Something easy, something light

a story

Aigee conquered the Mother’s heart right the next morning after her arrival, because she was the only one not only to make the bed but also make it in the same seemingly effortless but elaborate way the Mother does it.

The Mother is not stupid, it’s not only about devilish attention to detail and aiming to please, rather she sees her own young anxiousness in Aigee, her desire to become the perfect part in all the machinery, everything that brought Emsy to life, nurtured him, and now still is there, surrounding him,  like some immortal grass, like bamboo shoots that have a power to torture, while looking innocent, thin and gracious, like the Mother.

The Mother is not a torturous kind, but how’s Aigee to know that? 

Also, Aigee is in the bamboo-admiring stage, ready to fall on that bamboo like on some sword. That is how it is when one is deeply in love.

After Aigee and Emsy are back to the campus, the Mother also finds a very pretty postcard, elegant handwriting inside telling how Aigee is forever and endlessly grateful for the wonderful hospitality. The Mother remembers Aigee, and how endearing she is, pretty herself, as the postcard, elegant movements, former ballet dancer, among all the other impressive stuff, she seems to be an embodiment of her own handwritten message of a promise of future happy indentured servitude, or something. Adorable girl, really. 

Then though Aigee’s parents don’t find Emsy adorable at all, even though they didn’t meet him once. 

First, he’s a boy-what’s to adore?

 Then, he’s Jewish, and Aigee’s family is Catholic. True, the girl behaves like an apostate, but that’s just extraneous things, excesses of youth that she might overgrow; here though is a real chance for her to burn in Hell. 

Emsy becomes a secret.

The Mother learns of it and is quite aggravated. They don’t even know Emsy yet for them he’s already crossed out with many red lines, vigorously, and then they also blotted the ink, that is what the Mother thinks.

 That’s very not fair, for didn’t she accept their daughter with open arms, so wide open, that Emsy told her once: “Aigee thinks, you’re, like, the coolest person ever”. 

The Mother knows that many say so in the beginning for some strange reason, she knows the reason but doesn’t want to ponder it now, it’ll bring back all those thoughts about bamboos, ponds they reflect in, and even red benches with beautiful ornated backs where one can sit and admire the ponds.

 The Mother wouldn’t rather go into it, but she realizes she loves Aigee now too, in a strange way, so Aigee is double loved. Why not her Emsy? Who deserves to be loved more than anybody, and do they know, by the way, how much he helps their daughter, who kinda recently struggles with her studies, for all her brilliancy, the Mother bets they don’t, for them Emsy is just a vague threat-a shadow-waiting-to devour-and-spit out-Aigee. 

 She knows Aigee’s parents are much older, more traditional, she strives to understand them, but it’s still maddening. 

Then as time goes by and the Mother receives new information, it becomes painfully clear that the pond metaphor was all too appropriate, and she starts thinking that Emsy found in Aigee the bad side of the Mother that the Mother hoped he’d never find. What a sick girl, but Emsy takes it in stride, they move in together, live together, and there he is, running errands, shopping, cooking, cleaning, bringing home all Aigee’s plants and soft animals she loves to sleep with, when it’s summer vacation and Aigee leaves for her hometown.

 The Mother is okay with plants, and with soft animals, even though the collection grows and grows, more and more tiny teddy bears and picachos. At a certain point the Mother dares to tell Emsy maybe he can cut on the number of animals on his bed, put some in the closet? But he just gives her a defensive and reproachable look, as if he’s still five years old, but also fifty and wise. 

Then Aigee at last does something unforgivable, which she was preparing to do all these years, because Emsy wouldn’t, and Aigee can’t take good ending of fairy tales that happen to her, and they decide to separate. 

By that time, Aigee’s parents meet Emsy, because they arrive for Aigee’s graduation. They invite him for the family dinner, fall in love with him, quite unexpectedly, and stop caring about hellfire. 

One needs to add that Aigee’s big sister is engaged to a girl she’s been in love with since high school, who’s also some descendant of Al Capone. 

That’s just rich, the Mother thinks, of course now just even being a boy is good for you. 

School ends, but Aigee doesn’t, for all the decisions about separation. New and new betrayals of her come to light, yet the kids still talk for hours on the phone, each freaking night, “if we’d be forty maybe we’d marry, if none of us marries anyone else before; I’m not ready for it now”, Emsy says one day or some such nonsense, the Mother wants to scream, she’d rather they marry now if they love each other so, him and that brilliant wounded girl, but no, it’s just talking every night and meeting sometimes which they try to make happen in one of states of US where fate might look upon them favorably under disguise of some Coachella, or conference, or the wedding of the older sister to the Al Capone descendant.

All this time Emsy tries to meet other girls, and succeeds, yet the moment they learn about some ex he spends an ungodly time of talking on the phone, they inevitably leave, either straight away, or after trying and trying to explain to Emsy why it hurts. 
Emsy nods, agrees, he’s a gentleman, yet Aigee is still there, but not there, far away yet not leaving, plants are finally dry, but teddy bears continue to occupy, not leaving an inch of the territory to the enemy, whoever that might be.

Then there’s the Mother’s dream about a) Alix and b) Beverly, both daughters of her best friends, just the right age for Emsy, the idea was given, half-jokingly, by their mothers, at this or that point, they’d be happy to have a great kid like Emsy entering their family, becoming their son -in-law, not simultaneously of course.

 What a match would that be, the Mother thinks, never mind that Beverly is on a different coast, and Alix, in a different hemisphere. She knows both girls-beauties, inside and out; no hellfire involved. Stupid plans, she cuts herself off, who can plan such things seriously, fate’s a fate; yet she knows, that many plans dismissed as stupid carry within them pearls of wisdom, never to be found when needed; and vice versa, all the smart plans have seeds of stupidity, which start grow like crazy when those smart plans unfold. 

“Is Aigee still in the picture?”, Alix’s mother asks at some point; and the Mother moans inside, maybe outside too; they both laugh, she and her friend, yet frankly, the Mother is tired of all this, and worries about Emsy, and how things are foggy, and how somebody inevitably ends up being hurt, like in this song about marshes and a poor little orphan that got lost there at night.

“She’s a fixture”, the Mother thinks of Aigee, “it might be she’ll stay forever. Well, some people pull it out, even if they marry somebody else, don’t they?”

She’s a fixture, but what fixture? It’d be good if she’d be like a chair. Something light, versatile, an occasional chair. Maybe even a bamboo one, but the Mother doesn’t insist on that. Just something that can be swiftly and elegantly reshuffled together with the whole house when there’s a move, put whenever, look good everywhere, don’t take too much space. Aigee was a dancer, but she also plays instruments, sings like a nightingale, is great in sciences, has an impeccable taste. The girl would be a great chair, really, whatever shape she wants to be, just something easy, something light, please.

Then it very well might happen that Aigee is more like a sofa.

Emsy just went to visit some friends who study in a different university and live in dorms. The dorms are nice, but the furniture provided is often ugly. The girls in one of the apartments actually got their sofa sawn in half, and stuffed somehow both parts in the closet, bought themselves another sofa. “Why they didn’t take it out,” the Mother thinks, upon hearing this incredible story, “it is probably heavy as hell, that’s why, yet still, this closet thing doesn’t even make sense.”

The Mother highly suspects that she herself rarely got to be a chair-no, she’s often become somebody’s sofa, cut in half, stuffed in the closet, out of sight. 

There are several parts of her all around, scattered in between different closets. Sofa-that’s-too-heavy to take out, too ugly to keep. 

The Mother desperately wants to become a chair, graceful and light, but one cannot always choose what he’ll be for others, whether they’ll take a saw to him, stuff him in the closet, lock the doors.

She doesn’t want Aigee to be cut in halves, it’s too painful. 

Who decided that youth is a good time? Bollocks. Every time’s bad; every time’s good; and youth is cruel, in its Dorian Gray-ish way. 

And then something old, ancient, creaking inside her winks and whispers, “You don’t know yet what cruel is”.

“I’ll for sure be a chair though, in the end”, the Mother suddenly thinks, “because kids will take me everywhere. Just a small chair. A tabourette, really. Just let me stay.”