for all the white

For All The White by Sherry Cassells

An aptronym is when a place names itself, say Catastrophe Lake for a place of chaos, Round Lake when it’s like a clock, Trout Lake full of silver rainbows, my brother Spare.

 My mother didn’t even know there was another baby, Spare was delivered into the toilet four days after I was born, maybe they should have called him Catastrophe but that’s where we lived, Catastrophe Lake.

 I googled what’s the difference between hopeful and wishful this morning so I would know how to say this, it said wish is the passive form of hope, no action required – I wish Spare would come home. Then I googled if cockroaches fly, this place is a shithole, then I googled if shithole is one word, didn’t want a definition but there it was – startlingly perfect – an extremely dirty, unpleasant, objectionable place.

 Catastrophe Lake.

 I am waiting for Spare to come back. He said wait for me and I am. I do. We are not the identical kind of twins, I am smaller and more imaginative, he is sane and very handsome. It is hard to say who is the fastest at puzzles, the bigger eater, the better singer, we are tied on most things, I am by far the better brother, haha, that’s just in case he finds my journals.

 He said he’d be home soon, tomorrow the clocks go back and in the spare hour I decide to go hope over wish and do something rather than sit here in this definition of insanity.

 I think a slideshow of possibilities from booking a flight to hiring a P.I. but can afford neither, not in money but in stress, I avoid telephones and dislike electricity and most people, pretty much housebound here at the lake I am Boo Radley. Spare’s friend Nancy brings everything I need while he is in New York trying to sell my paintings, I leave one on the steps every Sunday for her, for Nancy. I choose the one from the week’s inventory and give it to her in exchange for goods, I make a list for the following week such as ceruleun blue x2, capers, any orange except burnt, anchovies (not paste), Death of a Salesman, black liquorice. She knows the rest, she brings butter and cheese and healthy groceries, a side of toiletries, canvases and an assortment of knives and brushes , last time there were cleaning supplies which I have lined up.

 The something I decide to do which is a derivative of hope is prepare for his arrival by cleaning.

 I don’t know what it’s about, you can’t google everything, but this morning I woke up covered in dead ladybugs, I vibrated to carefully dislodge them without flinging any, when I got back with the broom I saw my outline like a chalk pavement murder but in dead ladybugs, they polkadot the floor, polkadots with polkadots, but they are not dead, they start their motors and hover away, for the rest of the day I paint in polkadots, maybe for the rest of my life.

 There is a danger/concern because things really get in my head, they become lodged, the duration is the you-never-know kind but the obsession is thorough, I know in my polkadot insides that I am polkadot obsessed with a side of ladybugs, wishing for the burnt orange after all but pretty soon I switch to hoping, which requires action, I add a few squirms of black to regular orange.

 I sleep with loops of sticky-side-out packing tape arranged in you-guessed-it over my sleeping bag, I hope I can catch some, my obsessions run deeper when they replace worry, it’s not that I’ve forgotten Spare, but he’s, well, he’s my spare concern at this point.

In the morning there is a single dead nuclei on each cellophane cell, the canaries in the coal mine I suppose, the rest are hiding and for the first time I combine obsessions, I look for ladybugs while cleaning, I like to take things too far, I add to my shopping list carefully explaining that I want to paint the house, it takes three weeks and some profanity before Nancy finally catches on to which kind of paint the house I mean and brings cans of latex with rollers and trays instead of more stupid little tubes, white as requested, I forget to look for the ladybugs that’s how obsessions switch over, when all the rooms are white it’s summer again and it takes until the clocks go back to get the outside white including the local rocks and trees as far as I can reach/see.

 When he finally comes home in the winter I am waiting at the front window, he is my number one obsession again, he sort of bursts out of the car in a panic, I burst out of the house in the same way but for me it’s more relief than panic, he said if it weren’t for my polkadot eyes he wouldn’t have seen me for all the white.