CROSSING THE RAINBOW BRIDGE By Patricia A. Stefanovic A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton. Florida August 2002 CROSSING THE RAINBOW BRIDGE By Patricia A. Stefanovic This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate· s thesis advisor. Dr. Johnny Payne. Department of English. and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. ~~Colle~e Dean. The Dorotllv F. Schmidt of Arts and Leuers lUcttww~~ ~ Vice Provost Date ii ABSTRACT Author: Patricia A. Stefanovic Title: Crossing The Rainbow Bridge Institution: Aorida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Johnny Payne Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2002 Crossing The Rainbow Bridge is a novel set in 1971. Key West. Aorida. The no\'el is told in two narrative forms. using the viewpoints of the two main characters. The first of which is told through a third person narrative familiar to the novers female protagonist. Sara Bailey. The second viewpoint is that of the protagonist's mother. told in first person narrative in the nover s final chapter. The impetus of the nover s focus begins with the sudden and accidental death of the protagonist's mother. Initially, the mother's character is revealed mainly through retrospective narrative in the form of the protagonist's dreams. As the novel progresses. the narrative relies on the present moment consciousness of the protagonist. That is. following a traditional coming of age story. as the protagonist learns to cope with the death of her mother. the language of the novel relies more heavily on her voice. and less on the third person retrospective narrative to tell the story. Ill Crossing the Rainbow Bridge By Patricia Stefanovic Chapter One Art and morals are one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love. and so art and morals. is the discovery of reality. Iris Murdoch The macaw's scream pierced her dream. waking her. She wanted to go back to sleep. yet she waited for its next call. Her room was hot already. She had meant to shut the window last night before she had gone to bed. tired of the Perez's staccato stream of shouting in Spanish and broken English. coming in steady intervals from next door and across the yard. the angry words targeting her window as accurately as an assassin's bullet. She had opened her window initially hoping for a breeze. But the season had changed and the current of air to pass through her backyard and into her room was little more than a night's breath of air drawn straight from the Atlantic. a teaser for them. and an impending reminder that May in Key West was only the beginning of the summer. Black and white photographs of ballerinas posed in positions one through four posted on her wall seemed to mock her lethargy. Right foot forward. left foot out. they commanded. Plie. Up. Down. The ignored creaking of the knees. And with arms in delicate synergy, leg and toes extended beyond ligament's .., reason. their bodies exuded an impossible energy. How many rehearsals had her father missed? She had stopped dancing (and counting) the year they moved from Tennessee. She wasn't sure who was more relieved; she. who had grown two inches the summer before. or Miss Irene. the graying instructor. whose broken English barely concealed her annoyance at Sara's tallness. No. Sara. your legs like this. Not the ostrich but the crane. And in the meantime. all this while. she would have rather been riding her Appaloosa. more satisfied with the animal's four legs. than in her own two. Her father. in trying to make it up to her. took her with him the first week they arrived to sleep on the submarine tender they nicknamed "Happy Howie". But it hadn't worked because neither had known that she was claustrophobic. Later. when they arrived home early her mother had asked. -Did she get sick? -No. She was afraid. I think. It was too much. Noisy. But it hadn"t been the noise that had bothered her. The room was small and hot. and the bed. a narrow cot suspended against a steel lined wall. made her feel exposed. The room reeked of the same oil her father used to clean his Remington. But the cramped room and the tiny bed had made her feel dizzy. and she couldn't stop thinking that if something should happen. a fire. that she would never be able to find her way out of the maze of identical steel lined rooms at the back of the boat. But she couldn't tell him that because he seemed so excited to have her there. eager to explain all the things in the room. When she had begun to 3 cry after he corrected her when she called the bed a cot. he had looked confused. Honey. It's no big deal. I thought you wanted to come. I did. But I want to go home. Okay. he said. we'll go then. -Bring her inside. You aren·t staying? -No. the tour starts at seven. I have to go back. Even at that hour she could hear the disappointment in her mother·s voice. His lips grazed her cheek. the dark morning stubble scratching her. She wanted to tell him to take her back. that she had changed her mind. But when she turned around. she heard the front door closing. She slept in her mother·s bed that night pressed against her back. comforted by the warmth of her mother's shoulder against her face. The year they came to Key West Lenny"s was selling ground beef on special for seventy-five cents a pound. and the white-haired ex-president was landing on a tiny strip of tarmac outside Stock Island. The first year her mother had enrolled her in the all-girls Catholic school. which she knew. she was going to hate it the minute she stepped inside. The Cuban girls called her names they thought she didn "t understand. Flaca. Chica. She was only able to redeem herself to them the day she beat Margarita. a chunky pock-marked girl at tetherball. After that. they mostly left her alone. but they still made fun of her. saluting her when she walked by. calling her a brat. When she had transferred to the public high school. though. it had taken her awhile to adjust to the transition of friends that passed through her circle at school; an endless round of almost friends made 4 each year. the promising exchange of numbers and favorites. and the sad shock to hear Mrs. Bishop announce once again that so and so· s father had just been transferred back to San Diego; and what a shame it was really. to lose such a fine student. She wondered if all the good students had left. what the teachers thought of the ones remaining. the ones whose fathers (like hers) were stationed long­ term. What would they announce for her if she left? Her seat on the fourth row from the door. fifth seat back. would remain empty. her absence gone unnoticed. Would she have missed seeing Mr. Murray at the gesturing point of the history lecture. the balding flat of his head in perpetual motion. moving and diagramming across the face of the chalkboard: his body taut with the unexpressed anticipation in offering how the Druids had nothing to do with Stonehenge at all? Amid the hushed curses in Spanish last night had been the sounds of the night birds and the intermittent high-pitched yakking of the Perez's brown-spotted terrier. who sneaked secret pees across the backyard when it thought no one was there. But from her bedroom she had an open view of the yard. Now walking people created click-clack. clack-click. that synchronizes the bird's morning soliloquy. Across the graveled yard. in black pants clad leg. from polished black shoes. came the steady clack-click. and in a lower pitch comes its companion sound in the quick but delicate drop of heel to toe-Amelia and Mr. Perez-walking arm in arm as they cut through sara·s yard on their way to work. A line of laundry hung from an elbow-shaped branch of a gumbo-limbo tree. Its reddish brown trunk was covered in moss and bright green twists of a vanilla orchid vine. 5 A sound coming from her brother's bedroom caused her to shift her weight in the bed. He was listening to BTO. She looked out the window to see her mother kneeling next to the tree scooping something off the grass. The tree reminded her of the one in Tennessee. They had called the black walnut tree the old man: because of its color. and the wrinkled bark that oozed a moldy pungency. Years later when she thought of that time she couldn't remember what their house had looked like. only that it had set at the top of a rolling hill of bright green that faced the uneven peaks of Lookout mountain.