Excerpt from Playing Botticelli by Liza Nelson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

But artist and mother are separate sensibilities sharing side-by-side space inside my brain. The mother side saw only disaster. Maternal awareness moved in slow motion from Dylan's eyes to my knees, still covered with slime. Then I heard an intake of breath, hers and mine in discordant harmony.

"Shit."

I was stark naked. I grabbed an old shirt off the stool and buttoned it around me, not knowing whether to giggle or to sob. Even now the memory makes me smile and blush together. The absurdity. Those two painstakingly punked-out kids shocked by my less-than-youthful, far less-than-perfect body.

Needless to say, the mood was broken. I could not find my way back to any inner wisdom that day.



Driving along Highway 12 this afternoon, though, watching the clouds stretch over the Gulf as the radio cut from the news to a commercial for strawberry wine coolers, I decided my dream vision out on the Point had been some kind of real premonition: a sealed black room, a sky the color of the cafeteria ceiling, which is pretty spooky itself when you think about it, blood and death. My God, what had I seen coming? Someone who believes as strongly as I do in trusting my unconscious should have paid closer attention. Let no sign slip away, remain on constant guard, I began berating myself.

Then I saw the bicycle. Just barely noticed it, the way you half see a thing on the side of the road as you drive by. If I had not lifted my foot halfway off the gas and shifted my glance as I leaned across the seat for my cigarettes, the bike probably would not have registered at all, but in my state of heightened attentiveness it did register. As all wrong.

There were two bikes actually. One lay on its side. The other stood upended, halfway through a decrepit guard rail, the pedals revolving furiously in the breeze. I forced myself to get out of Miranda and walked toward the blue two-wheeler, an old-fashioned boy's Schwinn. Not Dylan's, was my first thought, as if Dylan has been near her bike in a year. Then I heard the cries and began to run.

A young boy, no more than seven or eight, lay several feet down the embankment. The bushy overgrowth had cut his fall, possibly saved him. Let him be breathing, I begged the powers that be, before I saw his face. He was awfully still, but his eyes stared up full of terrified life.

"There's blood. There's blood. Is he going to die? Is he going to die?" A second boy, the one whose screams I'd heard from the road, rushed at me as soon as I scrambled down to them. Tears were streaking sandy stains down his cheeks. He grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go.

He started sobbing, "We snuck off. I knew we shouldn't. I knew we shouldn't. Oh, is he going to die?"

"No, of course not." I needed to calm him down but had no idea how. "What's your name?"

"Philip."

"And his?"

"David."

"Well, Philip, let me take a look at David."

I let Philip keep hold of my shirtsleeve while I bent over the injured child. There was blood, red and oozy, a cut above his forehead, but it did not look terribly deep.

"Do you hurt real bad anywhere, David?" Dumb question but at least I kept my voice calm and used his name. I'd read somewhere that in a medical emergency you should use the victim's name whenever possible. The boy barely moved his lips.

"I hurt okay." Whatever way I wanted to interpret that one, pain or terror.

"You're going to be fine. We're going to take good care of you." The gears had kicked in I guess, emergency automatic. By some act of fortune I had thrown a bathing suit and towel in the backseat this morning. I stanched the cut with the suit, and used the towel as a blanket. Whether he had broken bones or internal injuries I could not tell, but I was not about to move him. I flagged down a car of teenagers and sent them off to phone 911.

From Play Botticelli, Liza Nelson. (c) December 1999, Liza Nelson used by permission.