CATHEDRAL - Patrick Sean Lee (best books for 8th graders txt) 📗

the strong morning sun coming through the windows frosting my russet hair in hot vermilion streaks like forge fire. Brad is at my side quickly. I want to disappear suddenly. Of all the terrible possibilities, he places a hand on my cheek—I don’t resist. He bends forward, and then kisses me for the last time—though, like death, his mind refuses the finality of it I’m sure.

“Whatever it is you’re going through, Is, we can get through it together. Let me help. Don’t push me away, I’m begging you,” he whimpers.

“I’ll treasure the gifts. I need to be alone, now. Please go. Don’t make this any more difficult for both of us than it already is.”

I grab hold of his wrists, and as gently as I can push his hands away. I leave him in the archway and walk back down the hall to my bedroom, closing the door behind me. Ashamed of myself for reasons I’m not able to fully comprehend.

 

                                   *

I am sitting in the dark in my living room, on the sofa where I sat this morning when Brad was here. My phone has rung so many times that I quit counting. Someone rang my doorbell twice, an hour ago—maybe a little longer—but I didn’t bother to answer. I hate the bell, now. It is a death knell. Stanfield is on my lap, purring, and I’m petting his vibrating back, staring out the front windows at dim features across the fence; a light pole whose globe has been burned out or broken for weeks. The tall hedge that I know is green, but only a still, blotchy, dark and long ghost looking over at me tonight. Once in a while someone walks by, going somewhere pleasant, probably in peace.

I am numb from crying and pray to the hedge, talk in disjointed thoughts to the passersby. Wondering how I will feel in another week, or a month, or a year. Knowing I have pushed a dagger into a beautiful spirit’s heart.

After feeding the gluttonous Stanfield for the second time hours ago, I wandered about the house struggling with my impulse to call Brad. I think back on the letter and the lake. My second thoughts—were they truly second thoughts?—and my cowardice. Goodbyes are hell, and I have no tolerance for pain.

I tried, also, to remember the exact moment when the decision to break it off with him first hit me, galvanized from a rippling wave of discontent into a wall of stone indifference toward his affections. And the reasons I slid into that sea that has now overwhelmed both of us.

Why is this so devastating? Haven’t I been through it before? Before Brad walked into my boutique four years ago and captured me with his smile and over-the-top flattery? Desmond in my early thirties. Gregg in my wild twenties. Chris…Leaving them was like rising up and flying out of a field of weeds and wildflowers. A rush of freedom and relief. I didn’t even look back to see if any of them were…crying.

I know Brad is. I know him intimately. Every mood, every inch of his heart, every vein in his body, and I vow, I swear to God never to let myself love someone as deeply as I once loved him. He called on me to let him love me, and I threw the door open, and now that I’ve slammed it shut I’ve slammed something else closed. Something deep within me.

I wish that I could see the stars in the sky outside, and the moon, and myself sailing with my arms extended into the midst of them a million light-years away. Far away. Alone.

Stanfield is purring. I want to be a million light-years away. I love Brad, still, but I am no longer in love with him. I just want to be away from who I am right now.

High Country Fall

November 20

 

Matthew

 

The sun is as bright as the insides of a white-hot blast furnace this morning, but it is a frozen brightness. Outside, the long eaves of the roof seem to be smoldering as their breathy vapors leave and stream upward, urged off the foot-thick blanket of snow covering the steep roof. Droplets of water escape through the underside; the snow is melting from the inside out. Here in the room the stale, pungent air is radiant-heated by the window glass, but out there on the other side the temperature is barely above the freezing mark.

It is my twenty-seventh day here at the lodge. I can hardly believe it! But I am writing. One hundred pages as of last night at midnight.

A week ago the doorway wall no longer suited my creative mood. I suffered. I require sunlight dancing on my brow, so yesterday I moved the writing desk across the room to the window. Now I can see this wonderland that changes in shadow and texture with the rising and setting of the sun. I can feel it. I placed a pillow from my bed onto the hard chair, I listen to classical music on my laptop, write for twelve, or even fourteen hours, with four ten-minute breaks to run downstairs for more coffee, run back up to pee, make the phone calls necessary to keep the world happy, or at least off my back, eat the food my adopted mother, Mrs. Davenport, delivers, rest and stretch my arms and legs. Discipline is the doorway to success, to completion, to the possibility of a favorable review in the New York Times Book Review next year. I knew that formula once upon a time. I resurrect it. I am consumed.

I return to my work, writing something that I pray is beautiful for Isabella of Barrington. I read, edit, write, read, edit, write more. I’m happy…almost.

 

I sit alone. Angeline left this morning, just hours before the sky went magenta and violet, and then deep, deep purple shot through with sullen, dark gray tufts. And then the snow arrived, slowly at first, and then with fury. Midnight descended at 11:00 a.m. Today these mountains, so far above the plains and valleys to the east and west, are blades of swords reddened with the blood of heaven. Oh, they are neither kind nor brutal—they have no soul—but they are beautifully dangerous if you venture into their silent grandeur, and they will swallow the foolhardy, such as I am, on their razor edges and deadly points.

Angeline. She is like this armory of peaks. An arsenal that draws me through its beautiful but icy door. She has cloaked herself in the white outside, the spires of green, the frozen footpaths a foot beneath the field of ermine. She has drawn me into a dangerous, severe orbit that I have no will to break free of. It is quiet in her strange and airy presence, in this frightening universe she has constructed, but here I float, unwilling to take hold of anything more substantial than her image…

 

I am composing Isabella. I am composing me. I am troubled because of her absence that has left a black hole in me, but I am captured by the words that defy the physics of my troubled heart and fly out.

Petals and Bows

Santa Monica 

                             

Isabella

 

 

I have steeled myself to the terrible decision that in a strange way was forced on me by the untimely ringing of a doorbell. The heartbreaking task has been completed; the letter was delivered and I am now free. I will not look back.

Annie opened the shop at nine. I enter through the rear door. It’s quarter to ten, and I’m ready to devote myself to my business once again. The door of the walk-in cooler to the immediate right is open and I hear Annie’s deep voice inside, though I can’t make out what she’s saying. Gloria, my designer, must be in there with her, and I set my purse on the large Formica-topped work table, then go in to say good morning. Only two weeks have passed and I miss their company and this place that is my second home.

“Hi, guys. How’s things in the flower business this morning? Are the roses holding up?” I’m cheerful sounding, and at the sound of my voice they both turn with smiles to welcome me home. The bangs of Annie’s blonde hair are hanging out under the rim of the white baseball cap she’s wearing. She’s holding a clear plastic wrap of bunched, white daisies. Gloria, as wide as she is tall, wearing her work apron, has a pair of shears in her left hand, a work order clenched in the chubby fingers of her right.  

“Well look what the cat dragged in,” Gloria says. She waves the order in the cold air in front of her. “Things would be a lot better if the flower mart gave a shit about what kind of merchandise they sent out. Welcome home, boss.” She’s smiling, but she’s in one of her moods.

Annie peels the wrap down off the blooms carefully, examines them with her delicate fingers. “She’s right, Is. This is the fourth bunch we’ve inspected. I’m going to call Dave and tell him to come get these things and bring us new ones. I don’t know what’s going on down there, but this is bullshit.”

I walk across the floor, take the flowers from her, and look them over. She’s right. They’re a week past their shelf life, beginning to show signs of curling and yellowing already. “It’s the times, partly. We’re a small shop and we get the stuff that normally they’d consider dumping. Simple economics: less dump, less loss on their books. I’ll call Dave myself.”

“Why don’t we give Berenson’s a shot?” Annie says. “They want our business pretty badly. I’ll bet we’d get decent stuff for a change.”

“Yes. Ok. How are the orders? What are the figures? Did any weddings come in?” I’m rubbing my hands together as I ask, and can’t help thinking back on the freezing water in the lake; thinking about how Matthew shivered and shook after falling into it. I smile.           

“The roses aren’t much better,” Gloria complains, ignoring the question. “Half of them are blown already.” She looks at the order. “I need decent white daisies, decent gyp and plumosa. Crap. C’mon, guys, get on the stick and get me something to work with, huh?”

Annie pleads with her. “Just go through these and pick out the best you can find. Throw in some of the better roses…”

“With fucking daisies? Are you crazy?”

“Well, use you imagination, Glo. Do something until we