Have You Ever Paid the Ferryman?

I held the phone tightly to my ear so I wouldn’t lose my connection with him. His confident and familiar voice kept me from losing control and going into a panic. He navigated me safely across the bridge all the way to his neighborhood.

As I parked the car, I had a moment of disbelieving that I was there, and from the sidewalk to his home, nerves of happy butterflies filled my stomach. When I reached his gate, I looked down at my feet, inhaled deeply and rang the bell. My knees buckled underneath me. I grabbed hold of the metal spindles in front of me, steadying myself and waiting for him to appear.

A few moments later, he came to get me and stood still for a moment on the other side. He reached up and wrapped his hands around the spindles above mine looking down at me. I blushed, embarrassed at my lack of composure, and silently begged my knees to stop. He didn’t take his eyes off me, meeting me with a sort of feigned shyness, lifting his eyelids delicately in the dark shadows of his hat brim. I looked back, staring up into his big celestial blue eyes with a bit of feigned innocence, and then whispered to myself, ‘Ah. You are a master of disguises.’ and he opened the gate for me to pass through.

After we smoothed the awkwardness of seeing one another again, he offered to take me on a tour of his home. I stopped him before he could lead me upstairs to his living room, asking what was behind the door to my left.

“There?” he said, a bit puzzled and let out a chuckle, “Let’s go in.”

He led me into the cool, empty space following me quietly so as not to disturb my reminiscence. “This used to be my studio,” he said, softly shutting the door behind him and approaching me with a folding chair. “I’m a filmmaker now, but I’m a sculptor by trade. Here,” he said, “Have a seat.” and motioned to me to sit like he was a waiter at a fancy restaurant.

I sat daintily on the edge of the chair like I was wearing a fancy gown, and he tipped his hat to me. Then, he proceeded to embellish an imaginary show in the air moving his hands and arms around like a mime, describing the impressive studio that once was. “Here’s where my kiln sat.” he said, motioning around the shape of it. “And here’s where the pipes were,” he gestured along the rafters. “They all led over to here,” he continued to move about, “and here’s where I kept all my casting equipment.”

I followed his story until it wrapped itself around me like a blanket. “Yes, I see.” I said looking around. ‘I remember.’ my body said silently, and we gave one another a knowing smile.

He soon guided me back to the tour and as we climbed the stairs, he’d pause from time to time showing me sculptures he’d made, or framed photos of bigger works he’d done. He would gaze upon them fondly, smiling at the story of them, and gently feeling their texture before moving on. As he continued leading me up the stairs to his living room, I giggled at a pink willow tree waiting for us on the landing, its branches bobbing happily a top a silvery trunk. He turned and giggled with me.

From that day forward, he would be my teacher, and I’d come to him to learn the fine art of storytelling through editing as we worked to finish my film. At the end of our tutoring sessions, he would invite me to stay and indulge in a sweet tete-a-tete, over a hot cup of tea.

In each of our encounters, I noticed that he was doing something quite remarkable and kind. He had a way of weaving in certain words when we talked that were a panacea for every ill spoken to me by my ex. It was as if he knew what had been said, what poisonous words had been slung, but I had never mentioned any of that to him. I kept that part of my life secret because I wanted it to be a million miles away from me and I didn’t want it to taint even a moment of our time together. Yet somehow, he knew. And in some magical way, he would speak the opposite of each one of those wounding words at just the right time and in just the right moments, reversing the damage. His words landed like seeds in my heart.

Our time spent together was the only thing that brought me happiness during the difficult months of my marital separation. It was the only place I didn’t feel my frayed nerves and worn out my mind. When I was with him, I could rest. His anchored presence provided safe harbor, and whatever knowing we had between us meant he could reach me intimately, and that’s where the medicine needed to go.

It was he who told me I could be anything I wanted. It was he who told me I could become the dancer I had always wanted to be. It was he who told me he’d wasted fifteen years of his life over a breakup so to choose differently. And it was he who told me that he’d never said those things at all, that it was me.

One afternoon, while we were having tea, he stood up in the center of the room and started saying something. I was lost in feeling for him. As he spoke, I couldn’t hear him and turned to look out the window to my left. There I saw rising to the sky several plump, angel-winged, cupids on a road of clouds leading up to the heavens. ‘That is to my left.’ I thought in wonderment, ‘And this is to my right.’ I looked at him and we locked our gaze staring endlessly into one another. My heart longed and ached for him, and in that moment of transcendence, I said in groaning whispers, “I miss you. I miss you.”

Just then, a golden light flickered in and through the corner of his eye, like a superimposed trail of stardust that I somehow knew and understood like a cosmic code. I stayed motionless, acknowledging it internally, and let it be.

On the final day of our tutoring sessions, he called me over to his computer to show me an editing technique but supposedly chose the wrong file. As it played, I recognized it, but I couldn’t place it at first. I watched as people painted blue and other tribal colors, engaged in a kind of mock ceremony, parading around while chanting, and then it hit me. It was a clip from the film I’d seen on TV over a year and some months prior.

“Oops! Wrong file.” he said with a laugh, suddenly stopping the clip.

“Wait a minute,” I gulped. “Where did you get that?!”

“What do you mean?” he said, twisting to look up at me with a smile. “I made it.”

In the ensuing weeks, I would be preparing to move to the city for good to start a brand-new life all on my own, giving into my little girl dreams of being a dancer and performer one day. After all that time with my teacher, I’d regained the self-confidence I needed to give it a shot, to jump off the cliff once again and into the unknown.

Each time I arrived, he’d looked slightly different, changing his appearance, and becoming increasingly glamorous.

As my move got closer, my teacher invited me to have lunch with him because he said he wanted to share a story with me about something very exciting. While I would’ve normally jumped at the chance, I instead felt an eerie sense of hesitation. He didn’t invite me just that once, but several times thereafter, always finding a new reason to lure me with. Each time I arrived, he’d looked slightly different, changing his appearance, and becoming increasingly glamorous. He tried to entice me into the storyline of his new film by evoking my imagination and interplaying the scenes with everything around us as we walked. He intermingled the sidewalks with the flow of my skirt or leaping over potholes with the bounce and sway of my hips, or window displays with the collage of my reflection. I enjoyed the attention and the creative weaving between worlds, but I still felt hesitant at letting him charm me.

Then one day he messaged me elated that he found a brilliant artist to draw the storyboards for his new film. “Wait until you see his work!” he exclaimed, and before I knew it, I was sitting across the table from the artist in an ode-to-Americana diner with my teacher discussing plans to commission his work. We looked at one another and smirked, ‘This kid is going to be huge!’

The next time I came to visit, something had changed. I sat where I normally did in his living room, but the music of the walls wasn’t playing anymore, and the soft natural light had turned to stark contrasts. I sat down awkwardly, uncomfortable in the new surroundings, and watched as my teacher paced back-and-forth, wretched, and irritated, elaborating a reason why I should pay for the artist to paint the storyboards.

My reticence only further incited him, and I watched as his calm, cool demeanor dissolve into palpable anger boiling beneath the surface. I was unnerved at his cunning attempts to get me to pay and wrestled with the thought of giving in. The price would be hundreds of dollars, more than I could really afford but it was more than that, it was that he seemed to be changing before my eyes.

Suddenly, he snapped and lost his patience snarling, “We both know this opportunity can’t be wasted!”

With reluctance, I agreed to pay, and when the artist finished, I rode to meet my teacher for the last time. He greeted me with an inflated sense of himself wearing a wide-brimmed hat and purple boa. He stared at me as I sat down on his couch beneath the broad bay window. There were no cherubs outside anymore, just the sounds of street noise and neighbors fighting. He left the room for a moment and then returned hugging a cross-body case tightly to his side.