by Chris Baron
but I’m okay.
She laughs louder.
I reach for her hand,
feel the length of her shoulder, her arm.
That’s it, I say, laughing.
Don’t make me sit on you.
Her hands finally tired,
she surrenders
in quiet laughter,
breath,
cheese,
the unexpected warmth
of bodies close
beneath the countless stars.
After Champagne
Eyes open,
my head glued to the pillow,
my body pressed against the planked floor,
lost in wood and paint,
I feel my hair with tired hands
and find my heartbeat in the center
of my skull.
There is no other sound.
I taste all of last night.
Lisa sits cross-legged
on the bench outside,
her hair a circlet
of gold straw.
She stares
into her phone.
My mother in the far corner
of the garden, coffee
steaming into the sky.
I am hungry.
I want a bagel with lox and cream cheese.
I want pancakes, French toast.
I want to dip my oranges in a pool of syrup.
I want bacon and eggs and a huge
plate of hash browns.
I slip Mysterious World
under my arm,
walk through the garden
in my socks, each step, dust,
each breath a question.
I want to ask Lisa
about the night before,
but when I sit down,
I’m too nervous,
and the questions all float away,
so instead I find other words.
You know, people always think
yeti and Bigfoot are the same.
But for once, I don’t really
want to talk about this.
I wish I could find
the right words to say.
Closing the Gallery
Coffee-soaked
and exhausted,
my mother walks over to us.
She looks at my eyes.
I need you to stay with Lisa tonight
at her house.
She smiles at Lisa.
Your mom is back.
But I see she’s nervous.
She doesn’t like
leaving us at Lisa’s house.
She unfolds sections
of her plans like a map,
points to ideas,
unexplored reasons:
busy meetings,
business dealings, unexpected
turns of events.
She calls it adventure,
like she’s trying to be brave
for all the business she has to do.
Last night fades into
in-between places.
We pack our stuff for the drive
back to the world.
Lisa is in the back seat,
not feeling good.
I want to tell her
how much fun
I had the night before.
I want to talk
about how much closer
I feel to her now,
how glad I am that she’s my friend.
I want to ask
if she will float with me
over the Pacific
in champagne bubbles,
but she’s curled up into
a morning glory,
petals folded
over her head,
silent as we wind our way
down Throckmorton Avenue.
Lisa’s House
My mother coughs and smiles.
Okay, she says, I should be back
FIRST thing in the morning.
She reminds me to be polite,
to call if I need anything.
She hands me six five-dollar bills.
She makes me say her number out loud to her.
At times like this, she says,
I wish you did have your own phone.
I shrug.
The long stairs to Lisa’s house
wind in mossy disarray,
slate and stepping-stones
threaded through a leafy garden
between three old redwoods.
Swings creak on ancient branches,
and flowers reach into spots of sunlight.
Lisa’s mom steps out from the front door.
She hugs my mom and me
and then her daughter.
Her body is strong,
her hair soaked
from a shower.
She smells like medicine
and daisies.
Ari! she says, and she runs her hand
over my body like I am a statue.
She puts her hand on my stomach
and under my chin.
You look so goood!
Her o’s roll the long way.
I try not to shrink back,
to feel and believe the words.
Her face wants to be beautiful,
like she is from some other world.
Her hands, long and thin,
spiraled in rings and bracelets
of gold and silver, shine.
Lisa takes my hand,
and we go inside.
The house is white,
filled with colorful pillows,
magazines, the smell of smoke.
We sit and play with her dogs,
twin Maltese with knotted fur.
She tries to hug them, but they
just keep jumping in and out of Lisa’s lap.
Outside, the mothers
talk. Hands flail
in all directions,
stories and pronouncements,
bodies shifting.
It’s normal for a moment,
and then I see my mom
grab Lisa’s mom by the hands
with a painter’s grip,
and she says something
eye to eye.
When they come in,
my mother kisses us both
and walks through the door.
Lisa’s mom smiles
at us, walks to the kitchen,
pours a glass of wine,
and I feel the taste
of champagne
coming up from my stomach.
Lisa looks at her mom.
I see her shoulders suddenly
hunch forward, and
she takes my hand,
squeezes tightly,
her mouth forming
words she’ll never say.
Fight the Corn Chip
Her mom gives me
a tuna fish sandwich,
rye bread, toasted, sliced in half,
corn chips stacked on the plate,
a Coke.
I already know that I’m not drinking
the soda, but I put a corn chip in my mouth.
I feel Lisa looking at me,
clear, green eyes, telling the story
of the boy who couldn’t
fight the corn chip.
I take the edge of the chip,
scrape the tuna off the bread.
I place eight chips along the edge
of the tuna,
stack and eat them,
just the eight,
one by one.
The best chips I’ve ever had.
We spend the day on her phone.
I hate talking on the phone.
I don’t know what to say,
but that’s what we do.
We call her friend in Corte Madera,
a girl I’ve never met.
Lisa says a few words about me,
cute, shy, supercool,
hands me the phone and says,
Talk to Gretchen.
She’s totally funny.
Silence.
Lisa hits me in the leg, and grits her teeth. Go!
I say hello.
Gretchen
Her phone voice is smooth, with a slight upward tilt
at the end of each sentence. It’s scratchy too, in places.
She tells me that she has red hair. So red, she says,
it’s orange. It’s, like, super rad, she says.
She tells me that she likes vintage music,
just like we do.
Do you like glam rock bands
from the eighties? she says.
She tells me about Quiet Riot,
and how the names of the songs
are spelled in ways we shouldn’t know about.
She sings to me, and she somehow gets me singing.
Come on feel the noise!
Girls, rock your boys!
She stops in the middle,
makes sure that I am headbanging.
Lisa, in and out of the room,
doodling pastels on giant paper,
laughs and headbangs with me.
Later, Gretchen tells me I have a cute voice,
that we should get along,
no matter what we look like.
Glow-in-the-Dark Stars
Beneath glow-in-the-dark stars
we listen to Duran Duran.
I stare at Lisa’s shelves:
a stuffed cat
with some of the whiskers
pulled out,
blue-and yellow-
painted frames filled
with old photographs
of people I don’t know.
My favorite is one
of Lisa when
she was little,
standing on a dock
over a green pond,
fishing with her dad, I think.
On the dresser
is a jewelry box
swirled with necklaces
and plastic bracelets,
trinkets spread over
the top onto the floor.
One side of her room
is a picture window
covered in a rain forest curtain.
I stare at the eyeball of a tapir
peering out from
the mudbank.
I put my sleeping bag down.
Is your mom really gonna
let me sleep in here? I ask.
Yeah, Lisa says, she doesn’t care.
We all sleep
in the planting room together,
don’t we? Besides—she smiles—
I want you to see the stars.
Finally, near her door,
a vintage three-section concert poster
of Joe Elliott, the lead singer of Def Leppard,
in leather pants
and a Union Jack tank top.
In one frame,
he is leaning into the crowd.
In another he is standing,
playing air guitar with the band,
and, in the lower half, his face,
cradling the mic.
He isn’t skinny in the poster,
but the crowd is still reaching
for him. He looks fierce. Unstoppable.
We spread out pencils and markers,
draw pictures.
She draws more pictures of Elysium,
the warrior queen, standing in the sun
on some high cliff.
Lisa is learning about perspective,
so she draws legs almost three-dimensionally,
stepping over a rise of green grass.
I draw my warrior, Thall, a hunter,
standing in the snow, his muscled arms
leaning on his spear
carved from a dragon’s tooth.
He looks out toward the valley beyond.
He is waiting for something.
I want him to be a true hero,
imagine how he might be a part
of Elysium’s kingdom
now that she is queen.
Lisa slides our drawings together,
holds them up beneath her desk lamp.
She pulls some tape from
the desk, sticks them to the wall.
She steps back
to look at the pictures,
puts her arm around my
shoulders. I feel the heavy,
perfect weight of her strong arm,
smooth against my neck,
and I feel the fire race through
to my toes. My body awake,
my back straight.
It’s one of the first times
I realize that my stomach
isn’t folding over my shorts as much.
She curls her arms up
into the air, flexing her muscles.
I am Elysium. The world is at my feet!
And there you are, her voice deep and silly,
a strong, mighty hunter!
Later, under the glow-in-the-dark stars,
when everything is quiet at last,
I unroll my bag
on the floor.
Lisa whispers,
Good night, Ari,
I’m glad you’re here.
She points at her ceiling.
We’re like those stars,
floating through the galaxy.
You’re like the brother
I never knew I had.
Her words fold around me.
Brother.
Like a brother, a best friend.
I smile,
but I feel like it’s
more than that.
I find the biggest star
in the center of the ceiling sky,
stare at it for a long time.
I want to be more
like two planets
in orbit together.
I want to tell her this,
but by the time
I find the courage,
she’s already asleep,
so instead I whisper,
Good night,
coil in my sleeping bag
next to her bed,
watch the glow fade
from distant plastic stars.
A Different Kind of Morning
Lisa’s mom has put out cereal boxes
and sits in the garden,
talking on her phone,
a book resting in her lap.
Lisa makes me scrambled eggs
with cheese without asking.
Gretchen just texted me.
Lisa smiles. We’re gonna meet her
sometime this summer.
I think about Gretchen and Lisa.
I think about how
everything seems like a new chance.
My mother comes
shortly after we eat.
Her moccasins and work pants are absent,
her tank top and paint-drenched
canvas shirt
missing.
She wears some kind of business suit,
gray over a white shirt, but still
with her silvery necklace.
I don’t recognize the way she looks in it.
She hugs everyone, asks me standard
Did you? questions that all parents ask.
Did you have a good time?
Did you brush your teeth?
Did you get any sleep?
Did you keep to your diet?
Did you thank Lisa’s mom?
I try to anchor myself to the next time
I get to see Lisa.
We hug, agree on soon,
and drive off toward the city.
Across the Golden Gate
The Golden Gate Bridge is enormous.
Its towers rise sentinel red
over the headlands,
into deep fog.
I just need to take care of some business
over the next week or so.
My mother tries to sound upbeat, for my sake.
I think of my father,
that he must have a plan,
that they are going to work it out.
After all, this isn’t the first time
they’ve been so mad at each other.
Maybe he’ll even be home
watching old shows,
like we always do.
I think of the rabbi’s
methodical voice,
how I haven’t been
to a Hebrew lesson in a month,
how whenever I mention anything
about it, my mother just says,
It’s your father’s job to deal with this.
I can’t remember one prayer.
I try to think where the tape
of the rabbi speaking the prayers is.
I search my room in my mind.
Past the second tower,
I feel the heaviness of San Francisco,
invisible in a mass of swollen fog.
I think about Pick in Australia now.
I wish he was here.
I picture Jorge, alone at the beach.
I think about Lisa, the nursery,
sand on my feet, clay between my fingers,
my sleeping mat and pictures of robots taped all around it.
My old body melting away.
My white T-shirt, loose
over my middle.
My shorts that used to be tight
are so baggy that my legs
don’t press against the seams at all.
We pass the Presidio, once an old army post,
huge artillery batteries turned into
living museums, and airstrips
restored into wetlands and grassy fields,
a huge park stretching all along the bay
green and alive in the wet air,
one of my favorite places
in the city.
We drive into the Marina,
past the long, low rows
of art deco houses
my mother always points out,
until we turn, at last,
to the street where
our apartment is.
Through the bay window,
I see the huge clay sculpture
of a woman’s head
looking out at the street,
and it makes it feel
a little like home
even though I feel so different.
Level 2: Ongoing Weight Loss
The first thing I do
when we get back
to our apartment
is weigh myself.
21 pounds.
21 pounds less
