Rose & Thorn Journal - Fall 2011
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Linda Leschak lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, son and two Boston Terriers. She has a B.A. in creative writing from the Union Institute and University at Vermont College. Her work has appeared in the Lone Star College’s Inkling Magazine, the anthologies of the International Poetry Festival at Round Top Texas, Rose & Thorn Journal and The Criterion. She is in the midst of writing a second young adult novel while working toward the publication of her first. Find out more at LALeschak.
Linda Leschak
Beatrice sits in a canvas recliner tasting the salt air. She stares out across the water watching the waves tumble over themselves like toddlers romping in play. It’s a lazy ocean that rolls in and out, sweeping sand and shells in its quiet wake, leaving a fringe of lacy hem along the shore. She sits until the sun drops out of sight then picks up her chair and carries it across the sand, back to the two-story house nested in the dunes.
How easily she’s made this her new life, far from Manhattan where she’d immersed herself in a marriage of thirty-two years. Far from the office where she’d spent her days wading knee-deep in busywork. Far from the turbulence of her earlier life. If not for Dan’s keen sense of the investment market, followed by his unexpected death, she’d still be back there, absorbed in that existence. But now, it seems she is destined for a new life—this life, this moving with the tide, back and forth, ebbing and flowing as the waves of grief take their measured time to recede.
Her mind floats here and there as she sits on the beach, her gaze drifting out over the surf, the sound of the ocean blending with the distant cry of the gulls. Even the birds seem to remember—Dan, Dan, Dan they call and their voices bring memories of soft evenings, sunk into the depth that was him. How safe he’d made her feel, how anchored in the life they’d shared.
It’s a stranger existence now, slow and methodical, with an easy sameness to the days. Acceptable and calm. And yet, Beatrice soon finds herself adrift in a numbed sense of being, as if her life is void of purpose. She remembers how she’d always dreamed of painting and wonders if this might be the right time to try, time to let her visions flow from image into form.
She finds a sketchbook and a worn, green pencil, feels the rocking movement of her hand as it flows across the page. The rhythm of the work helps her emerge from the darkness of her thoughts, bringing a small bit of relief she hasn’t felt since Dan’s death. Images fall lightly at first, shimmering on the thick paper, followed by smudged areas like shadows crossing the sun. In the pictures are stories and memories—some light and speculative, others dark, cloudy and ominous.
She moves from pencil to watercolor, changing media as easily as the shift of the midday tide. In all the scenes there’s water—soft trickling streams or angry, boiling seas. And above them all is Dan, his smile, his weatherworn face smoothed by wind and age.
Some of the paintings come easily, pouring from her brush as if charting a course of their own. Others need cultivating, to be nurtured and irrigated as if they’d gone fallow. At times she surprises herself, creating images that stream from the page as if to drench the viewer in their depth. Other times her confidence ebbs, and she balls up the paper, aims for the wastebasket, watches the lump of failure drown in the pool of so many others.
She finishes something, submits it to a local gallery and waits with pent up energy. It feels like she’s swimming near an undertow, moving yet going nowhere. In search of calm, she finds herself on the beach again, spending her days in lazy abandon as the tug of her courage rises and falls. Then rises again. Soon, though, news of rejection crashes against her resolve, and she struggles against unfamiliar waves of uncertainty. She imagines it all bleeding together: her creativity, her purpose, her very life pooling, spilling back into a single source. She finds herself sinking again, down into the emptiness Dan’s death created. She’s struck by the feeling of being unmoored, adrift and rudderless.
The night brings a violent storm that pounds the coastline with a savage fury and churns the ocean into a rolling boil. Sailboats tethered to a nearby jetty buck and rear against their moorings, tossed about like rubber ducks in a child’s bath. Thunder rocks the house where Beatrice sleeps; its deafening voice seeping into her consciousness. Her dreams move with the rhythm of the storm, first swelling and surging, then waning and dying out. And in her dreams, the fluidity of her body matches the cadence of the sea.
Much later, in the calm of the morning, she walks naked into the waves. The eagerness of their tongues lap at her ankles, her knees, her thighs, as far as she can go until her body floats buoyant on the soft waves and her feet find no purchase. Further still, until the shoreline shimmers like a mirage in the distance. To Beatrice, it feels like she’s finally come home, and she lays her head on the warmth of the water, tastes the salt on the back of her throat. While somewhere on the clear horizon of her mind drifts the unheeded knowledge that she cannot swim. Not a single stroke.
Returning
Beatrice sits in a canvas recliner tasting the salt air. She stares out across the water watching the waves tumble over themselves like toddlers romping in play. It’s a lazy ocean that rolls in and out, sweeping sand and shells in its quiet wake, leaving a fringe of lacy hem along the shore. She sits until the sun drops out of sight then picks up her chair and carries it across the sand, back to the two-story house nested in the dunes.
How easily she’s made this her new life, far from Manhattan where she’d immersed herself in a marriage of thirty-two years. Far from the office where she’d spent her days wading knee-deep in busywork. Far from the turbulence of her earlier life. If not for Dan’s keen sense of the investment market, followed by his unexpected death, she’d still be back there, absorbed in that existence. But now, it seems she is destined for a new life—this life, this moving with the tide, back and forth, ebbing and flowing as the waves of grief take their measured time to recede.
Her mind floats here and there as she sits on the beach, her gaze drifting out over the surf, the sound of the ocean blending with the distant cry of the gulls. Even the birds seem to remember—Dan, Dan, Dan they call and their voices bring memories of soft evenings, sunk into the depth that was him. How safe he’d made her feel, how anchored in the life they’d shared.
It’s a stranger existence now, slow and methodical, with an easy sameness to the days. Acceptable and calm. And yet, Beatrice soon finds herself adrift in a numbed sense of being, as if her life is void of purpose. She remembers how she’d always dreamed of painting and wonders if this might be the right time to try, time to let her visions flow from image into form.
She finds a sketchbook and a worn, green pencil, feels the rocking movement of her hand as it flows across the page. The rhythm of the work helps her emerge from the darkness of her thoughts, bringing a small bit of relief she hasn’t felt since Dan’s death. Images fall lightly at first, shimmering on the thick paper, followed by smudged areas like shadows crossing the sun. In the pictures are stories and memories—some light and speculative, others dark, cloudy and ominous.
She moves from pencil to watercolor, changing media as easily as the shift of the midday tide. In all the scenes there’s water—soft trickling streams or angry, boiling seas. And above them all is Dan, his smile, his weatherworn face smoothed by wind and age.
Some of the paintings come easily, pouring from her brush as if charting a course of their own. Others need cultivating, to be nurtured and irrigated as if they’d gone fallow. At times she surprises herself, creating images that stream from the page as if to drench the viewer in their depth. Other times her confidence ebbs, and she balls up the paper, aims for the wastebasket, watches the lump of failure drown in the pool of so many others.
She finishes something, submits it to a local gallery and waits with pent up energy. It feels like she’s swimming near an undertow, moving yet going nowhere. In search of calm, she finds herself on the beach again, spending her days in lazy abandon as the tug of her courage rises and falls. Then rises again. Soon, though, news of rejection crashes against her resolve, and she struggles against unfamiliar waves of uncertainty. She imagines it all bleeding together: her creativity, her purpose, her very life pooling, spilling back into a single source. She finds herself sinking again, down into the emptiness Dan’s death created. She’s struck by the feeling of being unmoored, adrift and rudderless.
The night brings a violent storm that pounds the coastline with a savage fury and churns the ocean into a rolling boil. Sailboats tethered to a nearby jetty buck and rear against their moorings, tossed about like rubber ducks in a child’s bath. Thunder rocks the house where Beatrice sleeps; its deafening voice seeping into her consciousness. Her dreams move with the rhythm of the storm, first swelling and surging, then waning and dying out. And in her dreams, the fluidity of her body matches the cadence of the sea.
Much later, in the calm of the morning, she walks naked into the waves. The eagerness of their tongues lap at her ankles, her knees, her thighs, as far as she can go until her body floats buoyant on the soft waves and her feet find no purchase. Further still, until the shoreline shimmers like a mirage in the distance. To Beatrice, it feels like she’s finally come home, and she lays her head on the warmth of the water, tastes the salt on the back of her throat. While somewhere on the clear horizon of her mind drifts the unheeded knowledge that she cannot swim. Not a single stroke.
