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Winter/Spring 2015

Healing Arts by Maryanne Stahl

 

         Cabbage Town was on the way home, so Allie stopped to see Simon, her ex. A box of his odds and ends had been absorbing heat in the back of her car since the day he’d moved out three months earlier. She didn’t plan to stay long, but she wanted to get rid of the last of his stuff. They had been talking online, finding their way past bitterness, and Allie figured they were both ready to move on.

         Simon was renting a shotgun cottage that was cuter than Allie expected, with a screened porch and a picket fence. He also had a new dog that followed Allie, jumping and panting, up the porch steps into the house. It was a good-looking dog, a fuzzy, yellowish sort of mutt, friendly if rather hyper.

         Simon opened the screen door and waved Allie in.  She set the box on top of a pile of newspapers, and the dog jumped up to sniff. Then it turned and sniffed Allie’s crotch. She raised her knee.

         Simon winced. “That’s Shady.”

         Allie felt a familiar steeling of her nerves against his criticism. But then Simon called the dog away. “C’mere, Shady.” So Shady was the dog’s name.

         “Want something to drink?” Simon asked, moving toward the kitchenette.

         “No. Thanks.” Allie figured she should leave.

         “Well, I’m going to grab a beer.” Inside the refrigerator was plenty of beer, Allie could see, but not a lot else. She turned so he wouldn’t see her looking.

         A half-shredded ten-dollar bill lay on the floor. Allie picked it up.

         “Shady eats me out of house, home and wallet,” Simon said, popping the top of his beer.

         Allie handed him the half bill. “I guess it’s worth five now.”

         Simon shook his head. “Maybe he needs more greens in his diet.”

         “Ha,” Allie said. “Well.”

         Simon took a long slug of beer. “Hey, it’s a nice day. Want to go for a walk? I’ll show you my ‘hood.”

         Allie couldn’t think of a reason to say no.

         Shady ran around excitedly, but Simon left him behind in the yard. The dog wasn’t good on a leash yet, he said.

 

~~~

         “Cool neighborhood,” Allie said as they walked past brightly painted cottages and shops. She knew he considered their old neighborhood boring.

 

         “I can walk to everything,” Simon said. “Restaurants.”

         “And bars,” she said. Bars had been an issue.

         Simon ignored the remark and enthused instead over various points of interest. Young homeowners were rebuilding whole blocks, he told her. Or they had been, until the market tanked. But it would turn around again.

         They walked past the old cotton mill, now reconfigured into loft condominiums, around which Cabbage Town had sprung up at the turn of the last century. Simon pointed out a twenty-foot cement wall that was locally famous for its graffiti, then led Allie round a community amphitheatre whose grounds showcased local sculpture. The sky was blue as paint. They walked.

         The day grew milder and they kept walking.

         Simon stopped before a stacked-stone wall that enclosed the yard of a ramshackle Victorian house. They peered through the iron gate. Turreted, porched and ginger-breaded in a chipping, shabby-chic way, the house was surrounded by an elaborately peculiar garden.

         Inside the gate, sloped garden beds along a path were ‘planted’ with objects. A red telephone sat atop pine mulch next to a grey-blue patch of Russian sage. Tarnished silver-plated forks sprouted from the ground, forming a fence around an azalea.   A wheel leaned against a boulder beside which sat one of a pair of green galoshes—a single galosh, Allie thought–used as container for a miniature tree.

         Allie craned to see past an old millstone fashioned into a fountain. Water bubbled up from the center of the worn stone basin and ran off into a bed of river rock edged in irises. From there, a path made of thousands of flattened metal bottle caps led to a gazebo festooned with naked Barbies, some painted, a few headless or limbless. An adult-size Barbiesque mannequin, nipples cherry red, stood guard at the steps.

         “I think the guy across the street from me knows the people who live here,” Simon said. “They have a landscape business.”

         There was nothing like this where Allie lived; there had been nothing like it where she had lived with Simon. The most outre house in her neighborhood was a pink-doored cape cod owned by two women who were most likely but not definitely lesbians; they grew lavender and sunflowers in the front yard.

         A voice called out, startling her. “Come on in and look around if you want.”

         Allie’s eyes met Simon’s, and they both looked up. On a second-floor balcony just off a French window, a bedraggled man leaned a bit too far over the balustrade, pale and sweating, naked but for a pair of dark silk boxer shorts. “Come on then. Close the gate behind you, and close it again, please, when you leave.“ He made a sweeping gesture. “Check out the garden.”

         Allie looked at Simon, and he nodded. “Thanks,” she called. Simon unlatched the gate and they entered.

         “God, I feel like shit,” the guy in the boxers groaned as they approached. Allie stopped beneath the balcony, shading her eyes to look up at him, not sure what to say. ”I didn’t get any sleep,” he told them. “Up all night.”

         “Sorry,” Allie said. She wondered whether she should wait to listen to the whole story. As if in answer to her question, Simon kept walking.

         Boxers Guy made a dismissive gesture. “Never mind me, I’m a wreck. Look around the garden. Enjoy.” He returned to the house through the French window.

         This guy could be a psycho-killer, Allie knew, but she didn’t think he was. He’d had a rough night, perhaps a few. But he obviously thought his garden was something special. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he was generous.

         Allie followed Simon past rows of overgrown azaleas, a graveyard of shovel heads and broken plant pots, past rock cairns and cement statues adorned with hats, mardi gras beads, and fake flower garlands.

         “Talk about your Southern eccentric,” she said.

         Simon, who had grown up in Atlanta, had gone to film school in New York. “This place is more like a Fellini set,” he told her.

         Allie felt a small jolt. They’d met at an Italian film festival.

         They walked down compressed coke-can paths, traversed battered brick patios, paused at a frog pond (labeled), passed a band of fig trees espaliered against a rotting shed–at every corner something strange or beautiful or strangely beautiful.

         Sometimes Simon walked ahead, other times he kept pace with her.

         “Have you been here before?” she asked.

         “Nope,” Simon answered. “I’ve passed by, but never got invited.”

         They ended up at the back of the house where a driveway, once slate, now mostly obliterated by earth and moss, ran along the side of the property to the back steps. Double wrap-around porches were strung with decorative lights: pink flamingos, Mexican peppers, Japanese lanterns and tiny blue Christmas lights.

         Boxers Guy came out of the back door onto the lower porch. He had dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and linen shorts, both wrinkled. His thinning, untamed hair was now slicked back, the work of a wet hand.

         Slick, Allie thought, re-naming him.

         Slick pointed to a painted wooden sign near a non-functioning waterfall. SPIRITED GARDENS and WATER FEATURES was lettered in watery green-blue Gothic font over a mirror-black waterscape. “That’s us,” he said. “That’s what pays for this bitch.” He gestured toward the house.

         Simon nodded. “I’ve heard of you.”

         “This place is amazing,” Allie added, immediately feeling lame.

         Slick turned his head to one side, his lips in profiled moue. He tapped his forehead with his finger, “Would you like to see inside? Y’all can come in if you want to look around the downstairs.”

         Simon stepped up, suddenly friendly, extending his hand. “Sure, man. Thanks.”

         Allie remembered that at one time, Simon would have expressed enthusiasm for her benefit, to create an experience for her. She wasn’t sure what it meant now. Perhaps she had never actually known what he meant.

         They entered the house, a warren of half-deconstructed rooms and mind-boggling collections of oddities. Spanish moss hung from a wax-spattered crystal and candle chandelier. A much-painted hutch, chipped blue over scraped beige over faded green, displayed animal skulls and skeletons on open shelves—‘gator, dolphin, deer, boar, snake and a bunch of small mammals.

         One wall was covered with Xeroxed photographs, mostly men, sometimes in pairs or groups, some alone, some posing. In one group shot, an athletic young man’s face had been inked out. At the bottom of the photograph, someone had scrawled in black ink: the love of my golden years.

         Simon was drawn to one end of the kitchen, toward the winches and pulleys, twisted cables and tangled chains, hydraulics and cranks hanging from the ceiling. He stood examining the contraptions, and the slope of his shoulders reminded Allie of a time years ago, a moment not unlike this one, separately together at a museum.

         Slick sidled next to Allie. “I’m just distraught,” he said, withdrawing a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and tapping out a cigarette. “I’m burned out from staying up all night with my dog. I think he’s dying.”

         “Oh no,” Allie said. He did look burned out.

         Slick held the unlit cigarette between his fingers, against his cheek and shook his head. “We’ve almost lost him before—what that poor animal has been through. But this time, I don’t know. He won’t eat, won’t get up.” He lit the cigarette and blew smoke toward Simon.

         “That’s awful,” Allie said. She watched Simon move into a room with walls stripped down to studs and beams and exposed wires.

         “I need a witch,” Slick said. Do you know any spells?”

         Allie didn’t know whether to laugh.

         “Or treatments, you know, anything to get Diablo going again.” Slick gazed upward toward Heaven, or the second floor. “I gave him the whole bed and I sat in the chair—all night, scratching his ears.” His words ended in a catch in his throat.

         Allie felt obligated to admit, “I do energy healing.”

         Slick brightened. “A healing artist.” He dragged heavily on the Marlboro. “Could you heal Diablo?”

         “Well.” What could she say? What could she possibly say to this wretchedly hung-over man who had shared his outrageous garden? “ I could try.”

         “Come with me then,” he said, motioning. He left the cigarette burning in a dead plant.

         Allie followed Slick past the pulleys, through a parlor as crammed with furniture as a shop, into a front hall that unexpectedly resembled the inside of a barn. Leaned up against the walls and hung from rough-hewn rafters were windows of stained glass, stopped clocks, old tea trays and a slate chalkboard trimmed in oak. Photographs hung and leaned everywhere, in frames, pinned or taped to walls, drawn on, scrawled across, labeled and remarked upon, torn and glittered.

         Simon emerged from a farther room.

         “Diablo is upstairs,” Slick said to Allie. “Come with me. Just you, not him.”

         Simon’s eyes met Allie’s, checking that she was OK with what was happening.   “I’m going to help with his sick dog,” she said.

         Simon nodded.

         They’d been getting along better since breaking up, Allie thought. Of course, they didn’t expect anything from each other now. Allie wondered whether it were possible to have a relationship without expectations.

         The staircase to the second floor was narrow and winding. Allie considered the logistics of moving furniture.

         Slick read her mind. “We hauled the big dressers off the porch and up through the French windows, using a windlass we still have around somewhere.”

         He guided her through the nearest oak door, into a bedroom. A queen size, four-poster bed took up most of the space; draped across it from edge to edge sprawled a gargantuan, totally black Great Dane.

         “This is Diablo, my big baby boy,” Slick cooed over the impossibly broad head. The dog didn’t stir, except to blink. “He’s a marshmallow.”

         “Hi, Diablo.” Allie moved to a spot along the right side of the bed. The dog was the biggest she had ever seen, a horse of a dog. Two or three of Shady.

         “So go ahead, make magic,” Slick urged.

         Allie closed her eyes and breathed. She drew the shapes in her head and silently intoned their names. The palms of her hands began to tingle unexpectedly soon. She opened her eyes and reached out, letting her fingers hover about an inch above the radiant animal heat. After a few moments of concentration, she lay her hands directly atop the sleek back. Diablo shifted but she kept her hands in place, or moved with him. She willed energy through skin. Diablo breathed loudly and his flanks heaved.

         “Oh!” said Slick. “You’re doing something.”

         Allie slid her hands along the rippling canine torso, stopping here and there where she felt cold or tension or emptiness. She wasn’t really a practitioner; at least, she had never before done energy work on a stranger, human or otherwise. But she had been using the energy work on herself.

         Diablo lifted his head and Slick squealed. “He’s moving!”

         With her left hand, Allie stroked between the dog’s prodigious ears; her right hand cupped his belly. The dog rolled to give her access. Allie concentrated.

         Slick walked around, picking up items of clothing, food cartons, papers, moving them from one spot to another. He held up a plastic backscratcher and used it as a pointer. “I sat in that chair all night and scratched his head with this. From the Dollar Store. Who knew it would become his?”

         The dog stretched, then farted. Allie smiled and turned her nose away. Two sets of triple windows, one on each side of the bed wall, had been gradually washing the room with light.

         “All night I sat up with him, he didn’t move a muscle!”

         Allie didn’t quite believe Slick, but maybe he thought he was being honest. She moved her hands to the back of the dog’s head. “You’re kind,” she said to Slick.

         “I’m a bitch,” he said.

         Allie laughed. “A kind bitch.”

         “With a heart of gold,” Slick said. He leaned across the foot of the bed and lifted Diablo’s front paw. Allie moved back to give him room. “I massage his toes,” he said, demonstrating. “He only has four.” He examined the dog’s dew claw. “I guess this is the fifth. Not really a toe.” His voice cracked. “A fake toe.”

         A ring tone jangled the notes of “Dancing Queen.” Slick pulled his cell phone from his shorts pocket and looked at the number. “Guess what?” he said to the caller. “I have someone here. With Diablo.”

         He listened, frowning. “She’s a witch, ” he said and turned to Allie. “Are you?”

         Allie stroked the dog from head to tail. She shrugged.

         “Who knows?” Slick said into the phone. “Who knows what anybody is?” He listened and frowned again. “Here, talk to him.” Slick handed the phone to Allie. “It’s David,” he said, as though that explained enough.

         Allie held the phone slightly away from her ear. “Hello?”

         “What’s going on?” asked the voice, David.

         “I’m here with your friend. He’s concerned about his dog.”

         “Yes.” Brusque.

         “I’ve been trying to do some healing…”

         “That dog has survived heartworm, parvo, mange.” David—was he Slick’s partner?—snipped. “He’s fine. He’s a strong dog.”

         “Wow,” Allie said. “OK. Good.” She held out the phone to Slick who turned his back and hissed into it. Allie moved toward the door. She should go. She hoped Simon was still downstairs. Would he have gone on without her? In the past, he might have. He could be impatient.

         Slick tossed his cell phone onto the bed next to Diablo and threw his arms around the dog. “Thank you,” he said, looking at Allie. “Diablo thanks you.”

         “You’re welcome. I’m Allie, by the way,” she said.

         Slick stood, his head to one side. “That’s my sister’s name.”

         “Huh. What’s your name?”

         “It doesn’t matter, “ Slick said. Then he told her: “Richard.”

         “That’s my brother’s name,” Allie said. She was a fan of coincidence, thought she had knack for it. Simon had liked to tease her about it.

         Slick-Richard waved his fingers at her. “Oh, let’s not go there again. Not that lifetime.”

         Allie laughed and Richard laughed too. For the first time, she looked him in the eyes, which looked as though he had probably been crying off and on all night. She wondered about David, who had sounded annoyed. What was up with them? Had Richard invited her upstairs deliberately, for the purpose of calling David, to show David …what?

         “What’s up with you and that guy downstairs?” Richard asked as he opened the bedroom door.

         Allie shook her head. “He’s my ex. We’re friends now.” She would probably say those words again, but she had never said them before. She felt a twinge of guilty pride. She was someone who could be friends with her ex.

         Richard led the way out into the hall. At the top of the stairs he stopped to face her. “What did I do wrong?” he asked.

         Allie mentally scanned through the past ten minutes. “Nothing.”

         “I always do something wrong,” he said.

         “So do I,” Allie said. “I guess we all do.”

         Richard straightened his bagging shorts and followed Allie down the stairs.

         Simon wasn’t in the downstairs hall or the kitchen or the adjoining rooms, but Allie found him outside on the porch, reading a yellowed community newspaper. “How’s it going?” he said, looking up.

         She smiled at him, as though later he would ask her what had happened upstairs and she would embellish the story with private jokes.

         A truck turned into the driveway, a dusty, black F-150 pick-up, its driver’s side window open for a hand holding a cigarette. Curls of blue smoke dissolved into the blue sky.

         The driver parked, flicked his cigarette out the window, and stepped out from the truck, grinding the butt with the heel of his shoe.

         “David,” Richard said. He pointed at Allie. “She’s the one.”

         Simon turned away, and Allie knew he was grinning. There would be teasing.

         David looked at Allie with suspicion. “Diablo doesn’t need any help. He’s much better than he was,” he said.

         “Oh Jesus, yes,” Richard said. “But still.”

         “He’s a beautiful animal,” Allie said.

         “Uh huh.” David came up the porch steps and went into the house, Richard following

         “Nice guy,” Simon said.

         Allie shrugged. Relationships were invariably fraught. Except the days when they weren’t. She and Simon headed down the driveway toward the street.

         “Feel free to come back.” Richard called after them; he was up on the second floor balcony again. “Just remember to close the gate!”

         Simon chuckled to himself as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. “So, “ he said. “You cured the dog?”

         Allie shrugged. “Who knows?” Simon had never given much credence to what he called her “woo woo” ways. She didn’t even know how much credence she gave herself, but healing arts were always worth a try. “That was pretty wild.”

         “Always an adventure with you,” he said.

         She looked at him to judge whether he were mocking her. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “But you know, the strangest thing about that place turned out to be the boyfriend in the pick-up.”

         They stopped at the corner for the light to change. Simon turned to her. “I wonder…”

         Allie thought he was about to tease her again. “What?”

         “Maybe you could work on Shady some time. Calm him down on the leash.”

         Allie nodded. “I probably could.”

         And as they walked, the way back seemed much shorter than the way there.

 

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