Nanowrimo 7

So many words!

Chapter 2

The Suzzallo Reading Room at the University of Washington was shaped like a church nave. Samuel Tyler Coldridge looked at it with disinterest. He paid more attention to it than he did the speaker though, whose bombastic tone resonated through the literary chapel with a hollow clamor. Samuel was, to this speaker, the equivalent of God, and while Samuel showed no inclination to accept this position, the speaker went on, convinced that this verbal groveling was a way to become Samuel’s hallowed disciple.

However, Samuel had no interest in the responsibility of having disciples. The only ones that mattered to him were those he could create.

“Samuel Tyler Coldridge, a visionary of syntax and grammar in poetry…”

The speech continued. Samuel noted the frequent use of adverbs derived from adjectives in each sentence. “Single-handedly.” “Bravely.” “Wonderfully.” “Creatively.”

Samuel hated adverbs that ended in –ly. They were the weakest words, derivations of derivations that did nothing to enhance speech. They were weak and useless. They were like people. He called many people “adverbs.”

“… Let us not forget the reasons in which Mr. Coldridge has made himself known in the spectacularly…”

Another adverb. Samuel’s sole enemy was superfluity. If it served no function, it should not exist. He sat at the front of the auditorium, and everything else with him was superfluous. The one that wasn’t was the poem in his mind. Everyone else asserted themselves on reality. They coughed, whispered to each other, tapped their feet. They all tried to exert their existence in some menial ways. But they had it all wrong. With poetry, Samuel did not need to prove himself to reality. Reality had to prove itself to him.

Cogito, ergo sum. I verse, therefore I am. And where I am, I am God.

Samuel memorized all of his poetry. He was supposed to recite three today. He wasn’t sure yet which three, but once he stood at the front he knew he would pick the perfect three.

“…His presence here today is a privilege that we all must remember! This is the first time he has ever given a public performance of his poetry…”

Samuel had never made a public appearance. He created poetry for himself and never strove it to share it with anyone. For Samuel poetry was not an important means. It was just a means to create.  Reality held no interest to him. The world he could create was perfect to him. Why conform to one that was not?

And why had he decided to come and do this poetry recital this time? He had just felt like it. And why had he felt like it? Because in a stroke of childishness he wanted to take some food from Luke.

The speaker had finished, and Samuel wondered why he had felt a need to irritate Luke. It was impulsive, and now he was here, doing something he had hoped he would never do.

Never again.

Samuel made his way up to the pulpit and looked at the audience. Seniors, professors, enthusiasts, everyone was ready to receive the sermon. Samuel was reluctant to give it. So much so that he contemplated walking out of the room and walking straight back to Murkvein. It would not be hard. It would take no convincing. Samuel did not care about any opinions. He only cared about his poetry. He began to gravitate away from the pulpit. But then something familiar caught his eyes.

Green eyes.

            Ambrosia Froid did not look at him. He felt her watching his poem floating in preparation in his mind. She waited because she knew she was the only person in the world entitled to hear this poem. And she was right. He knew she was right. She needed to hear this poem, if no one else. The poem needed to return to its nexus. That was God’s mandate. He would read this poem and decline the other two.

            Often Samuel closed his eyes when he recited his poetry, but instead he looked straight into hers.

            “Higher wisdom,” he began. His voice suggested no origin: perfect, standard English, no slang, a sociolinguist’s nightmare. Just words.

He looked at the opening lines in his mind. The word “fear” had never been used in his poetry before. He did fear her. He feared her because, unlike colons and nouns and orthography and any other part of human language, he could not control her.

            For the first time in his life, he hesitated.

            “In a split second I fear

            Blue, yes, like oceans…”

            A year ago he and Froid went to the beach to write poetry on the stagnant algae on the water. It was his idea, of course. All of them were. The sand was too coarse and cliché; the algae could make their poetry three-dimensional in the water, and they meandered through the lilies like quiet ducks, letting their fingers graze the flowers when it seemed right to do so. Froid had come across a dead painted turtle bobbing in the water like a hollow rock, its shell split with the precision of a stanza. She wrote a poem about it right away, holding it in her fingers and holding Samuel’s waist in her others. Samuel could not think of anything to say about a dead turtle floating among the weeds. He could only look at its glazed blue eyes like they knew who he was. He had told her that he did not feel like writing a poem then and there. He could write endless poetry about himself. But this was not himself. This was a dead turtle.

            “Fragrance the shore,

Break everything…”

Samuel closed his eyes and imagined Froid skipping through the water again, how the water fanned out behind her like she were a duck, the buoyancy in the lilies in her hand and how she weighed them, palms up, like an offering to him. He could smell the lilies and the dead turtle and the algae. None of them feared her. She saw the beauty in flowers, in death, in lowly vegetation.

“…I do not will you two,

Your cycle in repetition…”

Blue, yes, like oceans. They had found a dead frog on the path after leaving the water. Froid didn’t pick it up but instead stared at its flattened torso and commented on the “Tapestry… Soft gravel for a nest. Blue reflections, like water-death. The whole world is on this squished frog’s back!”

She turned back to Samuel expecting a scowl, a condescension that would force her to impress him further. His eyes were glossy in the sunlight.

Froid and her poetry. The two things that defied his predictions.

“At the edge of my shore,

A god like I.”

 Was she also God? In the context of exerting her world onto his, then yes. And to him, that was all that mattered.

            “Samuel,” she had asked a few minutes later, twirling her index fingers on his palm as they walked on a bike path, “Could you ever write a poem about me?”

            Samuel looked at her. She had not seen him on the verge of tears.

            “No,” he whispered.

            Froid looked him, denial furling her eyebrows. “Come on, you can write a poem about anything! I mean, ‘wet.rock’ was about that one time your brother caught you—”

            “Poetry is what I control. It is my world that I create.”

            “But, look at me! Clearly I am part of your world now, aren’t I? Don’t I deserve even the tiniest vignette?”
            Samuel couldn’t bear to look at her. Clearly. An adverb ending in –ly. Weak. Useless. He let go of her hand.

“Clearly. You know how much I love that word, Adverb? Do you know how much I wish to grammaticide all of those words from our language?”

Froid froze at the word “adverb.” Samuel had never used it with her.

“You’re beautiful, Ambrosia, but your beauty is redundant with my verse. I cannot make you beautiful. You just are. You are not my poetry.”

Any other person in the world would have seen that as a compliment. Froid knew better.

Samuel walked away from her, closing his eyes.

Samuel opened his eyes and he was in the Suzzallo Reading Room.

As soon as he finished the poem he sat back down. The speaker’s eyes were alight in terror, motioning that Samuel go right back up to the front and continue with the other two poems. Samuel shook his head. He wanted to see Froid.

            With the unplanned truncation of the program, there was extra time for the reception. Students threw themselves in Samuel’s path, hoping their martyrdom would enable them to ask some trite question about Samuel’s choice of orthography or why he always ended his poems with the letter “I,” but Samuel was in no mood for pilgrims. He wanted to see the one person he now could never convert.

            He wove around questions with as much precision as he could give himself. He made eye contact with every eye in the room but did not see the ones he was looking for.

            Green eyes. He felt them. He turned around and saw Froid facing him but walking out the door. He followed her outside. The two stood face to face at the entry.

            The color of Samuel’s eyes was shallow when he saw Froid’s. The lifelessness in her irises. The deep-set shadows. The gray lips from smoking. The pallid flaky skin. The nightmares, all of them, in her shaking hands, her stiff neck, her grinding teeth, her ripped fingernails, her ears numb from the times she heard herself screaming.

            She may not have been part of his world, but he was part of hers. And if he was in her world, was she also in his?

            Froid turned and started to run away. Samuel grabbed her wrist and turned her back to him. It was the reverse motion of the last time they had touched. Samuel could even smell algae nearby in a manmade pond.

            Froid’s eyes now were Samuel’s then, full of disgust and disappointment. Samuel could say nothing to her. He could only think.

            Higher Wisdom. The poem about you, Ambrosia. The poem I never wanted to create. The poem I could never create again.

            Samuel’s eyes moistened. For the first time in his life he held on to something that was not a poem. It was a human who was a poem.

            Samuel crumbled to the ground like a marble tower, kneeling at Froid’s feet. Samuel’s tears wetted the earth for the first time.

Chapter 3

            I drive frantically towards the University of Washington. Suzzallo Reading Room. It’s in the library somewhere. My driving halts when I arrive on campus and have to pause for students crossing the street in all the wrong places, the throngs of lectures releasing themselves outside in a heap of urgency. In exasperation I pull over on the side and park my car. I slam the door as I get out of my car and run towards the library.

            I stop and close my eyes, but I get nothing but silence from Froid’s mind. I sigh, not expecting anything different, and begin to run again.

            But then, I see her. Her eyes are angry, bright with rage, fighting the grasp of someone holding on to her. She’s holding on to me? No. I’m looking at her through the eyes of someone else.

            My vantage point falls to the ground in tears.

            Higher Wisdom. The poem about you, Ambrosia. The poem I never wanted to create. The poem I could never create again.

            This could be only one person.

            I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that Froid went to him. I can’t believe that I’m watching my brother cry for the first time in his life. But what I can’t believe the most is that I can get into Samuel’s mind at all. When he acts like a human being his mind is like everyone else’s.

            I turn my car around and go home. I can practice acting enraged for Froid. I’m not enraged right now at all. I’m euphoric almost.

            I enter my apartment and wait for Froid to return. I know she will come back.

            And sure enough, within the hour, she’s back. I don’t even need to force myself to act furious. Froid’s improved appearance has me gaunt with rage.

            “Was it fun? Was it fun going back to the likes of him? Do you like it? Do you like getting hurt?”

            Froid says nothing as she crosses the living room. Her calm makes me even angrier.

            “Oh, so now you’re just gonna be like him? You’re going to become like him because you can’t beat him? That’s a great strategy there, Froid. If you can’t beat the abuse, become it!”

            Froid opens the fridge, sees that I still haven’t bought guava juice, and closes it again.

            “You… ungrateful…”

            “How did you know where I was?” she asks me.

            “I assumed. I can’t trust you. After all I’ve done for you and I still can’t trust you. Why? Do you not trust me?” I grab her shoulders. She slips out of my grasp like she had anticipated it.

            “You don’t trust me?” she asks me.

            I stammer. I don’t know whether I mean it or not. I don’t know whether I said it just to scare her or if it’s actually true. I don’t know anything. When did this happen?

            She closes the door to my bedroom. I march up behind her and swing it back open. She tries closing it again. I wedge my foot in between and grab her wrist. I force her to look at me.

            But somehow, she doesn’t. “Let me go, Mr. Coldridge. I don’t feel comfortable staying here anymore.”

            I drop my hand in disgust.

            “Where are you going to go then? Where is safer than me? Where? Are you just going to go back to Samuel and sleep on that filthy mattress again?”

            Froid releases herself from my grasp. “I don’t need your help, Mr. Coldridge. I can get by on my own.” She kicks my foot out of the doorway and closes the door and locks it. I hear her packing her stuff. I see nothing of what she’s planning, where she’s going.

            Before I can wallow in my despair I get a notification that Callahan’s plane has landed in the airport. I text him a greeting as I head out the door. If I can’t get to Froid directly, maybe Callahan can.

            Callahan Grossherz has lost weight, somehow. I think he hasn’t been eating all that much out of stress and frustration. Maybe my jabs at his physique also did something. Callahan is as tall as Samuel, and taller than me, but literally twice Samuel’s weight, much of it on his face. He’s wearing jeans and the most interesting t-shirt he owns. It’s a screen print of some movers changing out the scenery in the background, paintbrushes dripping out of the pants and onto the ground. It’s an interesting shirt. I spill some coffee on it as he walks towards the exit, causing him to put a jacket on as he does a pain dance from the liquid scalding his skin.

            I honk as I pull over to the curb and Callahan peers into the car. I smile at him as friendly as I can, and I force him to smile back. Callahan doesn’t fight my command, and I don’t even have to force him to get into the car. As soon as he sits down I take off so quickly that the force pushes him back into his seat.

            “Callahan Grossherz. It’s so nice to meet you.”

            Callahan nodded as he looked at me. “Your name was….”

            “Luke. Luke Coldridge.”

            “And you’re related to…”

            “Samuel. I am Samuel’s older brother by twelve years.”

            Callahan hesitates. I lock the doors to the car to make sure he doesn’t make a run for it.

            “Don’t worry. I can’t stand my brother. I’m not working with him. However, I am concerned about a friend of yours.”

            “Ambrosia?”

            “Yes. She’s been catatonic ever since Samuel came to Seattle a couple days ago. It’s been very hard for me. I care so much about her, and we made so much progress. I was almost able to get her over Samuel, get her readjusted to her new life here in Seattle before the holidays. You wouldn’t believe it was her. She was so… happy.”

            Callahan looked at me incredulously. I wasn’t lying. Nothing that I had said was a lie, but my attempt to convey it appeared to have backfired.

            “Callahan, you’re going to have to trust me on this one. I’d never do anything to harm Ambrosia. I feel like I’m atoning for my brother’s sins against her, and taking the blame for all he’s done has been hard.”

            A few of those statements were lies, but they resonated more with Callahan. His suspicion dissipated as he nodded in concord.

            “I’m so glad you came out here to support her, Callahan. You’re such a good friend to her. Even if she doesn’t appreciate you as much as she should. Just know someday your loyalty will not go unrewarded.”

            Callahan smiles. I’ve said everything he’d ever want to hear in one concise utterance. We drive in silence for a while.

            “So, what do you do, Luke?”

            “Me? I’m a neurosurgeon at a hospital. My hours were crazy but they’ve winded down a bit before the holidays. No one wants to be recovering over Christmas. It’s nice. I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with Ambrosia. And you, Callahan? Are you studying creative writing as well? I’ve heard that that’s where you met Ambrosia and Samuel for the first time.”

            Callahan nods and tries to smile, even as I help him. But he can’t. He can only think about how he had met Froid and my brother. It isn’t a pleasant memory. He grips his fingers tightly he interlocks them. I slip his hands apart with sweat, but he puts them right back into position. We don’t talk for the rest of the drive.

            When we arrive at the apartment my bedroom door is closed.

            “Has Ambrosia been staying with you?” Callahan asks as he looks around.

            I nod. “It maximizes my time around her. It’s been nice to try to help her constantly. Give her some normalcy.”

            Callahan looks at my bedroom door in envy.

            I excuse myself to wash my face in my bathroom, but the door to the room is still locked. To my annoyance Callahan watches me as I try to break into my own room, and I have to play it off like it’s jammed.

            I unlock the door when he looks at the tile.            
            “Ah! There we go. The hinge must be a little dry.” I walk into my room.

            Froid is still there. She’s asleep on my bed as if our previous conversation never happened. Her things are still in closets and drawers. She isn’t dreaming because she’s not moving, and I can’t see anything.

            I try waking her up.

            Ambrosia, there’s someone here. Someone here to help you. Someone who cares very much about you. I’m not sure whom I’m referring to, but I definitely know whom I’m not referring to.

            Ambrosia doesn’t respond to my thought at all. It’s as if she hadn’t heard it. She lies there motionlessly, and I have to nudge her like a regular human. It bothers me.

            “Ambrosia, wake up! There’s someone here to see you.”

            Froid opens her eyes slowly, her irises slowly revealing themselves to me. I smile and put my hand on her cheek, but she doesn’t respond to my touch at all. It’s as if she hadn’t felt it.

            “Who’s here?” she asks with minimal effort. She doesn’t really care.

            But Callahan does.

            He bursts into my room with vigor and nearly throws himself onto Froid.

            “Ambrosia!” he exclaims, hugging her so hard I’m afraid she’ll crack. She doesn’t respond to his touch either, and that makes me feel a little better. At least she’s being consistent about it.

            “Hello, Callahan.”

            “How have you been? I haven’t seen you seen you since last May!”

            “I came to campus.”

            “Yeah, but that was for like a day, and we didn’t even get to spend that much time together, and you just left! I even went looking for you.”

            Froid doesn’t believe him. She looks at me and I nod as if to affirm what he’s said. It is true, though neither of them understand how exactly I know this.

            “Seriously! I went to your house even! Met your sister, your parents… We were all worried sick!” Literally, Callahan adds in his mind as he thinks of kelp and yeast and seaweed.

            Froid knows the last statement is not true.

            “My parents don’t care where I am, as long as I’m creating art.”

            Callahan’s enthusiasm dissipates. He should have known better.

            “I’ll make some tea,” I pipe up and leave them alone to talk.

            Callahan has some reservations of accepting food from strangers, but the very sight of Froid makes him happy enough to not mind. He and Froid walk out of the room after me and sit at the kitchen table. I make some rooibos. Callahan smells it and cringes. He is instantly transported back to the Froid house and dislikes the coincidence that both they and I would serve rooibos to him. I’m only doing it because they did. His newfound trauma from the Froid’s food choices was even funnier to witness firsthand.

            We all sit down at the table when I decide that I want to gain back Froid’s trust.  Neither of them are looking at me nor at each other but rather the wood grain on the table. I close my eyes. Dark.

            I open them. Still dark. The entire apartment is pitch black. I’ve turned off power in the entire building. Callahan is surprised but Froid doesn’t care, which doesn’t surprise him or me.

            “Ah, what a shame!” I exclaim from behind a few mugs. To make my shock more realistic I drop one of them on the ground.

            “Why don’t you two go out and catch up while I figure out what’s going on?” I encourage them. “There’s a Starbucks like a block away. It’ll be nice for you two to be out of the apartment and have each other’s company.”

            Now Froid is surprised. Callahan is as well but much more excited about it. Froid is even suspicious. I can feel her eyes in the darkness looking for my ulterior motive. She won’t find it. I know exactly what she’s doing.

            “That’s a great idea!” Callahan replies and stands up in the dark, nearly hitting his head on the overhead light. I swing it a little so that he actually does. He grunts as it smacks his forehead.

            Froid stands up as well, slowly because she’s still trying to figure out why I’m doing this.

            I draw the drapes and some feeble, cloud-diffused sunlight drips into the apartment. It’s not much, but it’s enough for them to find the door and enough for me to not have to procure a flashlight. I don’t have one. I don’t need one. If I don’t want to run into things I won’t. This is my story, after all.

            Froid walks out in front of Callahan. Callahan follows her until I stop him.

            “Look out for her, please. She’s angry at me at the moment, never mind why, but I’d really like it if you took my place in her life. Hang out with her, try to make her smile. Treat her like she’s the only good thing on earth.”

            Callahan beams at my request. He would have taken on this task even if I had not explicitly asked him, and not just because I willed it.

            Once the two are out of the building and out of sight of my window, I turn the power back on in the apartment. I grin as I picture Callahan’s face. Thank you, Callahan. Thank you for being everything that I could ever want for Froid.