By Kate Sullivan
Mrs. O’Reilly had an outdoor shower installed in her backyard. She was aware that the neighbors on either side might object, but she did it anyway. She asked the man to make the fence around her shower high enough so she couldn’t be seen from the triple decker next door.
Why, she thought to herself, at this late stage in her life, would I want such a thing? She didn’t quite know the answer. Every time she would try to explain it to herself, all she could conjure up were vague notions about freedom or lofty thoughts about nature.
For sixty-two years, she’d lived a simple life in this house, cooking supper, doing the laundry, attending daily Mass at St. Bridget’s, packing a lunch for her dear Bertie to take off to his job digging graves. She’d lived a practical life, and wondered what she would do with herself now that Bertie was gone. She missed him desperately, the love of him, the routine of him. She wondered if she had the strength or imagination to continue.
It wasn’t until her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wenzel dropped dead one day as she scraped the old paint from the balusters on her front porch, that Mrs. O’Reilly got to thinking of how short life was and that if she had any thoughts of anything she’d like to do before she died, she’d better do it now. Travel was too much, what with arthritis, a trick knee and a list of other little annoyances. She’d never been much for dinner parties. She’d given up her needlepoint because she could no longer decipher the directions. She never did much like shopping for new clothes. Well, to tell the truth, she found clothes tedious in general. She was happy wearing the same thing day in and day out.
In the meantime, she would go to the library, just to sit, and sometimes doze in the comfy chairs in the public reading room, a glossy home and garden magazine open in her lap. The houses pictured in the fancy magazines were the size of a city block. She enjoyed looking, but none of it was really for her.
Until she came to the spread about outdoor showers.
“Ah now, that’s it, so. Wouldn’t a nice outdoor shower be just the thing. I would feel like a queen, like I was on vacation every day.” Other than the tall fence, she didn’t have any other ideas of what she might like in her shower. A bar of soap, some shampoo, a hook for her bathrobe. Truth be told, she had never really seen an outdoor shower, except in the beautiful magazines at the library. She’d do what she could.
Mrs. O’Reilly thanked the workman and waved as he drove off in his truck. Then she went right to the backyard, lifted the latch on the door and stepped into her new shower – just to feel the space. She loved the smell of the new wood. She turned on the water, just to test it out, careful not to wet her oxfords.
She had never really given much thought to her daily shower. It was just part of her routine, like taking out the trash or sweeping the driveway.
Early the next morning, before breakfast, Mrs. O’Reilly put on her bathrobe, hooked her towel over her arm and headed out the back door. She wondered if she had every felt, really felt the cool of early morning air. She smiled and raised her head to look at the sliver of moon that still hung in the pinkening sky. She thought of Bertie and wondered what she really thought about life after death. She liked the idea that her dear love was now the air, the moon, and the sky. She took off her bathrobe hung it on the hook and felt the cool air on her skin. Have I ever really felt that? she wondered. She stepped under the warm water and just stood, letting the warmth, the cool, the wet, the moon, the sky, Bertie, the all of it, wash over her. I have never felt so alive, she thought.
In the ensuing days, Mrs. O’Reilly’s pleasure only increased. The workman had put down a large scrap of plywood, so she wouldn’t have to stand in the weeds and the mud while she showered. She could see this wasn’t a very poetic place to stand. She went back to the library to look at the pictures. There were lots of good ideas – wooden floors that looked like a Japanese temple; or small smooth stones, like what she imagined she might find in a secret cove in Greece. But perhaps stones would be a bit hard on her neuropathy? Maybe different colored flagstones, though they made her think of the front walk of the house she grew up in and she didn’t want to look backwards. She wanted to look forwards. She turned the page and there it was – just the right thing: beautiful large flat fieldstones, with Irish moss growing in the spaces between. The outdoor shower in the magazine looked like the Garden of Eden.
Mrs. O’Reilly watched as the workman finished placing the last fieldstone, and wondered aloud, Now, wouldn’t a lovely bench be just the thing in here? I could sit a while, maybe even read a bit of poetry. Perhaps two benches! Who knows what the future may bring? Mrs. O’Reilly surprised herself with such thoughts of the future.
She loved the simplicity of it all. She longed to escape the braided rugs, the upholstered sofa, the china cabinet full of wedding gifts, and all the rest of the clutter that had accumulated over the years.
Mrs. O’Reilly learned how to meditate from a little book at the library. Just sit quietly with your eyes closed and observe your thoughts as they pass by.
She began to spend more and more time in her outdoor shower. How wonderful it was just to sit naked on her little wooden bench. She became more aware of her surroundings, the aliveness of the breeze, the dark rich breath of the earth, with its lovely Irish moss. This seemed to be a place where her spirit was free to wander. She had never let her spirit wander before.
She greeted passers-by as though she was the same Mrs. O’Reilly, but she wasn’t.
She told a few neighbors about her shower, just in case they might be tempted to try. Mrs. Capobianco, who lived alone and grew African violets on her windowsill, and Betsy (she never had learned her last name), lonely, since she had decided to not replace her dear terrier, Fred, who had died a few years back. She even told dear Mailman Tom, the kind, elderly deliverer of mostly junk mail.
Mrs. O’Reilly returned to her bench and remained seated, quietly singing the Taino Chant To The Four Directions she had seen on National Geographic. After years of gospels and doctrines and special Holy Days of Obligation and the rest of it, she welcomed the simple purity of singing to Nature – to the turkey spirit of the South, the owl spirit of the West, the hummingbird of the North and the hawk of the East. That was it, a song of simplicity. The beauty of the earth and all creation – the sun, the moon, the planets, the souls of plants and animals, and the soul of dear Bertie; all one and the same. That’s what it’s all about, she meditated, as she shook the battered calabash rattle she found at the thrift shop.
Caney Ata, Caney Ata ah eh ah Caney Ata
Caney Baba, Caney Baba, ah eh ah Caney Baba.
After so much convention, so many rules, Mrs. O’Reilly was starting to swim in different streams and she knew she would not go back. She would no longer burden herself with the cares of the past. She no longer needed the approval of others. She would enter into herself fully, right here in her outdoor shower. She sang her song with such full-throated joy, she did not hear Mailman Tom knock on the shower door.
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Kate Sullivan likes to play around with words, music, and pictures. She has written and illustrated children’s picture books “On Linden Square” and “What Do You Hear?”, sung chansons at NYC Mme Tussaud’s Wax Museum, and her fugue-ish ‘Fugitum est’ was performed at Carnegie Hall by The Kremlin Chamber Orchestra as part of their tribute to Mozart. She paints ostriches and likes to play the musical saw to impress people. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines. Her flash fiction Mudlarking at the Beauport was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.