Tuesday, July 25, 2017

The Desert of Manzanita


 Response to prompt #25


The Desert of Manzanita
by Helen Sadler

Life crawls in Manzanita.  The children go to school. The adults go to work and do all their adult things. The flowers bloom and the sun sets over the ocean, which is irritatingly relentless in its tides and moods. Some days I think I will have to crawl out of my skin in order to ever feel free. And that isn’t too far from the truth.

I did get out of Manzanita once. I begged my mom to take off her medical billing job – a good two weeks – so we could drive south to Los Angeles, into the Joshua Tree Forest and the deserts of Nevada and those stunning Salt Flats in Utah. This was home to me – a place that is dry and scratchy and unforgiving. Because that is my every day reality. Nowhere like the desert, with its spiky trees and cacti, its ability to draw every bit of moisture out of your body leaving your sinuses aching and your skin akin to the Gila monsters. Ah, the desert.  My home.

I had dreams, great dreams, amazing dreams when I was growing up in Manzanita. There was no doubt in my mind I would spend my life here. It wasn’t a huge tourist town then; it was just the locals and newbies who occasionally showed up on our doorstep hoping to be taken in. More often than not they were. But not everyone or everything is welcome in Manzanita, as beautiful as the sky paints the sky and the mountains reflect that glory. Redemption is hard to find.

There was a boy. Yes, isn’t there always a boy? This is the wonderful dream part that I go to in my mind only at great risk of encountering sadness that I will not be able to control. My mother has warned me about thinking too much about the past, and to not even think too much about the present.  Mother is happy if I don’t think at all.

But I brought you here to tell my story, so here it is.

I was in love with a boy. Super secret. The only one who knew was my dear friend Hope Gillerman.  I swore her to secrecy with every pinky swear and zippered mouth motion and pleading I could possibly conjure up. She laughed. She kept my secret.  I thank her for that.

The boy’s name was Donald Hake and we were in the same grade at Neah-Kah-Nie High School. He was handsome and smart and funny and everyone loved him. Especially me. There was a gang of us back then, of which I was a bit on the periphery.  There was Siobhan and Daniel and Jenn and Jane, and a smattering of others who came and went.

Daniel and Jenn were always together. She was the tall redhead in the group, the one who was super at sports and everyone loved her easy manner. Daniel? Well, even back then we questioned whether he was truly meant for Jenn, but as kids we figured everyone wanted to experiment.  No issue for me, anyway. I wasn’t interested in him.

If Jenn was the tall redhead who caught every man’s eye, I was the short redhead who was invisible to anyone with testosterone. If Jenn was the vision of an Olympic goddess, I was the elephant dancer in a tutu. Yes, I was trying to be a dancer, even though I had a horrible sense of balance. It was the only thing I wanted to pursue.  Donald – he played saxophone and guitar.  Hope played the flute.  She was dedicated.  I just wanted to dance even though my body barely cooperated and I never made it into anything but intermediate levels at the dance studio I had dreamed of owning one day.

I wanted Donald.  He was never going to see me dance, so I started to think I needed to make myself more noticeable.  After all, didn’t that work for Ariel in The Little Mermaid? Didn’t that work for the Sandy in Grease? Just change who you are.  Simple. Gets you the guy every time.

I saved my babysitting money and bought new clothes. No, not leather pants!  But there was a big beach blast coming up and I was determined to show up as a new person.  It was the end of Junior year.  I figured it was now or never to nail Donald down, to help him see how much I loved him, so I was determined I had to be at that event. And I was going to surf.

Remember.  No sense of balance. I now know it was a silent form of epilepsy, but I had no idea at the time.

I showed Hope the clothes I had purchased for the event; halter top, tight shorts, skimpy bikini (yes, even though I wouldn’t be wearing it to surf.) I kept them hidden from my mom. She would have had a cow and a half.  Hope?  Well, she tried to understand.

“Deana, I don’t think you have to change who you are for Donald.  Maybe just talk to him.  Have you ever talked to him?”

I had to admit I had not. Ever. Like never ever.

On the day of the big beach event, the end of the year party where beer was sure to be flowing and maybe I would get Donald’s attention, I found out that Hope’s grandmother was ill, and she wasn’t going to make the party.  I was stunned.  I stalled.  I almost didn’t go.  Then my desire to impress got the best of me, and I called Siobhan for a ride.

Yes, I drank beer.  And yes, I did my best to surf.  All the way up to the time I woke on the beach with a ton of people hovering over me and no feeling in my body.  Until that moment this girl thought maybe she had a chance. I still had not talked to Donald, but I knew I was getting close. 

And it was Donald who leaned in and told me the ambulance was on the way.  Ambulance?  What? At that moment I could have turned into a sand crab and buried myself deep in a hole, so deep I would come out in some hovel in China. These are the only words he ever spoke to me. I’m in critical condition and all I can think is that he finally talked to me, and I had no way to respond.

As it turns out, while trying to surf I had a seizure which left me dumped hard on the beach, where I proceeded to have a stroke – left-sided hemiparesis, to be exact. I was carried off the beach by paramedics. My mother came to the hospital in a tizzy because I hadn’t been honest with her about where Siobhan and I were going, and that was basically the end of me.

I spent my senior year being tutored at home.  I took online courses for my associates degree from a community college just so I can make a living. My right side is partially paralyzed and therapy only took me so far. My brain just doesn’t cooperate.  I missed all the senior year events I had longed to be part of, with Donald of course: prom, graduation, the whole works.  And, of course, I could no longer dance.

Donald was long gone out of my life. I don’t believe he ever checked on me. I truly had been invisible to him all along.

And Olivia Newton-John had made it look so easy.

Time went on.  Jenn and Daniel broke up and before long she was with my Donald.  (See how I did that? My Donald. Still. I’m hopeless, just like Mother says.)

Manzanita.  Life creeps along as another day comes and I have no prospects.  I am employed editing technical journals online, something that I can do from home and doesn’t require the irritation of not ever being able to drive. I drink too much diet Sprite. I watch far too much television.

Then the tragedy. Donald in the path of a log truck losing its breaks.  He survives. His son survives. His daughter Lydia dies. Jenn loses it. They divorce.

This is the “Tragedy of All Tragedies” in Manzanita. The whole town made a big deal out of Jenn’s daughter dying.  Everyone but me attended the funeral (which was at a graveyard overlooking that nasty Pacific.  Who would lay their child in such a godforsaken place?) They cried and worried about “poor Jenn” and “such a tragic thing to occur so fast.”  Well, I had something horrendous happen to me which changed my life in a flash, and no one grieved or wrung their hands over the fragility of life. That’s the price I pay for not dying.

And yes, it got messier after that.  Jenn breaking up a marriage.  Mary Ann Tucker able to voice the anger I have held in for so long. (We have quite an active gossip mill here in Manzanita.) This broke Donald’s heart for good, I think, and he moved away eventually. Not that it matters.  I hadn’t seen him in years anyway. Just rumors and maybe an occasional picture someone took. All our sad lives started that moment I had an epileptic seizure and time came to a stand still. Forever.

Mother says I need to start thinking about what I will do someday when she is not here to take care of me.  Not sure what she wants me to do.  Start dating?  Now? Who would have me?

The evening Mother made this suggestion I found myself looking out the window, something I rarely do. I thought about my ridiculous love for Donald and my competition to be like Jenn and my lost dance dreams and my missing friendships. No one wants to be around me now since I’ve lost my sense of humor and ability to express feelings appropriately. Hope, yes, she stops by sometimes, but she has her hands full with her own children.

I look out the window long after dark, thankful I can’t see the wretched ocean.  I know one day I need to get out of here.  I know one day I will find a way to move, a way to get to the desert or the salt flats or anywhere but this rocky heartbreaking coastline. Away from this insular atmosphere that gets harder to breathe in every day.  I may not even wait for Mother to pass away. I may need to make my move. I look at the tall trees and wish they were Saguro cactus. I look at the mountains and wish they were miles of sandy dust. I want to go to a place that feels as dry outside as I do inside. It is only there I will find rest.  It is only there I will be consoled.














This story stems from Kevin Canty’s story “The Whore of Manzanita.”

4 comments:

  1. WOW! I read your entry right after reading the original story and felt like I was reading the same author! Your nameless character brought an even sadder sense to the gossips of small town. With her accident she forced herself to live solely through what was happening to everyone else. I love how you connected The Little Mermaid and Grease to your character's need for change. I also loved her hatred of the ocean and need to go to the desert. You used amazing imagery and voiced her disdain perfectly. I love, love, love this piece!!

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  2. Thanks for your comments. I was happy with my film connections, too, so glad you mentioned it. The character's name is Deana, but that is only mentioned once. Hope is her friend--a name pulled from the Canty story

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  3. There is so much for you to be proud of in this story. I would love to see is Deana actually made it out of town...or if she never made it out of Manzanita.

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