Backstitch – Marian Mitchell Donahue

“The ancient astronomer and mathematician.” Alice raised her eyebrows and signaled for him to go on. “. . . and Merlin’s little owl buddy.” “Does your mother know how affected you were by all those Arthurian bedtime stories?” “I’m sure she does, and I’m sure she’s very proud of her handiwork.” Arthur took another swig from his Slurpee and made a face.

The vodka had sunk to the bottom so now every sip went down like a shot. “I lucked out, though, with the Arthur thing. My father wanted to name me Douglas.” “Doug?” Alice leaned back and looked him over. “You are not a Doug.” “Who picked out your name?” The question was out of his mouth before he realized what he’d done. Usually, a mention of her parents and Alice would snap shut like a clamshell and stay guarded the rest of the night.

He froze and waited for her to close down, but she didn’t. If anything, she looked a little further away than usual, but she stayed with him, and miraculously she kept talking. “I know my father wanted Alice because it was his grandmother’s name. Well . . .” She swirled her Slurpee like wine.

“Really, he wanted a boy. He wanted Frederick Miller V, but he got me instead. But my mom . . . I’m not sure but I think she wanted to name me Daisy.” “Daisy,” Arthur repeated, testing it out. “I like it.” “I like it to. She was Rose, and she was always gardening, so I think she liked the flower thing. But I’m Alice instead.” “I like Alice, too,” Arthur tried reassuring her. “Alice is nice.” “Alice in Wonderland. Alice Through the Looking-Glass. You know, I’ve never even read those books?

I think my mom read me bedtime stories, but I can’t . . . I don’t remember any of the actual stories.” “Not in school, either?” “Nope.” She shook her head. “Lots of Bible stories, not a lot of fantasy.” They both drank from their cups. Alice looked up at the fading evening light. “What’s your birthday again?”

she asked. Arthur felt her trying to drive the conversation back to safer ground and he let her. “October tenth.” “Mmm.” She nodded. “So, you’re a Libra.” “Don’t. Start.” He walked into the trap happily. “A Libra, very interesting, very interesting. I’m an Aries, so that doesn’t bode well for us generally .

. .” “The Zodiac is not real.” Arthur turned to her, playing up his irritation, getting her to smile. “It is a made-up system of imaginary lines, and it cannot predict the future. You can’t see the future up there. No future, just the past.” “Is that supposed to be deep?” “No, literally, all light we experience here on Earth is old. Sunlight?

Eight minutes old.

Nothing had prepared her for the eyes. Violet knew she’d see little pieces of herself as a child on banners and bus stops when she went to her mother’s retrospective at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her sister had warned her they’d used one of their mother’s early works for the promotional materials, from the years she hid herself away in their house and all she’d painted were the girls.

But there was no warning Marigold could have issued that would have readied Violet for the way her own brown eyes followed her as she walked from the parking garage on Constitution Avenue through the soupy summer day to the doors of the museum. Once seen, they couldn’t be unseen. Her own eyes, rendered first in small dabs of oil paint all those years ago, now re-created in high- resolution printer ink, the rest of the image cropped out and left mutilated on some graphic designer’s desktop.

Violet tucked her head down and pressed her sunglasses high up on the bridge of her nose to keep from meeting her painted gaze. She couldn’t understand why, out of everything, they had picked this early work, and her eyes, to represent her mother’s show. Why her own dark set and not her little sister’s objectively more interesting hazel one? She was in that painting, too. Why not hers? Violet didn’t believe she had any illusions about herself. If anything, the years she had spent as her mother’s art object had given her a greater than usual awareness of her own aesthetic truth.

Her eyes were a dark brown that almost looks black, which some found off- putting. In a good mood, her mother would deem them only “serious” or “haunting.” In worse moods, they became inhuman. Violet suddenly had dolls’ eyes or dogs’ eyes. The feature—the scrap of an incomplete story— was meant to pull people in further and further. You were supposed to want to know what happened next, but Violet already knew what had happened, and she didn’t want to be pulled in.

She was already a half hour late meeting her sister at the exhibit. The last time she’d been in D.C.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: dbe0ba7ef7aa3cff
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,719,642 bytes (2.594 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 306
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 443.31 minutes
• Total Words: 88,661
• Total Characters: 488,156
• Average Words per Page: 289.74
• Average Characters per Page: 1595.28

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