University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1999 Riparia| [Short stories] Danis Banks The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Banks, Danis, "Riparia| [Short stories]" (1999). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 3447. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/3447 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. M I llMliw Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY The University of MONTANA Permission is granted by the author to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. ** Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature ** Yes, I grant permission No, I do not grant permission /<? ^ Author's Signature. Date (7, Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's explicit consent. RIPARIA by Danis Banks B.A. Brown University, 1993 presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts The University of Montana 1999 Approved by: Chairperson Dean, Graduate School S-l 7-<7? Date UMI Number: EP34091 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent on the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI' Dissertation Publishing UMI EP34091 Copyright 2012 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest* ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Rites of Passage by Elephant Duck In the Sand Oscar Night The Razor's Edge Tigris & Euphrates, Chapter One Tigris & Euphrates, Chapter Two Animal Husbandry Rites of Passage by Elephant It wasn't that the house was so big, it was the cleanliness I found appealing. There was an order. It made sense. Carter was out, his parents away, and I sat in the den alone, inhaling his dad's leather chair. It had deep cracks and smelled like tobacco generally and scalp at the top, where his head must have rested. Carter and I had been in love for just over a month, and this was my first time sleeping over. We met at our Quaker-founded high school, the People's Prep, in Brooklyn. I noticed him staring at me in our U.S. History class, and knew he'd be my boyfriend that year. When we first kissed—at my mother's loft, after school—my knees buckled and I fell to the rug. He came down too, our mouths still attached. We were seventeen then, but it's a year later now and everything's different. While Carter bought the condoms, I slid off the chair to flip through his dad's record collection. It was mostly jazz and blues, like my father's, although without the sixties folk and Ravi Shankar. The elevator doors opened and I glanced up at the redness staining Carter's cheeks, and my stomach muscles tensed. He dropped his keys into a ceramic bowl on the front-hall table, and his boots left brown puddles across the shiny parquet floor to where I sat, grinning. I eyeballed the small, brown-paper bag that crinkled when he set it on the couch. We'd planned to lose my virginity that Saturday. "Continue?" he said, sitting next to me. We greedily resumed making out, his cold hands in my hair, my warm ones over his back. He scooped and carried me into his parent's bedroom, scuffing the walls with my sneakers and us laughing, which made me less nervous. It was about four-thirty, I remember, because the light was golden from the afternoon sun through the bare trees of Central Park. 1 2 After we noticed a smudge of blood on his parents' sheets, and after he reassured me that the maid would take care of it, we clung to one another, trembling. Mr. and Mrs. Knight arrived from their country house in Greenwich the following day, and having never met them, I awkwardly stood at Carter's side. I thought she looked like an airline stewardess or a former beauty pageant contestant who never got very far on the circuit because of a slightly crooked nose and a large, heart-shaped ass well-displayed in tight-fitting slacks, I noticed, when she hung her coat in the hall-closet. Mr. Knight resembled a professional-basketball coach or the host of one of the brainier game shows. "Well, she's pretty as a picture," his mother said, looking at Carter while she delicately shook my hand. "I told you," he said. Mr. Knight pulled me into his chest and kissed the top of my head. "Hey sport," he said. Trapped in his armpit with my neck craned at a painful angle and my nose mashed against his itchy, wool-smelling sweater, I braced for a nouggie. At last, he released me and held out my hands. "It's Saribel, right?" he said, strangely altering the vowels. "Sari's fine," I said. "Make yourself at home," Mrs. Knight said, "and we'll go out for an early dinner, how's that?" She shuffled through the mail and disappeared down the hall, her unbuttoned Oxford billowing like sails. "Sounds good, Mom," Carter said, throwing his too-heavy arm over my shoulders. He led me to the den while Mr. Knight remained in the foyer with his hands on his hips. "Carter boy!" he said, following his wife to the back wing and their bedroom, with its two walk-in closets and those his-and-hers bathrooms. "Why do they have two?" I'd asked earlier, in their bed. "Romance? It's probably why they're still married." "Do you think?" 3 "No," he said, bringing me closer. "They're still in love, and they're good people." "Good people get divorced," I said. "True, but my dad says it's like Humpty-Dumpty—once broken, always broken." I decided to take this as an indication of Carter's marriageability. In the den, he channel-surfed and I watched. We had the same taste in TV, which is important. I was feeling ecstatic over my position as his girlfriend and ridding myself of virgin status. We'd spent the weekend in his beautiful apartment and were soon going out to eat with adults who seemed intelligent and kind. Everything felt right, and I'd never been so content on this side of river. I was living with my mother in Brooklyn then, and my only overnight sojourns into Manhattan were to stay at my dad's plant-choked apartment in the West Village that smelled of litter box and spores. His wife Stephanie, a yoga instructor, grew mushrooms under the sink and in the bottom of closets. I'd be searching for a tennis racket or the basketball, only to discover Dad's biggest salad bowl brimming with gray shiny fungus. After sufficient mitosis, Steph would make teas from her bacterial experiments. At his place, I slept in a loftbed, my face three feet from the ceiling. Airless and hot, it felt like a coffin and was right above their bedroom, which gave me insomnia from worrying I'd overhear the Tantric sex my mother said they were into. Also, I had to see my fourteen-year-old brother, Redwood, who must be called Charles or he won't respond. My dad, a lawyer, issued some fake papers to let Redwood "change" his name when he turned ten, but he's still Redwood Steingarten on his passport and birth certificate, a fact he denies. I felt more comfortable among these forest-green walls, blown-glass paperweights from the Museum shop across the street, bronze statuettes of slim horses on the mantle, Fifth Avenue and the park, and my good-looking boyfriend with perfect teeth whose elbow dug into my thigh while he stared at the oversized television set, his mouth ajar. Their walls were shelved with thick art books and decorated by historical maps of the Scottish isles well-framed in gold; my folks preferred obscure collections of poetry, fat candles stuck to 4 swap-shop coffee tables, thirty-year-old mandalas, and Buddha shrines. Carter rested his head on my legs, and I wove the soft, straight hair into tiny braids while we waited for dinner. In the Knights' car, a driver at the helm, Mr. Knight sat in front and Mrs. Knight with us in back. Her perfume, though delicious, made my temples throb. "So, Sari," she said, turning her face to me like a klieg light, "Carter says you live in Brooklyn." When she moved, her clothes rustled expensively. I nodded and said, "With my mother." Mrs. Knight's gaze made me insecure, her features so neat and tidy, the face well- poised. My family's looks were the opposite, swathed by a wide, sloppy brush. Our genetic canvas had clashing hues that dripped and bled, while the Knights were like Monet's water lilies—pale, harmonious, pretty.