Ursula Pflug - Seeds and Other Stories

Jessica shut the book. She was apparently reading her own future.

It was a good future. She still lived in the apartment; she had nice new downstairs neighbours. She still had the couch. She still had Simeon. And later on, she found a nice guy, and got to keep Simeon too.

There was a tiny part of her, she realized, that had always doubted there would be a later on, for her. She felt reprieved by this story, by whoever had written it.

Jessica remembered her and Simeon’s Ouija board phase. Ouija boards were usually a girl thing, but Simeon was Simeon.

Will I find love?

O-H Y-E-S.

Who will it be?

M-O-R-G-A-N.

Jessica spent all of grade eight looking for Morgan but he never appeared.

This was like that, only much worse. Or better, depending on how you looked at it. Except that Jessica wasn’t thirteen anymore. She couldn’t get excited. It was just nuts. There had to be a rational explanation, and suddenly its obviousness dawned on her. She picked up the cordless and called Simeon. “I found your book,” she announced.

“That’s great,” he said. “I thought I’d have to get a new one! Bring it to class tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Jessica said. “It was right on the street outside my door. You must have dropped it last time. We drank two bottles of wine, remember?”

“I’m so relieved. They’re eighty dollars,” Simeon said, “and there aren’t any at the used bookstore.”

“What are you talking about?” Jessica asked.

“My biology textbook.”

“No, this is a yellow hard-cover journal with lined pages. You’re writing a short story in it. It’s about you and me, and that day last winter we brought home my couch, only you’ve changed our names to Renee and Neil.”

“Not so,” Simeon said.

“You’re lying to mess with my head,” Jessica said.

“That would be someone else,” Simeon said.

“But who? No one saw us that day. The description of the roof, the cannas, the fire escape. It’s all there, exactly as it happened.”

It was Simeon’s turn to say it. “You’re lying to mess with my head.”

“But I’m not. And it even describes our future.”

“Oh?” Simeon didn’t do too good a job of sounding credulous.

“We’re still best friends in a year, and even after I get married. See you tomorrow.”

Jessica hung up. She picked up the yellow book, opened it to the page ahead of the last entry. It was empty. Should she write something more? She leafed through the remaining pages one by one. Every single one was empty.

If she wrote something else about Renee and the yellow couch, would another entry appear, one page ahead?

Jessica knew how to find out, but she was too afraid to try. Instead, she slipped the yellow book into her canvas bag. She’d show it to Simeon. He’d admit it was his after all. That had to be it. The part about her writing the missing part of the story was just a coincidence. Pleased with her analysis, Jessica went to sleep.

The next day Jessica went to the café after class to meet Simeon. Her cheque from her little job at the library had finally cleared, and it was her turn to treat. She stood in line at the crowded counter while the manager stuffed two carrot muffins into a paper bag. Someone tapped her shoulder. She thought it was inadvertent; the café was so crowded. The tap came again. She turned around. A young man in a wool scarf and a duffle coat stood there holding out her journal, the black one she’d lost the day before. Everyone had those notebooks. Except that she’d taped a postcard of a Christiane Pflug painting to the cover, “Cottingham School with Yellow Flag.” What was it about yellow, anyhow?

She took it. “Thanks,” she said. She felt exposed, wondering if he’d read it. She wrote in journals to vent, not to be brilliant. She felt suddenly angry at all the imaginary people who’d found her many lost notebooks and snickered at her.

“Do I know you?” Jessica asked. “How did you know it was mine?”

Maybe he stared at her in some class. Maybe he’d surreptitiously stolen her book so he’d have an excuse to introduce himself.

He smiled. “I’m Morgan,” he said, and turned away before it even sank in.

“Wait!” she called when it did.

He was already at the door. He heard her, though. He turned around and said, “I don’t think you’ll lose your notebooks anymore, Renee.”

She pushed through the crowd to follow him. On St. Andrews she turned both ways. He was gone. She felt like someone was performing experiments on her. How would she react?

“Jessica!” someone said behind her, and she started, afraid to turn and look, see the young man again. Except whoever it was had called her Jessica, not Renee. And she knew Simeon’s voice, she always had. She was just so disoriented she’d momentarily forgotten. Just as she’d forgotten—or pretended to have forgotten—that the handwriting in the yellow book wasn’t like Simeon’s, not even remotely.

She reached into her bag to get out the yellow journal and show it to Simeon. But her bag felt, once again, alarmingly empty. Jessica felt as if she’d been captured, and taken on a long ride through inexplicable weirdness—unmoored in space and time, coerced to explore a maze of many new dimensions.

“Oh fuck,” she said, and laughed.

“Fuck what?” Simeon asked. “You haven’t lost your journal again; you haven’t had time to buy a new one since I saw you yesterday.” He noticed she was holding it then, the postcard of the Pflug painting still taped to its cover. “Oh,” he said. “You found it.”

“That’s right,” Jessica said, still laughing. “It’s Morgan’s notebook I’ve lost this time, I’ll bet you anything.”

For just a moment she thought she saw the yellow flag ripple in the breeze, and then it stopped. “My turn to buy,” she said, and they headed back into the Mermaid Café.

“I remember about Morgan,” Simeon said, as she’d hoped he would. “So you finally met him?”

“Yes, I did. He’s not what I thought, though.”

“Is he your true love?” Simeon asked.

“Possibly,” Jessica said. “All the same, can you help me throw the yellow couch off the roof this afternoon?”

“Whatever for?” Simeon asked.

“I want to watch it fall,” Jessica said.

I’D ALWAYS LIVED ALONE until you came, Alia. We hadn’t just been lovers, companions; you led me beyond time. With you I was able to watch its comings and goings from the tops of invisible ladders, of trees, its messengers little ghostly animals we’d given birth to while dreaming there, while making love. We spent three summer months together, in my white clapboard house facing the sea. Before you came it was just an empty ballroom where I danced with sea winds.

September came; you had to be home. You lived an eight-day walk above our seaside valley. You asked me to take you part way. On the fourth evening we camped by a rocky waterfall; in the morning our campsite was enveloped in a golden mist. You were gone, our fire dead. I was afraid I’d never see you again, for you’d disappeared into that yellow fog as though into a cloud that might carry you away, to rain you down in a place where you might find smarter lovers.

I left the fire pit and began to walk in the direction I believed your village lay. The flat land swelled into shallow wooded hills, reminiscent of a woman’s body, but it wasn’t yours. It was Sonia’s, but I didn’t know that then.

When I made camp that night I tried to climb the spirit ladder as you’d taught me, up to the starry place we’d gone together. At the top of that ladder it’s possible to see into the past and future, to retrieve from the sky what is necessary to the life of Earth dwellers—the trick is to keep your brains intact on your way back down—such as they are. I’d so willingly shucked the husk of self to fly—a husk that seemed, while visioning, irrelevant, but a necessary cloak, you reminded me, for navigating this world, its people. On the way down, my first time with you, I was still so borderless I could understand the speech of trees, the secrets of rivers. I consumed this wealth of new knowledge gluttonously, never thought how there’s no use in wisdom if it can’t be shared. I understood so many new languages but could no longer speak. Is that why you left me? You said you’d go, part way, but I’d always thought we’d say goodbye first. It was when we descended together I learned how much stronger you were than me, how much more treasure you could carry down the ladder and still remain intact. Did you vanish because I proved too weak to carry knowledge?