This Side of Paradise

Her mind refused to yield. It was there, somewhere, the Fitzgerald quote that would encapsulate her recent past. That year and a few months of sporadic, heady luminescence, followed by endless stretches of time, walking through glue, each question and hurt sticking fast, refusing to be shaken, reattaching itself with every sucking step.

‘You and I knew strange corners of life’. That was it. For a brief moment she contemplated the words issuing from his mouth, her boyfriend’s, that is, submitting to Scott. F. like a ventriloquist’s dummy. But, no. It would be her mouth, her perceptiveness, finally registering in that phrase the past tense and emptiness of their affair. Doubling over, she conceded her willingness to follow him into those tight, solitary angles and her tolerance of the ninety-degree shift. Backwards, forwards, it was always the same no matter the issue. Love, partnership, children, a holiday, even insignificant purchases. Yes, let’s do this, shift right; yes, but on my terms, shift right; I’ve changed my mind, shift right; maybe we can, and back they would go, hand in hand, to the beginning where hope leaked through the cracks. Not a square at all, but a hopeless merry-go-round of damaged dreams.

She knew she would be judged. The naysayers would purse their lips and nod sagely as if they would have discerned the truth long before. They had their heads screwed on, they’d say, and wouldn’t be hoodwinked by a player. Because, remembering the title of the novel now too, there had been a side like paradise, the ‘yes, let’s do this’ side, when she had basked in bliss before the shimmy and switch.

She thought of the geometry, clinging to rationality as her world fragmented, diagnosing the critical flaw. It was both simple and hard. Being flung to the edges, spinning wildly, had caused her to lose her centre, her core, the very essence of the person she once was. Somehow, she had to claw her way inwards and stand silent and still until the whirling stopped. Silent, still and alone. There was no room for anyone else at the very centre.

Her teeth clamped together, her jaw announcing resolve. No more the habit of trudging the lines and being cornered by their squared life, she thought, confounded by the speed at which the pattern, the shape, had set in. Equally astonishing was the neatness of the allegory which offered comfort in the solution, seeing her new path and knowing it was position perfect. Her world view would be unobstructed: blindsiding and entrapment replaced by clarity and calm.

She hoisted a rucksack over her shoulder. The middle of paradise looked unexpectedly inviting.

THE END

Copyright © Diane Clarke 2020