by Adam Klein
I stand in her parents’ hallway speaking to Frances on the phone. I tell her I won’t be working there any longer. I’m trembling as I say it, afraid of her reaction. She wants to know what’s happened, but I insist it’s a personal matter. I don’t try to explain it.
‘What do you want me to do with your things?’ she asks. She’s controlled and diplomatic, but I know she’s angry at me, even though she’ll be leaving soon and her memories will quickly dim.
‘My friend Gina will collect my things. Just put aside the pictures and stuff on my desk.’
‘I’ll box it up,’ she says. ‘I’ll do it this afternoon. I need to have that desk cleared.’
She makes it sound as though my replacement were already hired.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. She’s quiet for a moment, and I realize that what she thinks matters to me.
‘I hope you’re not in trouble, Carrie.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I answer.
‘I think you are. But I know you’re not asking me for help,’ she says. ‘I’ll miss you.’
Hannah is holding Alex at the end of the hall, pretending not to listen. She doesn’t like holding the baby; she fights her attachment to him with a monstrous will. But I feel expansive and open, like anything is available to me. I ask Hannah if she has a map. I need to look at one right away, trace my finger over its branching lines.
I hold Alex while she searches for her father’s atlas. I think of the ocean, its swimmers rushing out to embrace it, trusting that its force will be benign, its currents will return them. And maybe Alex has had a great-grandmother all the time, waiting in a room by the beach, knowing this was all his and all ours if we wanted it.
Hannah knows I’m leaving. I can’t bear to live on that small stretch of road any longer. Judgment has been passed on our lives. Hannah thinks I can take her memories from her. I know she’s wrong. We can’t predict how relief will finally come. We can never predict.
The god of endings has asked me to oversee only the beginnings.
Roman Evening
Tiny Ladies
1. Tiny Ladies (Theme)
2. Casework
I have so little time, it’s a quarter to five
Take a number and I’ll see you next time
If you show
Let me take your last name first
Take your best, take your worst
Try not to hurt yourself
Or keep stumbling on your past
I promise not to think of you
After the appointment
Sometimes life
Is such a disappointment
Sometimes my life
Is such a disappointment
We have a small budget for clothes and things
Put you back out there in the ring
Help you feel a little self-esteem
I’ll ask the same questions that you’ve heard before
They leave you anxious, or they leave you bored
Experience can take so much
And nothing is restored
Let me write a page, chart your case
Talk you through the choices you wish you could erase
Retrospect is hard enough
Hard enough to face
You come looking for God at the desk
Judgment never rendered in this bureaucratic mess
Well sometimes it’s more
And sometimes It’s less
Casework is easy
But it never ends
Casework is easy, so many to defend
But it never
Never ends
3. Hook of Doubts
Every time I reach out for you
I slip away from myself
I’m strung out on a hook of doubts for you
No one’s interventions can help
Every time I want to forget
That’s when you come around
With your milk of the moon and your mercy spoon
And the way you gently bring me down
Anytime that we decide
We want to stop hurting
I guess we think we will
But pain has its design
That we’re deserting
It’s greater than our will
Every time I want to take care of you
I discover my own pain
I want to think that I’m ministering to the mirror
But I’m pouring my heart into the drain
There’s an army of band-aids and wounded lives
Wounded animals that are leaking faith
There are paintings depicting war and paradise
There’s weakness threatening every chain
4. Acid Lines
Consequences
They gather here
They leave their mark
On the atmosphere
Those tumbles
You took before
They gather weight
Pull you through the floor
Sometimes it seems there’s a line around me
An acid line
Pale and silvery
It cuts me out of some paper-thin sheet
Like something colored by a child and soon forgotten
My regrets
They fill the night
Like absent stars
Dark with appetite
They cut your form
In acid lines
Startling and separate
Pasted haphazardly into life
Consequences
The shitting floor
With so many traps
You never saw before
A night without solace
Full of dying stars
The dust of their light
Blown between the bars
While some great need
It just goes on and on
Configured painfully
In every dawn
The elements
They shatter and burn
And mark you up
Before you learn
5. King’s Theme
6. Song for the Ashes
Have you ever seen the ashes as a start?
Things just come to together when we part
From broken hearts and branches
Can we spark?
Can we spark?
Can we spark?
Have you ever seen the ashes as a prayer?
The people who you carry aren’t there
From broken promises, broken down
Are we found?
Are we found?
Have you ever seen the ashes in your blood?
How fire shares its purpose with the wood
And everything that’s broken isn’t weak
Can we speak?
Can we speak?
This is a song for the ashes
The aftermath and the wreckage
Today you can’t believe it
But tomorrow you might open your eyes
Have you ever had the ashes on your tongue?
The taste of where you started, where you’re from?
From shattered glass to needles
Are we sharp?
Are we sharp?
Are we sharp?
Have you ever seen the ashes as a start?
Things just come to together when we part
From broken hearts and branches
Can we spark?
Can we spark?
Can we spark?
This is a song for the ashes
The aftermath and the wreckage
Today you can’t believe it
But tomorrow it might rise
7. Owls
The moon is painted on the sky
The owls are hanging in the trees
There is nothing in our lives
Outside your sacrifice for me
An act that’s hanging in the balance
Balanced on a greasy wheel
The perfect locking mechanism
The hammer tapping of her heel
This wasn’t how we meant it
This wasn’t in our dream
We returned to check the damage
Turn his pockets out and see
We returned to check the damage
The snow has risen by the roadside
Icy headstones without names
Masks are drifting out the window
Owls alight on running prey
We can leave our crime behind us
It’s only nature we obey
Owls bear no repercussions
It’s only us who fly away
This wasn’t how we meant it
This wasn’t in our dream
We returned to check the damage
Sweep our presence from the scene
8. Changed by Your Face
I’ve been changed by your face
Changed by your hands
You were delivered to me
Some children they have open smiles
Doors with corridors that go on for miles
Until you arrive at a room that’s locked
These walls have shocks
And you won’t even know who’s threatened
Unless you’re let in
Unless you’re let in
I carry books with all their pictures removed
Records spinning now with sun-warped grooves
These perfect things that aren’t worth a thing
I’ll be the champion
Of all those unloved things
And I won’t be threatened
Even if I’m let in
Some people carry memories
Their pockets full of well-worn keys
But some of us can never fit
Have no mastery or consequence
And we can never know our lessons
Unless we’re let in
Until we’re let in
Knowing I can’t keep a thing
Or measure hope out on a string
I take all the love that I can bear
Put my lips up to your hair
Some answers we don’t need to have
The promise that I’m not so bad
And I can’t leave this pale hope threatened
Now that I’ve been let in
I’ve been changed by your face
Changed by your hands
You were delivered to me
9. Tiny Ladies (Outro)
10. Credits
Credits
Adam Klein – Vocals
Michael Mullen – Piano, Keyboards, guitar; bass on Song tor the Ashes
Tim Mooney – Drums, percussion; Bass on Casework and Hook of Doubts
Glen Swarts – French horn, trumpet, treated horns, dobro
Sharky Laguana – Bass on Acid Lines. Owls. Changed by Your Face
Walt Szalva – Textures, glockenspiel; guitar on Hook of Doubts, Song for the Ashes and Changed by Your Face
Produced by Roman Evening
All songs written by Adam Klein and Michael Mullen
Except Tiny Ladies, King’s Theme and Credits written by Michael Mullen
All songs © 2003. Comfort Bringers Publishing (BMI)
Horn arrangements by Glen Swarts
Recorded and Mixed by Walt Szalva at Planet 3, San Francisco
Mastered by Michael Romanowski at Paul Stubblebine
Mastering and DVD
Image by Todd Hido
Design by wall www.wallwideweb.com
To obtain a copy of the soundtrack, please visit: http://www.dzancbooks.org/reprint-series-books/tiny-ladies-by-adam-klein/
The Dzanc Books rEprint Series
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