[Hi. I realize it's been a while, and this may be junk, but a long time ago I promised to finish this, and I do want to. Ironically, before last school year was out I wrote out a plot for the entire story. Then life happened and I stopped writing anything, then college started and I still didn't write. Now I'm hundreds of miles from my notes and I'm not sure where they are anyway. This is all a long winded sort of way of saying: I think I found myself again. And as Grace made the transition from high school to college, so have I, and perhaps this will make us understand, better, what it is she wants to say, and where her life will lead her.]
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Chapter 5
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In heaven and hell and every place in between.
There was a point in her life when she thought she was well read. Yes, much of this was in comparison with her classmates. And she had, indeed, managed to give herself a fair grounding in literature in the relatively short time she had been capable of reading chapter books.
Still. It was now, for the first time, that she looked out and saw not the largish pond of worthwhile words she had always assumed, but the veritable primitive ocean: wild and huge and constantly heaving in an evocative dance, covering a stretch reaching far beyond the horizon. One in which no swimmer could ever survive, across which no ship could ever sail, the gateway to a land only the artist can ever imagine.
Some how, some way, she managed to read or glance at every author, every title that was recommended to her. And it was in the least likely of places – in the new best seller, the old sci fi, the battered western, the book no one had every heard of – that she found sparks of beauty and of promise and perfection that she would never have found on her own.
This made her sad and happy. Realizing one is not unique a standard disappointment. Discovering that one is not alone is a wondrous moment.
She was not alone.
Work for a play had kept her from home over Thanksgiving Break. Rather than be the one to destroy an otherwise complete family gathering, the kids had spent the holiday in various houses, and Zoey had even flown over to keep Grace from feeling alone.
But Christmas was for the family. Everyone, connected through all the marriages, had agreed to gather for the holiday at the old Manning residence. Old times revisited, in more ways than one.
Grace arrived early on a Friday, her classes over for the week. As the plane lifted off, a lump began to grow in her chest. Once the pilot announced the proximity of Chicago, the lump experienced a sudden growth spurt, before slowly, agonizingly, creeping down into her stomach.
Oh.
She had often wondered if her emotions had reached a plateau. Had attained a certain set of qualities and found a certain place in her mind and heart where they could be drawn upon and guide her.
In one respect, they had.
There was a whole other respect, however, which she was now aware of.
Was this what love eternal felt like? A fire that was content to smolder, until some bait, a proximity, a thought led it to rear up in high dancing flames? Poetically, perhaps. Currently, she was experiencing something more akin to an acute attack of nerves.
Nerves which only increased as the plane landed.
While the other passengers stood up and grabbed luggage and stood around, Grace remained seated.
Slight airsickness? Yes. As good an excuse as any for why her chest was suddenly too tight, the world spinning before her eyes, and her breakfast was queuing up to come back up.
Irrational. But fun, in a way.
Fun? What the hell?
No. Fine, fine, Ms. Airline Stewardess. Just a tad queasy there for a moment. This bag is it, the plane will be empty momentarily.
Body still at the mercy of whatever it was, she disembarked. And for one moment she indulged it, and looked around the gate, searching for one face.
Nothing.
Her name was called, her mother was running to her. Grace smiled back and by the time they were close enough to embrace, she had pushed it all away.
"How was the flight? How are classes? Is that play over, I forget, the one you were in? I wish we could have come out to see it, but with the baby and work-"
"Mom, it's okay."
Her words were swept up and lost, but that was fine. It was good to be home.
In the car her mom began pausing long enough to hear responses. By the time the car pulled in to the old house, the pair were laughing over the baby's latest antics.
Another embrace, as soon as the lack of seat belts allowed for it.
"Honey, it's so good to have you home." Eyes shining and voice quavering, there was nothing to doubt.
"I'm glad to be home too, mom. You know, if you want, I can go pick up Jessie and Zoey, and you can start cooking, or, whatever." A latent need to put off, even for another half hour, stepping inside that den of all memories?
"You don't have to do that. This is your vacation."
"But I want to. Really. It will give me a chance to visit the old neighborhood."
So keys were exchanged, another hug, and Grace didn't follower her mother into the house, but instead reversed out of the driveway.
Streets, houses, the skyline. The building, the parking lot, the old classroom window, which she could discern from her place behind the wheel. So much time had passed in so few months. The first few students were walking out the doors. No matter that three-fourths of them were the same as in the year before, they were all strangers. Strangers from another world.
Grace got out of the car, conscious of the way the wind twisted her hair and stung her bare skin. Holding herself perfectly still, she awaited her sisters.
This car ride was much like the last. She quiet, in the beginning, warming to conversation as they neared the familiar front door.
They entered together, laughing. Lily stopped and watched them, without speaking. Grace wondered what she saw. Wondered if they looked as if they had stepped out of an edited movie of scripted play, three young, pretty girls in the bloom of health. She had been thinking about that a lot lately, how real life and fiction intersected and blended together. Where is the distinction, really? Where can one draw a line, and have the line be true?
Nowhere and never, it is to be assumed. But then also, always and everywhere. Everything is a matter of perception, and perception can be shifted and defined off the view one wishes to take.
Such a reality it is, that we live in it! This was her constant thought as they made their way through dinner, and went afterwards to watch a new movie. Such strange incomprehensible variations of feeling and sight, history and motion which at every moment are poised to collide, then shatter into innumerable interpretations.
Almost too much, too many. But this is what the artist craves.
It was during that night that she began the one piece that would not be shared. Not for a long time. Maybe never.
It was also during that night that she began one piece that would be shared, and would be shared in the not-too-distant future.
Two works. Two sides of the same coin, two facets of the same situation. Two perspectives, two voices. Two, two, two: but an attempt to express one truth.
The next morning she awoke to light. It poured in the window, it lifted weights from her shoulders and filled her lungs with an expansive pleasure. This newest journey would take a long time, perhaps even the rest of her life. But it was begun, finally, and moving is infinitely more rewarding than standing still.
Unlike so many previous occasions, she felt no drive to write. This was no story birthing itself from her mind. No ending searching for a beginning and middle.
This was exploration to be taken slowly, completely, deeply. A recording, but more than that. Grace imagined that she knew how historians felt. Caught up in the midst of something so extraordinary that it felt ordinary, but realizing through the written word that to others, each of those moments will become a fascinating struggle, a hyper-reality of excitement and drama.
Strange, eh?
And there it is again. In the interplay between melodrama and humor, somewhere in there lies reality, and truth, and understanding.
Stories will use one, or the other, or both of these tactics or more to try and reach a point. What is really important, however, is what Grace was starting to realize from the broadening of her literary horizons.
The words, the style, the punctuation, even the story is not an end unto itself. Rather, the importance lies in some junction of all of these. At some point at which the reader finds an emotion stirred long after the book is returned. Long after the plot is a dim memory, the punctuation and diction long past an impression.
There are as many paths to this ill-defined point as there are roads to Rome, or ways to lead a life. It was Grace's new ambition to try as many different paths as it took to create something that would stir the longing or idealism or heartstrings of some reader, some day.
Her path was good, her path was pure, and she was content. For the rest of her break she talked and laughed and hugged and smiled, and started piece after piece and took notes on idea after inspiration.
Because Eli came to dinner that night, and she spent a good portion of her week in the company of Eli.
During her senior year she had gained a strange closeness to Eli, spanning a period when she loved him without caring, then during which she cared for him without love. God knows what he thought, but her comfort led to his comfort led to friendship.
After this time apart, Grace saw again how perception tricks the human mind. How different was this boy, no, he was almost a man, from the ideal that lead to her first honest moment on stage? An eternity of miles. What in him inspired that emotion? Grace looked, but could not find anything.
It must, then, have been born entirely in her own self. This she thought, while watching his profile as they walked through a grocery store. She herself and herself alone created all that she felt. True? Was everything everyone felt only inspired by the outside world? How sad, how tragic that no beauty would then be possible independent of the self.
The corners of her mouth dropped, and her glance fell to her shoes.
Eli asked after the cause but she only shook her head. No, she was too young to believe that. Better by far to hold on to the idea that no matter how much she read, how much she watched, no matter what was conjured up inside of herself… It all lead to something real.