Ever since I sold my house in New Orleans back in 2022; I have had strange reactions to hurricane season and hurricanes. I was here in Cadrieu when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August of 2005. I had workshops set, so I planned to be here from mid-June to mid-October.
I still have trouble getting my head and heart to work together from time to time. I know that I'm suppose to be here, and am so grateful I am. However, that doesn't stop me from feeling the pain. I do know that on the other side of that pain is gratefulness.
So today, I'm sharing a short story I wrote during the early years post-Katrina. It's a reminder that many losses go beyond brick and mortar. I hope you enjoy it.
It's called:
Just One Fine Day
Today is one of those fry your eggs on the sidewalk, pretend you're a fish so you can breathe through your gills, Sunday afternoons in June in Mississippi. I'm swimming naked. I've never even skinny dipped before, so this is a big deal for me. I've driven over from New Orleans to spend the day with Travis at his Bay St. Lous home. Now Travis, he says: "neck-ed." He loves my body. I tell him that I feel like the absolutely most gorgeous, sexy, beautiful woman in the world when I'm with him. When he says: "That's because you are," I pinch myself. Travis and I have been friends at a distance for 30 years, friends up close for a fistful of months, and lovers for 30 days. After love-making, he comes up behind me when I'm at the mirror putting the combs back in my hair. I feel his arms tight around my waist when he hugs me and then leans down to nuzzle my neck. Our eyes lock and we smile. We fit.
There's skinny dipping and then there's swimming naked. Skinny dipping is something you do in the water under cover of darkness, after darting out from behind a huge shrub where all your clothes sit. It is mischief, danger and a desire to get in the water as fast as you can so nobody can see you. My clothes aren't in a pile behind a shrub. They're inside on the end of Travis's black iron bed, made with everything Ralph Lauren. My fluffy white towel is keeping his company at the foot of the white plastic chaise lounge. Non-stop Neil Young plays in the background and reminds me how Travis always says, "I play what I like."
Stepping over the furry caterpillar on my path to the pool, I ease into the water and swim a few lengths on my stomach. At the furthest edge, I push off hard with both feet onto my back, stomach to the sky. My finger tips stretch to extend my arms far above my head, and return to touch palms to thighs as I float back and forth from one end of the pool to the other. Each rhythmic rush of sun-warmed pool water carries new sensations into every crevice. I feel free. My chrysalis has opened.
My wings flutter from the tip of my antennae to my butterfly tail and back. Each movement reveals a bowl of blue sky, bordered by bold green brush strokes dripping softball sized scoops of vanilla colored magnolias. Their syrupy, soft-serve aroma mists my wings. I flutter from magnolia to magnolia, until I hear voices on the other side of the fence. I swoop down to follow the giggling children with tiny grasping fingers reaching for the tinkling, wordless, melodies of the neighborhood ice cream truck. On the edge of my wings, long, slender, age-worn guitar fingers pick and strum Neil Young's rifts. Must I glide back to the other side of the fence? Can my lover's touch transform my wings into shoulders once more? I open my eyes. I look above me and I see Travis.
He pulls me out of the water and turns me to him. We stand trust to trust, eyes aglow and he asks: "How does it feel, baby?" I steal a long deep kiss from under his bushy black mustache. Finding his ear, my best Marlene Dietrich voice groans: "I...am...a...butterfly." His blue eyes dance as he pokes and teases, "A butterfly, huh? Have I got a caterpillar for you? Butterfly yourself around this." Travis has very little ass to smack and no fat to grab around his waist, so I settle for tickling. Pretty soon, we're chasing each other around the pool like a couple of silly teenagers who might have been skinny dipping to Neil Young in the 70's, but this is 2005.
We crash bare-asses smacking on our plastic chaise lounges. Sitting together, knees to knees, holding hands, breathing heavy, we let Neil do the talking for us. "Hello my old friend. It's good to see you smiling. You've been around so long. You really must be strong." I lean over to give Travis a peck on the cheek, but he kisses me on the lips instead. He stares into my eyes and whispers, "We don't have enough time."
"I don't know what you mean.
"We...don't...have...enough...time."
"I am coming back."
He presses on, "But four months without you...without this." He puts one hand on a breast and runs the other the length of my body.
I move his hand to my heart and the other to my forehead, while my silly teenager self giggles, "See, you have all of me."
"But all of you will be on France."
"I don't get it. What are you so worried about?"
"Something is going to happen to take you away from me."
"What could happen?"
"I don't know. I just want as much of you as I can get."
"Then come with me. You say it's your dream. Come with me."
"You know I can't. Not yet."
"Then, when?"
"When things change. I'll be on the next plane to France."
"Too may things have to change. By the time you wait for all these changes to happen, I'll have gone and returned a dozen times. Maybe then, we can go together."
"Four months is a long time. I don't even have a photo." He glances away and mumbles, "That I can jack-off to."
"Stop! You're torturing me! Do you want me to spend every moment I'm in France feeling guilty?"
"I don't want you to feel guilty," he says. "I should be the one who feels guilty."
"Isn't it enough to know that I'm going to miss you every moment?"
"Maybe."
"You are trying to make it impossible for me to get on that plane in the morning."
"Don't."
"I don't have a choice. I have work. And now, not only am I going to miss you, but I'm going to miss this sweet place too."
He reminds me, "You still didn't say if you'd give me a photo."
"I'll drop it off in your mail slot...in the Quarter, on my way to the airport."
"Okay, okay. Come on, let's go inside. I want to be sure to send you off to France freshly fucked."
"Such a romantic. How can I refuse an offer like that?"
"Travis is thinking "fucking," I'm thinking, "Don't tell him you love him." And Neil Young sings into the sunset beyond the swimming pool, his voice tumbling into the night: "I'm getting blown away to somewhere safer where the feeling stays. I want to love you, but I'm getting blown away."
I drove back to New Orleans that night in afterglow and silence. At each exit of I-10, I saw twinkling Travis eyes and Travis smiles. I slowed at each one, but didn't stop. By the time I reach I-610 and Broad Street, it was too late. I had gone too far. Before I left for France the next morning I stopped by the apartment Travis keeps in the French Quarter, and put my sexy photo in his mailbox. The brass lid clanged shut.
***
I didn't return to Bay St. Louis with Travis until eight months after the storm. It was a sweet gulf-coast spring day that lures you home with gentle breezes and sparkling sunshine, but mostly humidity. I remembered two blocks of houses between Travis's house and the beach. When we arrived, we drove the coast past fallen trees and debris piles. Travis's house was still standing, even though it was twisted and had settled into the lot next door. The ice cream truck was lying on its side. At the pool, he stood silent behind me. He couldn't touch me. The swimming pool was empty and cracked. The tops of the magnolia trees were gnawed ragged. Their milk chocolate-colored magnolia petals and dark-chocolate colored leaves formed a broken lei around the pool's edge. The caterpillar had spun his chrysalis on a cracked branch of an old magnolia lying in the bottom of the pool. I turned to face Travis-trust to trust-with tears. Travis frowned and shrugged. His "change" was never possible.
The chrysalis still hangs on the old magnolia. Tomorrow I fly back to France.
If you are looking for me, you will find me in my garden.
I'll be the one sipping Cahors wine, soaking up the aroma of mint and Mozart, and of course, surrounded by butterflies.
