No River Wide

Southern Review, The, Spring, 2007 by Robert Boswell

" I only read an article about that singer " Ellen confesses. It ' s finally dark, but a weightless sort of dark, as if they ' re walking in the shadow of a transparency.

Their destination is a house with a huge picture window. The room is brightly lit, and people skulk about in the light, drinking and displaying their clothes. A flagstone path warms Greta ' s feet even though the sun has set and it ' s supposed to be winter. Her feet like Florida. The remainder of her has qualms. Nothing about the landscape seems consequential: anorectic palm trees, golf carts driven on city streets, grown men in shorts and Pooh shirts. It ' s hard for her to imagine anyone taking the place seriously. When Ellen met her at the airport, she whisked her off to a squat pink building where they rode stationary bikes and performed aerobics before an unrelenting wall of mirrors. The trip to the gym irked Greta and left her with sore legs. She sips the last of her scotch considering this window of well-dressed strangers. She says, " You know all these people? "

" Put your shoes on, " Ellen replies. " I have lip liner. " She pats her purse. " Your mouth could use some definition. "

" It ' s that big hole in the middle of my face, " Greta says. " What more definition could it need? " She sets the mules on the walk and steps into them. A couple of houses away, a sexy kind of fog--pleasant and billowy like a giant ' s gentle exhale-makes moving shapes on the lawn.

" There ' s the hostess. " Ellen points. " She ' s the consummate bitch

. " A woman in a black dress spins away from a dark little man, a velvet V cutting her backside. She crosses the room with careful strides, as if she ' s stepping on bodies. " I used to love drive-in movies, " Ellen goes on, indicating the window with her chin. " Hard to believe they ' re gone. Half the women I know lost their virginity at the drive-in. "

" The kids still seem to manage, " Greta says. Unlike everything else she has seen in Florida, this show on its glass screen seems to have substance: adults dressed to the nines and drinking liquor from crystal tumblers, smoke churning from their mouths like the exhaust of internal combustion.

" People here call me ' Elle, ' " Ellen says. " You don ' t have to. "

" You changed your name? "

Ellen snatches the plastic cup from Greta ' s hand. " New last name, new first name. " She tosses the cups in the shrubs. " She ' s got a gardener. We ' re not littering. "

She doesn ' t knock on the door but throws it open.

The crane extends its black frame far above the great oak. Greta will not openly question Ellen ' s character, but secretly she wonders whether this had to happen. The destruction of the tree has about it the feeling of expedience. Ellen is practical, and old trees have root systems that burrow into sewer lines and rupture foundations. A tree specialist found a crack in the vast trunk, and the buyer withdrew his offer. The connection to the sale of the house troubles Greta. One crack hardly seems reason enough to fell this tree. The crane takes up most of the street and a good portion of the sky.