by Liza Veale

 

Adrian never took too much time in the morning. She had found that 27 minutes was all it took to shower, dress and drink tea without fussing about getting out of the door on time. Adrian was not self-important but she found fussing to be beneath her dignity. Her mornings were brief, allowing for maximal time sleeping. Adrian loved sleeping. She considered it to be her vice, although she wasn’t much concerned with morals. If push came to shove she would deign to fuss in the morning rather than sacrifice heavy, dreamy moments- although she was rarely confronted with push coming to shove.

            Her last gesture before pressing out into the day was to grab her eggplant purple shawl and wrap it twice around her delicate neck. She wore it even when the sun melted others into bikini straps and open toed shoes, for even then Adrian possessed a chill that required constant tending to. She had found the scarf in the closet of a senile great-Aunt, had tried it on in front of a rusting mirror and stuffed it into her bag, knowing she could have it if she’d asked, but not wanting to bother the old woman. To Adrian, the scarf said “I mean business” in the most tender, least hostile way possible. And she liked that. She enjoyed refining the impression she made upon people although you wouldn’t guess it.

            Finally, sheathed in scarf, Adrian closes the heavy door to her little San Fransisco home and feels for the first time, the consciousness of being awake. While she dwells in the hybrid dimension of waking dreamland over her tea, around the round wooden table far too big for a young woman living alone- out on the sidewalk she greets the momentary awkwardness of remembering who you are, and walks with a little more purpose.

            On this particular day the sidewalks were littered with fallen leaves, plastered by night rain. They lay flat as if pressed for years between the pages of a diary and she walked among them like faded cursive words. She worked for a small soup carry-out spot and was responsible for devising and preparing the soup du jour. The clouds collapsed in slow motion overhead and she thought to herself: cream of cauliflower with manchego cheese.

 

            Adrian passed the day like all the rest. She ladled hefty, bucket-like spoonfuls of soup with expert precision; never once did a drop slosh over a cardboard rim. She smiled with a small closed mouth as she handed over paper bags weighted with warmth. She fed those looking for more than a meal because we, like Adrian’s costumers, like to believe soup heals. She fed fathers without time and boys with runny noses and men who missed their mothers and girls without someone to keep them warm. And they all lost themselves for a small moment if they noticed the way she seemed to look, unseeingly, at a spot behind their heads. Some glanced out the window to see what could have been distracting. Most were already fumbling with their car keys.

            She was organizing the spice cabinet when she heard a small cough from the front of the store.

            “Good evening,” she said, brushing loose locks from her vision. He was a young boy wearing a large, worn, double breasted jacket with silver buttons. It looked almost like a world war one artifact and Adrian observed the moment become richly theatrical. Like the two of them played characters in a scene from a period piece. Period pieces were her favorite. She liked the boy instantly.

            “Hello.” He was beaming foolishly as if anticipating a punch line he knew was coming.

            “What kind of soup do you want?”

            “I’d like to sample all five of them, please.”

            So Adrian complied, looking somewhat amused while the boy took long, pensive pauses between flavors. He loved them all but hated the corn chowder.

            “I’ll have a quart of the tomato bisque.”

            “Ok. Are you very hungry?”

            “Oh, no it’s for my grandma. She sent me down here because she said she has an insatiable craving for tomatoes!”

            “So then why did you need all those samples?” She asked. And when she looked up the boy flushed hot pink and scampered out of the store forgetting his change.

 

            At home Adrian washed her linens with color safe, lavender liquid laundry detergent that came in a fancy bottle with a fancy label. She folded and put them away before snuggling up around warm milk and watching Jules et Jim. She was comfortable and so, she told herself, she was happy.

 

            The weather had gotten warmer. Today she prepared a cold chicken soup with lemon and zucchini. From behind the counter she spotted the boy quite a ways a way and spent thirty seconds trying to find something to do with her eyes while he and his grandmother made it into the store. She looked up and greeted them as if she hadn’t been staring.

            “Hello Miss, my grandson came and fetched me some tomato bisque last week,”

            “Yes. I remember.”

            “Well it was delicious, just what I had been hoping for. We’ll take another quart of that but I have to run to the bank and such for just a moment so darling why don’t you stay here for the time being, Miss you don’t mind keeping an eye on him, I’ll only be but a second.”

            “Oh. No, I don’t.”

            And so the old woman was out the door in a slow moving whirl of magenta and Adrian found herself unsure of what it meant to be alone with this child. She tried to guess his age, maybe ten? That would mean, what, fifth grade? Do fifth graders have concepts of awkwardness? After a moment:

            “You know you forgot your change last time.”

            “I know. I had to tell grandma I gave it all to a homeless man”

            “Is your grandmother a philanthropist?”

            “What?”

            “Does she encourage you to be charitable?”

            “Well, yes, but probably not with her money.”

            Adrian and the boy, whose name was Mischa, invented a soup called sweet potato cream chowder with brown sugar, ate the soup, (Mischa found this part most exciting because he said his grandmother’s cooking wasn’t very adventurous and almost always involved graham crackers) and cleaned up the store before closing time when they decided Grandma had gone missing.

            They had checked every store within a four block radius before Mischa made a confession.

            “This has happened before.”

            “Like Déjà vu?”

            “No, like my Grandma has run away before this.” The wind had whipped his hair like egg whites and the locks pointed in every direction. His smallness had never seemed so apparent. And he looked cold.

            “So what happened?”

            “I found her.”

            “Well where do we begin looking?”

 

            They caught a bus and squeezed into a compartment of four seats facing each other. First they rode in silence with maybe some humming. Then they were joined by a short Asian man who wished them both happy Sundays, followed by a man in a suit who spoke very loudly into his cell phone and made all three of them feel very small like whispers. Then the two men got off and a young girl sat down and looked at Mischa whenever he wasn’t watching. She lingered to ask him something with her eyes but when this went unnoticed she, too, headed for the doors.

 

“Did you ever wonder what it would be like if there were no such thing as friction?” Adrian thought first of soccer cleats and sand paper but then, with a smile she saw into this young boy’s mind.

“Well this moment would be very different.”

Perhaps in unison the two watched their bodies slide like soap off their seats, watched Adrian’s hair tie slide out of place and her rings slip from her fingers. The wheels underneath them would become still and gravity would take its throne as the only planetary force.

One look at Mischa, at his hopeful and expectant eyes and Adrian let out loud perfect laughter she didn’t know existed.

The city thinned out and so did the passengers and soon enough they were among only four others traveling along the California coast.

            “Mischa, I’m sorry to ask, but where are we going?”

            “Grandma loves the ocean. We’re going to the place I found her last time.” he said. And after a while, “I know you would think that because she’s a grandma, that she wants to love me all the time with cookies and blankets and she does some times, but also, I think, there are times when she thinks that should be my parents’ job.” The bus rounded a corner and their vision became filled with the green, glass ocean. And then Adrian was aware, more than ever, of being at the very edge of a land mass that seemed to stretch eternally behind them. “My parents aren’t alive.”

            Suddenly she felt- in a painful, physical sort of way- she felt for this young boy who didn’t have someone showing for him every day that he deserved devotion. And she felt for his grandmother who didn’t have enough time left in the world to be devoted to anyone but herself. And for his parents that never, ever had enough time in the world and then, for herself for having all the time in the world and no one to devote it all to.

            They got off the bus and walked to the place where the land turned into big rocks and then went under water. They walked with their arms out and their heads down and took big wobbly steps from boulder to boulder while the ocean threatened them over and over again with salty mist. Adrian let Mischa lead while the sun turned them into silhouettes until finally he stopped.

            “She’s not here.” They lowered themselves onto a small flat rock and huddled together. “The only gifts the sea delivers are harsh blows.”

            “She’ll turn up, Mischa.” They looked at each other and waited and finally she said what they both wanted to hear. “And if she doesn’t, I’ll take care of you.”

            And there with the salty, moist wind crashing around them, Adrian knew she could live forever without hot soup or lavender-smelling beds or purple scarves and never be cold again.