BLOOD

Medea offered Jason magic, and he took it: a golden fleece from a sleeping dragon, and before that, safety from the fire-breathing bulls. So: what does the story mean? That gold will turn to lead, that love will turn to hate or worse, indifference?

The wind swirled around Edith. What did it promise? Her boots crunched on the snow in a regular rhythm. Blood dripped from her hands, but that was imaginary. She could not really stab her beloved. She thought of the knife going into his chest–that would be hard with all the ribs. Much easier in the belly. How could he desert her? Melanie was a younger woman, but Edith had given him her experience and years and soul, had sacrificed for his education and his march up the law-firm ladder. Now he wanted to marry his law clerk.

For his part, he was tired of working. He wanted to marry the daughter of the partner and slide into an easy life: no more torts, no more schmoozing clients and flattering the partners. Just a ballet to the paycheck, an aria to a house in the Hamptons. After all the scrambling, how good it felt to look forward to a smooth future. He did not want to leave his children, but he had no choice, and he expected to visit them from time to time. He knew Edith was upset, but hoped she would eventually accept the divorce, even come to love another man. But he realized that was wishful thinking. Edith was passionate, obsessive, like a dragon herself. When she smiled, she showed her pointed canines, and the smile made him tremble.

Melanie was her father’s pet, educated at Swarthmore, good at languages, tender-hearted, only a little vain about all her advantages and fine qualities; she traveled in Europe for a year, she owned a Mercedes, she volunteered at the homeless shelter. She wanted to train in the law and work for a non-profit overseas, for children, perhaps in South America.

The paths of these three crossed, and there was no disentangling them. They smashed together, and their blood and juices intermingled. Edith suffered the most, though she lived. Suffering depends on the sufferer and not on the nature of the wound: Edith had a great capacity for pain, whereas he was almost oblivious, and Melanie in her youth had an undeveloped sense of it, although if she had lived she herself might have become an artist in pain.

Edith had embroidered a fine golden shawl on which were depicted Romeo in the garden gazing up at Juliet, Jason and smiling Medea sailing from Colchis, Paolo and Francesca burning in flames. Edith sewed the stories in brilliant threads, rushing to finish the shawl at the end, pricking her fingers and leaving drops of blood in the shawl. She muttered to herself, “Don’t do it.” The setting sun pierced through the bare branches outside the window and striped the crimson carpet, which seemed to bleed. She sewed scarlet flowers and leaves around her own drops of blood. When she closed her eyes, the insides of the lids were blood-red. She would get his blood. There was no choice. She dropped the shawl on the winter pavement.

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