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Graveside:
The sun nears its zenith, when no shadows were cast upon the ground, and the doppelgänger that squats close to your feet or stretches itself out into a long body that creeps behind you or scurries ahead of you over grassy lawns or weathered facades of old buildings are banished for a short time. He thought of Hellos’ daily ride across the sky, drawn by his fleet of flying stallions. He wondered what planets would be ruling the sky when Hellos completed his journey for the day. He wondered if Mary Beth was a prisoner of those stars. He wondered if he could unchain her from them, or if the stars were her true home and if the fetterments that bound her soul lay elsewhere.
He could faintly hear calliope music from the merry-go-round off in the distance, on the other side of a screen of tall poplar trees that occluded the view of the neatly lined up headstones from the amusement park. On the other side of the screen was the auditorium the management built (on the cheap) with columns to adorn the entrance and wings abutting each side to attract paying adults to its Tarot card readings, peddlers of crystals, and white-faced drag shows with skeleton faced M.C.s in black topcoats and hats with silver-handled canes. Now they were thinking of putting in a casino. At night the amusement park would shine with floodlights, vertical beams blasting into the sky, while the rest of the Gardens fell into darkness and solitude, and the security guards shooed away the children. The day belonged to the children, the night to the adults when they gathered for their otherworldly séances.
Now, with the sun at its zenith, the shadows banished, and the gawkers at the Kensington’s grotesque funereal debauchery, now rigid under respectable faces, masks donned for the glare of the light, he brought his offering. It was a slow day. There was no one about to be a witness. The headstones gleamed in the warm sunlight of a spring day, and glare reflected off their polished surfaces. Some stones were decorated with artificial silk flowers, faded by the sun, mounted on spikes stuck into the ground. Most of the headstones were bare as if the proprietors of them were saying, “I spent enough to buy it; I don’t have to visit it too.” The lake, the park, and the woman were all off in the distance, and hibiscus bushes and pealing birch trees obscured his presence. He knelt before Mary Beth’s headstone; she was underneath him--waiting.
He opened his briefcase and took out a hand spade that belonged to his wife. She had used it every year they were married to tend to her lilies, her favorite flower. She planted small miniature varieties of white and pale pink along the front porch, and tall lilies in little beds in front of the house, with a dozen blooms on each stock of blazing orange and dazzling reds. They weren’t the only flowers she cultivated but were her joys. The front of the house was not really sunny enough for them, and they didn’t do as well as she would’ve liked, but she dutifully lifted the varieties that couldn’t survive the winter and replanted the yearly multiplying new growth, baby buds popping off mature ones. The smooth wooden handle of the spade became worn and its blade dented. After each use, she washed it clean with the garden hose and put it away in the garage to dry. It was from those hooks on the garage wall where her few gardening tools hung that he took it. They haven’t been used much lately. She’s been neglecting her flowers; weeds started choking them this year.
With the spade, he digs a series of holes in the ground in front of the headstone that bears Mary Beth’s name. Thrusting the spade under the grass and into the soil where she lies beneath. First, he carved a circle in the sod so he could lift the clump of grass out with the spade, turning it over onto its top so he could neatly replace it when he was finished, to leave the grave looking as undisturbed as possible. He then dug down into the soil a few inches deep, leaving a small pile of dirt to the side. He did this nine more times, to dig ten holes all together: five pairs of holes, evenly spaced down the length of the grave.
This work made him hot in the direct sunlight; he removed his jacket and laid it nearby. The knees of his suit pants became dirty. He would brush the dirt away the best he could before he left. He loosened his collar, removed his tie, and rolled up his sleeves. Sweat marks formed on his shirt, under his arms, and on the small of his back. He wiped perspiration off his forehead and out of his eyes as he dug. Streaks of moisture ran down his chest. By the time he had dug the ten holes, the sun had crept to the West. The work caused him to breathe hard as he penetrated into the ground. Shadows were beginning to peek out from around the headstones, and the doppelgänger about his knees was growing again. He laid the spade down in the grass. His hands were sore and cramped because they weren’t used to this kind of work. He would have a blister on his thumb the next day.
The ten holes in the ground comprised a map of Mary Beth’s body. Five pairs of holes down the length of her grave to replicate the symmetrical sides of her body: left and right. He had thought this all out: planned it. Five pairs of holes down the length of her grave to replicate the five zones of her body: two for her legs and feet; two for her hips and genitals; two for her hands and arms; two for her chest and breasts; two for her head and face. He started at the bottom pair of holes. He brought with him, an object for each hole. He retrieved the first object from his briefcase. His hands shook from his labor, and he placed it into the last hole he had dug.
From his briefcase, he removed a pink lady’s razor and placed it in the bottom left-hand hole. A razor for Mary Beth to shave her legs, legs he knew would be beautiful like the splendid calves and slender thighs of her mother, those legs so entranced him, legs he loved to slide his hands over and feel the warm smooth skin, especially when he was dating her and early in their marriage. For the right-hand hole, he withdrew a pair of black stockings to adorn, cover, and enhance the sensual thighs, knees, calves, and ankles. He neatly folded them and placed them in the hole. He covered the razor and the stockings with the soil of the grave and replaced the grass.
For the next two holes, for Mary Beth’s hips and vagina, he brought black lace panties and a tampon. Those two items were the most difficult to purchase, partly because of his embarrassment and partly because he didn’t know what Mary Beth would like the best, would she prefer white, pink, pale blue, or black panties? For the tampon, he chose the same brand his wife used; figuring she would know which brand was the best. Even though he found contemplating menstrual cycles distasteful, he knew for Mary Beth to be sensual, she had to rhythmically bleed. He placed the tampon in the hole above the razor and the panties in the hole above the stockings. He covered those items with soil and grass.
He took out of this briefcase a compact with face powder and a mirror for Mary Beth to hold in her right hand while she checked her makeup, and touched it up as necessary, and buried it in the appropriate hole. For her left hand, he brought a gold wedding band. He had it inscribed on the inside “To my beloved,” the words he had hoped some man would one day speak to her and make her happy, who would bend his knee to propose to her and stand in front of a minister and take the vow to love her until death parted them. That man wouldn’t come now, so he vowed to be her husband in death since she would have no husband in life. He couldn’t decide at first if he should leave the ring inside the blue velvet-lined box it came in or place it in alone. He finally decided that only the ring should go in, what use would there be for the box once the ring was on her finger? He placed the ring at the bottom of the hole, pushed the soil on top of it, and covered it with the clump of grass.
For the pair of holes that represented her chest and breasts, he retrieved from his briefcase a black lace bra, to match the panties, and a nipple from a baby’s bottle. She would want to accentuate her breasts; breasts: those complicated pair of bewitching objects. Breasts that draw men to them, just as his wife’s breasts captivated him with their roundness and heft, but also fed men, the boys of men of the next generation, and girls of women who draw those boys to reproduce themselves. For those men capturing breasts, he brought a bra to help set the trap. Mary Beth, he was sure, would breastfeed her baby, providing milk from her own nipples before moving the baby to a bottle and solid food. This nipple, her nipple from which nourishment is pulled from sucking lips. Into the left and right holes, he placed these objects and carefully replaced the soil and grass.
For the last two holes, those for Mary Beth’s head and face, he brought a pair of earrings and a small make-up case with lipstick, eye shadow, and mascara, the adornments of a grown woman. A mature womanly face, framed with earrings, lips reddened, eyes highlighted, cheekbones blushed, head tilted back as the sun fell on her face, perhaps even a lit, burning cigarette in her hand, an occasional vice, just like her mother, smoke drifting off over her shoulder, then a puff of gray smoke issuing from between pursed lips, earrings reflecting sparkles of light around her ears and neck where a succession of boyfriends had placed kisses. She would stab out her cigarette and look down at her baby in a stroller. He thinks about this as he buries the last items and carefully puts the grass back in place.
He picks up the spade again. There is one more hole to be dug. This is the hardest one. He sits there on his knees and gazes into the sky. It's high and far away. Puffy white clouds are moving over. Their bottoms are gray. A breeze is blowing more constantly now, the shadows are longer; the doppelgänger to the East takes on a human form, mimicking each of his moves. He finds the right spot for the final hole, below her breasts, above her hips, this one is right in the center. With one hard plunge of the spade, he penetrates the sod, and with trembling hands, he tears back the grass roughly, leaving a gash in Mary Beth’s abdomen, and then threw the shovel to the side, to the West where the sun would set. He fell on his hands and knees and let out a sob. He offered up to his beloved Mary Beth the only Grail cup he had to give.
The doppelgänger to the East could be seen unfastening its zipper and lowering its pants. This scene is too private to view directly. If this scene were set to music, it would be the jagged rhythms of the “allegro con brio” of Beethoven’s seventh symphony. The doppelgänger, like the shadows on the wall of the cave, will be our guide. The doppelgänger pulls forth what we could perceive to be a penis. We could image the expression on its face, if it had one, eyes clenched shut, mouth tight, lips crushed together into a thin line as its penis is coaxed to greater and greater hardness, the doppelgänger conjuring up rough, brutal, pornographic images in its mind to bring this act to completion. Looking closely at this doppelgänger, we can see a clawed hand clutching, squeezing, pounding; we could hear, if the doppelgänger could make a sound, snorting, ragged breaths sucking and blowing in and out of opening and closing nostrils. Its back arched, its legs spread, head turned away from the sun, then a mouth popping open to wheeze, to breathe long deep gasps of air into suffocating lungs.
Meteors streaked the sky, chunks of rock thrown off by a passing comet, threw themselves into the atmosphere, to herald the coming messenger, the harbinger of evil fortune. . . Bees fondled the stamens and pistols of blooms spreading pollen as they fed on the nectar of deceptive blossoms, a trick on the insects by the flowers to carry out their reproduction. . . The horned and bearded Pan danced on his hooves, twirled frenetically in his dervish through the trees and bushes breaking their stems, bending their branches, waving their limbs in the gust of wind of his tornadic dance, tearing off their leaves, whirling, leaping. . . The black widow devours her mate; the praying mantis bites off her lover’s head, the male’s sacrifice so his prodigy lives on. . . Pagan rituals unfold, sacrificial blood spills, knives lift and slay unblemished animals. . . Heads at Easter Island fell; Horis lost his eye; Osiris found his phallus. . . In Babylon, the high priest strikes the king’s face and knocks his scepter to the ground as the king knelt on the steps before the throne of Marduk. . . Baal was resurrected, his storm clouds heavy with rain to nourish the parched thirsty earth of his companion. . . The peasants chased away with spears and staves and the clanging of pots and pans the dragon that ate the sun. . . The Rainbow snake stirred in its watery sleep; Quetzalcoatl flew in from the sea to roost in the temple to the sun at Teotihuacán; Ouroboros rapped the universe in his coils and squeezed like the anaconda. Life-giving fluid was deposited in the hole; Mary Beth would have her baby.
He crawled to the headstone with tears in his eyes and fell onto it. He clasped the headstone with hands that were dirty, sweaty, and sticky, and let out a sob and wept. On the other side of the stone, these sobbing and weeping hands frightened a garter snake that had coiled to sun itself. It straightened out its long black body with its yellow stripe down its back and disappeared like a streak into the grass. This weeping man who had entered the cemetery, dignified, by the front gate, for ceremonial reasons, for appearance's sake, now laid his head on the hot surface of the headstone, and with his voice wavering and breaking, cried out: “Oh, Mary Beth, It’s not enough!”
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