Clouds in My Coffee
My "Scarlet Yearnings" review, story by story: "Love Me, Daddy".
Ever notice how women marry their fathers? Or their brothers? Men are attracted to their mothers?
Not literally, I mean, but so often a partner has many of the same qualities as a parent. In a touchable, allowable, approved form.
Other stories in this collection are gems, hard and brilliant. This one, not so much.
This story is a dewdrop, full of pure brilliance, sparkling light in a pristine, perfect, shimmering fragiity. It is the essence of beauty, the beauty of beauty, the heart of yearning captured for a brief, shining moment.
Try to hold it, it vanishes. Study it intently, it evaporates.
And yet, just for a few moments, we are one with something special.
Scarlet Ibis James has given us one of these moments. It sparkles from different directions. There is a rainbow inside, lighting up our wondering eyes as we try to capture and understand its special, fleeting magic.
Following on from the previous story - The First Time She Met Her Father - this one takes the theme in a new direction.
Scarlet, now writing in first person though it is plain that this is fiction, not memory, takes us into a Harlem coffee shop where she looks out of an old window onto a busy street.
The tall, lanky man with dirty blond hair, wearing a jet-black long wool coat glided into view. My eyes snagged on him, pupils involuntarily widening to take in his imposing figure.
Are you the healing balm I need? I wondered.
The ache of my recent breakup was still fresh. Yet, with a primal urgency, my body and mind were already restless, searching for a new connection. It felt like a base instinct—a desperate need to fill the void left behind.
My best friend would say I had Daddy issues. Yeah, I’d say so too.
She’s vulnerable, suffering not just from a breakup but the loss of her loving, supportive father.
There’s a detail in the sight of this man on the street that catches her eye and takes her back.
There’s the ticking of time in her mind’s ear as she thinks back over a series of past lovers, each one sweet, each one somehow not quite satisfying, flawed in some subtle - or obvious - way.
Might this man, different and yet familiar, be a new chapter?
But that’s not important right now
Another writer might explore the relationship. Tangled limbs, sweaty writhing, deep kisses and so on.
Scarlet hints at this but we aren’t taken more than a pace or so down that difficult, dangerous, and disturbing road. At least not in this story.
Instead, we are one with the thoughts of this narrator woman, looking at her feelings and examining them.
These feelings are their own tangle and now we touch on issues of love and desire.
Is there anything wrong with feeling a need for love? It’s not going to happen by sitting back and watching, is it now?
There are choices to be made, steps to be taken, and thoughts to be had. Sometimes the first steps are thrilling and of course many times they are better than the reality found down the path.
Rather than the godlike voice of the author telling us what’s what, we are shown the thoughts of the narrator and we can connect or reject as we see fit, each choice containing its delicious delights and dangers.
As the story unfolds I’m enthralled by each new sentence to see what is now revealed or examined.
Scarlet leads us through the minefield, each step marked by sensation. Of sweat, of body image, of clothing and colour. We are there with the narrator in a Harlem coffee shop, drinking in the atmosphere, and enjoying each fleeting moment.
More yearning
The story comes to an end before any resolution but it’s good like that. This collection is about yearning and love, and here the narrator takes the reader to the end of the high-dive board.
We’re standing looking down, imagining the thrill and the peril. We might be safe and fully clad right now, but if we step off and plunge by the time we hit the water we’ll be nude and moving fast toward supreme excitement or awkward embarrassment.
We hold the dewdrop in our gaze for a moment, enjoying the connection with sparkling beauty, lifted into a realm of light and hope.
Here is the yearning, the love, the desire, the promise of the book in a new form. Is this moment one of careful choice? Of random chance? Of confidence or risk?
Scarlet puts us in the position of enjoying that moment. Secure in our easy reading chair, we’re not in that actual position of deciding where to go, of stepping off the board into what might be a rocky ride or a rollicking romance.
We can admire the beauty of the moment, we can sigh, we can turn the page.
I loved this story
750 words, give or take, and again each one works hard to give the reader full value. Savour the moment, go back and enjoy the craft, and sit with Scarlet in her Harlem café enjoying a world that goes beyond the physical.
There are layers and depths here and that is the charm.
You’ll have to read the book for this story. There is no free preview on Amazon. Not more than a few words, anyway.
It’s worth it.
Go to Scarlet’s website, read what she has to say, enjoy the video launch highlights, check out her stories, blogs, newsletters. And buy the book.
I’ll be back in a day or so with another look at another story. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this. I’ve read the stories but in my reviews I pick them up, feel their texture, inhale their scent and give thanks for the experience.
Thank you, Scarlet!
Britni
My look at the first story in the book.
