THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SUNSET
by Enriqueta Carrington
And they lived happily ever after. They rode off into the sunset on their thoroughbred Arabian steeds, his a night-black stallion, wild and fierce and hard mouthed; hers a moon-white mare, graceful and slender and flowing maned. Inside the sunset all was poppy red.
On the other side of the sunset there were rows and rows of split-level houses with neat poisoned lawns and crew-cut hedges in strict military formation. They drove their Dodge Caravan up to one of these houses, undistinguishable from all the rest but for the color of its paint and the number on its door. There they settled down to do their living happily ever after, our hero John of the aristocratic nose and the clear-cut chin, our heroine Betty of the starry eyes.
Cherubic daughter followed cherubic son, one and two, and then there were three. All of them curly haired, all of them rosy cheeked, as dream children should be. What else is missing to make the picture perfect? A dog enters the scene in between cherubs one and two. He is friendly, grinning, slobbering and loud. Things are not yet perfect, now what? They got a persian cat, beautiful and dignified. Yet not quite right, now what? A new Lincoln Navigator, that's what.
Somehow things still seemed rather dull, because plump in the middle of the sunset something had fallen out of Betty's saddle bag: a tight-wrapped little package containing her soul. And things do seem rather flat, after all, when once you have dropped your soul.
She dreamed of going back to search for it. Inside the sunset all was rose-madder red. The steeds were there; she never knew when they left them behind. She chased and caught one, this time the black one, that savage unbroken devil which had never been hers, which she had never been allowed to mount. Up onto his bare back she leapt, wrapping herself in her new-found soul; the horse unfolded powerful great wings, and they threw themselves together through red-black storm cloud and wind.
Then the baby cried and Betty found herself back in the house on the poisoned lawn. Actually she never made it back to search for that lost soul. Wherever she might be, the sunset was always somewhere else, and the more she pursued it the more it moved away.
There were days when she thought she should try harder, but she kept putting it off from day to day, and there were always things to do, and things, things, things. She had to drive Johnnie to his special lessons, which were meant to overcome his learning disability. There was no denying it, the boy was slow. She had to drive Jennie to her ballet lessons, meant to cure her obesity. There was no denying it, the child was fat, and already miserable about it at the age of five. The world is so cruel to overweight women, as our dietingBetty knew only too well.
The children hated their special lessons, all lessons, preferring to stay home and disembowel frogs, dismember flies, try clever new tortures on that over-proud cat. At least little Jason was still baby-chubby and baby-sweet; he wasn't walking yet, although he was almost three. But he would learn, eventually, no matter what they said. And he would start talking soon, and then they would all see.
John Senior was not much help with the house, with the kids, with the getting from day to day. When would she ever find time to walk back into the sunset, then? John preferred to spend more and more time at his stock-broker job, and, as Betty was coming to suspect, more and more time with his secretary, that flakey floozy, that flibbertigibbet, that you-know-what (a respectable woman does not say what).
Anyway, what with his coarsening beer-drinker's features, and his resounding, unremitting salvos of farts, his constant belittlement of everything she said, did, was, the brokering was welcome to him, and so was the you-know-what.
One day as she was driving back to the house of the crew-cut hedges after taking Johnnie to his special lessons, then over the river to take Jennie to her ballet, then back over the river to take Jason to his physical therapy, then picking up Johnnie, then picking up Jason, then over the river to pick up Jennie, and over the river again, Betty found herself driving straight at the sunset and she just kept on going. She saw the sunset was in the waters and she kept on going. Splash, kersplash, right in and she kept on going. Our heroine Betty Jones and her Lincoln Navigator, her quarreling children and her slobbering dog all into the sunset, and inside the sunset all was blood red.
The cat, however, was home, and she was saved. John Senior at least had that. Our hero and his floozy then proceeded to live happily ever after.
– THE END –
I am a Mexican-English writer-mathematician, transplanted by fate or happenstance to the U.S. I got my B.Sc. and M.A. degrees from the National University of Mexico and my Ph.D. from Rutgers University, where I'm now an associate professor Some of my stories are scheduled to appear in SHOTS, the Magazine of Crime and Mystery, and in All Hallows, and some of my poetry in Carnelian and in WAH3. My prose poem “To Those Who Have Disappeared” appeared this year in Pedestal Magazine. My poetry translations are about to appear in Rattapallax 13. I am the editor and translator of the bilingual book Treasury of Mexican Love Poems, Quotations & Proverbs (Hippocrene Books, 2003). Contct Enriqueta.
