Red Balloons
Agnès Madrigal
Agnès Madrigal writes works of fiction. This short “vignette” was originally titled “Peter, Red Balloons, Stars.” In it, the narrator imagines a universe—perhaps the very universe we live in—as being greater and kinder than the behaviors of a past boyfriend. It is, at the very least, a changing universe.
A singular event at a party causes a woman to reflect upon the universe, the self, the reliability of memory, and the meanings of good and evil. “Red Balloons” is a short story by Agnès Madrigal.
She was still in the hazy aureole that surrounded the event that had happened in time. In time, the event would fade and recede as events do, and it would find a comfortable resting spot in the recesses of her memory until, perhaps, it was dredged up by something that was reminiscent of it, bringing it forth into a lighted present, or perhaps not. There were various ways that the events that occurred could go, assorted scrapbooks, diverse chambers in the mind—some lit, some cloaked, some down long dark corridors and behind locked gates with rusted keyholes and no keys. This less-than-obvious lesson she had learned after so many years of remembering—and of forgetting also.
She lived in an ongoing universe, plus whatever debris—stars, planets, comets, satellites—floated about within it. This particular universe was laced with some chaos and a bit of order too. This concept seemed not simply plausible, but the best scenario of all that had been proposed, yet she was not a physicist, was not a scientist of any sort. Beside her there was a parking lot doused with the changing variations of sunlight as the earth spun and clouds rolled overhead, parting and gathering again and again to form different shapes—some could be construed into objects that were known and some resisted, making forms that were not identifiable, at least not yet. The shadows moved like they too were alive, shadows of a flag blowing gently in the breeze, the shadow a man walking his bicycle across the lot. Above, hyacinth and trumpet lilies exploded over the top of the wire fence. The live petals splayed upward as though exalting something there, and the dead others fell to the ground, littering the cement with a design. The cars were parked in their yellow-lined spaces and the sun glinted on their metal bodies, in one space, then another and another as the light shifted. If she moved her body and her perspective, the angles would all change again. Above the cars, an advertising tarp hung over the side of a building with a smiling woman’s face and bright letters that she chose not to read. The tarp and the woman rippled from the same wind that roused the flag.
“She lived in an ongoing universe, plus whatever debris—stars, planets, comets, satellites—floated about within it. This particular universe was laced with some chaos and a bit of order too. This concept seemed not simply plausible, but the best scenario of all that had been proposed, yet she was not a physicist, was not a scientist of any sort.”
—Agnès Madrigal, “Red Balloons”
The hazy aureole that surrounded the event, she thought again. Ah, yes, the event: Peter, shunning her at the party, though only hours prior they had made love on the wood floor of her apartment like lions. She tried to assemble the two Peters: the one of before, whom she had quite impulsively gotten to know and had fallen in love with over the course of their year-and-a-half together, and the one now. Her disappointment overwhelmed her urge to grieve. Peter. He was not overly attractive, was a little short, was a little thick at the middle now, and his scalp was pink, pink as a piglet, where he had begun to lose his soft blond hair. Perhaps these facts led to his insecurities and those led to his sudden dismissal of her? There were linearities to be sure. Peter was not particularly good at parties; he was bright when one looked for it. Herself, she found his awkwardness beguiling, his shy stature safe. How perfectly wrong she was. Now all the colored details of Peter seemed recast in their exact photographic negative. Was it possible? It was completely possible—it had just happened, had it not? And hardly had she been the first to witness such a thing in a person. Yes, it was possible, supremely possible. It was one of the many intrigues of the human species.
It had happened two weeks earlier. She still had not spoken to Peter about it. When she went to compose her words, they sounded weak, even wounded. Why was that the case when it was Peter who had behaved so badly? Her silence felt only slightly stronger. She had left the party in her silver taffeta dress, in her glittering faux jewels around her throat and dangling from her earlobes. It all seemed ridiculously ironic, walking alone on the sidewalk, sparkling like that under the indifferent stars that also sparkled. Oh, Peter. She recollected with some sickening all the stories she had told him, deep stories pulled from another part of memory, the locked chamber that housed the things one did not want to forget, where one went to revisit without need of impetus because the stories were so seemingly crucial, defining one’s very self, if there was such a thing—and if there was a self, memory seemed an amiable enough collaborator in it. She wondered where those stories would go now, if he would tell them at another party, one where she was not, if he would speak them loudly to strangers to make himself seem popular, and that the stories would float into the air and fill the pretty party room with the great red lacerations that they were.
“She had left the party in her silver taffeta dress, in her glittering faux jewels around her throat and dangling from her earlobes. It all seemed ridiculously ironic, walking alone on the sidewalk, sparkling like that under the indifferent stars that also sparkled.”
—Agnès Madrigal, “Red Balloons”
She wondered if he contained evil. She could not be certain anymore if he did or if he didn’t. Evil. Luckily, she could spend most of her life believing it did not exist. She knew that she was fortunate for this ability, though such an optimistic belief structure did make moments such as this, this moment with Peter, unexpected, and for that reason, all the more grueling. An ongoing universe, she mused, ever changing. Perhaps pain pushed one toward a belief in infinity, she thought, the desire for there to be more, much more, much more than what hurt. This was especially true considering those pains that seemed to stem from such minor and unnecessary injuries, like Peter, turning away from her mid-sentence, toward the other woman, pretending that they were not together, complimenting the woman’s crimson dress, making her wonder, in that moment, if they had ever been together, watching the champagne bubbles rise up in the fluted glass, popping at the top like tiny kisses at the surface. Peter . . .
Could the world be as small as all of that? It could not possibly be.