maxfield francis goldman – graceland

On the nature of things which move away (from me).

Glamourising, that white silk shirt blowing softly, glimmering in my sister's periphery; only she sees it—sitting down at the table in mid july, it’s my 18th birthday. Ephemeral skin soaked in that shit stained summer’s dew, I hear her laugh and say her full name— annunciating it in perfect mono-syllables like a speech engine, each noise refined and rotund, indicative of a forced drawl, long, high, nasally “A” noises. Words fly around like saucers in the brief moments in which I turn away and watch a silver Mercury Grand-Marquis drive by; driver's head pointed straight (pointed forward), passenger seat empty (filled with stale air) / (filled with leftover lights). Summer before I left for college, a sultry semi-season inflamed with drunkenly forgotten dawns scattered well throughout the weeks— my last weeks with Ada. Ada’s white shirt is old, it was my mother’s, aged to a toned champagne through years once spent out late as a twenty-something in L.A. and of later years spent shoved into the back of her closet. Mom gave it to Ada before she got sick last year. Surrounded by her back porch, my sister and father sit, speaking to her parents.

This season has left me standing in a meadow behind her house, watching from afar her blow a dandelion into a billion little pieces caught up with sub-eastern jetstreams carrying little tiny bits of her honeydew breath out west, like a bird, maybe a plane. I touched her cheek, she touched my breast, calmly, unfamiliarly. We used to watch deer from her back porch together as kids, sitting here waiting for a herd to stick their heads out the brush, look around for a second of grace through her yard, they would jump through that grass plain which painted her estate lush, greens of spring and summer.

Our fathers laugh with one another, loudly, threshold expectations of “dinner-party-voice” go right out the door, my sister and her mother drink wine softly beneath her cover of chatter laid heavy on them like a blanket. Our mothers met outwest twenty years ago, both ended up here. Ada moves next to me as our fathers get up to go inside, her hands are doll-like and fragile. Always dissimilar to mine, moving up the inner seams of my hand-me down dress worn thin from the grease on Ada’s hands, accumulating all summer. Like flies on a store bought cake left uncovered in my unimpressive kitchenette, her hand prints built up colonies on my thighs, up to my chest, and back to my ass (only when she was drunk). She whispers in my ear “let’s go out to the meadow, not waste the night sitting around”. She tells our families we're going on a walk, runs inside and grabs a bottle of wine, and grabs me by the wrist, feels like she’s tearing the freckles off my skin, and shoves open the door like a drunken man, the sky is at its dimmest light— our little sun looking like it’s dying, a half-assed supernova (every night with Ada). The path has rocks and I stumble a little bit, Ada keeps pulling me forward.

Her meadow serene, almost crystalline in which the humid air carries our little droplets of sweat around with us, painting the whole night in little parts of us, falling off (falling apart) like ancient Egyptian ruins.

Standing in the middle of the field I'm in her arms, her chest on mine, the sharp tip of her chin lay deeply in my shoulders, always less girly than hers, always more room for her to put her head, I can feel her begin to close her eyes.

Her whole body flexes, just for a second, she whispers in my ear “be quiet, be still...look”. My head creaks ever so slightly back, and there, beyond serenity of classical still lifes and lesser nostalgic polaroids, the herd stands staggered before us, like before, just like june, frozen within the refraction of a dim (but growing) light inching ever closer, evermore in the ice-age frozen seconds—we stare.

Ada turns me around and holds me against her, the nape of my neck aligned with her supple body, she jerked too quickly and the deer scattered, quicker than anything I have ever seen, and within an instant the light once reflected in their eyes from hundreds of feet away in the road grew closer; the smallest deer sprinted instantly to the road while the others dispersed in gull-like formation near that edge of the road where the pavement met the meadow. Blaring like a rocketship, cacophonous and shrill, the meadow lit up as the headlights drew near as can be, illuminating the field, they swerve off the road, missing the one deer in the road, tumbling nose over, upside down into the sitting reminisce of the herd within Ada’s meadow. The car scraped across the grass at lightspeed—red stained green like cheap acrylic paint— tearing one of the deers in half like it was paper thin stopping only a few feet in front of us.

Fragmented mollusks of wet brain shot out like shrapnel staining my mother’s old shirt, still flowing on Ada’s body. She held me tight. Let out a breath of terror and laid in the grass, in shock, in silence. Her body below my feet, I walk forward inching towards the car; a silver Mercury Grand-Marquis, flipped upside down covered in dirt. The passenger seat is empty (filled up with glass ridden air), the backseat full (of deer guts and damp wind). Hanging limp, an old hand's body suspended by the pull of the seatbelt, his glasses half smashed into his face. I felt tears begin to fall down my cheeks, fall harder, fall to the ground where Ada lay down, only a few steps behind me. I run my hand along the paneling of the car, warm, dirty, wet. Ada’s gasps softly play out half a lazy ear shot away, they sing a little.

Reaching around to the trunk of the car, dented in, splattered with blood, a bright blue bumper sticker cuts through the now fallen night, in big emboldened text, only reading:
“I’VE BEEN INSIDE GRACELAND”.


MAXFIELD FRANCIS GOLDMAN is a 21 year old author and student at Bennington College. He has had work published at Expat Press and Maudlin House.


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