no particular place to go

it is late here, almost 2008; that usually makes me sentimental. but i am awake and sitting up praying for some things, and i thought of you and wanted to write to you.

i wanted to write to you, but what i wanted to say, i'm not sure.

now i feel stupid. why would i want to write when i don't know that i have anything to say?

...

i think this is why:

it's too easy to restrain an emotion until there's some excuse for it, like a birthday, or couched as a specific message..."the Lord put this on my heart to tell you." but i don't have anything right now that i think you need to hear.

relationships are hard over long distances because they have to be maintained with words. sometimes there's only an overwhelm of feeling that can't be excused or expressed. it's this that makes me want to write to you without any words in mind.

hearing someone say "i love you" can be embarrassing when there's no particular reason for them to say it. but if they catch your eye, and smile, if your gazes meet unexpectedly, if you suddenly feel their eyes on you while you're chopping onions or mingling at a party...doesn't it kind of rumble through you like an express train? don't you wonder why no one else seems to feel the earthquake in the floor?

knowing someone is thinking of you for a minute, for no reason, is the surest sign of love that i've ever had.

so, i guess, this is just a note to say, hi--i was thinking of you.

(first published 12.31.08, 11.48pm)

where are you now?

Lisa has squinty eyes, and a haircut that makes people wonder if she is a lesbian. Most Italian women are built along sturdy lines, but Lisa's sturdiness is turning to fat, and she knows it. She makes coffee in the mornings at a suburban watering hole, but she isn't very fast; to compensate her wounded pride at dragging down her morning team, she draws long interchanges from the customers while she rings them up, and over the counter where she serves their drinks. She tells them, in a confidential tone, "The company is always pushing efficiency, but you know? I like to focus on the quality, even if it takes a little more time. It's the Italian in me." The truth is that she's not very adept with the espresso machinery, either.

She has a daughter named Jennifer, who is almost fourteen and lives with her father, in another suburb of the same city. Lisa does not see her much, but calls her every day. Jennifer is very sullen on the phone. Lisa chalks that up to teenage angst. She doesn't let it deter her from saying, "Is the TV on? Are you doing your homework? Don't tell me you don't have homework, you do have homework." Lisa considers herself a good mother. Jennifer mutters, "How do you know?" Lisa answers, triumphantly, "I'm your mother--I know everything."

Lisa is not a lesbian. She had a short-lived affair with the manager of another coffee shop in the chain. They did not go out much, but they cooked dinner for each other several times. She came into work one morning radiant with triumph, and when questioned about it, she answered, in a scandalous whisper, "I got a foot rub last night." That thrill is gone, however; she is back to watching skin movies, while cooking dinner. Lisa loves to cook.

She says she is writing a cookbook that is also a mystery novel. It is to be called "Nonna's Kitchen" and the main character is based on the person she declares she is meant to be, the best self that cannot emerge until she is about sixty. Lisa says she cannot wait to be a grandmother. The book also pulls several elements from her own life, characters and places she has known. At times, one of her coworkers, who also would like to be a writer, solicits details of Lisa's life. Lisa gladly makes mention of a pair of parents, a grandfather, a cheese and pasta shop frequented by, presumably, one or more of these characters and, presumably, herself. But the details are vague and their geographical location is never divulged, not even the city where, presumably, they must have all coincided for some period of time. Perhaps the lacunae are due to the erratic nature and sudden urgencies of the coffee shop business.

Lisa also works at a kiosk in the mall, where she sells bags of sweet roasted nuts. The mall is outdoors, so she has to wear a thermal layer and gloves while she works, to keep warm, and also has to eat a lot of the nuts. It saves her the price of a meal each night. She has worked for the nut kiosk since the business opened, a few years ago. She is close with the owner and his elderly wife. She used to live in a room over their garage, and and she still watches their dogs for them and waters their garden when they are away. They have been good to her.

Lisa is training a tomato vine and a basil plant in a couple of plastic pots meant to look like terra cotta, which she has set in her kitchen window. They are not thriving, however--she is seldom home to water them.

When Lisa gets upset, or hormonal, or depressed, she says that she craves salty carbs. When she is eating potato chips at work, her coworkers stay out of her way.

Lisa wanted to go to Italy after college. But she never went to college.

numb fumbling

there are two kinds of empty. one is that dank smelly confusion of vapors that you feel when you're depressed or lonely. all the things you thought about yourself seem unlikely, the good and the bad, so that being anywhere but your own hole in the ground seems like a bad act. you feel like the most obvious kind of fraud, the kind that nobody confronts because they feel too sorry for you.

and the other kind is how you feel after a good conversation, a good workout, or a good...you can imagine. it's how i feel after writing, sometimes...in fact my rule is never to post anything here that hasn't made me feel like i've taken a good...you can imagine. it's the way you feel when you finish doing what you were made to do. some people get it after playing a sports game, some people get it after watching a game. some people get it after a lifetime of work, some people can't get it until their lifetime of work is over and their retirement begins.

at the moment, i feel full. full isn't bad, like the first kind of emptiness, but it's frustrating, it's maddening. i feel like your five-year-old in line for the bathroom, hopping up and down. don't ask him why he didn't go before you left the house...he would have if he could have, but it wasn't his time!

when is my time? it's likely to come all of a sudden. until it does, my stomach rumbles, my breath labors to regulate the burgeoning energy, my head buzzes. i feel like i'm living in a perpetual freeze frame of the part of the movie where the music swells.

you could well ask what kind of cue i'm waiting for. why don't i just get started?

how would a born basketball player be able to just get started if he'd never heard of the game? how would a great dancer get started if she had no access to music? that's where i seem to be, fans and critics.

where are you?

what cue are you waiting for?

(first published 1.9.08, 7.24pm)

hey hey hey

guess what i said today? you will never guess, so i will tell you.

i said, "thank you for letting me be here, now."

can you believe that?

maybe you don't realize what a big deal this is. maybe you don't know me personally, or you haven't been reading this blog for very long. it is a big, big deal.

the title of this blog is "the rampant idealist," which generally refers to the headstrong nature of my intrinsic optimism. sometimes i embrace this attribute and sometimes it drives me crazy. lately, it has been driving me crazy, because few circumstances in the present state of my life warrant any optimism. i suppose most of the optimism is due to my long-held belief in God, and his promise to continue the good work he begins in his children at the onset of their relationship. there is also, in the title and in my optimism, an aspect of amusement that cynical people inspire in me. i have been depressed, and angry, and hopeless, but there seems to me something quite ridiculous about habitually assuming the worst about life. as often as life blindsides you with misfortune, it surprises you with unmerited and unexpected blessing. edward murphy is quite as unrealistic as pollyanna whittier. so much of what you experience in life depends on what you're looking for.

but taken apart, the "idealist" in the title also refers to my chronic wishful thinking, and "rampant" refers to my wanderlust. there's a hole in my heart, and i'm still figuring out the shape of it; some things fit it better than others, but i've never found the perfect fit, no matter where i go. no matter how happy i am somewhere, within a little time i usually find myself wishing to be somewhere else.

at present, i am in a place that i once devoutly wished never to return to, at least not for any length of time. this place is emotional and spiritual, as well as physical. ...although, having writ that, i suppose i never quite left it in spirit. and that is probably the reason why i'm here again. you have to do the things that you fear the most--this is a moral imperative, in the spirit of eleanor roosevelt, and it is also a law of nature, at least in my experience.

anyway, i just wanted to let you know that today, in the unlikeliest and least logical of places, i thanked God for being where i presently am. let us build a monument and call it קהוי סוף סוף , which in the hebrew means "'it's about time, moron."

fortune cookies

here are some things recently brought to my attention by certain severe mercies:

running is great because it makes you exhausted at the day's end, as if you've been cutting down trees all day long. sometimes you might be fortunate enough to fall into a deep sleep in the middle of the afternoon, waking up after the sun has gone down with an unwonted sense of secret brilliance. also, running gives you blisters, and if you can wait a couple of days until they have deflated, blisters can be a lot of fun.

being sick is great because you feel so good when you wake up, and it's over.

if you don't stir the sugar when you put it in, the tea is bitter but the last sip is so good.

a month without a haircut is like a month in a hairshirt, constantly irritating. but two months or more without a haircut is like taking a vow of silence. besides looking forward to the day when you will at last display the sartorial expression of your personal aesthetic, you find in the meantime the true self of your hair, which you were before always curbing and exaggerating. it may subtly alter the direction of your goals.

lack of success may indicate that your destined avenue for success lies outside the bounds of your imagination. perhaps it is best to devote a period of time to incubation of your talents and passions, without even examining them, so that when the period is over, you can find out which ones are tapping at the glass, most insistent for exercise. some of the things you thought you were might have died out for lack of persistent feeding, and new growths might have emerged that you never suspected could be within your constitution. be brave enough to allow the natural self.

local atmospheric pressure variation

“I’m going to marry Carl,” she told them, her face blank and her voice toneless.

In mid-slurp, Adam set down the aluminum can, retaining it in his clutch. Before wiping his lips, he asked, “Why now?”

Josie slapped the back of his skull.

Linnae sighed, drew her wrist across her perspiring forehead under its fringe of baby-blonde curls, then moved her roving hand to her belly.

“Is it a problem, Daddy?” she asked, as her palms traced the sweet crescent covered in white eyelet cotton.

Adam wiped his mouth, snorted, scratched the spot where Josie had struck him, wiped the entire surface of his face starting and ending with his chin, the nbrought his hand down on the table with a dull report. With a philosophical flick of his wrist, he said, “No.”

She nodded. “Good.” Picking up a peach from the table, she made her laborious way out of the kitchen.

In the hall, Linnae momentarily weighed her choices—outdoors would be hot, with little respite, while the parlor would be uncomfortably solitary, and questions awaited upstairs. Heat presented the least evil, and she turned her face to the screen door at the end of the striped hall. However, Canna came galloping down the stairs, hissing in a stage whisper, “Oh, cripes, you told them, didn’t you? Cripes, you look awful. Well, how’d he take it?”

“Okay. Josie is in there scolding him now.”

“Yeah, she’ll keep him in line. Well, anyway, it was clever of Carl to beat it out of here before you told Daddy.” Glancing around, Canna lit a long grey cigarette.

“I don’t see how it helps. He’ll have to see Dad eventually.”

“Why?” Canna looked up over her cupped hand. “It’s not like this situation beat him out of the bushes the first time.”

“What situation?”

“The baby!” she said exasperatedly, motioning with her smoldering finger.

“Dad already knows about the baby, Canna,” Linnae said. “Good grief, I’m five months along. He’s figured out I’m not just getting plump.”

In perplexity, Canna’s eyebrows plunged like vulture’s wings. “Then what were you telling him?”

“I’ve decided to marry Carl.”

The cigarette scarred the floor. Quickly, Canna stubbed it out. “Marry?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No.”

“Did he ask you?”

“Of course he asked me.” She maneuvered past Canna, and up the stairs. “If you see Polly, tell her I’m up here.” Linnae clumped heavily to the second floor, clsing her ears against the successive inquiries with which Canna pursued her from the landing.

She went into her little white room, at the top of the house, separated even from the second floor by a little step ladder. The lace curtains listlessly fingered the inert windchimes, which had hung there since Linnae’s twelfth birthday.

She sat on the wide sill, her face patterend by the lace’s shadow, and lifted her cinnamon-sugar freckles to the breath of a breeze. A shriek below attracted her attention; as she leaned over the window sill, she saw a little three-foot dervish, crowned ina flaxen excess of curls, running in the spray of a broken lawn sprinkler from next door. Polly slipped, presumably on the wet grass, rolled over to regard the clouds, and caught sight of the upper window. With frantic delight, she shook her arm in salute. “Hello, Mommy!”

Linnae waved languidly back in swelling affection. Suddenly, she felt the slippery wood give way under her; in desperation, she clutched awkwardly at the sides of the window, and braced herself out over the expanse of air above the lawn. Slowly, Linnae eased herself back into the room, away from the window. In a moment, she could feel pain from the tension her wrists had experienced, bracing up her one hundred and seventeen pounds from a grassy lobby of eternity. She smoothed back her curls, which had fallen forward, and rested into her bed’s crackling pillows.

She loved the unsullied purity of her girlhood room. White had alwys been her favorite color as a child, even when friends informed her that it was not a color, at all. She loved the perfect fit of the planed boards against each other in the corners of the ceiling, how they kindly sloped to form a vault of ivory over her head. When at Sunday school she heard the story of God’s creation, she had always imagined the forming of the firmament, which He called Sky, in terms of her little loft room. Somehow, however, the remembrance bothered her, so that she was not sorry to find herself coughing against the tendrils of light-tar smoke that intimated Canna’s entrance.

Pushing aside Linnae’s feet, Canna settled on the bed, which sank unwillingly under her. She breathed in heavily several times, as if about to speak, but each time released the breath in defeat. At length, she measured LInnae’s downturned face with squinted eyes.

“Marry?” she probed.

Linnae did not answer for a moment; she met Canna's stare begrudgingly. “Is that so hard to believe?” she asked.

“What did he ever do for you?” Canna parried. With an abrasive snort of laughter, she motioned with her cigarette at Linnae’s belly. “Except…”

Linnae rose quickly from the bed and stared ou the window. Now Polly was gone.

“Careful,” Canna said. “Don’t get too close to the window. Your weight will carry you over. Josie really should put screens on them.”

“Do you remember the time Max saved my life?” Linnae asked.

Canna was inspecting the room, her head turning like an owl's, this way and that. “What a dump,” she muttered.

“I was seven,” Linnae mused. The curtains brushed against her cheek tenderly. “We were playing on the roof of the barn at Aunt Cilla’s, up north. And I almost fell down the side. Remember that? I don’t’ know how he did it—he just dove after me—he ought to have fell, himself. After that, I thought he could fly.”

“What’s that you say?” Canna asked.

“Remember when cousin Max saved my life?”

“Max? He wasn’t our cousin, featherbrain. Cilla took him in when some lady from church had cancer.” Canna blew out oa jet of smoke. “He never saved your life.”

“He did. I was seven.”

“You were twelve.”

“Canna, I was seven. I remember it.” LInnae did not mention the wish she had made on her eighth birthday, four months later, concerning Max, the New Hampshire autumn, and Aunt Cilla’s white clapboard church covered in glowing moss.

“Well, I guess maybe you were eleven,” Canna conceded. “You worshiped Max after that little prank, didn’t you?”

The telephone rang, and Canna rose. The matterss sighed with relief. “That’s probably my agent,” she explained under her breath, as she hobbled from the room. “I’m fed up as hell with these two-bit printers she digs up under every rock.” Despite her professed annoyance, she shambled away with dispatch when Adam’s voice wafted up.

“Canna! It’s that writer’s mack from Savannah!”

Josie came in with Polly in her arms, and laid the child on her little corner cot. “She fell asleep watching the cloud shapes,” she smiled. Linnae put out her hand to stroke Polly’s flossy curls. “Don’t’ wake her up,” Josie cautioned. “She’s a light sleeper. I could kill your father for hollering like that.”

“We all learned to sleep over Daddy’s voice,” Linnae smiled.

The red and purple print of Josie’s skirt spread copiously over the bed. “How you holding up?” she asked solicitiously. “Come sit down, baby, let me rub your feet.” A breath of wind followed Linnae from the window, cooling the toes she cushioned in Josie’s lap. “Did you ever know a summer so hot? Makes me think of those summers we used to spend up north, when I was a girl. All them maple trees never let the heat through so bad as here. And fall time! Well, I guess it’s now wonder Priscilla stayed up there when she got older. She was the only one went to college, you know. Did you ever think about college, Linny?"

Linnae shook her head with a sad smile. “When did I ever have time to think of that, Aunt Jo?” she asked. “I met Carl in high school.”

“I didn’t mean for you, sweet pea. I meant for Polly. College might be a real good thing for her, someday. She’s real bright.”

“Do you ever hear from Aunt Cilla anymore?” Linnae asked. “Does she write?”

“Sure, baby. Nobody like a sister for company, even when you’re twelve hundred miles apart.”

“Does she tell you anything about Max?”

“Max?” Josie’s brow crimped. “Well, I guess she does talk about him sometimes. All those babies, and no daddy!” Josie bit her lip in a rare flush of embarrassment. “Adopting, I mean, you know.”

“Max wasn’t a baby when she adopted him, though, was he?” Linnae asked.

“Seems like he was thirteen when Cilla took him in. I guess we all though she was in for it, with a boy that big. He was always real quiet, and we guessed he was up to mischief, or hiding dirty books, or something. Shoot, maybe he was. But he helped her with the babies, and kept the place looking real spruce. Cilla dropped about ten years after he came, she was that relieved.”

“What’s he doing now?” Linnae asked, thinking of ten years dropped like a garment around the ankles.

“Oh, working, I guess.”

“Did he stay in New Hampshire?” LInnae was desperate to know that he had stayed, never migrated south of the Mason-Dixon. Max belonged to that cool, shadowy realm of falling leaves and pristine clapboard houses, where water tripped over stony brooks instead of lolling sluggishly in cricks, puddling muddily in hollers.

“Seems to me he went somewhere round there. Mayb New York. I guess Cilla said he takes some trips to Montreal on business.” Closing her eyes, Linnae drew deeply of the thick air, steadying herself.

“Max was real smart,” Josie conceded. She looked at Polly againk, then back to Linnae, stroking her face tenderly. “I’m so proud of you, baby,” she said affectionately.

“Oh, Aunt Jo,” Linnae murmured. The comfort and sadness of her bed cushioned her thickly from a widening split she felt within.

“Polly’s such a good little girl,” Josie continued. “She’ll be a real star one day. Anybody can see that. She’ll come to something real fine. You’re doing just fine, baby. Don’t forget that.”

They heard Canna’s voice ricocheting off the hall’s peeling paper. Josie rolled her eyes. “Lord have mercy,” she said. “We’ll live to rue the day she took up with that writers’ club. But at least she’s got a job in the works.”

“Maybe I should have got a job,” Linnae mused. “Maybe it would have helped.”

“Nothing could have been better than these two precious babies you've got,” Josie said irrefutably. “You’ve done the best with everything you’ve had. Remember Della’s girls? All of them gave away the babies and went to California, trying to be film stars. Seems like all the girls were doing it at once—running off to Hollywood to be an actress.”

Feeling lost, Linnae said, “I never wanted to be an actress, Aunt Jo.”

“I know, baby,” Josie answered. After a pause, she scratched her head. “You were always the one I never understood too well.” She rose to leave, her flowered print clinging to her generous hindparts. At the door, she turned for a moment.

“So you’re going to marry that boy?”

Linnae nodded mutely. Josie sighed with closed lips.

“Well, that’s probably good,” she conceded. Then, in mid-stride, as if she almost had kept it to herself, she added, “Good to get a daddy for those babies.” She closed the door behind her.

Polly murmured in her sleep, and Linnae knelt beside her, not feeling the weight of her belly as much as before. She touched Poly’s cinnamon-sugar freckles, brushed the long black tendrils of her eyelashes, traced the round line of her jaw to her oyster-shell chin. Angrily, she pulled out of her head, like a hairy, noisome weed, the thought of any partner in Polly’s making. The child had seemed to sprout inside her, like a fluffy dandelion seed flying through the air in late summer, coming to rest in a warm, sunny hollow. Idly, Linnae wondered whether dandelions ever grew in New Hampshire.

There was a sound like ice clinking weakly in a glass. During one of the last summers she spent in New Hampshire, Linnae had admired the windchimes that hung in Cilla’s window, and Max later found her in the yard, with bits of string and broken glass strewn around her, trying to copy the chimes for herself. Max did not laugh, but took her hand and put her on the front of his bicycle; together, they rode to the general store, two miles away, where he took down a middle-sized ring of shining metal rods, threaded strongly together with a ball hanging in their midst invisibly. He could not have known that, when she would hang them up at her home, the air would be too stagnant for them to make any music. Once Linnae pushed it with her hand, and then harder, insistently.

The clamor woke Polly, who blinked, sat up, and giggled blithely, "Do it again, Mommy!" Seeing her, Linnae let her hand drop, and felt the fruitlessness of her anger.

The telephone rang, and Adam hollered again. “Lin!” he shouted. “It’s your boy.”

Linnae flatly answered his shout, “Tell him he can try again later.”

“We got the mail today,” Polly volunteered, wiping the sleep from her eyes. “You got a card, Mommy. It has a picture on the front.” She pulled a crumple of pasteboard from the pocket of her overalls. “I was holding it for you.”

Linnae smoothed the the wrinkles from a postcard that showed a tower of nineteenth-century prestige, rising against a blue sky from a lawn covered splendidly with leaves.

“Auntie Joe got a letter, too,” Polly said, pulling herself out of her cot. She made her own way down the stairs.

Linnae watched her go and wondered why she had never thought of going to college. Some people had talked of doing it, when she was in school. Probably she couldn't have done it, and maybe she'd instinctively known so--but still, Linnae thought, I ought to have thought of it! Polly was smart—Linnae wondered if Polly would think of going to college. She must, Linnae decided, she must think of going, before too long. All Linnae had thought of, in regard to the future, was having a baby.

“Well!” she thought fiercely. “Now I’ve got one.”

She wished there were an old dog or something near to kick. She had borne a baby before she was sixteen, and damned if she wasn’t going to have another one. She had never considered another.

"Just because I wanted one," she thought, balling up her fists, "doesn't mean I want another one!"

It was like she had pushed a rock, just to see how far its own weight would carry it, and the ground had turned out to be a slope, carrying the rock fast and far away. It seemed unfair to her, but there was no one to blame.

She wondered what it might be like to be an actress, to put on make-up and be somebody new all the time. Hollywood, where Della’s girls had gone, only meant tall white letters on a hillside to her. She wondered what they stood for, to lure Della’s girls and so many of the young girls away.


In the evening, Linnae lay on her back in the long grass, where the yard sloped away into nameless meadow. The sun was still high and insistent; hints of approaching twilight came in stealthy breaths through the grass. Polly came to her where she lay on the ground—Linnae felt the cool of her small shadow over her eyes. Polly settled her belly down on top of Linnae’s pumpkin-sized bump, laying her head against Linnae’s chest. With difficulty, Linnae heaved her breath in and out.

“When does the baby come?” asked Polly. As Linnae tried to gather strength to answer, Polly gave a little gasp. “Oh! I can hear him.”

Linnae lifted her chin slightly, in surprise.

Polly cupped her ear attentively to the top of Linnae’s belly. “I can hear,” she whispered. “I can hear. He’s talking.”

They both lay still for some moments. Linnae felt tears squeezing from her eyes, running down into the cradle of her ears.

“Polly, don’t,” she croaked weakly. “It hurts mommy when you do that.”

Polly rolled off her belly and into the grass beside her. Tears welling from her eyes, Linnae lifted up a grateful inhalation. She felt her daughter’s knees clamber against her side. Polly seemed to be trying to tuck herself in along with the baby.

“I think we should name him Herman,” she mused.

"How do you know it's a boy?" Linnae asked, brushing Polly's flossy hair out of her eyes.

Polly cocked her head to one side. "Well," she slowly drawled. Then she closed her eyes and rested her hand on the side of Linnae's belly.

Josie came out to find them. "I've been waiting supper for twenty minutes!" she said exasperatedly. Polly popped up obediently.

"Did you get a letter today, Aunt Jo?" Linnae asked, remaining on the ground.

Josie paused, nonplussed.

"Well!--how did you know?--I had a letter from Cilla. And what do you think?” Her pause was punctuated by Linnae’s steady breath. “She's coming down for a little visit, and she’s got Max coming to keep her company,” Josie concluded. "How did you know?"

"She got a postcard!" Polly hopped up and down on one foot. "I saved it."

"It wasn't really for me," said Linnae. "It was for everyone." She pulled it out from her pocket, handing it up to Josie.

"Well! This is where he lives, now. That's real nice. He was always a nice boy, wasn't he? Says here that he wishes you could be here, when they come to visit..."

"I know!" said Linnae, starting to laugh. "He doesn't think I'm here! He thinks I've gone away!" Her laughter shook her with increasing violence. She saw Josie looking at her with alarm. Linnae feared she could not stop, that it would shake her to death. But then she thought she heard the resounding of the windchimes; the sun fell, at last, and dusk was bringing a rare breeze.

(from 6 October 2001)

christmas special

irving berlin wrote "white christmas" while sitting by a pool in phoenix, arizona--it has been recorded more times than any other american pop song in history. according to my extensive research (on wikipedia) "it has often been noted that the mix of melancholy — "just like the ones I used to know" — with comforting images of home — "where the treetops glisten" — resonated especially strongly with listeners."

there you go--the numbers indicate that christmas resonates of melancholy and comfort to the general public. but we already knew that, didn't we? think about the words to "god rest ye, merry gentlemen." when i was a small child, that song really bothered me, with its minor key and words like "dismay" and "darkness." i hid when the christmas album reached that track, because the song scared me.

"white christmas" reached its record peak of popularity at a time when a subtler reminder sufficed that christmas really is a season of melancholy, even if you're not in the midst of war. it's the end of the year. it's cold. we expect ourselves to perform more duties and spend more money in six weeks than in the whole rest of a normal year.

nonetheless, there is comfort, sometimes natural and sometimes manufactured. the earth's dormant season is the growth spurt of nostalgia, of a general expectation of cheer and gratitude and generosity, of value placed on virtues that get less airplay during the rest of the year. at this time, as at no other time, we prefer the feelings of others. we welcome the nasty family members into our homes. we put on the ugliest sweaters because an elderly relative knitted them.

christmastime is life as a cartoon. every hurt throbs, every joy is like a catapult, and it lasts for about five minutes.

green glass

In urgent quest of his mother’s choir robe, Brian Winslow found the vestry closet locked, with a peculiar sound coming from behind. Brian knocked at the door—the snuffling stopped and he heard shallow breaths biding the unnatural silence. A moment passed, the snuffling resumed. Brian called out,

“Somebody in there?”

A volley of curse words rang through the closet door at him. Their complex construction identified the speaker as Martin Saint. No other boy in the Sunday school, even under great emotional duress, could have equaled Martin's deft turns of phrase with profanity. And it was impossible that any of the grown-ups should use words of that kind in church, no matter whether their faces were hid by closet doors.

Finding that it was Martin locked inside, Brian’s impatience to get the choir robe was cooled by a pleasant sense of justice. Only that morning, Martin had stuck four matches in Darien Mooney’s new shoes and lit them with a flint. The pious Darien, holding forth on the evils of whisky-nipping after school, making veiled references to persons in the room guilty of that evil, began suddenly to hop and shout.

Brian did not mind the prank on Darien, but he did mind getting pegged for it by Miss O’Rourke, when everyone knew that only Martin Saint had the nerve and prowess to carry out a scheme of that calibre. So it was with satisfaction that Brian answered the insults,

“Can’t you get out, Martin?”

The door opened a crack.

“Look, Winslow…that’s you, isn’t it?” A tear-wet eye peeked through the inner darkness. “I…that was rotten stuff to say, Winslow. I’m sorry, really.”

The apology seemed to stick in the door, as Brian confronted it in disbelief. The door slammed vengefully shut.

Brian stammered, “Well, that’s all right, Martin. I forgive you.”

The door opened again, only a crack. Martin’s glassy eyes and sharp nose poked out.

“You do? Just like that?” His face squinted as if he’d eaten something sour. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” He began to pull the door shut.

Brian started. “What?”

Martin’s eyes shifted across the floor. “You’ve got one up on me, haven’t you? Does that make it not count anymore?”

“Make what not count?”

“Saying I’m sorry, shithead!”

Helplessly, Brian shrugged. “I don’t care so much if you curse. I’m used to it,” he said.

Martin’s eyes emerged again. He whispered, “Look, Winslow. You’ve been at this all your life, haven’t you?”

“At what?” Brian asked.

“Being good.” Martin’s voice was hoarse with urgency. “Does it ever start to come easy?”

Brian chose his answer warily. “Sure, I guess. You stop doing bad things because you’ll be caught.”

“So it’s only bad if you’re caught, then.”

Brian felt safer, treading on Martin’s own ground. “Well, you can’t be punished if they don’t catch you.” He thought it quite diplomatic, and was pleased to Martin’s scowl fade a little.

“But He sees everything, doesn’t he?” Martin’s brow clouded. “So it’s no good.”

“Who does?”

“Jesus does, stupid prick!” It immediately gave him remorse, which he expressed with “Shit--sorry." Again, he desperately bleated, “Sorry!”

“What do you mean, Jesus?” Brian interjected.

“Father said so this morning, didn’t he? Said he sees everything good and bad, sh…stupid.” Martin bucked his head defiantly. “See? I stopped myself that time. But I thought it, didn’t I?” He began again to snivel. “Why’d He have to go and die, anyway? I didn’t ask Him to.”

Troubled by a vague sense of responsibility, Brian said uneasily, “It doesn’t work like that. If He waited to die until everyone asked…He’d have to die lots of times. It was once for all…” Heaven sent him a resource. “The petitions addressed to our Father, as distinct from the prayers of the old covenant, rely on the mystery of salvation already accomplished, once for all, in Christ crucified and risen.” He delivered it as he had memorized it, in monotone.

Martin looked at him with grudging respect. “Say, how’d you know that?”

“It’s catechism. You’d know it too, if you were listening in Sunday school and weren’t cutting the belt of people’s trousers.”

“Yeah. If I ask you to forgive me, will it be all right?

Gratified that Martin remembered the episode, which had given him such grief at his mother’s hands, Brian was not inclined to grant a swift pardon. “Well, it won’t put the belt back together,” he said.

“Yeah,” Martin said gloomily. “And what about Jesus?”

“What about Jesus?” Brian demanded exasperatedly.

“Well, you didn’t go and die for nobody, did you?”

The responsibility was wearisome to Brian. “Look, Martin,” he said, “I’ve got to get my piece of glass.”

“What piece of glass?”

“Just a piece of glass. It’s in my mum’s choir robe.”

“What’s it for?” Martin demanded.

“Looking through.”

“I saw you!” Martin pointed at him, wide-eyed. “You were doing it in church. Looking through that piece of green glass while the priest was talking.”

“Yeah, what of it?” It was altogether out of the natural order that Martin should scold him for misdeeds in church or anywhere else.

“Don’t get in a strop,” Martin said. “I’ve done lots of things worse than that. Took the Lord’s name in vain all the time, and…” He paused shamefacedly. “You remember what happened to Mrs. Gallow’s cat?”

“Look,” Brian interrupted quickly, “maybe you should tell all this to the priest.”

Martin cried, “I can’t do that! Bad enough talking to God. What’d I do with a real person I can see? Besides, they’ll never let me into confession. They’ll think I’m going to plant another stink bomb.”

His eyes fell. “Yeah, that was me.”

Brian sniffed. “We all knew that,” he could not help saying.

Martin looked up at him as if from a great distance below.

“What’ll I do, Winslow?” His voice was dull with despair. “I didn’t know nothing about Jesus before today—I never listened, see. I was going to hell, but I didn’t know it. And now I do know it, and...” His voice drew thin like a thread, and he looked down. When his gaze resurfaced, his eyes were filled with tears. “Is it any better now? I still done all the things I done.”

Brian tried to think what to say, but could not rid the thought of his piece of green glass. So hard to see through, dark and cloudy, putting lumps in the faces of people he saw through it—even the priest’s. His mother had taken it away, hissing that it distracted him from the Word of God; it was galling she should know so well. Trying to decipher a face through the glass, putting the warped vision of the priest right with the knowledge of the real priest, he could only hear watery echoes of the homily. He could remember only snatches of the hymn. Without the glass to play with, the service was long and rather too much to bear.

on the necessity of believing in miracles

He loves you; and hourly miracles
For you, and such as you, is working now;
From all eternity has worked them for you.
(G.E. Lessing, Nathan the Wise)

C. S. Lewis has an apologetic that is, of course, great, on the subject of miracles. Either you believe they are possible or you don’t, and if you don’t, you will never see one, even when it happens.

That comes at it from the perspective of believing that miracles are possible at all. But what for those who, having committed themselves to the belief in their possibility, want to know how far they should commit themselves to the likelihood of miracles?

We’re not being skeptical. We’re only being polite. Wishing not to be presumptuous. It’s fine if there won’t be any available for us—just thought we’d ask.

Six years ago, I got kicked in the head that the whole issue of salvation is one of presumption. The better you understand Jesus, the better you understand grace, and the better you understand what an intolerable interloper you are.

And that you are just the cutest damn thing—to put it in human, grandparental terms that we all ought to understand—to the one who is granting you grace.

“Oh, look what a man he thinks he is, grabbing that toy out of my hands! Watch him run off to play with it. Oh, look out, he’s going to stab himself in the eye with it. Yeah, that’s right, come back over here, you can sit on my lap until it feels better.”

We get just a little bit older, to where we have learnt our manners, how to say please and thank you to God. And that it’s rude, when He gives us a new bike, to say, “but I wanted the one like the kids ride on TV.”

The differences are several, because God is not your grandparent. He only thinks you’re cute because, by virtue of being God, He has made it so, and there are plenty of other Godly character traits that would influence Him to treat you like the presumptuous interloper you would be if He had not made it so.

If you’re still following me, the point is that believing that miracles are not only in stock, but arrayed on the shelf, is directly linked to believing in this particular God and His salvation.

Shyness of presumption is good as long as it is shyness to make miracles the currency of our belief. That’s like marrying for money, and we all know not to do that. But think of it this way:

“Happy anniversary, darling!”
“Oh, Charles, thank you. It’s so lovely being married to you.”
“I’m ever so glad you think so, my love. And I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to, Charles, really!”
“Yes, I have, darling! If you’ll come with me to the jewelry shop downstairs, I want you to look round and pick out anything you’d like to have that you see there. Anything at all.”
“Oh-ho-ho! Charles, what a sweet thought! But I don’t need fancy presents to make me love you. I love you just the way you are.”
“I know you do, darling. It means ever so much to me. That’s why I want to buy you something nice. Come down, let’s go!”
“Really, Charles, I can’t imagine… I mean, this really isn’t necessary.”
“I know, darling, but I want to do it!”
“But—”
“Whatever is the matter, darling?”
“Charles, how can you possibly? I mean, how can you? Anything in the shop? Without knowing what I might ask for?”
“I mean it, darling. You didn’t know, but I’ve been keeping by a little, and you can believe me, I’ve got the resources. No matter what you might pick out.”
“Charles… The shop below is Cartier.”
“Yes, love, I know.”
“Charles…”
“Don’t you believe I mean it, when I say I’ve got it?”
“Charles…I know what a hard worker you are.”

No, we should never marry for money. But should we marry for poverty? Or rationality? Or respectability? If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Jane Austen, it’s that we should marry for the man himself. Quite often he turns out to be much more agreeable or rich than anybody thought at first.

(first published 8.2.07, 3.23pm)

vive la revolution

Never tell me that coffee is not the source of eternal youth. I have been feeling absolutely dire for two weeks and, in desperate fatigue, drank a double espresso yesterday afternoon; within an hour’s time, the clouds parted and the world was new and fresh as a dewy rosebud.

I woke up regrettably early this morning and, acting on aforesaid principle, made with sluggish but steadfast dispatch for the coffee shop. A strange thing happened when I emerged from the house; I became conscious of it some moments after. It is a strange thing that has been happening consistently since I returned to America.

I keep thinking of Paris. No, that isn’t right. I keep thinking as if I were in Paris.

It would be easier, you would all know what I meant, if I said things about this town remind me of Paris. But that is not what I mean. Nothing about this town really reminds me of Paris. The streets are much too wide, the flowers too diverse, the women too blocky, the men too sheepish, the dogs too animal. There are no wrought iron balconies, and no kiosks selling cigarettes and smut magazines with an air of dismissive elegance. There are people awake and moving at eight in the morning who are neither street-sweepers nor bakers—what needs more?

Quand-mème, as I walk my two knee-high escorts around town, any time of day, I find the furniture of my mind unexpectedly rearranged. You know what I mean when I borrow the phrase “unbearable lightness of being”? There is some spiritual medium that suddenly envelops me as I walk up Martin and then East Street, between King George Street and Maryland Avenue, that I remember from the air in Paris. I remember it walking downhill from the Pantheon on the rue Lhomond, when my hair was tied up in knots because it was too long or short to do anything about, smiling at the salutes of a couple of delivery men in a van—here in America we call them catcalls until we get to Paris and realize they are much too chivalrous, much too appreciative, for such a name.

It is a feeling too earthy for a halo and too clarifying for a fog, and too visceral to be only a state of mind. But for me it is distinctly Parisian. I knew I would see no blue windowboxes of geraniums, nor no slick-haired businessmen with glowing skin and Hermes accessories, and if I got a catcall it would be a catcall (only this and nothing more). Nonetheless, though I expected to see none of these things, if I had seen them it would not have surprised me. It would not have surprised me to see the Eiffel Tower instead of the cupola of the State House in the middle of the roundabout.

Maybe it is the weather—that is one thing that this part of America shares with that part of France—a langourous damp in the air on the clearest of mornings, that can turn into a heavy drug for days and days, and then suddenly rains itself out into childish freshness.

But I am more persuaded that this strange syndrome is a result of my current place in life, one so unusual for an American of my age that the only phrases for its description are in European languages. “Laissez-faire” is what I mean, or “que sera, sera.” A state of working hard without being quite sure of the goal, of commitment without certainty of the outcome.

I think most Americans do not experience regularly this state of being, except on holidays. There is nobody who is going to mow their lawn or fix their deck today; if it was going to get done in time for the Fourth of July, it would have got done yesterday. If not, laissez-faire. C’est pas grave. Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de faire? No one’s really going to notice, anyway. Holidays are the greater equalizers—everyone is in an equal state of committed lethargy. Kind of like the greater European population is from two until five, every day of the work week. They spread out their siestas over the year, while we save them up for bank holidays.

Nota Bene: As I was walking back from the coffee shop, my matinal lethargy was broken by a musically rapid flow of French language, spoken in the most impeccably nasal intonation. There were three people sitting in a car parked at the curb, discussing place or custom, something that required immediate assessment. They were speaking French, in the most impeccably nasal intonation, and all of them were black. Truly, this is a great country.

(first published 7.4.07, 9.15am)

magic words, vol.1

"i wonder what she's like sober."

debt

You and I hate to owe anybody. It gives somebody the right to be nasty to us. Favors are the purchase of our tolerance.

Isn’t it funny that the people we owe are called “creditors?” Maybe you don’t think it’s funny until you overthink it, like this: as often as “credit” refers to finance, it also refers to trust or belief.

To figure this out, I could consult a dictionary, but so could you. Instead, let’s play.

To give someone credit could mean that you’re allowing him to take stuff from you without paying for it just now. It could also mean that you are recounting his act, one accomplished or yet to be. In both these instances, you are treating this someone with a lot of honor. You don’t give credit of any kind to a bum.

A creditor is someone who treats us real nice, giving us a privilege reserved for someone honorable. Sometimes they are doing it because they are hoping or expecting us to prove otherwise—companies are built on interloping bums. Other creditors are doing us a favor, helping us rise to confirm their faith in us. Other creditors love us.

The benign ones at the middle level are the ones I don’t mind. Credit at the company store, or from a casual acquaintance, I can take as easily as leave, because it costs them little when I disappoint them.

But I despise the sharks, and I loathe the lovers. Both types threaten to eat me alive.

Can you survive without credit? Probably. I’m not sure, though, if you can live without it. The problem with spending your life taking no favors, is that you die with no glee, having got away with nothing and having received no gifts. Life that has only what it earned has no amazement, does it? I haven’t lived that long…maybe I’m wrong about that.

I’m twenty-five now. I owe a bank in Wisconsin a hundred thousand dollars today. My mother thinks I’m a failure. But there are a few friends and a few people who don’t know me very well who think I’m amazing and have a wonderful life ahead of me. I think I had better keep well away from them. I’d hate to have them invest too much, and feel the pinch when they lose it.

the bear and the bird

the bones of birds are filled with air. consequently, their bodies weigh less than is suggested by their volume, and can be buoyed by air currents.

when i learned this in fifth grade, i was envious.

human bones have similar structure to that of birds--it is called cancellate. unfortunately for flying endeavors, human cancellate bone mass is mixed with concrete bone mass, which is solid through and through.

my family's home is all harmonious, like lights shining from a house in winter, and my sisters are like music moving through it. in contrast, i feel like a bear in summer, drunken and fat, lumbering in with obtuse, destructive goodwill. my voice is too loud, my laughter as jarring as a sneeze in a symphony hall.

i am ambitious to be unrecognized. i want to hide, but i know that hiding will make me more conspicuous. i feel most gratified when i am out running, and the cars hiss past me. if i could, i would run from early morning until twilight, when the chaparral breathes out an evening peace. as yet, i can't run far enough for my own satisfaction.

lately i cannot quit crying. it happens suddenly and irretrievably, like someone pulled a rock out of a dam. it comes in jags are like an animal pelt, thick, flush, comforting, a soporific relief. i have to take them alone, unwilling that anyone should see how good they feel.

as i catch my breath, from one jag to the next, i try to find a pressure point that set it off. even if i can find one, it weighs hardly anything when i examine it. i cry at exhaustion, at failure, at stupidity, but these all seem to be scratches on the thick sheeny surface of some grief that is draining, warm and heavy, from incomprehensible recesses, leaving me light-headed and exhausted, hearing only inchoate questions:

how does it all slip away so fast, and where does it go?

it must be my fault--who else could i blame?

everyone accepts that i am the way this way, and they are quick to point out my good qualities. God bless them. why should i get so angry at their kindly acceptance?

why won't the reality come out of hiding?

tonight i heard the "kyrie eleison" we used to sing in college chorus. i shut my eyes and retreated from the heaviness of my breathing body, following its archaic vaults of tones intertwining. like college, it is ethereal, short-lived, nothing more than an exquisite beginning.

i keep running, wishing i could leave the ground, that i could disappear like a vapor when the sun comes out.

all i've ever wanted was to be a bird.

here in dust and dirt

His wife reminded him, it wasn’t as if they had nowhere to go. But he knew where that was; he nodded, and took his head out of his hands as if he were comforted, but when she was gone he rested his arms on his knees again, squeezing one fist inside the other.

His children loved the beach. He loved the smell of their hair after they were spent and fell asleep in his lap under their umbrella, the seal-like sheen of their arms and legs. Everything seemed to fit together, the umbrella in the sand, him in the wooden folding chair, the daughter asleep in his lap, as if her life were meant only for ending up there.

And he could get them there again; he liked the school in Santa Rosa where he had lectured a couple of years ago. They liked him. They had hinted then at interest in employing him. But he told them he was devoted—he was called—to be where he was. At the time, the suggestion of this other job had warmed him, like a confession of love from a woman not his wife. He thought of it now, of how he could tell the kids, we’ll be able to go to the beach every Saturday.

They loved their cousins’ house in France, too. He thought of the long Sunday afternoons, lazy, half-sick from food and wine, watching the apricot haze deepen and fall into grey dusk at ten or eleven at night. Adeline was probably telling them, even now, and they would be happy. He put his head in his hands.

Commencement had been a job. At the faculty brunch, he drank mimosas one up another, ostensibly to celebrate. But Adeline knew. He saw her choose not to say anything about it. Of course she knew, he laughed bitterly—he hated sweet alcohol. He hadn’t tasted it.

As he passed the queues of robed students, he saw the bird-like redhead who had toasted him at the senior banquet. Following another drunken tribute to drunken friends, she had risen from her seat and taken the podium, lifted her glass and wished to thank the professors who were moving on to bestow their gift of knowledge to other students, who needed them badly in other places. Her speech was brief, and stilted, he might have called it prissy if he had not felt its direction toward him. Everyone dutifully raised their glasses and drank. It was a small thing.

But as he passed her in the commencement queue, he gave her a little tap with his fist, a gesture of the “go get ’em, tiger” kind. Ordinarily, he disdained bonhomie like that; but what else could he do?

She turned slightly from her group of friends, and looked at him with surprise.

-----

It was really better, he thought, that the other faculty didn’t address it with him. It was a small thing, that happened all the time. It happened to people with more personal investment in the college than he had. But he couldn’t think of an occasion that it happened to someone with a family to support. However, he reminded himself, that was not the college’s fault.

Then, he reminded himself, it was not a fault at all.

His children had reacted with slow-dawning comprehension and dread of the unknown, until Adeline wisely told them that not only would they be spending the summer in France, but also Christmas. Think of Christmas in France! With Tante Nadine and the cousins! Then, of course, they were ecstatic. Christmas in France! Sledding with the cousins! What kinds of cake would Tante Nadine make?

He drank more wine, shielded from Adeline’s attention by the children’s uproar of glee.

It ran through his head: “Opening bottles is what makes drunkards.” Where had he read that?

-----

The town slowed down in the summer, became completely torpid, in fact, except for the floods of tourists on the weekends. Adeline had started to pack and pushed him out of the house with the children. “Do anything,” she insisted. “Get ice cream. Feed the ducks.”

He longed for the summer to be over, for the recourse of the beach. By the dock, the air pressed heavily around. His children did not seem to notice the oppression. He thought of stopping into the pub, buying them French fries or ice cream…but they would tell Adeline if he had a beer. It would not occur to them that it was a sign of harm. And if it did occur to them, though they would say nothing, it would be no better.

He threw a bit of bread toward the ducks that had stopped over in the stagnant water. Surely they would be on their way soon.

-----

Adeline had gone out to pick up Chinese food. He lay on the sofa, trying not to think about an early glass of wine while she was gone, trying not to think about the faculty reappointment meeting that had decided his fate, trying to think impartially of the dean and the committee; failing that, trying not to think of any of them at all.

Marianne, the six year old, padded softly in from the front room. He looked at her.

“Don’t you like the movie?” he asked.

She nodded. “This is the scary part,” she said.

He pulled her onto the sofa beside him, against his stomach, and tucked his arm around her. It was not hard to stop thinking when he could listen to her deep, healthy, contented breaths.

-----

“I’m not going to hide the wine from you,” said Adeline to him, that night. “But I’m not going to buy any more.”

He nodded.

“It’s just another month.” Her palm pushed in deep circles over his hunched back.

He raised his head. “Until what?”

She smiled encouragingly. “Until France!”

He smiled back, his forehead pierced with the effort not to speak.

Her brow furrowed uncomprehendingly. “Why, what?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “It’s not so long. We’ll make it.”

-----

The children helped him carve out a path that they took every day, from the house to the playground, to the dock where the ducks sometimes met them—apparently having no sense of or trust in routine, to a bench in the little courtyard of the public elementary school, circling through the back garden of St. Mary’s toward the main road, then cutting off it to spend more time at the playground before they came home again. At Danny’s insistence, they stowed a basketball between the hedge and the firehouse. He was surprised to find how it improved his morale for that brief hour, watching the ball sink unexpectedly through the chain basket. It helped, too, to buy small things for the children—Popsicles, ice cream, yo-yos or paper dolls or sidewalk chalk. They asked him to draw on the sidewalk with them, and he tried manfully, sincerely, to comply. The only thing he truly enjoyed was the blind physical work of lifting them, catching them when they jumped, pushing them on the swings until they shrieked “Too high!”

-----

He knew he could sit for hours in that same space, if he wanted to. He smiled to think that, maybe, he would. He could drink all four bottles of wine that he had found in a box, hidden in the closet under the stairs—Adeline lied, or changed her mind—and still have time to sleep them off before she and the children came home from their weekend. She was with her girlfriends from the translation office, the children were farmed out among their friends from school or church. He had been assigned to go fishing with a group of men that he didn’t know—a sort-of friend from church had invited him through Adeline, or perhaps she had suggested it. He did not know. But the sort-of friend had called him the night before to say that he was ill and would not be going; he should still go, of course; of course he would, feel better soon. He said nothing to Adeline and he was alone on the couch, with one open bottle and three more to qualify him as an alcoholic, if he chose. Where had he read that before? The question was one of pacing. If he drank too slowly, he would not sleep soundly and would wake up too early the next day, and have to get through a good many hours before he could start drinking again. Say what they will about opening bottles being what makes drunkards, he was steadfastly against heavy drinking before the sun gave signs of setting. It might not be diagnostic but it was simply uncouth.

But if he drank too fast, there would be nothing to drink tomorrow. Anyway, it was his prerogative to decide. His space to decide to remain.

-----

He was not deeply religious, but was devout. That was how his students described him. They saw his sincerity, no matter what class they had him in. They saw his inner light, the ethical desire that drove his efforts beyond the response that seemed to reward them little. That was why he had not taken the Santa Rosa school’s offer, though drawn by its appeal. Life was not a matter of finding what you liked best to do, but what you were supposed to do. It is workers, not enthusiasts, who are rewarded. Enthusiasm is its own reward, a life of endless trivial joy. There was nothing wrong with that, but when you clearly knew you were supposed to be doing something else, when you clearly saw a challenge meant for you, it was only cowardice or laziness that would shy from a challenge to seek a life contented moment by moment.

-----

The basketball was safe in the hedge, where Danny had left it. Danny was short for his age, which made him well-coordinated but not very fast, little effective in school sports. He made no comparison between his own efforts and those of others, and none either between their efforts that failed and those that succeeded. If someone shot the basketball and it sank, he commended it as a good shot, never as lucky or improved, never at all qualified.

The chain jangled satisfactorily. He waited for the ball to return to him. At length, he realized it had flown under the hoop and rolled away from him, jangling the chain as it passed.

Danny’s face made people believe he was older than he was. Sometimes it worried Adeline. He had never worried, never questioned it. He loved his son’s gravity, present even in joy. He understood it. Life was grave, even joy was grave if you knew it was joy, and not just happiness or ecstasy. He looked at his son’s face and was gladdened by the knowledge that he would have a confidant sooner than any other men his age with sons.

When Danny shouted encouragement at him for shooting the basketball, he knew it was not childish adulation. When Danny took his hand as they walked back from the park, he knew it was decisive.

He hid the ball again in the hedge and walked back to the house, crossing from pool to pool of sallow streetlight.

He took the three unopened bottles of wine to the school, in a basket, with a ribbon round the handle, and laid it all in front of the dean’s door. He cooked a filet mignon in the empty kitchen and ate it with the last of the opened wine. To his great pleasure, there was an all-night marathon of Hitchcock movies on the TV. It was a small thing, but it was pleasing to him.



first published 6/28/07, 9.24am

the chippie

We were only talking.

“Graham!”

“I see you, Sophie love. Be up in a jiff.”

Sigh. We were only talking. But I suppose that’s the way of it. Don’t need him to keep me company, anyway. Graham is good for a chat, if I want it, and I don’t want it generally. He was a bit of a talker, that one. Sometimes it was all you could do to make the bugger keep shut. Best he’s gone…

Oh hell. “Graham!”

“Yes Sophie! Here y’are, my love. What you wanted?”

Dear old Graham. It’s not on to make him cross, he works hard.

“Thanks, darling. They’re lovely.”

Well. He need not sniff that way. Here to wait on folk, isn’t he? But um—these are lovely. Graham’s right enough.


What’s meant by gone, anyway? It’s a chippie, isn’t it? Open to the public isn’t it? And suppose he’s off on an assignment for work—what was it he did? Pharmaceutical engineering. Fittings for orifice applicators, wasn’t it? That would be as likely to take him out of town for a time. Not likely to be many who can serve in that field. Quite good at his work, too, I think. He said as much; rather, he never said as much but you could read between the lines. Might equally be that he’s on holiday. We used to talk a lot about that, didn’t we? He was keen to go to Ibiza. Neither of us had been, just heard a lot from old schoolmates, would be fun to see all the sots carousing on the beach, like we never were. There was just the matter of the bikini…

We talked about going there together, didn’t we? Played it like it was a joke, but… It came up bit too often for only a joke…I should think. Didn’t it?

“Graham! Another, if you please.”

“Of the same, Sophie?”


Yes, just the matter of the bikini. We talked about that a little, too. It was a relief to find that some men think about other things. Like what’s in the heart. He really cared the most about that. At least I know there’s some men about like that.

And that some men know what a challenge it can be. That’s the thing of it—he wasn’t any Adonis himself, was he? I mean, good looking. Quite good looking, for a heavy chap. He was heavy, no getting round that. And didn’t help that he was always coming in here for a basket of chips. But if he hadn’t, we’d never have…

Hell. “Graham, when you have a moment.”

“Aye, Sophie?”

“A couple packets of tartar sauce. And…”

“Aye?”

“I think...”

“Would you fancy a beer, love?”

Sigh. “A Flowers, Graham. Thank you.”

“Aye, Sophie.”


All the flowers I get, come in a pint glass. Got to get them myself. Get them for myself. All the flowers I’ll ever get. Not the sort anybody buys a Flowers for, me--not even in a pint glass. He never bought me a beer. Paid for a couple baskets chips, I think. That was just conspir…consp…just a dirty trick, I guess. To get me heavier than he was. And now he’s gone.

Just a damn public chippie, isn’t it? He might be back next week. Shouldn’t wonder. But I won’t speak to him. Not first. If he wants to speak, he can speak first. He can buy the bloody Flowers.

Sniff. Seemed like the type to buy the real flowers, sometime, if he…if he fancied the girl.

Suppose he’s in Ibiza, with some other heavy girl, watching the sots carousing on the beach. Suppose he uses that line on them all. Makes you feel sort of special. Bet she swallowed it whole. Didn’t I?

“Graham!”

“Another of the same?”

Shouldn’t.

“Yes, please.”

(first published 6/28/07, 9.35am)

sturdy legs

“Sarah Bernhardt made me see the thin arms of Frenchwomen….It was only many years later when the styles changed, in those days they wore long skirts, that I realized what sturdy legs went with those thin arms. That is what makes the French such good soldiers the sturdy legs, thin arms and sturdy legs, if you see what I mean, peaceful and exciting.
That is what makes all the French able to ride up hill on bicycles the way they do, no hill is so steep but that slowly pedaling up and up they go, men and girls and little children, the sturdy legs and thin arms.”
—Gertrude Stein, Paris, France, 1940

Today is also the one-week anniversary of me and my little blue bike. I love my little blue bike! I love it in spite of the horrible pain it puts me in. I’m a fool for its punishment. I’ve ridden it every day but one this week—to my friends’ house, to the drugstore, to the library, and yesterday the long haul—to the church and the grocery store. That was a challenge, a pause-giving consideration. Not of the bike’s powers but of mine, and also of the relationship. I bought it not only for love, but also for practicality—everywhere I need to go this summer seemed reachable by bicycle. Including church and grocery. But the thought of actually making the journey last evening, after a full hot day of trekking around town already, made me wonder if I had been idealistic. I am that, on rare occasions.

But do you know, it wasn’t a battle really at all, in the sense that it was not a real question of whether or not I would go forth on my little blue bike. The only doubt was of how far I would get before I passed out or something. The commitment was there, it had been from the moment I set eyes…well, hindquarters, actually…on the bottle-blue fat-tired fifty-year-old Mercury, the commitment to go nowhere without it, even if it meant forgoing the most direct route. As in the present case of church and grocery.

There is a lot to be said for pain at the beginning of something, as opposed to having it come later. It lets you know what you’re getting into. This morning I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. My body is sore in places that it will be no consolation to have callouses in. But yeah, yeah, as soon as I can move about and get a shower, I’ll be back on that little blue machine. I don’t anticipate that the pain I’m undergoing now is only for a time, that I’m getting it out of the way early. This bike only has one speed. It’s just less painful than paying for gas. That is freedom, I think—being able to choose what brand of suffering you will live with.

Love.

(first published 6/29/07, 9.08am)

reminiscing about st. john's

i’m trying to get a handle on what that magic is, that signature nostalgia that threatens to engulf me there, what chords in me does it particularly pluck that i haven’t learned enough about to enjoy and submit to?

that palpable air, humid because it’s the South but tempered by the salt of the bay? the bricks look a little moist, everything does. none of the trees nor the buildings are very thick or very tall. that sailboating air pervades, so that it can’t be quite country, but the smallness and the hicky-ness of maryland generally keeps the officiousness genial and the preppiness a little faded and worn so that it seems more genuine. it’s rich but it’s down-homey money, invested in the home, more trips on the boat with family to see family, better food and booze to entertain, and there aren’t enough people to overwhelm your entertainment of quite as many people that you like as those you don’t.

the familiarity, because even if you don’t recognize somebody you’ve probably shopped in their store or eaten beside them in a restaurant. the smallness, the manageability…

oh, the memory hurts! hurts so gloriously! what is it touching?

i knew it and i knew who i was. i felt no competition. the whole world was in my head and annapolis and st. john's were just a place i was passing through. and now i have passed through, God help me, and now I’m lost in the biggest jungle in the world and nobody knows who i am. i sometimes recognize them but nobody recognizes me. i mean nothing here and i don’t feel anything is manageable. there, anything i did stood out. there were so many people for such a small place that it was quite likely someone i wanted to impress or someone i was impressed by would be right around the corner, or at the same party. now it doesn’t matter where i go, no one will notice and i will notice only in passing without hope of finding out. maybe that’s why writing comes so damn easy here—it’s a way to get to know all the people i’ll never get to know.

but when i first got there, was it like that? everything was just there, and i sort of coasted along and i remember sitting under the gaslight on the next-to-last night of the school year, when i was a freshman, and thinking, i won’t be like those people, terrified of leaving, i have other places in mind to go.

when i think that someday, if i were to go back after proper ripening of time and maturity, misters p. and k. and h. and ms. k. won’t be there—they’ll be dead or retired—or that they just won’t remember me… it won’t be anymore what it was for me. can you believe it’s the same campus that A's parents went to, that they can walk around and see the same things? the buildings stay the same, but it’s the people i want to see! that’s the problem with knowing people isn’t it?

when i first got there, i felt faint stirrings of envy of those who knew so many people but i just thought it wasn’t worth my time. and then i was so depressed and alone my second year because i didn’t know anybody. and then it was fun and also dreadful, because other people knew me, too.

anybody might be around the corner, or out on the quad, and usually they were. people noticed me. drama and intrigue everywhere.

i’m not lonely here but i do feel strange. i had no reason to come except that God seemed to call me. okay...here i am.

purge

I have too much stuff and I’m going to move. And I’m just wondering, as I survey my four garbage bags full of clothes, why have I kept so many of these? I wear the same four garments over and over, with a change for an occasion more or less formal than usual. It’s not that I don’t like the clothes I don’t wear—I just don’t wear them. They belong, I suppose, to someone that I used to be. They are discarded cocoons. And for that reason, I hang on to them, to remind me of where I’ve been.

But I’m moving and I don’t want to pay the price in coin or trouble to bring them all along with me. The memories are in my head. So I’m cataloguing my old clothes, to preserve the shades I have grown out of.

Starting with—the large white industrial-strength t-shirt that says “surfer” across the front in olive letters. I love that shirt until I actually put it on. No matter how many times I’ve washed it, it doesn’t get soft. It came from Glenn, a surfer nearly twice my age who used to come in to flirt with me at the coffee shop where I worked the summer between freshman and sophomore year of school. When he found out I was going back to school, he took off the shirt right in front of me and gave it to me—I’d admired it before and said I wanted one like it. And he gave it to me. He had nice eyes and bright blonde hair, and a girlfriend that nagged him and also had a kid.

My Joe’s Jeans. The first pair of designer jeans I ever owned. They didn’t ever fit quite right, but I still wore them every day because they were designer, and there was a bird embroidered on the back pocket. I remember staring at the “distressed” patch just under my right hip, while I sat on the dock with the first boy I loved under the stars, almost nauseous with longing and fear of what he might do to me. And he did it, too. But I guess I survived, didn’t I? Goodbye, jeans.

Little black chiffon skirt with tiny white pindots. Bought with a “gift card” that came with the caveat that I open a credit card at the Limited, in an attempt to get something for free—I ended up paying more for it than the price advertised, on account of the company not canceling the card and charging me late fees. Lesson learned.

Pale blue striped pajama pants—only because I fear I will never find another pair as perfect, have I held onto these old faded practically transparent things. Fear is not a good reason for doing anything.

Gauzy white top, long sleeves and scoop neck, perfect for layering but not anything else, really. I like the long seam down the back. But come on. It reminds me of the body I used to have. If I’m ever to have that body again, it will probably be when I stop reproaching myself for not having it. And this shirt remains as a reproach.

The pale blue, square-necked shirt with three-quarter sleeves that has always been a little too short for how I like them. My first Free People purchase. And my souvenir of my first summer in New York City. I bought it at Filene’s Basement on Union Square. I wore it a lot during the duration of the summer in France.

Flowered tube top from A & F. Stupid. Trying to take my mind off the misery of the summer after I graduated from college. Wore it to a couple of Bible studies. Constantly tugging at it to stay where I wanted it.

Grey cashmere zip-up sweater with hood that I stole from the closet at the fitness studio where I worked for a hot second. Sayonara, Physique57! Happiness to you and Kelly Ripa.

Royal blue Mary Green bra—I mean, who buys a blue bra and wears it?

Lots of Mary Green bras—I wore them out. So comfortable. But it’s time for something new.

Black velvet pants—lots of dancing in them. Lots of parties when I was feeling fat. Pants that were too heavy for dancing, really. I’ve changed. I bought them as an homage to Christy Turlington, who was wearing them in a Christmas edition of O magazine, with a white tank top. I never looked like her, alas. The pants could not accomplish that.

Black sateen skirt gathered on the sides like a theatre curtain with cheap lace and sequins dangling on the ends of the strings. Bought it to look vaguely rockabilly and MoulinRouge-esque. I guess I did. Should have worn it more often while it fit. It didn’t fit for very long, did it?

Blue and white striped t-shirt from J. Crew that says C’est La Vie, which is why I bought it, in a size too big. Do you really need a shirt that says that?

Little black boxer shorts with white polka dots. Bought in the hope that someone would be around to see me get out of bed in them. Dumbass.

Kneelength charcoal shorts with pinstripes. So long, so wrong.

Black undies bought against better judgment—too cheeky. Trying too hard.

Here’s to clothes I like and that like me.

the escapist

“I’m worried about Tess,” said Janet, lacing a frying pan with melted shortening.

Her husband traced his finger along the line of newspaper print.

“I just…” She sighed, frustrated not with the effort to express herself, but with having to do so unsolicited. “I don’t think it’s natural for a girl her age to write stories about the devil.”

“The what?” Terence was still looking down at the newspaper, but his eyebrows came together encouragingly.
Janet continued,

“What if she brings up something of that nature in her school work? Can you imagine how Ms. Fusz will react?”

Terence looked up. The bags under his eyes distended with incredulity.

Janet moved toward him beseechingly. “You see what I mean?”

“Her teacher’s name is Fuzz?”

“F-u-s-z. Yes, that’s her name. You know, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Terence sat back, contemplating the mystery. “I just can’t understand that.”

“Six is a tender age.”

“You’d think somewhere along the line, somebody would have wanted to change it.”

“A lot takes shape in these years, particularly in the thought life.”

“At least the pronunciation. It could rhyme with ‘fuse.’”

“What does that say about our parenting? That’s the real question they’ll be asking.”

Terence was silent, meditating. Janet looked at him, her face etched with concern.

“I know I’ve never talked to her about devils. No books, no TV." Her face puckered in consideration. "I don’t think she even has any red clothes,” she murmured.

Terence shook his head. “I mean, think of all the names they changed at Ellis Island. How could they let that slip by?”

With her fingers, Janet pulled apart a log of ground beef and let it drop, sizzling, into the pan.

“I’ve never heard her talk about anything like that, either.” She stared up dolefully at the wallpaper. “If there’s something hidden in her thought life, way deep down, that she broods on constantly but never mentions… But how could it get there?”
She looked at Terence. He had gone back to the newspaper.

The beef flung up juices onto the wallpaper, where it joined the greyed stains of other suppers of the same kind. Tess was six years old, younger than the rest of her first grade class. She was average for height and weight, but being intellectually advanced made her appear undersized. She played nicely when invited, but was alarmingly content to stand by the school wall or under a tree, muttering to herself.

Ms. Fusz had hinted tactfully at analysis. That was a number of weeks ago, before Janet found the devil story on Tess’ bed. It was four pages long, carefully scrawled in her best penmanship. At first, Janet thought it was a folktale that Tess copied from a book. Certain misspelled and unorthodox words made her approach Tess, which she did with all appearance of casual inquiry.

“Tess, what’s this?”

“It’s a story that I wrote.”

“Who wrote it?”

“I did.”

“Why is it about the devil?”

“Because that’s what I thought.”

“You thought about the devil?”

“No.” Tess was coloring a picture. “I thought about Margaret.”

“Margaret?” Janet paged through her mental index, finding no entry of any Margaret. Was it, she wondered, an imaginary friend? Was it the name of an ethereal fiend who whispered in her daughter’s ear?

“The girl in the story,” Tess murmured unwillingly.

Janet looked down at the page; indeed, “Margret” figured prominently. “Yes, okay. But why did you have Margaret talking to the devil?”

“Because that’s what happened.” Tess got up from the table.

“Where are you going?” Janet almost shrieked.

“I’m going to get my other crayons.”

Janet approached Terence.

“Ms. Fusz suggested that analysis might be…”

Terence looked up.

“Analysis?”

“Yes.”

“It might be what?”

“A good idea.”

“For Tess?”

At least, Janet thought, he had forgotten the newspaper. “She just hinted tactfully.”

“She was clear enough that you understood.”

“Of course I understood.”

“Tess writes one little story about the devil and Ms. Fusz thinks she needs a shrink.”

“Ms. Fusz hasn’t seen that story!” Janet cried. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Then what is she talking headshrinkers for?”

“Because Tess is different.”

Terence sat back on the barstool. He threw his hands in the air. “Of course she is! She’s always been.”

“No, Terry. She’s different.”

He looked at her helplessly.

“She’s not like the other kids her age.”

His eyes begged her like a dumb animal.



The next morning, he woke up at three-thirty. For once, he did not reach out for the snooze button; he was groomed, dressed and on the interstate by five. The sun was climbing sluggishly through a filter of clouds, grey and fibrous like the poly-fill that leaked from the corner of their sofa.

He had come to accept, over time, the unpredictable occurrence of whimsical thoughts such as this, and their indication that somewhere within him lurked a fragment of a poet's nature. He was glad to have it; for one thing, It allowed him to connect to his daughter in a way that, he recognized, Janet could not. Janet as he first met her would have, possibly, intuited something significant and philosophical about Tess' story.

He called to mind an image of her in former days, with long hair that fell in waves, the furrow in her brow so cute because it looked out of place on a young, smooth face. He remembered the fine angles of her collarbone that held shadows as if they were pools of water, in the hot afternoons when they sat on a blanket, their eyes desperately clinging to the vague white shapes practicing baseball, so to avoid being caught looking at the other.

The furrow was etched in Janet’s forehead now; the collarbone had effectively disappeared. He drove a truck now, to leave the confusing mutations at home, to hide from panic in nonspecific memories.



The school yard, even full of running children, looked brown and barren in the onset of summer. Janet stood in the parking lot, shielded by a car not her own, and tried to pick out Tess. It was not hard, she thought grimly, seeing the bare shoulders hunched slightly forward, the hair that grew too far over the face, no matter how she tried to keep it cut back. She cringed at the thought of Tess’ eyes staring out from under a curtain of bangs, like a waif in a crowded street. Every month she trimmed them back, chattering hard and bright to Tess about how everyone would now see her friendly smile, impelled by Tess’ grimace to go higher with the scissors; last time she might have cropped them to fuzz, before Terry stopped her. The fringe bristled out from Tess’ scalp for several days before barrettes or hair products could mend the damage.

Janet saw Mrs. Fusz come out from the building. A man joined her at the bottom of the steps. They stood with a manila folder between them, their faces solemn and their mouths tight. Mrs. Fusz stared out at the school yard, the man rifled through the folder on his own. They parted ways, Mrs. Fusz back into the building with the folder in her hands, the man toward the parking lot.

Janet intercepted him as he was unlocking a grey Nissan.

“Excuse me,” she said.

He looked up. His eyes were ringed with the shadows of sleep deprivation, and his moustache was stained with a recent consumption of mustard.

“I…” Janet felt choked by the parental ineptitude that, she was certain, her face must advertise. Nothing, she thought, could sink her any lower. “I saw you talking to Mrs. Fusz.”

The man’s eyes shifted toward the school, then back to her. “Yes?” he said noncommittally.

“I’m Tess’ mother,” Janet told him harshly. He did not blink. “I can’t say I’m surprised she spoke to you, though I’m a little…miffed that she did it without telling me first. Oh,” she felt near to wailing, “maybe it’s for the best. I’m going to be honest, I don’t know what to do. I mean, I’ve done everything I know, and I do know a lot. Believe me, I’ve read so many books; it’s not like I’ve just let this go. But you can’t deny that Tess is special. I mean, in some ways she’s far, far beyond other kids her age. But along with that comes some things that are…unusual. Difficult to handle. To know what to do with. There’s not a book for every single child, is there?”

He had not made a move to say anything back.

“I mean, God!” Janet flung her head back in frustration. “Can you people honestly read a folder of a teacher’s impressions and decide a child is in need of analysis? What if she’s just going through a stage? There’s so much we can’t know about anybody, let alone a child who’s only seven, who might have just had a funny dream or heard a chance remark…”

“Ma’am?” He laid a hand on her arm. The hard callous of his palm arrested her in mid-sentence. “I’m Roy Anistakis. I’m a private investigator.”

“A what?” Janet croaked, aghast.

“A private investigator,” he repeated patiently. “Meredith…Mrs. Fusz…is employing me on a personal matter. The folder we were looking at has to do with my investigation. I don’t know your daughter, if it’s your daughter you were talking about; Mrs. Fusz has never mentioned her to me.”

Janet was at last breathing regularly. She looked up at a lumpy cloud highlighted by the relentless sun, wishing she lived someplace where it rained more often. Somewhere like Seattle or Portland, where people went into coffee shops to wait out the weather and soft music played on the radio.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s my daughter I was talking about. Tess. She’s seven years old, and she’s very…” Janet looked at Roy Anistakis, into his nubilous grey eyes. “Different,” she finished. “She’s different from the other children.”

He smiled. “Well, what kid isn’t?” he said, tossing his hands up carefreely. Her arm felt cold where his hand had left it.

She shook her head, with a sad smile. “It’s not that simple,” she informed him.

“Oh, I don’t think that,” he responded. “I’m a private investigator. I know nothing’s simple.”

“You think it will be, when you’re young,” Janet said, her eyes straying again to locate Tess. “You think you’ve got yourself all ready to handle whatever comes along.”

“It’s the one thing you haven’t thought of that you end up having to handle,” said Roy. “I know. Whatever you get ready for, you never have to deal with.”

“It’s true!” Janet gawked earnestly at him. “I read all about investments when I was in college. I thought, when the time is right, and we’ve saved a little money, I’ll keep my eye on the market, and we’ll buy some savings bonds and get ahead a little. Maybe get into real estate.”

“But you haven’t.”

“No! Just the opposite. My husband drives a truck.”

“Does he.”

“And look around here. There’s no real estate. ConAgra owns all the land. What is there to invest in? But my daughter…” Janet laughed bitterly. “She writes stories about the devil.”

“Does she.”

“Look!” Janet thrust the scrawled pages at him. “She wrote this and my husband doesn’t think it’s anything to worry about. She’s seven years old!” Janet insisted to Roy Anistakis’ impassive face. She was satisfied to see him raise his eyebrows appropriately—not enough to signal a judgment on Tess, whom he did not know, but to indicate recognition of the situation’s distinctiveness.

He ran his eyes down the first page. “Seven years old,” he repeated.

Janet laughed incredulously. “I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s normal for a wholesomely raised seven year old girl. And believe me, there are few kids around here who could boast of a better childhood than Tess. I was reading to her when she was six months old. We did flashcards.”

He was nodding intently. Janet saw over his shoulder that the school yard was thinning out. Mothers were departing with their children into the parking lot.

“I have to get Tess,” she sighed.

“Wait.”

He put out a hand to stop her. They stood side by side, facing opposite directions, his hand pressed against the ball of her shoulder. She looked down, finding stiff black hairs on his hand.

“I have to go,” said Janet in monotone.

“I’ll give you a ride,” he said.

“No,” she answered.

“You’ll be okay,” he told her.

“It’s all wrong.” She shook her head impatiently. His hand lingered on her shoulder until she moved beyond his reach.



Terence sat at a counter, tracing his finger in the grease. His coffee was cold, but summoning the waitress would bring an end to the story she was confiding to the line cook through the order window, a story Terence was enjoying, mostly because he was not meant to.

When he was dating Janet, she would have sudden imperative urges that he thrilled to fulfill. One such was a craving for waffle house food: coffee from a Pyrex urn, ketchup on an order of hash browns, English muffins with ancient grape jelly. Terence thought of watching her eat, every bite a lunge that sent her hair swinging across her forehead, while he was completely ignored. It was her and the fork on those occasions; he was there to pay and to record it in memory. When he mentioned that was how it felt, she laughed and began calling him Alice B., though she never explained why.

Occasions like those convinced him that Janet loved him. She would unreservedly expound her ideas to anyone; it was only in front of him that she ate like a hog. Had he ever learned that she was being accompanied to Pizza Heaven by some other guy, he might have gone and bought a gun.

He tried to remember when she had changed. He supposed other men would blame the child as the organ of change, but Terence dismissed that with a smile. When Tess came, Janet was ready with an itemized schedule for the next twenty years. That was her way; he was not surprised by it.

That left him with the consideration that it was he who had changed, but that idea was no more illuminating than the first. He loved her no less. He understood her no more than when they sat side by side at other greasy counters, long ago.

The difference was that he did not long for her, as he used, to be sitting beside him now. He had discovered that it would be no help.

The realization came with no great feeling.

The waitress was going strong still with her story; Terence had kept apprised of it, despite his private reflections. He swallowed the dregs of his coffee.

His cellular phone buzzed against his thigh. The number was not one he recognized.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Tess?”

The waitress and the line cook looked up at him indignantly. Terence slid away from the counter and ambled toward the door, apologetically ducking his head at them.

“What’s up, honey? Where are you?”

“In the principal’s office.”

“Really? What are you doing there?”

“Mommy’s not here yet.”

“She’s not? What…is everything all right? Are you in trouble, honey?”

“No. I’m not in trouble.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“Mommy’s not here, and school’s out.”

Terence looked at his watch. “School’s out. How long have you been waiting?”

“Um…an hour and sixteen minutes.”

Terence pushed through the glass door into the restaurant foyer. He leaned a hand against the window.

“Did they call Mommy?”

“Yes. They called lots of times. Mrs. Fusz already went home. Mrs. Pullman is calling again.”

“Calling Mommy at home?”

“Yes. They said I should call you to come get me.”

“Oh. Oh, honey, I’m in Wyoming.”

“Really? Yeah, I told them you were on a trip. But they said call anyway.”

“Oh, honey.”

“Where are you going? California?”

“No. Oregon, this time.”

“Where?”

“Salem.”

“That’s the capital.”

“Is that right?” Terence caught his fingers drumming on the window. He stopped them. Irritably, he let them start again. Then he put his hand in his mouth and bit down on it.

“Mrs. Pullman hung up. I guess Mommy’s not there still.”

“Do you know where she might be?” Terence waited. “Honey? Tess? Are you still…?”

She came back into his sentence. “Mrs. Dipple says ask if you know any phone numbers of neighbors or friends they should call.”

Who were all these women? Terence thought wildly, and why didn’t they know what to do? He was in Wyoming, and they were there in the same state as his daughter, and his wife.

A cold little thought coursed like a lone goose through his head.

“Let me think.” The neighbors closest down the road were old people; the wife he suspected of alcoholism, and he wouldn’t trust the old man with a female puppy, let alone his daughter. He had no idea who Janet’s friends might be. “Do you have a friend at school you could go home with?”

“All the kids have already…”

“That’s right, that’s right. Let’s see.” He shook his head to clear its gathering storm. “Honey? Tess? I’m going to do this: I’m going to hang up with you for just a minute, and go through my cell phone to find someone who can help. Okay? You can call me back in ten minutes. Okay?”

“Okay. I love you.”



Janet rolled over on the pillow. The black hairs tickled her nose.

“There’s a beautiful irony at work here,” she informed Roy.

He lifted the cigarette from his lips, smiling.

“Do you see it?” she persisted. “You see what I mean?”

He turned his head halfway toward her; his eyes rolled the rest of the way. “You talk too much. You know that?”

She should have been accustomed to his lazy causticism by that time. It still made her wriggle with pleasure, the suppressed discourse knocking about inside her for release.

Roy blew smoke at the ceiling. “Did you see that?” he said, pleased. “I can do rings. Watch.” He did it again.

Janet willed herself to keep silent, fascinated by each moment that she found she could endure without speaking her mind.

“But I can only do it on my back anymore. It used to be part of my act…I was a magician.” He looked for her full attention. “Before the whole private eye thing, I was.”

“Really?” she encouraged him hoarsely.

He passed her the cigarette. “Sure was,” he said. “I played conventions and some Vegas hotels.”

He took the smoke back from Janet, who had held onto it out of courtesy.

“You always think about getting a little farther than you do,” he said. “I kept thinking how was I going to learn escaping. I practiced putting shivs in my heels. That’s what Houdini did. Lock picks in his mouth, wire in his hair. Friend who went to prison showed me how to do it.” He looked over at her again. “You know what I’m talking about? Tanks of water, getting tied up in a trunk.”

Janet nodded vigorously.

“Yeah.” He poised the glowing butt against his lips. “You need money for that.”



Terence sat on the foyer banquette, his elbows on his knees. A group of five elderly people squeezed past him, intent on entering the restaurant abreast. Tess had called him twice; each time he anxiously signed off for another ten-minute interval. There was no one in his address book to call.

It occurred to him very little to wonder where Janet was, after the first shock of her delinquency. If she wasn’t dead or hurt somewhere, then she was all right, and there was, in any case, nothing he could do. It was that incapability he mused on, and on the strange pleasure it gave him. Though he agreed with the office women that the predicament lay on his hands, he found himself foolishly smiling at the thousand miles that separated them.

Who am I? Terence thought incredulously, pulling at the unkempt hair around his ears. What kind of father? What kind of man? But the words, like the responsibility, were impalpable.

It was unthinkable to go back to the motel and watch Nick at Nite, as he had vaguely thought of doing before Tess had called. He could no more do that now than he could, on any other work night, find himself a hooker. Yet he knew many fathers who did so, men who would have twenty numbers to call if their daughters phoned from school to say that their mothers were mysteriously absent.

The cell phone jangled again, twice, before he answered it.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, honey.”

She was quiet, waiting for him to say something.

“How’s it going?” he asked, trying to sound bright.

He heard her sigh with wry good humor. “Mrs. Pullman went home. Mrs. Dipple keeps asking questions about Sesame Street.”

“Sesame Street?”

“She thinks I watch it.”

He gave a wry chuckle. Tess said nothing.

“They still haven’t found Mommy yet, huh?”

“No. I guess you’re pretty far away, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yeah, sweetie, I’m a long ways away. I can’t come and get you.”

“Yeah. I know.”

They were both quiet for several moments. Terence listened to Tess’ breathing, wondering desperately what she was thinking, unable to say anything more himself. I’m sorry, he thought, hoping it would transmit from his adult mind to the one she would have someday. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Being far away changes love. You don’t know what it’s like, far away, where no one sees you.

She spoke again, this time in an undertone.

“Mrs. Dipple wants to go home,” she said.

“Yeah,” he hoarsely croaked.

“Well,” said Tess, “she makes good brownies. She brings them to all the classes on Valentine’s Day.” She paused for several moments. “’Cause I guess I’ll go to her house, if Mommy doesn’t get here.”

“You will? I mean, you think she’ll…”

“I don’t know. She took Greg Hoffmann to the hospital when his mom got in a car crash.”

A designated collector for the school strays, Terence thought. He pictured himself spreading his hands in helpless apology before a woman wielding a chocolate-stained spatula.

“They asked if our neighbors could help,” said Tess, “but I’m not going over there.”

“What? Why not?”

“I don’t like them. Mrs. Baxter is mean and Mr. Baxter is funny. I decided if they try to take me there I’ll throw a fit.”

“Tess,” said Terence admiringly, “you’re the smartest girl I know.”

“Mommy’s friend said that, too. Do you think I should be a doctor?”

“Sure. You should be anything you want.”

A gang of flannelled truckers barreled into the foyer, pushing each other and barking laughter.

“What’s that noise? Where are you?”

“I’m in a restaurant. I was having some coffee when you called.”

“In Wyoming?”

“Yes. It’s dinner time now so everyone is coming in.”

“Is it a trucker stop?”

“A…yes, it’s a truck stop. How did you know that?”

“I just guessed. We were shopping last night, and we drove past a restaurant, and it said they had French toast special, and I wanted to eat dinner there, but Mommy said no, it was a trucker stop, and you can’t have French toast for dinner, only for breakfast.”

“Well, Mommy was wrong,” said Terence, watching through the glass as the truckers bandied with the waitress. “You can have anything you want any time of day.”

“Really?”

“If you were here,” he said, “eating dinner with me, you could have French toast.”

“What would you have?”

“Chicken soup and meatloaf.”

“I’m hungry,” said Tess.

“Well, soon you’ll be having delicious brownies.” He immediately hated himself for saying it.

“Do you think Mommy’s okay?”

He could not speak.

“They were whispering before Mrs. Pullman left, and they called the hospital.”

“Really? Did it sound like...” He stopped, wondering how he could think of asking his daughter to gauge the likelihood that her mother was to be found in the hospital. “I’m sure she’s fine.” There was simply no alternative to offer.

“Do you think I could be a magician?”

“What?”

“You have to be smart for that too, don’t you?”

“Sure. Really smart.”

“I learned a magic trick. I can show you when you come home.”

“How did you learn that?”

“Mommy’s friend showed it to me. When are you…”

He heard a muffle of commotion on her end of the line. Her voice came back after a moment.

“Mommy’s here!” she crowed. “Oh, I gotta go. Wait. Do you want to talk to her?”

Terence found his voice. “Does she look okay?”

“Yeah. I think so. Mrs. Dipple’s talking to her now.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “That’s okay. I’ll talk to her after you get home. I’m glad you’re okay now, honey.”

“Yeah. I love you. Whoa, Mrs. Dipple just yelled. Okay, I love you, Daddy. Bye.”

Dark had fallen around the glass walls of the foyer. Dion and the Belmonts issued plaintively from the jukebox against the far wall. Terence bought a pack of Kool Lights from the vending machine and, when he returned to the motel, changed to a smoking room. He burned determinedly through the pack, one by one, staring at the shades of grey on the silent television screen--Rob Petrie shouted with muted fury as Laura flung her skinny arms about. He ought to break one of those skinny arms, Terence thought, snap it like a matchstick, it would be so easy, and then no need to shout anymore. He smiled at his own assurance, stabbing the cigarette into the ashtray. He ought to have taken the phone to Janet when Mrs. Dipple was through with her. A man's home should not be compromised while he was away, providing for it. Clearly, it was time he commanded her full attention.