An idiosyncratic retelling of the Demeter and Kore/Persephone myth.
---
The hard cold broke, and in exchange came a wet cold that seemed colder still. Frost no longer streaked the long dead grass in the mornings. Green snakes of daffodil leaves rose, and waxy invaginated tulip spikes. Also the year's first weeds.
We'd sold the big house the year before, and David got a bachelor's pad in the city for more money than he'd ever spent when he was with me. At first I thought it little-boy ego-assertion, but then I saw he was simply not paying attention. Corey was charmed by the idea she could choose the paint and wallpaper for the room where she stayed over. An overexposed Polaroid with my birthday card told me Valentine-candy lavender, Laura Ashley border. I forbore from commenting. She was just 21.
I'd been afraid I'd be stuck with an apartment, but a real-estate agent I know did some poking around and found six acres in the Snoqualmie Valley, with a long overgrown back yard dropping to a ragged creek, on it a metal-roofed chicken coop, a decrepit trailer. I closed without a mortgage and put a real kitchen in the trailer without breaking my budget. Then I broke my budget by putting a darkroom in the shed. I was pleased with my little kingdom of desolation, the only peaks above chaos the essentials, the means of making food and photographs.
And I had room for a garden. In the fall, my friend George helped me fight back the blackberries and build raised beds. He pushed himself at me doggishly afterwards, wanted more than a few home-made dinners in exchange, but rapped across the snout he receded. I spent the winter alone with my Hasselblad.
I trusted David to keep track of Corey. He doted on her with the combined force of long-habituated nurturance and Oedipal adoration. I was preoccupied, grieving the final disintegration of our marriage after so many years of struggle, trying to find my center of gravity now the dependency had been cut away. I kept thinking she'd call, and she did at first. But after I snapped at her a couple of times for complaining about her department-store job, the calls ceased. Let her talk to David, I thought. He'll be more sympathetic than I can be right now.
I was working in the garden, muffled in several layers of sweats but still chilled by the gray March afternoon, when an unfamiliar black subcompact pulled to the side of the road and stopped. The man who emerged was in his early thirties, with dyed black hair. He was beautiful in a stylized way, despite having a bit of a gut, but dressed in a black leather vest and chaps. He belonged on Capitol Hill, not in my wilderness. Lost, I presumed.
Then Corey got out on the passenger side. She had a ring in her eyebrow, tangled hair - was it dreadlocked? - fading from dense blue violet to white-blonde. A tight black minidress, torn stockings. A black velvet collar.
My gut sank. She peered around uncertainly, at the trailer, then at me. "Mom? Hi." She looked again at the trailer. "This is where you live?"
"Welcome to the estate." I gestured toward the creek, beyond to the fields on the valley floor.
"Wow," she said, taking in the remaining blackberry tangle, the shed's galvanized roof. "Dad thought you had, like, a mansion." She flashed a sudden grin. There was fear in it. "Mom, this is Blaze."
The man gazed at me without smiling or speaking. "Blaze," I said. We stood there a moment, a tableau. I saw Corey trying to keep up her courage. "I'm glad you came out, Corey. I was hoping you would." She was my child, and I had been her age. "Can I offer you two some coffee?"
Corey looked at Blaze hesitating. I guessed they'd been arguing. After a moment, he half-shrugged. As if relaying his answer, she said, "That'd be great, Mom."
They followed me in; the aluminum door hung for a moment stopped by its spring, then snapped shut behind them. Blaze's shadow in the door frame reminded me of something, I couldn't think what. I set the thought aside.
I put on the blue enamel kettle, pulled from the freezer beans from my favorite roaster, from the cupboard my French press. I glanced up and caught Blaze looking at me. He didn't lower his eyes. Neither did I.
Quite deliberately he put his hand - in a leather glove with cutout fingers - over Corey's on my table. Not gently. She looked at him with wide, angry eyes. But she didn't speak, and she didn't move her hand.
"Blaze," I said, not quite sure what I was about to say. "So what...do you do?"
"I'm a software engineer."
"Ah. Stuck in an office all day, cut off from life?"
He said nothing. A muscle clenched at the side of his jaw, I was pleased to see, but the score had come too easily.
Corey gave him a quick submissive look, then turned on me her prettiest, least trustworthy smile. "You know, Mom, we were just stopping by on the way to see friends. Maybe we shouldn't bother you for coffee."
The kettle was close to boiling. I'd already ground the beans. Our gazes exchanged this knowledge. Without turning his head, Blaze said, as if to a dog, "No, let her serve me coffee." He spoke to Corey but stared at me.
His turn to gloat. It got me more than it should have. But just as when I'd rattled him, it meant nothing.
Then I realized what I recognized in him. Or rather whom.
"Blaze," I said, "I think - "
Corey leaped to her feet. "Why don't I make the coffee? I haven't used your French press in a while, but I remember how. Mom, you sit down."
Her glance pleaded with me. I didn't know why this man was so important to her. I thought I'd brought up my daughter to recognize an asshole, leather chaps or not. "No, Corey. I'll make it. But we could have a little talk with your boyfriend about elementary feminism."
Blaze gazed at me, nostrils flaring. "I am not her boyfriend."
I set cups in front of them and paused. "So what are you?"
"Her master."
"Um," said Corey, "actually we're not done negotiating." Her fingers went to the velvet collar. I saw the clasp was actually quite flimsy.
My stomach roiled. I sat down. Corey, seeing her chance, leapt up deftly to measure coffee. "Blaze and I have a D and S relationship," she said in her perfume-sales tone, or almost; her voice shook. "He's dominant. I'm submissive. But I haven't agreed to wear his collar yet." He stirred in his chair. "This is for while we negotiate."
I looked back and forth between them, at Corey's begging glance toward Blaze, Blaze's just-under-boiling heat. "A dominant-submissive relationship," I said. "You're negotiating to be his slave."
"Sorry if it bothers you, Mom." She couldn't help smirking. I tried to keep panic at bay. I could kill this man if he threatened her, but I couldn't prevent her from throwing herself away.
I looked down, at mottled galaxies in the ancient linoleum. What was really going on here? Corey checked the kettle, set it back.
I thought I understood.
"It's your father," I said, almost in a whisper, rage twisting my throat. Corey's thin shoulders went taut. She turned, her face a warning. "What are you talking about, Mom?"
"To get out from under Dad, you found someone else to push you around." Her eyes burned wide, face stricken. "There are other ways you can win your freedom. You don't have to go from one autocrat to another." I looked at Blaze. He seemed perfectly despicable, squat in his leathers. "At least your father has some substance. Blaze here is so full of fear, he role-plays instead of living."
Blaze rose swiftly, with self-consciously theatrical grace, as if he needed a cape to flick back from his shoulders. It took an effort of will on my part not to fall to a defensive crouch.
"Corey, out. We're leaving." He strode to the door, clattered down the steps and was gone.
I looked at my daughter, and she looked at me, lost, like a trapped animal. "Well?"
"You don't get it. I didn't think you would."
"It has nothing to do with your father? With always giving in to him, trying to please him?"
She bit a lip dry under its lipstick. "That's not what I mean."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't do it to lose responsibility. I do it to take responsibility." She looked at me straight, though she panted slightly as if in pain. I realized she was telling me something important. Then she glanced at the door. "I'd better go."
"He'll be back."
"You don't know him."
I let myself smirk and pointed to the table; his keychain lay in the center of the cloth. It was heavy, a small black quirt attached.
"Oh God." She scrabbled for it, but I grabbed first. "No, Mom, you've got to let me take it." With soft fingers she tried to pry it from my hand. "Please, Mom."
"Let me go, Corey," I snapped. "Either he's got the balls to come back, or you're better off without him." She backed away, sat down at the table with a look of desolation that wrung my heart. Her eyes stared as if sightless. For safety's sake, I went to a flour jar at the back of the counter, fished out my .38 police revolver. I folded it in the dishtowel so Corey wouldn't see, set it aside. Then I poured the well-boiled water over the lifeless grounds.
"Corey," I said, facing away from her, leaning on my arms as if nauseated, feeling old, feeling my breasts like useless weights. "Why are you doing this, darling?"
She was silent. We were coming back to old ground. She'd always been a daddy's girl, running after David's ever-retreating form, siding with him at every opportunity, punishing me with pretty disdain. Our secret had been that it was a game. When the trouble was real, she came to me, and I hope I hadn't failed her. I don't think she doubted my love. But I'd been fighting my own battles, against David's accusations that I was too strong, too domineering, that I castrated him with my willpower. I hadn't always had the strength to comfort her as I'd wanted. And I hadn't always had the strength to protect her against him.
"You wouldn't understand, Mom."
I turned to her. My lovely girl. I remembered her chestnut hair. Her beauty still shone from the artificial package. "Try me."
"Well, first of all, I do it because it turns me on. I get off on it. Does that gross you out?"
"No. But what exactly do you get off on?"
She rolled her eyes. She thought she would shock me. I waited. "Oh, SM things."
"Such as?"
"Such as being tied naked to a rack in front of a crowd of people. Such as having clamps tightened on my nipples until I scream. Such as being whipped until I come, in front of everybody, against my will. Okay?"
The images washed over me; my gut contracted, and my groin. I felt a flicker of embarrassment. My welling rage swamped it.
"God damn your father."
"What?"
"God damn your father and his spankings. The last time, when you were about six, your little bottom was covered with bruises. Do you remember? I told him if he ever so much as touched you again, I'd take you away and he'd never see either of us again."
"I remember that." Her eyes were swimming. I set down her coffee in a thick china cup, but she didn't see. "He was so scared. He kept telling me he was sorry." Her cheeks had gone pale, but for high spots of rose, as if she had fever. "For some reason, I was mostly mad at you, for scaring him. As if you'd made it all happen."
I nodded slowly, though what she said gave me pain. But she was trying to speak the truth. "I don't think he wanted to hurt you, or I wouldn't have stayed. He just... I don't know, darling." I looked at her, lost myself.
"Corey!" Blaze was at the door, a shadow against the glass. His silhouette seemed to throb with rage, edge wavering like a fire's.
She stood, and spoke gently, without fear. "Sorry, Blaze, I needed to talk to Mom for a while." She turned to me and held out her hand. I gave her the keys. She stepped forward, pushed open the door. "You take these and go on."
His fists clenched at his sides. "Corey," his voice tight, "you know what this means. This is your last chance. If you don't come now, you will never see me again. Never. You will not be welcome at my home. I will not put up with this."
I stepped from behind the table. "You chickenshit little liar. If you had any heart, or half a brain, you'd come in and talk like a human being, not run off and play dungeons and dragons. Don't you have the sense to care for this woman?"
He stared at me past her, breathing raggedly.
"You stupid cow," he said. "Do you think it matters what a white, middle-class suburban housewife from Kirkland thinks? Dabble in photography and think you're slumming in your trailer. You've never had the guts to break free of anything in your life. In your repressed, frustrated, frigid little mind, you do not begin to understand what is at stake. I suggest you go back to gardening."
I took a deep breath. "Blaze, I was hanging out with leather dykes and breathing tear gas before you were born. And I've sold my photographs for better money than you make. It's you who don't know what's going on. Is your last name Wilkowski?"
He stared. "No."
"Anyone named Wilkowski in your family?"
"No."
"That's just as well."
"What is it, Mom?" asked Corey.
I turned to brush her off, but when I saw her face, I couldn't. I have never lied to her. But I hadn't meant to blunder like this. "He was a man I had an affair with before you were born. Blaze here reminds me of him."
"An affair? While you were married to Dad?"
I looked at her. Her doe-brown eyes since infancy have read as older than her age. "Yes. When I was married to your father. It ended eight or nine months before you were born."
She looked at me. "Are you saying - ?"
I nodded. "It's possible. I've never been sure."
She began to shake her head slowly. "Omigod," she said. "Omigod. This is just too weird." She sat down heavily, stared between her torn-stockinged legs at the universe of strangeness compressed into my linoleum.
"Come in, Blaze," I said. "Break your rigid rules. Live a little. Have some coffee." I expected him to flip about, leave, taking his shallow arrogance with him.
He gave me a long look, unyielding as granite. Then, slowly, he pushed open the creaking door.
I hadn't expected it. He rose in my estimation. And I felt less leverage, because I understood him less. He sat, and I poured him coffee.
He sipped it, black. Corey sat with her knees delicate as a deer's pressed together, a tear trembling on her mascaraed lashes.
"I didn't mean to tell you that," I said to her. "But you asked. I try to deserve your trust."
"It's funny," she said throatily. "I was coming out to talk about Dad." She looked at Blaze, who stared out the window at my flowering cherry. "Blaze and I have actually been breaking up for a while, even though I... don't really want to. But I fit the role in some ways, not in others." Her gaze tugged at him. "I don't blame you, like I've said a million times, for wanting to be rid of me."
His fist clenched on the quirt. "If I wanted, Corey, I could drop you in a heartbeat. I could drop you like this if I wanted." He hurled the keys on the floor. "If." He glared at her. "But I don't want. You just don't give me any choice." He breathed out hard, almost a snort. Stupid little piss-ant, I thought. But my heart went out to him.
Corey looked like she was suffocating. She spoke to me now, as if from under water: "One of the things being in a D and S relationship makes me realize, Mom, is I don't want to hang out with Dad for a while. I've got a lot of anger. And I hadn't even thought of the spanking until you mentioned it."
I shrugged, turning one palm up. I felt uncomfortable myself. I wished I had some clue what was right here. I wanted to flinch away, but I wanted more for this to happen the way that would heal her.
I stood, poured myself more coffee.
"The other thing," said Corey, "is that I've started realizing..." She looked away.
Maybe Blaze hasn't been so bad for her, I thought, watching him watch her. It's costing him to be here, which is not a bad sign. She isn't afraid of his anger, which is a good sign.
"Mom, I've been realizing more about me and you."
My attention snapped back to her, facing me now with determination, her voice a little girl's. "I see how..." She couldn't finish. I hung now, at the edge of an unknown drop. She shook her head and faced me again. "I guess I realize how much I look up to you. It's like I always hide it, even from myself." Her face wrinkled up. She sat still a moment, then pitched toward me, threw her arms around me. I held her while she cried. For a long time, the tears would not stop, neither hers nor mine.
After a while we disentangled ourselves. I realized Blaze was standing looking out the window. But he hadn't left. Somehow I read pain in the heavy curve of his back.
"Oh, Blaze," I said, I don't know why. He turned and stared at me, like I was crazy. I held open my arms to him, half as a joke. He came toward us slowly, and I saw I was wrong, he was not as afraid as I'd thought.
I was suddenly embarrassed. His arms were strong, his smell oddly familiar, and I confess I thought of Vilk. But I held him tight, feeling my heart, his heart. Corey's I couldn't feel, only that her slender arms were cold.
He disengaged himself. Corey stumbled outward as if drunk, one arm still around me. Her face yearned toward his; I gently let her go. She rubbed her palms together. "I'd better get going," he said, and I read in his face yearning and ambivalence.
"Blaze," she said.
They stood there, not knowing how to end it, the moment or the relationship.
"Let him go," I said, reaching. They both looked at me, irritated. "Then let her come back."
Blaze glowered. But "Your mom's right," he said, sending an ironic smile my direction. "I'm not certain we're finished."
Corey shrugged. "I don't think I'd ever be finished with you, unless you made me."
They exchanged a look. So young. Then he kissed her, roughly, bending her backward, and stalked out. She looked after him with an infatuation that reached deep into my past and pulled thread after thread.
She collected herself. "Can I stay over?" I nodded. "Though you don't have much room."
"It's a king-size mattress."
"I'd like to be with you for a while."
I smiled. "Work in the yard, like we did when you were little?"
She gazed at me, remembering. "Yeah."
She spent most of the summer with me, hardly going in to Capitol Hill at all. We descended together into a state of primitive immediacy, letting go plans and expectations, spending most of our time outside. There was almost no friction between us.
She dyed her hair its natural color and flirted with a local boy, good-looking, country-smart. But it was never serious.
By August, she was becoming restless. She'd seen Blaze a couple of times. Toward the middle of September, she moved back in with him. Over the winter she came to me rarely, when she came showed off proudly her red weals.
Then one March afternoon, all tears like a spring shower, she told me he was moving to Germany.
If anything she was more garish than last year: hair four colors, roots dark, further out platinum, over that one section candy-apple-red, another apple green. Stockings striped, tall platform shoes. Her cheek pierced, her tongue; through her spandex you could see the barbells in her nipples.
"Before he leaves," she said, "I want to introduce Blaze to Daddy."
I cleared last year's leaves from the fence around my tulips. Already thistles poked through the mulch. "Do you think that's wise?"
She twisted a little on her high shoes. "I'm thinking of going to Germany."
I must have gone white. "Don't worry, Mom. I won't go till fall, if I go. I need time to think about it. And Blaze hasn't agreed." She swallowed. "Daddy really wants me to go to law school. I swear he picked it because he knew I wasn't interested anymore."
"Honey, that's not fair." I pushed at the clogging wet brown leaf-dung, untangling it from the wire. "He just wants you to do something with your life."
"He never came to see the photographs I had up at the café." Our eyes met. "My art's too weird for him. He wants me to do something safe and clean, something from my head. He wants to show me off as his successful daughter." She squatted suddenly, with long purple fingernails pulled up a dandelion shoot. "He told me he'd like us to have brunch on Easter."
I sat back on my heels. "Does he mean me too?" This was a new thing.
"Oh, yeah." Flicker of dark-brown eyes. "He wants to show off Dionne. He said to bring whoever you're seeing." David knew I wasn't seeing anyone. Though in the fall, when I'd bought that truckload of earth, the bronzed truck-driver - I could still feel the wet dirt under my back. A slow wet burn moved up my body. I shook off the memory.
"Did he extend the same invitation to you?"
Her thickly lipsticked mouth pursed. Then she grinned. "No. But I think it's time for a surprise."
It was touch and go till the last minute, whether Corey could get Blaze to the brunch table. But Sunday morning, early, dew winking in pink-tinged light, we collected on the gravel edge of the road before the trailer: myself in earth-colored velvet, Corey in a dress spangled with flowers, scooped neck showing a new tattoo. I'd expected Blaze in his leathers, but he wore a morning coat.
So we could all fit, I'd borrowed my neighbor's car, a long black Lincoln. Blaze insisted on driving. The valet took it from us at the new restaurant on the water. From the foyer, I saw walls the color of sunrise, big multicolored ceramic urns, Italian ware. The Italians aren't much on breakfast, I thought. The hostess nodded, smiled, led us to the table.
David and Dionne had beaten us there. He rose from the white linened table all beneficence. He had more of a paunch, I noticed. Dionne looked just as I'd expected, frosted blonde, pink glacé lipstick. Her ice-on-the-orange-trees gaze lingered on Corey's tattoo and studded collar. David's gaze came to Blaze, and fixed.
I moved to follow his eyes. Blaze, though a little heavy, was anachronistically stylish, red carnation in his buttonhole, black hair slicked. But his face was adamantine, lips in the barest hint of sneer. I had thought that his leathers were what telegraphed his bull stance, but in formal wear he seemed more menacing, energy focused by the contrast with his clothes. And he wore his leather gloves. Corey introduced, trying not to smirk.
"Let's sit down, shall we?" David said.
A waiter glided up, a thin flat-topped blond boy in formal waiter-wear. He fawned on David, who expanded. Blaze he glanced at and glanced away. Double latté for David, decaf americano for Dionne, cappucino for Corey, French press for me. "And for you, sir?"
Blaze's look was perfectly flat. "Triple espresso."
We got our coffee. David leaned and sipped, rose with a foam mustache. Dionne, simpering, wiped him. He leaned back, paunch pressing the table, and smiled. "It's so good to see you all here. I'm glad you're doing well, Moira."
He wouldn't have been so generous if I'd come with someone. I smiled shortly. "And you, Blaze. What do you do for a living?"
Blaze stared at his leather-gloved hand on the linen. "I make software." He looked up. "And whips."
David chose to misunderstand. "Riding crops, for the horse market? Corey rode when she was a little girl. Well - " he blessed her with a fatherly smile - "not so little. She did dressage in high school."
"I didn't know that," Blaze said levelly, looking at my daughter. She blushed pink as rosé. "I'd like to see you with a horse."
She gave him a half-amazed smile. Her teeth gleamed. I thought Dionne's face was going to crack. Luckily the waiter returned to take our orders. Dionne asked for fruit salad, Corey corned beef hash, myself a frittata. David and Blaze ordered the same thing: salmon Eggs Benedict. The most fatty, expensive thing on the menu.
As the waiter was turning to leave, Corey laid her hand on his arm caressingly. "Just a moment. I'd like a Bloody Mary, with Absolut vodka." She beamed at her father. He hated for her to drink.
Dionne looked from one to the other, then at the waiter. "Yes. I need - I'd like a mimosa."
Blaze and I looked at each other. I seconded my daughter's Bloody Mary. Not to be outdone, Blaze ordered a double shot of Absolut. Only David, thunderous at the head of the table, abstained.
The waiter exited. Blaze leaned back in his creaking chair, I think in unconscious imitation of David. "No, David, since you ask, my whips are for beating women."
They stared at each other. David, I could tell, was working up a full thunderhead. I could have undercut him with a few choice words, but it wasn't my scene. Presently, if I knew him, he'd order Blaze out of the room. Then we'd see lightning, or brimstone, or both.
Suddenly Corey gave a chiming laugh. "You men! You're so silly." This drew her glares from both. From between heavy melon-velvet drapes sun poured on her, burnishing the platinum in her hair. "Daddy, I brought my portfolio for you to look at. You didn't get a chance to see the show." Nimbly she set aside water glasses, silverware, coffee, smoothed the linen with her fingertips. Then from under the table she lugged a black leather book.
I had seen the photographs before, but still I had to rise to look over David's shoulder. But for a few nature shots, they were mostly SM scenes, somewhat derivative but with a good sense of framing. And brilliant colors. Acid greens, fire-engine reds. She was learning to print color herself.
She had some photos I hadn't seen at the show. She beamed at me as David turned to them. "My bleeding nudes."
Just then the food came.
Dionne ordered a second mimosa. David seemed happy to set aside the book and focus on food. In fact, all he seemed to be able to look at was his plate. His red face hung inches above yolk and Hollandaise. Blaze, eating the same thing, cut his food efficiently into triangular pieces. He glanced at David periodically and smirked. Tossing back the end of his vodka, he caught my eye.
"You know, I think your daughter's a switch. Not usually my style. But for her I make an exception."
I smiled at him.
Corey could hardly touch her food. She would take a bite or sip, then look at David, who was fixed on his plate; she'd fidget, try to eat again. Finally she could stand it no longer. "Daddy, you haven't finished looking at my pictures."
He pushed back his plate. Slowly, with deliberation: "Darling, you know I hate that kind of thing. Why must you posture so?" He looked at me with a meaning glance: It's all your fault, Moira.
I looked away. I wasn't going to start. Outside clouds occluded the sun. A breathless patter of rain had begun.
"They're just trash, and you know it. Like this get-up of yours. You know those tattoos will be with you the rest of your life? You're a beautiful, intelligent young lady. You're so much better than this, darling."
She stared at him, her eyes huge. What had she expected? She had surprised him, as she'd wished. I saw she hadn't looked further than that. She hadn't expected him to hurt her. "This is all fake. Derivative. Borrowed. You know it. Just like your trashy relationship with this - man. This whip-maker." He wiped his lips deliberately with the linen napkin, set it on the table. "I want you to drop this, darling. I want my baby back. My little Corey."
Her face had drained of all color. It was as if he'd ripped an organ out of her: massive internal bleeding.
How can he do this? How can he hurt her so? He claims to love her. But all he loves is the pastel version.
If I could let my baby go, who was he to be so selfish?
I stood. I wanted to back-hand him. But Blaze, faster than I, leaped up, his chair crashing backward onto the parquet floor. He whipped down two hundred-dollar bills, the metallic strip glistening in an odd, thunderstormy flash of sunlight.
He threw a look at David. "Keep the change." Then he offered myself and Corey each an elbow. "Ladies?" Corey scrambled up, grabbing her leather book.
I beamed at Blaze. "I'm honored." I took his arm.
As we swept out, I heard a tinkle behind us and glanced back. Dionne had clutched her mimosa glass so hard it broke in her hand. She stared at her bleeding fingers, then burst into tears.
David sat staring forward, his face gray. I hoped he knew enough to count all he had lost.
She'll forgive him, though. She's generous.
She's her mother's daughter.
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