CNF: Wychwood Park
by Lissa Staples
It’s 3 p.m. on August 31st and I’m walking through Wychwood Park in Toronto. I never expected to need solitude the way I do now. Rain is falling with intent and autumn leaves corkscrew around my feet as if sentient. I’ve always loved rain. How the pavement cups it into puddles. Put enough of it together and you have the lake with the blue rowboat, my cousins and I oaring across the bay to Moore’s General Store with quarters in our pockets, salivating for bars of sweet caramel. We float over water black as eternity.
I never thought loss would feel like drowning.
I remember quiet evenings in the cabin, my parents’ faces in candlelight and the sounds of summer through the open windows: the clank of the rowboat against the dock, the silvery songs of loons and the splash of trout tails. I have always been surprised by the sound of my own name: my mother calling me from the cabin, her voice like a disembodied creature of the lake.
The first time I saw my mother’s name on her gravestone, it looked so small and unimportant among the other memorials. I never expected her to be subterranean just as I didn’t expect a wheelchair to put my father below the visual horizon – a social disaster and a lonely place to be. When he asked me rub his slumped shoulders, his voice was breathy.
I didn’t know my name was beautiful when whispered.
A bell shrills and I step into the grass as a cyclist passes. He’s not wearing a hat and I wonder if he likes rain too. A swath of flame-tipped leaves follows him down the hill like a celebration. On my eleventh birthday, I singed my eyebrows blowing out the candles. My mother dashed me in the face with a glass of water, laughing in relief. When she said my name, it sounded joyful.
The rain courses toward the pond. The swans have already flown because they are sensible creatures. Was that a flash of lightning? I’ve always loved the edgy tension of thunderstorms. I stop to zip my coat and lift the collar. All over the pavement are the fleshy question marks of worms flip-flopping charmlessly in the flood. I never thought I liked worms but they are the most defenseless of all things on wet asphalt and yet they can be deconstructed without necessarily dying.
I never imagined a worm would make me hopeful.
The wind twirls my hair into a complicated tangle. The umbrella is exhausted. I let go just to see what happens and it sails away to the unknown like a liberated soul. I like the feeling of being vulnerable in this weather. Anything could happen. I could slip on one of these worms or change course to the pub on Bathurst. If I stand here long enough, I might molt, shed my losses and grow thicker skin.
I didn’t expect so many options as I observe my sixtieth birthday in a rainy park in Toronto where no one says my name or disturbs my solitude.
Lissa Staples is a retired classical singer and emerging writer. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she won Synkroniciti’s short story contest with “The Month of Drowning.” Her work has appeared in Corvus Review, Heartwood Review and The Stickman Review among others. She lives in Golden, CO.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Wychwood Park”? My mother was born and raised in Toronto. She immigrated to the US and married my father, a Polish immigrant. They settled in Connecticut where I was born. While my father couldn’t hold a tune, my mother came from a long line of boisterous sopranos. I demonstrated a definite vocal talent as a very young child and spent my nineteenth year in Toronto at the home of Joanne Mazzoleni, in order to study voice at the Conservatory at the University of Toronto. Joanne lived in Wychwood Park, an oasis within the city. The park was founded in the late 1800’s as a community of artists. Joanne was a mezzo and a painter; a founding member of the Canadian Opera Company, and my mother’s closest childhood friend. When I moved in with her in 1978, she became a second mother to me, introducing me to her artistic friends, sharing stories of her experiences and letting me tag along to concerts and theater performances. Luciano Pavarotti sang at the old Massey Hall in Toronto in 1979. He was accompanied by the Toronto Symphony. Students were seated onstage. I was one of them. After the concert, he came to Joanne’s house for a late dinner along with his esteemed accompanist, John Wustman. At nineteen, I had only the vaguest idea of how extraordinary this dinner was. Joann died at 96 and I sang at her memorial. While bringing up three boys in Tucson, I did quite a bit of professional singing, but it was the local theater work that taught me to pay close attention to the details of a set because – like good writing – no visual, tactile or auditory clue goes to waste onstage. This has been strong influence in my writing. “Wychwood Park” is a pause to celebrate those who own space in my heart despite their absence. The writing itself was inspired by the work of Sean Thomas Dougherty (Death Prefers the Minor Keys); Claire Keegan (Foster); Paul Harding (This Other Eden); Denis Johnson (Train Dreams); and Ada Limón (Bright Dead Things).
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