Riptide Milagro, and: On the Malecón

Abstract

Riptide Milagro, and: On the Malecón Dana Roeser (bio) Riptide Milagro Late in the day when Lucy was packing up all her things—the towels sun tan lotion orange beach umbrella— I saw a gull proudly high up in the sky flashing something silver just beneath it parallel—I’d seen this before the proud conquest the victory lap the brandishing of the silver trophy in distended claws like an underneath side car back to the dunes to eat it so I had a pretty good idea [End Page 7] what I was looking at. I said Look look and she said I’m trying to pack up all this stuff. Her friend Ava looked for a moment polite half-thrilled as it turned slightly adjusted its flight path. Then as it straightened out I saw it in profile the gull flapping forward and then the silver object in perfect side view a definitive fish-shape. Like a piece of jewelry a fetish a filled-in fish symbol like one you might see on the back of a car signifying a not-so-secret allegiance to Jesus. Or a milagro. What would it be the miracle [End Page 8] for then? A good catch or to return safely from the sea? Not the well-being of a breast a leg a torso. Perhaps Ava’s mentally ill mother who fills notebooks with hypergraphia— all gibberish Ava says except a few numbers and occasionally some set prayers. Don chimes in helpfully at the dinner table “Religiosity!” Ava is matter-of-fact; she never really knew her mother otherwise. I will attempt similar equanimity. Our daughter Eleanor’s trickery abandonment. On the lam in France. Through which lens are we supposed to see them again? [End Page 9] We know very little. Lithium. Pot. Alcohol. Delusions. Relapse. Hapless boyfriend whose image she twists her mind in the service of. His feckless parents. The “less” words. As in “No love lost.” Frances my elderly father’s “girl”friend told us yet another story last night about the sea taking a child. His brother was saved by a passerby but the younger child slipped from the rescuer’s grasp submerged and sucked out by the riptide. Now all the parents read it— the helicopters all night—in the paper and are [End Page 10] cautious. And Lucy and Ava are frolicking there in that same surf every day. Let it be silver fish Jesus “Ichthys” for Ava and Lucy then for Ava’s hyper-religious Mary-worshipping mother for Eleanor—once upon a time, she took to Catholicism like a fish to water. Silver milagro, amulet ex voto dije sea gull’s souvenir of the riptide— “this is my body which will be given up for you”—about to be taken to a sand dune live and devoured shining. [End Page 11] On the Malecón Family vacation, Hotel el Pescador, Puerto Vallarta My self is like breath on glass. My name lifts off like a cloud like when you press and drag the cursor the print lifts off print, a shadow of the whole phrase wandering. At night I anchor myself down with two winter blankets—in the tropical heat— to keep from floating up. The woman squealed as she was lifted from the beach on the boat-pulled [End Page 12] parachute— a child playing in the surf almost got tangled in the lines. The operator, holding the woman by the shoulder, had to motion the child away. I saw her rise up up, still pale, with her mouse-colored ponytail, and squealing, till she was something in the sky and I wondered how they would get her down—what maneuver of the little faraway boat? While up the beach beside the malecón a man sold plastic representations [End Page 13] one could hold on a string like a kite the flapping plastic multi-colored umbrella dome with diamond slit cutouts, like the real thing, and the blue- or pink-clad plastic action figure dangling improbably below. Such is me in paradise—trying in vain to get coordinates on my wayward 18-year-old orange-and-red-diaphanous full-length...