on her Instagram account—
she’d been too blasé to ever bother with a private account, and was secretly
interested in fame though she would never *ever* admit this. In her own way she
was an open book and hadn’t cared who saw what of her life, and so hadn’t minded
her ex’s fans following her in order to catch glimpses of him. Though she never
knew what to do with the painfully earnest comments they sometimes put under
silly photos.
A few days ago a fan had written: “I hope you and Toby are doing well!!!” followed
by a little heart emoji.
This annoyed her at first.
And then it didn’t.
It was one of the many structural errors that had been at play in the relationship.
At first she had wanted to say “Hey @StarryNiteLite123 have you given any thought
to why Toby hasn’t appeared in any of my photos from the past nine months?”
She passed by a cop car where the police officer didn’t look up from phone scrolling.
No hello from him.
She now imagined writing back to the fan a private message—a DM if you will.
“Toby left me over the summer. In the fall we spiritually divorced. We are still
technically married, and sometimes a teeny tiny part of me still wonders if we have
really reached our end. But I also know we have. I didn’t want to broadcast this over
Instagram and am telling you in a private DM so that perhaps you could let Toby’s
other fans know in a discreet way about our status, since this is obviously very
painful for me and likely for Toby too. And it’s a bit awkward to have his fans
commenting on my pictures now that we aren’t together. Unless you're my fans too,
lol. Anyway, thanks and I hope you are living your best #PandemicLyfe.”
She wouldn't send that private message though she wanted to.
She dodged an aggressive pit-bull and its owner and crossed the street into the
alleyway behind her apartment where she passed a dumpster.
Next to it lay a discarded cardboard box advertising a telescope.
She imagined a little kid using it out of an apartment window with a kindly dad.
We need astronomy now more than weather, she thought.
She thought of the “star machine” she and her husband had been gifted for their
wedding.
It was strange and circular, a plastic objet d’art, which, when turned on in a dark
room, projected the night sky onto a ceiling.
You could choose a setting to make the night sky rotate very slowly.
She had used it once in one of her projects that her ex hadn’t been able to see.
He now had the machine.
At least she still had stars.