The storm hurls itself off the mountains above Martha’s home. The wind drives sheets of rain across the porches and against the windows, more blinding than even my sightless frightened dream ride. The small high valley around us suffuses with iridescent light shot through the onslaught by lightning and explosions of sound from the thunder fully throttling itself against the close walls of Martha’s canyon. Martha and Raechelle and I are embraced by fury and furor and unforgiving closeness as the storm subsumes us with its madness.
Martha studies me. She alone is unshaken by the storm. She ignores all it brings except for our immediacy. “Your friend. She killed herself. She didn’t kill you.” She points at the photographs of her Williams. “They got themselves killed. Each one. They did not get me killed. And I refused to let any one or all three kill me. I married each of my Williams with all the passion of a sixteen year old virgin in heat for the first time.” Martha pours more port into mine and Raechelle’s glasses. “I still refuse to let them kill me.” Martha takes my hands in hers. “Were you ever named William? Are you willing to change your name? For you see, I haven’t given up on my life.”
Raechelle laughs. Her face is awash with the port’s warmth and her heart is alive with Martha’s verve, her vitality, her aplomb and her willingness to be our confidant. “Yes! Yes! You marry Martha and I…” She has nothing to say, no name to add and she knows it. She stares at Martha and begins to cry.
Martha leans her face close to Raechelle’s and says. “And he will come. He will, child.”
I frown and shake my head. “Not always.”
“You are wrong.” Martha lays her arm around Raechelle’s shoulders and squeezes and kisses Raechelle’s golden cheek and puts her lips beside Raechelle’s and whispers. “He is wrong. Believe me. Not him.” Martha kisses the side of Raechelle’s mouth. “He is a coward, a coward of the first order, afraid, so afraid of her. His suicide friend was right, he is afraid of life. That is why he will not even text this lost love of his. Any fool can do that, even him. But he plays this silly game and waits for her to find him. Why he even thinks she is looking for him I cannot fathom. But he does. This coward does.” Martha breathes into Raechelle’s open mouth. “But you! For you there is someone, some many someone’s, looking for you.” Martha winks at Raechelle. “You wait. He will come.”
Raechelle is spellbound.
“Do not listen to him.” Martha continues. She kisses Raechelle again. “He thinks he can love only her. Pooh! Silly Pooh! I can think of a hundred I would have gone to bed with and been thankful for it. I just could not marry them.”
“Why?” Raechelle asks.
“They were not a William!”
“You are insane, Marta.” I begin, stop, continue. “Sorry. Sorry. I have no rights here. None. I have no right to call you, Marta.”
“You may call me Marta.” Martha turns away from Raechelle, lifts her glass of port and drinks. “Why does it concern you so greatly about regaining this lost lady of yours?”
“Because I need to know if someone loved me.” I look at Raechelle, who is still and quiet, comfortable against Martha’s arm, as though she is almost asleep now. But she is not asleep. She is entranced, captured within Martha’s story and mine, excluded from participating only by her youth, her wonderful beautiful youth. “Doesn’t everyone need to know if someone has loved them sometime during their lives?”
“Oh I doubt that.” Martha drinks from her third glass of port. “But that’s probably not fair for me to say that to you because I have been loved intensely at least three times in my life.” Martha licks the remnants of the port from her top lip. “Not for a great length of time even if you add the three together, but I know that I was loved and I loved.” She takes another drink. “But why does it concern you that you or I may be insane? The lunatic fringe.” She laughs. “That’s what the Denver Post wrote of me: ‘She exists at the lunatic fringe of life.’” She drinks the last of her port. “The Post said I did so because I had lost three husbands and two sons. That’s bullshit! I live as I live because that is how life best suits me to live. These are my stories and this is how I tell them. Is this your story? Is this how life best suits you?” Martha shakes her head. “What you are doing? Why are you doing this?” Martha reaches and takes my wrist. “This is insane. Doing it this way, just leaving it to chance, you may never see her again. You understand that, do you not?”
I nod.
“Do you think that makes it more likely she will accept you this time?” Martha asks. She squeezes my arm. “Why is this so important to you?”
“Because life is story, living is storytelling, and who tells my story is what I have always been about.” I stare at the deep rutilant remnants of the liquid staining the bottom of the Sherry glass which I hold between my hands. “Without her I don’t know what I am about.” I look up into the cataracts which are banishing the blue from Martha’s above the timberline high azure eyes and pray. “She was my storyteller.”