She Walks in Shadows(72)
Later, she started researching astronomy and even visited an observatory up north. The scientists there had taught her how they measured asteroids, even helped her find one sharing her name: 34-Circe.
“We think it’s gotten smaller,” one of the scientists said. “Infrared will have to confirm it, but it looks like it suffered a minor impact and loss some of its mass.”
Circe turned and smiled at the scientist. The tingling in her fingers became pleasant now.
“Do you think it could’ve been the same asteroid that hit me in the thigh?”
“Highly improbable,” the scientist said. “The odds that an asteroid with your name from the main belt got minor fragmentation, and the odds of that little chunk of rock drifting for dozens of light years only to crash on Earth and into that particular bar, are highly improbable.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Circe had responded. “Math was never my best subject. And a rock one foot long is ‘little’?”
“We measure in meters and yes. Asteroids are usually measured in kilometers.”
Circe had accepted that, even though the aching in her thigh wouldn’t. That bruise had only faded in recent years. Sometimes, it changed colors, depending on her mood.
Accept the rainbow, taste every color, power great, once meant for goddesses. Know your true form, the formless demands of life and eternity.
Stir herbs, stir angry, stir love. Brew potions, stroke others’ flesh, embrace in years lost.
Back in the practice room on a Friday; Circe had spent her days strolling in the park, calling her daughter just to hear Melody’s voice. Melody lived in New York now, studying liberal arts, and she liked her independence. Circe knew that her daughter had cut off her long hair, settling for a curly crew cut.
Circe showed her ID to the security guard Toby, a smiling young man with beard stubble and dark skin like hers. He escorted her to one of the largest rooms, with a wall-sized mirror and a black piano. Toby brought her a music stand and asked if she wanted water. So different from the first security guard.
Pleasant persimmon orange. Light-green bobbing in a soft, gray wind ....
Her fingers remained still as she prepared herself and started warming up. She was even able to press keys on the piano, to go into the simple chords. Her throat lent its power well to the occasion:
“Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,”
Toby strolled around the corridors, listening to her and to the regular orchestra students — just like Ulysses, righteous mud-brown armor minty-green swirled together to fight unraveling pink — but Circe ignored him and the thoughts in her head:
“More I would, but Death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.”
Except Death wasn’t welcome in Circe’s home. She hadn’t welcomed it the day she and Melody had gotten into a nasty fight, the only night Melody had stayed up past midnight to work on a high school project due the next morning. Trouble is olive green rotting in orange autumn —
“When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in, in thy breast.”
Her fingers had twitched terribly, but by then, Circe knew what could happen and so, she held back and screamed, instead. Melody screamed at her to go to bed, and Circe did, holding in all the rage and frustration that Melody was acting stupid. When her fingers wanted to lash out with sting-angry, Circe used a mirror.
“When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in, in thy breast.”
The next evening, when Circe went out to lunch with a friend in the afternoon, the friend had noticed that her face was starting to freeze in odd places and her movements were becoming sluggish. By evening, Circe had ended up in the hospital, in Intensive Care.
“Remember me, remember me, but ah!
Forget my fate.”
Late at night, rubbing her eyes and yawning, Melody came into the room. She had thought her mother was asleep and sat beside her.
“I didn’t start earlier because you were talking about not wanting to live anymore, with no husband and a dead-end job as a professor with thankless students,” Melody had spoken to what she thought was a corpse. “How could I focus on myself if I was worried about you swallowing pills or slitting your wrists?”
“Remember me, but ah!
Forget my fate.”
As Circe recovered, Melody had started distancing herself, while helping her mother with household chores. She paid for her college application fees and relied on guidance counselors to choose good schools, far from Circe. It was as if she had built a fortress so that schoolwork mattered more than family, so that Melody could please Circe without either of them worrying about each other.
“Remember me, remember me, but ah!
Forget my fate.”
Circe looked at herself in the mirror; she had lost weight since her stroke and the kind dimples that always appeared when she thought of Melody. She was wearing dark pants, so that you couldn’t see the scar from where the asteroid had hit her.
Where did I go wrong? She asked herself. How could I get angry at her for getting angry about what I was saying? Why would I want to hurt my own daughter? I love her.
She continued singing, repeating the verses. Colors appeared in her head, wistful violet regret, gentle pale-orange, peach-pink longing.