ZIGZAG STITCH
A zigzag stitch is simply a stitch made with a zigzag pattern.
Often used to sew along raw edges to prevent
them from fraying.Summer 2020
Chicago, Illinois
The things I loved most about the city have now been stolen, the simplest of things, like walking the neighborhood, eating at a local restaurant, shopping, perusing art galleries and antiques shops, heading to ball games and concerts, gathering with friends.
I live in a city to do these things. I was alone too long. I yearned for noise, people, fashion, food and both celebrity and anonymity in a crowd.
One of the most monstrous aspects of Covid—in addition to its nightmarish invisibility, the ravaging effects on those we love, the devastating loss of so many—is that it strikes against our very own human nature. It challenges our vulnerabilities. The virus isolates us.
Humans are social beings. We yearn to gather, hug, celebrate, laugh, cry, comfort, befriend. And this monster teases us, laughs at us, challenges us, infuriates us by removing—in the biggest crisis of our lifetimes—what we yearn for most: connecting with one another.
And yet I know I am equipped to handle this isolation better than most.
I sit in the window seat of my second-floor condo in River North. I live in a drafty old condo with ornate woodwork that sits above an art gallery in the Gallery District. The condo has huge windows that front the street, and I used to love to perch in one with my coffee, water or wine and watch the constant bustle.
Now, there is little activity. Galleries and restaurants are closed. I wonder how many will open again once this nightmare ends.
I don’t believe River North has, in its history, ever been this quiet.
“History,” I say in the silence. “Where’s mine start?”
How can I know my neighborhood’s history better than my own?
During Prohibition, speakeasies popped up all over Chicago, and River North—with its many train tracks—became a bootlegging epicenter. Two of Chicago’s most famous mob incidents happened right here, including Al Capone’s murder of Dean O’Banion who ran a bootlegging business disguised as a flower shop on the corner of Chicago Avenue and North State with his wife. That started the five-year gang war that culminated in the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929.
Now, River North is a lively neighborhood that—as its name implies—lies north of the Chicago River, directly above the Loop. It is bordered by the Magnificent Mile to the east and is home to many corporate headquarters including Groupon, Yelp and ConAgra.
My company, Lindy’s Department Store, is also headquartered here. Lindy’s used to be known as Magnus Rhodes Finebaum, the quintessential Chicago department store where everyone went to shop and where every Chicagoan flocked for the holidays. Now they’ve become airplane hangars filled with ransacked rounders and bargain basements.
Sutton’s Buttons is one of their few bright spots.
As long as I make them money.
In addition to the proximity to work, I was drawn to the area for many other reasons: the nice shops and eateries, vibrant nightlife, and multitude of cocktail bars and activities. But I was mostly drawn by the inspiration.
River North is home to the largest concentration of art galleries outside of Manhattan. Located between Orleans and LaSalle, many of these galleries are housed in converted warehouses and lofts.
When I used to walk the streets and into the galleries, I could actually feel the hum of creativity, as much as I could feel the throb of the El when it passed. The massive Merchandise Mart is also close by, drawing shoppers and retailers to its home and office design showrooms.
I picked up so many fashion ideas just walking around “First Fridays” when galleries were open late and filled to the gills with partying artists and the Midsummer Art Walk. I sketched late at night. I shared ideas with strangers. I ran after girls on the street whose outfits I admired.
My job, like me, has changed over the years, though. I feel as if I’m no longer creating a fashion line as much as I am—like my mother did—doing the same thing over and over and over again. My dream has become a recurring nightmare. The movie of my life has changed from a documentary on Iris to Groundhog Day.
I am a widget maker, a cookie cutter. I count dollars and cents. The buttons I select are watered down and plasticized so they can be manufactured for pennies. My new line of beautiful shirt dresses has been redesigned into poly-blend smocks. My life is...
I glance over at my mom’s Singer sewing machine, sitting in the corner of my living room.
...a zigzag stitch.
I have been unable to sleep. I dream of my mother, at her sewing machine, trying to finish a dress for me that she wants me to wear to our family reunion.
“Everyone will be there,” she says. “Everyone you’ve never met. Then it will all make sense.”
She keeps sewing the same stitch over and over, creating the same button hole over and over. There is a man, back to me, no face, and he whispers to my mother, confusing her, making her start anew.
And then I wake with a start and try to sketch to calm myself. I sit and sew on Ol’ Betsy.
Am I trying to bring my mom back to life?
Am I trying to say goodbye?
Or am I trying to stitch together a history I will never know?
I am trapped in life and in grief, in that place of inaction and immobility, where your mind runs rampant and your thoughts take over. I am in a holding place, treading water, unable to have closure over my mother’s death, and unable to restart mine. I am taking stock of a life—after forty years—that I thought would continue seamlessly, no questions asked, and now all I have are questions.
My mom’s belongings are scattered everywhere around my condo. Ol’ Betsy, like her soul itself, casts a shadow in the corner. The button tree is propped against a wall. My childhood teddy bear, with button eyes, is propped in an armchair, staring at me. My mom’s button jars sit on her sewing table, on the floor and on the mantel, shimmering in the light.
I tried over twenty times to start a new design in the middle of the night, inspired by Mom. I got as far as a zigzag stitch to prevent the edges from fraying, hoping against hope that might work for my heart, too, but it didn’t. I simply stooped over Ol’ Betsy and cried until my eyes were puffy and my throat raw.
I look back onto the street. My heart yearns to wander them. I miss wandering into the many cathedrals that populate this area. I want to light a candle for my mother, say a prayer for her, ask God why and how He could do this, to help me find my family, but I am trapped.
What if a runner were to bump into me without a mask, or a stranger were to approach and I became paralyzed in fear, or a biker passed too closely?
The virus found my mother in the middle of nowhere, and God did not save His most ardent believer and fearless warrior, so why would He spare me?
Or perhaps I should go and wander, take a chance, knowing the outcome would be a reunion with the only person in my life who ever loved me, the only one who could answer my questions.
I could escape this world.
I glance at the clock on the mantel. My heart jumps. I only have five minutes until the meeting with my boss.
I rush into the bathroom, toss on a cute sweater, not bothering to change out of my pajama bottoms or tube socks, run a brush through my hair, apply some mascara to my lashes, a little color to my wan cheeks and a touch of lipstick. At the last minute, I toss on my blue button necklace for security’s sake and open my laptop.
Welcome to the new corporate world! Business on the top, comfort on the bottom.
I take a deep breath before joining the meeting.
“Good morning, Sutton.”
My boss, Jamieson Kimsley, has a British accent that would make a sunny day sound cloudy. Everyone thinks British accents are so sexy, but Jamieson sounds like he’s narrating a 1970s ad for Grey Poupon. And he doesn’t want you to buy it.
“Morning, Jamieson.”
“I...um...would like to start by expressing my deepest condolences on the loss of your mum.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that.”
“I take it you received the floral arrangement from our office?”
“I did. Thank you so much for such a thoughtful gesture.”
He stares at me over the laptop. Human emotion is not a strength of Jamieson’s. He’s a boarding school kid raised without the benefit of a mother tucking him in every night.
My breath hitches thinking of my mom.
“The Ozarks,” he suddenly says, picking up his cup of tea and looking off into his wood-paneled home office. I know there is a pool just beyond his office that overlooks the lake. I’ve been to his home—an estate in Lake Forest, a ritzy suburb of Chicago—when I was being interviewed. He tested me by asking if I’d like a cup of tea. He gave me many options. I knew only Earl Grey.
“With milk and sugar?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” I said.
When my tea was placed before me and Jamieson was seated, he said, “Earl Grey is not a morning tea. And when you drink it, you should use lemon and sugar. Milk has a tendency to do strange things to black tea. It dulls the flavor. It’s not as crisp and sharp. Lemon is always the way to go. I just want you to be informed for the future.”
My mind whirs to the TV show, Ted Lasso. I think I’ve binge-watched every show ever created, especially the darkest ones, but turned to Ted for lighter fare. I remember his conversation with his new boss, Rebecca, after he arrives in England when she asks him how he takes his tea.
“Well, usually I take it right back to the counter because someone’s made a horrible mistake.”
The memory makes me laugh. Out loud.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
And that all sums it up: I was hired not because I was the most polished girl on the block. Nor did I have the most connections. I was unique. I was cheap. And I believe Jamieson knew he could always make me dance like a marionette on a string because my thirst for acceptance would always be unquenchable.
“Is it much like the TV show?” he asks.
“Ted Lasso?” I ask.
“No. Ozark. Is it like your Ozarks?”
“Not really,” I say. “That show takes place in Lake of the Ozarks. That’s further north than where I grew up. More city folk tend to have homes there. And Lake of the Ozarks is man-made, which is heresy for a true Ozarkian. I grew up on a crystal clear creek.”
Jamieson looks disappointed. I don’t think he understands a word of what I just said. To people like him, Chicago, New York and LA are real. The rest of the country is not.
Missouri? Arkansas? I might as well be speaking Esperanto and showing him a map of Mars.
A map floats in my mind. A map of Michigan. Shaped like a mitten.
“But the people are similar,” I say, tossing him a bone.
“Oh, yes, yes,” he says. His thick brows and upturned nose twitch.
Jamieson looks like a mix of Colin Firth and an English bulldog, which is not as awful as you might imagine. He looks quite innocent. But he’s known to bite. You just never know—with his accent and personality—that you’ve actually been bitten.
Jamieson is Executive Vice President of Sales and Brand Management for all of Lindy’s women’s wear lines, and there are many. Over the last decade, Lindy’s has purchased every dying department store and malnourished mall across the country, turning once-beloved and once-beautiful family shopping institutions into roller rinks filled with the same items. Jamieson is an Oxford grad and Harvard MBA, and he lets you know this, dropping it every chance he gets. He has no design training, and yet he has learned to stitch a profit-making division together by trimming all excess and hemming the remains into the semblance of a finished gown for the Bride of Frankenstein.
“Well, let’s get down to business, shall we?” He doesn’t as much acknowledge me through the screen as he does sear me with those brown eyes that are magnified through his ever-present tortoise frames. “And business, as you know, has not been good.”
Jamieson begins to pull up a number of slides showing first quarter sales at Lindy’s. The numbers aren’t just down, they’re the business equivalent of watching an avalanche occur in real time on the Discovery Channel. He then breaks out the retail numbers. It is a sea of red.
“Everyone is at home,” he says. “People aren’t buying jeans. They’re not buying day wear. They’re not buying business clothes. They’re not purchasing dresses to wear to weddings, parties, restaurants or clubs. Consumers are only buying loungewear, pajamas, workout clothing.”
I glance down at my bottom half and invisibly nod.
“If we worked at Lululemon, we’d all be golden,” Jamieson says. “But we don’t.”
The world around me spins briefly.
He continues. “We cannot keep making clothes that people aren’t buying. We can’t keep paying employees who aren’t working. Can we, Sutton?”
I hate it when people ask me to agree with something I don’t agree with.
“No, sir,” I say.
“Good, good. Well, then, we’re on the same page.”
What book are you reading? I want to ask.
“We’re not terminating you, Sutton...”
“What?” I blurt.
“Hear me out, Sutton. As I was saying, we are not terminating you. But we are placing you and your team on indefinite leave. When things pick back up and the world returns to normal, so will we.”
“And if they don’t?”
“I don’t like to live in a vague world,” Jamieson says. “I prefer firm numbers. Reality.”
“How am I going to survive? What if I were to come up with a loungewear design?”
“With buttons?” he asks. “No one is buttoning anything, Sutton.”
My heart drops.
“We’ll pay you for the next few months, and then...” Jamieson stops. “...there is unemployment.”
His accent makes it sound like a dirty word.
He continues. “The government is being quite helpful in these situations. You are eligible to receive an additional three hundred dollars a week.”
“My mortgage payment costs six times that much! Without utilities!”
I don’t mean to say this out loud, but I do, my voice echoing in the condo I can no longer afford.
“Not to mention health insurance and food,” I continue.
“You still have insurance, Sutton,” he says. “I’m sure you have budgeted accordingly.”
Jamieson’s home in Lake Forest costs two and a half million dollars. I looked it up on Zillow.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What about me?”
“Are you being placed on leave?”
Jamieson gives me a look. I’m not playing the good girl any longer.
“That is a corporate decision,” he says. “As of now, I am making the hard decisions to...”
Cut. Hem. Trim.
I glance at Ol’ Betsy.
Zigzag stitch.
“I know how difficult this must be coming on the heels of such a profound personal loss,” he is saying when I tune back into his voice. “I truly am sorry, Sutton.”
I nod.
“There will be some paperwork coming your way,” Jamieson says. “And I’d like you to complete your quarterly reports. And then...”
I nod again, he says goodbye, and I shut my laptop.
It’s as easy as that, isn’t it? I think.
The image of a cottonhead striking out of nowhere fills my mind.
I look over at my mother’s Singer.
Everything hangs by a thread. Our lives. Our health. Our jobs. Our past. Our future.
We think we are in control, but we’re not. Someone—something—else always is.
I stand and take a seat at my mom’s sewing table. I can see her entire life on this machine: her footprints worn on the treadle, her fingers on the hand wheel, her arms on the desktop, her weight making the table bend forward ever so slightly.
Ghostly impressions everywhere.
My mom is gone. My job is gone. And yet I remain.
“Why, God?” I ask out loud. “Talk to me!”
I shake the sewing machine.
Silence greets me.
I stand, filled with sudden rage, and pick up the jar of buttons off the sewing table. I lift my arm and start to smash it onto the floor, but it’s as if an invisible force stops me in mid motion. My arm hinges in the air, my shoulder shaking, the buttons quaking inside.
I take a seat on the floor, turn the jar upside down and dump all the buttons out.
They scatter and roll, and I do the only thing I can right now to calm myself: I slowly begin to sort them.
Just as I did as a child.
A bell clamors. Birds scatter.
I glance toward the cabin.
It’s now or never.
The bell rings again. It echoes through the bluffs, a thousand bells chiming, each one, I know, calling my name.
Sutton! Sutton! Sutton!
My mom placed this bell by the door of the cabin to ring me in when I was swimming, floating, fishing or reading on the bluffs. The sound is not, like the new word I just learned in church, tintinnabulation, the sound of church bells on a Sunday morning.
No, this is loud, obnoxious, just as my mother wants it to be. It is a warning.
I have one minute to get home.
And then I hear my mother’s voice actually yelling my name.
“Sutton?”
“Sutton?”
“Sutton!”
I toss my backpack into the front of the canoe next to milk jugs filled with water and just behind a Styrofoam cooler filled with bologna sandwiches and potato chips.
I step inside the back of the canoe and grab my paddle. I push off from the rocky beach. The current catches the canoe, and...
The canoe stops.
My mother is standing in the creek. Her hand is on the back of the canoe.
“Where in the heck do you think you’re headed, young lady?”
My mother never cusses. Only if it’s written in the Bible.
I look back at her.
“Away from you.”
I take my paddle and try to push off of her body, but she grabs it with her free arm and tosses it onto the beach before single-handedly dragging the canoe onto the rocks.
“I hate you!” I yell, bursting into tears.
“Take that back.”
“No, it’s true! I hate you!”
My mother crosses her arms and looks across the creek.
“I don’t have any friends. You don’t let me do anything fun. I can’t go to dances. I can’t go to the square on a Friday night. I’m all alone in the middle of nowhere, and I’m going to be all alone just like you.” I hesitate but continue. “I’m going to die all alone just like you.”
My mom looks at me for the longest time.
“Am I really that bad?”
“Yes!”
She nods.
“Okay then. Go. Just go.” She leans down and hands me the paddle. “I know you’re goin’ to leave me one day anyway. You’re goin’ to break my heart and then get yours shattered. It might be by a boy, or a boss, or a friend, or a job, but you will get your heart broken. But I want you to know I won’t ever hurt you. I won’t ever betray you. I won’t ever lie to you. I would never kick you outta this house, no matter what you do. Do you understand me? Even if you leave me right now, forever, remember that you are welcome back here no matter what. Do you hear me?”
I am staring at her openmouthed.
“Do you hear me!” she screams.
I nod, and then she pushes me off into the creek.
My mom takes a seat on the beach and watches me, as casually as if I’m a turtle come to sun on a rock.
“Goodbye, Sutton,” she says with a wave.
My canoe goes sideways. I grab my paddle, trying not to panic.
“I hope you know how to paddle all by yourself,” she calls. “And that you have enough food. And did you remember to bring a pillow or a blanket? A change of clothes?”
I paddle left, then right, trying to straighten out the canoe.
“And remember to watch out for the Blue Man,” she calls. “And don’t get spooked by the Spooklight!”
My mind reels as I think of sleeping alone along the creek banks tonight.
Blue Man! Spooklight!
These Ozarks legends have frightened many a child and adult for decades. The Blue Man is a Sasquatch-like creature who relishes chasing and killing. He carries a wooden club in his huge hands, throwing boulders and feasting on livestock. He isn’t blue, but those who have witnessed him say his jet-black fur shines blue in the sunlight, while others say he wears animal skins and feathers dyed blue from berries.
Whenever a chicken coop is ransacked, or a pet goes missing, people search the woods for the Blue Man. Hunters see him at night. Young lovers swear he tries to turn their car over at Makeout Point.
I believe I once saw him crossing the creek, blue in the midnight moon, a deer over one shoulder, a raw fish in the other hand. I screamed for my mom who had to sleep with me all night.
And my mom and I once drove to the country road in the middle of nowhere to see the Spooklight. We’d both heard about it for years but never believed it. We were the only car there. We waited for hours one summer waiting for dusk to fall, eating popcorn out of paper bags. That’s when we saw it: a flickering ball of light, the size of a baseball, spinning down the center of the road at a high speed. It rose and hovered above the treetops, performing some sort of demonic dance for us. It would retreat and then reappear, this time swinging like a lantern being carried by an invisible force.
My mother began to pray, but I opened the car door.
“What are you doing?” my mother yelled.
I didn’t answer. I just looked at her. I guess I was tired of being afraid of the unknown, of hiding from the world.
I had a desire to chase down the unknown as if it were my one and only calling.
I started to run toward the light.
It disappeared, as if my courage and bravery had spooked the Spooklight itself.
And that’s the moment I steered my canoe back toward the beach, back toward my mom.
I knew running away would never solve a thing. It would never answer any of my questions, the reason behind my sadness. I had to chase down my own unknown.
My canoe rams the beach, a few yards from my mom.
“Tell me about yourself, Mom,” I say quietly. “A story. Anything. Please. I need to understand why you are the way you are. Why we are the way we are. How we got here.”
My mom stands and walks over to the canoe. She climbs inside and sits in the bottom of the canoe, facing me, our knees touching.
“You know everything you need to know,” she says. “I’m your mother. And I love you more than anything. That is not a lie.”
“Mom,” I start, my voice raw. “I always feel like I do when I was taking off in this canoe. All alone. I just need to know more about us. I need some connection to you, the past, something. Please.”
My mom shakes my knees.
“I’m givin’ you everything I can, Sutton. Everything.”
“No, you’re not, Mom. You don’t give me anything. Who’s my dad? You don’t even say his name. What was he like? Do I look like him? Talk like him? I’m so alone, Mom.”
I cry.
“You look like him,” she finally says.
I start, and the canoe shakes.
“Really?”
She nods.
“And, oh, your passion for life...that’s all your daddy, too.” She stops, and, for once, I swear she’s going to cry, too. But instead she takes a big breath. “Here’s what I know, Sutton...what I can tell you: loss and heartbreak do funny things to a person’s insides. It’s like hard-boilin’ an egg. Everything dries up, hardens, changes. It can never go back to the way it was. And yet it still looks the same on the outside.”
I don’t totally understand what she means, but I don’t press her any further because it is something. I got something. I look like my father!
We sit in silence forever.
“Come home. For a night. To think about things?” my mom finally says.
I nod.
“We’ll leave your canoe here, just in case you change your mind,” she continues.
She begins to stand, and the canoe wobbles. I scoot over and pat the tiny seat. She takes a seat beside me, closer.
We remain there for hours, eating the food I’d brought, until dusk comes.
I know what my mom is waiting for.
Finally, the swallows come from the bluffs and dart over the water, looking for bugs. They jet this way and that, the hum of their wings and rush of the creek our Ozarks symphony.
My mother’s calm.
The swallows dip into the water, leaving little circles in the twilight, purple ripples that eventually smooth.
“I don’t think I’m gonna need the canoe after all,” I finally say.
My mother and I drag the canoe across the beach and leave it by the spring. She looks at me and holds out her hand. We walk hand in hand up the steep stone stairs, back to the cabin.
As she cooks dinner, she watches the swallows feast while I take a jar of buttons and scatter them across the old Formica table my mom loves so much, dappled white top with an inlay of pretty flowers that look as if they have been sewn onto the table. Four aqua blue dining chairs with chrome legs sit around the table.
I arrange the buttons into piles by color. Sometimes, I do it by shape or feel, sometimes by personality, or ones I like and ones I don’t. I have made it into a game, but it is really a trick, like counting sheep or taking deep breaths.
I do it to calm myself.
“Would you set the table, Sutton?” my mom finally asks.
I look at my mom and nod. I rake my forearm across the table to gather the buttons into a long line, and then use my hand as a scoop to push them back into the jar.
I head to the cupboard and cabinet and retrieve three plates, three glasses, three sets of silverware.
I set the table.
“What are you doing?” my mother asks, noticing the additional place setting.
“One for Daddy,” I say.
I can’t tell if she is nodding or shaking her head, but she doesn’t say a word and returns her attention to the stove. I stare out the windows of the cabin as the sky turns dark as oil.
The beach and the water are now quiet. The swallows, like the buttons, are gone.
I look at the third place setting and then out the window again.
I will have dinner with my family and enjoy this moment, before the dishes are put away and these memories are gone, too, as if nothing before has been real.
I sit on the floor, my legs in front of me spread in a V. I use my hands as a scoop to gather the buttons. I begin to arrange them by color.
Blue in piles to the left of my left leg, white on the right of it. Red, black and green are placed in piles in the center of my legs, pink, yellow and purple go around my right leg. I stack the brown buttons down my legs, just as I did as a girl, challenging myself not to knock them off as I reach right and left.
Slowly, I can feel the world still. The jagged pieces become a complete picture once again. My breathing slows.
I grab a button and run my fingers over it, feeling its smoothness, its simplicity, its history, its meaning.
Blue there.
Yellow over there.
Brown here.
I move left and right, my legs twitching ever so slightly, and that’s when I see it, an image as clear as day: a brown swallow on my leg. Or is it a whip-poor-will?
A sign from you, Mom? Are you here with me? Today? When I need you most?
My mother believed in such signs. It was a shocking sign of optimism for a woman who rarely smiled, like merging Walt Disney with Alfred Hitchcock.
After I left for college, my mom said a hummingbird used to visit as she sewed. Lots of hummers would buzz the feeders my mother hung around the cabin, but she said this one was different.
“Particularly nosy,” she would tell me in her gravelly voice when I’d return home, the edges of her mouth traveling northward, something it rarely did unless she was watching Johnny Carson or Carol Burnett. I once caught her face move when a wealthy woman at church got a heel stuck in the gaps of the wood floor after asking parishioners to “give everything” we could and then not-so-subtly telling everyone how much she had given.
But my mom was right about that hummingbird. It would sit for long spells—often ten, fifteen minutes at a time on the native honeysuckle that trailed up the cabin—longer than any hummer I’d ever seen. It would just sit and watch my mother, angling its head this way and that, turning an eye directly toward my mother, as if the two were lifelong friends and used to the comfort in one another’s silence.
I had no use for nor belief in such signs. I had no history or backstory and, thus, no understanding of why such a sign might matter.
Until now.
This is a vision so clear that I can see swallows on the water. Even when I shake my head, the buttons remain a bird, my dark blue pajama bottoms the creek.
My sudden movement causes the buttons to scatter. I scoop up a few, special brown ones in my hand and head to the Singer.
I have set it up just as my mother had it in her sewing room. The flouncy-shouldered blouse my mom was making waits quietly, staring at me, just like that hummingbird.
A ghost?
A sign?
A clue?
I arrange an assortment of brown buttons—the vintage tortoise Bakelite buttons my mom had intended to use on the blouse—into the shape of a swallow.
I begin to sew. Ol’ Betsy’s hum is like the rush of the creek, and I am lulled into another world. My heart races. It is frightening to be so alone and lost, and yet exhilarating to be creating for creativity’s sake for the first time in a very long time.
When I look up again, it is dusk.
A streetlight clicks on and glows into my window.
I stand, stretching my back, and perch on the window seat looking out at the approaching night.
A man in a mask walks down the street carrying groceries. He is blue in the light, and his shadow stretches behind him, making him look twenty feet long.
Spooklight.
Blue Man.
There are so many things in this life that terrify us. Most are myths. Many are unseen.
But all exist, and they are real to us. They dwell in the corners of our minds, memories and pasts, where the monsters actually exist.
I stand and return to the blouse. The button swallow dips and dives in my mind.
What was my mother thinking and remembering when she watched these birds?
When she was sewing?
When she was sorting buttons?
I pick up the little antique button card with aquamarine buttons I discovered when I found my mother’s blue dress.
What stories was my mom telling in the clothes she made and the buttons she so carefully selected?
What was real? What was myth?
What is now real, and what is myth?
I reach over and grab the blue button I snagged off her dress before I buried it. I hold it next to the button card.
They’re exactly the same.
I squint and look closer.
Aren’t they?
A flutter catches my attention. A pigeon sits in the window, cooing.
I think of my mother reading the Bible. She often said pigeons were the currency of mercy, the birds of sacrifice.
“Mom?” I call out loud.
The bird looks at me. It chirps.
“Ted!” it says to me.
I walk toward it, holding the buttons. It doesn’t move.
“I sacrificed everything for you,” I can hear the pigeon now say in my mother’s voice.
I yelp without warning, ongoing grief plus the shock of the day suddenly overwhelming me. The bird’s wings flutter madly in the window. It looks at me, yells at me, haunts me.
“Everything for you!”
And then the bird is gone.
Nothing is real anymore.