Emilee Prado
BRING MAY FLOWERS
It’s true that I was up to my elbow in the vending machine when we collided. We were both in the hall of a shoddy motel where the wind was shaking the windows and threatening to tip the whole place into the lake below. You hadn’t been looking where you were going and my head was so set on rummaging for something unseen that everything else was out of my field of vision. We were both the same slight and unimposing 120 pounds, so it was just a jostle.
You apologized but didn’t continue on your way, just stood there, smiling.
I falsely accused the machine of stealing my quarters.
You called the machine a greedy little fucker and fed it until it spat out something for each of us.
I asked what brought you here.
You told me in great detail about how you were trying to convince your husband to become your ex. You had lived in this tiny mountain town for twelve years and now you were done with all of it, almost anyway.
When you asked about my arrival, I gave the brush off answer that I’d been expecting from you: I confessed that I was just stopping for the night, passing through, on my way to something bigger. You shrugged and unlocked your room. You left the door open, saying that you couldn’t remember the last time you’d eaten dinner alone. I followed you in. The wooden chair I sat in looked identical to the one in my room and together they probably comprised half a set that used to belong with a kitchen table.
I sat stiffly. I mentally doubled back to a few moments prior and wondered whether you’d intended for me to follow you. There must have been some expression on my face because you caught my eye, smiled again and shook your head. I think we both thought that we’d caught the same line and were being towed somewhere unseen. Or maybe you wanted something from me. Is that why you’d kept the conversation going? I had nothing to give so whatever it was you wanted, I would disappoint.
The corkscrew willow of a man—who had introduced himself as Milfred when he gave me my key—rapped on the doorframe. He addressed you by name and told you that your husband was on the landline. Again.
Milfred refused to give the screw you to your husband that you requested, so you sighed and gave me a look and followed him down the hall. I wondered whether it was stranger for me to stay here or to vanish back to my room. I heard the storm deepening outside. Through the sheer curtains, I got a glimpse of premature night and I knew I wouldn’t be watching the sunset over the lake, which was the reason why I got off the highway and came all the way up here. How was it that a deluge could sneak up like that? Where I was from, it didn’t rain this much in April and never did the weather change so quickly.
You’d left your tote bag on the bed and the thing had flopped over when you stood. I used the toe of my shoe to lift the edge of the bag so I could peek inside. What made you so trusting? I pulled my foot away and went back to eating my mixed nuts, but that glimpse lingered, developing like a Polaroid in my mind.
You came back angry.
“He was beautiful once,” you said, referring to your husband. “His words, his thoughts, his presence. But I can’t see that anymore and I don’t know how I once did. Strange isn’t it? How beauty is something you give to someone, but time either makes them ugly or makes you take back your definition.”
You told me that what you’d said about dinner, hadn’t meant to imply the food from the vending machine, that there was a restaurant attached to the motel. Did I want to join you? You’d already ordered the only thing they were serving tonight.
You picked up your bag and brought it with us.
I learned that Milfred was not only the owner, but also the cook. The fish was some sort of white fish, caught from the lake this morning, glazed and baked. There were rosemary potatoes on the side. The fish had so many little bones in it, like nylon thread had been used to hold the creature together. I was unaccustomed to living near water and to eating fresh seafood, so I studied you for clues. When you did not hunt around with your fork for the sharp threads or reach up to your mouth to extract anything, I didn’t either. I wondered whether the tissue inside my mouth was delicate—if I was weak. Sometimes the pricking sensations felt more like needles than tread.
You declared this fish was the best fish you’d ever eaten. I wondered whether you meant the species of fish or the specific fish on your plate, the one that never had an identity or a name and now was a part of you. I thought about how the fish I ate became a part of me too after I swallowed its flesh and bones and a little of my own blood.
While we ate, I’d learned a great deal about you. The interpretation you once gave to your husband, I began to give to you. I knew that our short time together would make your beauty last.
You excused yourself to find Milfred and to inquire about dessert. You left your tote bag on the chair between us. This time I blindly reached in and wrapped my hand around what I’d seen earlier.
As I passed by your room on the way to retrieve my backpack, I kissed my fingertips and let them linger on what would be your door for the night.
I raced out into the storm and thanks to your umbrella my head was now shielded from the rain.
CASTING NETS, SNAPPING TWIGS
When I met you in Brazil, I was loitering near the motel’s vending machines, letting the salt of the sea breeze collect with the tears on my face. You rounded the corner, fishing in your pocket for a few reis. You looked up and noticed me with a start. “Sorry,” you said. Were you apologizing for your surprise? The single word you spoke in English cast your net. You replaced the sorry with a few words in Português then started feeding the machine. I was pulled out of the trance I’d been in, the one that had me staring at a stain on the concrete that resembled someone I used to know. I revealed to you that I also spoke English and I asked where you were from. It was a city I’d never heard of. I’d never been to your country. You wanted to guess my origin based on my accent. After you guessed, I said you were correct even though it wasn’t true.
I don’t think I lie more than the average person, but it’s not like one can measure veracity like the size of a life vest. But my lack of alignment with what might be called objective honesty doesn’t come from a place of deceit. It’s just, I think I struggle with the truth sometimes because of the sponge-like element of my personality. When I’m in a conversation with someone, I take-in part of them. I understand them by becoming them, but since I’m a full person already, some of me leaks out and I think a bit of truth goes with it. I didn’t tell you any of this, but I think you could understand because it’s something that’s what happens to people who are willing to live; they soak up some of the water they fall into.
The machine dropped you a cold plastic bottle and you asked if I’d like one. I said yes—which again wasn’t true—but I wanted to continue speaking with you. We covered the usual introduction about what brought us so far from our native lands. I added that I’d been living in this Brasileira city for a five years, but my stay in the motel marked a stop over on my way out.
You looked at me, cast your net far and wide and said, “It must have been heartbreak.”
I said, “What do other people do when this happens? People who can’t escape to another country?”
We laughed and the tears leaked back into our sinuses rather than down our facades.
You said there’s always another person ready to accept an offered heart.
I said, “If two people needed a heart transplant and one of them was your love and the other was a millionaire philanthropist who could better the world, who would you give your heart to?”
Neither of us knew how to answer.
You said you’d seen a sign pointing to a swimming pool. You’d been on your way to the water when you ran into me. Would I like to join you?
We looked at the summer flowers beyond the fence. We sat by the pool with our feet dangling in. We sat in the shade of a big faded umbrella with the afternoon breeze brushing against the hairs on our necks.
You lied to me, saying, “Everything is so beautiful.”
I called you out and said, “That’s a lie.”
You laughed and asked why you would be lying, insisting you thought everything here was so very beautiful: The sky was a piercing blue; the brush was lush and clung to the buildings; the city streets were full of love and loss and life.
“And full of hardship too,” I said.
“It’s an onerous task, staying alive,” you replied.
You added that beauty is a part—always a part—never a totality.
I said if beauty was a totality, we’d all be paralyzed.
We decided there might be beauty in heartbreak. It felt like the twigs in one’s chest were snapping because they were: Kindling was needed to build the next fire.
“Fire keeps us warm on the sea but is of no use when we are drowning,” I said and ruined the analogy by adding “My plane leaves in the morning.”
Still, there we were, our nets tangled together.
I asked about your hometown and when you asked about mine, I told you what I could remember. We talked about our new home here in Brazil and how home is never really a place on a map.
You asked if I was hungry. We ambled to a food truck and bought a couple of marmitas: meat, vegetables, rice, beans, and orange slices. A daily staple I’d relied on that was now about to drift away. We each bought a beer too, the usual Brahma brand, bem gelada, as close to frozen as possible. You laughed at me because I asked for a malzbier. You said, “Enjoy your brown sugar.”
I swore that I would enjoy it, but everything gets caught in the hooks of a barbed heart, so nothing tasted sweet.
We went back to the motel and ate under the umbrella. We spoke in português because I worried even after five years here I might forget.
It was evening. Then it was gone.
I’ve bailed through the swamps of memories, searching for how we lost so much time. We both expressed the desire to keep in touch and neither of us thought we were lying. It was late, too late. You told me goodnight although it was morning.
Now, I wonder if thoughts of me ever swim through your head. Because we’re continents apart and so far out of context, I don’t think the messages I could send could reach you. I’ve been taken by the current to another whirlpool and I must soak up what’s here now. All the while you remain a buoy in the distance.
Emilee Prado’s fiction and essays appear in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, CRAFT, Orca, Subnivean and elsewhere. She also writes about film. She holds a masters in creative writing and bachelor’s in film studies.
Find out more at emileepradoauthor.com or on social media: @_emilee_prado_.