A flamingo flew over a sandbar fifty feet from a white sandy shore—
the flutter of its wings, the only sound in the late afternoon sky. The sea
was a turquoise calm—the sun, warm loving hands.
A young man jumped from a thirty foot cruiser onto a dock then to
the shore and along the water’s edge past sandcastles and sea turtles—his
foot prints filling with the tide.
foot prints filling with the tide.
A young woman stood at the top of a hill in front of a house whose
wings stretched out like the wings of an eagle. She looked down and saw
him running…running…
New York 1980
Noooooooooo! Why am I being punished? All I wanted to do was drive
to Kennedy and catch a flight to St. Lucia or Eleuthra or any place that’s
warm and far away from Lou and every moronic jingle he’s ever made me
write. Okay, so he didn’t make me, but I felt like a fly in a jar after the lid’s
been taken off. You just stay there because you think you have to.
Vessie VanCortland was stuck in her four-seat Thunderbird classic
beneath a five foot mound of snow. She couldn’t see through the iced
windows, couldn’t open the doors. She was locked, blocked, fi lled with
anxiety as snow kept pelting down imprisoning her in a living tomb. It
was the worst blizzard to hit New York City and for a smart young woman,
Vessie felt desperately dumb. She looked at the travel brochures on the
bucket seat beside her. Magnificent white sandy beaches. Sun streaming
through lush tropical palms. A crystal clear sea.
The car radio belched static as a newscaster’s voice kept breaking bad
news:
“… even rescue cars need to be rescued.”
“Rescue cars?”
Vessie hit the radio with her freezing hands. She had hoped that by
blasting it as loud as it would go, it might reach out and touch someone;
but it didn’t reach and it didn’t touch, it just died.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the rear view mirror. “Damn, I’m
turning blue. I look lousy in blue!”
Vessie couldn’t look lousy in anything—goofy, maybe.
The huge rainbow colored earmuffs and matching muffler wrapped
around her neck and head stuffed down inside the tall stand-up collar of
her faux fur coat detracted from her long shiny auburn hair and emerald
green eyes. It was more a Hanna-Barbera look than Vogue.
Frightened and freezing she asked herself: How the hell did I get into
this mess? But she knew. She just couldn’t take it anymore. It, being Lou
Fields who was proving to be not only a toxic boss—he made bi-polar
something to strive for.
The recession was unforgiving. Lou was convinced that winning the
equivalent of an Oscar for a television jingle would boost business and
guarantee the survival of his jingle house, Fields and Friends. For weeks
he had been pressuring Vessie to bring home the bacon at the upcoming
Geo Awards, and his crazy-making was off the charts. After dealing with
ten years of it, she finally had enough. She turned off her electric keyboard, jumped into her Thunderbird and headed for the airport.
Then all hell broke loose.
The sky spit bullets. Wind snarled. Trees snapped. A great gust
of swirling white exposed the Chrysler building, Grand Central, the
Guggenheim at 5th and 89th. Then white again—a ghostly dream-like white
with a big fat hole in it—Vessie stuck in her impending doom.
with a big fat hole in it—Vessie stuck in her impending doom.
She tried to shove the word help out from behind her frozen face. She
was always able to make her body do anything she wanted; but now the
simple task of parting her lips begged the aid of a hacksaw.
Lou Fields paced the floor twelve blocks away. He was a ferocious bulldog
in a five foot human frame. “Where the hell is she? I’m going to lose
the musicians.” Everyone had made it to the 6:00 p.m. demo session at
Allsounds to record the new Catflakes jingle Vessie had composed, except
in a five foot human frame. “Where the hell is she? I’m going to lose
the musicians.” Everyone had made it to the 6:00 p.m. demo session at
Allsounds to record the new Catflakes jingle Vessie had composed, except
Vessie.
The recording engineer sat at the mixing console—feet up, eyes closed.
The musicians, ten in total, sat on folding chairs in the adjoining “live room”
smoking, drinking coffee, discussing real estate and stock investments.
Remy Bartells, Lou’s staff producer, sat cradling a phone anxiously
waiting to get through to the airport. “I told you to cancel the session,” he
said. “I told you Vessie wouldn’t be here—she split.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lou said. “She was working on the final changes.
She was going to bring copies like she always does. Split? She’d never do
a thing like that.”
“No, she wouldn’t normally do anything but the best for you. But
you can’t keep making her cancel her vacations and expect her to stick
around.”
Remy got a busy signal and dialed again.
“What? I’m gonna turn down business? Vessie’s my top jingle writer.”
“Yeah, who you burnt out.”
The absent composer closed her eyes. Paradise was almost hers. She could see it, touch it, feel it. Salt water—buoyant. Her long thin body, floating. Sun caressing, licking, soothing her. A chill raced up her spine. Vessie put her mittened hands to her face. It seemed not to be hers anymore, but a kabuki mask painted white with holes cut out through which her eyes registered panic. Is this it? Is this how I’m going to die?—Vessie VanCortland, hack composer of tuna fish, hemorrhoid and cat food jingles freezes to death in her car?
The keyboard player headed for the door. “Hey, thanks Lou. That was the
easiest session I never played.”
The studio lights flickered—Lou flinched. “What the hell?”
“Damn!” said the engineer. “Looks like the power’s going.”
“Elevator’s stuck!” yelled the keyboard player huffing it back to the
studio.
Remy slammed the phone. “The airport’s shut down. Vessie’s plane
never got off the ground.”
Lou saw red. “You mean she’s here? She’s in town? Then why the hell
didn’t she show up? The ingratitude—the goddamn ingratitude!”
Remy’s heart sank. Where are you, Ves? Are you okay? He turned to
Lou. “She drove to the airport.”
“In that meshugana car of hers?”
“I’ll try her at home.” Remy dialed as Lou stood frozen. “No
answer.”
The lights went out—the room was pitch-black.
“Damn!”
“Jesus!”
“This is nuts!”
The recording engineer flicked on a flashlight. Remy Bartells’ boyishly
handsome face was consumed with fear. He made his way to the window
and looked out at a sheet of white. “She might be stuck in it somewhere.”
Lou forced himself to look. “Goddamnit! I told her to get rid of that
car of hers, but no—‘It’s a classic, Lou.’ A classic trap!”
A little girl with green eyes and auburn hair dressed exactly like Vessie—
rainbow earmuffs, matching muffler and mittens and faux fur coat—
appeared in the bucket seat beside her, crying.
“Don’t cry,” Vessie said. “Your tears’ll freeze your eyelids shut.” What
am I saying? Who am I talking to? “Wait a minute!” she said. “Who are
you? How the heck did you get in here?”
“I’m your inner child.”
“My what?”
“Your inner child.”
“Then what the hell are you doing out here?”
“Showing you how miserable you feel.”
“Great, a cheerleader! Well, don’t worry. Pretty soon I won’t feel a
thing.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. You’ve been out of touch with your feelings
for years.”
“Oh my god, a Jungian.”
The child cried harder.
“Okay, hold it right there,” Vessie said. “If you’re my inner child, why
are you complaining? I walked out on a jingle session because of you!”
Her eyes said, you did?
“That’s right. I was about to take you to an island. A gorgeous, sunny,
lush green island far away from Crazy-maker-Lou.”
“An island?”
“Yeah, hot sun, blisters on your tush, salt water on your flippers.”
“So.”
“So? So, here I am freezing to death because you kept yelling, Vessie,
get a life. All work and no play, Vessie. You hate your job, Vessie. Write
songs you believe in and stop being a sell-out!”
Her inner child wiped the window exposing their ice-covered cell.
“Guess we’re stuck, huh?”
“We just look stuck. It’s really me un-sticking myself!”
“I’d hate to see you with a roll of packing tape.”
Then the child went ballistic—big ear-crushing sobs.
Diversion, diversion, Vessie thought. She cleared her throat and sang:
“Take a Catflake to breakfast, and you’ll have a thrill. Take a Catflake to
breakfast, and I’m sure you will…”
“Please,” said her inner child, “if I puke now you’re really in
trouble.”
Vessie closed her eyes. The air was biting cold and hurt less that
way. She heard om-mani-padme-hum floating inside her head. Om-manipadme-hum, her old meditation technique. The mantra yogi Paramahansa Bramananda, Founder of the Spiritual Enlightenment Ashram in Malibu, California taught her eleven years ago. Six little syllables from the ancient language of Sanskrit that could help transcend her fears and warm her freezing body.
Vessie grabbed onto them like a life raft. I’ve got to concentrate. I’ve
got to make this work, because if somebody doesn’t find me soon, this
could be my last day as a human and my first as a popsicle. Chant, Vessie,
chant girl, chant.
“Om-mani-padme-hum, om-mani-padme-hum, om-mani-padme-hum,
om-mani-padme-hum…” It’s been a long time, too long. Why did I ever
stop meditating?
Her inner child wanted to know, too. “Why did you ever stop
meditating?”
“Enough, just do it.”
“Om-mani-padme-hum, om-mani-padme-hum…”
Good. Keep it up Vessie, she told herself. “Om-mani-padme-hum, ommani…” Wait… you’re too anxious. Subtle, Ves, be subtle. Don’t pounce on those syllables. Whisper them. Let them take you deeper. You remember…just let gooooooooooooo. She could feel her muscles begin to relax, her thoughts begin to fade. Then she had a vision.
She saw everyone she had ever loved crowded into the back seat of
her car: her father, Reverend Everend VanCortland; her mother, Erlinor
Sutton VanCortland; Mrs. Smith, her beloved Jewish surrogate mother; and
Paramahansa Bramananda, her guru—his legs wrapped in an Indian-style
dhoti of bright orange cloth, chanting, “Om-mani-padme-hum, om-manipadme-hum.”
“Mama! Vessie’s a witch!”
Oh, and her older sister, Smoodgie, as a ten-year-old with her hair in a
flip and a Pixie Band parting her thick dark bangs. And, as always, Everend
tried to stop her from taunting Vessie.
“Don’t talk about your sister that way.”
“Well she is!”
“Excuse me young lady!”
Vessie turned to Smoodgie. “How can you call me a witch? I’m your
sister!”
“Are you kidding? You’re the weirdest kid in Symington. You speak to
angels nobody can see. You know the phone’s going to ring before it rings.
You even heal hamsters and… and cats’ and dogs’ paws. You’re a freak!”
“A freak? Update your pictures, sister dearest. I haven’t done that since
we were kids.”
Erlinor piped in. “Not since your father made you Church Organist. A
clever diversion, Everend.”
“Well, it did take her mind off doing those things.” He looked at Vessie
lovingly. “And what a blessing to discover your God-given talent for music.
The songs you write are beautiful, Ves.”
“Oh, Daddy, you really think so?”
“Of course I do, darling girl.”
Vessie turned and faced the snow-covered windshield. “God I miss
you.”
She heard Smoodgie stab her in the back. “God I hate you.”
Vessie whipped her head around. “Smoodgie, grow up! You’re my
older sister, remember?”
Suddenly, Smoodgie, aka Charlene, transformed into her present age:
thirty-five.
“And, Smoodgie?” Vessie said. “The phone’s for you.”
“Very funny.” Then a phone rang. “Damn you, Vessie!”
Smoodgie picked it up and Vessie grabbed it away.
“Nobody home,” she said, and slammed it down.
“You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can. This is my vision!”
Tucked into the back seat in a full lotus position, Guru Paramahansa
Bramananda continued to chant, “om-mani-padme-hum, om-mani-padme-hum.”
Vessie and her inner child joined in.
Sirens wailed through the streets of Manhattan. A blur of swirling red light
streamed at a snail’s pace from the tops of squad cars and ambulances as
they crawled through a sea of unrelenting white.
Stuck inside Allsounds, illuminated by a single flashlight’s beam, Remy
avoided Lou’s eyes. He wouldn’t allow himself to appear vulnerable to a
man whose only concern was himself. He looked away fighting tears.
“I never should have let her go.”
“What do you mean let?” Lou snapped. “Since when does Vessie
listen to you?”
“She’s my best friend, Lou. She listens.”
“You’re my producer. She has to listen.” Lou scanned the room. “Christ,
where the hell’s the goddamn electricity?”
“Om-mani-padme-hum, om-mani-padme-hum…” Something was interrupting Vessie’s focus—an intruding thought, a vision mocking her attempt at survival. She kept repeating her mantra but the vision was overpowering.
Suddenly, it was as if Vessie were looking into a crystal ball dated 1955. There she stood in her rosebud-papered bedroom staring into a shiny new cage at two birds whose faces appeared to be kabuki masks through which their small eyes registered panic.
