rosanne cash
"The Arc of Loneliness" from Bodies of Water
Short Fiction by Rosanne Cash.
© 1996 Hyperion, New York

THE ARC OF LONELINESS

The arc of loneliness curves suddenly into view at the odd­est moments: when by chance I see the unknown woman who lives in the apartment across the street through her living room window, adjusting the knick-knacks on her mantle; when a stranger in rough clothing passes me on the sidewalk smelling of cigarettes and spearmint chewing gum, which makes me think of suicide. Not my own, not even his, necessarily, just suicide, another segment on the arc. There is no present time on the arc, only past and future, those most frustrating limbos of thought. Deferred pain is the drug of choice—feeling seen in a mirror, framed by calculation and distance. Deferred pain is the heat that shapes the arc.

One day there is nothing left to do but go away to an island. On the plane, an eight-year old with an excess of testosterone keeps running across my feet. Finally I grab him by his T-shirt and say, very sweetly, “Listen, darling, if you don’t stop trampling me I’m going to make you sit on my lap while I tell you my entire life story. Including a lot of details about drug rehab and my divorce.” He goes back to his seat.

On the island, sitting on a tiled terrace, with the smell of wild orchids making me abso­lutely dizzy, listening to a million different birds sing and waves breaking in the near dis­tance, I find I can think only of one thing: Serial monogamy: biological imperative or excuse for failure? I am continually distracted by con­templation of this, or similar questions. A vacation is of no use to me. A jetliner bound for a holiday just sails the curve of the arc, like a heat-seeking missile bound to find the deferred pain.

These are the thoughts that soothe me when I am encircled in this arc: that perhaps I am already a ghost to some dear relation centuries away. Perhaps something I have recently done is now disturbing her future equilibrium. She is surely someone I would love, and rattling her from my place in the past is my way to know her. We connect.

My distruptive rhythms are even now rippling through time and my own gene pool. It is comforting to become the crazy ancestor. I am a brooding face staring from a old paint­ing in a stranger’s house, a stranger who has my blood. My memories of the future are not nightmares, but a product of the deepest long­ing, to want what doesn’t yet exist, to miss those who have not yet been born. The future is the point on the curve of the arc just where it bends out of view.

My legs have been numb for thirty years. They have clenched the arc as if it were an oiled sad­dle attached to nothing. We have ridden it to exhaustion. As I step off and survey my sur­roundings, an occasional but necessary foray, I find my skills at relating to other human beings are nonexistent, desperately lacking, or rusty at best. Too many years saddled to a phantom stallion. I am now waiting for my legs to come to life and inform my whole body of the appropriate next move.

My daughter goes to nursery school. She tells me on our walk there one morning that every day after she is dropped off, she gets a funny feeling of missing-me-and-being-worried. I describe the feeling for her in detail, invent some memories of when my own mother left me at nursery school and how my fears gradu­ally turned to excitement at the various oppor­tunities for learning and play, and assure her that she will soon feel the same. What I don’t tell her is that I have the identical gnawing anx­iety when I leave her in the morning, and usu­ally linger at the window to watch her. It is unbearable to let go. One afternoon, having come a little early to pick her up, I watched her on the playground through the fence from the street. She was arguing loudly with anoth­er five-year-old girl. I was stunned. She is the most gentle, soft-hearted child ever to breathe, and yet she was standing with clenched fists, telling the other child exactly what she thought of her in a loud, trembling voice. The other little girl stared at her implacably. My daughter turned away angrily and walked to a bush, where she buried her face and sobbed loudly. She buried her face in a bush to cry. What a great idea, I thought; so poetic. She is an artist. It is a sublime torment to receive the unfathomable gift of her confi­dences and her innocent dependence. I don’t trust myself with such munificence; I, who don’t give a bush a second glance. In those moments, I stumble back to the arc. I mount the saddled ghost. I wave to her from afar.