Story of the Month

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      A beacon of light shot in through a window and dust particles swirled through the air around her. And then the children she didn’t know were a ring of planets orbiting her. She was the sun. Everything revolves around her, the teachers had said. 

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      Walking, walking,

      We all fall down!

 

      When she was eight or nine years old she liked to help her mother in the garden. The plants needed her attention. Her mother dug up the sod. Joan could then dig with the spade and pour in the fertilizer and plant food before placing the red dahlias just so in the cool brown soil. When the little boy next door got too close, she pushed him down. She was unmoved as he cried, and their mothers came to his rescue. 

 

      In middle school, the playground was swarming with kids. Then the bell rang, and they funneled past her to the door. The last boy carried the soccer ball. She stepped in front of him. He gazed nervously at the door as it closed. The yard was oddly quiet. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. He didn’t kiss back. He didn’t like it and told her so. She kissed him again. Slower, feeling his lips. She liked it. The next day he wanted to do it again. She said no.

 

      She saw only the boys that revolved around her from then on. She accepted only the best gifts. They were briefly valued, but there were always better ones waiting. She couldn’t remember any of them now. 

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     Vague recollections of their faces came to her as she read the letters. She remembered the times at the reservoir. She saw the leaves shimmering overhead, and the sunlight filtering through, painting the naked bodies of the boys with warm and cool blotches. She loved looking back at them as they jumped up and dashed after her attempting to cover their burgeoning manhood, on their way to leap off the rocks into the clear water. 

 

      It had been forty-three years since she had read this one. She remembered the encounter he mentioned. It was satisfying, but his words told a different story. You got what you wanted, he wrote. How strange she thought. Why would he write that? Of course she did.

 

     The next group of letters were more recent. Long descriptions of how their lives together would be, and the plans he had for them. Another wrote about the gifts and wondered if she had gotten them since he hadn’t heard. She couldn’t remember. His name was familiar, but his face was hidden in the smoggy recesses of her memory.

 

     I’d like the ring back, wrote another. She could never have gone through with it. She had only accepted it because of her mother. Joan had handed it to her. “I don’t want to see him again, so you have to return it.” 

“But I like him,” her mother had said. It was a familiar refrain, but this was one Joan remembered. “You’ll never find anyone,” her mother added sadly. “I’m afraid you’ll always be alone,” she murmured.

 

      Joan sat in the attic as the light shifted. A sunbeam filtered through the lone window, a galaxy of dust was all that circled her now.

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     She had never thought much about the letters before — or the people who had written them. But there they were. And there she was. Confused. 

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      She felt something shift inside her, something she couldn’t name. It rattled her. She paused.

 

     After a few moments she began sorting through boxes, feverishly searching for the tiny yellow sweater — the one she had worn when the universe was new, and everything revolved around her.