Sweet Water Read Free Page A

smooth turn on a bike around a narrow bend: the way your body and mind lean into the curve simultaneously, as if one with gravity; the way you feel lifted up, as if on wings.
    As I learned about throwing clay, I taught my hands how to move in to center it, how to glide up the sides of the bowl to cut the excess or save a weak rim. The process became intuitive; my mind threw out messages, and my hands worked them into the clay, responding to unplanned patterns and rhythms. Working with clay, I decided, was like being in a relationship: as you move with and against it, as it moves with and against you, you put part of yourselfinto it and it takes on part of you and supports you. That’s why you have to work quickly; you need to do it, as my teacher said, without thinking too much.
    I could feel the energy in the air, my energy, as I worked through the afternoon, my mind racing beyond thought. When I looked up I was surprised to find the daylight faded, the room dark and quiet, the flowing shapes in front of me the only signs of turbulence.

T here was a time before all of this when I was young and Amory touched my body as if it were a shrine. When I was beautiful, or thought I was because he thought so. When we shared secrets instead of hoarding them. When we stayed together not because of the children, not because of the past, but just because. When, if I had danced, we would have danced in step.
    There are so many ways to tell this story.
        
This is the story I told my children.
    The first time I ever saw your father he was playing the piano at a party in Chattanooga. He was tall, even sitting down, with large ears and great big watery-blue eyes. I had never met a man who could play the piano, and I was impressed. Everyone was singing along. I even remember the song; it was “Mood Indigo.”
    Your father looked up, across the crowded room, straight into my eyes, and smiled at me. And then he sang the words directly to me: “You ain’t never been blue ‘til you’ve had that mood indigo.” My girlfriends pushed me forward, and I mouthed the words back at him, and soon we were singing it together, as if we were the only people in the room.
    When the song ended he asked my name and I told him it was Constance Whitfield.
    “That’s a very pretty name,” he said. “Mine’s Amory Clyde. How do you like it?”
    I told him it was real nice.
    “Good,” he said. “I’m glad you like it, because it’s going to be yours someday.”
    Four months later, we were married in a small Baptist ceremony in my parents’ house at 11 Edgeley Drive in Chattanooga. My dress was silk, simple and white, with embroidered rosebuds and silvery beads, and it came almost to the floor. Your father wore a blue suit with a black tie. Your aunt Clara was maid of honor, and she wore a rose-colored dress with matching ribbons. Granddaddy Whitfield gave me away. For our honeymoon, we went to Atlanta. I’d never been there before. We stayed at the Sewanee Inn, and when we got there your father carried me across the threshold into a room that was filled with flowers, top to bottom. There was a piano in the lobby of the hotel, and that night your father started to play and people gathered around. It was just like being at that party where we’d first met, except that now I had a wedding band on my finger and our smiles weren’t shy anymore. We sang “Mood Indigo,” and everybody moved aside. I harmonized, singing soprano to his strong alto, and at the end everyone clapped. When we got back to our room, we found a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of ice, compliments of the hotel. And the next morning they served us breakfast in bed.
    Ellen would ask, “Was he handsome, Ma?”
    “I thought he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen.”
    “Was it love at first sight?” This from Elaine.
    “From the moment I saw him.”
    “Would you do it again?” Horace wanted to know.
    “I can’t imagine life without my three beautiful