March - Like Lions 6 страница

That was the one thing I didn't see, actually, when I glanced around. I saw evidence of children, but no actual bodies anywhere. I figured they were all in the backyard, like Mikey had been saying, or upstairs in their room. Did they each have their own room? Was the house big enough for that?

Alexa cut off my thoughts, and I was glad. I was beginning to feel too nosey and curious. "So, Mikey tells me you've come to draw him. Might I ask why?"

Gerard explained to her that he had recently been studying Degas and was trying to find the best way to observe a subject from afar. "And in movement, too, I think, if I have the time. If the kids are around and they don't mind, I'd like to see if I can sketch them as they play."

Alexa smiled and confirmed my suspicion. They were all outside playing as their father did outdoor chores and would probably follow him inside once he was done. She also gave me a quick run-down on all the kids, which was helpful, since Gerard couldn't remember names in the car, let alone ages. Isaac was the oldest at about twelve or so, but almost thirteen. I had been right about the shirt and it had been his last year when he played in the minor football league at his school. He was a tall skinny kid, and he didn't fair well. He lasted about three games and then gave up. Alexa's analysis of the whole three month affair was to appeal to some form of innate maleness right before moving on to the "next stage of development"; I had wanted to probe more about this, but she had moved on quickly. Rachel was next and took after her father; she was the one that wore glasses and was into math. She was ten. Then David, who had just been born when Gerard left for Paris was coming up on his eighth birthday soon. They were going to have a superhero party for him, Alexa told us, and she was planning on dressing up as Wonder Woman. Mikey, of course, would probably be Clark Kent and stay Clark Kent, since "pretending to be yourself was often the hardest act." Again, I wanted to ask more, but she went on to add with a giggle that there would be no photo booth transformation for Mikey, at least, not publicly. Gerard rolled his eyes and stared into his tea, not wanting to hear about his brother's sex life with his hippy-esque wife. Elizabeth was the next child and she was about five and still adjusting to school. It involved too much sitting and staring, but not enough screaming and singing and general loud noises at random intervals. She was upstairs with Jonah, the baby of the family, and they were both taking naps. Surprisingly.

"I expect them to be up in a matter of minutes," she told us, sipping away at her tea. "Jonah, at least. I swear, he never sleeps for more than an hour at a time some days."

"Jonah is an interesting name," I commented and then bit my lip, realizing I had fallen into her trap. Her eyes brightened with the mention of names again and she turned to me.

"Do you know where it's from?"

I shook my head and Gerard stared at his tea. It was done now, so he stared at the leaves.

"Jonah was lost inside the whale." She splayed her arms outwards, as if to demonstrate that she, herself, was that whale. My eyes went wide with her deduction, and she interjected her own story with: "Don't worry. I don't consider whale an insult. I have no idea why anyone ever would, I mean, when you consider the facts. The whale is beautiful, the biggest animal in the world. Think of how huge a heart like that would be, the capacity inside itself. That is how I feel a lot of the time. It made sense to call him Jonah."

She went on with the story, where Jonah had been swallowed alive and lived in the body of the whale for ages and ages. He stayed alive and then emerged at some other point, only after his faith had been tested. "It's a popular story line - in no way original, but purely archetypal. It appears a lot in literature. There's a recurring theme of being eaten by a whale, living in a stomach, and the being reborn into the world. Even Pinocchio had a scene like this. It made a lot of sense for our Jonah. His birth was really hard. The cord was around his neck at one point and we realized this just as I was about to go into labor." She stood up from her stool and leaned over the countered bit. She lifted up her shirt and showed up her long scar on her stomach. "I had to have a c-section, in order to get Jonah free. I shouldn't have any more kids after this, and that's fine. So I wanted Jonah's name to mean something since our bodies will always be connected. Of course, you're always connected to your kids, but this scar is Jonah. And I am the whale. I like to think we were both reborn from all of this."

Gerard smirked a bit, and I nudged him. I didn't know what he was finding so funny. It was a weird story, but at the same time, wasn't anything in life weird like that? Isn't what we did with the lives of painters and their work similar to what Alexa did with the story of Jonah and the whale? I thought so, but Gerard kept smirking.

"What?" I whispered to him when Alexa turned around to boil some more water. She heard me, though, and jumped in to explain for Gerard.

"He doesn't like the idea of rebirth. He wants immortality to come through painting and art."

"And love," he cut in, and this made Alexa stop and think for a bit.

"Jonah is love. We can be reborn that way," she stated seriously.

"Yes, I agree, but only in this life. The life we have now. This is the life that matters and the birth that our mothers gave to us, that is the only one that is important. Rebirth is fine, but it is never real. It can only be a metaphor for something else because there is nothing after this, only darkness."

I was surprised by how morbid his thoughts were, and how quickly he had reached his conclusion. Death and what came afterwards were usually topics I avoided.

"I don't think that's entirely true," Alexa said.

"Well, you've read a lot of books. What are my other options?"

Alexa laughed. "Just because I've read the books, doesn't mean I agree with everything they say and it certainly doesn't mean they're right, even if that information has been published. It's not an order of fact. But..."

Gerard cut in, enjoying the debate. "Jonah is from the bible, right? Do you believe in the bible's version of heaven? Do you think something like that exists?"

"All my children's names are from the Bible, but that doesn't mean I believe in it. It just has some good stories, and that's what I believe is there. Stories. If heaven exists - and versions of heaven appear in all sorts of religions and it's called all sorts of different things - it is really in our minds."

"Kind of like how you create your own reality," I cut in, trying desperately to keep up with the conversation. I had read very few books. I knew some things about the bible, but not as much as these two. I knew Gerard had never read it himself - he flat out refused to - but since so much of art was based around religion, he knew more than he wanted to on most days. "Like how your version of heaven is all around you if you want to see it as such. You can create your own reality that way."

Alexa nodded, and Gerard piped up: "It still doesn't solve the dilemma of dying. Do you stay or do you go on? I say it's darkness. Nothing but that."

Alexa considered this. "Darkness seems too harsh, especially after life."

"That's the point," Gerard said. "The only life that matters is now. Darkness after this makes us want to live this one better. You run the risk of people becoming too passive in this life if people think that something else wonderful awaits them."

This time Alexa nodded considerably, agreeing with that point. "I know exactly what you mean. So often when I see people, they want me to tell them what to do with their lives. I can't do that. They want guidance now, or they want to wait until the afterlife. I can't do either for them. I can illuminate to them the paths they have and I can show them symbols that can make them think differently, tell them stories, but ultimately, I can't really do anything. But people think I can."

Gerard nodded as well. He went on to share a story of when he did one of his small art lectures, and a guest appearance in a class, and how everyone thought he held this magic formula and key to life. That if they were able to get the right prescription out of him, the right order and the right materials, they could be just like him.

Alexa smiled. "Art really is like magic. The magician was the first artist. Here," she got up suddenly. "I've been working on a painting and I want to show you both."

We walked into the room adjacent from the kitchen, but not the living room. It was a small room to the side with a door that had a full view of the backyard. It was the room that Jasmine had been staying in, she told us, one that had been added as an afterthought to the house when it had been planned. The bed was made and it was the only place to sit in the room, so I did. My blood rushed through me as I realized Jasmine had slept here. I was convinced it still smelled like her, too; like the type of special non-commercial, non-animal tested deodorant she wore. Gerard sat down on the bed next to me and seemed to also have a visceral response to the room. He looked around, as if expecting to find Jasmine, and then shrugged as he turned his attention to Alexa. Next to some of the bookshelves where her books were all kept, a small easel was set up. She took off the dark blue cloth with silver streaks in it and showed us her painting. She wasn't using good materials - the paints that I saw were mostly craft and folk kinds that were sold in crafts stores and the canvas looked to be from there as well. Her painting was elementary; it lacked a surface depth and for a moment I thought Gerard would ridicule it. But he stared forward, just as captivated as I was.

The painting, though quite simply done, was easy to make out. It was of a woman with a lion and she held her hands on the lion's jaws. It looked as if she was about to open it and place her head inside. There was an infinity symbol, the figure eight, above her head, and the background was of a simple city. The lion and the woman were the main focus, and it was framed by a detailed border. The number eight was in roman numerals at the top and the word STRENGH in fancy block text was at the bottom. Though I did not fully recognize this picture, there was an uncanny quality to it that drew me in.

"It's a tarot card," Alexa explained. "This is from the major arcana, the twenty-three cards that go from zero to twenty two and tell the progression of the spirit, the soul, the consciousness - whatever you want to call it. Carl Jung has studied and used them in his psychology and I'm more inclined to view them from a Jungian perspective, especially given the clientele I have."

Gerard nodded, equally captivated by the image. He may not have been completely into the occult, but he knew an interesting work when he saw it. When the religious, or pagan or whatever spirituality was conveyed to canvas, it made him want to pay attention. "Who did this image?"

"Rider-Waite, though there are different versions of this card all throughout history. This is my favorite deck - my favorite images - and they are easier to paint."

"What does it mean? And why did you do this one?" I asked. I began to recall some of my memories of tarot cards and most of them were negative. I remembered the death card, the devil card, and a whole bunch of other ones involving knives and people being stabbed or fighting. This one was peaceful, calm, and it made me want to be a part of it. I was glad the image had the painted frame that contained the name and the number; it would have been too overwhelming without, as if it could expand to our everyday waking world. Gerard had told me about this phenomenon before where you actually became what you saw. I had never really had it happen to me before, but now, I felt myself being pulled in.

"I painted it for clients mostly - I sell them whenever I finished them - but I would paint them regardless. They draw me in just as much as you and I learn more about them each time I draw or color them." She paused and turned her attention towards the card so she could remember the story about it. "Strength. It does not mean actual physical strength, like brute force or violence. It means balancing that physicality, our animal natures, with other elements. The maiden in the picture will put her head in the jaws of the lion and he will not bite. Putting yourself in that vulnerable position and then trusting the outcome, that is strength. Following your passions, but knowing when to stop and when to come back, that is strength. And this infinity symbol above her head - this is what makes it possible. The link, the chain, never stops."

Gerard nodded. "I still think it all ends in darkness."

Alexa contended. "Okay. But the light of this life, that chain, it keeps on going. The light is the only part of these twenty-three cards that keeps repeating itself, again and again, in a different form. Here it's in the mane of the lion, the infinity sign. In other cards it will be the sunlight, the star, or even a lantern. We're all linked by it."

Gerard didn't say anything, but he did nod, as if considering what Alexa was saying. He seemed so determined that day to tell us both that there was nothing after death, but it seemed as hard for him to admit that there was a light that kept us all together in this now. We all returned our gaze to the painting and I saw him squint and peer into its depths, as if trying to find it. He knew it was there, though, he had to. I touched his back as we both fell into the shoddy acrylic and two-dimensional piece. He had to know it was there, that we were all drawn into it. I thought of Jasmine and with my other hand, I felt the bed where she had slept. Where she had slept before she got her apartment, before we conceived our kid, and before all three of us were placed in this room together. I was quiet as we looked at the painting, though I sometimes felt Alexa's eyes on me. She was waiting for something, wanting for me to speak a revelation or something. I remembered Gerard's comment - about how she thought we were going to change the world. How? Through a messiah complex that couldn't be eradicated even through years and years of disproof? Through a whale swallowing us whole and then being reborn without dying, but being close to death instead? It was clear to me, that even though Alexa had named her children after the Bible she was not a believer. She had herbs and tarot cards and spiritual paraphernalia, but she was just like us. We were all drowning in our own fantasies, our own art history, and names. How were we going to change the world any differently than she was going to? I was overwhelmed, quite honestly, and I didn't know who to believe or who was fooling who or if anyone was a fool. I was beginning to trust Alexa more and more. She had pulled me into her world, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to get out just yet. She wasn't a believer, and neither were we, but we had both somehow managed to believe in something that kept us alive. I looked back at Gerard again, and he focused onto the sun in the background of the painting. He focused on the light that he thought he had found, and I found myself falling into this world as well. I stared at the maiden, and then at the lion, and wondered which one of them was my twin.

Note: Alexa's translation of their names if for Bernard and Thomas, not Frank and Gerard. Their horoscopes as well are clearly different than Frank and Gerard irl.

The kids came inside shortly after that, followed Mikey just like Alexa had predicted. Mikey knocked on the door where we all were and then dipped his head inside when Alexa gave him the go ahead. He kissed her quickly and told her about the gardening that still needed to be done at a later date along with other banalities that I assumed couples who lived together worried about. Even though there was so much boredom in what they talked about, they seemed to be having the liveliest discussion ever. He told her about the laundry he had started, but she would need to get, and then she told him about the food she had bought and a recipe for them to try. It was so utterly normal, but the way that they bounced ideas and collaboration off one another made me envious. Something deep inside of me responded. I didn't know where it had come from or where it was going, but I felt a desire that made me want this. Mikey and Alexa were so normal if you just looked at the details. Straight couple, living in a house, a lot of kids, she stayed at home, and the kids were even named after people in the Bible. But they were just as strange as Gerard and I were, just as passionate, even when talking about a broken dishwasher.

I thought back on conversations that I had had with Jasmine and Gerard about this type of stuff and neither one of them had the same enthusiasm. We mostly conferred with one another begrudgingly if we had to, and kept our stuff separate to be taken care of at leisure. I wondered if things would change when sharing a space with everyone. I put off thinking about it for too much longer, because it was about time to actually meet the kids she had talked about so much, and for Gerard and his art project to get started.

Isaac sat at the table eating something that Alexa had baked earlier; Rachel was standing by the fridge, and David was running around in the next room. Isaac initially scared me because he looked so much like Mikey, and I guessed he heard that a lot from people, so I didn't bother to mention it. David was a spitting image of Alexa and the Rachel was a combination of the two. She had the dark hair and face shape of her mother, but was tall and skinny like Mikey, with glasses to match. David was the only one who didn't come and say hello to us; he was a bit hyperactive today and the best course of action, Alexa had told us, was to just let him run around and tire himself out. Gerard raised his eyebrows with an amused sigh; I could tell he was definitely going to have fun trying to draw movement with David.

Gerard and his brother went into the family room where the young boy was running, and while Mikey sat in a chair with a book, David ran circles around him. The kid's energy was astounding, and what was even more astounding than that was his parents' reaction to that energy. Mikey would give occasional warning that he was going to tire himself out now and then would not have the energy to keep playing later, but that was about it. It made little difference to his behavior, and I expected Mikey mostly said it for himself, so he could feel as if he was trying to do something as he sat motionless in the chair. After Alexa explained a bit to me, she began to move furniture out of the way so if David did fall over, there would be less items to damage. Other than Mikey's small warnings, which seemed like a challenge more than anything, no one told him to stop. Alexa seemed amused by the whole ruckus and told David that if he could count to one hundred as he ran in circles he would get a prize. He was never able to, but the counting actually slowed his pace a bit, and I began to see the small trickery behind their parenting. There was no yelling. There was nothing forbidden. They found ways to make things work and probably because she had read "everything" Alexa knew how the mind worked and how it could be distracted.

Once her husband and Gerard were set up in the living room, and the other kids joined them with food, Alexa turned her attention to me. "We've hardly met. I only know what others have told me about you. I would like to see how much of it is true. Come with me," she insisted, taking my hand and leading me back into the same room. "I want to do your horoscope."

I groaned internally, realizing that this was what it must have felt like for Gerard most of the time. I was with her until she spoke about something that most newspapers had, and did quite badly. I expressed my disgust for newspaper horoscopes as benignly as I could as we entered the room. I sat back down on the bed while she peered into her looming bookshelves.

"Of course," she stated. "Those horoscopes are trash. You can't tell the future with it, not at all. But you can illuminate some aspects of yourself that you may not have been aware of before."

Her claim towards no future-telling capabilities made me give her back her credibility, but it also left me somewhat disappointed. That was the point though, and she went on: "If there was anything that actually told the future, we would know by now. The oracles of the past just tell people what they want to hear, not the future. Usually anything like that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the people do it anyway. But horoscopes - they won't tell your future, anymore than Tarot cards will. But it can act as a mirror. You see what you want to see, and then you know what's important. I read your horoscope, but I really watch the reaction. Not to make you self-conscious, or anything," she smiled. She sat down on the bed with me and opened the book between us. In spite of her blunt statement that she was more analyzing how I reacted to it than the actual words itself, I didn't find myself becoming self-conscious. I trusted Alexa because of her admission and I also realized that she had been studying me this entire time. She was going to do it anyway. I began to like the attention; it made me feel like maybe I could change the world.

According to her horoscope book, I was a Taurus. I was born near the end of May; though I was on the cusp, apparently, she knew I was a Taurus. I had to be. I was too quiet to be an air sign, which was Gemini, the next in line, so that meant I had to be an earth sign. I tried to nod and take it all in, but she still wasn't winning me over with this logic. She read through my characteristics quickly and then she began to plot out horoscopes for everyone. I thought I was going to have to tell her some birthdays, but she remembered. Apparently it was the first thing she asked when she met most people to, no doubt, do this as soon as she got home. She had already done all of these, I had realized; she wasn't doing this for her own personal benefit. She wanted me to listen and to know. I tried to pay attention, but it didn't make too much sense to me. Jasmine, born in July, was a Cancer. Vivian in November was a Sagittarius (though she was on the cusp as well and this was probably why we didn't always see eye to eye), and Gerard was born in August, making him a Leo. This meant he was artistic and passionate, that he preferred to teach his lovers rather than be in relationships with them, and that his sign was a lion.

"Yes!" she stated to herself, realizing something monumental. "A lion, a lion. He is definitely that. Not a bear at all. Brave sure, but not a bear. The lion suits him perfectly. I've never seen anyone's horoscope so apt."

"And me? What is Taurus supposed to be?"

"Taurus is a bull. Bulls are stubborn and they won't be moved. But they're also strong, and it can be like the strength of the card if you want it to be," she told me, getting under my skin a bit. "And Cancer are crabs. They like to hide in their shells and it takes a lot for them to come out. But they can, too, given the right circumstances and the right people."

She smiled, trying to hint at things. Though I did not want to believe in any of this, it was freaking me out how right she was with analyzing Jasmine. Thankfully, she kept talking so I didn't have to respond.

"You two are in quite a wonderful circumstance, right now, I hear," she said, mentioning the pregnancy and the baby for the first time that day.

"I uhhh, all of us are. Gerard too. He's as much the father as I am, even though I'm still unsure about the word father..." I trailed off, feeling a bit foolish. It was the first time I had really discussed this with anyone but the people involved. Alexa didn't falter, though, of course. She understood the power of names.

"You'll figure it out. And I want to see the baby when it happens, if you don't mind." I nodded, feeling uncomfortable with how comfortable she made me feel. Then she added, "Can I track the baby's horoscope?"

Since I remembered the approximate date when we had conceived they, it was easy enough for Alexa to jump ahead and declare a happy, "September! Probably a Virgo, just like Mikey. It's a good sign. You'll have a lot of fun with them."

She smiled, and then I grew curious: "What sign are you?"

She told me Scorpio, then divulged a bit of information about that. She told me how she and Mikey were a good match and how they worked together, even though their personalities were so different. "It's all about the paradigm shift. We inhabit different worlds, but our foundation, how we place these worlds inside our minds, that is the same for us. Though he works with money, economics, and business and I sit with cards and symbols, we understand the structures behind it all. It's what's behind the material that matters, not the material itself." She insisted on this point and gave a few more examples, and nodded along. She talked so quickly and with a few unfamiliar words that it took me a lot longer to comprehend what she was telling me a lot of the time. She described the complex inner web of their relationship and all relationships between the star signs and the people who inhabited them. When I did comprehend some things, I was struck with awe. It seemed so foolish, and yet, this worked. It was based on where the earth was tilted when you were born, the stars above you, and how this all pulled and shaped you. She also talked about the importance of the moon and what phase it was in, where the moon was in relation to the stars as well. That became more complex than normal horoscopes (which were sun-signs, she said), but it was beneficial because the moon, just like the sun and the seasons, were important tools. They affected us and how we lived and they kept us in balance. We would be kidding ourselves if we didn't acknowledge something this big in front of us. We couldn't forget that we were really, really small in the end. Because of this, it was hard for her not to admit that the constellations that we were born under were important.

"Maybe the stuff about personalities is all junk at the end of the day, but we still have to be aware of the stars, the constellations, and the picture they make. We are smaller than a star, and the ones we are associated with, they are even bigger than that one star. We're all linked this way, through the stars, we are all these pictures that we forge and connect based on how small we feel in contract to how large we can become. This is what family is, Frank, this is how it is formed. You connect the dots and see what you get."

She smiled, and I honestly didn't know what to say. I wished that it was night time so we could open the curtains on the window and see what it was like in the sky, see what other stars were around for us to gaze upon. It seemed so ridiculous and so stupid, but I remembered that feeling of being small. Of being alone and feeling as if I had no significance whatsoever. The world was huge and we were all nothing, but maybe, if we all banded together, we could do something good.

I also began to feel alienated from time in her discussion; September seemed like a long way away. The baby was around us all the time, yet, it was itself a smaller being, a smaller star inside Jasmine's stomach and not taking up to much room at all. To think that by September, the entire world would have shifted and then they could come into existence. They would be born under the horoscope of Virgo the virgin, most likely, and the virgin was the only human sign in all of the zodiac.

"Zodiac actually means a ring of animals. All other signs here are animals, in one way or the other. There are some that are hybrid, like Sagittarius who is both human and horse, but the rest are just creatures. Small, small creatures in a big world. It's another thing to keep in mind, and another thing that Jasmine helped me to see."

"We're just like the animals we eat or claim to love and keep as pets," I said, echoing words she had told me and that were sinking in more and more each day. I began to feel my consciousness and how I thought about certain things changing from my new experience of not eating animals. I began to see them as equal to myself, just as smaller; like how I was in relation to the stars. They were searching for meaning just as much as we were before we got nothing but darkness.

"You can learn a lot from Jasmine, Frank," Alexa told me. She folded up the horoscope book and folded her arms over her crossed legs as she leaned in with intent. It felt like a speech, ones that she must have given her spiritual customers. She was giving me guidance. "And she can learn a lot from you. The four of you - Jasmine, Vivian, yourself, and Gerard - I don't know if you're aware of it but you have something special going on here. You have this sense of power that radiates off of all of you. You can change the world by merely existing."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14