waylaid

She walked through the blaring blasting heat of the walmart parking lot. Stewing about how messy her car was and how she shouldn’t even be in this town and she certainly should not be going to walmart. Some old guy was looking at her cross eyed, limping. His box of cheap soda pop suddenly fell off the bottom shelf of his cart and lime green cans started rolling across the wicked asphalt.

Sylvia hurried to start picking them up. She felt like crying. He was embarrassed, fumbling, clearly shaken. “o thank you, thank you,” he said looking at her from crinkly eyes. “here, have a pop, please take one.”

She was shaking her head, no, no thank you, but smiling at him and her stupid grumpy heart was melting all over the stupid walmart asphalt and her heart pumped sad and sweet inside her and her blood was full of joyous cells.

It was Monday and a tiresome week was beginning but she squared her shoulders and carried her messy achy heart into the giant windowless store full of dirty crying children and tweakers and vagrants, leftovers republicans teenyboppers conformists sad tired people. She smiled at them all and wished all throughout her body that she had time and patience to stop and talk to everyone.

She picked up her package of pictures after waiting patiently in a long line. She opened them up while walking back through the store.

Her sister jade, glowing, hiking down to the river. Her mom and two of her brothers on a picnic at bodega bay. Her two youngest sisters, emerald and noella doing a dance they created at the vineyard, some of the ceramics and marble statues around the vineyard, and then finally the one she had been waiting for.

Simon Lagana. In the background of a photograph of her sister noella playing her guitar at her summer camp. He was the camp coordinator. She knew only the few things her little sisters had reported to her. He was really cool, noella said. He knew how to rock climb, he wore the same shirt three or four days in a row, he could row a boat, mountain bike down forest paths, and singlehandedly beat teams of two or three kids at games of scrabble.

It’s not that he was so devastatingly handsome, she decided while looking at his slightly blurry image in the picture. Although he did have a broad build and strong-looking arms, folded lightly over his chest. Was that a gesture of dominance, disinterest, disdain? She was getting worried. Was he a narcissist? Was he ignoring or looking down on her little sister’s performance? Okay, maybe it’s a bad idea to be interested in this self-serving smug jerk, she decided. I’ll tell noella to forget it. Don’t sneak up anymore information. It’s over.

Before it ever begins, before it comes into my life and wrecks everything, nope. Sorry. Not a chance. This is my life, I will take control, this is my destiny and I’m not gonna fuck around anymore. Screw you simon lagana. It’s over.

jade hollow

jade has lived in that house for seven years. for seven years she's been swinging off that rope swing into the creek and wandering through the redwoods and oak trees of the forest. you take acorn ridge road for five miles past the highway, follow it through the vineyards and ranches until you come to little old apple blossom road, and you know you're almost there. from there everybody calls it "jade hollow" even though she rents her little house from the klippers and most of that property out there belongs to them, as well as the apple orchard and the goats and the ranchhouse.

you drive over the hill, over the wooden bridge and down the tiny dirt road and you feel it, jade's out there, you open your windows and feel the air like peach skin and mustard flowers. you feel the quiet air on your face until you hear her singing.

i't such a long strange story i want to tell, i get the shivers just imagining trying to begin it. it's not just about jade either, although she's queen of this forest. it's the full moon of july, it's her sisters and brothers and the old mission and the grapevines. it is secrets you find down deep in the well. it is a stone that breathes and rainbows that sigh in the wind.

i was best friends with her brother rafael. i'd known the caraway family all my life. my mother, leona anderson farrar, was best friends with their crazy mother, annabelle castle caraway since high school in santa rosa. we moved away for awhile to tuscon arizona but when we came back rafael and i started hanging out again and then we were asked to be the djs at jade's wedding to benjamen culver.

she was 22 years old and she looked like a black-haired fairy princess. she wore this gauzy soft creamy dress that looked like it would float away like dandelion puffs. she had barefeet and an anklet made of tiny wildflowers. she had apple blossoms in her hair and brown shoulders and arms that were so beautiful it just about makes you want to cry. scary.