Rock, Paper, Scissors

by Naja Marie Aidt

  “A wild and decadent person. What does she mean by that?”

  “I suppose it means she wanted to be free to live life to its fullest. That’s how I understood it anyway. She rebelled against her educated, well-heeled family and took off with a charlatan no one liked. She burned all her bridges, Kristin said. So she couldn’t come crawling back when she’d had enough of the wild life. She was a proud person. All too proud, Kristin said.”

  They come to the mudroom and the front door. Patricia squats down to rub Jupiter’s back. “That’s why she died alone.”

  “That sounds like a rather theatrical interpretation. Did she tell you about her horoscope too? Or read tarot cards for her?”

  “It wasn’t meant that way, Thomas.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s dead.”

  “Yeah, she’s dead all right. But what does that explain?”

  “I don’t know. Jenny was happy to hear about her. Even though she cried. There’s so much grief buried inside her. Kristin gave her one of your mother’s old necklaces. Hard to believe she was only thirty-two when she died . . .” Patricia looks at him. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Give it a rest, Thomas. Every little thing pisses you off. Can’t you be happy for anyone? Is that what’s wrong? Are you miserly?” Patricia straightens up and rests her hands at her side. “Well?” He doesn’t respond. Just stands there. “Are you stingy with your feelings? With your family? Do you have a patent on the correct ‘interpretation’? Do you see yourself as some kind of police officer for this family? Huh? Is that it?” She looks at him, and he glowers at her, so she shakes her head. “So much for a romantic stroll under the stars. There’s very little that’s fun with you anymore. Do you know that? There’s just bad luck around you these days.” She goes inside and slams the door. But she pauses there, her hand resting on the knob. For a moment she doesn’t move, as if considering going in or out. Then she returns.

  “Thomas,” she says. Her voice is different, low and compact.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’re we going to do?”

  “We can’t argue inside, that’s for sure.” He nods at the brightly-lit windows.

  Her arms droop at her sides, all energy drained from her. Under the sharp light of the bare bulb dangling in the mudroom, she looks rumpled, worn out. She gives him a wounded or sad look, he can’t tell which. Then she turns and goes back into the house. This time she doesn’t return. Thomas sits on the stoop smoking another cigarette. Frogs croak nearby. Midges and moths flit around the bulb above him. His legs are sore following the hike. His butt, too. He doesn’t have an answer to Patricia’s question. He gazes at the stars one last time, thinking: That’s how it is, though he doesn’t quite know what that means. Doesn’t understand it. But that is how it is. I am tamping this half-smoked cigarette out on the flagstones. I am throwing the butt into the grass. I am turning around and lifting first one foot, then the other. I am walking up the stairs, I am putting my hand out, I am touching the doorknob, I am opening the door. The hinges squeal. I am stepping into the entryway. It smells a little sour in here. I am breathing. I am breathing. I am breathing.

  “Was it nice out there?” Kristin comes downstairs just as Thomas closes the door. He nods. “I need to use your bathroom,” he says, passing her going up. The walls on the second floor are pitched at an angle, and it’s hard for him to stand erect. Up here there’s a large bedroom with a king-sized bed, an acid-washed cabinet, dim light thrown from a single wall lamp above the headboard of the bed, and a view of the lake. The twins’ dinky rooms, plastered in pink, are teeming with knick knacks, unmade beds, heaps of clothes, school-books, and old toys on the floor. The one is apparently as disorganized as the other. He locates the bathroom at the end of the hall. It’s messy in here, too: wet towels on the floor, overturned bottles of shampoo and soap in the shower, a plastic basket filled with rubber ducks and miniature ships—which the twins must have outgrown years ago. He does his business and washes his hands, then looks at himself in the mirror. He looks overheated, sunburned, the whites of his eyes seem yellowed—maybe it’s the light. A few tiny nail clippings are stuck to the hand soap. Despite treading carefully, he bangs his head against a ceiling beam on the way down the hall. Pain jabs his skull. The steep stairwell. Someone let the dog back in the house, and it greets him with a wagging tail, then follows at his heels through the kitchen to the living room, where Thomas hears voices and the twang of a guitar. Maya’s the one playing it, testing it out haltingly. Then she hands the guitar to Alice and Alice begins plucking chords to an old Bob Dylan tune. Her singing voice is light and pure. Kristin, Helena, and Jenny sing along, and the girls clap in rhythm, and then Patricia starts singing too, and Maloney. His voice forms the humming foundation to Kristin’s alto and the others’ sopranos. Luke’s the only one not singing along. He sits quietly on the edge of the cot watching, uncomfortable and rigid, as though he’s embarrassed at the boisterous, unrestrained cheerfulness. Rocking back and forth on her stool, Helena raises her arms above her head, lets them sway to and fro. Thomas settles into a kitchen chair and waves awkwardly to Patricia. She smiles wearily at him. Luke gathers his hands on his knees and leans forward, hiding his eyes beneath his hair. And Jenny says, “Can you believe we still remember every single lyric of those rotten old songs. Thomas used to play guitar too, it sounded horrible. Isn’t that right? You couldn’t play at all. He’s tone deaf.”

  “But Jenny, as you can tell, has immense and underappreciated musical talents,” he says, which makes Alice laugh without restraint.

  “I love you all the same, you idiot. You know that,” Jenny says. “That’s the problem, of course.” And she looks as though she’s about to cry again, but no tears come.

  “So you love him even though he can’t play guitar?” Alice teases her mother.

  “No. I love him even though sometimes I don’t want to.”

  “Hey, thanks. Right back at ya,” Thomas says, smiling at his sister. Maloney raises his voice: “I’m going to let you two figure that out together, that’s a little too intimate for me.” He glances cheerfully at Thomas. Jenny drains her glass.

  They sing more songs. The twins do this silly dance, keeling over laughing the entire time. Finally they throw themselves into the beanbag chair. Kristin hammers on the bongo that Helena uses to meditate. Then Maloney and Jenny go to bed. Jenny gives Alice a long goodnight hug, which seems to surprise Alice, who rests her slightly baffled face stiffly against her mother’s shoulder, until at last she wraps her arms around Jenny’s buxom body and surrenders herself. For a moment she appears blissful. It’s 10:30. Maloney bows to the group and keeps close to Jenny as she, stumbling in her high-heels, waves to everyone. Her dress is creased in the back. She’s walking inward, Thomas thinks, as if she were knock-kneed. They begin kissing even before they’re beyond the kitchen door, Maloney practically munching on Jenny’s mouth, her hands gliding up under his shirt. Thomas turns away in a kind of stunned disgust. And yet he looks again, but by then they’ve disappeared from sight, the door slamming shut behind them. “So!” Helena says to the twins, “bedtime.” The girls don’t want to go to bed, but after some complaining and nagging, they slink away after all. “Goodnight, Uncle Thomas,” Nina whispers sleepily.

  “Goodnight, Niece Nina. Sweet dreams.”

  “What do we do now?” Patricia asks, trying to stifle a yawn. “Maybe we should go to bed too?” “Wait,” Luke says, standing. Soon he returns with a bottle of tequila. He holds it up to the light so they can see the worm floating in the liquor. “Okay,” Kristin says. “I’ll get some glasses.” They each down a shot. And another. Then Helena decides she doesn’t want any more. She laughs and tilts her head back.

  “Oh, do you remember that time you had to carry me home, dear? Because I remember it! Tequila makes a person so crazy, I went out like a light.”

  “I carried her on my back. Luckily she was light as a
feather,” Kristin says tenderly, rubbing Helena’s wrist and her imperceptibly pulsing vein. “You still are . . .”

  “Listen,” Luke says. “Let’s recite poetry. You guess the poem and score points for each correct answer.”

  “Poetry!” Kristin refills her glass, then rolls her eyes. “I don’t know any poems by heart.”

  “Of course you do.” Helena arches forward and whispers something in Kristin’s ear.

  Alice leans back on the couch’s pillows. “How many points?”

  “Five for the poet’s name, five for the title, and five for the name of the collection in which the poem was first published. You get five bonus points if you can name either the year the poem was written, or the publication year of the book the poem first appeared in.”

  “Huh, that sounds complicated,” Kristin sighs.

  “What about suites?” Patricia says. “What about literary journals? If it was printed in a magazine before it was published in a book? And if it was only published that way?”

  “That doesn’t count. But you get a bonus for suites. What should we say? Three extra points?”

  “Five,” Patricia says.

  “You must be hoping for a suite, huh?” Alice nudges Patricia teasingly, who’s now leaning back with a cushion under her knees. Patricia smiles at her.

  “What if you only know the first verse?” Alice asks.

  “That’s enough. A few lines are enough,” Luke replies. He draws columns in his notebook for scoring.

  So he carries a notebook in his pocket, Thomas thinks. I wonder what he writes in it? Luke looks at Thomas. “Who wants to go first?”

  “We need another drink first,” Thomas says. “To kickstart our brain cells.”

  “Ha!” Kristin slaps her thighs and extends her glass. Though this is her fourth shot, she doesn’t seem drunk at all.

  They roll a die to determine who will start. Kristin wins.

  “Okay,” she says. “Pay close attention: The opals hiding in your lids / as you sleep, as you mysteriously . . . Oh, as you mysteriously . . .” Kristin hesitates, glancing at the ceiling. “Ride ponies! Yes. Ride ponies, spring to bloom/ like the blue flowers of autumn.”

  Helena blushes a little. The others applaud.

  “Wait,” Kristin says. “I remember some of the last part too.” She squeezes her eyes shut in concentration. “Only by chance tripping on stairs / do you repeat the dance, and / then, impeccably dressed /, no, impeccably disguised! And then / impeccably disguised / so . . . what is it?”

  “In the perfect variety . . .” Helena says.

  “Oh, yeah!” Kristin snaps her fingers. “In the perfect variety of / subdued / white black pink blue saffron,” she pats her cheek after each color, “And golden ambiance, do we find / the nightly savage, in a trance!”

  “Wow!” Alice blurts out, “That’s awesome. Who wrote it?”

  “Yes, who is it?” Kristin’s eyes gleam.

  “You remembered it,” Helena whispers, squeezing Kristin’s knee.

  “The nightly savage, in a trance,” Luke mumbles. “I pass. I don’t know it.”

  “Come on! Thomas?”

  Thomas shakes his head. They are silent. They glance curiously at each other. A new suspense, tension in the room.

  “O’Hara,” Patricia says. “I don’t know where it was published the first time. But I’m guessing it was in the collection Meditations in an Emergency. Wasn’t it published in 1957? I can’t remember that at all. But in any case, it was in The Collected Poems, published after his death.”

  “That’s right. It was in Meditations in an Emergency,” Kristin says. “1957 is also correct. Well done!”

  “What’s the title of the poem?” Luke has his pen ready.

  Patricia shakes her head. “No—I can’t remember that.”

  “Yes, you can, c’mon, babe.” Thomas is beginning to enjoy this game.

  “May I help?” Kristin asks.

  “No. You’re not allowed.” Luke is stony. He spins his pen around in his fingers.

  “Well, I’m going to anyway. It was written to a female friend of his. She was in your line of business, Patricia. Sort of. He wrote more poems to her over the years.”

  “Including a sonnet,” Helena adds.

  Patricia considers. “Oh . . .” she says. “Oh! It’s right on the tip of my tongue, I have it . . . Is it . . . hmm . . . is it . . . it’s Freilicher. Jane Freilicher. Isn’t it? The painter?”

  Kristin nods. Alice and Thomas clap.

  “But what’s the name of the poem?”

  Patricia doesn’t know. “Something with Jane,” she suggests.

  “Yes, but what?”

  “To Jane?”

  Kristin shakes her head. Luke regards Patricia. “You give up?” She nods.

  “Jane Awake,” Kristin says. “Doesn’t she get a point for getting half the title right?”

  But Luke says no. Fifteen points for Patricia. You’ve got to follow the rules. A short discussion ensues about the fairness or unfairness of the rules, then they continue playing. Helena goes on and on about how important this O’Hara poem was for her and Kristin when they met, but no one’s really listening. Kristin needs to choose the next player. She points at Alice.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you!”

  “I don’t know any poems.”

  “Of course you do. I guarantee you memorized some lines in school.”

  Alice bites her lip. “Any kind of poem?”

  “Yes,” Luke says. “Any kind.”

  How goddamn poetic of him, Thomas thinks. The schoolmaster of poetry. A schoolmaster in every form of poetry. He feels laughter bubbling in his throat, rising, but he restrains himself, because now all goes quiet. Alice begins earnestly and stutteringly to recite: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall / Humpty Dumpty had a great fall / all the king’s horses and all the king’s men / couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

  “Oh!” Helena says excitedly. “No! I’ve completely forgotten what that is.”

  “Well, it’s not really a poem,” Alice says shyly.

  “It’s a rhyme,” Luke says. “Is it the same guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland?”

  “Lewis Carroll? No,” Kristin says.

  “I don’t know who wrote it. I just remember it from when I was little.”

  “Then you don’t get any points,” Luke says.

  “Yes, she does!” Kristin shouts, “Nobody’s guessed the writer yet.”

  “That’s because it’s an age-old nursery rhyme,” Thomas says, “and nobody knows who wrote it. It’s probably been passed down via the oral tradition.”

  “It was in one of my books when I was a kid,” Patricia says. “I can still remember the illustration of the egg-shaped creature in the tree. It wore suspenders and had a strange hat.”

  “It’s called ‘Humpty Dumpty,’” Alice says softly.

  “Five points to Alice!” Kristin’s animated now. “Otherwise I’ll veto.”

  “You can’t do that,” Luke says sternly.

  “Call it a draw, at least. C’mon Luke,” Alice chides. “I don’t want minus points.”

  “Can you get minus points?” Kristin is genuinely perturbed.

  “No,” says Luke. “You can’t get minus points.”

  “Come on then, Luke. Give her a point. This is only a parlor game,” Thomas says. “And she knew the title. You’re cheating!”

  Luke regards him, irritated. “Of course the player should know the title of the poem she’s reciting.”

  “I don’t entirely understand why you have to,” Kristin says. Luke makes a decision then, it’s clear, and he does an about-face like some other Humpty Dumpty. He smiles. “Fair enough. Five points to Alice.”

  Alice cheers. They pour more tequila. Helena goes off to the kitchen for olives and salted almonds. “But who is Humpty Dumpty?” Alice says, gulping her drink. She spreads out on her stomach, exposing a strip of skin between her T-shirt and jeans. “Who the hell i
s Humpty Dumpty? How bizarre!” She laughs so hard she begins to cry, her shoulders heaving. “A dumb little egghead.”

  “It’s Maloney!” Thomas shouts, suddenly very drunk on tequila. “It’s Maloney sitting in a tree waiting for someone to rescue him.”

  “And his savior’s Jenny!” Patricia practically howls, kicking off her sandals so she can tuck her legs beneath her on the couch.

  “Jesus Christ, now I can taste that fucking worm!” Thomas jiggles the bottle and breaks into laughter, and thinks of that Blade Runner quote about memories that will disappear like tears in the rain, and that’s not at all funny, it’s a deep, deep well, and under the well: darkness, death, but if he stays out of the well, it’s fun. There’s Maloney as Humpty Dumpty, there’s Luke—and for crying out loud, his real name is Luc, he recalls, Luc and not in any way Luke, it’s a goddamn pantomime to call him Luke just because fucking Jacques did—he, Luc, is the Schoolmaster of Poetry, and everything’s funny: a glance at Kristin, the laughter rolling off their lips, Alice shaking and drooling as she lies there on her stomach. “What’s going on?” she gasps. She finally gets up on all fours, turns, red-faced, her eyes glazed. Luke pinches his lips impatiently before raising his voice, “Are we going to keep playing? Alice, who do you pick?”

  “Ah! Why am I so drunk all of a sudden?” Kristin looks as though she’s fallen off the moon. They laugh at that too.

  “Who do you pick, Alice?” Luke asks again, annoyed.

  “I pick Helena,” Alice nearly whines. And Helena can’t help but smile; it takes a long time before they settle down.

  “Okay,” Helena says. After drinking water from her green glass, she takes a deep breath.

  “Sorry, but I need to light a cigarette,” Thomas says.

  But Thomas! You can’t do that.” Helena looks shocked.

  “Sure he can,” Kristin says. “What are we, Calvinists?! Give me a drag.”

  And so it continues. They pass the cigarette around, and then it’s Helena’s turn to recite. “This genre means a lot to me. It’s part of my meditation. It’s connected to my work at the loom. To the images. To harmony and disharmony.” She glances at the others through the semi-darkness, meeting their eyes, while her own smolder and glow. Her beauty is a rare flower, Thomas thinks, a passion flower, gone quickly, until it blooms again, a new flower, ephemeral and unforgettable. Now I’m thinking these thoughts, he thinks, surprised. What kinds of thoughts are they, passion flowers, rare beauty—from Humpty Dumpty to unforgettable. Meanwhile Helena goes on: “I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying, but the tapestries represent, for me, the expression of a lifelong act, a slow and rather humble act, but one that’s totally spontaneous and unforeseen, deeply expressionistic, the byproduct of a single unruly movement or thought.” Helena stares at a point above their heads, her face inscrutable. “It’s probably the closest I’ll ever come to eternity,” she says, her eyes darting to Alice and rousing her. Alice and Patricia seemed to have zoned out during her long monologue. Patricia’s lying with one arm over her eyes.