The Tale of Miles Davis and the Candy Cane Lighthouse...

A Short Story /

His name was Miles Davis because his mother loved jazz and because his father loved his mother. They lived happily on a tiny, colorful island with a candy cane lighthouse and a bay so intensely blue it made you want to cry.

His mother’s hair was the color of pale sand. It flowed around her face as soft as the tide and fell down her back in undulating waves. Her eyes were like the water, green-blue and translucent, as bright and clear as opals. Her cheeks plumped when she laughed, like two pealed peaches, and her long limbs were golden from hours spent in the garden where she grew happiness and flowers and all the food they could ever want.

His father’s skin was black as a garden snake and glistened just as handsomely, and when he worked, his large, dark eyes narrowed in concentration, and he chewed ever so slightly on his ample lower lip. He worked every day in a shed near the harbor, bent over his potting wheel, locked in a concentration so complete you had to say his name three times before he would hear.

He rolled coils of clay back and forth under his pale palms then layered the coils, as thick as his thumb, one on top of another in a circle. As the pot grew in height, layer upon layer, he smoothed the clay into a perfectly symmetrical bowl or vase or drinking cup, then fired it in the special oven and dipped it in sawdust so it turned as deep black as a moonless sky. Some pieces were smooth with an appealing sheen. In others, he placed unusual images, either etched into the clay or cut straight through, a menagerie of fascinating shapes—animals, sea creatures, shells, and mountains. People came from all over the island, and from nearby islands, and from places Miles Davis would never see and could not imagine, to buy his father’s beautiful black pottery.

Miles Davis’ house sat at the end of a sandy road that ran like a ribbon along the bay. The house was painted pink and blue like the sky at dawn. The house had a porch and three perfect rooms: a yellow kitchen with a table and two chairs and a painting of Miles Davis—the dog, not the trumpet player—that resembled a brightly colored cartoon and that Miles Davis liked very much; and a pale green room with nothing but a big, round rag rug that his mother had tied from all the rags and all the sheets and all the worn blankets she had ever owned; and a room with striped paper walls and a bed set high on thick posts cut from palm trees that seemed to float like a cloud.

His mother loved orchids and when his mother loved anything she loved it as if her life depended on it. And so, Miles Davis’ entire house was filled with beautiful flowers. She hung them from the ceiling beams and draped them over wall hooks. They covered the shelves and the porch railing and the small kitchen table. There were dark green roots reaching like ropes and leaves both wide and thin, and a fragrance as sweet and delicate as dew. There were little cupped flower faces everywhere, some drooping in a pout, others with curled lips, or with mouths flung open in laughter. Their blooms were ruffled and pleated and represented every color under the sun—sapphire, canary and beet; tangerine, topaz and honey; lavender, flamingo and coconut—and took shapes so varied in their creativity and style you couldn’t help but believe in magic.

Miles Davis knew his mother could grow anything. On the happy days, she rose at first light, made strong black coffee, sent his father down the sandy road with a kiss, then went into the garden. As she worked, Miles Davis liked to follow her or, on especially hot days, to lie in the shade of the eucalyptus tree listening to her bare feet and her strong hands with closed eyes. Her body moved as if she were dancing, smooth and flowing, her inner rhythm beating its way to the outside. As she danced, she sang jazz songs, sometimes softly and other times belted out like thunder. She bent over her vegetables and churned the sandy soil and sang. She reached up to the hanging flower pots and drizzled water and good intentions. She crawled on her hands and knees apologizing to the weeds before yanking them from the ground with a satisfying pop.

Everything in the garden grew twice as large and was doubly as colorful as in any other garden on the island. Visitors came with baskets and filled them with her bowling ball-sized melons, and her melon-sized tomatoes and her tomato-sized plums, then walked back down the road leaning to one side, weighed down by the bounty. They bought her magical orchids and her lush, prickly bougainvillea, and her drooping trumpetbushes—of course she grew trumpetbushes—and her sensual, West Indian jasmine. Miles Davis greeted each visitor with a sniff and a wag of his tail.

On the sad days, they both stayed in the big cloud bed, Miles Davis nestled at the bottom, vigilant, waiting. Some days she would tumble slowly from the bed once the light was high. On others, she sighed heavily when she heard his father’s footsteps coming down the road and went into the kitchen or laid on her back on the rag rug. On the saddest days, she stayed in the bed as the sun grew bright then dim again, and even after his father came up the porch stairs.

There hadn’t always been sad days. Early on, it would take them a long time to settle to sleep. They would push Miles Davis off the bottom of the bed without even noticing, their feet intertwining every which way, their arms reaching for everything at once. His mother would sing out in a sweet, soulful moan and his father would grunt like pig and laugh and laugh. And once they were quiet, smelling like the sea, Miles Davis would jump gingerly onto the bottom of the bed so as not to disturb their rest, because sometimes, if he woke them, they would start again, first with feet exploring across the bed, then with feet rubbing legs, up and down, and then with his mother pushing her backside against his father, arching one way and reaching the other and then the soft singing moan would start and it was the whole business all over again and Miles Davis would be forced back onto the sandy floor.

Miles Davis didn’t know why there were sad days. He was aware that the nightly dances grew further apart in their frequency, and that there was less singing by his mother, and that his father’s funny pig grunts were less enthusiastic until, one day, Miles Davis realized with unexpected melancholy, that rarely was he forced to sleep on the floor anymore.

Now, on the sad days, after his father came up the porch stairs, his mother would get up from the bed and stand defiantly in her thin dress on the round rag rug. Her eyes would turn dark, and water would flow down her flaming cheeks, and she would pace back and forth, frenzied, pulling at her hair. And his father would sit on one of the wood chairs and drop his head into his hands, looking up every so often with soft, pleading eyes. He could not marry her, he’d explain, because of the family curse. Every man in his family who married the woman he loved turned the love into stone, and he did not want their love to turn into stone. He loved his beautiful soulmate with all his might, he said. This tremendous love came very easy to him, like floating in salt water, and it would never end, he said. He pleaded until the sky grew dark. He begged until his outline was barely visible. He rang his hands and chewed on his lower lip in a failed attempt to stop its quivering. But still his mother wailed.

Sadly, it was all quite clear. Miles Davis’ mother could not understand, and his father could not explain it any better. She had heard the story of his family’s terrible curse many times and still she could not accept it. As much as she tried, she could not understand why he refused her request, and her heart would give her no peace in this matter, she said. Slowly, she grew so thin and so frail that her hair no longer bounced around her peach cheeks and the blue of her eyes dulled to the grey of a porpoise’s back.

One evening, after a long, sad day, his mother waited in the pale green room for his father to come home. She walked back and forth and back and forth, and Miles Davis did not know what to do. When his father arrived, he sat in the chair and hung his head and his mother paced faster and her laments grew more frenzied. After pounding across the sandy floor so many times, her delicate bare feet swelled and threatened to bleed, and she threw herself onto the bed and screamed into the pillow. She kicked her feet up and down, up and down until, at last, she was quiet. Once Miles Davis heard her breath slow, he jumped on the bed and tried to soothe her sore feet with his soft belly.

She stayed in bed all the next day, and the next, and the next.

These were long, sad days. Miles Davis exhausted himself trotting down the road to his father’s pottery shed and back to his mother in the big cloud bed. His father’s potting, for the first time ever, became impossible. He could not get the clay to respond to his touch. The mud cracked prematurely. Any symmetry evaded him. No matter his care, the vases were crooked and the bowls misshaped. For the first time in his life, his art refused to flow from his heart through his hands to the clay. For many hours, he sat motionless on his stool staring out to the deep blue bay.

Finally, one day, when Miles Davis was sick with worry, the tall, skinny medicine woman came to call on the pink and blue house. She came to see what had caused Miles Davis’ mother to grow so distraught that she could no longer tend to her garden or listen to jazz music or sing. She had been summoned by the people on the island who both relied on the bountiful garden and loved the woman who tended it.

The medicine woman had a crooked nose and a sparse head of hair and Miles Davis could see the outline of all the bones in her face. She smelled faintly of vinegar and misdeeds, and Miles Davis thought to growl but, out of desperation, kept silent instead.

The woman brought a chair from the kitchen, sat by the bedside, and closed her eyes. For a very long while, she took very long, very deep breaths. Then, she opened her eyes and stared directly at Miles Davis’ mother who sat abruptly and swung her legs round to face the chair, her feet dangling. Miles Davis watched as the two women stared without speaking or even blinking their eyes. Much passed between them, Miles Davis knew, but what it was would remain a mystery.

As his father made his way home that evening, Miles Davis ran down the road to meet him and they could hear the music from some distance and as they got closer, they could see the shadow of a woman dancing in the garden.

His mother took his father by the hand as they came up the porch stairs, and she led him to the kitchen and showed him where she had circled a day on the calendar that hung next to the painting of Miles Davis. It was an auspicious day, she told him, because the numbers of the day and the month and the year all aligned in perfect harmony. She announced that on that day, they would get into their little boat and sail out of their bay and into the sea. It was waiting there, she said, the elusive peace she had been craving, the peace she needed to bring into her heart so that they could once again be happy. She told him she knew he loved her but, if he refused to take her out on the boat on the day she had circled, she would throw herself over the cliffs on the far end of the island.

Neither Miles Davis nor his father could understand why she said these things, but his father was so obviously relieved to see his beloved dancing in her garden that he kept his dread to himself. After the sincerity of the threat was grasped and after much head holding by his father, it was settled. Even as he chewed his lower lip, his father let his mother kiss his kind, dark face and take him by the hand to the bedroom.

The auspicious day was marked with a wide red circle on the calendar that hung on the wall in the yellow kitchen, and if Miles Davis was a misbehaved dog, he would have ripped it from the wall and chewed it to pieces. Instead, he tried to ignore it, and when that failed, to push his bowl from the kitchen to the porch where he might eat in peace. His mother laughed at his effort and rubbed his head and put his bowl back in the kitchen. The red eye stared at Miles Davis as he ate his meals, and his food lost its taste and his stomach churned in protest.

On the last day before the day circled in red, Miles Davis skipped his breakfast and went with his father to the shed by the harbor. He watched as his father tried once again to make a vase. He turned his wheel slowly, round and round like he always did, but the tall cylinder refused to hold its shape. Instead, its narrow base curved one way and its wider rim curved another, and it looked dismal, as if someone had tried to twist the joy from it.

As the day went on, both Miles Davis and his father grew more distraught. Miles Davis watched as his father readied the small boat with slow, heavy movements. Creases pressed across his broad forehead like cracks in dry mud.

When the circled day arrived, his mother woke at first light, made strong black coffee and sent his father down the sandy road with a kiss. As she sang, his mother prepared a ring of flowers that she set on her head and admired in the mirror before carefully wrapping it in bright orange paper and placing it in a basket. She donned a white dress made of the softest island cotton which zig-zagged at the bottom and brushed against her smooth, tan calves as she moved. She danced all the way down the road along the bay to the harbor.

His father was waiting at the boat when they arrived. He tried to smooth the creases in his forehead by smiling at his mother as she danced and swayed and pressed her body against his. She threw her arms up over his substantial shoulders, first nestling her face in his neck then flinging it back in song.

Normally, Miles Davis would have wagged his tail with wild abandon and even tried to get between them, to feel some of the waves that passed there. But on this day, his nose twitched and the fur along his spine tingled. His tail would not wag and he stood some distance away trying to get them to look at him so he could show them what a bad idea he knew this was.

At last, it was time.

His mother released her hold and stepped onto the stern with her basket of flowers. Miles Davis’ father untied the little boat and raised the sail. He aligned her bow with the candy cane lighthouse, and they headed smoothly and silently out of the harbor. There was movement underneath the top of the air, but only Miles Davis could feel it. Only he noticed the clouds forming in the distance and sensed the subtle shift in pressure. His mother was too busy singing, and his father was too busy trying to smooth the cracks from his forehead.

Later, when they were far out on the water, Miles Davis’ nose began to twitch even more, uncontrollably and obviously on high alert, but still they did not notice. He could smell the change building beyond the horizon, but not so far beyond and coming closer. They continued further out to sea with steady determination, and suddenly the sky came alive. A great funnel formed over the water. It rose out of a mist and whirled and twisted with much majesty.

His father wanted to turn back but his mother refused. She braced herself in the front of the boat even as the waves grew in intensity, and she stared straight ahead, undeterred, as if she knew exactly where she was headed. His father objected but only briefly, then chose his dignity instead.

Even as the color of the sky turned a sickly green, as if overtaken by mold, and even as the air sent chills up her arms, Miles Davis’ mother stayed in the bow of the boat and stared straight ahead. She sang a song he had never heard before. It was a beautiful but mournful song, full of longings satisfied and dreams come to pass, and soon her voice was lost under the great noise of a sea gone wild.

It would be two days and two nights before Miles Davis arrived on the shore at the base of the lighthouse, half dead from exhaustion and despair. He was a great swimmer, his legs and lungs strengthened from years of play in the deep blue bay, but even so, he would not have been able to swim all the way home from the distance they had traveled that dreaded morning. He had been helped by the tremendous funnel that lifted him from the water and carried him westerly and set him down gently nearer the island. He had seen the lighthouse in the distance and swam and floated toward its hopeful red and white stripes.

It hadn’t taken long for the angry green water to swallow up the tiny boat and the lovers who sailed it. The terrific waterspout had reached down and whipped the sea frothy and snapped at the sails until they tore from their masts in shreds and fluttered away like confetti. His mother had never turned back, even as the greatest of all the waves rose before her and crested into the vibration of her song. Nor had she had a chance to wear the wreath of flowers which, after two days and two nights, had also floated onto the shore at the base of the candy cane lighthouse, eerily intact.

It would be some months before Miles Davis discovered that he could still wag his tail and still appreciate the warmth of the sunshine and the blue of the water and the cheerfulness of the candy cane lighthouse. He learned he could do these things even as he accepted that the sadness in his heart had settled there for good, and even as he decided he wanted it to stay.

All the people of the island who loved his mother and his father would take care of Miles Davis, who would trot back and forth down the sandy lane between the pink and blue house and the shed by the harbor. The tall, skinny medicine woman moved into the house and tended the garden, but the flowers would bloom only intermittently, and the vegetables would grow only half-sized. All his father’s remaining pottery would be sold, and the money used to take care of Miles Davis. The only piece that remained was the last twisted vase. It was noted by all who saw it how much his father’s last piece resembled a funnel or a waterspout. The people of the island would decide, and Miles Davis would agree, that the vase should be buried in the island cemetery under the shade of a eucalyptus tree at the highest point of the hill, with a view of the harbor and the lighthouse on one side, and the sea on the other.

The end.

What’s in a name?

My son and his fiance gave birth to my first grandchild this month. If I say this to someone, most likely the first question, after the congratulations, will be—Is it a boy or a girl? That’s easy enough. And undoubtedly, the next or almost next will be—What is her name?

Should this be an easy question? I always thought so. At least in my family. We are not, after all, in the realm of the famous or infamous, a world in which children might be named after a fruit, or a really, really large number, or even just given a sign…how do they call that child to dinner or emphasize their anger when administering discipline (not even a middle name to tack on for emphasis). I always thought of those people who chose those kinds of names for their children as…I don’t know…just plain weird. But I did feel sorry for the kids.

Now, I have a different dilemma. My granddaughter is 20 days old today and I still have trouble telling someone her name. I have yet to just say it. Just blurt it out. Without any preamble, or pre-explanation, or commentary. Not once. In twenty days.

At first, I might have blamed this on my son. Just another one of his ploys to get under my skin. He’s had 30 years to perfect the technique and he is good at it. I always said he became a Marine and chose one of the most dangerous jobs within the Marine Corps because it was the best way to make his mother crazy. Don’t get me wrong. I adore my son. I admire him more than just about anyone. He has accomplished things in his young life that I can’t even imagine attempting, much less earning awards for. He’s an amazing person.

But this name thing has really thrown me for a loop.

I don’t know my daughter-in-law well enough to know her role in this decision—whether she was an instigator, a co-founder, or simply an agreeable partner. I will say the two of them are standing in admirable solidarity. As they should be. It’s their child and they named her and that’s that.

Her mother, my son’s mother-in-law, laughed good-naturedly over the choice and vowed she was already getting used to it. The baby was eight hours old at that point. I found her fortitude remarkable. I vowed to get on board.

My ex-husband spent the entire morning of her birth telling everyone he had a grandson. By mistake. Based on the name. He’s now handling the situation by telling everyone the baby’s name is her middle name. He’s leaving off the first name altogether. To hell with it.

My daughter is still somewhat inconsolable over the whole thing. When the birth certificate arrived in the mail today, she called me and asked, “Does this mean they’re not going to change the name?”

Perhaps if we understood why they chose this name. A good story goes a long way in my book. Just give me a romantic lead-up to the decision, or tell me it means something fabulous that she can aspire to, or at least tell me one other woman with this name who invokes a lovely image or does it justice in some way.

Right now, I have none of that. No good story. No good meaning. No good role model. At least not that the parents have been willing to articulate or that I or anyone else in the family have been able to discern. We are all flummoxed. Plain and simple. We just don’t get it.

And so, I am back to where I started. What’s in a name, really? Will it help mold the person we will become? Does the mere utterance of this word, our name, throughout our infancy and childhood help create us in some way? Does a great name make for a great person? What is a great name? And what about those people who later choose a different name for themselves? My father hated his name—first and middle. As soon as he was old enough, he insisted people call him Jack. Many people choose to use their middle name. Others adopt by choice or default a nickname, usually descriptive, and usually, hopefully, bestowed out of love.

What will my granddaughter do? Will she like her name?

To be fair, I have gotten a few—two, I think—rave reviews on the name, and a couple of sincere I think that’s cute. My son described the name’s reception as mixed reviews. That’s one way to spin it.

I asked if I could call her by a shortened version of her middle name. Would you mind if I called her Ella? I asked my son yesterday morning. I really like her middle name, I offered into the silence that followed. Don’t you?

He got off the phone quickly and hasn’t called me since.

I’m still struggling and I’m so disappointed in myself. I thought I was way cooler than this. Open-minded. Hip. Apparently not.

At this point, all I know to do is the next time someone asks me to tell them the baby’s name, I will hold my head high, smile, and without any pontificating of any kind, simply say, Harvey.

There. I like it better already.

How I wrote an 87,000 word novel without interrupting my "real life" and what happens next...

Writing the manuscript is only the beginning. But, oh, what a beginning.

In the coming weeks and months, I will be sharing my experience of studying the craft of writing a novel while actually writing the novel early in the morning and on weekends, and while working a full-time job.

This journey began in the summer of 2019 as I lay on my sofa, flattened under the fog of chemotherapy. I had carried for years the germ of an idea for a novel. I now found myself with the time, if not the energy, to contemplate the actual writing of a book. This idea, which came to be the basis for the mystery in the story, was inspired by a true event in my family, a secret i didn't learn about until I was in my thirties. This family secret was followed two decades later by another mind-blowing revelation, one which hit much closer to home. One year later, as I neared the end of my treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and with a renewed appreciation for the value of my time, I started writing Bottom of the Breath.

More about the writing to come...

I am now in the process of deciding which path I will take: traditional publishing which involves finding an agent, self-publishing which does not really excite me, or hybrid publishing, which promises the best of both those worlds. I will share the story of this adventure as I go.

Please, stay tuned... And to my fellow writers out there: Keep the faith! We can do it!