Friendly Neighbors
David was a born storyteller. He had never met his father nor had he wanted to. But he was an angry kid. He lived with his mother in the suburbs of Montreal, hated going to school and spent most of his awake time painting. He despised equally his teachers and schoolmates. The former feared him and he gave them reason to. He was sharp-witted as well as sharp-tongued. He also made no mystery of the fact he didn’t like the people of his age. He had nothing to do with them.
His mother was very worried and had tried to convince him to see a psychologist but he rather talk to their neighbor, a retired primary school teacher well into her eighties, than to a shrink. Melanie (that was her name) was a very cynical lady, she always told things as they were, no matter how hurtful they might be. No one was closer to David than she was, in spite of her age. He adored her, and she had told him she firmly believed in his talent.
He had refused to attend her funeral. All he could feel was dumb anger. Melanie was pretty old and he should have been prepared. And yet. Melanie herself had often spoken about her death. She knew her health was not so good as it used to be and she wanted to be ready. David thought she was the bravest lady in the world. He thought if someone could be ready to accept their own death that person was Melanie. And yet.
He had decided to play nasty jokes on the new neighbors. Just for fun. He didn’t know what to do now. He was bored out of his skull. He was down. He didn’t even feel like painting anymore. The day the moving van arrived, David was ready. After the new neighbors had settled he would enter their garden with a bucket full of paint and write a big “Welcome” on their back door. It was simply genial. No one could have accused him of not being a friendly neighbor.
Everything was ready. He had skipped school and gone back home. His mother was at work so he could take his time to make sure everything was perfect. The house next to theirs was deserted, immersed in silence, unaware. He put on his old trainers, picked up the bucket and went out. The sun was slowly reaching its zenith. He had climbed that fence so many times before he could manage climbing it with the bucket. The back garden was full of empty boxes and garbage, he had to be very careful not to make noise. He walked very slowly and took minutes to reach the door. When he thought he was close enough he put the bucket down and searched for the brush in his pockets. There it was. Now he just needed to dip it in the bucket and…
The back door opened all of a sudden. A skinny girl in her early twenties appeared and yelled:
What the f* are you doing?
For David it was love at first sight.
First Loves
I knew Dolores wouldn’t approve my decision to have a child coming regularly to the apartment. Ours was like a marriage; she had started working for me right after my wife had moved out, and, as I liked saying, I had found myself committed to this very valuable lady of Irish origins. Every day she took care of my apartment, watered my plants, and cooked my meals. To her that meant she was entitled to control my diet. I found that annoying at that time but I have to admit that, if it hadn’t been for her, I would have probably followed the recently separated man’s diet, i.e. junk food at breakfast, junk food at lunch, and junk food at dinner.
Ours had also been an encounter of two solitary planets. Widowed at an early age, Dolores had raised four children all by herself. Now all of them had moved away from Portland, and, even though they would phone her very often (the girl who was studying at UCLA called her daily), she had started feeling her house was too big and empty, so she had looked for a job that would take her outside it for most of her day. And she had found me, a lonely university professor in love with the stars, only partially aware of having a body that needed feeding and resting when deeply involved in research. I was all she needed and she was all I needed too.
I knew she would make a big fuss about having Gwendolyn coming to my place regularly but I was also sure she would fall in love with the child as soon as she met her. Things went as I had foreseen: when I told her I was going to tutor a girl who would come to the apartment every day she looked at me in disbelief. She said she was worried I was going to embark on something I would quickly regret but the expression on her face meant You are going to embark on something I will quickly regret. Don’t you like having a perfectly polished floor under your expensive shoes? This apartment was intended to be for adults only.
I declared I was feeling like having a drink before going to lunch with David and asked if she would like to have an aperitif too. As I was pouring a little sherry in her glass I told her I knew our routine practically perfect and a girl would certainly make things different, but I was also convinced a slight change (I tried to emphasize the adjective) would make us good. She didn’t look too persuaded so there was nothing left for me to do except drain my whiskey and leave.
As I was parking in front of the restaurant where I had agreed to meet David I realized I was a little drunk. I oughtn’t to have drunk so early in the day, but I had felt a little embarassed with Dolores and I knew she enjoyed our alcoholic breaks from work as I did so I thought it could have been a good idea. Now I knew it hadn’t been. My head was gently spinning as I was making my way in the restaurant. It was a place average students couldn’t afford, so it was empty with the exception of a group of Chinese students giggling in the table next to the one where David was sitting waiting for me.
After I had apologized for being late and asked how he was we were both quiet for a minute, studying the menu. After a fake-tanned waitress had taken our orders I asked David what was new. He cleared his throat and said:
– Well, it seems Jett is dating someone. I don’t mean he has a special friend or something like that, I mean he goes to the movie with her, holds her hand in public, practises French kissing and hopefully nothing else….how old does that make me??
I chuckled.
– He’s 15, it’s pretty normal he’s got a real date, don’t you think?
-I know, it’s just they grow up so quickly. Yesterday we were watching cartoons together and now he’s dating someone, ready to have his heart broken for the first time.
My senses were still a little blurred and I realised I was giggling a little too much.
– You don’t seem to be very optimistic about love, I said. -And of course everybody remembers their first love because it’s so intense but it is usually as intense as it is short so one gets over it quite quickly.
– I suppose that’s true in general. That’s certainly not true in my case.
-Did your first love last a lot?
-My first love was Linda. I met her was I was fifteen, just like Jett. We had him when I was seventeen and we had Gwen when I was twenty.
I felt I was completely awake now. David had all my attention.
The Sourcils were no normal family, that much had been clear to me since I had first met them. But it seemed as if the more I got to know them the more there was to be discovered.
Billie Holliday On Sunday Mornings
Henry Miller played the piano on Sunday mornings. His parents would lie in bed, awake, and would knock on the wall. That was the signal. Still in his pajamas and dressing gown, young Henry sat down in front of the old family piano, cracked his fingers and forgot everybody and everything surrounding him. He put all his fantastic genius and vitality in the notes and he was able to let them fly, just like he would be able to give words wings as an adult and a writer. Hitting the piano pedals with bare feet, he was perfectly at peace with the world. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew what was to come; he knew his wouldn’t be an easy life, he knew that his genius would single him out from the rest of the people, that is gift would be a blessing as well as a burden. That’s why he praised his Sunday mornings spent at the piano so much and that’s why he decided to remember them in his Tropic Of Capricorn.
I am thinking of Henry Miller while listening to Billie Holliday this morning. I often listen to her when I’m home and I need to chill. I listen to a lot of jazz stuff when I need to chill. Needless to say, I listened to nothing but jazz in the weeks following my trip to Saskatchewan.
It should have been a perfectly ordinary period but I felt restless. I was restless when I was at university to see my students and work on my books, I was restless when I got home at night. I would pace up in down in my almost empty apartment, a glass of whisky in my hand, the TV on with the sound down, jazz coming out of my stereo. Something had seen the light of day, deep down inside me, and was feeding on my anxiety. I couldn’t help being jealous of Gwendolyn’s father; my wife and kid had moved to L.A. two years before, and, even if we had never talked about the possibility, I was reasonably sure he didn’t want to live with me. I was reasonably sure he seldom thought of me, too. Therefore, once I got back to Saskatchewan, I resolved to phone him once a week and try to play a more active role in his life. I knew I was not good at it and I had never been, but I would do my best and learn. During our awkward calls, he listened politely and answered all my questions; I could picture his curly blond hair, his chubby hand holding the phone, his freckled face bearing a slightly embarrassed expression, his glasses. He was only eight, and yet he understood. I’ll rephrase it. He was only eight, that’s why he understood. After the things that have happened to me, I must have learned this at least.
Even though I would have never admitted it, I thought of Linda more that I ought to have. She was not extraordinary like her children and she wasn’t extraordinarily beautiful either, but I had the feeling we had clicked during the few moments we had spent together. I found myself wondering what could have possibly made her ex husband decide to leave such a loving family. That guy had thrown his luck away. And so had I, if truth was to be told. But I preferred not to muse on that.
I should have accepted that hardly anything had happened to me during my stay in Saskatchewan but I couldn’t. I felt it had been something important and, as absurd as it may sound, I knew there was more to come. I had started having my recurrent dream (the one I wrote to you about) where my left eyebrow turned indigo out of a sudden. And I couldn’t find an answer to my dilemma: had Gwen dreamed our encountered that night, too? Was that the reason why she had wanted to meet me? She wanted to quit school and she wanted to move to Portland because she wanted to live with her daddy: she may have thought I could be a means of achieving both her goals. This might have been perfectly reasonable. But why had she acted so rudely the day we had first met then? Why had she changed her attitude all of a sudden? The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself it couldn’t be because of the dream. But I couldn’t find any other explanation. Maybe I lacked the necessary information.
During the day I often found myself googling indigo children. I read many interesting websites, according to which indigo children were a new generation of incredibly gifted warriors whose task was to guide humankind through these dark times until a new, better era begins. I can’t say I believed what I read, but I found it quite fascinating. One day Natalie, my PhD student, caught me as I was surfing the net for information about indigo children. I knew she had a deep interest in poetry, just like me. And I suspected she secretly wrote poems, just like me. When she saw the website I was reading she asked if I liked their poetry and I replied that I had no idea some of those kids would be able to write poems too. As I was saying this I felt as if a piece of the jigsaw was clicking into place. But I had no time to linger on this odd sensation because I heard a soft knock on the door of my office. A good-looking young man opened the door and asked:
Mr.Eyebrow do you have a minute? My name is David Sourcil. I guess you’ve met my wife and kids.
A Vivid Dream
I was jogging in a desert neighbourhood. It was night and I didn’t know where I was nor where I was going, but, strangely enough, that didn’t seem to bother me that much. I would go as long as my feet kept going. The harsh sound my trainers produced on the iced pavement made me feel less alone. It was like I know there was someone there, in tat part of the world, a kindred soul.
As soon as this thought hit me, I realized where I was. The diner was still quite far from me but I could see it. I couldn’t tell whether the lights were on or off, though, so I sped up. As I got close enough, I noticed that someone had dimmed the lights and was moving inside the diner: I could see a shadow stretching on the pavement outside the window. I went inside.
Gwendolyn put a cup of hot tea on one of the tables and sit down with a magazine in her hand. She barely took notice of my presence and greeted me with affected coldness. It was obvious it was her and her arrogant behaviour proved the girl sitting in front of me was the same I had met the previous afternoon, yet she looked different. Her hair was much fairer than I could remember, almost albino. Every single hair of her body, her eyebrows and her eyelashes were almost white. And she was not trying to hide her beauty anymore, she didn’t seem to care about concealing her femininity, still in its unripe state, any longer. She was wearing a long black skirt and a purple red blouse. Le rouge et le noir, I couldn’t help thinking. Death and Passion, Order and Chaos.
I couldn’t explain how the idea came to me, or what gave me the certainty that it was correct, but all of a sudden I felt I was there to see right through Gwendolyn’s soul: an angel-haired child whose feelings could be dangerously deep. Absorbed as I was in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed Gwendolyn staring at me until she exclaimed You, as if she meant to say You, of all people! I instinctively looked down at my clothes and realized I was wearing an indigo shirt. Very strange. I never owned an indigo shirt, I’ve always thought grey, brown and black would be more appropriate in the academic world. And, if black and red represented Gwendolyn’s soul, what would indigo say about me? I couldn’t think of a possible answer, because the girl added I’ve never thought you could be… She sounded genuinely shocked and as I raised my eyes I saw her pointing at something above my left eye.
The phone rang and woke me up. According to the alarm clock it was six am. I lazily picked the phone up. It was Devi, she said Gwendolyn had contacted her to ask if she could meet us at the diner before she went to school. She had expressly asked to talk to me.
Old New Beginnings
Waking up in a new brand year gives me the same pleasure as starting writing on an immaculate page. It used to scare me when I was a teenager and I thought life offered a myriad possibilities and they would be all mine had I just reached for them. Then, as time passed and I started thinking jazz and its desperate notes would match my life much better than rock’n’roll or heavy metal, I gradually lost my faith in the possibility of change and felt very disillusioned about brand new years: I knew that they would be very much like the previous ones, that I would be very much like my previous year self.After my meeting with Gwendolyn, though, I started perceiving the unpredictability of life again. Changes may not happen on January the first, but no matter how comfortable in our daily life we are, they do happen and we have to deal with them. And more often than not, we will not know how to do it, but we’ll find out we possess qualities we never suspected. That’s the beauty of life, I guess. We are only half explored universes; hopefully something happens that makes us realise our full potential.That luckily happened to me. Gwendolyn Sourcil happened to me.
When Devi and I entered the diner, a fair-haired waitress wearing too much make up welcomed us and brought us coffee. We asked to meet uncle Ben. The man arrived bringing a smell of fried meat with him. I immediately liked him, he was very friendly and seemed keen to answer our questions about Jett and Gwendolyn. Granted, their works could probably attract customers, but the man probably genuinely enjoyed meeting new people like us. Besides, Devi was using all her charm which meant no man on earth would be unfriendly to her.
When we had finished our first cup of coffee (not the best one I had tasted in my life but coffee was not what had brought us there) uncle Ben took us to the small corner of the diner where Gwendolyn and Jett’s paintings were displayed. Jett’s works were quite varied, they ranged from fantasy landscapes to portraits of powerful warriors. The subject of his paintings were not that original, but the style was nonetheless remarkable. He was only fifteen after all. Gwendolyn’s works seemed to belong to two completely different phases. The older ones were very much like Jett’s, even though she recurred to much harsher brush strokes. Then something must have happened and she had dedicated her art to angels only. To one angel only I should say. As a matter of fact all the works represented a beautiful, sad angel whose vermilion lips were parted in disdain. I had the impression I had seen that angel face before but I couldn’t remember when.
Meanwhile, a skinny teenager had come to our side, Jett. He politely asked us how we were after introducing himself. I said I really liked his works, especially those representing medieval warriors. Devi told Ben the boy was adorably shy, then, with the apparently careless expression I had recently seen so many times, she asked if it was possible to meet Gwendolyn too.
Ben took us to the back-garden and there was Gwendolyn, practising free throw shooting. I was surprised not to be impressed by her appearance. While everything about Kinvarra was extraordinary, Gwendolyn seemed a perfectly normal twelve-year-old blondie wearing a baseball cap, a worn-out sweater and a pair of jeans. As she drew nearer she pulled her cap so down over her eyes one could barely catch a glimpse of them. Her forehead and eyebrows could not be seen. In spite of this, I noticed that she was very beautiful but she was doing whatever she could to look ordinary and unpleasant. It looked as if she had tried and only partially succeeded in rubbing off that special glow that distinguished indigo children and that Kinvarra so much emphasized.
Devi’s charm had no effect on Gwendolyn whatsoever and she barely took notice of my presence. I was very disappointed and I could feel my Indian friend’s frustration as well. As we were driving back, she would say Gwendolyn was the least cooperative child ever.
I thought that was the end of it and that I would never meet Gwendolyn again. But I was wrong, I was about to meet her very soon, in my sleep.
Under a Blanket Of Indigo Bubbles 