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The wedding crowd was thinning and I was plotting my own escape. My new
boss had been sweet to invite me, but I was getting uncomfortable as the
last familiar faces were making their way toward the door. I was edging
to the side, three more feet and even my shadow would have disappeared,
when I stumbled over Fate.
"Have you ever been to Lisa's house?"
I had never even met Lisa. Lisa was the mysterious artist who got the
job that I had wanted. The Competition.
"No...not yet," I said, glancing at my watch as if the time
would once again excuse me. I didn't want to tell my co-workers that in
my world, going out meant picking up the Friday night pizza instead of
having it delivered. Such was the joy of being a single mother.
"You have to come with us to her party, then. You'll LOVE her
apartment--it's so Bohemian!"
Bohemian. One single word, my mantra from years ago. I remembered when
people used that word to describe me. I considered it the
ultimate compliment. Now it belonged to Lisa? I pulled the word
close to my heart like an old friend, feeling the way my lips moved
slowly around it, savoring each syllable on my tongue before letting it
escape into the air before me. Bo-he-mi-an. If they had used any
other word, said anything less promising, my sense of motherly duty
would have succeeded in making me go home once again.
Instead, I found myself surrounded by new friends as we walked a few
blocks up a cobblestone street in Old Town, St. Augustine. The buildings
were all Spanish Colonial, painted in rich adobe colors. Quaint little
restaurants, a jazz club, a few galleries and a New Age store marked
this place as an artist's haven. Each step took me further into the
unknown, triggering longings from a distant past.
We turned the corner and came to a solitary blue door with a single
light overhead. It stood on its own with no markings, a mysterious gypsy
portal to a world beyond. The door to Lisa's place. St. Augustine was
left for the tourists on the street. When I reached the top of the
stairs, I had landed in Marrakech. The apartment glowed with at least a
hundred candles of all shapes and sizes. The floors were covered in
Persian carpets, and the living room was designed for reclining with day
beds and sofas draped in exotic blankets and covered with pillows of
every kind imaginable. Layers of incense floated through the air, and I
half expected to find opium simmering in a hookah somewhere. But still
no sign of Lisa.
The most striking thing about this room were the murals that I was told
that Lisa herself had painted on the walls. On one full wall, she had
painted an amazing reproduction of Maxwell Parrish's Daybreak.
The marble columns glowed with sunrise and the fog-shrouded purple
mountains beckoned me closer. When someone lay down on the chaise-longue
before it, they were instantly tranformed, becoming the resting goddess
in the masterpiece. Gustav Klimt's The Kiss adorned another wall;
a swirl of seductive gold as lovers melted into one another. My senses
were drunk and I thought there couldn't possibly be more until I passed
an archway draped in golden silk with tiny white Christmas lights that
climbed like ivy around it.
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Klimt''s "Danae"
Courtesy CGFA-
Carol Gerten's Fine Art
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I stepped through the arch and blinked to focus my eyes. There
were more candles there, but the room was darker, cozier. I was
momentarily embarrassed to find myself standing in Lisa's bedroom.
No, not a bedroom, a shrine to Eros. On the wall above her bed,
Lisa had faithfully reproduced my favorite Klimt painting, Danae.
A red-haired goddess, her long tresses didn't hide her body but
framed it as she lay with her full thighs drawn close to her
chest. A woman with flushed cheeks, basking in the ecstasy of the
moment after. The queen-sized bed was set off by a sheer net
draped from overhead as if to say, lie down anywhere else, this
bed is by invitation only. It was the most sensual room I'd ever
been in. I started to dream of long, deep kisses and intertwining
limbs with a lover like Adonis.
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As much as I wanted to linger in that room, the wave of
partygoers were making their way out a door onto the rooftop. Heaven under
the stars. Lisa had covered the roof with more carpets and pillows nestled
amongst a beautiful garden of potted trees and flowers. There were more
candles outside, but most of the light came from more strands of white
Christmas lights that were woven throughout the rooftop paradise and up to
the garret that was Lisa's studio, until they seemed to disappear and
blend with the stars above. I consoled myself with the thought that Lisa,
wherever she was, couldn't possibly be as beautiful as her apartment was.
I was in the land of milk and honey, and my soul was so thirsty that I
felt like I couldn't possibly drink enough to quench it. Greek folk music
was playing on the roof, and I drifted off into a dream with the ancient
melodies. I was young and beautiful once again, going to fabulous parties
at Boston artists' lofts and rooftops. A couple of men in Greek costumes
came forward and started to dance. There was a time I would dance in
whatever direction my feet led me, but it had been so long that I
hesitated now. Then the hypnotic music pulled me in like a trance, and I
joined the circle of rhythmic dancers. The stars fell at my feet as I
whirled about on the clouds. For a short while, I was flying. Lisa was
forgotten until my legs reminded me I wasn't twenty anymore, and gravity
pulled me back to reality. It was time to rest.
I drifted over to the trees to catch my breath. And then I saw all of the
men's heads move as if one. A striking blonde with long, curly hair and an
incredibly lithe body made her way out to the center of the dancers and
began to belly dance. I didn't need to be told that this vision was Lisa.
She was more mesmerizing than the music. A goddess fallen to earth.
Watching her dance was like seeing my spirit had somehow been freed from
its aging prison and was dancing off to a new life without me. She was the
woman I had always dreamed of being. She was the woman that I didn't
become. I both loved her and hated her in that instant.
I finally met Lisa when the dance was over, as I joined the crowd that
waited to praise her performance. I listened as she bubbled forth with
details of her upcoming trip to Peru, to celebrate the winter solstice. I
had visions of Lisa and her handsome boyfriend dancing naked beneath the
Peruvian moon. I felt a painful twinge as my soul cursed its mortal
bounds, then my heart reminded me of another life that I had almost
forgotten. I had someplace else to be. Home. Home to my suburban
cinderblock house that was as romantic as an old shoebox. Home to clutter,
mountains of laundry, and the never-ending demands of three children. To a
place where every day was a struggle, and every night was lonely with no
one's arms to hold me.
Later that night, I sighed as I walked through my front door, realizing
that the closest I'd probably ever get to Peru would be in the produce
department of my supermarket. But it was good to be home. I didn't even
have to think as I did the mother's dance, quietly checking in on each of
my sleeping daughters and planting a soft kiss on their foreheads. I
stared at their faces and wondered what music they danced to in their
dreams. They were a treasure that even Lisa didn't know, and I wouldn't
trade them for anything in the world.
Yet even though my heart was basking in a warm, maternal glow, my soul was
crying out as I surveyed my uninspired surroundings. The idea of filling
my house with candles the way Lisa had done broke my silence with a
giggle. I wondered how many minutes it would take before my cat caught on
fire or my kids burned the house down. And the thought of trying to paint
murals like Lisa had done was equally absurd, since slapping on a single
coat of latex wall paint was a challenge to me. But then I realized I
didn't have to be an artist to recreate my landscape. Click, click. I went
to my computer and searched until I found a print of Klimt's Danae
and ordered it right on the spot. I felt my soul dance in anticipation as
I looked at the spot where I would hang it, right above my bed.
I turned on my stereo. It had been so long since I'd played music that I
didn't even remember what disk I had left in it. Folk music from the Andes
filled my room and without even realizing it, my hands drifted over my
head and I started to slowly turn about, my hips swaying from side to side
in rhythm with the wooden pipes. I didn't need a rooftop garden, a winter
solstice or a Peruvian moon to be Bohemian. I just had to remember to give
the Lisa inside of me a little space to dance.
Anita Clare lives in St. Augustine, Florida with her three daughters,
Varina, Natalie and Liliana. She works at a public library during
the day and comes home every night with a new pile of books, chanting
"So many books...so little time!"
In addition, she works as Senior Manager for a weekly short story
writing contest at The Amazing Instant Novelist on America Online,
and as an editor for The Rose & Thorn. She also does freelance
writing and editing when time allows. Two of her short stories are
about to be published in a book about cancer experiences.
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