The Color of Home: A Novel (8 page)

On her way home, she stopped at The All-Star Sandwich Bar. All of her questions had made her super hungry. Inside, she surveyed the ten almost-full tables; an eclectic, affordable menu written on a chalkboard; and a number of cute waiters. She slipped into the last free table next to an older woman with beautiful, long gray hair, wearing no make-up, and perfectly dressed in shades of purple. Would Sassa look that good when she was that age?

The woman was engrossed in a book Sassa didn’t recognize, with the word
forgetting
as part of the title. Without thinking, Sassa blurted out, “Any answers in that book?” She followed with a smile.

The woman looked up from her book.

“Sorry. I’m not as good at small talk as I used to be.”

The woman nodded, and angled slightly toward Sassa. “Have you ever tried the French fries here? They’re fantastic!”

“No.”

“Have you tried the East Coast Grill next door? Excellent.”

“No.”

“Same owner. Great chef.”

“Cool. Expensive?”

“Not too bad.” The woman appeared to gather her thoughts. “All books have some answers. I guess it depends on the questions.”

Sassa nodded slowly. She felt a strange affinity toward the woman, like a granddaughter might have with a grandmother. Her grandmother had died when she was very young and Sassa didn’t remember her, but that somehow strengthened the feeling. “Can I ask another question?”

“Sure.”

“There’s so much broken in the world these days; how can any of us be anything but overwhelmed? Things seem hopeless.”

The woman closed her book. About to speak, she cleared the phlegm out of her throat with a sip of iced tea.

The waiter approached Sassa. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a veggie Cubano sandwich, an Arnold Palmer, and some of your famous fries.” She glanced over at the woman.

“Very good.” The waiter turned to the woman. “Anything else for you, ma’am?”

“I’m good, thank you,” the woman said. Loosely folding her hands on the table, she returned to Sassa. Her eyes sparkled shades of blue. “That’s a deep question. What’s your name, love?”

“Sassa.”

“Linnéa. With so much broken, there’s a lot of potential.”

Potential. How could there be potential when she didn’t have a clue where to start? She’d been spinning all day, and didn’t see a way out. Early in their relationship, Nick had taught her how to flip a spin out. When she had some problem at work, with a friend, with him, and was stuck and spinning in a negative place, he would say, Sassa, you thought so-and-so would never do that to you, but they did. That means anything is possible. What a gift they gave you! Flip it and find the positive. Anger flipped to compassion. Hurt to understanding. Fear to bliss. Grasping to letting go. It had worked every time. But this one was the whole world. How do you flip the whole world? “You think?”

Linnéa reached over and gently squeezed Sassa’s forearm. “The world is more divided now than at any time in my adult life, and I’ve been around for almost seventy years. Something’s gotta change.”

“You look great.”

“Thank you. I looked something like you when I was young, but that was a long time ago. Are you Scandinavian?”

“Vikander.”

“Ahh, Andersen. Anyway, if we all work together, we might find a way forward.”

“It’s hard to find ‘we.’”

“Always hard out on the edge.”

“The path of most resistance.”

Linnéa nodded. “That’s a good name.”

“My mom.”

“Wise woman. You’re very lucky.”

Sassa nodded. She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and placed it across her lap, spending a few seconds adjusting it so it was just right. She sipped her Arnold Palmer, which for some reason reminded her of her mom’s citrusade. Luck? She could use more. Then again, maybe her mom had already given her the only tool she would ever need, the path of most resistance. If she followed it, did she need luck?

“It may take a few generations, and I can see how you might be overwhelmed, but for me, doing my small part is enough. You have to be okay with the long view, though.”

“What’s the long view?”

“It means big change takes a lot of time and people, that’s all. It might take one hundred years and millions of committed souls to bring about what we’re talking about.”

Sassa sighed. “I’m not so patient.”

“Most people aren’t.”

“Isn’t there a simpler way?”

“I don’t think so.”

Could that be the answer? One small step at a time, with an unwavering belief that things would change in the long run. It was too simple. Who made up the rule that life should be hard anyway? That there was a cost to bliss? “One more question: how do you know what helps the most?”

“That’s the thing. There are so many places to help that almost anything works as long as what you do has heart.”

“Really?”

“You could be the first female president or own a local restaurant like this. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re living your life in a way that advances toward a better place, toward the long view.”

The waiter delivered Sassa’s lunch. She sampled the fries. “Amazing! Want some?”

“One or two.” Linnéa reached across and grabbed a couple. Then she did it again.

“Can you see the long view?”

“I don’t know. It has something to do with more compassion, more love, more truth.”

Sassa’s throat grew thick. “You remind me of someone.”

“In a good way, I hope.”

“Yes.”

She ate while she continued talking with Linnéa on lighter topics. The benefits of elegant clothing. Good, cheap restaurants in the area. Free lectures all around the Square. After lunch, they exchanged contact information. Sassa left the restaurant exhausted, and slowly walked the remaining mile home. She entered her apartment full.

An hour later she stepped out again, retracing an old path from one of her first walks. She ambled down Brattle and looped onto Garden Street toward Harvard Yard. Passing the Old Burying Ground, the oldest cemetery in Cambridge, she surveyed the uniform 300-hundred-year-old scalloped slate tombstones, which marked Harvard presidents and Cambridge paupers equally. Arms raised signaling a driver to halt, she raced across Garden Street, blowing the driver a kiss midway.

Once inside Cambridge Common, she passed by a monument of a man, arm outstretched, hand open, reaching out to a girl sitting on a stoop. The inscription on the granite: “Never again should a people starve in a world of plenty.” She nodded. She walked down the row of maples toward the playground. Leaning on the playground gate, she watched boys and girls in vibrant summer colors play inside. She opened the gate, entered the playground, and climbed up on the large wooden dragon, where she could see everything. On a swing set in the corner, a boy pushed a girl higher and higher until the girl jumped off at the peak, flew for a second, then stuck the landing in the sand.

The dream visited Nick often. He stood in a room alone. The room was empty, except for a small unshaded lamp on the floor and an unusual red door with the letter M tiled on it. He didn’t recognize the room, but somehow knew that it had been part of his life for a long time.

After a few minutes, Sassa entered, naked. Pressing one foot against the wall, she leaned back. “I love you. I know the truth about you.”

He smiled.

“I know you better than anyone.” She pushed off the wall and glided closer. “I now know what it means to surrender completely to another person, and after years of not being able to connect with anyone, I’m ready to give myself to you with no masks.”

He reached out to take her hand.

No longer naked, wearing a stained DiPosto chef’s jacket, Sassa grasped his hand.

A current ran up his arm. A sign. A warning. He tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let go. What was happening?

“I’ve met someone else,” she said.

“You what?”

“I’ve met someone else.”

The room morphed into a giant snowdrift and went arctic. He started to shake uncontrollably. He never thought he would hear those words from her. Never. The red door opened. “Do you love him?”

“Yes. I need to let the affair play out. I need to leave our room and see where things go. Don’t worry, yours is still the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

“Fuck you.” He snapped away from her, dashed to the red door, and stepped inside. The floor gave way and he plummeted down a dark shaft for a long time. As he fell, the sickness in his stomach grew. Who was he? How could she? Palms outstretched, he braced for impact. Whomp! Hundreds of steel marbles spewed out of his shattered arms, and he screamed, “Fuck her.”

Time cut forward. The pain subsided, replaced by a cramped feeling. Stuffed in a high school classroom seat, he struggled to acclimate. Ms. Davis, his tenth-grade science teacher, dawned at the front of the room as pretty as Nick remembered her, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing thick black sixties glasses, and a tight, short black dress.

“You failed, Nick.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” His voice was barely audible.

“You weren’t who I thought you were. You didn’t fight for me. You were an imposter.”

“I was a teenager.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“I’m sorry. What should I have done?”

“You should’ve taken what was yours. Instead, you crumbled at the first sign of trouble.”

“You didn’t teach me.”

“I did, but you didn’t listen. You thought you knew better and that all you required were words. Words, words, words . . .”

“Teach me now, Ms. Davis. Please.”

Ms. Davis went to the blackboard and chalked it with a beautiful multicolored abstract image. “Paint a picture with the astrology cards I gave you. Feel them. Move in them.”

“I lost them.”

“Find them. Build a car with them and go north.”

A man came into the classroom. He looked at Nick with a strange expression on his face, both disapproving and perplexed. He swaggered up to Ms. Davis and passionately kissed her. While eying Nick, he inserted his hand between her legs and pushed upwards in one fluid act designed to display his superior technique. Ms. Davis responded with a barely perceptible moan, the kind that Sassa made on those nights when Nick really got to her.

“Who’s the guy?” the stranger asked in an English accent.

Nick hated him even more.

“Ignore him. He’s nobody. He had some fancy words once, but couldn’t back it up with anything real.”

“Should I take him out?”

“No. Let him suffer. He’ll fade away in the room.”

Nick shut his eyes, and shrank into himself. When he opened them, Ms. Davis and the man evanesced and were replaced by a man he recognized as famous. Older, forty at least, with red hair and a reddish-gray beard . . . he couldn’t place him.

“Nick, when exactly were you born?” the man asked in a prescient voice.

“I don’t know. 7:26 p.m., I think.”

“I can help you.”

But he wasn’t sure anyone could help him.

Without Sassa, Nick lost hope. For weeks he stayed in bed all day, drifting in and out of consciousness, unable to settle. When asleep, elaborate dreams of betrayal haunted him. When awake, he scribbled fragments in his journal trying to work through the sadness. It had to go somewhere.

Monday: I know that I will learn from this in time, but for now, I let the tears stream me to sleep. As I dream, messengers of hope start their journey toward my home.

Thursday: Immutable pressure in my back and neck. It feels like there is some mysterious creature under my skin, drenched, nourished by my blood, quickening to find a way out through the labyrinth.

Friday: Perched on a ledge above translucent unfeeling, I wish I could take the plunge for a few minutes to release this burden. At this moment I understand the pull of alcohol, Vicodin—a replacement lover.

Sunday: Once caressed, these shadow thoughts subside. They are replaced by a calm, deep grasp that I must continue to push through the pain. And so I continue struggling, groping to understand. Grieving a loss I’ve only felt this deeply once before.

Tuesday: I know this. If I must be singularly defined in this lifetime, then I choose to be a survivor. But before I come through, I want to know one thing. Years from now, will you even remember the figs?

For three months, nothing made him feel better. He devoured food he hadn’t eaten in years: gyros, Reuben sandwiches, sausage and pepperoni pizza, cheeseburgers, French fries, milk shakes. Craving the dark, he returned to the movie theaters, though this time he replaced Bergman with romantic comedies. On rare productive days, he threw himself into twenty-hour days at the studio. He visited his mother every week, hoping home cooking would steady him.

One morning, while waiting in a dentist’s chair for a filling, he read a fascinating story about the healing power of Sedona’s vortexes, which linked vortexes, Shamanism, and quantum physics. Shamans helped seekers realize their intentions by leveraging energy vibrations in sacred places such as vortexes. Inside a vortex, altering reality was workable through prayer and intention rituals. For the ritual to work, the seeker had to accept the fundamental tenet of quantum physics: there was no “us versus them” in the universe. He had to suspend belief in edges and boundaries normally used to separate life.

It sounded perfect. In a vortex, Nick would snap out of his funk. In a vortex, a Shaman would help him win Sassa back. In a vortex, he would keep his heart open until she came to her senses. He hired one and booked the trip.

Nick boarded the plane for Phoenix, and sank into his seat. Headphones? Check. Tablet? Check. Airline-provided pillow at the base of his seat for lumbar support? Check. The same routine every time. Settled, comfortable, and walled off by his noise-canceling headphones, he drifted off on rekindling his relationship with Sassa. What was she doing? Did she ever think about him? When was she coming home?

After a few minutes, someone hovered. He glanced up. A woman, standing in the aisle beside him, smiled and signaled that she was in the window seat next to him. Outfitted in a smart black business suit, she stood not an inch over five feet, even in her pumps. With short gray hair, clunky black glasses, and little make-up, Nick guessed her age at somewhere between fifty and sixty years. Stumbling out of the row to let her pass, he bowed his head. She wouldn’t bother him much.

Two hours into an uneventful flight he removed his headphones, waved to a passing flight attendant, and asked her to bring him a glass of water with lots of ice. Years earlier, during long hours in the studio, he’d picked up his ice-chewing habit.

“Hi there, my name is Jackie.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Nick.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Sedona. How about you?”

“Phoenix, for a conference. I’ve been to Sedona a few times. Do you know about the vortexes?”

“A little. Have you been?”

“Yes, a long time ago. They’re amazing. There are four of them: Cathedral Rock, Bell Rock, Boynton Canyon, and Airport Mesa. If you can, visit each one, and make sure that someone knowledgeable goes with you.”

“Cool. I will.”

The attendant returned with his water. Instead of chewing ice, he slowly sipped the water. First the vortex article, now the woman. What were the chances? He had to be on the right track. Pushing his lower back into the pillow to straighten up, he shifted his body toward the woman. “Can you tell me more of your vortex story?”

“Sure. Let’s see . . . I’d just been through a divorce. I’d spent years committed to a dead relationship and had lost sight of myself. I had no idea what I was going to do.”

“I can relate.”

“On Cathedral Rock, I had this vision, almost like I was watching a movie of my life so far, but detached, with emotional distance. As I watched, I realized I didn’t like who I’d become, so I promised myself that I would never enter another relationship where my partner didn’t see me. I also decided to become a therapist and work with women who were, in one way or another, oppressed by men.”

“What a change.”

“It was. I’d been in chaos stew for years, and it had paralyzed me. The vortex cleared the chaos so that I could act.”

“Cool image, ‘chaos stew.’”

She nodded. “Once I left Sedona, I went back to school and eventually started my own practice in New York. Hard to believe, but I’ve been practicing for over twenty years. Most of the women I work with are from the corporate world. They feel stuck.”

“In chaos stew?”

“Either that or like impostors. In either case, they feel oppressed by male-created and male-dominated cultures.”

“I sometimes dream that I’m an impostor,” he said.

“That’s interesting.”

Why did he feel that way? Somehow different from other guys. On the edge. Lost. Or on the forefront. Leading. Like all that mattered was love. Or fear. A sharp pain surfaced in his upper back right at the base of his neck. He tilted his head one way, then the other to work it out. “Do you still love your work?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“How about you?” Jackie asked.

“I’m a musician and songwriter. I have a small company. We do online recording, mostly for songwriters who need help bringing their songs to life.” Nick detailed for Jackie how the Internet recording process worked. He loved talking about the technical aspects of his business. Any aspect, really. After a whirlwind tour of studiomusicians-dot-com, he stilled. A thought formed— he’d never had a significant conversation on a plane with a stranger before.

“I noticed you were reading lyrics on your tablet earlier. One of your songs?”

“One of my poems. I dabble.”

“Do you have any favorite poets?”

“I like Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Kay Ryan, Marge Piercy, Mary Oliver.”

“That’s a lot of women, which is appealing to me, of course.”

He gathered himself. Why was he doing the pitch that, before Sassa, he’d reserved for attractive younger women? What had Jackie looked like at twenty? Was it possible for attraction to be non-physical? “I tend to like people who communicate directly and honestly. Female poets seem to do that well. I’m not sure why.”

“Probably something to do with falling apart. That happens a lot with women, and when they go through the pain, as poets often do, it makes them stronger and more honest.”

He nodded. It happens with some men, too. No wonder he was so drawn to her.

“Do you mind if I read some of your poetry?”

His face warmed. He shifted slightly away. He’d never shown his poetry to anyone except Sassa, but that had turned out well. And he did feel a connection with Jackie, so maybe it would be okay. “I only consider a few of them done.”

“You don’t have to if you’re uncomfortable in any way. I’m just curious given your interest in female poets.”

He changed the subject back to the purpose of Jackie’s conference: The exact location. How long would she be away from her practice? Was conference food any good? His body temperature dropped. Then, while she was in mid-sentence describing one of the conference talks on self-love, he blurted out, “Oh, what the heck.” He opened a document on his tablet and handed the tablet to Jackie. As she read, he tried not to watch her, first thumbing through the airline magazine and eventually watching a man in the row in front of them tap his foot to an unknown song. Why was he so scared of what she thought? He would probably never see her again.

Jackie said nothing for what seemed like a long time. She pored over each poem more than once and appeared to mouth answers to her own questions. Finally, she handed Nick his tablet. Turning her body toward him, she crossed one leg under her and placed her hand on his forearm. “Nick, your poems are beautiful. Like all of the poets you admire, you manage to convey a rich set of emotions in your work. I honestly believe a wider audience would benefit from reading them.” She detailed a few poems that particularly resonated with her.

“Thank you.”

“One more thing.”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me more about ‘Dancing Ground?’ But before you do, I’ll be right back.” She popped up, crossed over him, and then balanced down the aisle, eventually disappearing into the lavatory.

What should he share about “Dancing Ground”? He’d written it when he was twenty-three, after attending a workshop in Colorado with a group of older men. He had great father-hunger at that time, and had searched widely for ways to satisfy his appetite. The workshop focused on Native American wisdom, and he fully participated in every ritual with one exception.

The group had gathered around a large bonfire one night, each participant with a drum. They drummed together, following the lead of one of the elders. Nick jumped right in, comfortable given his musical background, and let go as he pounded his drum in rhythm with the group. After drumming for some time, an elder rose to his feet and started dancing. Soon, another man joined in, and another, until all of the men stood dancing to Nick’s drumming. He had to keep going. Otherwise, the entire spontaneous ritual might fall apart.