Rocks

There was something about the evening air, moist from the rain that had drenched the area earlier in the afternoon, that made Natasha feel like stopping the car. The CD faded to a stop, and Natasha was left in silence by the shore of a little lake—more of a pond, really. The beach was really very rocky; from the size of the tiny parking lot in which Natasha was now wedged it was pretty apparent that it was not a popular destination. Even after the clearing of the rain, there was nobody there. Natasha opened her door, startled at the noise it produced, and stepped out onto the sand. She crossed the grass and sat down on one of the rocks.

The sky was the color of the grey primer that had overtaken Natasha’s afternoons. It had started out innocently enough, another Project by her husband—once completed it would probably sell for hundreds of dollars. Vast, billowing wooden shapes had begun congregating around the house, and eventually they were swathed in buckets and buckets of the grey primer that Greg brought home almost every day. Natasha had not been happy when the structures began moving into the house, but when she had gone to visit her sister (alone, since Greg was too busy wielding his roller) and returned to find that the Shapes had invaded the bedroom in her absence, she returned to the car.

She had thought she’d known, five years ago when she had married Greg, what she was getting into: when they had first met he had been working constantly on a series of telescoping green giraffes, except for the evenings he spent with her. Since then, however, Greg’s sculptures had burst onto the popular art scene and he became obsessed, always out in the garage with the tools of his trade, which he arrayed on an immense workbench surrounded by samples and shavings of differently colored wood: his chisels and the small chainsaw he used for particularly monolithic projects, like this one was turning out to be. That Greg would have even considered putting his sculptures in the bedroom was the very last straw.

The rocks reminded her of the time they had gone hiking, some six years ago now. Although that day could not have been more different than this day, the rocks had the same even coolness as they did today, although they weren’t as wet. At the summit, they had eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The sky was a clear hard blue and the sun shone down. Remembering happier times brought tears to Natasha’s eyes for the first time in years. For the first time that day, she thought about getting back in the car and turning around. She wavered for a moment, weighing the virtues of the past against the disadvantages of the present. The disadvantages of the present won out; she got back into the car, angrier than she had been before.

I thought I'd post the rough drafts of some things I've been working on before I go away.