El Cerrito Writer's Short Story Wins Blue Ribbon

Editor's Note: The short story below, "Chilling Love" by Evie Groch of El Cerrito, was recently published by Sand Hill Review Press in Carry the Light, the first anthology ever assembled from the literary arts contest of the San Mateo County Fair. The story also won a first-place blue ribbon for short stories at the Marin County Fair. 

Chilling Love

She couldn’t remember the last time she felt hearty enough to take a brisk walk or cook a meal.  How long had it been?  Sarah was at a loss to explain why the more she rested, the worse she felt.  She and Bill used to entertain frequently and prepare lavish dinners for their guests, many times after a workout at the gym or after a vigorous game of tennis earlier in the day. 

When they were younger, they traveled extensively, taking in the cultural highlights of Asia, Europe, and South America.  Shanghai, with its architectural boon, showing off its modernity set against a canvass dotted with pre-World War II tenements, held special appeal for Sarah. She remembered joining the couples dancing in the public squares and waking up early to take part in the t’ai-chi rituals in the streets. 

Traveling through Europe, on a stopover in southern Spain, the two of them had met.  Sarah was making her way through Granada’s The Alhambra, when Bill was asking someone for directions in his broken Castilian. Sarah offered to translate, and the two of them spent the rest of the day and evening together.  In fact, they joined up to finish seeing Europe.  They skied the Alps in Switzerland, cycled in Tuscany, and shared adventures of physical challenges.

The wedding took place in July, exactly two years after they met. Bill was from Manhattan and Sarah from Napa, California. The ceremony took place in San Francisco, but with two receptions a week apart – one for the friends and family on the west coast, and another in New York for those unable to attend the wedding.

For these experienced travelers, South Africa was the honeymoon choice.  They landed in Johannesburg, but spent their time in Capetown and Kruger Park.  Their love of wild animals kept them in Kruger until they could check off their list the sighting of the five big African game animals: the elephant, the rhino, the leopard, the lion, and the buffalo. 

Santa Barbara, California was where they settled, partly because of Bill’s new position as head of a publishing company and Sarah’s work as a university professor of psychology.  Their condo suited them well, for they spent very little time in it.

“Where would you like to go this year, Bill?”

“I’m thinking South America.”

“We haven’t been there in a while.”

“We’d see Argentina again.”

“And perhaps Brazil.”

“And Peru or Uruguay.”

Narrowing down travel destinations always remained a challenge for them, but anticipating and savoring the winnowing process was sweet. The Porteno milonga dancers or the Incas of Machu Picchu?  Why not both?  Both it was.

The women in Lima were selling colorful violet woven goods. The stylized symbolic patterns in the shawls enchanted Sarah. Square boxy borders supporting serpentine figures mingled with themes of flora in bold colors grew on her.  Bill could see her attraction and offered to help her pick out a shawl to draw out her blue and hazel eyes.  He persisted in this pursuit until he had located the perfect wrap for her shoulders with strands of blue and soft green woven through red, yellow, and rich black backgrounds.  Sarah loved it and wore it throughout the rest of the trip.

Determined to reciprocate, Sarah searched for a unique wooden Andean llama for Bill to add to his collection.  None were to be had.  It wasn’t until years later that she found the ideal one in a universal arts craft collection in Los Angeles.  The llama was seven inches tall, carved out of zebrawood, and so smooth, anyone who touched it couldn’t stop running his fingers over it.

For Bill, it was a loving gift, reminding him of their travels through Peru and the lip smacking blond llama who was so enamored of him, she tried to kiss him repeatedly.

Now that they were living in Woodland Hills in a two-story suburban home, they continued their nightly ritual of preparing a mug of piping hot cocoa for Sarah and pouring a glass of chardonnay for Bill and sipping them in front of the fire with Sarah in her shawl, and Bill in his favorite navy pullover.

Years ago, when they had returned from South America, Sarah had started complaining of fatigue, dizziness, and feeling cold.  Bill insisted she see a doctor, but no diagnosis was forthcoming.  When specialists were stunned, he started to treat her himself, making her nightly hot chocolate drinks and wrapping her in her special shawl.  They never quite warmed her up.

Sarah was now on disability, having had to step down and lose her tenure from UC Santa Barbara.  She was not improving, and they were both worried.  She was anticipating celebrating her 48^th birthday, but only wanted a few close friends around, nothing more.  Bill arranged for a small gathering, decorating the house with celebratory banners in Spanish and English – the languages responsible for their meeting.

Sarah surprised herself by admitting she wanted a party.  Bill was surprised as well.  He feared she believed it might be her last one. Without recognizing her own motivation, she proceeded to help Bill plan it. 

Bill arranged the catering, and Sarah selected her favorite foods, although she no longer enjoyed eating very much.  Spanish paella had always been a special meal for her, but now she requested it more as a tradition rather than a craving.  Several kinds of paella were on the menu, including Paella Valenciana, her long time favorite.  Tapas and sangria were the starters, followed by rioja wines and the paellas.  Of course the dessert had to include flan, but Sarah allowed Bill to decide on anything else he would like to include.

The invitations went out to a few close friends from Sarah’s work and extended family members.  When several friends shared the news of this party with others, many called to ask if they could come as well. It was a challenge to delicately explain why the party invitees were limited without alarming anyone.  Sarah relented a bit and allowed a few more guests to attend.

Bill was helping Sarah dress for the party. She chose a royal blue flowing silk sari with long sleeves for a bit of warmth.  Lapis earrings carried the blue up to her hazel blue eyes and contrasted nicely with her dark hair and light skin.  She looked lovely and was pleased with the dual effort they had expended.

Guests started trickling in, bringing gifts she had asked them not to bring, curious to see her.  Sarah rose to the occasion, greeting everyone personally and reconnecting with them meaningfully, as if she might not see them again.  Her teaching peers from UC Santa Barbara’s psych department gathered around her first, inquiring about her health and commenting on how good she looked.  Shirley, with whom Sarah has worked closely, didn’t need to ask about Sarah’s health.  She could see something was amiss, and it disturbed her. Instead, she questioned Bill privately about how Sarah was doing. Bill didn’t lie to her, but held out hope things would turn around soon.

The tapas were a hit, as was the sangria.  Fellow travelers loved the bilingual banners.  The foodies savored the paellas as they discussed the unique flavors of each one.  And the flan, with its custardy smoothness, won everyone over.  Bill had ordered a birthday cake as well.  It was not right to sing Happy Birthday over anything but a cake. It was deep chocolate with a mango frosting, in the shape of Spain. In the colors of the Spanish flag it read: From the Alhambra to Woodland Hills – Feliz Cumpleanos!  Sarah was moved by it and even ate some after everyone sang to her in English and Spanish. 

Even though Sarah had asked for no gifts, the guests insisted she open the ones they brought.  After many refusals, she relented and opened them.  One was a beautiful small glass globe painted in vibrant colors.  Each place Sarah had visited was marked by a shiny dot.  The globe had quite a few of them scattered throughout.  Each gift was a chance for her to reflect on benchmarks in her life.  They meant more to her than she could express.

Shirley gave her a poem she had written about the long friendship she had with Sarah, a poem encouraging her to write her memoirs.  Sarah gave this some thought and decided she might pursue this.

John, her department head, presented her with a comedic description he had written titled “The Psychology of Sarah.”  As he read it, everyone exploded with laughter and applause.  It emphasized her sense of humor in how she handled challenges.  “However,” she was thinking to herself, “this is one challenge I don’t know how to handle.” And Bill, who knew better than to give Sarah a gift she did not want, gave her one anyway.  It was a small album containing a compilation of some of her favorite travel photos, photos of them together in special parts of the world, starting with Spain.  All Sarah could do was smile and embrace him.

As the evening was drawing to a close, Sarah’s fatigue became evident.  With heartfelt joy and appreciation for their attendance, she warmly said her goodbyes to all the guests as they left.  As she and Bill nestled on the sofa, she held each gift and honored it, especially the album. The guests certainly knew what to get her.  Each gift evoked for her a special memory, an emotional tug to the past.  And memories were all she had now.  She was her memory of herself.  Bill hadn’t seen her so happy and at total peace for some time.

For several months after the party, Sarah worked on her memoirs. When she was too weak to write or type, she recorded adventures and recalled happier times.  They continued to gather nightly for their drinks.  One night, Sarah was too tired to go upstairs for bed.  She asked Bill to stay on the sofa with her.  He held her in his arms and rocked her gently to sleep.  With the few rays of sun coming in through the uncovered living room windows, he awakened to find Sarah had been taken from him during the night.

As Bill wandered aimlessly through their once happy home, months after Sarah’s funeral, he relived the beautiful tributes attendees had paid to her, his soul mate.  So many people had wanted to speak, but he only allowed a few to do so.  Although the occasion was a sad one, the ritual was not.  Such lovely things were shared and remembered. It had the feeling of Sarah’s 48^th birthday party, her farewell party. She would have loved to hear all that was said.

Family and friends had offered to come over and help Bill sort things out, especially Sarah’s personal items.  More months passed before he could bring himself to address this.  He knew then which of her items he would keep forever and those with which he could part.  The friends could take the clothes and jewelry to donate or sell for a worthy cause, but he would keep the 48^th birthday party gifts and her favorite shawl. And so it was decided and done.

After a few more months, he could no longer look at the shawl without an ache in his heart and decided to donate it to the bazaar the Salvation Army was preparing for the neighborhood.  He brought it down to their intake door and parted with it in tears.  While he was down there, he noticed a bookshelf of paperbacks and decided to scan them for something to occupy his mind in the evenings.  He selected several copies which they quickly placed in a paper bag for him, and he headed home.

When he arrived back at the house, he placed the bag on the kitchen counter, poured himself some chardonnay, and lit a fire in the living room fire place.  It was several days before he remembered to look in the bag.

One evening, as he took out the three books he had purchased, he was surprised to find a fourth book in there as well, a hardback.  It must have been placed there by mistake.  As he read the title, A Weaver’s Garden: Growing Plants for Natural Dyes and Fibers, he grew curious and opened the book.  An entire section was devoted to the dangers and toxicity of natural dyes such as logwood and bloodroot. He read that logwood can create a vibrant array of colors from violet, blue-grays, and deep black, but its active ingredients, hematein and hemotoxylink, could be deadly if inhaled, absorbed through the skin, or ingested.

Bloodroot, along with lily of the valley, privets, yellow flag iris rhizomes and delphinium flowers could also be toxic.  Indians used bloodroot as a body paint, and others have attempted to capture that pigment on textiles.  Its sap is brightly colored, but can cause vomiting, dizziness, nerve damage, and even death.  Doses that are too low to kill immediately can accumulate over time and become deadly.

Bill was starting to perspire and feel queasy.  What did all this mean? He thought back to the shawl he had just given away, the shawl he had selected for Sarah in Peru, the shawl she wore every day since he bought it for her and every evening as they sat in front of the fire.  Could it have contained these potentially deadly dyes?

He ran to the computer and googled Peru’s textiles. There he learned about its cotton industry that in 1901 had suffered a fungus plague caused by fusarium vasinfectum.  This plant disease entered the plant’s roots and traveled up the stem.  Could this fungus, latent or active, when combined with the toxic dyes, cause the symptoms Sarah had exhibited for so long?

When he got off the phone with Sarah’s doctors, he felt let down. They had not heard of such plants, nor the toxicity of such dyes and were reluctant to draw any conclusions to support any of his theories. Nevertheless, he felt he had to do something.  He could not live with the thought that perhaps he had contributed to Sarah’s demise.  In the morning he would go down to the Salvation Army store before they opened for the second day of the bazaar and warn them about the shawl.

Earlier in the day, a young couple expecting a child in a matter of weeks was strolling through the bazaar grounds looking for bargains. The bright colors of the shawl Bill had delivered caught their eye, and they moved closer to examine it.  The expectant mother saw the possibility of unraveling the shawl to make a baby afghan out of it. She was excited by the possibility.

When Bill arrived at the Salvation Army’s bazaar the next morning to inquire about the shawl, he was told it was one of the first things to be sold.