Today, I have cobalt sadness and persimmon anxiety. 

I have clunky depression and prickly frustration.

I have nagging dull pain and odd fluttering sensations.

I have no uplifting energy, yet no ability to surrender to delicious relaxation.

I have regrets about crooked missteps. 

I have a colorful history of crooked missteps.

I have wavering hearing loss in one ear that goes in and out like my breath. 

Yet, I do have my breath. 

And I have moments of sweet release.

I have the chance to soak in the buttery sunlight pouring through my window.

I have cats with endearing expressions and impossibly soft fur. 

I have a husband with these same qualities, except he has hair. 

I have seen the first orange-breasted robin of spring. 

Actually, I have seen the first ten of them.

(I have to remind myself, it’s not a competition.) 

I have a tribe, though small, that gets me.

And I have to admit, that’s HUGE.  

Still, today it feels a lot like I have nothing.

And sometimes that’s just what I have to feel for a little while. 

So I have given myself… permission. 

(gentle, soothing, and calm music plays)

WILLOW: Welcome to the third installment of our bedtime stories podcast, Catch Your Zs. We’re so happy to have you. My name is Willow and beside me is my lovely co-host, TS. 

TS: Good evening, Willow. 

WILLOW: I see you’ve brought me my favorite tea. 

TS: I have. We’re learning each other, right? 

WILLOW: We sure are! TS and I are new to this whole podcast thing. And kinda new to each other.

TS: We are. So how are you this fine evening, Willow?

WILLOW: Splendid. Just terrific. And you?

TS: Well, if I’m truthful, I’m going through a little identity crisis. Feeling like I need to get back to my roots. 

WILLOW: Oh yeah?

TS: Mmmm-hm. So I’m asking people I know to start addressing me by my full birth name. Just trying that on, ya know?

WILLOW: Wow. (pauses, sound of sipping tea) You know, I’m ashamed to say it but I don’t think I know what TS stands for.

TS: That’s okay. We haven’t known each other that long.

WILLOW: Even so. I can imagine it’s probably something poetic though?

TS: Traffic Stop.

WILLOW: Excuse me? 

TRAFFIC STOP: Traffic Stop.

WILLOW: Traffic Stop?

TRAFFIC STOP: That’s right, Willow. Traffic Stop.

WILLOW: Hmmmmm.

TRAFFIC STOP: Each of us has a conception story.

WILLOW: Yes, that’s true.

TRAFFIC STOP: Like Jesus.

WILLOW (clearing throat): Except I’m assuming yours wasn’t exactly like Jesus’s.

TRAFFIC STOP: Not really. I mean, I was there, but I don’t remember it.

WILLOW (sipping tea and laughing): It sounds like yours may have involved a red light. 

TRAFFIC STOP: Actually, my parents had been pulled over. 

WILLOW: Oh.

TRAFFIC STOP: By the police.

WILLOW: I see. (sips his tea)

TRAFFIC STOP: For fleeing a murder scene. 

(prolonged silence)

TRAFFIC STOP: It’s a long story. And not particularly interesting. But you know what is interesting? 

WILLOW: What’s that, TS? Sorry. I mean, Traffic Stop?

TRAFFIC STOP: Tonight’s bedtime story. 

WILLOW: Well, I sure hope so. But not so interesting that our listeners will be kept awake! (laughing)

TRAFFIC STOP: I don’t think there’s any worry of that happening. So last week, we geared our story for the young lawyers in our audience. But tonight, the story I’ve crafted is specifically for the blossoming psycho- or sociopaths out there.

WILLOW (jokingly): One could argue there is some overlap between this week’s and last week’s audience then. Am I right? 

TRAFFIC STOP (deadpan): Perhaps. Though psycho- and sociopaths are really a different breed.

WILLOW (pausing): So, wait. You’re serious?

TRAFFIC STOP: Dead serious.

WILLOW: Just a quick question, (sound of long sip of tea) If I may?

TRAFFIC STOP: Shoot.

WILLOW: Why psycho- and sociopaths? I mean, no offense, but shouldn’t we be gearing these stories to the children who will eventually become valuable members of society?

TRAFFIC STOP: Because honestly, Willow, the way I see it, every child needs love. Even if they’re going to take this said love and use it as a justifiable excuse for dismembering a small animal.

WILLOW: I suppose you have a point, (pause) albeit a weird one. At the very least, they’re likely to be more valuable than social media influencers. 

TRAFFIC STOP: Agreed. So everyone sit back and enjoy this week’s edition of bedtime stories. Tonight’s story will be read by my younger brother who is currently working on his degree in communications.

WILLOW (unconvincingly): Terrific. 

TRAFFIC STOP: He hopes to someday become a game show announcer. 

WILLOW: Hmmmmm.

TRAFFIC STOP: Take it away, Meat Locker. (sound of Willow spitting out his tea)

MEAT LOCKER (in exaggerated game show announcer voice): Thanks, sister! I hope everyone’s having a fantastic night out there as we get ready for this night’s installment of BED. TIME. STORIES!!!

WILLOW (clearing throat): Excuse me, Meat Locker… was it?

MEAT LOCKER: Thaaaaaaat’s right, Willow! 

WILLOW: Okay. Alright. I’m gonna just pause the recording here for a minute. (turns off recording)

Willow leans in toward Traffic Stop. “Hey, can we have a word in private?” he says, running his fingers through what’s left of his thinning hair. 

“Of course,” she responds.

Willow and Traffic Stop get up from their chairs and go to a darkened corner of the makeshift space they call a studio. In reality, it’s the back of a decades-old deli where Traffic Stop works during the day.

“Look,” Willow whispers. “I don’t mean any disrespect to your brother, but I kinda wish you’d cleared this with me first.”

Traffic Stop cocks her head and regards him with a steely glance. “I wasn’t aware that I had to get your permission.”

“Oh, no. Don’t misunderstand. This is a partnership. All the way. But I just don’t think that… Meat Locker,” he clears his throat, stumbling on her brother’s name, “is exactly the right voice for this particular story.”

“And why not?” 

“Why not!?” Willow gasps. “Did you hear him? He sounds like Johnny Gilbert from Jeopardy! And again, no disrespect to Johnny either. I mean, the guy’s a legend. He’s a highly trained professional.”

“What’s your point, Willow?”

“He’s just not who I’d choose to read a bedtime story.”

“No?” she pierces him further with her cold glance. It’s a side of her that he hasn’t previously witnessed. He passes it off as her being a bad mood.

“Just who did you think was going to read it then?”

“Well, you,” he says. “You’ve been reading them the past two weeks and doing a damn good job of it. Your calming voice has become our trademark.”

“Do you mean that?” Traffic Stop says, quickly turning on a dime and transforming her cold stare into one of adoration.

Willow feels slightly alarmed by her sudden shift in demeanor. “Of course I do.”

She continues to smile warmly at him and he feels a little ashamed for thinking she was a bad mood a few moments before. “Ya know, I gotta ask,” he says, leaning toward her. “Meat Locker?”

She’s still staring at him adoringly, but now there is a glassy look in her eyes.

“So is that another conception story? In a meat locker? Because your parents sound pretty kinky.”

Traffic Stop coils a lock of her hair around her finger and starts twisting it. “No. Not a conception story,” she says in a dreamy voice. “But you know that already, Daddy.”

For a second he thinks she’s kidding. Then he realizes she’s serious. “What’s going on, TS?” he says, accidentally slipping back to her old name – a slip of tongue he immediately regrets. 

“You know my name, Daddy,” she says, the anger returning to her face. 

Willow begins to feel hot. And dizzy. “I’m feeling a little strange. I think I need to sit down,” he says, lowering himself into a chair at one of the tables.

“That sounds about right,” Traffic Stop glances at her watch. “The tea must be kicking in now.”

“Kicking in?”

She smiles again. This time in a devilish way. “You don’t have much time left.” 

His heart begins to race and he grips the table to try to stand up. But he can’t seem to move. He slumps to the floor; unable to speak. 

“Hush now, Daddy,” she says in her trademark soothing bedtime story voice. “It’s time to go to sleep.”

Willow stares up at her with terror in his eyes.

“And don’t you worry. We’ll keep you safe and sound for the night in the meat locker,” she gently rubs the side of his face and her brother peers out over her shoulder at him. “Which, in response to your inquiry earlier, is how my brother got his name,” she says. “Isn’t that right?”

“Thaaaaaaaaat’s right, Traffic Stop!” Meat Locker says in his announcer voice, laughing. “Have a terrific night, Willow!” 

“Nighty night,” Traffic Stop kisses Willow gently on the forehead. 

FADE TO BLACK

It’s another day at the zoo. 

From where Lucia is perched, she can view both the elephants and the macaques. She thinks this apropos, given that the elephants smell of their shit while the macaques make sport of theirs. 

Since the beginning of July, she’s taken to doing her embroidery while sitting on this particular bench. She needs to be around other living souls. Being at home by herself – which once brought her solace – feels too much like imprisonment these days. 

It’s 9:20am, but already too hot and humid for her taste. A peacock walks by and emits his standard-issue broken car alarm shriek as if in protest. “Speak it, brother,” she says in response, as he fans open his impressive feathers. She laughs in delight. “You’re wasting your time on me,” she says to him, retrieving her latest embroidery piece from her bright purple bag. It’s one of her larger works – a complex and abstract piece portraying hands in various sizes and colors (including the signature bright purple that adorns her bag), intricately intertwined with one another. ‘She specializes in hands,’ her daughter once said when showing Lucia’s latest piece at the gallery. Her gallery. Back when she believed in her mother.

‘I can see that,’ the curious but ultimately disinterested viewer had said before walking away.

Lucia leans back and watches the elephants swatting flies with their tails and lumbering in slow motion. She is certain that some of the animals at the zoo know that feeling of being passed over. After all, what sort of person wants to stare at an earth-toned mule deer when the intrigue of a large and showy black and orange striped cat beckons nearby? With this thought, she questions whether her work is nothing more than the embroidery equivalent of an unremarkable brown ungulate. She just as quickly shakes off the ridiculousness of the thought. Still, she’s amazed that after all these years and amid her continued success, that insidious thought still has the gall to stroll out onto center stage and make itself known. 

A monarch butterfly flits by and circles her for a moment before moving on to milkweedier pastures. It makes her smile as she places her plastic bin of floss – meticulously organized and sectioned based on color – and chooses three bobbins in variegated colors. She lays them carefully on the bench. She plans to embroider the detailed rings that will adorn a few fingers on the brightly colored hands.

She stares intently down at her work when she is shaken by what she believes is an auditory hallucination. “That’s pretty,” says a small voice that sounds like her granddaughter, Bella, who is in Vermont. She looks away from the bobbins and is startled to find herself staring into the hairline of a young girl standing in front of her, her mouth gaping open and looking down at Lucia’s work. The girl has a warm copper-colored aura that surrounds her as though she’s been dusted with glittered cinnamon.

“Well, thank you,” says Lucia, taken aback by the precociousness of this child. In the past month, she’s been on this bench at least a dozen times and few children are ever brave enough to make eye contact let alone approach her. But this child smiles at her, pulls herself up onto the bench next to Lucia, and with no preamble whatsoever, tells her that she was recently kicked out of preschool. 

“Ooooooh,” says Lucia, looking around for a parent. “Were ya now?” 

The little girl nods. 

“Well, you must’ve done something awfully naughty to have that happen,” Lucia says, continuing to scan her surroundings for this little girl’s caregiver. She takes a sip of the iced hibiscus tea she brought. It’s cold as it moves down her throat – a sensation that vaguely reminds her of the injections she’d had all those years ago. She shudders a little, even in the heat.

“Maybe,” the little girl says tentatively. “I mean, I keep asking people if what I did was wrong,” she says pensively. She’s wearing a small ring which she twists and turns on her finger. 

“Do you mind if I ask you what you did?” Lucia asks, taking another sip.

“I called my teacher a mother fucker.”

Lucia lets out a gasp, more of a laugh really, that would have sent a spray of hibiscus tea all over her work had she not moved it off to the side.

“And I guess you’re not supposed to say that,” the little girl says. 

Depends on the situation, Lucia thinks, but decides against verbalizing it. “Well, I guess not,” she says. “Not to your preschool teacher, at least.”

The little girl nods, but then tilts her head to the side and squints her eyes as if she’s pondering who, then, would be the appropriate recipient of the moniker.

“So tell me this,” Lucia interrupts her thought before the child can ask. “What’s your name?”

“Montana,” the little girl says. “What’s yours?”

“Lucia.” 

No sooner does she finish saying her name when Lucia hears a man’s voice approaching. “Ech! There you are, Montana!” She looks up to see a young man who is a larger male carbon copy of Montana coming toward them. “I’m so sorry she’s bothering you,” he calls out, throwing his hands up in the air. He sidles up next to Montana and shoots her a glance. It’s hard to read the emotion behind it though. And when he speaks, it’s without rancor. There’s even a taste of compassion. “She just has a very… different way of going about things.”

“No bother at all,” Lucia says. “To be honest, it’s refreshing.” 

“Look what she’s making, daddy,” Montana says, pointing to Lucia’s work. The father frowns for a moment, but then leans over her to take a look. “Wow,” he says, his eyes widening. “That’s really amazing!” 

“Thank you,” she says. His response is nothing new. It’s not that she’s some revolutionary visionary. Of this she is certain. Rather, people see an older woman sitting on a bench with an embroidery hoop and assume she’s stitching a pastel pastoral setting with some sort of syrupy sentiment.

“No, I mean it. YOU are an artist,” he says, acknowledging something that she already knows but seems to think she does not. This is also another common occurrence. Especially among men. “Seriously. You should have that hanging somewhere.”

She smiles warmly. “I intend to.”

“Will you make me something!?” Montana asks. 

Montana’s father laughs. “I think you’ve bothered her enough for today,” he says, holding his hand out to her. Lucia is about to protest, but is surprised to see Montana take his hand so willingly as she jumps off the bench. Even once she’s landed, she doesn’t cease to hold his hand. Instead, she holds it tighter and gives it a kiss.  

“Goodbye, Lucia,” Montana says with a sweet smile, pronouncing her name ‘LOO-cha.’ Lucia notices she’s missing one of her front teeth. 

“It was truly a delight to meet you, Montana,” she says. “And I’ll make you a deal.”

Montana perks up her head and raises her eyebrows. 

“Next time you come to the zoo, I will have something especially for you. Just look for me here,” she says with a wink. 

“I will,” Montana attempts to wink back, but only twists her face into a hilarious expression. This makes Lucia’s heart ache all the more for her sweet Bella. She watches Montana and her dad walk away, still holding hands and swinging their arms in unison. Once they are out of sight, she gently threads her needle and inserts it on the side of the embroidered bright purple finger upon which she wants to place a ring. She has chosen the ring finger and utilizing a chain stitch, she begins to work. The irony of the chain is not lost on her – bound by her old familial demons as much as the animals at the zoo are bound to their exhibits. She sighs and shakes her head. Then she takes a deep breath and thinks about Bella. 

She’s always believed that if two people think of each other at the exact same moment, the atoms will coalesce into invisible forms and connect them. She lets out a long exhale as the floss passes through the cloth with a muted popping sound. She knows full well where things went wrong and her role in it. But knowing is only the beginning of a treacherous journey.

And today, she’s just too tired to start that trip.  

*(modified excerpts from The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese)