Katherine Sammons
Strings Attached by Kate Sammons
We walk down the path side by side. It rained yesterday, but the wind has dried the path to that firmly packed stage, not muddy, not dusty, just smooth. Our feet think for us.
At five seven, she is just half an inch taller than me, and our strides are well-matched. We sometimes bump into one another and then wander further apart as if connected by an invisible rubber band stretching and contracting. Mostly we are at a careful equilibrium with a few hands breadths between us. A year ago, this space would have been pure agony, to be so close and yet not touch. But today, for me, today the physical attraction is gone. The rules are different from when we parted. Except for the not knowing what the other wants, this space is comfortable, not just something to bear until we are alone, but what I choose. Is she as aware of this space, this touching and not touching as I am? Is she insisting on the space or am I?
We begin in the usual way: neither of us speaks. The air is suddenly dusty, and I might as well be mute for all the words that come to mind. I wrestle the band from my ponytail, stretch it distractedly between my thumb and forefinger until it nearly shoots into the grass, and secure it around my wrist. A minute later I find my hands twisting my hair back off my neck into a bun. There is no lack of feelings or things to talk about, just the words to express them. Do we feel the same way? Am I the vulnerable one or is she? I am determined; this time I will be the one to break the silence. Finally I have it, not what I really wanted, but something.
“Still wearing your girly jeans, huh?” she teases. Dammit! How does she always beat me to it? Still, I am relieved to let her bear the burden of beginning.
“Hey, it’s the only pair I own! What did you expect? Besides, they’re looser than yours.” We grin in relief at the old joke. The dust is nearly gone.
“So, how’s Iowa? Do you like teaching?”
“Uhh, it’s good I suppose. You know. It’s Iowa. There’re a lot of cornfields. Which are actually really gorgeous, in their way. The teaching thing—I think it’s too soon to tell. They always say the first couple years are the hardest… The kids—the kids are amazing. They’re so sweet, so smart. But then you meet their parents and you really wonder how… And you? Georgia?” We’ve had this conversation before, when our lives first twisted in different directions, and we sometimes numbed the pain by calling one other. Those calls were torture though: bliss during, but the second the phone clicked into its cradle the aching began again with a renewed ferocity. The reprieve accentuated the return to reality until finally the calls dwindled, and we let forgetting balm our hearts.
“Georgia, oh, it’s great, flamboyantly green. The kudzu—it’s really scary, the way it swallows everything up. I urge the little sheepies on, but they can only eat so fast. I tried frying up a mess of kudzu for dinner one night, southern style, but after the third bite decided I couldn’t help them with the job. Oh! And I’m learning to play this recorder a friend gave me. I really gotta work to maintain the shepherd image, you know? I’m still looking for the perfect crook. I figure it’ll serve two purposes: catching wayward lambs and massacring kudzu.”
I smile as I gaze out at the prairie. The grass glows, lit up by the sun slipping toward the horizon. “I can picture you: Lady Ana, kudzu warrior and shepherdess. You’ll have to play me a song before you go. Do you carry a sling and sack of rocks?” Why is it so impossible to talk about the things that matter?
“Nah, I may be a shepherd but I’m no David, that’s what Nate’s for. He’s the one who really keeps the sheep in line. He’s shy but he’s got one loud bark. You should see his teeth. Any wolf or coyote east of the Mississippi would high-tail it to the other side if they so much as caught a whiff of him.”
Nate is new to me. “So are you best buddies then?”
“Well on the way. He’s pretty spoiled right now. If I don’t keep him supplied with rawhide bones he chews everything—my bed, my blankets, my trial crooks…See? Look at my shoe.”
We pause and I see the distinctive tooth marks of a teething dog in her old black Converse tennis shoe. She was wearing these shoes the first time we went on a date. It was a day in early March over two years ago, not yet warm enough for the picnic we had planned. We ended up sitting under the blanket instead of on it as we nibbled on the sharp cheddar cheese and sweet apples, the crusty chewy bread. Shivering, we sat closer than we would have otherwise, and finally began walking to stay warm. We were both cold, both loath to be forced out of the other’s presence but neither wanting to be the first to admit the attraction. At last she asked me to her house for hot chocolate and the first band of connection was wrapped firmly around us. A movie followed and here we are again, come full circle. Her shoes were new then and a shock to me: who over the age of ten wears Converse tennis shoes?
“Just wait until you have a real baby,” I joke, “then you won’t be able to feed it bones to keep it satisfied.” A brief expression of horror flashes across her face.
“So you still don’t want kids, huh?” I ask. “Still worried about the apocalypse?”
“Look at the state of our world. It’s for real. How could you want to bring kids into this? What if they get hurt?”
We walk a few minutes in silence. The sun streams down, warming the air and bringing out the scents of the prairie. I smell the biting scent of sage, the sweet musty smell of the grass, the muddy mint of the ground ivy. The wind cools the line of sweat between my breasts and whips her now-long hair into her eyes; I am always surprised at how red it becomes in the sunlight.
I say, “I don’t know, but—how could you not want someone to experience this? Now is all that matters, whenever now is. The very fact of being at all. See that bit of grass, lit up by the sun? You wouldn’t know that was bright if there wasn’t that pitch black bit of its shadow outlining it. These small things, these are life’s angels, the grace that is somehow always enough.”
“Not everyone is blessed with eyes like you."
I don’t respond at first. This is my world, how can I not love it? Finally I ask, “So, are you getting to know anyone? Making any friends in the deep south?”
“Kind of, I guess. There is someone. Her name is Jordan. She’s the one who gave me the recorder.”
I am not surprised by this. Ana always seems to find someone. I wonder if I should feel hurt or jealous, but I feel nothing beyond mild curiosity. “Is she a good kisser?”
“What! Of all the questions to ask, you ask if she’s a good kisser?”
“Well, is she?”
“Not as good as you.”
Prairie grass has an amazing number of colors. I always think of it being some nondescript beige, but now I realize it is streaked with blues and greens and reds and golds, not dull at all. The grass is a toned-down version of a blanket of Ana’s. When I was sick, she tucked it around me as I lay on her couch. She tried to kiss me well again, but I wouldn’t let her. She made me tea with lemon and honey and brought me books to distract me from my misery. When she could do no more, she wandered around, sweeping the floor, wiping the counters, collecting half-full cups of coffee, and straightening piles of books. It hurt me to see her feeling so impotent, and to be the cause of that frustration. Finally I convinced her to stop and she came to me. Sitting on my feet to warm them, she painstakingly stitched together a braided wool rug.
“So tell me about what else I should have asked,” I finally say.
“She loves junk, flea markets, knick-knacks. She’s short and has long curly black hair and she laughs a lot. She’s a grad student at the university. I’ve managed to meet a really cool group of people there, and she’s just one of them.”
“Then why her?”
“Why not her? Why anyone? Why you? She’s smart and she’s fun and she makes me laugh and she’s someone.”
I could swear I heard, “Why not you?” somewhere in there. Should I feel guilty for successfully getting over her, just as we’d agreed to do? Does she think I didn’t hurt too when we parted and the thousand strands of connection were suddenly ripped away, leaving me more naked than we ever were together, than I had ever been before?
We come upon a patch of violets and I can’t help myself. “Oh look! I love violets. They’re supposed to smell good but I can never smell them.” I bend over, pick one, and sniff it: scentless. “I wonder what they’re supposed to smell like.” I tuck the violet behind her ear. Her hair is course against my skin. The flower barely peaks out of the wild mass. Did I ever find her beautiful?
Neither of us was quite willing to sacrifice our immediate future to the whims of the other and the breakup was mutual. Finally, finally I am becoming truly accustomed to being alone again. I like being alone. Alone has walls. Alone is safe. Alone has the comfort of unadulterated selfishness. I am finally clothed again. But I have not seen her since we parted a year and a summer ago and it is hard to know how to act, what to feel, what I want. Out of habit I want to touch her, to put my arm around her shoulders or hold her hand, to kiss her. Any contact at all. But do I want that now? I wanted it when I saw her last, but now?
She interrupts the buzzing chorus of the cicadas. “What about you? Are you getting to know anyone?”
“Iowa’s a bit lacking on the social scene but I suppose you could call a couple of the teachers my friends. The ones that aren’t too appalled at the idea of having someone new at the school are friendly enough. Amy is wonderful. She’s one of the third-grade teachers. I don’t know what I’d do without Amy.”
“So are you seeing her then?”
“Of course I see her. I see her every day at school.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yes. That’s all. I like living alone. I’m not ready to be lonely again.”
She is quiet. We hear the rippling call of a red-winged blackbird, the only waterfall to be heard in Iowa. “I guess I’m not ready to still be lonely,” she says. Neither of us looks at the other—not avoiding her gaze intentionally, just listening too hard for a face not to be a distraction.
As I watch my feet move along the packed earth I see familiar miniature piles of squiggly earth getting flattened underfoot. “Worm poop!” I exclaim. “Look at all the worm poop.”
“What are you talking about?”
“See the little mounds? What else could they be? Look at the worm trails connecting them. Worm trails and worm poop. Fresh dirt!”
“You’re crazy, you know that? The kids must love you.”
“I want to have a worm farm some day. I’ll live in a little shack on a cliff by the sea with a huge garden out back. And I’ll grow lots of worms and sell them to all the local kids. And maybe I’ll have a goat or two.”
“And some sheep?”
“And some sheep. And an herb garden by the kitchen.”
“And a library.”
“Of course.”
“And lots of windows. And I’ll bring you rugs for the wood floor when I visit.”
“Yes.” It is not a new dream. The details change but not the sense of it. I am never alone in this fairy-tale future: there is always a faceless someone else, just out of site behind the half open library door, just around the bend in the stairs. Except that for a long while that someone’s wavy red hairs clung to the stairs and the bathroom floor. That someone’s slippers scuffing against the floors sounded just like Ana’s. That someone’s hands peeling a potato had the same shapes and angles and softnesses as Ana’s. That someone’s brightly colored socks decorating the clothesline out back could belong to no other. Will that someone ever be faceless again? Or become another someone? You’d think she’d realize it’s not her rugs I want.
She asks, “So, do you think you’ll ever come see me?”
“We’ll see. I’ll check out plane tickets. My car isn’t in any shape to make that trip. The train could be fun. And I haven’t been home in a while. The family is kind of expecting me at Christmas and I kind of think they won’t be too happy to hear I’ve gone off somewhere else.”
“At least think about it, ok? It’d be fun to show off my shepherding skills. And I’d like my friends down there to meet you. They’d like you. I’ve missed you this last year. I want you in my life still. Nate will give you lots of kisses.”
“Alright. We’ll see,” I say.
Back at her car, she fishes her wallet out of her bag. “Look,” she says. “Here’s a picture of me and Jordan. It was her birthday.” It is as if she has doused me in hot oil, oil I needed without knowing it. Rusty gears deep within me grind and something clunks into place: I am no longer Ana’s now, Jordan is. And Ana is still wearing the same pair of shoes as when we first kissed.
In the picture Ana and Jordan are wearing sparkly birthday hats and making goofy faces from behind a half eaten chocolate cake. Jordan is small and round and could not look more different from me. The contrast is exaggerated by the picture on the adjoining flap: me and Ana leaning back to back, arms crossed across our chests, pretending to be self-satisfied business partners. We are dressed up in wool suits scavenged from thrift stores for her rugs, with atrocious ties dangling from our necks.
“She’s cute,” I say. She is. What am I supposed to say? I am not jealous, but the emotional physics of this new world are unfamiliar to me. “She looks nice. Hey, I still have a song to collect from you!”
Maps tumble out of the glove compartment when she digs out her recorder. The small bell I gave her at graduation still hangs from her rearview mirror. The evening sky yawns above us as she plays a tentative rendition of Amazing Grace, to the frogs’ pulsing harmony. The wavering melody weaves us together again before the wind sucks the notes into oblivion.
“Is that a shepherd song?” I ask.
She grins, “I don’t know. But I like it. And it was one of the songs that came with the recorder,” she admits. “Besides what is a shepherd song? Do you know any?”
“No. I guess not.” We linger a moment, neither of us quite ready to say goodbye to the comfortable familiarity of the others’ presence. Finally she shoves her recorder into her back pocket and steps forward to hug me. For once we really look at each other. Her brown eyes are steady, but sad. I wrap my arms around her. Her scent of outdoors and leather and clean laundry is as familiar as my own. There is a new smell though, something higher and sweet—the violet maybe?
It is my turn to say it first. “I love you, Ana.”
“I love you.” The response is programmed and expected, following our ancient litany, but still not said thoughtlessly or questioningly. We keep on hugging. Because our bodies are so well matched she is easy to hug and be hugged by. I restrain myself from kissing her: I am not even sure I want to. In any case, I don’t and neither does she. Not today.
She climbs into her dusty red Volvo. Her recorder jabs her in the back when she sits, and she yanks it out of her pocket and tosses it into the passenger seat. The door slams shut after the fourth try, and I am reminded of why we stopped calling one another. I hold up my hand in farewell and then fold my arms across my chest, fending off the chill, holding myself, and holding myself in. She has over a thousand miles ahead of her and yet I have so much further to go. I watch the car recede down the infinitely straight highway, disappearing and reappearing in the rolling hills, becoming smaller and smaller until it finally merges with the sun on the horizon.