That night, the night I’m remembering, the night after the drive from that time at the restaurant in Nogales, I carried the blankets, and you carried Sammy the parrot and the piñata. We lived on the second floor, and we tried to walk up the cement steps as quietly as possible because the lady on the first floor liked any excuse to poke her head out her door and squawk. She accused us of cooking stinky food, even when it was grilled cheese for dinner. Peering through the cracks between the floorboards of our tiny balcony, we could see that her patio below was stacked wall to wall with shoeboxes. What the hell’s inside them, you asked, and wondering was a fun guessing game. She and the shoeboxes were still there when we moved out two years later, and she yelled the whole time we tramped up and down, carrying stuff to the U-Haul. I thought about sending her a letter to tell her you died, but didn’t. She might remember that day we brought home the yellow parrot named Sammy because even though we were tiptoeing, her door popped open and she launched into a lecture that if we walked on the balls of our feet, we’d have better posture and be quieter besides.
You were halfway up the stairs, and you stopped to listen, parrot in one hand, chili pepper piñata in the other, and she interrupted herself to say, “No pets allowed means no birds. I’m going to the office tomorrow and I’m filing a report.”
Only tonight, you said, we’re keeping him for a friend.
“Better not be a talking bird,” she screeched.
No, no, you assured her, it’s not, not at all. He’s more of a thinking bird, a bird who thinks.
She slammed her door and spun the deadbolts, click-clack. When we moved in she warned us that management would snoop if we didn’t install our own locks. She had a P.O. box because she didn’t want anyone seeing her mail. Arizona was loaded with crazies who were fun at first.
I repeated to the closed door, Only for tonight.
Inside, we pushed through the wall of hot, stuffy air. That achy spot in my head was half-dollar size now. I lifted my hair off the back of my neck, but there was nowhere for it to go, so I just let it drop back down. I tried not to think about it, but I was thinking about it.
There was a hook in the ceiling, where someone before us maybe hung a spider plant, and that’s where you decided to put Sammy. He perched on a metal ring that no one had bothered to paint or prettify. Why did we buy such a silly thing? Was that why the tequila flowed, so gringos would end up with junky yellow parrots and chile piñatas? All that tequila had been on the house, by the way, so you left a big tip. Maybe that’s why free tequila, for looser tips.
To reach the hook, you stood on one of our rickety metal folding chairs that we used at our dining room table. The apartment had vaulted ceilings, which is also why it was so expensive to keep cool. Another thing to think about when renting an apartment in Arizona, instead of how many hot tubs. Think about covered parking, or if there’s a ceiling fan to push around your piled-up, hot, heavy air.
He looks good, you said.
Kind of tacky, I said, but maybe in an okay way?
Don’t call our new pet tacky, you said, jumping down off the chair. I rolled my eyes, knowing the lady would bang her cane against the ceiling, which she did so fast it was as if she’d been waiting, locked and loaded. Boom, boom. For someone who wanted quiet, she was noisy.
Sammy the Mexican parrot, I said.
When he wants a cracker we won’t understand because he speaks Spanish, you said.
The thinking bird, I said.
We laughed. Nothing we said right then was funny, but laughing seemed important anyway. I miss your laugh, the slow roll of it. Who would think to record a laugh? Who would think it wouldn’t always be there?
You stood at the sliding glass door to our tiny balcony and looked out. Let’s go swimming, you said.
The pool closed at ten, but plenty of people ignored that rule. If you were quiet, no one cared. Even the lady downstairs didn’t fuss over swimmers at night. That shimmer of blue dropped into the dark lured all of us. On hot nights, the water was barely cooler than the soupy air, but it was an escape, that sensation of stepping in and disappearing, inch by inch, melting down to liquid. A luxury in a place like New York, and here, only a matter of tiptoeing down some stairs and walking across the tennis court, pulling open an unlocked iron gate, hoping it didn’t creak.
I shrugged. Maybe tomorrow night, I said, I’m kind of tired. All that tequila.
Tomorrow, you said. Tomorrow’s fine.
But you kept staring at the blue pool, at the darkness beyond. The rustle of the palm trees. The flowers we didn’t know the names of, the orange ones, the purple ones. The glass between you and the pool. I watched the fuzzy reflection of your face in the window, and I tensed, expecting you to say something surprising. I don’t know why, but that’s what I thought was going to happen. I thought about your dreams, your blue dreams, and maybe that was why you were so drawn to the pool right then, because being in the pool would feel like being inside one of your dreams.
We should remember today, you said.
We will, I said, promise. Then I crossed my heart, which was corny, but felt like a gesture that might not seem corny at this exact moment, and might be significant, like the way we had laughed at the jokes that weren’t funny.
I was wrong, and you made fun of me: We’re not the girl scouts, you said, too sharply.
I know, I know.
It’s just one night, you said, one day. There are lots of days, there are infinity plus one days, and how can we know we’ll remember this one over any of the others? What if this day, as good as it was, isn’t even the best day?
I know, I know.
Maybe if we went swimming . . . your voice trailed off suggestively.
Go swim by yourself if you want to go swimming so bad, I said, you don’t need me holding your hand down there.
I wanted to ask, What if this is the best day? What if it is? That’s what I should have said. Instead, I kept picking, waiting for the fight: Plus, I have to get up early to go to work. It’s not like you, class at one.
Work, you said.
It was typing up classifieds at the alternative newspaper, back in the days when there were classifieds in a paper newspaper. I was terrible at this job because I made typos that ended up in the newspaper, selling a “care” instead of a “car” or a “car” instead of a “cat,” and I hated it. But the boss liked me for reasons he shouldn’t have, so I knew he’d never fire me though I would have been relieved if he did. But this job paid our rent, which when I was tired and scared and the apartment was stifling hot, I reminded you of, not in a pleasant way. That, and that your dad paid your tuition.
This fight ended where the others ended: Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and I ran off to cry in the bedroom, and you slammed the door—bang-bang—and pounded down the stairs—shrieks from the lady—“didn’t I tell you already about them stairs; didn’t I tell you?”—then silence. I wished Sammy was a real parrot because there was too much quiet in the room once I stopped crying, which I did immediately after you left because I was embarrassed to keep carrying on. Besides, you were gone, which was what I wanted; hadn’t I just screamed so several times, inventing several ways to say one thing: get out? (The lady downstairs didn’t mind our fights; you speculated she preferred them to her TV soap operas.)
These fights were what our parents did, not us. Not you. You were different. I was different. That’s how we got married in that room in New York, making those promises, because we knew we were different.
I lay on the futon in our bedroom, still in my clothes, my tennis shoes, thinking that neither of the blankets we got in Nogales was very pretty, and instead we should have bought the other two we had looked at, or gone to more stores because surely in all of Nogales there were prettier, better blankets than these, and I wondered if the cotton would give us a peculiar rash or if there were fleas, and I scratched my suddenly itchy calf, and I started to feel sick to my stomach from the soup that had been cooked with scary
Mexican water, the limes and cilantro that had been washed in scary Mexican water—and I thought about eating a pig’s foot and a cow’s stomach—and all that tequila, and the never-ending heat, and I had to think harder, really hard, to convince myself that I was only psychosomatic. Everything I was feeling was psychosomatic. I loved you, I did, and this marriage wasn’t a colossally huge fuck-up and I did not want to jump in the car and race back to New York City to bagels and a closet-size sublet.
I would love you forever. That’s what we promised.
I fell asleep, an hour or so according to the glowing digital clock, and I swept my arm along your side of the futon, but no you, and I jumped up and ran into the other room, flipping on every light switch, but you also weren’t in the living room watching our tiny black-and-white TV or at the table studying or in the kitchen poking through the brown refrigerator, and I was thinking the worst, without even knowing then what the worst might be, but I had that tendency, didn’t I, to find the single thing to worry about that didn’t need worrying about, and I hated that about myself. But right then, it was only that you were gone. That was all I knew, that single fact.
I pressed up against the sliding glass door, and you and I had agreed that we weren’t praying people, but I thought a little prayer anyway, something simple that was only the word please, which didn’t have to mean I was no longer an atheist, and I took a deep breath, and you were sitting on the edge of the shimmering blue pool, kicking your feet one at a time in the water, droplets a quick flicker, your hair sleek, wet and slicked back, like seal fur—you had just emerged from that restful water, there it was, there it was, you and the blue water, like one of your own dreams. I was immediately angry, and I said, Goddamnit, and looked guiltily at the parrot as if it would tattle.
Then you saw me: you saw me looking at you, saw the lights of the apartment behind my silhouette, and you waved. You jumped up and motioned me forward; your hand beckoning me; you were telling me to come in, telling me to follow you, that you hadn’t gone anywhere except to cool off. I kicked off my shoes and peeled away my socks, and I ran down the cement steps, across the tennis court, still warm from the day of sun, rough against my bare feet, and I ran out there to you: I ran out there to you, to where you stood, waiting for me.
When I think back, I see that it all passed so quickly.
Now that you’re dead, now that I’m remarried, now that I live in Chicago, now that I’m getting the baby I wanted, now that years are stacked like bricks between that day at the restaurant in Nogales and the drive and the fight, and now that the parrot named Sammy is packed in a box in the attic and one blanket is missing—now that I can think about these days and those times, now that I can speak in stories and words, now . . . now I can’t remember when it was that we promised to each other that we would never get remarried. A drive to somewhere? A lunch? Whispers during a late night? Did we really speak those words? It’s the promise of the impossibly young, of people who don’t know many things, certain they know everything.
Like me, you would have gotten remarried if I had been the one to die first and young, if the maggots got to my body before yours. You would know—as I know—that in the end, whether there is a god or isn’t, no matter if the world ends or if only we each do, you would know, know absolutely, that in a dream, in a blue-drenched dream, there I would always be, always: running to find you.
ONE ART
EXPERIMENT: Tell a true story to an audience gathered in a bar. Tell something so personal and so true that you’re spattering your ripped-out guts on the dirty floor, so personal and so true that your naked, beating heart lies exposed for everyone to gawk at and poke. Tell the truth. Tell the truth for real. Put it out there. You can do it. That’s what you tell yourself, because you’re pretty sure you can’t do it.
WHERE: Story League, Washington, DC, May 2011
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eavvO3B0Kn4.
READ: “You know how people sometimes worry about saying or doing the wrong thing with a bereaved person? I became a bereaved person when my thirty-seven-year-old husband suddenly died, so I know that one wrong thing is to buy a bereaved young woman an expensive flowering dogwood tree and have it unexpectedly delivered a week after the funeral while she’s out of the house dealing with lawyers.
“At first I didn’t realize that this tree was a ‘wrong thing.’ At first it was, ‘Oh, how thoughtful, a tree to commemorate Robb.’ Then I tried to move the damn thing off my porch—six feet tall, a burlap-wrapped rootball the size of a tire. The thing weighed a ton. So I dragged it down the stairs, realizing that this would be a little trickier than the peace lilies people had sent—which were already wilting under my quote—‘care.’
“Instructions on the tree were crystal clear, ‘Plant immediately. Do not let roots dry out.’ Other demands: Shady spot. Acid loam soil. Lots of water. But the real issue was that this tree was supposed to symbolize my husband, flowering every spring and providing beauty in the world for decades to come. God forbid this tree died . . . too.
“It was early April, so not the dead of winter, but honestly, the last thing I wanted was to dig a hole three times as big as the rootball, dump in a forty-pound bag of soil conditioner—whatever that was—and find the tangled-up garden hose somewhere in the shed. Digging holes was a boy job, not a girl job. And damn the woman who sent me a tree without also sending along her husband to plant it for me.
“I’m not someone who is comfortable with untidy emotions like anger and, well, grief. No, I’m dutiful and responsible and organized. I washed and returned casserole dishes after the funeral; I wrote thank you notes for every last flower arrangement. I knew what I was supposed to do about that tree. Still, I stared at that tree for a few days, at its big, dumb rootball.
“Was I someone who could purposely leave a symbolic tree to die? Was I a woman who ‘needed’ a man? Since I didn’t have a man anymore, I guess the question answered itself. I could do this. I didn’t need help. It was the responsible thing to do.
“So, Saturday—cold, windy—I dragged out some shovels, untangled the hose, and lugged the tree to a spot in the front yard. Dozens of dead leaves fluttered off the branches, which I tried to ignore.
“The ground was like cement. My shovels were cheap, like beach shovels. I was weak, with spindly arms. The rootball was actually the size of a Volkswagen. My husband was dead and I had to dig a hole three times the size of a Volkswagen for this goddamn tree that would symbolically flower every spring to remind me that my husband was dead.
“Crying. Cursing. Flinging dirt. Chopping worms in half with my cheap shovel. The worst moment was when I realized that because I’d hacked up the yard so much it was too late to go back. I could only dig.
“‘Hello, ma’am.’
“I looked up. Mormons. Two of them, boys, with white shirts, black ties, black pants, windbreakers. Bikes. All acne and peach fuzz. You know the uniform.
“Stating the obvious, I said, ‘This isn’t a good time.’ Then I added, ‘My husband died last week.’
“To me, that was the get-out-of-jail-free card, and I expected them to back off the way the telemarketers did when I told them Mr. Rauth couldn’t come to the phone because he was DEAD.
“But to these Mormons, my response was hitting the jackpot, and they exchanged meaningful looks. One of them—the smart one—dropped his bike and edged over to me the way you approach a wild animal you don’t want to startle, saying, ‘You know, I could help you dig that hole. Looks like the ground is pretty hard.’
“They’d seen that I was crying and I certainly couldn’t pretend everything was fine. Seriously, the wind picked up right then and blew off a hundred more leaves.
“‘I don’t know,’ I said.
“The smart one smiled. Such a bright smile, those big, white Donny Osmond teeth.
“He cautiously reached for the cheaper of my cheap shovels. ‘We’ll help,’ he said.
“Then the other one—the dumb one—sa
id, ‘Yes, let us help. If you want to see your husband again, you’d better talk to us right now.’
“Oh. My. God. My husband was dead, I was all alone in the world, the rootball was as dry as dust, and these preachy children with their heaven or second coming or afterlife or whatever the fuck it was, were claiming the only way to ‘see my husband’ again was to let them save my soul. Oh my God.
“I channeled my inner crone and I stood up, waved my cheap shovel like a pitchfork, and shouted, ‘Get off my property!’
“Off they pedaled—dooming me to hell and eternal loneliness.
“With new strength, I ripped through the earth and dug the damn hole. I planted the tree. Watered it all summer.
“Next spring, there were maybe two or three flowers on it. What was I to make of these blooms? So, my husband’s life added up to two or three flowers? About then, I realized that I had hated the tree all along, and it must have started feeling my hatred because then it started to look sickly. Oh, I still watered it—I wasn’t going to KILL it. Not on my watch, not responsible me. But dogwoods are fragile, and this one was definitely fading.
“The tree couldn’t ever be just a random tree in my yard. No, it was a tree that someone else had told me should be symbolic and should make me feel better.
“But you know what I thought of every time I looked at that tree? I thought about how bad shit happens to people all the time, and that finding a god or planting a tree wasn’t ever going to stop that. When I was yelling ‘get off my property,’ I wasn’t only angry with the Mormons.
“A few months later the tree finally died. By that time it was totally dried out. I was able to pull it out of the ground with my bare hands, rootball and all. I planted bleeding heart there instead.”
THE TRUTH: This story is true and everything in it happened to me. It’s what we like to call the truth. But I could tell this story all day long. It’s nothing personal. People think my guts were quivering on the floor. People in the audience tell me they watched my naked, beating heart. Not so. No way. I would never really do that. I hide, I hide the truth from everyone, from friends, family, readers, and most of all from (Write it!) myself. Those stories I imagine I won’t ever tell: those are the personal ones.
This Angel on My Chest Page 5
