In the fog, magic and mystery swallowed the mundane. Shafts of shadow and light crossed every glance and made the streets a gauzy maze.
The shop door rang as I pushed it, eager to leave the dank night for bit. Mobile’s back-and-forth winter – from freezing to early blooms and back to the frost in a week’s time – was always good for these sudden banks of mist off the bay.
The shop was unfamiliar; down an alley I had passed many times. Packed with rain sticks and African drums, incense and oils and gris gris bags, it looked like places I had seen in the French Quarter but never in Mobile.
“I guess the Holy Ghost hasn’t haunted this corner of town,” I muttered to myself, knowing there would soon be scandalous whispers passed over tea cakes and then protest screamed from pulpits once word got out.
Animal parts in jars, dolls and herbs, all the accoutrements were there. Beneath a shelf of feathers and rooster talons a row of spiritual glass candles twinkled, labeled for “money,” “focus on your goal,” “go away fear” and so on, their waxy aromas mixed with the leathery and earthy scents. But the smoke from one candle marked L-O-V-E was different, not rising straight up but curling, taking form.
It was there under the dried chicken feet that I found love, or its source anyway. The figure in the smoke looked familiar as it began to move, rubbing the small of its back.
The name Botticelli jumped into my head. “Venus?” I asked.
She looked my way. “That’s right, baby,” she said. “Mighty Aphrodite, large and in charge.” She craned her head back, stretching her neck muscles. “Lord child, I am tired!”
“Yeah, I guess you stay pretty busy,” I said. “Especially this time of year with Valentine’s Day and all.”
“Say what?” Venus responded. “You think love slows down or picks up by the calendar? You folks work me to death. All your little crushes and daydreams; you got no idea how silly you sound when all I can hear is every little desire that rushes through your piddlin’ heads.”
I cocked my head, quizzical. Maybe Venus was picking up some Creole vibe, but there was a distinctly down home kind of sass to her, more “hell, naw” than Hellenic.
“How come you folks don’t know real love when you see it?” she asked. “How can you be so blind?”
“It ain’t just us,” I said. “If I remember my Greek mythology well, you Olympians had your fair share of turmoil with affairs of the heart. Your big chief couldn’t keep his thunderbolt in his pants. Zeus fathered almost the whole population of Mt. Olympus and half the constellations in the sky. His wife was always checking up on him, ready for the next illegitimate offspring.”
“Oh Lord, that horny old man,” Venus said. “There was nothing he wouldn’t do to get under a lady’s toga.”
“Didn’t he change into a bull to rape Europa?” I asked. “And he became a swan to get Leto, right?”
“Zeus is nasty,” Venus said. “Just like a man, always trying to jump every woman he sees. The other day he changed himself into my bathwater. Almost worked but I heard him chuckling when I dropped my robe.” She cocked her head and an eyebrow. “He wasn’t laughing when those bath salts I sprinkled in there turned out to be Drano.”
“So what’s the hardest part about dealing with love among us mortals?” I asked.
Venus didn’t hesitate. “All the worrying about marriage,” she said. “Y’all have made a big ol’ mess out of that. One doesn’t necessarily equal the other but y’all are determined to make one description fit all of it.”
“Well, what’s it supposed to be?” I asked.
“It is what you make of it, child,” Venus said. “Despite what Sinatra sang, love and marriage aren’t always hand-in-hand. Tying the knot can have as much to do with an umbilical cord as it does the red ribbons of passion. Shakespeare knew it, so did Kierkegaard.”
“Well, I know sometimes it can be about politics and other stuff,” I said. “Mobilians are always talking about their wealth of gay neighbors married to women for the appearances, so they don’t lose their cushy positions around town.”
“Nothing new,” Venus said. “Besides, honey, what is love? It comes in so many flavors and forms, who’s to say what’s real and what’s not? Y’all all up in arms about gay marriage, some of you thinking you’re all enlightened. You ain’t doing nothing Greeks weren’t thousands of years ago.”
“I can point to a host of locals who would point to Greece’s fall as evidence that path shouldn’t be taken,” I offered.
Venus put a hand on her hip and cocked that eyebrow again. “Really? They just laid the foundation for Western Civilization, that’s all,” she said. “Everything about your life, your government, your science, your art, is all built on what the Greeks did.”
I raised my eyebrows and let out a sigh. “That aside, why did you have to make love so tricky?” I said. “If you wanted to make us happy, why did it have to be so rocky?”
“Ha!” Venus laughed. “That ain’t me, baby. That’s on you. It’s the human heart that’s littered with rough spots.”
“But you make it so people fall for others who aren’t at all what they need,” I said.
“Now, wait a second,” Venus countered, palms out. “You’re getting me confused with someone else.”
“Oooh, the chubby kid with the wings and the bow?” I asked as she nodded with her eyes closed and lips puckered. “Then why you don’t get him in line? He’s your son, after all.”
“Cupid?” Venus snorted. “That fat little bastard can’t even come home for Valentine’s Day. He claims it’s his ‘busy season.’”
“Yeah, I guess he’s out there making happy endings,” I said.
“Happy endings, my ass,” Venus said. “He’s not a masseuse. That chunky cherub passed the bar and makes serious jack as a divorce attorney these days. Half the arrows he lets fly in mid-February are headed for middle-aged men and their women on the side. Give ‘em a little poke d’amour and next thing you know, sugar daddy’s filing papers so he can hook up with his newest ‘sweet little thang.’”
My expression fell.
“What did you expect?” Venus chuckled. “You know Mars was his father, right? When your Mama makes love and your Papa makes war what else you supposed to do? It’s a perfect racket; he perpetuates his own business. As long as 20-year-olds can bounce a coin off their butts, he’s got a living.”
“Maybe he can share office space with that bald attorney, Mahoney, Baloney, whatever his name is,” I teased.
“Pffft, if you were going to be in that line of work, this is certainly the place to be in it,” Venus said. “You folks down South love to run to the altar but your divorce rate couldn’t be any higher if you were putting Spanish Fly in your egg nog and trading spouses instead of gifts at Christmas.”
“So you’re saying Cupid isn’t doing your job anymore?” I asked.
“He never was, darlin’” Venus said. “What he’s tossing around is infatuation. It’s related but it’s not the same. I heard a UCLA psychologist the other day who called romantic love a ‘commitment device’ that encourages longer lasting bonds with couples.”
“You mean like a trick of some sort?” I said.
“Well, in a way,” she answered. “Let’s just call it momentum. It lasts about a year on average and it’s supposed to be replaced by something called ‘companionate love’ that lasts for the long haul. But when you have immature people getting married, whose only idea of love is from the junk they see on TV, it’s not going to end well. Love is a decision, not a reflex.”
I nodded.
“Love isn’t about the river of passion you can’t control,” Venus said. “That’s too much fun. Love is more closely related to work. Anybody can love when it’s easy. It’s what you do when it’s hard that tells the story. And you can’t find that in a box of chocolates.”
My rumination was evident. Venus smiled and looked outside. ”Look, darlin’,” she said, “Infatuation’s like that pea soup out there. It can make the ordinary enchanted in the short term but you need some clarity to blow the haze out so you don’t wander in confusion all the time.”
Venus drifted toward the door. “All I do is make it so you can open your hearts up and find love, but it doesn’t have to come wrapped in romance. Love is everywhere if you look for it. Between kids and parents, between friends and family.”
The door swung open on the rising wind, snuffing the flame on the candle. The smoke swirled and Venus’ words lifted with it.
“You see yourselves through your intentions and others through their actions. Reverse it and find love.”
I wandered outside where the cool air swept the fog away. Above, the stars glimmered in a universe suddenly unveiled.
