A Nap, The Fog

Last year, while helping my grandparents, I reached the end of my rope. The situation was difficult. I’m not sure that matters all that much, though; sometimes I think reaching the end of your rope is a mysterious process that does not have a one-to-one relationship with the difficulty of your situation. Regardless, I had reached it. I had the horrible consciousness that I was two seconds away from starting to scream and scream and scream at someone whose only real crime was being the age they were. It felt like the flu—shivers, aches, fatigue—even though it was manifestly not the flu. Your body keeps the score. My body tells me it’s got a lot of money riding on this fight and if I’m not prepared to take a dive I’d better look good in cement shoes. We are not the same (I am worse).

Anyway, I had reached the end of my rope, and we all drove to my great aunt’s house, and she took one look at me and sent me upstairs to bed while she made coffee. The two bedrooms at the top of the landing, added when the barn was converted to a home, belonged to her daughters, my cousins once removed, and still bear their imprint. One is summery, blue and yellow, redolent of lavender without scent. The other is green, wallpapered with birds sitting on wintry fir branches, and does in fact smell slightly of conifers and cedar. There are crisp ironed white sheets and cool plump pillows in both. Linens are so important in life. I chose the green room, crawled beneath the patchwork quilt, and fell asleep. As I drifted off I could hear their voices downstairs. How wonderful, to be sent to bed and sent back, just for one necessary hour, into childhood, hearing the voices downstairs and clinking coffee mugs weaving into the half-dreams of your half-sleep.

I am at that house right now now, making fun of the boutique shower-head commercial with my aunt. Who needs a fancy shower-head? Say two women who in a crisis would probably walk over broken glass to obtain the correct bed linens.

Anyway, I watched The Fog last night in my ongoing quest to watch horror movies that are a) free and b) conform to my somewhat hostile set of requirements.

I love The Fog so much. Its admirable plot (a supernatural fog rolls in; betrayed sailors return from their watery graves to seek vengeance on the town) is barely enough plot to sustain an 89 minute run time. It has a plucky single mom with a sultry voice operating a small-town coastal radio station out of a lighthouse. My personal Ballerina Farm. It has a guy driving a big rig down a country road with an open beer in his hand, which is both civilization and infrastructure.

I love the greasy little Anglican priest with his bottle of (presumably) sherry and his greasy Cavalier curls and his church full of family secrets and his nasty chiseling ways towards the hired help, who somehow manages to end up (more or less) the hero. I love the way the menace moves like fog—it can’t really be avoided or thwarted if it happens to be where you are, but it also just goes where it goes without any plan. I love the “The hours between midnight and one belong to the dead. God deliver us, ” and the knock knock knock on the door. I love that this a California story—so many things are set in California that very few things are set in California, if you know what I mean—the monster is literally fog. And you know what? I love fog.

Edit: Ok, apparently The Fog is “not,” set in California? Shut up. Yes it is.