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#Post#: 27--------------------------------------------------
Pickles and the Blue Vase
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: December 3, 2019, 10:23 am
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Marion stared through the glass at the Chinese vase. There were
many people in the art museum, but she was all alone. She had
been all alone when she met up in front of Goff-Bartlow with a
dozen kids of various ages and genders and a Suite Advisor who
had brown curls and yellow tinted glasses with severe, black,
metal frames. She blinked from behind the glass and read
everybody's name over and over again, as if they were passengers
on a plane.
They were passengers on feet. They left in the early morning
walking down to Central Avenue and then north; for the sun was
in the east, to their right. They walked and walked, past
schools, offices, shopping centers, some of which had seen
better days, past apartments that told stories of the past.
Unlike in Malta, New York, where the trees were already brushed
with red, gold, and copper, there was only a hint of changing
colors in the leaves as summer gave way to fall. There was only
a hint of the heat to come, and Central avenue was quiet enough
that the stink of traffic had not yet driven out the fresh smell
of morning.
In front of the music conservatory which was near where Central
Avenue either beings or ends at County Center and Tarrytown
Road, the Suite Advisor took count again. Actually, she was an
art teacher, not a Suite Advisor. She talked about how she
wanted to see the students in her classes. "Artists starve,"
thought Marion, though she might inherit money. No one was clear
on that, she mused. "Get your Mega-Metro Cards out," the art
teacher cried. "You're going to need them for the bus which
should be here in about ten minutes."
The bus which was mostly empty arrived. Most adults, Marion
thought, were still asleep. From a seat near a window, Marion
watched the landscape roll by. She had a tall, eleventh grade
female for a seatmate. The older girl asked her how she got
interested in art. Marion said that she was not particularly
interested in art, but that her mother suggested she see New
York City.
"All you'll see today is 5th Avenue and the inside of a museum.
That's not really New York."
"Thanks for the advice," Marion felt like saying, but instead
she asked. "Then why are you going?"
"I'm going to be stuck on campus all fall, and I still have some
birthday money left."
Marion liked her seatmate's honesty. The bus went from Yonkers
into the Bronx, and then across the bridge into Manhattan and
down the East side. New York City took forever to grow up from
its well populated northwest suburbs. It was an alien place like
all large cities that were squeezed together instead of
sprawling like the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, and other nice,
green cities in the South. On the other hand, New York lacked
favelas or shanty towns. Tenements, if they still existed,
looked a whole lot better.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was like a temple. The art
teacher assembled her charges on the broad, granite steps and
made them all synchronize their phones' time. She also made them
set an alarm for two and a half hours from now. That meant one
pm. "We'll have lunch after that," she explained as if lunch
were an important event or a bonus. "I hope all of you have
money or at least know where the ATM machines are in this
neighborhood."
"For those of you who are new to all this," the teacher
continued. "I'm going to let you split up. I'll pick out a
rendez vous site. You need to be back at the rendez vous at
1:10pm. You can all tell time. I need you to set an alarm for
fifteen to thirty minutes before that. The alarm is your signal
to walk back. If you want the alarm to just vibrate fine, but if
you don't get back to the rendez vous, things are going to get
serious if you know what I mean." Marion did not know, but
"things getting serious," sounded like a euphemism for the
threats her Aunt Judith and Uncle Niles made back in Malta.
"Goodbye Malta," Marion sing-songed in her head.
Marion followed the rest of the Kotiah-Yovanovitch crowd into
the museum and past the admission stall where the Art Teacher
said to pay five dollars or as little as they chose. No one
would stop them for not paying twelve dollars, and they needed
lunch money. Once inside the lobby, the art teacher chose the
rendez vous point in front of a banner advertising an exhibition
of 17th and 18th Century still lives. "We meet here, under the
green grapes. You think those were really Thompson Seedless?"
the art teacher asked. The seatmate from the bus raised a hand
with coral, pink nails. "Thompson Seedless weren't invented
yet."
"Yes, but there are green grapes with seeds," Marion spoke up.
The green grapes with seeds that she knew were called Niagara.
They were a Malta, or maybe Upstate New York thing, but there
were probably other green grapes way back when. "Who invents
grapes," a boy whose voice hadn't changed asked. "Nobody, they
grow them," another boy replied.
"OK, 1:10pm back at the banner," the art teacher dispersed the
group, and Marion was alone. She was alone because no one wanted
to tour the museum with her. She was alone because she knew
nobody. She was alone and she didn't care. She thought for a few
minutes about sneaking out the museum door and making sure she
was back in time, but she didn't know the city and she figured
she may as well get her five dollars worth and stay out of
trouble. Besides her phone had GPS and there was no reason the
art teacher couldn't track her.
Marion sauntered over to the floor directory, then turned right
to find the African art. Her parents had talked about taking her
on a safari, not the kind where you shot animals with guns, or
even bows and arrows (The way people sometimes hunted for deer
in Upstate New York), but with a camera, like a big natural zoo.
They would sleep in luxury tents, and travel with a group of
friends. It would have to be a group of friends, Marion
realized. Otherwise her parents would have had to be on their
best behavior, and that would be no fun for them. Marion's
parents had always prioritized fun.
Of course there were no animals in the Africa collection. That
was over at the American Museum of Natural History. Buy your own
lunch etc... This was people art, masks, distorted faces, wood
carvings, metal jewelry and beads. Marion touched the beaded
rope that held her D-Card. She remembered sorting through the
pile the night before for beads with odd shapes and interesting
marking. So much work could go into something so small.
When Marion got done with the African exhibit, she returned to
the directory. If Africa was done, it was time to try Asia since
she had actually been there. If Hong Kong could be considered
part of China, she had been to China. She had also been to Tokyo
but was small enough at the time to remember it only as winter
and loud trains. What her parents were doing there, she was not
sure.
Hong Kong had been another matter. That had only been the summer
before seventh grade, and the good ship, Ship, traveled across
the Pacific, with Dad staying sober enough to take regular
shifts at the helm. He had shown her navigation maps and
equipment. Mom did not have to stay sober because she had
Gabriella, the nanny, to watch the younger children and Shaunna,
the governess for Marion and Nestor, the two oldest. There was
also a whole raft of friends and hangers on.
They were loud and silly, the way stoned and drunk adults can
get. One fell overboard after two days at sea, and Eddie, Dad's
pilot, threw him a life buoy, and pulled him back on deck. He
stood on the deck shivering and cussed Eddie out. That memory
still made Marion wince. Marion, Liza, Shaunna, and Gabriella
all shared one mega cabin below deck. They kept the door bolted
and latched at night or when things got loud. Nestor and Jason,
had a small cabin of their own, close by. Marion could remember
Shaunna telling Nestor over and over again. "Just close and lock
your door....If somebody pukes in the hall [Between the two
cabins and their bathroom] I'll get a sponge from the galley.
Just chill..."
There were days when Marion missed Shaunna way more than she
missed her parents. Her parents, after all, had not disappeared
entirely. "I don't need these thougts," Marion tried to push the
memories away and read the directory map. The Asian art was up
two floors and on the other side of the museum. Marion checked
her phone. She had plenty of time. She imagined the museum
closing and getting trapped inside it. Wasn't there some book
about two kids running away to the art museum and eluding the
guards by standing on the toilet in the ladies room. Any guard
with half a brain would eventually pound on the stall doors or
need to pee or the kids would trip off an alarm because face it,
electronics were everywhere.
The Buddhas did little for Marion and the paintings looked
mostly like scrolls of brown parchment, but the porcelains were
another matter. The delicate and intricate flowers, the scenes
of rivers and bridges, and yes people, the borders made with
hair thin brushes and the brilliant cobalt, sweet pinks, and
jade greens, made her imagine a China different from Hong Kong,
the land of dumpling eateries and black circles under her
father's eyes.
Marion tried to imagine herself as the artist of any of those
works, particularly a vase, that was nearly solid cobalt except
for a design of white blossoms on sprigs with realistic white
leaves. The white on blue design was made by painting a
background of a blue pattern, and leaving the flowers and leaves
blank. She imagined devising the design and then patiently
applying the paint with different size brushes, different
consistencies of glaze, and care that came from always having to
keep the final product in mind. Of course as a woman way back
when, Marion, doubted they would let her paint porcelain. They'd
probably bind her feet. Marion wiggled her toes to make sure
they were still there and full size. She wondered what her
mother would think of the plum blossom vase. She probably
wouldn't notice it because people came first, that and fun. If
she were sober, she might ask why it interested Marion. When she
was sober, she knew her daughter craved stability. "You take
after my brothers-in-law," she said long before one of those
brothers-in-law, Uncle Niles, kidnapped Marion after Mom and Dad
got busted in Biloxi.
On the good ship, Ship, the summer before seventh grade, when
everyone was still together, and when they were crossing the
Pacific, two of the passengers got sick. Getting sea sick wasn't
that special, but the old lady, spent most of the voyage in bed.
She was to sober to curse very much. The old man, not the man
who fell in the sea, was another matter. He crumpled into a heap
the first night they were in port. Dad and Mom whispered and
then after telling the other passengers to hide everything, he
went and got the police and an ambulance. The sick man came off
the Ship on a stretcher. Dad later said, the sick man had a
heart attack. He did not die but he was flown home "into the
clutches of his no good family." Bad things could happen on the
Ship, but Dad and Mom said they could handle it. Dad and Mom
lied.
The vase painter would not have thought much of Marion's
parents, just as they didn't think much of the vase painter.
Painting porcelain could take your outside yourself, but it was
not fun. Sometimes being outside yourself was better than fun,
Marion decided. Then she remembered to check her phone. She ran
down the stairs and made her way back to the museum's center and
down the main stairs. She was the tenth out of twelve kids back.
The Art Teacher looked impatient.
"So did you see anything interesting?" she asked a dumb, adult
question.
One of the boys talked about armor. Another shook his head. "
What do you feel like eating for lunch?" the art teacher asked.
"Pizza," a boy said.
"Salads," a girl answered.
"Restaurants in New York are expensive," thought Marion, and
then she pushed the thought out of her head. As things were, the
Art Teacher insisted everyone walk down Fifth Avenue to window
shop in the boutiques and oggle the apartments hoarded as
investments by wealthy Chinese, at least according to Marion's
father. Door people stood outside like tin pot dictators in gold
braid trimmed uniforms. Fountains burbled, and luxurious and
decidedly ordinary goods sat behind plate glass windows.
Once past Central Park, the art teacher took a left into a side
street and led her charges into a bagel bakery that also served
sandwiches. "Too many carbs," complained a girl who could have
sat on her hair. "Order a wrap or a salad plate then,"
suggested the eleventh grader who had sat with Marion on the
bus. Marion perused the menu and ordered a tuna on wheat with
relish and dill pickles.
The sandwich made her think of Shauna again. Shaunna always had
two kinds of pickles in the house and put them with tuna for
Marion's lunches. It was a small thing, but small things grease
the wheels, and Shaunna, the governess was not fool. Even on the
good ship Ship that last summer the family was together, there
were pickles in the galley. Shaunna made sure of it. There was
also marshmallow fluff for Liza, and big bags of frozen corn,
the only vegetable Nestor would eat. Shaunna made sure the
galley stocked food they enjoyed. There are no quick trips to
the store, when you are in the middle of the ocean. When you are
in the middle of the ocean, it's your own world. Sooner or
later, though, you come into port.
Marion remembered selecting dumplings (Dim Sum) from bamboo
baskets and trays in a restaurant trimmed with red lacquer. Some
tasted spicy. Some had fish inside them. The green ones were her
favorite, but she was pretty sure she ate with her eyes. Shaunna
had taken Marion out to eat a day or two after the man with the
heart attack went to the hospital. It was just the two of them.
And now, Marion couldn't even recall what they talked about. The
memory of the restaurant sat there frozen like the blue vase
with the plum blossoms on it. "Are you OK?" the eleventh grader
former seatmate asked Marion. "I'll be fine," she answered.
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