Persephone

A short story inspired by the classic Greek myth of the abduction of Persephone.

“How did she get so lost?” Danielle hears her voice break and surprises herself. It’s not the fact that she’s emotional that surprises her. It’s that if she’s starting to cry it means this is real, and her body is admitting it before her mind is. She reaches out to clasp her husband’s hand, the one that’s lying limp on the kitchen table between them. He squeezes back.

“She’s smart. She’s going to figure it out,” he says weakly.

“At some point I think we have to stop believing that.”

Zach takes a shaky breath and exhales, still staring down at the table. “I know.”

“She used to pity them, Zach. She used to see, plain as day, how completely nonsensical and corrupt that religion is. She went into this with an arsenal of knowledge, with all the critical thinking skills you can teach a kid. Now she’s marrying one of them, and… And I don’t understand how this is possible.”

She glances at the white envelope on the counter and her stomach twists. An announcement. Not even an invitation.

“We did everything right, Dani.”

“Then why is she buying into this absolute mind-suck, Zach? Why does she all of a sudden believe in a God who lives on planet f*****g Kolob? How could she possibly get to a point where that makes any sense?”

Zach sighs again. “I’m going to make tea.”

***

If Penny hadn't been singing to herself, he would have walked right past her. Never would have stopped and looked through the trees into the clearing. Never would have seen her, tumbling hair, picking flowers like it was a hundred years ago.

He watched her until her eyes passed over his location and he was suddenly ashamed. He froze, hoping fiercely that the foliage between them had kept his presence a secret. Her gaze kept moving, though, and he breathed again. He should talk to her. Either that or keep moving, don't just stand here like a stalker. But what to say?

She stood, holding a heavy black camera to her eye and twisting to adjust the lens, thankfully turned away from him. There was a mud stain on the butt of her jeans. Wild grass in her hair.

He loved her already.

***

“She's barely eighteen, Zach. Didn't we raise her to dream big, set goals and attain them, figure out who she is and what she wants to be before she locks it down? Didn't she say last year she wanted to go Tokyo alone and learn the language by immersion? She was going to be a journalist and get to travel all over the world and see everything.” Danielle is tapping four fingers against her cup of tea, agitated. Her face is begging him to fix this.

“She could still make those dreams happen, Dani,”

“Not if she gets knocked up right away! You know that's how it goes, Zach. They're supposed to make babies. They're supposed to be perfect, submissive wives who pop out lots of babies for their future-God husbands and raise them all to be perfect little Mormons who don't question what they're taught and vote Republican and wear holy f*****g underwear,” she's standing now, face flushed, gesturing firmly. “-and don't invite their own parents to their wedding because their sacred f*****g temple is only for the brainwashed members of their fucked up sci-fi cult! And wait-” She chokes on a sob, then leans on the table and composes herself. “And wait, and hope that their husbands loved them enough to call them into heaven, because that's how messed up it is, Zach. Women don't even go to heaven on their own merit. Their husbands get to decide to call them. How did we raise a daughter who wants that?”

Zach clears his throat. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes!”

He goes to the liquor cabinet and pours two glasses of bourbon, puts one in her hands and kisses her head. She downs two fingers, slams the glass on the table and looks him in the eyes. He sips, sets his bourbon down and wraps her in his arms.

“You have to talk to her,” she whispers, head on his chest. “You have to remind her why none of this makes sense. It doesn't make sense, Zach. She doesn't believe it, she can't possibly believe it.”

“Maybe she doesn't.”

“Then she's ruining her life and throwing everything she believes out the window for some guy! How is that better?”

He doesn't answer.

***

“Hello there,” he called from the edge of the clearing.

Penny whipped around to see who had spoken.

“I'm Hunter,” he said, smiling. He held a hand up in greeting.

“Penny,” she replied, and smiled back. Sunlight and birds.

“I - Sorry to interrupt you, I just -” he searched for something to say, a reason to keep talking to her. Why had he not thought this through?

She raised her eyebrows.

“I thought I heard someone singing. Summertime? Was that you?” he managed.

She laughed, and his heart raced ahead in time while his brain tried to listen to what she was saying next because she had started talking.

“I just saw Porgy and Bess! It was brilliant but now all the songs are stuck in my head. God, did you really hear me? How close is that trail? How embarrassing.”

They had somehow moved closer together. His hair is the color of drift wood, she thought. And his eyes are salt water sky. She still held the camera in front of her chest.

“Are you taking pictures?” Stupid question.

“Yeah, wanna see?”

“Sure.” They closed the gap and huddled around the camera's display, her hand shading the screen.

Her scent is dizzying.

His freckles are like sand.

***

“You know Penny wishes you could be at her wedding, don't you, Dani?”

They are sitting in the living room on the couch that faces the window to the street. Danielle swirls bourbon around in her glass and watches a woman stop to smell the honeysuckle growing on their fence. The world looks like a post card through this window, it always does.

“I feel like I lost her, Zach.”

“You haven't. You won't. Even if they convince her the earth is some odd thousand years old, and sex is only for procreation, and hell exists, and you and I are bound for it, you will still be her mother. They can't change that.”

“But she's so young. She's just barely gotten a taste of real life and now she's skipping right to sharing it with someone else and giving it up completely when she has kids. Why do they have to get married so young? No. I know why. You know why? Sex. It's sex. They convince them they're dirty and sinful for being sexual unless they're married. I mean, who wouldn't want to find a partner? So rather than explore and learn and figure out what they like and who they are, they blindly agree to only be sexual for the rest of their lives with one person whom they have ideally never even seen naked. How is that supposed to work?”

“Danielle,” Zach croons.

She puts her head in her free hand and sighs. “I'm sorry.”

Zach sips his bourbon and looks out the window. There's a robin in Danielle's garden with a worm in its beak. Zach watches the worm stretch impossibly thin and then snap in half coming up from the soil.

“He loves her,” he says.

“I know,” she says.

“She's happy."

“For now.”

***

They sat together on her little blue blanket in the clearing until the mosquitoes bit. They went through all her photos and took turns taking more. She taught him how to weave chains of tiny daisies, and he taught her to whistle with a blade of grass. They laughed so much their faces ached. When their hands touched the first time, a charge ran up their arms and sank into their stomachs like Fireball Whiskey. She is going to be a journalist. He is going to be a doctor.

“What are you reading?” she asked. His bag was splayed open in the grass, a book peeking out.

“The Book of Mormon,” he said. He freed the book to show her and a pomegranate rolled out after it onto the ground. He picked it up as well.

“You don't have a knife, do you? I forgot to bring one.”

Penny smiled as she pulled a pocket knife from her jeans and held out her empty hand. Hunter gave her the pomegranate. She cut a line around the fruit and broke it in half with her fingers, careful not to damage any of the ruby jewels inside. Hunter took the half she offered him and Penny licked a trail of blood red juice from her wrist.

“Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

“I believe in God,” he said.

Penny poured a handful of crimson arils into her mouth and chewed. “Oh.”