Summer Song III
by ANNA REESER
Liz Asch, A Sound of Silence, mixed media on paper, 20 x 26 inches, 2016. Art photographed by Anna Campbell. Courtesy of the artist.
Summer SonG III
ANNA REESER | JUNE 2023 | Issue 24
Part III of IV
begin the series here
We made it to Eastern Oregon in the late afternoon. There was the road—two lines angled to meet at a horizon. Landscape like a three-color print: rust red, ochre, faded denim blue. In the backseat: water bottles, a bag of almonds, a pile of towels. Aaron’s hand gripped the wheel too hard. My bare feet tucked under the gingham sundress, waiting for the blood. The ultrasound image appeared if I closed my eyes—the debris—so I stared out the window. Even as we sped southeast, the world seemed completely still. Every so often, a wind-battered house cast a square shadow. One had a white lawn chair baking in the sun.
My mother called. I hesitated before picking up.
“I’m taking a pottery class,” she said when I answered. “I know. Silly. But something got me thinking, your good news, maybe—and Cheryl was teaching one at the community center, and so—why not? I thought it might be satisfying. So—isn’t the ultrasound soon? Any nausea today?”
“No nausea. Sorry, I have to go.” I heard my voice, metallic and strained.
When I hung up, Aaron gave me a look. “You didn’t tell her.”
“I’ll do it tomorrow,” I said. “She was in a good mood.”
Ahead, ochre sand disappeared into a pale body of water. No trees, but what looked like a flat mirror reflecting white. I suggested we take the side road and get closer.
The sign read Summer Lake Nature Preserve and a chain blocked the road. Sensitive wildlife area, no entry. We parked; I grabbed the towels. There was nobody around for miles. In silent agreement, we stepped over the chain. The sand seemed taut; the water was the color of milk. A white crust extended from the lake’s edge. I spread a towel on the sand and stretched onto my back. Stiff body, slip of a body, incapable.
Aaron approached the water’s edge. “We should get out of here,” he said, pacing. “I think the water’s alkaline. Some lakes—it’s a really high pH, that’s why there aren’t any trees. Let’s go.”
“Not yet.” I stared up, afraid to close my eyes. I could see nothing but sky, no trees to block it.
Aaron squatted by my face. “We’ve barely talked. I’m sad, Catherine. Are you—are you sad?”
Heavy sun pressed on my belly, my chest. That’s when I cried. Down the sides of my face, past my ears, onto the towel. That he even asked—that he had to ask. But sad was too simple a word. Every feeling I had seemed wrong. Was I supposed to feel less than this? Or more? Aaron sat finally, put a hand on my arm. Wind rushed across the lake, over the water drying on my temples. It smelled like sagebrush and asphalt. I convinced Aaron to wait an hour, but nothing else happened, and we drove home through thick low light.
***
A weekend passed. The doctor told me not to worry—it could take many days. My mind was full of hot sand, extending for miles.
Finally I called my mother from the front porch, sitting on a chair covered with a towel. I told her about the ultrasound. I told her there was nothing there—the word miscarriage felt barbed on my tongue.
“Oh, Catherine,” she said. “I wish I could hug you.” Her voice was low, gentle. She paused, and I could tell that she was crying. I pictured her in the kitchen, the bend in her shoulders, and maybe she had never cared whether I became an artist, but that I would be pregnant. She asked if she could visit, but I said no, afraid of how it would crush me to feel her eyes up close, her warm hands on my back.
We said goodbye. Through a screen of yellowing vines, I watched people walk past. I wondered who they were—I hadn’t introduced myself to any neighbors. My body ached every time I saw a stroller or a BabyBjörn. Did I want to be there, bounce-walking with a baseball cap and ponytail? It was too painful to admit to myself that I did. I imagined the mothers tripping on the uneven asphalt in front of our house, bruising their knees.
I felt a gnaw at my belly, but I didn’t eat. I was ashamed of how superficial my thoughts of pregnancy had been—my retro maternity clothes, my art. At the same time, I was ashamed for assuming I would have a baby. For singing lullabies. I knew I could schedule the surgery, but to avoid pain, I would be sedated, and I was afraid to go to the edge of unconsciousness. I should at least stay awake, make a memory I could see and fold down. So I waited, working my day job from the porch. Aaron handed me tea and water from a distance. I avoided the studio, closed the door to the spare room, hoped I wouldn’t remember the length of the nights.
***
At the end of the week, Nina texted me a progress shot from her studio. Stacks of newsprint proofs, large carved blocks. I hadn’t told her. She asked how my editions were going.
I walked barefoot across the lawn, harsh with burrs. The tarp on the roofless studio had slid off, and light flooded the worktable. Already, cobwebs hung in the corners. Cringing, I arranged my lino blocks with transferred sketches. The compositions looked like someone else’s. The tender shoulder, the curved ear—what I made when I believed in my body. I took out a gouge and began to carve; a strip of linoleum curled away. My fingers felt weak. I carved fast, and now it was not with the thrill of a deadline, but the draining of nine months into unstructured time, and that’s when I rested my left palm in front of the blade and slid too far, nicking the side of my thumb. I stopped—my hands were shaking.
Printmaking had made sense before. Crisp incisions, drawing with negative space. The precise application of ink. The way I had lifted the corner of the paper to check for imperfections. In school, the printmakers never did as many drugs as the painters. No psychedelics. This was art for a person who deep down was afraid to lose control. Blocks from my old successes were stored in boxes. It had been comforting to think I could always print another.
Sunlight pressed the back of my neck. It made sense that I was not capable of being pregnant, of holding the question. I wanted to disappear from my body, even for an hour. I didn’t text Nina back. Instead I scheduled the surgery under anesthesia.
***
The surgery layers into memory like gauze. Here I am in a warming suit and surgical cap. The suit is lavender and puffs out with heated air. I’m giddy with nerves, talking at a quick clip with the nurse who holds my elbow, placing the IV.
Aaron sits in a chair by the end of the bed, and I watch his eyes get wide. To him, my face must look small, like a child’s. Not his wife giving birth, but a girl being prepped for a D&C, too nervous to keep herself warm. When it’s time to go, he touches my hand, says, “I’ll see you soon.”
The operating room is down a long, metallic hall. The nurse holds my arm as we walk, my feet blurred in surgical socks. Behind a heavy door, the room is large. A bed, or a table, at the center. Stirrups. Faces masked in pastel green. I am told to lie flat. My knees are exposed. Overhead lights, strong as full sun.
When I close my eyes, I’m back at Summer Lake. There’s a house at the water’s edge with a white plastic lawn chair. I lie flat, wearing the gingham sundress. Aaron stands barefoot on the sand, skipping stones. Milky ripples go out and out.
“Alright,” the doctor says. “Let’s give you something.”
Rush of heat, elbow to wrist. There is no pain, just the sensation of skin lightly burning. Beyond, sagebrush is flowering yellow. Aaron, I say, Will you get my water bottle from the car? He nods and walks off.
Alone, I’m more still than the alkaline water. My navel is a lead weight. I hope I will wake up as a printmaker again, able to hold a gouge and carve without hurting myself. My hands go limp. Ochre sand, bleached sky, and after that, a moonless sleep.
Anna Reeser’s short fiction is published in The Best American Short Stories 2020, The Masters Review, Fourteen Hills, and CutBank. She has lived throughout the West Coast and is now based in her hometown of Ojai, California. She recently completed a story collection and is working on a novel.
Liz Asch is an author, artist, and acupuncturist based in Portland, Oregon. Her book, Your Salt on My Lips (Cleis Press, 2021), is an ode to eros in queer bodies of the global majority. Her podcast, Body Land Metaphor Medicine, is a free archive of somatic visualizations. Her stop-motion animation film, The Love Seat, played in LGBT film festivals in the US and Canada. Liz holds a BA from Vassar, a Masters in Chinese Medicine, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Eastern Oregon University. Liz has published essays, poems, interviews, stories, book reviews, and artwork in a variety of journals and anthologies, earning her a Pushcart nomination, a RACC grant, and several essay prizes. Liz teaches embodied surrealism and salutary storytelling, with an emphasis on earth activism, creative expression, and public health.