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Once upon the concrete of an Iowa suburb a boy asked a girl out, and the girl said yes. They were the best of friends and she, blonde and pinkish of temper, didn't want to be mean. Her mother approved of the boy, a rare gift. The years marched and the boy kept asking and the girl kept saying yes. To a dance, a kiss, a shared night, a house, a ring. To ever after drowning in the concrete of an Iowa suburb. "Happily," family and friends insisted with tears crawling over smiles.
Wedding preparations were the cake of times, for everyone but the bride. In her opinion the world had too many shades of beige, and she wasn't sure if she was thinking of napkins or people. The flowers were her only respite, her vivid rainbow.
In a town of cardboard cutouts there lived a rebel. A woman of rag and bone who always had leaves growing in tussled auburn hair. She preferred wild cats to docile dogs, rock and roll to church choirs and kind glass shards to poisoned apple pies. A pissing Brit in the bladder of Americana. The bride thought her the prettiest thing in the world, only being able to admit the fact in the absence of light.
The bride and the rebel were not strangers. They knew each other with all the depth and variety the word “intimately” implies. Between them there was no flame of romance, that would have been ludicrous. There was simply the water of love gently bubbling over any pot it was forced into.They of course called each other by their simple and true names, a rare gift, for no one else in the town did. Dani the bride and Jamie the rebel.
Most connections are born out of crooked circumstance—a stumble of two in the rosé haze, a shared workplace or racing for the last bar of chocolate—and theirs was no different. Dani and Jamie met at high school, talking for the first time when the former was assigned to help tutor the latter. Jamie fucking sucked at math (Dani found her incessant cursing adorable). There wasn’t a single event that solidified them as more than classmates, they just kept growing long after algebra sessions.
Dani and Jamie’s shared moments had no public, they happened in the absence of light, in the time between heartbeats, in the closets of crowds. Most people in their lives had no idea they even talked. The girls liked no one knowing they drank Dani’s awful tea on summer evenings or that Jamie drove them to admire moonflowers out of town after attending a concert. Not everything needs to be shared, a little selfishness is a kindness. For Dani, it was also survival.
Jamie’s home shared the same atomic freedom-loving commie-killing bones as any other house in the suburb, but that’s where the similarities ended. No other had its personality, or any at all. Vines clung to walls and, in spite of protests from the homeowners association, the yard was a veritable jungle where the red of roses clashed in beauty with the blue of lilies and the yellow of dandelions, amongst others. So many others. It was the fruit of a love of gardening and experimentation through the years.
That night Dani uncharacteristically ignored it all and rushed to the front door. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. The wedding date encroached, the concrete rippled. Dani pounded at the door in desperation that sounded more like fury. Something had changed that evening when Dani was getting ready for bed, perhaps the planets had rearranged or a worm had crawled into the brain, she just knew the need to run.
“Jesus Christ, Dani! Is something on fire?”
Jamie opened the door, ungroomed and wearing pastel purple pjs Dani had gifted her. She had made a whole spectacle of hating the color, of claiming to need nothing but shorts to sleep. Dani enveloped her person in a hug.
“Take me far and take me fast. I can’t stay here.”
Jamie understood the weight of the words. She had dreamed of leaving the place for years. The garden was hers, but the inside of the house held too many scars. Mom. Dad. Mickey. Too many impossible loves, improbable pasts and futures. However, in spite of many nights dreaming, she had never found the strength. Something (Dani, what else?) kept her tethered (Perhaps an addiction to licking wounds). Jamie returned the hug fiercely, breathing her person in. Oxygen of the soul.
“Far and fast. Got it. We’ll take things one day at a time.”
Leaving happened in a haze. Bags to pack. Flashes rather than full motion. Odd goodbyes to write. Hand in hand, their gravity. An airplane to board. Dry tears. A planet to fly. Peeking smiles.
"Focus on the clouds, Dani. They are beautiful."
"I'd rather focus on you."
Jamie had chosen their route. They were soaring towards the north of Europe. Like the sky, like the Atlantic, vast and blue, overwhelming, dangerous and delightful, is how Dani felt the future. Freedom is the daughter of fear and hope.
After leaving the plane they rented a car, choosing a cotton-candy pink one that made Dani laugh gently and Jamie mad (with gentle laughter). They drove for hours through flat forests and around frozen lakes on serpentine roads, stopping to eat stale road-side food.
“I wonder from which fucking cemetery they unearthed this bread. Compared to this travesty the plane was a five star French restaurant.”
Jamie commented between suffering bites of a tuna sandwich. It was rumored there was lettuce and tomato on it, but the women could swear those vegetables weren’t gray. Gas station food. America or Finland, some things never change.
“Restaurants only go up to three stars, silly. But you are right, they must have used paint to cover the mold, it tastes worse than my tea.”
“You finally admit your tea is awful!”
Jamie looked like a child who’d won the world’s biggest prize with her toothy smile. It was a rare sight. Even when happy Jamie didn’t smile much, even less smiled big. Perhaps Dani wasn’t the only one drowning in the concrete.
“Recently got in the habit of admitting things to myself. What made you choose this place?”
“There aren’t many restaurants around, if you didn’t notice. Snowed woods suck for business.”
“I meant the country.”
“Oh, I threw a dart at a map of the word.”
“Really?”
There was wonder in Dani’s tone. She was resting her head on her palms, elbows against the sticky table. Her look was dopey as she stared at her companion.
“Well, I threw a fork. At first with my eyes closed, I thought the twat would stay in place. It was embarrassing collecting it from the floor and having to throw again. Bounced off somewhere between Norway and Finland. This was the cheaper option.”
Dani’s laughter filled the establishment. It was the first time in years it didn’t sound like a sitcom laugh track, something out of a can. It was fresh fish out of the lakes, and made the only other occupied table glare.
There wasn’t much talk the rest of the drive. Music filled the space, a warm third companion in a land of ice. Cars practice ballet on pavement. Dani noticed a pen and a notebook in a pocket of Jamie’s bag. After a nod of consent from the driver, she took them out and began to flip through the pages. Her idea was to draw something, she’d grown quite decent at it, after years of scribbling on chalkboard to entertain children at school. Math is so much fun when it’s about cute giraffes and not wicked numbers, at least for the little ones (for Dani too).
The notebook was filled with what Dani first thought were poems, but then figured out to be song lyrics. Jamie originals, if the amount of words crossed out were any indication. There was one that caught her attention, and she decided to try and finish the words, as well as one could without a melody for them. What is literature if not using words to draw?
“Jamie, I thought these lyrics had potential and decided to give them a final spin. Hope you don’t mind.”
Hesitancy.
“I don’t. I mean, I’m a little embarrassed. I’ve never shared those lyrics with anyone. But it’s just you. So of course I don’t mind. Let’s hear what you have.”
“Don’t expect me to sing.”
“I wasn’t, but now the idea won’t leave my head.”
Outside their windows the sun wallowed over the horizon, painting the snowy canvas with strawberry and tangerine. A reindeer hopped in the woods, ready for sleep. Jamie lowered the radio, and Dani began her brief recital.
You who are listening,
have you ever been
to a silent place?
I don't think those are real
but I'll keep searching.
I may need to dive
underneath the magma
or fly to Pluto's crater.
You aren't helping,
I'll tell you when I find it.
Don't hold your breath,
no perfume in the room,
I started in the womb.
So close to giving up,
but I yearn for sleep.
Jamie loved the lyrics, and her mind began immediately to adjust the roll and roar of the melody to fit Dani’s changes and additions. Unbeknownst to her, subconsciously, she began whistling the tune. Making guitar riffs and downbeat drumming into air. To Dani’s ear it sounded like an indie rock lullaby. One perfect to say goodnight to the trees and the rabbits as the outside grew black and blacker.
“I thought the northern lights were green.”
It was midnight. Dani and Jamie had arrived at their destination a couple hours ago. A traditional cabin in the woods that had stood for generations. Logs rose upright, fireplace light flared through glass, and the roof looked a tilted mattress. Not so far from civilization as to be lost, but isolated enough to offer respite. The perfect place to retool a life or two.
“They can be, but they don’t have to.”
Jamie answered. The aurora borealis before them were red, with hints of purple. Beautiful, and unexpected for Dani. She’d always been told the northern lights were green. She’d always been told many things.
“You’ve seen them before.”
“Once. With family.”
That word was a probing wound neither wanted to dig into. In their experience it was surrounded by vampiric arcana. Surprisingly boring vampiric arcana (boring things hurt too).
Jamie took a sip of hot chocolate, prepared by Dani with the few supplies they’d brought. Tomorrow they’d have to go into town for groceries. Tonight they sat on a porch, covered in jackets and blankets galore, watching aurora borealis dazzle the sky. Watching each other, haloed by chocolate steam. Nowhere else to be.
“Was this too much? Dragging you here?”
It was an honest question posed by Jamie. Something she needed to ask, less than 36 hours ago life had made sense. Dani understood what was being asked with no further explanation. Her brow furrowed.
“You didn’t drag me anywhere. I could have left any time.”
“Eddie’s ring is still on your finger.”
“Fuck.”
Dani hadn’t even noticed. It was a weight she was used to carrying, but the second Jamie pointed it out the metal started to feel like a tick biting her hand. Immediately she got to her feet and threw it onto the snow. The ring shined ruby, reflecting the red light of the auroras.
“I’m sorry Dani. I trust your judgment, but for too long you’ve lived to the tune of other people. I don’t want to be one of those people.”
"Do you think me a moron? I'm no puppet. Nor is there a ghost inside me, controlling my actions. Knocking on your door was my choice. Mine alone."
Before Jamie could answer, Dani straddled her and joined their lips. No hesitation. Jamie answered in the same manner. Hands clawed on hair, desiring to reach further. Red on red, skin on skin, under the moonlit carmine. Magnetism, but a pull can be resisted. The women did not. They never truly had.
The following day—after a night of eyes diving in eyes and naked touch tenderizing hearts—they were messing around in fresh snow. Puffy and powdery, new and wonderful. At one point Dani fell backwards into it. She was sinking while hearing Jamie’s teasing in the background (“Oi, I thought you were puffy.”) and she was breathing. The snow felt nothing like concrete, it couldn’t trap her. It was just soft and sweet, a cooler version of a childhood teddy bear. Her own teddy had been a gift from Eddie and was now deep in her suitcase. She had always treasured it, and that wouldn’t change. Ring or no Ring. Eddie or no Eddie. Soft things last a lifetime.
Jamie appeared, hand stretched, surrounded by sunlight. Dani did not hesitate in taking it. It truly struck her, when emerging from the snow, how different the breathing wilderness of rivers and pine was from anything she’d known. From a sterile Iowa suburb. It did remind her a little, in spirit if not shape, of her lover's house.
Once upon the Finland paleness, with a whooping heart and a hearty chuckle, Dani shoved Jamie into a pile of snow.
Happily.
(Not forever, but for a time. All anyone ever gets.)