Wesley Mattson Writes

Once it strikes 8:00AM at the park with the lotus pond, the day is already over. The city’s elderly who come to exercise have cycled home to escape the sun’s worst behavior. The lotus blooms, now relieved of their duty as performers, are resting. Hazy white dominates the sky, making it possible for the few young people who remain to laze with some degree of comfort. Newly-plotted paths meander and end up nowhere. On one of them a toddler passes a flowering bush and notices for the first time how quickly a scent can come and go. It is while dreaming this dream that the youth stops and sees it.

Nestled between two bulging roots are a collection of framed images of the virgin Mary. Haphazardly arranged to fit the space between the roots and some layered upon others, partially hiding Mary’s halo in one case. Most of them are bordered with gold, one or two with silver. Mary herself is airbrushed and serene in all of them.

The youth is stoic in transfixion. A sliver of white at the edge of him steals his attention from the Many Marys. His eyebrows shoot upward and jaw lowers at a cluster of styrofoam boxes turned on their heads and overseen by a skinny grey cat, who crosses his legs in disapproval of the youth’s investigation. He zooms out to see a small canopy branching from a bend in the tree, positioned unimprovably to protect the scene.

Several minutes have passed since he stopped on the path. Several joggers have now had to break their sacred rhythms to avoid collision. One of these, in the spirit of getting this confused young man on his way, enlightens him.

“Special, isn’t it? The whole thing’s been there forever. Definitely a highlight.”

The stranger pauses to check if this has done the trick, but the youth only acknowledges the man and his statement and does not move. A mere second before the stranger is to gently suggest that maybe you might consider taking a step forward at the very least, he is beaten to the punch.

“Who made it, though?”

Briefly forgetting his frustration, the stranger smiles.

“You know, the people who come to this park a lot say it was the cat itself.”

The stranger feigns a placating laugh, but the youth is yet again stoic. They exchange confused looks until the youth mutters an “Ah.” and steps forward onto the leafy mud.

Had he known the rickety pedestrian gate was secured each day by a city worker at first hint of darkness, he would have come at five o’clock. He throws back his head as a futile protest and once there sees how high the gates reach. There is no climbing. Elsewhere a rotting wall does not stand, the lotus blooms guard. On a different day this boy might have surrendered to a job and a wife and to death at old age. Under a sky with more stars the boy might have made dinner that night and fucked himself.

At first the water is tepid, indifferent to him. Only the especially paranoid blooms deploy their thorns, drawing annoyance from their more carefree peers.

“He’s clearly drunk,” says one to the other “he’ll sort himself out.”

The other retorts “Drunk, sober or manic, any day could be the day.”

The odd prick barely registers, anyway. Toward the other end of the pond the water becomes offensively cold. The algae that has been hugging his feet all die at once. He moves much quicker now. Trash lining the pondshore crunches, pops and squirts onto what are now the youth’s bare feet. He takes a moment to relish in the pleasure of the intermixing creams before wiping his feet on the grass and continuing.

Protected by a giant mango tree sit two dull individuals about five feet apart. One stares blankly with her hands limp on her lap. The other squints at the surrounding darkness. He has short white hair, untidy, and is wearing absolutely no clothes. His eyes widen at the sight of a stranger approaching. His ears stand up, fall as the stranger’s pace neither quickens nor stops. He can see her well now, Mary. Her skin has microscopic holes it didn’t have in paintings. Her stained veil moves only slightly in the wind. She is dripping and filthy and lovely. The virgin clumsily stands, as though her legs were untrained. Next is the challenge of forward motion. Rise of one foot, bend it forward, back down again. Rise of the other, bend it forward, back down again. Upper and lower lip separate.

“It isn’t that.”

Her voice is smooth and heavy, enough to smother the youth’s rising terror.

“It’s a great many things, dear, but it isn’t that.”

Eye becomes nose. Eye migrates upward then crawls in circles. Euphoric thrashing causes her white veil to slip, revealing a color so pure and untethered that it lights their shadowed home brighter than a thousand candelabras. For a brief moment, from nowhere on Earth is a sound made. Women birth with their mouths closed and with no pain. Mens’ hammers swing in vain as nails don’t budge a hundredth of an inch. Our youth falls to his knees and ruins the world’s peace with a cry. Oh, the cry of a needy child. The cry of a prophet.

His Mary who, noticing the disturbance she has caused, retrieves her veil and resets it. The naked man with the grey hair is cross-legged and unimpressed. Our dear youth tilts his head and watches as Mary sighs in defeat and plops down between the roots. He now looks at her as a father to a sick infant. From her unmade mouth to the wretched of the Earth so repeats: “It isn’t. It isn’t. It isn’t. It isn’t.”

“I know.”

Eye returns to eye. Spiral of a mouth unfolds. Before long all that remains between two bulging roots is a collection of framed images of the virgin Mary. Most bordered with gold, some with silver. His Mary content in all of them. How easy it is to satisfy an honest beggar.

More thorns prick him on the way back through the lotus pond. When he has reached the city again, passersby look with disgust at his gored legs, then pretend not to have seen.

“It isn’t.”

Instead of stepping through his doorway, the young man treads steadfast toward the rising white, which increasingly untethered ceases to be white at all.