Foiled
by Angela Townsend

Everything is sentimental in a time of triumph. I discovered this when I reached the end of the tin foil roll. Standing in my kitchen, the final sheet in sight, I wondered how I could make this a keepsake.

Maybe I could take that last ripply rectangle and coax it into a swan or a Brontosaurus.

Maybe the Reynolds Wrap box could be reborn as a shelter for scrunchies.

Maybe there were other ways to honor Awful August.

I had acquired this household product when the dragonflies buzzed and the Perseids played. Mere weeks into living alone, I discovered I could not only acquire a toaster oven of my own choosing, but also command veggie burgers as I saw fit.

I could set them on silver magic carpets, keeping my chipper white appliance pristine. I could assault them with 450’ dragon fire, scorching them into crisp pucks.

I could eat and experiment and hold my house without anyone holding me in contempt.

I found myself daily astonished. Contrary to bleak predictions, I was capable of rejiggering the dryer vent when it misbehaved. Against all odds, I remembered to change the air filters. Surely attracting the awe of angels, I did not destroy the dishwasher.

Somehow, I even accomplished feats such as feeding myself, keeping not one but both cats alive, and remaining generally ambulatory, at times even with a shine in my step.

This was all despite the fact that Awful August was upon us.

I conducted experiments, praying God would help me to conduct myself with grace. I prayed for V.’s family before I would take a bite of dinner.

I played with V.’s least favorite cleaning products and made the house smell like hooligan Gain and lawless strawberries.

I piled my hair high atop my head, then cut it short.

I watched good men have good fun on The Tonight Show until my laughter shook pillars.

I erased pages.

I wore ruts in the road to Goodwill until the old man with the eye patch smiled at me knowingly: today, pajamas from V.’s mother; tomorrow, jungles of burdened stuffed animals. It made me happy picturing Costco fleece and Gund birds finding new life, somewhere they wouldn’t have to stand in for flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.

I made mistakes by the roll, dropping glass and shopping unwisely and snapping at my mother when I was scared.

But now I was my own foil, and my fouls were not met with swordplay. I swept up the pieces. I resolved to do better tomorrow. I apologized and was forgiven.

I prayed for his family before I would take a bite of dinner.

My mother, God’s poet, God’s planet, God’s grace in blonde, blocked out two Zoom hours every morning. Her herbal-tea eyes, the comfort of my life, boiled over. We did the last five years over. We traveled the full length of the cosmos, redeeming time, foiling the rancid wedge between us.

When V.’s plants and couches and kitchenware departed, she cheered the void and filled it with pastels. She brandished Samuel L. Jackson’s entire vocabulary. She spent thirty-six hours redecorating my empty condo, naming it the Queen’s Garden.

She forgave me and refused to admit anything to forgive. The crown sat light atop my head.

And then Awful August made me lightheaded.

Late-night V. calls pierced promises of God’s peace. The edge of midnight brought threats to climb my balcony, convince the court to command my cats, tow me like a dinghy to marital counselling.

He would scorch me. He would save me. He would take his life. He would take me in his sacred love.

I was not his for the taking.

I was taking care of business, shaking like the last square of foil.

My friends toasted my tries and confessed they “knew” before they knew. They knew. How did they know? How did they all know, even the ones who are always the last to know?

They charged me to reclaim my name, give no ground, live no more as a blanched ballerina en pointe. They observed that I looked younger. They admitted that I had looked terrible.

The shower drain mysteriously stopped clogging, an anomaly since it had surely been my hair to blame.

A work picnic became an uncorked coronation, volunteers and valiants polishing my tiara and amputating the long tail of “unlovable.”

Halfway through the picnic, he called. He would let me keep the cats if I went to counselling. God spoke to him in the afternoon sun. Wasn’t I the one who always said God still spoke? Now he understood. Now. Now. Now. OK?

I attempted to negotiate. I got scorched. I got sunflowers. I got scared. My Mom got scared.

And then I got sentimental for myself.

When the man opened the cage, sleepy and cavalier, he had five years of evidence that the bird would tremble.

But the bird saw something glinting in the tree, not tin foil but dignity.

The bird realized it was her reflection.

And the bird flew.

And the bird’s courage is still new.

And the bird can let Awful August drop in The Lover’s ocean.

photo Harry Rajchgot