#243 Seascape

by Kirk Nesset

A man paints seascapes. Not waves beating pilings or piers, but waves trailing waves, patterns of furrowing water. The paintings surge on his walls, like breathing gray and blue windows. They tilt against cabinets, occupy halls and garage.

Visitors appear, saying, Why don’t you show these? Or: I love this. How much?

And the man, touched, shakes his head, knowing how faulty each canvas is, how incomplete, flawed.

Then he meets a young woman. He does all he can not to fall in. She invites him to dinner. They eat crab cakes, raw oysters. She’s a rover, a sea dog, she tells him. Her rudderless mother was guided by stars. He smiles. They smile together. She’s dressed in pale yellow. Her damp hair is dark red.

After ice cream and a movie they go to his house. She’s entranced by the paintings. They pause in the bedroom by windows of water, wave after turbulent wave; she turns to kiss him, and sighing, tips toward a painting—and slips in. Into the sea he has painted.

Come swim! she exclaims.

And the pictures, each and all, on the walls, start to swell. They shudder, they murmur and throb. The girl floats along, singing. She beckons. Over the clamor the man tries to answer, call to her, love her, but can’t, or does not, his heart stuck, afraid, or unready: a heart sutured shut before it can shatter, a wet fist, or drowned yellow flower, surging with living by not giving in.

The stories in Kirk Nesset's Paradise Road vividly examine the various pitfalls, both physical and emotional, we encounter and suffer trying to find lasting meaning in love. Stark and unsentimental, they feature the chiaroscuro of particular worlds and particular lives, infused with the yearning and muted desperation that comes after passion has bent us, burned us, and cast us aside. “Nothing comes and goes without a trace,” muses the narrator of “The Prince of Perch Fishing,” the collection's opening tale. “In this world there are consequences for everything.” Such stories speak to the fleeting yet monumental moments of our lives, which catch us off guard, unveiling and unsettling us, each leaving its indelible mark. The stories also offer paths, paved or unpaved, leading out of the ashes, out of the wilds of upheaval and betrayal and pain. Story by story, Paradise Road guides us deeply into ourselves—into new kinds of awareness, if not transformation.

Click on the cover to visit the book's Amazon page.

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