Sideways rain still soaks her, even under an umbrella. Wind swoops it inside out, some Mary Poppins shit. Yanks it out of her hands. She never has enough hands anyway. Lunch bag, purse, backpack hanging off a shoulder. She’d rather wear an extra-large lululemon parka bought on sale that covers her thighs, twee galoshes her daughter left in the closet when she went to school. The hood may slip off her head, but she never trusts umbrellas on their own.
She never saw the Tejon Ranch Umbrellas in person. You can google photos of the brown hills above Highway 5 spotted with mammoth yellow manmade sprouts. A cross between radioactive marigolds and forsythia. Christo and Jeanne Claude intended for them to stay up for more than eighteen days, but the winds messed up their plans. A gust uprooted one from its concrete base. It wound up in the air, some Mary Poppins shit, and crushed a woman enjoying art. Later, a crane operator died after they ordered the dismantling of a different set in Tokyo–these were the color of bluebells.
The Blooming, they called the installations—the language of spring, not fall. The language of life. But art killed.
In college, she had a boyfriend, a surfer with a chipped tooth, golden skin and curly hair. Their first night together, he showed her photos from his time in California–the yellow blooms. He was there, October of 91, stood in that spot an hour before things flew south. The beautiful boy with the chipped tooth who still smiled so easily showed her the clouds darkening, the tiny dots of people, the mass of grey coming towards him. He described the wind picking up and his decision to bolt. Just in time. He said she hadn’t shown too many people those pictures. Too disturbing. A gravesite. A car wreck he avoided. A spine breaking wipeout that never happened.
If you live long enough, if you’re lucky, you leave a few piles of twisted metal behind. Moments when you sense danger and evade, turn down the right street, wait the right amount of time to grab your keys and walk out the door. Or maybe it’s not a choice at all. Something goes wrong that saves your life–a missed flight, a cancelled appointment, an awkward conversation when your husband says you might want to check out a lump he felt the night before.
That beautiful boy and her didn’t last the semester. Later, when she got sick, she tried to find him on Facebook, but he never responded. Sometimes, your near misses send you in opposite directions. Sometimes you don’t make that choice–either of you. Something goes wrong. And your lives go on.
She has seen the brown hills above Highway 5 in person since her doctor declared her clean, but they’re empty now. People who were there when art that killed speckled the land say they still imagine yellow blossoms over traffic–piles of metal that move 80 miles per hour to their next death, their next blooming. She moves too—puts on her jacket and her boots, pulls over her hood, and tries her best to stay dry.