November 1
Allotment
In her dream, Lexi had been handing out didgeridoos to a group of musicians, led by her ex-boyfriend. The room was one of those teak wood chambers she’d seen on her trip to Thailand, made more unusual by the door’s high threshold: everyone had to step up and over.
Thunder outside her real room woke her, before she’d gotten any true satisfaction from the plot of her dream. And what was dreaming, really, meaning derived from images? Explanations? Facts or feelings unearthed?
Rain struck the roof in waves. Lexi reached for the light knob
Once woken, she could face hours before returning to sleep. Mountolive, book 3 of the Alexandria Quartet, beckoned.
Click. Nothing.
Where she lived, on the banks of the San Lorenzo River, that wasn’t a rare occurrence. It didn't take much for a tree to go down, root mass loosened by rain, hooking any strand of wiring that connected backwood neighbor to neighbor to shops down the way from the source.
Binx, he was purring the louder. His feline reasoning credited hardship as a coherence better to knead the breast of his beloved.
“Hey Binx, no claws,” Lexi said and pushed him to a more blanketed region of her body. He was her new adoption.
In the extending darkness of her bedroom, the dimensions of her life felt defined and insistent.
“These five hundred square feet are my own parcel of the earth’s 196, 936, 994 square miles,” she said out loud, her voice clear and strong. “Is that really my share? If there are 7,830,458,560 people on the earth, more or less, as of last October 5th, that means we each could be allotted a quarter mile, to be fair, but, really, when was this planet ever that?”
Binx rubbed his head against her hip. He loved her mini dissertations.
“Oh, what would I do with my quarter mile, were I granted my share, that is if it weren’t a quarter mile of ocean or glacier or feldspar outcropping? I think I’d grow half in food, a quarter in flowers, and a quarter left to wild. A quarter of a quarter that is, which is…”
And with that, as if in affirmation of the plan, the electricity came on.
Allotment
In her dream, Lexi had been handing out didgeridoos to a group of musicians, led by her ex-boyfriend. The room was one of those teak wood chambers she’d seen on her trip to Thailand, made more unusual by the door’s high threshold: everyone had to step up and over.
Thunder outside her real room woke her, before she’d gotten any true satisfaction from the plot of her dream. And what was dreaming, really, meaning derived from images? Explanations? Facts or feelings unearthed?
Rain struck the roof in waves. Lexi reached for the light knob
Once woken, she could face hours before returning to sleep. Mountolive, book 3 of the Alexandria Quartet, beckoned.
Click. Nothing.
Where she lived, on the banks of the San Lorenzo River, that wasn’t a rare occurrence. It didn't take much for a tree to go down, root mass loosened by rain, hooking any strand of wiring that connected backwood neighbor to neighbor to shops down the way from the source.
Binx, he was purring the louder. His feline reasoning credited hardship as a coherence better to knead the breast of his beloved.
“Hey Binx, no claws,” Lexi said and pushed him to a more blanketed region of her body. He was her new adoption.
In the extending darkness of her bedroom, the dimensions of her life felt defined and insistent.
“These five hundred square feet are my own parcel of the earth’s 196, 936, 994 square miles,” she said out loud, her voice clear and strong. “Is that really my share? If there are 7,830,458,560 people on the earth, more or less, as of last October 5th, that means we each could be allotted a quarter mile, to be fair, but, really, when was this planet ever that?”
Binx rubbed his head against her hip. He loved her mini dissertations.
“Oh, what would I do with my quarter mile, were I granted my share, that is if it weren’t a quarter mile of ocean or glacier or feldspar outcropping? I think I’d grow half in food, a quarter in flowers, and a quarter left to wild. A quarter of a quarter that is, which is…”
And with that, as if in affirmation of the plan, the electricity came on.
November 2
|
Mineral
November 3, 2021
Because she lived halfway up the mountain, Hannah had to drive into town to get her mail. She combined the trip with her weekly shopping, her visit with Ed, and a stop at the town’s outpost library, where she returned the week’s haul and picked up her new stack of books.
“Hold on there, Hannah,” Roy Harvey said through the P.O. window. “You’ve got a big, old package, couldn’t fit in your box.” He disappeared into the backroom. Coming back, he said, “Cost $37.50 to send,” and he slid it towards her. “From Chicago. Who do you know from those parts?”
Hannah thought for a moment, “I don’t,” and she managed to bring the box back to her truck, as Roy called, “Do you need help?”
Her dog, Rondo, sniffed it, there on the passenger seat, as curious as she.
“It’s heavy!” She told her lifelong friend, Ed, “from Chicago.”
“Who do you know in Chicago who’d send you some big, heavy package?”
“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?”
“Well, what is it? Haven’t you opened it up yet?”
Hannah shook her head. She’d been waiting until she could be alone.
“Let’s go have a look,” Ed said and drew his long body up from his usual chair.
So, what could she do?
He followed her out to the truck, Rondo running circles around his heels, and pulled a knife from his belt.
Hannah took the well-weighted blade in her hands but hesitated before opening the package.
“Do you recognize the print, Ed?”
“Someone had written her name and P.O. box in black magic marker.
“No. You?”
She shook her head.
“Well happy birthday to you, Sugar, three months late,” and he gestured to the package. “Open it.”
Hannah ran the blade along the seam, opened the box, and there, in a bed of crumpled newspaper and cardboard lay three big sheets of stone, in varying colors, each with a series of fossils embedded in a face.
“Well now,” Ed said and patted Hannah on the shoulder.
She took up the first piece. Rising from the surface, like an ancient bas relief, a beetle shape protruded with a series of perfect striations running across its back.
“Trilobite,” Hanna said and reached for the next.
Studded through was a series of spirals. “Ammonite,” she said, and with the third, “And, last, but not least, Helopeltis Trilobite.”
She presented it for Ed to behold, flat against the palms of both hands. It looked like an elaborate, black spider plant, with dramatic occipital spires.
“Girl, you never cease to amaze me,” Ed said. “Since when are you some kind of paleontologist?”
But Hannah hardly heard him. She was searching her memory for names and faces of those who’d known her during her days at the university or who’d accompanied her on any number of digs. She’d checked the box for a return address, or inside, for a note, but there was nothing. How annoying, she thought. She wasn’t much for nostalgia and remembrance, having chosen long ago that now was all she truly had.
“What’s wrong,” Ed said. “Hannah?”
She began to return the three slabs to the box, securing the top so it held.
“I’m off to the library, I guess. I’ve got an Agatha Christie waiting for me.”
She got Rondo back in the truck, kissed Ed’s cheek, and was off.
It wasn’t until she’d gotten home and unloaded everything that a name and face came to her. She placed the three stones on her mantle, between candlesticks she’d turned, her first woodworking class in Adult Ed. Perfect, really. Three ancient records of lives lived and lost and left in stone.
Her name had been Elizabeth, no, Lizbeth, and she had a German-made mattock that was especially precise. At that thought, Hannah chuckled to herself. “Leave it to you to have warmer memories of the woman’s tools than of her,” she said aloud.
Neither Rondo nor Jack, the cat, stirred. Their owner was known for soliloquies.
She did remember. Their first kiss, on a mountain night on the Isle of Wight, had cracked her wide open. With the cosmos peeled back, with the strata of days deep within years, within uninterrupted earth, they had felt their youth and scale as fleeting and flexed. And then what?
Everything that had intervened and nothing that had not mattered to this girth and span and that, to this impulse and reckoning, this tangle of limbs and longing.
“Yes, Lizbeth,” she said, standing at the mantle. But then Hannah saw there in the tight coil of the ammonite, an opalized flare of green and blue. She remembered that ammonite was thought to have been a dragon’s medallion. That was something Lizbeth had told her, all those years ago.
“How silly,” Hannah said, taking up the stone, “and how lovely.”
November 3, 2021
Because she lived halfway up the mountain, Hannah had to drive into town to get her mail. She combined the trip with her weekly shopping, her visit with Ed, and a stop at the town’s outpost library, where she returned the week’s haul and picked up her new stack of books.
“Hold on there, Hannah,” Roy Harvey said through the P.O. window. “You’ve got a big, old package, couldn’t fit in your box.” He disappeared into the backroom. Coming back, he said, “Cost $37.50 to send,” and he slid it towards her. “From Chicago. Who do you know from those parts?”
Hannah thought for a moment, “I don’t,” and she managed to bring the box back to her truck, as Roy called, “Do you need help?”
Her dog, Rondo, sniffed it, there on the passenger seat, as curious as she.
“It’s heavy!” She told her lifelong friend, Ed, “from Chicago.”
“Who do you know in Chicago who’d send you some big, heavy package?”
“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?”
“Well, what is it? Haven’t you opened it up yet?”
Hannah shook her head. She’d been waiting until she could be alone.
“Let’s go have a look,” Ed said and drew his long body up from his usual chair.
So, what could she do?
He followed her out to the truck, Rondo running circles around his heels, and pulled a knife from his belt.
Hannah took the well-weighted blade in her hands but hesitated before opening the package.
“Do you recognize the print, Ed?”
“Someone had written her name and P.O. box in black magic marker.
“No. You?”
She shook her head.
“Well happy birthday to you, Sugar, three months late,” and he gestured to the package. “Open it.”
Hannah ran the blade along the seam, opened the box, and there, in a bed of crumpled newspaper and cardboard lay three big sheets of stone, in varying colors, each with a series of fossils embedded in a face.
“Well now,” Ed said and patted Hannah on the shoulder.
She took up the first piece. Rising from the surface, like an ancient bas relief, a beetle shape protruded with a series of perfect striations running across its back.
“Trilobite,” Hanna said and reached for the next.
Studded through was a series of spirals. “Ammonite,” she said, and with the third, “And, last, but not least, Helopeltis Trilobite.”
She presented it for Ed to behold, flat against the palms of both hands. It looked like an elaborate, black spider plant, with dramatic occipital spires.
“Girl, you never cease to amaze me,” Ed said. “Since when are you some kind of paleontologist?”
But Hannah hardly heard him. She was searching her memory for names and faces of those who’d known her during her days at the university or who’d accompanied her on any number of digs. She’d checked the box for a return address, or inside, for a note, but there was nothing. How annoying, she thought. She wasn’t much for nostalgia and remembrance, having chosen long ago that now was all she truly had.
“What’s wrong,” Ed said. “Hannah?”
She began to return the three slabs to the box, securing the top so it held.
“I’m off to the library, I guess. I’ve got an Agatha Christie waiting for me.”
She got Rondo back in the truck, kissed Ed’s cheek, and was off.
It wasn’t until she’d gotten home and unloaded everything that a name and face came to her. She placed the three stones on her mantle, between candlesticks she’d turned, her first woodworking class in Adult Ed. Perfect, really. Three ancient records of lives lived and lost and left in stone.
Her name had been Elizabeth, no, Lizbeth, and she had a German-made mattock that was especially precise. At that thought, Hannah chuckled to herself. “Leave it to you to have warmer memories of the woman’s tools than of her,” she said aloud.
Neither Rondo nor Jack, the cat, stirred. Their owner was known for soliloquies.
She did remember. Their first kiss, on a mountain night on the Isle of Wight, had cracked her wide open. With the cosmos peeled back, with the strata of days deep within years, within uninterrupted earth, they had felt their youth and scale as fleeting and flexed. And then what?
Everything that had intervened and nothing that had not mattered to this girth and span and that, to this impulse and reckoning, this tangle of limbs and longing.
“Yes, Lizbeth,” she said, standing at the mantle. But then Hannah saw there in the tight coil of the ammonite, an opalized flare of green and blue. She remembered that ammonite was thought to have been a dragon’s medallion. That was something Lizbeth had told her, all those years ago.
“How silly,” Hannah said, taking up the stone, “and how lovely.”
Adit
November 4, 2021
Risa lived out on the edge of the mining town, but anything could be an edge to somebody with dualistic tendencies, which she had, just barely clinging to her own tippy isthmus. And it was only here and there or now and then, but with the mind foundering, it was also under and above, and folks barely staying on the dry side of debt and burden.
Theirs was a manganese mine, not gold or silver or diamonds, but you’re looking to deoxidize steel or tine some pigment black-brown, or stiffen an aluminum coke can, that was your ticket.
How she’d ended up there, of all places, she might tell you, if you got Risa drunk enough, but the story could well shift and spire around mobile details, a man, a promise, an intricate network of wishes and words.
“And now, as you would know, if you’d stuck out high school, a body at rest, let’s call it that, will remain so, unless acted upon by a force. Acted upon,” she said, and pushed away from the bar, so her stool almost tipped over, “It could have been anything!”
“Could have been?” Young Drake asked. He was five days past drinking age, and trying to catch up.
“Anything. That leaves the door open wide, doesn’t it? A lot of flies could come and go in those, what, 21 years.” She was pretty much talking to herself, so Drake turned to his left and asked Sam, “Knock, knock.”
“Knock, knock,” Risa said, “Who’s there? Devil come by my front door,” She sang under her breath, and stood up. “And with that, I bid you kind people adieux.”
She mader her overly cautious way across the bar and out into the night. Once outside, she lost much of her momentum and tipped her head back to drink in the dark, star-chipped sky.
“Where to now?” She said, at last, accustomed to her own company. Home was haunted by silence and regret. Usually, she drank herself numb before her return, but not tonight.
“Anywhere but here, charged ion. As long as you are in this contained space, you will matter,” she said and began to laugh, laugh and walk west on Creekside.
It wasn’t long before she realized she was heading towards the mine. It exerted its influence on the whole town, dwindling as it was. It was the origin of planar explanation, she thought, the central locus of event and livelihood. She knew a way around the locked gate, the way the town’s teens entered to conduct their boozefests and deflowerings.
She stepped through the fencing and past the plywood spray painted with pot leaf and band names, into the adit. Immediately, the temperature dropped and a moist air of rust and earth exhalation surrounded her.
“That’s more like it,” she said and laughed. She clicked on the flashlight on her phone and walked through the corrugated throat of stone and soil, until she came to a kind of opening, the site of previous parties and double dares. She had never been there, never really asked herself how geological history transected her human path. And there she was within. It felt like death and non-death, burial and exhumation, to a mineral state, end and beginning.
Risa sat down on an outcropping of stone, not caring that it was slightly damp, and switched off her flashlight. Darkness swallowed the instant. And just as suddenly, she was given back to herself, felt the weight of her eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose, her assbones pressed hard by stone, heard from deep within, an echoing drip, drip, drip.
“I am as deep as you,” she whispered, though she didn’t really believe it. “You are given purpose by use,” she said, and that she did believe. She really did.
Risa lived out on the edge of the mining town, but anything could be an edge to somebody with dualistic tendencies, which she had, just barely clinging to her own tippy isthmus. And it was only here and there or now and then, but with the mind foundering, it was also under and above, and folks barely staying on the dry side of debt and burden.
Theirs was a manganese mine, not gold or silver or diamonds, but you’re looking to deoxidize steel or tine some pigment black-brown, or stiffen an aluminum coke can, that was your ticket.
How she’d ended up there, of all places, she might tell you, if you got Risa drunk enough, but the story could well shift and spire around mobile details, a man, a promise, an intricate network of wishes and words.
“And now, as you would know, if you’d stuck out high school, a body at rest, let’s call it that, will remain so, unless acted upon by a force. Acted upon,” she said, and pushed away from the bar, so her stool almost tipped over, “It could have been anything!”
“Could have been?” Young Drake asked. He was five days past drinking age, and trying to catch up.
“Anything. That leaves the door open wide, doesn’t it? A lot of flies could come and go in those, what, 21 years.” She was pretty much talking to herself, so Drake turned to his left and asked Sam, “Knock, knock.”
“Knock, knock,” Risa said, “Who’s there? Devil come by my front door,” She sang under her breath, and stood up. “And with that, I bid you kind people adieux.”
She mader her overly cautious way across the bar and out into the night. Once outside, she lost much of her momentum and tipped her head back to drink in the dark, star-chipped sky.
“Where to now?” She said, at last, accustomed to her own company. Home was haunted by silence and regret. Usually, she drank herself numb before her return, but not tonight.
“Anywhere but here, charged ion. As long as you are in this contained space, you will matter,” she said and began to laugh, laugh and walk west on Creekside.
It wasn’t long before she realized she was heading towards the mine. It exerted its influence on the whole town, dwindling as it was. It was the origin of planar explanation, she thought, the central locus of event and livelihood. She knew a way around the locked gate, the way the town’s teens entered to conduct their boozefests and deflowerings.
She stepped through the fencing and past the plywood spray painted with pot leaf and band names, into the adit. Immediately, the temperature dropped and a moist air of rust and earth exhalation surrounded her.
“That’s more like it,” she said and laughed. She clicked on the flashlight on her phone and walked through the corrugated throat of stone and soil, until she came to a kind of opening, the site of previous parties and double dares. She had never been there, never really asked herself how geological history transected her human path. And there she was within. It felt like death and non-death, burial and exhumation, to a mineral state, end and beginning.
Risa sat down on an outcropping of stone, not caring that it was slightly damp, and switched off her flashlight. Darkness swallowed the instant. And just as suddenly, she was given back to herself, felt the weight of her eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose, her assbones pressed hard by stone, heard from deep within, an echoing drip, drip, drip.
“I am as deep as you,” she whispered, though she didn’t really believe it. “You are given purpose by use,” she said, and that she did believe. She really did.
11/5/21
When he was younger, Oliver was what you could only call profligate with his time. It stretched ahead of him, slack days of lolling and languor, misbegotten nights of false-starts and the lost way, a teeming surge of possibilities taken, missed, and assured.
Following his prognosis, and he only 32, he reckoned every event as a kind of final occasion, the last time he'd ever play chess with Victoria, who lived now in New Zealand, his final telephone conversation with Leo, who would have thought that salty S.O.B. would cry? Would Oliver remember any of this? What conceivable biological function did memory serve? Yes, survival (don't eat those berries; yes, eat those), but would he be allowed to "keep" any of it beyond the last breath and beat?
"I'm sure that's the wrong way to look at it," Oliver told Dr. Sal, his shrink, "a materialist's
perspective."
And she had raised an eyebrow, which meant, interesting, tell me more.
"It's not as if experience can be amassed and preserved, right?" and then she had looked down, which had left Weston feeling stranded with his own dying wishes.
Nevertheless, he'd taken to spending his mornings in Jenner, at the mouth of the Russian River. He watched the pelicans sort themselves to Vs, sea gulls comb back and forth, reflected in the surface of the river. He scanned the horizon, letting his eye travel along the wave edge, noting how a sleeper rose out of inexplicable depths with speed and fury, and, well, a kind of nonchalance.
All the flittering flicks and flutter of birdwing and song seemed random and excessive. No one stood out to be noted. No one was writing a dissertation on flight. Not one of the fledged seekers considered what he'd given of lasting value to the world. It might as well have been a rainstorm that he watched.
And why did he count himself worthy of singular regard? He wrote that question in a notebook that maybe nobody would ever read. He answered, "because I lived," and he crossed that out, "because I live," he wrote above it, then crossed that out too.
When he was younger, Oliver was what you could only call profligate with his time. It stretched ahead of him, slack days of lolling and languor, misbegotten nights of false-starts and the lost way, a teeming surge of possibilities taken, missed, and assured.
Following his prognosis, and he only 32, he reckoned every event as a kind of final occasion, the last time he'd ever play chess with Victoria, who lived now in New Zealand, his final telephone conversation with Leo, who would have thought that salty S.O.B. would cry? Would Oliver remember any of this? What conceivable biological function did memory serve? Yes, survival (don't eat those berries; yes, eat those), but would he be allowed to "keep" any of it beyond the last breath and beat?
"I'm sure that's the wrong way to look at it," Oliver told Dr. Sal, his shrink, "a materialist's
perspective."
And she had raised an eyebrow, which meant, interesting, tell me more.
"It's not as if experience can be amassed and preserved, right?" and then she had looked down, which had left Weston feeling stranded with his own dying wishes.
Nevertheless, he'd taken to spending his mornings in Jenner, at the mouth of the Russian River. He watched the pelicans sort themselves to Vs, sea gulls comb back and forth, reflected in the surface of the river. He scanned the horizon, letting his eye travel along the wave edge, noting how a sleeper rose out of inexplicable depths with speed and fury, and, well, a kind of nonchalance.
All the flittering flicks and flutter of birdwing and song seemed random and excessive. No one stood out to be noted. No one was writing a dissertation on flight. Not one of the fledged seekers considered what he'd given of lasting value to the world. It might as well have been a rainstorm that he watched.
And why did he count himself worthy of singular regard? He wrote that question in a notebook that maybe nobody would ever read. He answered, "because I lived," and he crossed that out, "because I live," he wrote above it, then crossed that out too.
11/6/21
It was like that recurring nightmare I had about one hour between the time he busted my nose and opened my brow and headed out to the Quickstop for more beer, and when he'd make it back. It must have been the adrenalin that powered me, because to say I was dazed doesn't even come close to describing my state of mind while I loaded a duffle and a few garbage bags with clothes and whatever was left of my old life, emptying the shelves of cans and cereal, because I knew one hundred and whatever I had wouldn't last me long, and I hit out with the Honda, knowing Johnny hadn't quite fixed it fully, but what choice did I have?
To be honest, I had only the vaguest notion of what lay west, but I set myself headed sunwards as that gold ball dipped, and figured distance was buffer, regardless of direction. I had to get somewhere different from where I'd been.
How many of us are on this green and brown and blue globe? How many leaving their origins? How many saying maybe next time, forced to return? I'd never really given myself adequate regard, but that's almost programmed, isn't it? If your bad father, widowed by suicide, considered your need nuisance, then what did you believe you deserved? I'm saying "you", disassociated by whatever was driving me. I say "you" because I guess I'd never gotten full ownership of any kind of "I".
But then it happened, on the side of the road, a girl smaller and sadder and more vacant than my own pale outline of a person. She had a sign asking anyone, anyone, to help her move along. Name of Lucinda, as it happened, which I took to be a sign, and just like that, or in a matter of hours, confiding as we drove, I became a newly minted coin of the realm, made "we" by miracle.
We took turns driving to a future we could come to share. That was seven years ago, and still. Please forward any kindness delayed by plot-stitch or pothole to Taos, New Mexico, where Lucinda and I have made our home.
It was like that recurring nightmare I had about one hour between the time he busted my nose and opened my brow and headed out to the Quickstop for more beer, and when he'd make it back. It must have been the adrenalin that powered me, because to say I was dazed doesn't even come close to describing my state of mind while I loaded a duffle and a few garbage bags with clothes and whatever was left of my old life, emptying the shelves of cans and cereal, because I knew one hundred and whatever I had wouldn't last me long, and I hit out with the Honda, knowing Johnny hadn't quite fixed it fully, but what choice did I have?
To be honest, I had only the vaguest notion of what lay west, but I set myself headed sunwards as that gold ball dipped, and figured distance was buffer, regardless of direction. I had to get somewhere different from where I'd been.
How many of us are on this green and brown and blue globe? How many leaving their origins? How many saying maybe next time, forced to return? I'd never really given myself adequate regard, but that's almost programmed, isn't it? If your bad father, widowed by suicide, considered your need nuisance, then what did you believe you deserved? I'm saying "you", disassociated by whatever was driving me. I say "you" because I guess I'd never gotten full ownership of any kind of "I".
But then it happened, on the side of the road, a girl smaller and sadder and more vacant than my own pale outline of a person. She had a sign asking anyone, anyone, to help her move along. Name of Lucinda, as it happened, which I took to be a sign, and just like that, or in a matter of hours, confiding as we drove, I became a newly minted coin of the realm, made "we" by miracle.
We took turns driving to a future we could come to share. That was seven years ago, and still. Please forward any kindness delayed by plot-stitch or pothole to Taos, New Mexico, where Lucinda and I have made our home.
11/7/21
For the past 18 months, Mary hadn't dared ride the subway. Each human entity could harbor a fatal, viral load, each exhalation the reach of parasite for fertile host, constantly expanding range. She'd taken to walking or riding her bicycle. The bonus was she'd lsot twenty-five pounds.
Now that she'd been inoculated, she was beginning to re-emerge.
"Hello Wally," she spoke through her mask to the man in the south corner's bodega.
"This kale looks great," Not exactly a brilliant foray into social interaction, but a start.
She went to the library, following their recommendations exactly, even leaving the books on a sunlit table in her flat for three days to zap any remainder, though, yes, she'd read that such surfaces had been deemed fairly safe. Why take unnecessary risks?
Today she'd decided to venture uptown to visit the Metropolitan Museum to view the Surrealism exhibit, and, with this, she'd felt her pulse quicken, she would get there and back by subway. She'd worn her Anne Klein black slacks, a black sweater, and walking pumps, and to her mind, she looked put together, maybe even a little chic, with her clunky silver necklace and bracelet. The mask she wore was also black and sleek.
Heading down the stairs felt normal enough, her metro-card still had plenty on it, it felt almost normal. Waiting on the platform, being part of the city, this city, her ardent goal from childhood. But there was something different now, a hollowness to it all, as if she were alone, even as she was surrounded by others.
A tourist with an accent asked her if this train headed to Brooklyn, and Mary helped her sort things out.
Finally her train came; Mary was surprised to see how crowded it was, not one seat available. She would have to stand, to hold the bar with her bare hand. She had not thought of that. When the train pulled out, she felt the surge upon the gathered bulk of human bodies, crowded in. Movement, function, urban intricacy. People acted as if it were the most normal thing in the world, reading their newspapers, playing on their phones, holding their children on their laps.
For Mary, it all felt different, the closeness of these strangers, the sense of individuality joined with common direction, like being a kind of hemocyte in an artery, part of the blood flow, but just one. She felt the pressure of the bodies beside her, all of them holding on, going where they needed to go. And then she smelled something, something warm and alive. She turned her head ever so slightly and saw a man, perhaps her own age, or a little younger, bearded, dark, one ear pierced with a silver hoop. His smell, a mix of some scent and faint sweat made Mary a bit unsteady.
Truly, he smelled like sex to her, she couldn't deny it. And once she'd thought that, she grew all the more woozy. What was happening to her, she wondered, trying to be stern, trying to shake free. And before she could stop herself, she began to lean a little, so her leg brushed against his. The movement of the train disguised any intention. And then she let one hand drop to her side so her fingers just brushed his jeans, so she could imagine his bare leg within. The train was so crowded, it wouldn't seem strange, and if she were to raise her hand slightly, she might feel his haunch. Before she could act to touch a stranger so intimately, the train came to the station, and let off, with the rest of the flow, this one person who had proven to her that she was actually still alive.
For the past 18 months, Mary hadn't dared ride the subway. Each human entity could harbor a fatal, viral load, each exhalation the reach of parasite for fertile host, constantly expanding range. She'd taken to walking or riding her bicycle. The bonus was she'd lsot twenty-five pounds.
Now that she'd been inoculated, she was beginning to re-emerge.
"Hello Wally," she spoke through her mask to the man in the south corner's bodega.
"This kale looks great," Not exactly a brilliant foray into social interaction, but a start.
She went to the library, following their recommendations exactly, even leaving the books on a sunlit table in her flat for three days to zap any remainder, though, yes, she'd read that such surfaces had been deemed fairly safe. Why take unnecessary risks?
Today she'd decided to venture uptown to visit the Metropolitan Museum to view the Surrealism exhibit, and, with this, she'd felt her pulse quicken, she would get there and back by subway. She'd worn her Anne Klein black slacks, a black sweater, and walking pumps, and to her mind, she looked put together, maybe even a little chic, with her clunky silver necklace and bracelet. The mask she wore was also black and sleek.
Heading down the stairs felt normal enough, her metro-card still had plenty on it, it felt almost normal. Waiting on the platform, being part of the city, this city, her ardent goal from childhood. But there was something different now, a hollowness to it all, as if she were alone, even as she was surrounded by others.
A tourist with an accent asked her if this train headed to Brooklyn, and Mary helped her sort things out.
Finally her train came; Mary was surprised to see how crowded it was, not one seat available. She would have to stand, to hold the bar with her bare hand. She had not thought of that. When the train pulled out, she felt the surge upon the gathered bulk of human bodies, crowded in. Movement, function, urban intricacy. People acted as if it were the most normal thing in the world, reading their newspapers, playing on their phones, holding their children on their laps.
For Mary, it all felt different, the closeness of these strangers, the sense of individuality joined with common direction, like being a kind of hemocyte in an artery, part of the blood flow, but just one. She felt the pressure of the bodies beside her, all of them holding on, going where they needed to go. And then she smelled something, something warm and alive. She turned her head ever so slightly and saw a man, perhaps her own age, or a little younger, bearded, dark, one ear pierced with a silver hoop. His smell, a mix of some scent and faint sweat made Mary a bit unsteady.
Truly, he smelled like sex to her, she couldn't deny it. And once she'd thought that, she grew all the more woozy. What was happening to her, she wondered, trying to be stern, trying to shake free. And before she could stop herself, she began to lean a little, so her leg brushed against his. The movement of the train disguised any intention. And then she let one hand drop to her side so her fingers just brushed his jeans, so she could imagine his bare leg within. The train was so crowded, it wouldn't seem strange, and if she were to raise her hand slightly, she might feel his haunch. Before she could act to touch a stranger so intimately, the train came to the station, and let off, with the rest of the flow, this one person who had proven to her that she was actually still alive.
11/8/21
I told everyone that I just couldn't face Thanksgiving this year, that I was going to submerge myself in Hepburn movies and takeout, and give the rest a pass. They all tried to talk me out of it, even Richard, who doesn't usually let his feelings be known.
"Come on, Mom," he'd called me up to tell me. "We need to keep the family together. And what says family better than one of our great traditional Thanksgivings, where Josephine makes turkey, and --"
"Oh, I know, honey, it's going to be wonderful; it's just that I haven't got the emotional, what is it..., the emotional bandwidth? to engage with everybody."
"But what would Dad want?"
It was that comment that nearly launched me.
"Your father's wishes died with him, Rich," I said in a voice that sounded much colder than I'd intended, and I made my excuses soon after and hung up.
I felt bad afterwards, of course. Richard was having to deal with Scott's death in his own way, and probably needed some mothering, but I just couldn't. It had been only one month and I felt too raw, unskinned.
Scott and I had met and married in a flurry of firsts and snowstorms and abandon 33 years ago, each one another's one and only. I know he could not have meant it, the last words he'd said to me; he was in unbearable pain, neither of us could bear.
"Get the hell out of here, Catherine, I can't --" but it seemed he could.
I'd holed up after the funeral, rebuffing visitors. It may not be a wife's failure if her husband died, but I could not stop questioning every clue I'd missed, every modulation in the man I'd loved, but hadn't had the distance to discern. Now it was Thanksgiving and for what did I give thanks? Yes, family, but my own life had felt residual, somehow, undone by Scott's death.
I woke with the rain sluicing across the balcony outside our bedroom window.
"I could stay here all day," I thought, huddled under our comforter. "What it to anyone?" And I closed my eyes again and slept. I might have slept the day away, if the apple hadn't woken me. What? Yes, an apple, blown from a branch of the Gravenstein that overhung our eave. It hit the roof like a small bomb, and I woke, my heart thudding, strong and sound. At this time of year, the ground was littered with windfall apples in every stage of firm ripeness and decay. Yes, I did hear that one as emissary from above, call me foolish or mystified. Scott had called me both.
But who do you imagine was outside in her nightgown getting drenched, gathering fruit for a pie? Who do you think spent Thanksgiving morning baking? A woman with a new regard for her place in the world.
I told everyone that I just couldn't face Thanksgiving this year, that I was going to submerge myself in Hepburn movies and takeout, and give the rest a pass. They all tried to talk me out of it, even Richard, who doesn't usually let his feelings be known.
"Come on, Mom," he'd called me up to tell me. "We need to keep the family together. And what says family better than one of our great traditional Thanksgivings, where Josephine makes turkey, and --"
"Oh, I know, honey, it's going to be wonderful; it's just that I haven't got the emotional, what is it..., the emotional bandwidth? to engage with everybody."
"But what would Dad want?"
It was that comment that nearly launched me.
"Your father's wishes died with him, Rich," I said in a voice that sounded much colder than I'd intended, and I made my excuses soon after and hung up.
I felt bad afterwards, of course. Richard was having to deal with Scott's death in his own way, and probably needed some mothering, but I just couldn't. It had been only one month and I felt too raw, unskinned.
Scott and I had met and married in a flurry of firsts and snowstorms and abandon 33 years ago, each one another's one and only. I know he could not have meant it, the last words he'd said to me; he was in unbearable pain, neither of us could bear.
"Get the hell out of here, Catherine, I can't --" but it seemed he could.
I'd holed up after the funeral, rebuffing visitors. It may not be a wife's failure if her husband died, but I could not stop questioning every clue I'd missed, every modulation in the man I'd loved, but hadn't had the distance to discern. Now it was Thanksgiving and for what did I give thanks? Yes, family, but my own life had felt residual, somehow, undone by Scott's death.
I woke with the rain sluicing across the balcony outside our bedroom window.
"I could stay here all day," I thought, huddled under our comforter. "What it to anyone?" And I closed my eyes again and slept. I might have slept the day away, if the apple hadn't woken me. What? Yes, an apple, blown from a branch of the Gravenstein that overhung our eave. It hit the roof like a small bomb, and I woke, my heart thudding, strong and sound. At this time of year, the ground was littered with windfall apples in every stage of firm ripeness and decay. Yes, I did hear that one as emissary from above, call me foolish or mystified. Scott had called me both.
But who do you imagine was outside in her nightgown getting drenched, gathering fruit for a pie? Who do you think spent Thanksgiving morning baking? A woman with a new regard for her place in the world.
Blind Date
11/9/21
Shall we start with whole idea of a blind date -- I may be wrong, but I would imagine those actually sightless could be miffed with the phrasing, or is it complimentary, as if those who aren't snowed by visuals can "see" better the very soul and nature of a person? And there's the whole "love is blind" thing which is supposed to give folks a pass when the defects of their beloved aren't a deal breaker, far from it, the doting lovebird coos, but maybe part of the draw, while onlooking friends and cousins are thinking, hell no, let me start this relationship clock, because we're not going to get much farther than 6 AM with that loudmouth/bigot/addict/narcissist/bully. Please, girl, call me next Taco Tuesday for a pitcher of margaritas and a good cry.
I'd absented myself from the whole fray for the past 18 months of recovery, which also coincided with a pandemic, so let's just chalk that up to the luck of the Irish, or at least an Irish name, Kiara.
I would not have ventured out so soon, but Ellen from circulation told me she was good friends with this guy, this Brad, who (and here she numbered his qualities on her beautifully manicured fingers), 1. loved to travel, 2. had a cat and a dog, 3. had a great sense of humor, and -- here her eyebrows rose an inch, 4. into tantric massage!
"Into it, as in, like to give it or into it as, loves to receive, because I just --" I said, but she drew her lovely finger across her lips.
"Zip it, Kiara! He's a nice guy. You'll like him. And, he's cute as a bug."
"I don't like bugs," I grumbled.
"He's cute. It's only a date."
And so it was arranged, Sunday brunch date. At least I'd get to eat. I was early, but he was earlier and seated, waved at me as I came out to the patio. He looked fine, hair and glasses and not too flashy, but not untasteful, clothes. I'd worn my flower wrap dress, flattering to my waist, and not too much cleavage. Bodies -- a whole lot of hoohah for the mass our meaning bears.
"Kiara," he said, and extended a hand.
"Brad," I took it, knowing full well his was the first hand I'd touched in almost two years. It was warm, firm, large. He applied just the right amount of pressure, for the right amount of time. I realize I sound ridiculous, but you have to understand where I was.
"So, how have you weathered this crazy time?" He asked, after I'd perched on the deck chair.
"All right, I guess, a few new hobbies and manias...."
"Hobbies and manias?
"Oh, ukulele and fermentation," I said and he laughed, "Crosswords and meditation," I took a sip of water, "Crochet, facials, candle-making..." I would have gone on, but then I saw, beside his eye on his cheekbone what looked very much like a squamous cell carcinoma. I stopped suddenly, and placed my hand over my mouth.
"Go on," he said and smiled. "It sounds like your place was a veritable home lab of experimentation!"
When he smiled, his eyes crinkled at the corners sweetly, but that patch on his cheekbone stayed level.
"Are you Okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
Then the waiter came to take our orders. I got a Denver omelet. He ordered a fruit plate, which made me wonder if he were trying to reduce, which was strange, because, if anything, he looked a little on the skinny side, I mean, not bony, just not beefy or buff.
These dates were so damned strange. Hey lonely people! Why don't you meet up to eat?
He told me about his job as an environmental engineer designing systems to improve water quality and the way he described it, you could see he took his work very seriously, but it was just one side of who he was.
"And for fun?" I asked, because isn't that the door a woman is meant to enter, were she to join a man's life?
"Mountain biking and chess, mostly," Brad said. Strike one, strike two. "Oh, and opera." Strike three.
Which meant I would have to tell him what I saw and suspected.
"Would you like to change seats with me," I asked, because the sun was coming down fully in Brad's face. "I've got my sunglasses with me," I said, reaching into my bag.
"No worries," he said. "I've got mine, too." He put on a pair or Raybans that changed his whole look from wounded wholesome to a kind of cool, sort of undercover observer.
Our food came and we began to eat.
I watched him pierce a slice of melon with his fork, bring it to his mouth, bite it in half. His teeth were slightly crooked, but only slightly. In fact, they were quite nice.
"Brad?" I said, and he put down his fork. "I don't know how to say this..."
"Why does it sound like you're going to break up with me?" He said and gave a short laugh.
"No, it's worse. I'm sorry. This is totally inappropriate, it probably is, but I think you have a carcinoma on your cheekbone, here," and I pointed to the place.
"This?" His hand went to his face.
"Yes."
Needless to say, the rest of our brunch was pretty much ruined, but he did go get it checked out (it was benign). The Doctor saw something else, he said, that Brad should watch, so it turned out to be good that he got things checked out. And, out of gratitude (or interest, it was too soon to tell), he asked me out for a second date, to a Maluhia Ukulele festival, which, over all, might be a good sign.
Shall we start with whole idea of a blind date -- I may be wrong, but I would imagine those actually sightless could be miffed with the phrasing, or is it complimentary, as if those who aren't snowed by visuals can "see" better the very soul and nature of a person? And there's the whole "love is blind" thing which is supposed to give folks a pass when the defects of their beloved aren't a deal breaker, far from it, the doting lovebird coos, but maybe part of the draw, while onlooking friends and cousins are thinking, hell no, let me start this relationship clock, because we're not going to get much farther than 6 AM with that loudmouth/bigot/addict/narcissist/bully. Please, girl, call me next Taco Tuesday for a pitcher of margaritas and a good cry.
I'd absented myself from the whole fray for the past 18 months of recovery, which also coincided with a pandemic, so let's just chalk that up to the luck of the Irish, or at least an Irish name, Kiara.
I would not have ventured out so soon, but Ellen from circulation told me she was good friends with this guy, this Brad, who (and here she numbered his qualities on her beautifully manicured fingers), 1. loved to travel, 2. had a cat and a dog, 3. had a great sense of humor, and -- here her eyebrows rose an inch, 4. into tantric massage!
"Into it, as in, like to give it or into it as, loves to receive, because I just --" I said, but she drew her lovely finger across her lips.
"Zip it, Kiara! He's a nice guy. You'll like him. And, he's cute as a bug."
"I don't like bugs," I grumbled.
"He's cute. It's only a date."
And so it was arranged, Sunday brunch date. At least I'd get to eat. I was early, but he was earlier and seated, waved at me as I came out to the patio. He looked fine, hair and glasses and not too flashy, but not untasteful, clothes. I'd worn my flower wrap dress, flattering to my waist, and not too much cleavage. Bodies -- a whole lot of hoohah for the mass our meaning bears.
"Kiara," he said, and extended a hand.
"Brad," I took it, knowing full well his was the first hand I'd touched in almost two years. It was warm, firm, large. He applied just the right amount of pressure, for the right amount of time. I realize I sound ridiculous, but you have to understand where I was.
"So, how have you weathered this crazy time?" He asked, after I'd perched on the deck chair.
"All right, I guess, a few new hobbies and manias...."
"Hobbies and manias?
"Oh, ukulele and fermentation," I said and he laughed, "Crosswords and meditation," I took a sip of water, "Crochet, facials, candle-making..." I would have gone on, but then I saw, beside his eye on his cheekbone what looked very much like a squamous cell carcinoma. I stopped suddenly, and placed my hand over my mouth.
"Go on," he said and smiled. "It sounds like your place was a veritable home lab of experimentation!"
When he smiled, his eyes crinkled at the corners sweetly, but that patch on his cheekbone stayed level.
"Are you Okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
Then the waiter came to take our orders. I got a Denver omelet. He ordered a fruit plate, which made me wonder if he were trying to reduce, which was strange, because, if anything, he looked a little on the skinny side, I mean, not bony, just not beefy or buff.
These dates were so damned strange. Hey lonely people! Why don't you meet up to eat?
He told me about his job as an environmental engineer designing systems to improve water quality and the way he described it, you could see he took his work very seriously, but it was just one side of who he was.
"And for fun?" I asked, because isn't that the door a woman is meant to enter, were she to join a man's life?
"Mountain biking and chess, mostly," Brad said. Strike one, strike two. "Oh, and opera." Strike three.
Which meant I would have to tell him what I saw and suspected.
"Would you like to change seats with me," I asked, because the sun was coming down fully in Brad's face. "I've got my sunglasses with me," I said, reaching into my bag.
"No worries," he said. "I've got mine, too." He put on a pair or Raybans that changed his whole look from wounded wholesome to a kind of cool, sort of undercover observer.
Our food came and we began to eat.
I watched him pierce a slice of melon with his fork, bring it to his mouth, bite it in half. His teeth were slightly crooked, but only slightly. In fact, they were quite nice.
"Brad?" I said, and he put down his fork. "I don't know how to say this..."
"Why does it sound like you're going to break up with me?" He said and gave a short laugh.
"No, it's worse. I'm sorry. This is totally inappropriate, it probably is, but I think you have a carcinoma on your cheekbone, here," and I pointed to the place.
"This?" His hand went to his face.
"Yes."
Needless to say, the rest of our brunch was pretty much ruined, but he did go get it checked out (it was benign). The Doctor saw something else, he said, that Brad should watch, so it turned out to be good that he got things checked out. And, out of gratitude (or interest, it was too soon to tell), he asked me out for a second date, to a Maluhia Ukulele festival, which, over all, might be a good sign.
11/10/21
It's Friday's barroom spat that proves I do love her. Guy scratched on the eight; she high-fived me, smiling bright.
"Luck's that way," she said, just before he shoved her. She hit the table, crashing bottles, but kept her balance. I was up and at him in less than that. Valor's weak that can admit defect, when rules are understood. I'd have told him, had he stuck around. Tried to take the drummer with him, a friend of his, I guess. The drummer said, "go home. I've got music here." Which was the best response to foolishness I've ever heard.
It's Friday's barroom spat that proves I do love her. Guy scratched on the eight; she high-fived me, smiling bright.
"Luck's that way," she said, just before he shoved her. She hit the table, crashing bottles, but kept her balance. I was up and at him in less than that. Valor's weak that can admit defect, when rules are understood. I'd have told him, had he stuck around. Tried to take the drummer with him, a friend of his, I guess. The drummer said, "go home. I've got music here." Which was the best response to foolishness I've ever heard.
11/11/21
For any domestic award, the terms, the stakes, the evidence of effect will always be hotly contested, especially between my darling and me, because neither of us is domestically inclined towards anything approaching perfection. Establishing necessity and a modicum of aesthetic satisfaction as baseline merits, we carry on, dedicating both our effect and innovation to less material endeavors of the literary, artistic, and, in the case of the culinary arts, to matters of sensual appeal. All of these conditions of our habitant order make today's announcement all the more surprising and delightful. I must admit, I'd never heart of the Home Tender award, much less ever considered myself in the running for such an honor. Just last night, while moving our dishwasher into position for a connection to a water source (Yes, it's true we have not had a built-in dishwasher the full duration of our life in this house), I happened to knock a wine goblet off the top, sending shards of glass to a radius of more than five feet, and while I did immediately go for the broom and dustpan to attend to what amounts to a threat to bare foot and paw, there were some lurking fragments that were better vacuumed up in daylight, so thanks go to my dear Doug for that. I couldn't have gone so far or done so much without you! Pause for applause. (And no this is not a disguised dig. You know it's true, whether you would honor the increment of my win, or not. I love your spirit!) My thanks go out to those who can recognize what motivates each gesture, who hear the heart behind the unspoken and the voiced, who see not clusters of dust and dog fur, but the echoed eyeholes on sun-bleached skulls arrayed as if by Linnaeus, according to evolutionary leap and bound, gathered etchings of tree branch and hillside, the staggered heights of candles, giving forth their warmth and light. None of this was done for further acclaim, which makes acknowledgment all the sweeter. I feel seen, affirmed, so thank you.
For any domestic award, the terms, the stakes, the evidence of effect will always be hotly contested, especially between my darling and me, because neither of us is domestically inclined towards anything approaching perfection. Establishing necessity and a modicum of aesthetic satisfaction as baseline merits, we carry on, dedicating both our effect and innovation to less material endeavors of the literary, artistic, and, in the case of the culinary arts, to matters of sensual appeal. All of these conditions of our habitant order make today's announcement all the more surprising and delightful. I must admit, I'd never heart of the Home Tender award, much less ever considered myself in the running for such an honor. Just last night, while moving our dishwasher into position for a connection to a water source (Yes, it's true we have not had a built-in dishwasher the full duration of our life in this house), I happened to knock a wine goblet off the top, sending shards of glass to a radius of more than five feet, and while I did immediately go for the broom and dustpan to attend to what amounts to a threat to bare foot and paw, there were some lurking fragments that were better vacuumed up in daylight, so thanks go to my dear Doug for that. I couldn't have gone so far or done so much without you! Pause for applause. (And no this is not a disguised dig. You know it's true, whether you would honor the increment of my win, or not. I love your spirit!) My thanks go out to those who can recognize what motivates each gesture, who hear the heart behind the unspoken and the voiced, who see not clusters of dust and dog fur, but the echoed eyeholes on sun-bleached skulls arrayed as if by Linnaeus, according to evolutionary leap and bound, gathered etchings of tree branch and hillside, the staggered heights of candles, giving forth their warmth and light. None of this was done for further acclaim, which makes acknowledgment all the sweeter. I feel seen, affirmed, so thank you.
11/12/21
I'd been directed to take it as easily as possible, to rest, to not exert, and I had been following doctors' orders, but I woke on Wednesday feeling terrible. I had deep, intense cramps, and my back was killing me. I'd called in sick at work, planning on staying in bed. Carlos had been working from home since the beginning of the pandemic, so he was in our home office, checking in regularly. What I mean to say is, I was doing everything right. But it wasn't enough.
Around 10, I felt a ripping pain in my lower abdomen and I began to bleed.
"Carlos," I moaned, and he as at my side in seconds, got me swaddled and in the car and to the hospital as fast as humanly possible.
"Blood pressure, 170, Fetal heartbeats 140 and.... 210."
I'd been carrying twins five months. Hearing that, my own heart seemed to dim. The three of us had lived in one body these five months, two small boys nestled within me, part of me, drawing energy from the food I ate, the dreams I'd dreamed.
They had me lying down in minutes, tethered to machines to maintain and monitor. The nurses came in to prepare me. The room's mauve walls, the lights above my bed, the beeping sounds and grating of metal all became amplified. I'd been thirty-one years in this world, acquiring memories, achieving what I could, deepening connections, preparing to take on the responsibility of rearing our babies. It gutted me that my body was unable to sustain our boys.
I will not relate every step of the surgery; they're mostly blurred. I had Carlos at my side of the sheet divid. He brought his lips to my ear, whispering soothing encouragement.
"You are wonderful, mi vida. You'll come through stronger than ever. You'll be such a good mother to our sons," but he had tears in his dark eyes.
The first baby they withdrew from me was tiny, but mewling, curled as if still within. Our second son was bluer, unmoving. The midwife cut their umbilical cords. I took great lungfuls of air, trying to imbue them with everything I had, though we were no longer connected. While the nurses cleaned and swaddled our first-born, the doctor took our second son to tend him at a station they'd rolled up.
I could hardly see through the tears, but I strained to hear through the medical talk and tumult, for any sound this tiny soul might make. Carlos kissed my face again and again, stroking my hair from my eyes. His body, too, was taut, casting glances to the corner.
At last, the softest of sounds emerged, wet and slow and high pitched. Our son, Ernesto, was born.
In time, they stitched me up and brought Lionel and Ernesto for me to hold to my chest, for a moment before they were set in incubators.
"We're a family now, mi cielo," Carlos said and handed his photo for our first of many photos together.
I'd been directed to take it as easily as possible, to rest, to not exert, and I had been following doctors' orders, but I woke on Wednesday feeling terrible. I had deep, intense cramps, and my back was killing me. I'd called in sick at work, planning on staying in bed. Carlos had been working from home since the beginning of the pandemic, so he was in our home office, checking in regularly. What I mean to say is, I was doing everything right. But it wasn't enough.
Around 10, I felt a ripping pain in my lower abdomen and I began to bleed.
"Carlos," I moaned, and he as at my side in seconds, got me swaddled and in the car and to the hospital as fast as humanly possible.
"Blood pressure, 170, Fetal heartbeats 140 and.... 210."
I'd been carrying twins five months. Hearing that, my own heart seemed to dim. The three of us had lived in one body these five months, two small boys nestled within me, part of me, drawing energy from the food I ate, the dreams I'd dreamed.
They had me lying down in minutes, tethered to machines to maintain and monitor. The nurses came in to prepare me. The room's mauve walls, the lights above my bed, the beeping sounds and grating of metal all became amplified. I'd been thirty-one years in this world, acquiring memories, achieving what I could, deepening connections, preparing to take on the responsibility of rearing our babies. It gutted me that my body was unable to sustain our boys.
I will not relate every step of the surgery; they're mostly blurred. I had Carlos at my side of the sheet divid. He brought his lips to my ear, whispering soothing encouragement.
"You are wonderful, mi vida. You'll come through stronger than ever. You'll be such a good mother to our sons," but he had tears in his dark eyes.
The first baby they withdrew from me was tiny, but mewling, curled as if still within. Our second son was bluer, unmoving. The midwife cut their umbilical cords. I took great lungfuls of air, trying to imbue them with everything I had, though we were no longer connected. While the nurses cleaned and swaddled our first-born, the doctor took our second son to tend him at a station they'd rolled up.
I could hardly see through the tears, but I strained to hear through the medical talk and tumult, for any sound this tiny soul might make. Carlos kissed my face again and again, stroking my hair from my eyes. His body, too, was taut, casting glances to the corner.
At last, the softest of sounds emerged, wet and slow and high pitched. Our son, Ernesto, was born.
In time, they stitched me up and brought Lionel and Ernesto for me to hold to my chest, for a moment before they were set in incubators.
"We're a family now, mi cielo," Carlos said and handed his photo for our first of many photos together.
11/13/21
Among the few things she left behind when she took off were her tarot cards.
"I don't need some arcana telling me life sucks, has sucked, or will suck, thank you very much," she had said more than once, but my mother hadn't wanted to throw those cards away because one of her only good boyfriends, Lyle, had given them to her. I guess she was ready to let that memory go now, along with her one child, me.
I was nearly 17, which maybe is close enough to being able to make it on my own. We lived, or should I say, I now lived in a cabin on Tom Delaney's back acreage, rent-free, as of always, and he didn't seem to mind paying our utilities, either. I figured he had lots of money. He was almost never there; he had a place in the city. Which had suited my mother fine.
It wasn't the first time she'd left me there; it was actually a somewhat regular, occurrence, usually following a blowout, mood-crashing event, she'd scream "What am I doing with my life? What am I DOING?"
But this was the first time she'd cleared most of her stuff out.
One tarot card: I thought I'd focus really hard and draw just one from the deck. There were guides that my mother kept in some purple velvet sack so I wouldn't have to interpret the reading myself -- or I could interpret it, but I'd have help with the meaning. I didn't really know what to make of it, but it felt good to consult an outside source, even if it were mystical.
I spread the cards on the braided rug, running my hands along their blue backs. It was getting dark soon. I would have to light the fire, but I still could see. I let their hidden meanings draw my hands, and there it was, calling to me, a card: the ace of cups. I placed it upright in front of me, and really looked at it. On the palm of a hand, emerging from a kind of ether cloud, a chalice stood, gold, with a W or upside down M on it. Five spouts of water arced up out of it and fell to the lily pad pond below, with lots of drips dripping all around. A white bird, maybe a dove, drew a white disk (or dunked the disk, you couldn't really tell which) from the chalice. It has a stylized cross on it.
The card was quite beautiful and strange. I wasn't sure if I was just making things up, but it looked hopeful. I started reading from the book, about joy and new beginnings, possibilities of intimacy, attunement, compassion, love, and I started feeling much happier. It seemed the perfect sign. But then I thought, wait a minute, did I draw it upside down? If so, then everything was reversed. Instead of blessings and renewal, I might be facing sadness, pain, bleakness all around! But which was it? Right side up or upside down? I really couldn't remember.
It was darker still, so I put the card on the table by the rocking chair, and went to light the fire I'd laid earlier in the day.
"I should burn these cards," I said, aloud, "what good are they to me?"
I used the bellows to get the logs to catch. It might have been a shift in the air, but no joke, the card fell from the table and landed, propped against the chair leg, upright and munificent, and, if that wasn't enough of a kind of blessing of my path, I didn't know what was.
Among the few things she left behind when she took off were her tarot cards.
"I don't need some arcana telling me life sucks, has sucked, or will suck, thank you very much," she had said more than once, but my mother hadn't wanted to throw those cards away because one of her only good boyfriends, Lyle, had given them to her. I guess she was ready to let that memory go now, along with her one child, me.
I was nearly 17, which maybe is close enough to being able to make it on my own. We lived, or should I say, I now lived in a cabin on Tom Delaney's back acreage, rent-free, as of always, and he didn't seem to mind paying our utilities, either. I figured he had lots of money. He was almost never there; he had a place in the city. Which had suited my mother fine.
It wasn't the first time she'd left me there; it was actually a somewhat regular, occurrence, usually following a blowout, mood-crashing event, she'd scream "What am I doing with my life? What am I DOING?"
But this was the first time she'd cleared most of her stuff out.
One tarot card: I thought I'd focus really hard and draw just one from the deck. There were guides that my mother kept in some purple velvet sack so I wouldn't have to interpret the reading myself -- or I could interpret it, but I'd have help with the meaning. I didn't really know what to make of it, but it felt good to consult an outside source, even if it were mystical.
I spread the cards on the braided rug, running my hands along their blue backs. It was getting dark soon. I would have to light the fire, but I still could see. I let their hidden meanings draw my hands, and there it was, calling to me, a card: the ace of cups. I placed it upright in front of me, and really looked at it. On the palm of a hand, emerging from a kind of ether cloud, a chalice stood, gold, with a W or upside down M on it. Five spouts of water arced up out of it and fell to the lily pad pond below, with lots of drips dripping all around. A white bird, maybe a dove, drew a white disk (or dunked the disk, you couldn't really tell which) from the chalice. It has a stylized cross on it.
The card was quite beautiful and strange. I wasn't sure if I was just making things up, but it looked hopeful. I started reading from the book, about joy and new beginnings, possibilities of intimacy, attunement, compassion, love, and I started feeling much happier. It seemed the perfect sign. But then I thought, wait a minute, did I draw it upside down? If so, then everything was reversed. Instead of blessings and renewal, I might be facing sadness, pain, bleakness all around! But which was it? Right side up or upside down? I really couldn't remember.
It was darker still, so I put the card on the table by the rocking chair, and went to light the fire I'd laid earlier in the day.
"I should burn these cards," I said, aloud, "what good are they to me?"
I used the bellows to get the logs to catch. It might have been a shift in the air, but no joke, the card fell from the table and landed, propped against the chair leg, upright and munificent, and, if that wasn't enough of a kind of blessing of my path, I didn't know what was.
11/14/21
Anvil was a transgender kid in my Creative Narrative Studio class, and they seemed strange, but strange in a cool way, so that's why I agreed to pose for them in the first place. They had a warehouse studio in East Oakland pretty much directly under 580. I biked over on a Sunday afternoon. They'd asked me if I were comfortable with nude poses and I'd said, "Yeah, that's okay, if it's, you know, tasteful," but of course that's a matter of subjectivity.
"You can undress over there," Anvil said and gestured to a heavy red bedspread that functioned as a kind of curtain. There's a bathrobe in there you can use. My apologies for the cold in here. There's no real heater." I did notice th at there was an electric dish over near their easel. Yeah, well.
As it happened, I felt fairly comfortable with my naked self. I was a larger woman, with small boobs and big legs, strong all over. I actually liked people seeing me for what I was. I shed my clothes, put on the robe, and walked barefoot to the small stage Anvil had set up, under a row of pebbled windows.
"Can I offer you a drink or smoke or something?" They asked.
"No, I'm good," I said and climbed up on the stage. In the center was a kind of playpen. That should have been warning enough.
"Okay, then, let's get started, shall we?" They said and went to switch on some heavy techno. "A little mood music."
Then they walked over to a big, black trunk along the wall and pulled out a mask. At first I couldn't quite tell what it was, but it was pink rubber, with lots of folds.
"Put this on," they said "and their voice took on a strange tone of authority. They walked it over to me. It was a pig mask, eyes cut to see through, snout erect and ridged in darker pink, mouth ajar.
"And drop the robe."
They were paying me a fair sum, so I though, okay, I can go along with that. I put the mask on, securing it around my face, took off the robe, and tossed it to the side. They watched me, as I moved.
"Now get in the crib," they said.
Something about that, that "get in the crib" freaked me out. But I did what they asked, stepping my long leg over the edge. They began squeezing paints out onto the palette, their oily smell reaching me across the warehouse, Anvil's eyes looking at me, looking down, looking at me, looking down. They moved fast. I wondered how I might translate to hue and form. I'd seen some of their work in our weekly course reviews, but nothing like this.
"Get down on all fours," they demanded, stroking the end of their paintbrush.
That's when I had to stop. I couldn't help myself.
"What?"
"You heard me," they said, and that was it. Something about that phrase, their tone, triggered every awful moment I had experienced or witnessed, as a child.
"I don't think I did," I called back, removing the mask.
With that, I'd broken whatever spell had been forming around us. Anvil dropped the brush and turned away. "Sorry," I said, because I was sorry I couldn't give them what they wanted. But also I wasn't sorry. I'd learned to say "No" to what would have made me feel undone.
Anvil was a transgender kid in my Creative Narrative Studio class, and they seemed strange, but strange in a cool way, so that's why I agreed to pose for them in the first place. They had a warehouse studio in East Oakland pretty much directly under 580. I biked over on a Sunday afternoon. They'd asked me if I were comfortable with nude poses and I'd said, "Yeah, that's okay, if it's, you know, tasteful," but of course that's a matter of subjectivity.
"You can undress over there," Anvil said and gestured to a heavy red bedspread that functioned as a kind of curtain. There's a bathrobe in there you can use. My apologies for the cold in here. There's no real heater." I did notice th at there was an electric dish over near their easel. Yeah, well.
As it happened, I felt fairly comfortable with my naked self. I was a larger woman, with small boobs and big legs, strong all over. I actually liked people seeing me for what I was. I shed my clothes, put on the robe, and walked barefoot to the small stage Anvil had set up, under a row of pebbled windows.
"Can I offer you a drink or smoke or something?" They asked.
"No, I'm good," I said and climbed up on the stage. In the center was a kind of playpen. That should have been warning enough.
"Okay, then, let's get started, shall we?" They said and went to switch on some heavy techno. "A little mood music."
Then they walked over to a big, black trunk along the wall and pulled out a mask. At first I couldn't quite tell what it was, but it was pink rubber, with lots of folds.
"Put this on," they said "and their voice took on a strange tone of authority. They walked it over to me. It was a pig mask, eyes cut to see through, snout erect and ridged in darker pink, mouth ajar.
"And drop the robe."
They were paying me a fair sum, so I though, okay, I can go along with that. I put the mask on, securing it around my face, took off the robe, and tossed it to the side. They watched me, as I moved.
"Now get in the crib," they said.
Something about that, that "get in the crib" freaked me out. But I did what they asked, stepping my long leg over the edge. They began squeezing paints out onto the palette, their oily smell reaching me across the warehouse, Anvil's eyes looking at me, looking down, looking at me, looking down. They moved fast. I wondered how I might translate to hue and form. I'd seen some of their work in our weekly course reviews, but nothing like this.
"Get down on all fours," they demanded, stroking the end of their paintbrush.
That's when I had to stop. I couldn't help myself.
"What?"
"You heard me," they said, and that was it. Something about that phrase, their tone, triggered every awful moment I had experienced or witnessed, as a child.
"I don't think I did," I called back, removing the mask.
With that, I'd broken whatever spell had been forming around us. Anvil dropped the brush and turned away. "Sorry," I said, because I was sorry I couldn't give them what they wanted. But also I wasn't sorry. I'd learned to say "No" to what would have made me feel undone.
11/15/21
Gretchen liked to come down to the mouth of the river to witness how fresh water joined salt, not for the first time, not, she knew, the hundredth time (water cycle), but anew. After a storm, the levels were up, and the flow was swift, carrying branch and bin from the cabins that edged the river. Here she felt both strongly located and open to change.
Gretchen had a candle and gift shop upriver five miles where she'd stand by the register or sit by the back door through which sh could watch the heron and osprey conduct their daily maneuvers. She would have happily shed her own human concerns and involvements to become a creature tuned to season, if she could.
Here, with the silver surface rippled with movement, the dark shore bulked on cypress and dune, she hushed her usual meter and plan, in order to be better bystander, gathering impressions. Today, especially, it was hard to be human, the anniversary of her lover' suicide. She had not been enough to keep him alive, was the thought she most often sought to breather through and from. Beyond that, the idea that as much as she might have felt connected to him, ,with him, of him, each was each, measured to the specificity of each.
From the river's patina, the surface broke with the cresting of a harbor seal, black shine of eyes, hood of fur.
"Oh," Gretchen said, quite unaware of the movement of her own mouth. This animal did not seem to notice her at all, intent on its own ventures. It dove down, surfaced farther out, dove down. It was and was and would be. Gretchen breathe, was and was and would be, and that then that now was enough.
Gretchen liked to come down to the mouth of the river to witness how fresh water joined salt, not for the first time, not, she knew, the hundredth time (water cycle), but anew. After a storm, the levels were up, and the flow was swift, carrying branch and bin from the cabins that edged the river. Here she felt both strongly located and open to change.
Gretchen had a candle and gift shop upriver five miles where she'd stand by the register or sit by the back door through which sh could watch the heron and osprey conduct their daily maneuvers. She would have happily shed her own human concerns and involvements to become a creature tuned to season, if she could.
Here, with the silver surface rippled with movement, the dark shore bulked on cypress and dune, she hushed her usual meter and plan, in order to be better bystander, gathering impressions. Today, especially, it was hard to be human, the anniversary of her lover' suicide. She had not been enough to keep him alive, was the thought she most often sought to breather through and from. Beyond that, the idea that as much as she might have felt connected to him, ,with him, of him, each was each, measured to the specificity of each.
From the river's patina, the surface broke with the cresting of a harbor seal, black shine of eyes, hood of fur.
"Oh," Gretchen said, quite unaware of the movement of her own mouth. This animal did not seem to notice her at all, intent on its own ventures. It dove down, surfaced farther out, dove down. It was and was and would be. Gretchen breathe, was and was and would be, and that then that now was enough.
11/16/21
It's a big propaganda push from the beginning, this romantic union thing we've been fed, the one that goes through hardship and quarrel-storm to come out shining like a gold ring at the surging melodious finale. Bunch of crap, if you ask me and I realize I don't resemble any knight or damsel, but really.
I'd been seeing Day for six months and not utterly exclusively but head that way, I thought, but what did I know? We were only sleeping together every night, wearing each others' clothes, saying "I love you" in every tone from soft, panted whispers to declarations within an echoing underpass.
"It's slave chocolate, you know," I said, when Day handed me a kiss, wrapped in silver foil.
"What?"
"Child slaves harvest the cacao beans for this," I held a kiss in the palm of my hand.
"It's a kiss," Day said, "from me to you."
"Tainted by slavery," I said. I couldn't help myself.
We were lying on a blanket out by the conservatory of flowers, in Golden Gate Park. I guess it could have been romantic, but really, how could it ?
"You're too much," Day said, unwrapped one of the chocolates and popped it in their mouth, making a big deal about chewing down, lips open, so I could see everything.
"Well, maybe I am," I said at last.
"Way to ruin a beautiful day, sweetheart," Day said with a slowed down sneer on the endearment. They picked up a chocolate and threw it across the grass where it fell among a swell of tulips, another they threw out onto the path, another hit a seagull, until all the kisses had been scattered in a circle around our blanket.
I had to say it; I guess I knew there was no hope.
"And now you're littering," I said, and that, of course, was the end of that.
It's a big propaganda push from the beginning, this romantic union thing we've been fed, the one that goes through hardship and quarrel-storm to come out shining like a gold ring at the surging melodious finale. Bunch of crap, if you ask me and I realize I don't resemble any knight or damsel, but really.
I'd been seeing Day for six months and not utterly exclusively but head that way, I thought, but what did I know? We were only sleeping together every night, wearing each others' clothes, saying "I love you" in every tone from soft, panted whispers to declarations within an echoing underpass.
"It's slave chocolate, you know," I said, when Day handed me a kiss, wrapped in silver foil.
"What?"
"Child slaves harvest the cacao beans for this," I held a kiss in the palm of my hand.
"It's a kiss," Day said, "from me to you."
"Tainted by slavery," I said. I couldn't help myself.
We were lying on a blanket out by the conservatory of flowers, in Golden Gate Park. I guess it could have been romantic, but really, how could it ?
"You're too much," Day said, unwrapped one of the chocolates and popped it in their mouth, making a big deal about chewing down, lips open, so I could see everything.
"Well, maybe I am," I said at last.
"Way to ruin a beautiful day, sweetheart," Day said with a slowed down sneer on the endearment. They picked up a chocolate and threw it across the grass where it fell among a swell of tulips, another they threw out onto the path, another hit a seagull, until all the kisses had been scattered in a circle around our blanket.
I had to say it; I guess I knew there was no hope.
"And now you're littering," I said, and that, of course, was the end of that.
11/17/21
"Of course it would have to be a total blizzard today, of all days," Joni heard her husband growl from the bathroom.
"What?" she called. She was down on the green shag carpet, doing her exercises.
"Nothing!" Sam called. She could hear him turn on the water to brush his teeth. In a minute, he said, "I probably should have gotten those snow tires."
"We can't afford them until next month," Joni called back.
"What?" Sam called back, whacking his toothbrush on the edge of the sink to shake off the last drops of water. He always did that, though she'd told him it splashed on the mirror and left marks.
In a minute, he was out and standing over her, appraising her legs.
"Go on ," she said and pointed one toe towards the kitchen.
"We're still married. I get to look," he said, hands on his hips. He'd benefit from some exercises of his own, she thought, and had tried to tell him, but did he listen?
"You still got it, Jo-Jo," he said and stepped past her.
Still got it, she thought, but what exactly did she have?
Between them, they had one son who was doing well for himself in Denver, not married yet, but he'd been years with a nice girl who was a veterinarian. They saw the two of them on Christmas and July 4th, which was Sam's birthday. Both Joni and Sam were retired, fairly comfortable, living in New Canaan, pursuing their hobbies and causes, nothing to complain about, especially given the state of the world, on the verge of some kind of Armageddon, but that was it. How could you just go about your business, accompanied by someone you no longer really knew, whose involvements and concerns seemed so foreign and, well, Joni admitted, meaningless, as the entire planet marched towards certain destruction, while she, despite exercise and Qi Gong, made her own way towards the precipice.
"Coffee's ready," Sam said.
Joni joined her husband in the breakfast nook. Every morning Sam ate a bowl of Cheerios, with bananas, if they had them, without, if not. Joni had only coffee, preferring to wait until midmorning for some fruit and maybe some toast.
"It's not that we can't change," she said, as she looked out the window onto their backyard. Snow came down in curtains, swirled by the wind.
"Here we go again," Sam said, gesturing with his spoon. "Can't this wait until Dr. Whosit?"
"Larchmont. That's the thing about old people --"
"Please."
"I mean, when you're young, you're open to experience. It changes you. You move from Pittsburgh to Paris --"
Sam chewed his cereal and looked past his wife to the yard.
"It's crazy out there," he said.
"You take up the oboe! You have an affair with your history professor," she said pointedly. Sam's eyes flicked over to hers for a second. She liked to mention affairs she'd had before they'd married.
"You hate the oboe," he said at last.
"I do hate the oboe, but maybe I wouldn't if I'd studied at the Moscow Conservatory!"
"We better get going if we're going to get there at 9:30. We're going to have to drive slowly, with all this snow. I'll do the dishes when I get back."
She transferred her coffee to a thermos, and they were off.
The drive was slow going and visibility was terrible. They got to the the clinic with time to spare, but when they tried the door, it was locked, with a sign explaining they'd closed due to the inclement weather.
"Great. Did they think they might have let us know?" Sam said, but when they checked their phones, they saw they'd gotten a warning last night.
"Dare I say it's an omen?" Joni said.
"Stop."
The two of them stood there for a moment, snowflakes colonizing every angle.
"Well, I guess we should head back," Joni said.
"Hold on, now. We're here. Who knows , we may get snowed in for weeks. We might as well --"
"Might as well what? Hit some black ice and crash into a tree?"
"Joni," Sam said and took hold of both her arms under their layers of down and wool.
It was kind of funny, she realized, looking at him becoming an abominable snowman, thick white flakes covering his balaclava. His eyebrows were dark, shot with white hairs.
"We're so close. Let's go to Waverly Park. We could even walk."
"Walk!"
"You've got on your brand new super boots, right?"
In fact she had. Sam had balked when she told him she'd spent $318 for them, which was a lot, she conceded, but if they weren't going to move to the Bahamas, then they were actually a bargain.
Waverly Park happened to be where they'd had their first date, 42 years ago.
"O, you sentimental, old --" She began, but he'd hooked her arm and led her down the snowy path.
"I bet the castle looks amazing in all this," he said.
"Of course it would have to be a total blizzard today, of all days," Joni heard her husband growl from the bathroom.
"What?" she called. She was down on the green shag carpet, doing her exercises.
"Nothing!" Sam called. She could hear him turn on the water to brush his teeth. In a minute, he said, "I probably should have gotten those snow tires."
"We can't afford them until next month," Joni called back.
"What?" Sam called back, whacking his toothbrush on the edge of the sink to shake off the last drops of water. He always did that, though she'd told him it splashed on the mirror and left marks.
In a minute, he was out and standing over her, appraising her legs.
"Go on ," she said and pointed one toe towards the kitchen.
"We're still married. I get to look," he said, hands on his hips. He'd benefit from some exercises of his own, she thought, and had tried to tell him, but did he listen?
"You still got it, Jo-Jo," he said and stepped past her.
Still got it, she thought, but what exactly did she have?
Between them, they had one son who was doing well for himself in Denver, not married yet, but he'd been years with a nice girl who was a veterinarian. They saw the two of them on Christmas and July 4th, which was Sam's birthday. Both Joni and Sam were retired, fairly comfortable, living in New Canaan, pursuing their hobbies and causes, nothing to complain about, especially given the state of the world, on the verge of some kind of Armageddon, but that was it. How could you just go about your business, accompanied by someone you no longer really knew, whose involvements and concerns seemed so foreign and, well, Joni admitted, meaningless, as the entire planet marched towards certain destruction, while she, despite exercise and Qi Gong, made her own way towards the precipice.
"Coffee's ready," Sam said.
Joni joined her husband in the breakfast nook. Every morning Sam ate a bowl of Cheerios, with bananas, if they had them, without, if not. Joni had only coffee, preferring to wait until midmorning for some fruit and maybe some toast.
"It's not that we can't change," she said, as she looked out the window onto their backyard. Snow came down in curtains, swirled by the wind.
"Here we go again," Sam said, gesturing with his spoon. "Can't this wait until Dr. Whosit?"
"Larchmont. That's the thing about old people --"
"Please."
"I mean, when you're young, you're open to experience. It changes you. You move from Pittsburgh to Paris --"
Sam chewed his cereal and looked past his wife to the yard.
"It's crazy out there," he said.
"You take up the oboe! You have an affair with your history professor," she said pointedly. Sam's eyes flicked over to hers for a second. She liked to mention affairs she'd had before they'd married.
"You hate the oboe," he said at last.
"I do hate the oboe, but maybe I wouldn't if I'd studied at the Moscow Conservatory!"
"We better get going if we're going to get there at 9:30. We're going to have to drive slowly, with all this snow. I'll do the dishes when I get back."
She transferred her coffee to a thermos, and they were off.
The drive was slow going and visibility was terrible. They got to the the clinic with time to spare, but when they tried the door, it was locked, with a sign explaining they'd closed due to the inclement weather.
"Great. Did they think they might have let us know?" Sam said, but when they checked their phones, they saw they'd gotten a warning last night.
"Dare I say it's an omen?" Joni said.
"Stop."
The two of them stood there for a moment, snowflakes colonizing every angle.
"Well, I guess we should head back," Joni said.
"Hold on, now. We're here. Who knows , we may get snowed in for weeks. We might as well --"
"Might as well what? Hit some black ice and crash into a tree?"
"Joni," Sam said and took hold of both her arms under their layers of down and wool.
It was kind of funny, she realized, looking at him becoming an abominable snowman, thick white flakes covering his balaclava. His eyebrows were dark, shot with white hairs.
"We're so close. Let's go to Waverly Park. We could even walk."
"Walk!"
"You've got on your brand new super boots, right?"
In fact she had. Sam had balked when she told him she'd spent $318 for them, which was a lot, she conceded, but if they weren't going to move to the Bahamas, then they were actually a bargain.
Waverly Park happened to be where they'd had their first date, 42 years ago.
"O, you sentimental, old --" She began, but he'd hooked her arm and led her down the snowy path.
"I bet the castle looks amazing in all this," he said.
11/18/21
“Just look at you! Look!” Her shrillness broke through like a flashlight, a chisel, an icicle to the brain.
“What?” I said. How do you look at yourself without a mirror?
“Where have you been? As if I didn’t know.”
Rhetorical questions are placeholders in this case for distress.
Margaret was in her quilted bathrobe, her hair down. What time was it? I thought I could feel a warm drip from my nose. When I reached a hand up to wipe it, I saw there was blood.
“What happened?” I said, wiping my nose again. The whole thing throbbed.
“That’s what I’m asking you, Marcus,” she said, her voice brittle. “What happened tonight?”
That seemed like a different question altogether. What happened to me I could tell by effect. I was drunk, exhausted, wounded, bleary. I could trace the line back to a vague outline of occurrence, a reckoning of place and company, of 1,2,3,4, lost count drinks.
“Marcus,” she said and began to cry. How I hated when Margaret cried.
“You’re a mess,” she wept.
“No, no, I’m okay,” I said and got awkwardly to my hands and knees, pulled myself to my feet with help from the kitchen cabinet. Upright, everything felt watery. The room, lit, yellow, contracted like a laboring lung. I could feel a tidal shift within me, realizing that among all the times that were and were not like this, this time was the last. It was in Margaret’s tear-stained eyes, the end.
“I’m going to bed,” she said. “Don’t get blood on the couch.”
She made for the hall closet, pulled out a comforter and a pillow and placed them on a chair, thoughtful to the end.
11/19/21
Caleb was wearing a black knit hat when he came into the library. He went straight for the back where we have a floor-to-ceiling Lego fielding, nubbed for connection. He and his friends from the 8th grade had been working on a display of international flags: Switzerland’s red and white, Italy’s red and white and green, Yemen’s red, white, and black.
I’d pulled out a couple of books they could use for reference. I had them stacked on their own shelf. He ran his hand through the plastic blocks looking for one that fit.
“Andorra?” I asked
“Yeah,” he said, and smiled.
Caleb stood six foot two already, which made designing the upper region of the board his special province, high about the reach of the younger grades, who were all about spaceships and towers, anyway.
“Hold on,” I said, “did you get a haircut?” Usually he had masses of long, dark curls.
“Yeah, my father made me,” he said.
“He made you?”
“Yeah. He said, ‘you need a haircut.’ I said, ‘no, thanks,’ but well…” His voice drifted off.
“May I?” I said, gesturing to his hat.
Caleb pulled it off and looked at me directly. His eyes were both fierce and banked, a boy waiting to become himself fully.
“You don’t want to hear how handsome you are, shorn or not, so I won’t tell you,” I said. He looked down. “Or that it will grow. Or that you can just be undercover for a while longer,” and with that he caught my eye and went back to the Lego.
“Too bad we can only make flags with straight lines,” he said, “but I can improvise.”
“Yep,” I said, going back to reshelving books. “You can.”
11/20/21
“Back when I was a kid, the hills burned nearly every summer,” my mother said, eyes trained to the horizon. “It was just part of the season, and because nobody built their houses up there, it wasn’t a problem.”
“Right,” I said, “just look at the wetlands, what’s left of them. Nobody saw them as necessary either.”
I was geared up and out the door before she could say anything more, or kiss me.
I’d been part of the Anderson fire crew for 3.5 years, enough to have seen my share of pyrocubs, to have spent time making a handline, digging trenches, backfiring to starve the main blaze. My crew and I were tight, had to be, given the risk we faced. When I joined them out in the field, I felt a kind of weightless elation. It was hard to describe, like we all were going to step off a cliff together and hang there in a kind of ether embrace, to do the work our muscle and sinew craved.
I wasn’t very tall, 5’3” on a good day, but I’d worked on my body with weights. Nobody worried I’d let them down. Masked and loaded, I joined a truck headed out the north road. It was me, Jambo, Esther, Ray, and Pedro, everyone of them a tried veteran.
“Evacuated since yesterday morning,” Jambo said, knowing full well there was always some crazy who thought he could battle it alone.
“Wind?”
“32 km/hr, with low fine dead fuel moisture content, 5%” Jambo told her, “We’ve got some time, if there’s no shift.”
With the shape of the hills out there, it was smart to anticipate change.
We drove up the north fork, which was deserted, towards the smoke. Nobody said anything. On The way back from our runs, there was always chatter and laughter, no er how tired we all were, but heading up, each of us seemed to enter our own core, a place still and cool, at least that’s how it seemed to me.
Before long, we’d come to the turn-off, where we parked on an outjutting platform that overlooked a kind of valley. Each of us had a topo map of the region we’d work.
“See you back here in two hours.”
We all synchronized our watches and set out, masked and equipped, determined to create a break the fire couldn’t breach.
“Ever safe, ever strong,” we said, as one, joining our hands in a central star, before each heading out on our own arc of endeavor.
I walked in a 4/4 rhythm, the count in my head, but it wasn’t long before I came upon a guy walking, barefoot through the woods, carrying a cat.
“What the actual fuck,”I said through my mask. He looked at me as if I were some kind of spirit.
“Where are you going, old man?” I asked, though the mask gutted my words. “Or, maybe more importantly, where are you coming from?”
His shirt was torn, but held at the buttons. His white hair was long and swirled around his head like steam’s vapor. He made as if he wanted to walk around me, but I grabbed his shoulder. That’s when he looked straight at me.
“My house,” he said. “It’s gone.”
“Come on, now,” I said. He wasn’t that far from the truck. I’d only been walking a mile or so.
“Let me bring you to safety.”
“My house,” he said. “I’ve been… 17 years…”
“Sir,” I said. Politeness never hurt. “You’re obviously in a bad way. Let me take you to safety.” To my our ears, my voice sounded subterranean. “Sir. Let me help you.”
He handed me the cat he’d been holding. It was a skinny, striped thing, ears back, eyes big.
“Take Levi,” he said.
“Sir, “ I said, trying to get a better hold of the cat. “It’s you I’m worried about. We’re not far from the truck. Let me help you out of here.”
He looked left and right, like he was thinking of running.
“This fire is bearing down on us. It’s not safe for you out here.”
“My house,” he said again.
“Come on,” I said again, and handed the cat back to him. “Let me show you the way.” I took him gently by the arm. “It’s not far,” I pitched my voice at the most soothing, even through my mask. “You and me, we can make it out.”
And we were the only two who did make it out, three if you count Levi. My whole crew perished in the firestorm on the edge of Rigby Peak on that Tuesday morning six months ago, bless their souls.
11/21/21
She’d been trying to avoid Peter since the last neighborhood party they’d had down the block at Emerald’s house, where he’d cornered her in the pantry and tried to kiss her neck. She’d chalked it up to his drunkenness, but had steered clear of him since.
“It’s a tapas party,” William told her, holding the invitation in his hand, “announced on linen cardstock.” He loved when people went that extra mile. “And a return within. You’d think those two were getting re-married.”
“Hmmm,” Renee said, and went back to her newspaper.
“I’ll let them know we’d love to attend,” William said, opening a drawer for a pen.
“I don’t know… Don’t we have something going on the 15th?”
“No.”
“Do you really think…” but then she couldn’t really think up any fake excuse.
“Tapas. Need I say more?” He laughed.
And so, they’d gone.
They arrived thirty minutes late, which was as gauche or worse than arriving on time, but William was exacting. At the door, Peter had greeted them both, shaking William’s hand, kissing Renee on both cheeks. Another couple, the Greeleys, who lived over on Hillside, were there already. Joao Gilberto sang from the corners of the high-ceilinged front room.
Both Renee and William got themselves a glass of champagne and sat on the plush sofa. How had she ever found herself in such a place, acting normally, Renee wondered. She’d been a badass in college, a revolutionary singer/songwriter. How had she made it to the suburbs? How indeed. William took her hand and gave it a small kiss. That was it, she thought, and repeated their usual phrase, “Where there’s a way, there’s a will.” Successful architect, a man on a mission, who’d come up as a kid from the other side of the tracks, William wanted safety and comfort, and he’d found it with Renee in their house in Oak Park.
“How are my favorite masters of erudition?” Peter said and sat down right beside Renee.
“It’s great to see you, Man,” William said. “Things are going great for us. How are things with you and Valerie?”
“Val’s finally recovered from her lift, wanting to show off her re-ju-ve-nation,” Peter said, evidently drunk already. “And I have yet to quit the grind, but debating it daily, as in all’s good in the U. S. of A.” He leaned over to click his glass against William’s and Renee’s. When he tried to right himself, his glass sloshed a small tidal wave of champagne onto Renee’s blouse.
“Whoa there,” William said and was quickly on his feet and searching for some kind of napkin.
“Did I drool on you too much,” Peter said and reached out to pat Renee’s breast. She dodged him just in time, leaping up to follow her husband.
“Lots of action on Myrtle Street. Join us at 11:00 for an upday, for an up-date,” Peter said loudly.
The doorbell rang and he was up to see who’d arrived.
“He’s completely loaded,” William said, attending to the spot on Renee’s blouse.
“Typical,” Renee said. “Let’s leave early.”
“I’m looking forward to some tapas. Just avoid him, if you can. OH look, there’s Linda and Osami.” And he steered her towards the new arrivals. “Just the person I wanted to see. We need your expert advice on a ficus,” for Osami had a small plant boutique.
“Ficus like us!” Peter said and threw his arm around Osami’s shoulders. She flinched hard, and he dropped his arm.
“Fuckus Luckus! Hocus Pocus, who’s the one who’s lost his focus?” Peter kept on turning his attention back to Renee.
“I just can’t,” she said and stared right at him.
“What’s wrong, darling?” William asked.
“It’s insufferable,” she said. Everyone looked surprised, everyone except Peter who began to laugh.
Just then Valerie walked toward them, carrying a large tray of chorizo, manchego and olive skewers, patatas bravas, white anchovies, and tortillas.
“Who’d like some fresh tapas?” She said, her voice high and lilting.
“I’m very sorry, Valerie,” Renee said, “The water main at our house just broke.”
It was the first thing she could think to say.
“What?” William said. He’d already taken a skewer. He held it away from himself, as if it were on fire.
“Let’s go,” she said, “My apologies.” She grabbed her husband’s arm to steer him towards the door. Just before they got there, they came to Peter who had blocked their way.
“Your wife has pork-a-plenty for you, Peter Peter pig crap eater,” she said, though William gasped. And they were out, free, never to be invited to that fine Oak Park address again.
“Just look at you! Look!” Her shrillness broke through like a flashlight, a chisel, an icicle to the brain.
“What?” I said. How do you look at yourself without a mirror?
“Where have you been? As if I didn’t know.”
Rhetorical questions are placeholders in this case for distress.
Margaret was in her quilted bathrobe, her hair down. What time was it? I thought I could feel a warm drip from my nose. When I reached a hand up to wipe it, I saw there was blood.
“What happened?” I said, wiping my nose again. The whole thing throbbed.
“That’s what I’m asking you, Marcus,” she said, her voice brittle. “What happened tonight?”
That seemed like a different question altogether. What happened to me I could tell by effect. I was drunk, exhausted, wounded, bleary. I could trace the line back to a vague outline of occurrence, a reckoning of place and company, of 1,2,3,4, lost count drinks.
“Marcus,” she said and began to cry. How I hated when Margaret cried.
“You’re a mess,” she wept.
“No, no, I’m okay,” I said and got awkwardly to my hands and knees, pulled myself to my feet with help from the kitchen cabinet. Upright, everything felt watery. The room, lit, yellow, contracted like a laboring lung. I could feel a tidal shift within me, realizing that among all the times that were and were not like this, this time was the last. It was in Margaret’s tear-stained eyes, the end.
“I’m going to bed,” she said. “Don’t get blood on the couch.”
She made for the hall closet, pulled out a comforter and a pillow and placed them on a chair, thoughtful to the end.
11/19/21
Caleb was wearing a black knit hat when he came into the library. He went straight for the back where we have a floor-to-ceiling Lego fielding, nubbed for connection. He and his friends from the 8th grade had been working on a display of international flags: Switzerland’s red and white, Italy’s red and white and green, Yemen’s red, white, and black.
I’d pulled out a couple of books they could use for reference. I had them stacked on their own shelf. He ran his hand through the plastic blocks looking for one that fit.
“Andorra?” I asked
“Yeah,” he said, and smiled.
Caleb stood six foot two already, which made designing the upper region of the board his special province, high about the reach of the younger grades, who were all about spaceships and towers, anyway.
“Hold on,” I said, “did you get a haircut?” Usually he had masses of long, dark curls.
“Yeah, my father made me,” he said.
“He made you?”
“Yeah. He said, ‘you need a haircut.’ I said, ‘no, thanks,’ but well…” His voice drifted off.
“May I?” I said, gesturing to his hat.
Caleb pulled it off and looked at me directly. His eyes were both fierce and banked, a boy waiting to become himself fully.
“You don’t want to hear how handsome you are, shorn or not, so I won’t tell you,” I said. He looked down. “Or that it will grow. Or that you can just be undercover for a while longer,” and with that he caught my eye and went back to the Lego.
“Too bad we can only make flags with straight lines,” he said, “but I can improvise.”
“Yep,” I said, going back to reshelving books. “You can.”
11/20/21
“Back when I was a kid, the hills burned nearly every summer,” my mother said, eyes trained to the horizon. “It was just part of the season, and because nobody built their houses up there, it wasn’t a problem.”
“Right,” I said, “just look at the wetlands, what’s left of them. Nobody saw them as necessary either.”
I was geared up and out the door before she could say anything more, or kiss me.
I’d been part of the Anderson fire crew for 3.5 years, enough to have seen my share of pyrocubs, to have spent time making a handline, digging trenches, backfiring to starve the main blaze. My crew and I were tight, had to be, given the risk we faced. When I joined them out in the field, I felt a kind of weightless elation. It was hard to describe, like we all were going to step off a cliff together and hang there in a kind of ether embrace, to do the work our muscle and sinew craved.
I wasn’t very tall, 5’3” on a good day, but I’d worked on my body with weights. Nobody worried I’d let them down. Masked and loaded, I joined a truck headed out the north road. It was me, Jambo, Esther, Ray, and Pedro, everyone of them a tried veteran.
“Evacuated since yesterday morning,” Jambo said, knowing full well there was always some crazy who thought he could battle it alone.
“Wind?”
“32 km/hr, with low fine dead fuel moisture content, 5%” Jambo told her, “We’ve got some time, if there’s no shift.”
With the shape of the hills out there, it was smart to anticipate change.
We drove up the north fork, which was deserted, towards the smoke. Nobody said anything. On The way back from our runs, there was always chatter and laughter, no er how tired we all were, but heading up, each of us seemed to enter our own core, a place still and cool, at least that’s how it seemed to me.
Before long, we’d come to the turn-off, where we parked on an outjutting platform that overlooked a kind of valley. Each of us had a topo map of the region we’d work.
“See you back here in two hours.”
We all synchronized our watches and set out, masked and equipped, determined to create a break the fire couldn’t breach.
“Ever safe, ever strong,” we said, as one, joining our hands in a central star, before each heading out on our own arc of endeavor.
I walked in a 4/4 rhythm, the count in my head, but it wasn’t long before I came upon a guy walking, barefoot through the woods, carrying a cat.
“What the actual fuck,”I said through my mask. He looked at me as if I were some kind of spirit.
“Where are you going, old man?” I asked, though the mask gutted my words. “Or, maybe more importantly, where are you coming from?”
His shirt was torn, but held at the buttons. His white hair was long and swirled around his head like steam’s vapor. He made as if he wanted to walk around me, but I grabbed his shoulder. That’s when he looked straight at me.
“My house,” he said. “It’s gone.”
“Come on, now,” I said. He wasn’t that far from the truck. I’d only been walking a mile or so.
“Let me bring you to safety.”
“My house,” he said. “I’ve been… 17 years…”
“Sir,” I said. Politeness never hurt. “You’re obviously in a bad way. Let me take you to safety.” To my our ears, my voice sounded subterranean. “Sir. Let me help you.”
He handed me the cat he’d been holding. It was a skinny, striped thing, ears back, eyes big.
“Take Levi,” he said.
“Sir, “ I said, trying to get a better hold of the cat. “It’s you I’m worried about. We’re not far from the truck. Let me help you out of here.”
He looked left and right, like he was thinking of running.
“This fire is bearing down on us. It’s not safe for you out here.”
“My house,” he said again.
“Come on,” I said again, and handed the cat back to him. “Let me show you the way.” I took him gently by the arm. “It’s not far,” I pitched my voice at the most soothing, even through my mask. “You and me, we can make it out.”
And we were the only two who did make it out, three if you count Levi. My whole crew perished in the firestorm on the edge of Rigby Peak on that Tuesday morning six months ago, bless their souls.
11/21/21
She’d been trying to avoid Peter since the last neighborhood party they’d had down the block at Emerald’s house, where he’d cornered her in the pantry and tried to kiss her neck. She’d chalked it up to his drunkenness, but had steered clear of him since.
“It’s a tapas party,” William told her, holding the invitation in his hand, “announced on linen cardstock.” He loved when people went that extra mile. “And a return within. You’d think those two were getting re-married.”
“Hmmm,” Renee said, and went back to her newspaper.
“I’ll let them know we’d love to attend,” William said, opening a drawer for a pen.
“I don’t know… Don’t we have something going on the 15th?”
“No.”
“Do you really think…” but then she couldn’t really think up any fake excuse.
“Tapas. Need I say more?” He laughed.
And so, they’d gone.
They arrived thirty minutes late, which was as gauche or worse than arriving on time, but William was exacting. At the door, Peter had greeted them both, shaking William’s hand, kissing Renee on both cheeks. Another couple, the Greeleys, who lived over on Hillside, were there already. Joao Gilberto sang from the corners of the high-ceilinged front room.
Both Renee and William got themselves a glass of champagne and sat on the plush sofa. How had she ever found herself in such a place, acting normally, Renee wondered. She’d been a badass in college, a revolutionary singer/songwriter. How had she made it to the suburbs? How indeed. William took her hand and gave it a small kiss. That was it, she thought, and repeated their usual phrase, “Where there’s a way, there’s a will.” Successful architect, a man on a mission, who’d come up as a kid from the other side of the tracks, William wanted safety and comfort, and he’d found it with Renee in their house in Oak Park.
“How are my favorite masters of erudition?” Peter said and sat down right beside Renee.
“It’s great to see you, Man,” William said. “Things are going great for us. How are things with you and Valerie?”
“Val’s finally recovered from her lift, wanting to show off her re-ju-ve-nation,” Peter said, evidently drunk already. “And I have yet to quit the grind, but debating it daily, as in all’s good in the U. S. of A.” He leaned over to click his glass against William’s and Renee’s. When he tried to right himself, his glass sloshed a small tidal wave of champagne onto Renee’s blouse.
“Whoa there,” William said and was quickly on his feet and searching for some kind of napkin.
“Did I drool on you too much,” Peter said and reached out to pat Renee’s breast. She dodged him just in time, leaping up to follow her husband.
“Lots of action on Myrtle Street. Join us at 11:00 for an upday, for an up-date,” Peter said loudly.
The doorbell rang and he was up to see who’d arrived.
“He’s completely loaded,” William said, attending to the spot on Renee’s blouse.
“Typical,” Renee said. “Let’s leave early.”
“I’m looking forward to some tapas. Just avoid him, if you can. OH look, there’s Linda and Osami.” And he steered her towards the new arrivals. “Just the person I wanted to see. We need your expert advice on a ficus,” for Osami had a small plant boutique.
“Ficus like us!” Peter said and threw his arm around Osami’s shoulders. She flinched hard, and he dropped his arm.
“Fuckus Luckus! Hocus Pocus, who’s the one who’s lost his focus?” Peter kept on turning his attention back to Renee.
“I just can’t,” she said and stared right at him.
“What’s wrong, darling?” William asked.
“It’s insufferable,” she said. Everyone looked surprised, everyone except Peter who began to laugh.
Just then Valerie walked toward them, carrying a large tray of chorizo, manchego and olive skewers, patatas bravas, white anchovies, and tortillas.
“Who’d like some fresh tapas?” She said, her voice high and lilting.
“I’m very sorry, Valerie,” Renee said, “The water main at our house just broke.”
It was the first thing she could think to say.
“What?” William said. He’d already taken a skewer. He held it away from himself, as if it were on fire.
“Let’s go,” she said, “My apologies.” She grabbed her husband’s arm to steer him towards the door. Just before they got there, they came to Peter who had blocked their way.
“Your wife has pork-a-plenty for you, Peter Peter pig crap eater,” she said, though William gasped. And they were out, free, never to be invited to that fine Oak Park address again.