Page 42 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #7

chloE turnEr
Joe and I had planned to come here for our hon- eymoon, when I had imagined walking under The Queen’s Ring with my hand in his, wearing the nine-carat band he’d surprised me with at the Montana State Fair.
Los Pozas
sunset’s just visible over the palm thatch, and there’s a hummingbird hovering around the splashy red blooms of an autumn sage planter.
Back then, I’d assumed we’d grow old together, that one day I’d be tucking some old, red-plaid quilt around his knees, reminiscing about these gardens, asking, Do you remember the acid green parrot that chattered at the entrance? The Stair- way To The Sky that which led you up and left you teetering on the edge of the blue? What about the pool where the children were swimming, their warm brown bodies twisting in the spring- fed cold? We’d be staring out over a yard to a chopped-ice lake beyond, yellowed teeth chatter- ing on the back steps, loose-haired dogs slopped around our ankles. A long way from here, from Las Pozas and the sculptures crowding out from the jungle in this Mexican garden, teasing you with their twisted forms.
Cathy’s a college tutor from Brooklyn, not long out of college herself. I had planned to keep to myself on this tour, but since she folded herself into the seat beside me that first day the bus left Tampico, we’ve got on well enough. Though there is some- thing sad about her, a drooping wilt to her tall frame, as if her roots might be too shallow. Her whole body has paused to wait for my response now, a grilled cob held just out of reach of but- tered lips, pale crumbs of Cotija cheese slipping between the rows of hot, plump corns.
We wouldn’t grow old and crinkled together, and that’s not our yesterday to remember, our hard- won honeymoon fund having ended up in the Church coffers–a loan at first, somehow never repaid. Daniel Windslake could have eased the pocket money from the clammy palm of a tod- dler. Even that cheap piece of Jewelry World tat, with its tiny solitaire sparkle, found its way across Daniel’s palm, via the revolving door of the pawnshop.
The garden of a poet playing God? It felt a little close to home, after everything, I want to say. I have seen enough of men who think their power knows no bounds. But even since I’d left Joe, haven’t I always wanted to go to Las Pozas, to see the streams tumbling down the slopes amid all that concrete strangeness? I’ve taken risks, emerging from my enforced solitude, joining this party to make the trip. Crazy risks. But it was worth it.
Still, what I’d give to be there, tucking that quilt round Joe’s knee. Instead, I have made my own twisted path, so I must walk it. Even up to the top, where I had walked at Las Pozas this morning, up to where the steps vanish into the jungle air.
Joe had known nothing of Edward James, of course, eccentric English poet with an eye for the fantastical. Hell, Joe probably couldn’t even spell Surrealism. But I’d married him for his heart, not his sparks, although today I ended up there with- out him, in Edward James’s Garden of Eden, walk- ing under The Queen’s Ring on my lonesome–my ring finger bare, even the tan line long gone from below my knuckle. Is it worth now being safe, if I am always going to be alone?
“How did you find the gardens, Sally-Ann?” Cathy asks me that night at dinner, out on the bunk- house terrace. It’s cramped, the five of us hemmed in by dwarf palms and terracotta walls, but the
“Lengua taco, Sally-Ann? You have to try it.”
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“It was very special,” I say, if only to make Cathy bite into that dripping cob.