How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly Read online

  Clarissa peered out of the wavy, thick glass of the double doors that led onto the back porch and into the garden to see if her husband had brought out the boom box. Her red geraniums, planted in terra-cotta pots, lined either side of the railing. In the halcyon light of the morning sun, they appeared too perfect to be real. She did not see a boom box or any other sort of music-playing apparatus but was aware that her husband had just touched the hard edge of the model’s jaw with his index finger and angled her face to the light. She was also aware that the model closed her eyes—probably against the glare—and that when she did, the music faded altogether.

  The ovarian shadow woman who sounded like Bea Arthur said, “You have got to get away from those idiots in the backyard.”

  “Yes, yes, I do,” Clarissa said, standing beneath the chandelier, not noticing that the fly had lit on one of its lower crystal prisms. She wanted to feel sunny, bountiful, in control, not jealous and ticked. Her hands itched to dig in dirt. Dirt, without a doubt, made her happy. And then she thought, Of course! Flowers! Cut some flowers; the front yard is chock-full of them. But before she could get to her pruning shears, which she kept in the laundry room situated down a hall off of the kitchen and to the right, or to the front door and outside to the rosebushes she’d planted five months ago by the porch steps, she heard Iggy instruct his model to spread her legs wider.

  At that very moment, under the soft changing light of the chandelier, Clarissa Burden wanted her husband dead. She stomped through her kitchen, down a hallway (the house, like her brain, was a maze of hallways leading to rooms that she frequented so rarely, they sometimes surprised her), into the laundry room, a realization washing over her that would, in due course, change her forever: Not only did she want Iggy dead, she spent at least 90 percent of her waking hours and a good portion of her dreamtime fantasizing about said death. Oh, my God, she thought as she reached for the shears she kept on a hook to the right of the dryer, it was true. And disgusting. Contemptible. Obscene. She gripped the shears, unlocked them, and said, “Holy shit.” She’d gone from being a writer who spun whole worlds from her imagination, populating thousands of pages with stories people wanted to read, to being a discontented wife consumed with spousal death scenarios.

  There was no denying it. These send-him-to-the-grave vignettes welled up randomly inside the withering fields of her imagination, devoid top to bottom of literary merit. She searched her laundry basket for that pair of gardening gloves she’d washed just yesterday. Could it be, she wondered, sifting through underwear and tees (the fly now perched on the dryer door), that these death dreams were consuming every last drop of her creative energy? Were these negatively charged fantasies the source, the cause, perhaps the very nexus of her block? In an instant—blink, blink—what had the makings of a lengthy self-interrogation came to a whiplashing halt as she, with no will or discipline, tumbled straight into the dark heart of a death scenario rerun—one of her most popular, judging by how frequently she tuned in. She continued to search for her gloves, but in action only; in her head, she was on the scene of a grisly tragedy, one that changed little from episode to episode.

  Clarissa saw herself with twenty-twenty clarity: Wearing a yellow sundress and black strappy sandals, she stood at the edge of the cane, cotton, and sorghum fields that lined the two-lane blacktop leading into town. Why she was by the road in the middle of an agricultural area, she didn’t know. But she didn’t need to; this was a fantasy, not a novel. Enveloped in the stench of manure and pesticides, she shaded her eyes with her hand and watched her husband, who had just left the house to attend to whatever affairs a multimedia artist must attend to, zip by in his green Honda Civic with the Monica Lewinsky bobblehead doll grooving on the dash. The sun was so intense, the asphalt appeared unstable, as if Florida’s legendary heat had transmuted the road into a river of molten black lava.

  She saw, with the aid of God’s omniscient eye, her husband squint into the shimmying distance, lower the sun visor, and with his right hand spin the radio dial. He did not like American popular music, and given that the state of radio had declined since his youth (a splendid childhood spent on the family farm in the foothills of the Witzenberg Mountains), playing nothing but pop (which he could put up with only when he was in one of his rare generous moods) and country (which he loathed, claiming it gave him migraines and lower intestinal turbulence), he flipped off the radio and—steering with his left hand—reached under the passenger seat to retrieve a CD.

  The road was narrow and winding; if a person allowed his focus to wander, or if he was unable to stop multitasking, or if he was impaired by drink or smoke or a desire to hear Howlin’ Wolf wail “Smokestack Lightnin’,” could not an accident easily happen?

  Clarissa found the gloves at the bottom of the basket. She grabbed them and the shears, walked into the kitchen, opened her cupboard, retrieved a drinking glass, filled it with tap water, and nodded her head yes. In fact, she believed any number of fatal endings could result, but on this day, as the solstice sun slowly rose higher and higher in that heat-blanched sky, her continuous loop fantasy offered only one thing: Her husband did not realize that as he groped for a tune he could live with, he had crossed the double yellow lines. His only clue, a blasting horn, came too late. Three seconds before impact—in that zone where time takes on the all-knowing, all-penetrating, boundary-free quality of God—he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, held her steady, and slammed the brakes. His face went slack with what was perhaps amazement as he realized that the last thing he would see in this old world was the love bug–splattered grille of an eighteen-wheeler.

  Clarissa downed the water in one huge gulp, as if it were whiskey. She set the glass on the counter and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Seized with guilt (she didn’t really want her husband dead, did she?), she attempted to steady herself by focusing: her glove’s quaint blue daisy pattern, the brain-drilling buzz of that fly, the shadow of the Marilyn Monroe cookie jar wavering like mutant ink on her tile floor, the rosemary quivers scattered like ash. She opened the sink cabinet in search of a plastic bucket she’d stuffed there several weeks ago.

  As she reached into the dark, humid abyss, a black widow spider that lived in the top right corner watched her giant arm approach. The spider twitched her legs, readied her fangs, prepared to defend her egg sac if necessary.

  Oblivious, Clarissa waded through Drano, Raid, Goop, Mr. Clean, Tilex, Windex, Pine-Sol, Clorox spray, plastic disposable gloves, ammonia, baking soda (she was unaware that she had all the ingredients to build an explosive device), and a package of roach bombs before laying her hand on the rim of the bucket (it had fallen on its side in the far nether reaches, behind the bomb-making ingredients). She lifted it by the handle, tearing a small hole in the black widow’s web.

  An icy surge of venom filled the spider’s fangs.

  Clarissa pulled herself upright (relieved that the giant arm was retreating, the black widow withdrew and began repairing the hole in her web) and—dizzy-headed but determined to try to make something of this moment in June—filled the bottom third of the bucket with water. Her blue eyes bright with the excitement that comes with a decision well made, she grabbed the gloves and shears and ferried everything, water sloshing, to her front yard, far from Iggy and his model, where she would immerse herself in the business of cutting roses: peach-colored roses with thorn-studded stems and thick, serrated, crimson-tinged leaves. Their citrus-and-velvet scent would clear her mind. She would stop thinking about ways her husband might die. She would map out her novel and make a mental list of funny, smart, despicable, and fascinating characters. She would find joy in the satisfying snap the shears made with each angled cut. Come hell or high water, she would find a way to love this day. That’s what Clarissa Burden told herself, her imagination stirring with possibilities, as she stepped out of her house and into the bright heat of this long morning.

  Ouch!” Clarissa was on her knees, her bucket filling slowly with
roses, elbow-deep in foliage, when she got snagged on the healthy, beautiful, sharp point of a curved thorn. She pulled off her glove and examined the petite wound. Her punctured finger bled lightly. She put it to her lips and sucked; for some reason, this took away the sting.

  Smelling of sweat and roses, she stood, swiped the dirt from her knees, surveyed her bushes, and decided she needed to move on to those on the right. As she reached for the bucket, that strange music welled up again. Was someone down the road playing a stereo too loudly? And by down the road, she meant a couple of miles, because Hope was bordered on all sides by swamp and forest. She walked to her front gate and tried to figure it out. Carl Washington, a man whose skin was the color of strong coffee, approached from the east on a blue bike.

  “Good morning, Carl.” Clarissa waved. His handlebar basket brimmed with tomatoes and greens.

  Carl slowed the bike. “Morning, Clarissa. Hot enough for you?” Carl might have stopped and chatted were he not on a mission, because he liked Clarissa Burden. She was pretty, but not in a trashy way, and did not appear to be afraid of him like so many other white women in these parts. But his mother was sick, and he was on his way to her house to fix her a proper meal.

  Clarissa wanted to ask what he was doing with those tomatoes. She loved homegrown tomatoes, and from her vantage point, they appeared to be just that. What she wouldn’t give for a thick-sliced tomato with basil, salt, pepper, a bit of lemon, and mozzarella. But he was on the move, obviously busy, so as she stepped into the road she simply said, “Yes, sir, it’s going to be a scorcher.” He waved, the bike bobbled, he brought it straight again, and Clarissa watched him pedal hard, westward bound.

  She leaned forward, craning her neck first to the left, then to the right, unable to determine what direction the music was coming from. Her tanned skin glowed—a peach glow—in the lucid, shady light. In the distance, she saw the WELCOME TO HOPE sign but could not read the thermometer because the sign was poised on the outskirts of the town, on the far end of the village green. But if she’d been able to, Clarissa would have taken note that at half-past seven, it was nearly ninety-five degrees.

  Clarissa loved the small-town feel of her new home. Comprising a smattering of old houses and single-wide trailers—a quiet oasis amid the north Florida wilderness—Hope existed because cotton had once been king in these soft rises. Some of the old plantations still existed, now owned mostly by wealthy northerners who came down with their well-heeled buddies to hunt quail. Clarissa, barefoot (soon the asphalt would be too hot to walk on, and Chet Lewis, the man who owned the house catty-corner from Clarissa’s, would wander into the street, egg in hand, and fry it just for the bragging rights), walked toward the crossroads where Bread of Life Way intersected Mosquito Swamp Trail. She didn’t know why it was called Mosquito Swamp since it wound its way through Jake’s Hell. She looked to the east, toward the green, listening to the music fade in and out, and decided that perhaps a good Christian in the county road department objected to putting the word hell on a county sign, especially since it intersected the Bible-inspired Bread of Life.

  Past the crossroads, on the right, stretched the village green, where each year Hope held a town fair, replete with a dunking tank, homemade pies, and beauty queens, the proceeds going to restore old Mrs. Hickok’s house for use as a community center. Mrs. Hickok, dead for fifteen years, was part Seminole Indian, part Irish, and—blessed with a knack for midwifery—had delivered several generations of Hopians, as she called the locals.

  Shortly after Clarissa moved to Hope, the mail lady told her that the legendary Mrs. Hickok had suffered a stroke in her front yard and that she’d been discovered by the then postmistress, Mrs. Auden, who was the great-great-grandniece of John Milton, Florida’s Civil War–era governor. A rabid secessionist (he shot himself in the head to avoid submitting to Union occupation), Milton presided over a state whose total population at the time Florida joined the Confederacy in 1861 was 140,424 souls. Nearly half of them—over 61,000—were slaves. Included in that number were 15 of Carl Washington’s ancestors, a fact he never mentioned.

  The mail lady, however, mystified by life’s unpredictability, took a lot of nerve pills and was therefore perpetually confused, forever misdelivering mail and getting the details of local lore wrong nearly every time she attempted to share.

  In actuality, Mrs. Hickok had died of heatstroke immediately after nailing that thermometer, using all her seventy-eight-year-old might, onto the WELCOME TO HOPE sign on a day nearly as hot as this one. And she was discovered not by Mrs. Auden, but by the circuit court judge, old Judge Revel, with whom she’d had a twenty-two-year affair. If Clarissa had dug a little deeper, if she weren’t so preoccupied with her palsied marriage, she would have known these things.

  Still, as she walked along the oak-dappled road, picking up her pace because the asphalt was growing hotter, Clarissa thought, Maybe there’s a story here somewhere. “A Florida backwoods, half-Seminole midwife is falsely accused of murder and…” And then what? Clarissa couldn’t think of anything. Her mind, as it was wont to do when she tried to think about writing, simply went blank. Shaking her head, Clarissa said, “I’m a hopeless Hopian.”

  A squirrel that had been watching Clarissa from the boughs of a pecan tree scurried across an electric wire, and a pickup truck driven by a young man with wild red hair slowed down. He waved and smiled as he moseyed past, and Clarissa returned the greeting. She remembered him. He’d tried to talk to her back in May at the fair. Charmed by his attention but weirded out by the wolfish glint in his eye, when he had offered to buy her “a cold co-cola,” she’d refused.

  The other thing she remembered was that she had eaten a cumulous cloud of pink cotton candy. It almost made her sick, all that sugar. And also, Iggy had declined to accompany her. “Boknaai,” he had said, dismissing her invitation, slipping into his native jargon’s word for “bullshit.” That’s what he’d said; that’s what he thought of most anything she wanted to do. But she’d enjoyed the carnival despite the cotton candy, and she was quite taken with how many folks had ventured out of the woods and into the village, making it appear for one day as if Hope were a thriving hamlet.

  At the corner, an old woman in a sky blue Bonneville puttered along, ignoring the stop sign, ignoring Clarissa, favoring the road’s right-hand shoulder. She can’t see squat, Clarissa thought; she must not have anyone to help her, no one to run errands or get groceries or take her to the doctor. I hope I never get like that, Clarissa fretted, and by “that,” she meant alone.

  She scanned the green: not a soul in sight, not even a mockingbird, much less a man. A fire tower, rising one hundred feet into that infinite sky, dominated both the three-acre plot and the village itself. Clarissa eyed the lookout station but saw no one. Besides, how in the world could the music—which she no longer heard; she wasn’t sure when it had stopped—waft such a great distance? For nearly a full minute, she stood in the deep heat, protected from the sun by a shady oak, and studied the tower, an idea taking shape. Perhaps if she got to know the fire ranger, he would let her climb to the very top (could she make it?) and see for herself what her world looked like from on high. The view must be tremendous. She’d even be able to enjoy a bird’s-eye gander of that sentinel oak. And then she thought, Uh-oh. From way up there, a fire ranger and his buddies could see into her backyard. A pair of binoculars, and boy, oh boy! Voyeur city. Clarissa looked over her shoulder to her house and again to the tower. There goes my reputation, she thought. If folks here knew what her husband did right under their noses, they’d be run out of town on a rail.

  An ovarian shadow woman, adopting Christiane Amanpour’s sartorial tone, mocked from the depths, “Author Clarissa Burden was arrested today for having a bevy of naked women in her backyard. Her husband was also taken into custody, in shackles.”

  “Nudity is not a crime,” she whispered, and then, without having solved the music mystery, she turned and headed home, but this time she stayed on the g
rass.

  Clarissa unlocked her gate, swung it open, heard the metallic clunk of the latch reengage, looked at the rose-filled bucket, and thought she needed just a few more stems when someone behind her cleared his throat and said, “Well, hello there.”

  Startled, she spun around. Outside the gate stood a short, muscular man, maybe her age, with bamboo-colored dreadlocks that ran past his waist. He wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans. He was missing his right arm. The one he did have was draped in rope. Where had he come from? Clarissa wondered. Other than Carl, her redheaded suitor, and the old lady in the Bonneville, she hadn’t seen a single other soul on Hope’s main drag.

  “Can I help you?” Clarissa stayed where she was. From three yards out, she decided there was something shifty about him.

  “No, but I think I can help you. Name’s Larry. Larry Dibble.” He smiled, showing off a set of chompers that didn’t fit him; they were too white, and nothing about him suggested he was the type of man who would indulge in the expense and time it took to whiten teeth. He stuck out his only hand.

  Clarissa did not want to shake it. But she also didn’t want to appear rude, so she reached for the bucket and pretended to be busy with the roses.

  Little things didn’t get to Larry Dibble, especially small sins committed by a trifle like her. So he rested his hand on the gate and massaged a sore spot in the wood.

  For a man, he had unusually long fingernails, but what was even stranger was that he appeared not to notice the battalion of ants traversing the mountainous terrain of his knuckles.

  “May I come in?”

  Was he crazy? Clarissa wanted to send this fool packing. And what was up with the rope? She remembered the southern superstition about the devil: When he takes human form, he’s always missing a body part and always asks for permission before coming onto your property. Not that she believed in such things, of course not, but there was no way she was going to let him step one foot into her yard. “I’m sorry, but I’m very busy.”