mm My aunt was a high diver. By that I mean she was on her school diving team. Growing up, when we would visit my grandparents over the holidays, I used to admire her diving trophies. My brother and sister and I would stay in my aunt’s old bedroom, and her trophies lined a shelf above the beds where we slept. To a young boy, the figurines on those trophies looked like tiny gold goddesses on marble pedestals. They were lean and sleek like fairies, but frozen in mid-air as though touched lovingly by King Midas and preserved forever mid-flight. I would study them for a long time at night, by the cold glow of the street lamp coming in through the window, with my brother and sister dreaming easily beside me, and imagine what my aunt must have been like when she was young, just a few years older than me.

mm My mother was the middle child, and the pretty one. She was a homecoming queen, and very popular. She had an older brother, who was the smart one (a Fulbright Scholar) and my aunt was the youngest. My aunt, I imagine, was left to make her mark where she could. She ended up marrying a wealthy stock broker and moving to Canada. They have houses in the islands now, too. But that, of course, came years later. My mother says my aunt tried to teach me French before I could speak English. She would come back to my crib at feeding time and find her there whispering things to me in French. It made my mother very angry. She was afraid it would confuse me. I like to think my affinity for Proust and Camus had it’s start there in the blue bedroom where my crib was kept.

mm But when they were growing up my aunt was the athlete. She was tall and thin, just like the statues. I liked to imagine her poised high on the diving platform, arms outstretched, balanced on the edge above a pool of pulsing, translucent blue, the same baby blue as the walls of the bedroom. Then, in one swift motion, she would launch herself out into space . . . arcing, spinning, tumbling down . . . and plunge into the pool with the sound of ripping silk. In my mind it was like splitting wood with an axe, only more graceful.

mm So the story goes that something happened on the night of my aunt’s first prom. My mother was a senior, and her date was the captain of the basketball team. My aunt must have had a date, too, but no one remembers much about him now. Both girls had bathed and dressed and were finishing their final touches for the evening. They wore tight waisted dresses then, in the fifties, fitted in the bodice with layers and layers of crinoline and taffeta that poofed out the skirts into big cones. All the girls wanted to look like Grace Kelly then. They were combing their hair out by the fire to dry. Perhaps they were running a little late, and the fire would have felt good on that cool, early spring evening. I imagine the scene so well, because I have warmed myself by that fireplace many times since. Apparently, as my aunt was brushing out the last of the damp spots in her hair, a coal surreptitiously popped out of the fire and landed on her skirt. Moments later the skirt burst into flames. She ran around the living room screaming, swatting at a blaze that quickly surrounded her like a burning life ring. There was much shouting and mayhem. My grandfather came running and, thinking quickly, tore one of the drapes down from the window and tackled his blazing daughter, rolled her in it and smothered the flames, thereby saving her from serious injury.

mm I wonder, now, what happened after that. Did my aunt recover emotionally from that assault of heat and light, regain her composure, and go to the dance after all? Did she borrow one of my mother’s dresses and glide valiantly onto the dance floor undeterred? I realize many years later that I don’t know. But after I heard the story I could never again separate the image of my aunt in a burning ball gown from the images I had of her before. Still, years later, when I’ve seen those little gold statues again, I always imagine her standing at the edge of the platform on fire, then arcing out into space ablaze, before extinguishing the flames again in the cool, blue quivering pool.

B.L.Long
November 15, 2004
Scottsville, Virginia

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Barry L. Long
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