Sunday Morning, a dawson's creek fanfic

SUNDAY MORNING

She's never sat at a steamy café near Pont Neuf
and fed a lover a perfect tarte tatin,
never slept naked in a rented room
on Place de la Madeleine, shutters open to the rain.
Already, a thousand times before this morning,
she's wished to be someplace else if only
a little further down the beach.

On a hot hot Sunday, abrasive heat, salt-sweat breezes, a sun high in the sky, pounds flesh and sand alike. A man, red, bloated, floats on his back on a thin, rectangle raft, plastic, blue-and-green. A floppy hat covers his head. Black band of glasses covers his eyes, seeming stark and harsh-dark, viewed from a distance. Blindfolded sea-hostage held captive, an island, out on placid rolling waves, bobbing on a careless current.

Two boys, tow-headed, splash lithe, bendy girls, first flush of girlhood, taut and tight and titillating. A trio of girls—one, blonde-crowned, another, brown-haired, and last, black-headed. Splashing in the surf. The girls wear bright striped cotton bikinis—multitude of showy colors, red, yellow, orange, green, blue, yellow, purple—the kind you wear when you are thin and tiny and budding, so you don't fill those tops as much as you do those bottoms, but it's still all girl and the boys who splash say they don't like it but down below, you know, they do.

A woman, dark-skinned, risks terminal disease, spread-eagled on a red-checkered blanket, arms to sides, asleep. Her back offers picnic to onslaught of rabid rays. They eat her up, ravenous. A yellow dog ambles along the periphery of wet and dry, at the edge of waves, on the far bends of packed damp sand. A man throws a red ball into the water, a ball that floats. The dog rushes into drenching, plunges deep so water embraces—full and encompassing—plucks the ball out with teeth, holds in mouth with tongue, emerges dripping, shaking, shivering. Ecstasy. It drops the ball and barks.

This small beach, quiet today, except for those happy few espied upon. You, alone, sitting on a bamboo beach mat, floating on sand, a castaway from sunlight, shielded by extra-large blue umbrella, dotted with seahorses and mermaids. It belongs to your daughter, those whimsical dreams. Oh, and the umbrella, too.

In the morning—after you gave your daughter to your sister, Bessie, telling her an afternoon free from a five-year old would be all you need to "Feel yourself again," and "Get some perspective" for the rest of the day, the week, the month, the year, the rest of your life—you flipped on the aquamarine water-resistant, plastic radio from Old Navy and it immediately warbled irony at you. Been to Georgia and California, And anywhere I could run. I've been to paradise. Never been to me. That stupid old song your mother used to sing-along to.

He came in, just as you flung out your arm, knocked the radio off the counter, tumbled it a few feet away, unharmed on the carpet, now screeching Been to Nice and the Isle of Greece, While I sipped champagne on a yacht. I've been to paradise. Never been to me. "Is everything okay?" he asked, blue eyes alarmed, hands soft on your arm. Too soft. You shuddered. "Fine," you said. "It was an accident." You've been to Georgia on a small sailboat that was better than a yacht. With a dark-haired, firm-handed boy. Then you went to California via a cross-country car drive with a golden-haired, less sturdy boy. He is the man that holds you now, unwitting manacle. Because you've never been to Nice nor the Isle of Greece.

Nor Paris, either. And life goes on.

In this small town on the Cape, even clouds
drag away their important business.
Flimsy chairs face seaward, as if in wait
for something glorious, drastic.
An ocean away from Boulevard St. Germain,
the water shimmers like unspooled foil.
Some other life lies elsewhere:
hers, unclaimed.

"It was an accident."

Seagulls circle above, stalking the sky, encroaching vultures to her thoughts. Cawing for wisps of "Whys" and "Why nots?" All you have are "Beens" and "Never beens." Laughter assaults from an old woman, maniacal. Or rather, you think it maniacal. She thinks it's all good times. She strolls next to an old man. They are rather dressy for the beach. He wears a linen shirt, unbuttoned, revealing regular cotton white undershirt. His lapels are flapping and his sleeves are rolled up. Slacks, thin and loose. She is in a modest sundress with thick straps, yellow and gay and billowing. She wears a large-brimmed sun hat. They are barefoot. They walk hand-in-hand. They are maniacs. Because they are happy. And they don't care.

They've been to paradise.

They are still there.

You wonder if once she was the woman in the picture. The black-and-white photograph print of a woman walking through a street in Italy, male eyes molesting her. She's a beautiful woman, her head held high. But her eyes hold a note of fear, of lurking revulsion, because the men all around undress her with sight, do unspeakable things to her in the harsh light of day, in full view, so gaudy that the camera picked it up, immortalized the moment, made it famous. It would be the same in Paris, capital of sin and sex. You know it would be. One woman; plethora of men. Deep down, the woman got off on that encounter, reveled in the orgy of fantasy and fuck me visions. You know she did. You're not afraid to admit that you would too. You wanted that kind of adventure, that chance to unpeel your layers, uncleanse your skin, undulate in foreign climes and unravel with exotic men. Or maybe just that one man.

But you have this man. The one you always dreamed of. The one who eternally dreamed of you. Both believing in destiny. In each other.

Forever.

It has come and gone.

One night in a dorm room, fulfilling Fate. Your birthday. His present. Snow-globe foretold the future, his touch made it real. Irrevocable. Plunging in, seeding into your womb, his future. So it became yours too. Yet in that perfect moment of this soul-mating, the infinite second of realization and release, you thought of him. Not the one above and within but the one away and beyond.

As soon as you came, he was gone.

Some choices bring permanence, inadvertent. Emerge decisions that can never again be undone. Options are lost.

Forever.

It sometimes does not mean what it ought.

But why, now, as her husband crosses the yard
and with customary gestures plucks—
oh, how banal—a common daisy,
does her blood, running its old familiar route,
deliver such bounty to her heart?

"Those that God hath bound together, so shall no one tear asunder, forever now until death do you part."

The announcement came with a note scrawled in his familiar loops and squiggles. He met her in London, they had holiday in Italy, and they were married—spontaneous—in Paris. Because they both loved adventure. They loved each other. You met her once. He brought her to Capeside to meet his family, to meet his friends. So of course, she met you. She knew. As soon as she looked into your eyes, it was common knowledge. You were holding Gertie in your arms (of course, he would name her Gertie—she was the star of your favorite mutual Spielberg movie, and in this day and age, Gertrude was such a distinctive name, he said).

And she pitied you, this creature named Alexandra, Alix for short, she of the rich auburn hair and the sparking blue-green eyes and the warm, welcoming compassion that twists syringes of pain into your heart, plunged deep to drip poisonous joy. He likes the ones with the names that can be shortened to boy names. But the moniker hangs on a full-fledged woman that could handle both the long and short versions, equal parts whimsy, wit and wisdom. Lots of whammy spunk too. You, yourself, could never get a good grasp on the entire Josephine. Perhaps that's why you'll always be merely Joey. Even worse, Just Jo. With the small scrap of beach and the yellow-haired Gertie-accident and the Dawson-destiny. While Alix-Alexandra gets adventure and passion and eternity. With Pacey.

It is late August. The end of summer approaches, bearing down hard, sweeping lazy remnants of leisure into more industrious fall. When harvests sow what has been reaped. When folks prepare for the annual inevitable dying of winter. Every year, a time to die.

He suddenly calls out to you, behind. You turn and see he holds a daisy-chain in his fingers. Fake daisies litter the lawn just outside the steps of the beach house, scatter ubiquitous all over the yard. They are weeds. But Gertie likes to make daisy-chains. To string together wishes for once upon a time, she says. And it looks like he has made one, too. For you.

As he comes closer, pale-skinned still, despite the abundance of sun (he doesn't want to burn, he insists), gold-hair shaggy, overlong, he holds aloft his offering. Seven daisy-weeds interlink on his palm. Limp, skewered through, plant-blood clear, juicy, runs down stalks, adhere each to the other. White petal-crowns surround anchoring yellow core, seven times over. Lucky number seven, he says, punctuating with a short laugh. Haughty daisy-chain mocks you from his hand.

They say you can have once upon a time if you only wish hard enough.

Be careful what you wish for.

THE END

References:

Song is "Never Been to Me" by Charlene.

Photo referred to is "American Girl in Italy, 1951" by Ruth Orkin.