Across the intersection a taxi winked. The carpet merchant had summoned it with a gloved finger. She turned to me and gestured to the approaching taxi, but we’d arrived at the same time, so I shook my head.
She opened the door, then turned back. “Headed north?”
I shook my head again.
“Right,” she said. “Farewell.”
I watched her bend into the cab, lean forward to say something to the driver and then lean back, resting her head on the seat. I kept watching as the taxi sleighed away, down Columbus, against the backdrop of Lake Michigan frozen and flat, endless, really, an endless carpet of fresh fallen snow.
Already I was learning that some of the things I was learning weren’t things I’d need to know.
HOME BUTTON
When we snuggle, my left hand finds purchase on his back cyst.
SOME CHILDHOOD DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE
THEN
I wanted to be a mermaid. But first, I needed the tits and the hair. Hair long enough that it rivered in naked curves down my naked chest while I lounged on a rock, luring sailors with my song.
NOW
I have tits, and hair down to my ass.
You’re probably expecting me to end with something depressing like, “Yet I never lounge on rocks, luring sailors with my song. In fact, I never even sing in the shower.”
But you’d be wrong. Dead wrong. I must have become a mermaid: look at my wrinkly skin. What could have caused me to wrinkle, if not hours spent submerged, frolicking in the sea?
OUR FRIEND THE MEMOIRIST
It was his wife’s birthday and seven of us were having dinner, seated around a festive table. Our friend the memoirist felt moved to make a toast.
“I’d like to make a toast,” he began, lifting his glass. “I’d like to tell a story about our first date, which took place on my wife’s birthday, thirteen years ago tonight.”
“Aww,” said one of us, probably more than one of us. We’d drunk some wine. It was the right time of the evening for sweet reminiscing. And our friend was a memoirist, a professional reminiscer. This was going to be good.
Encouraged, he continued, “Thirteen years ago, I took my beautiful wife to a Mexican restaurant.”
We all turned—she’d been placed at the other end of the table—anticipating her smile. She has a sweet smile. And in fact she was smiling, but not the way we’d anticipated.
“Well,” she said, softly. Softly, but precisely. “The Mexican restaurant was one of our early dates, for sure.”
This gave him pause. “That was our first date.”
“Um,” she said, “no . . . but that was one of our first dates.”
“The Mexican restaurant. On your birthday. Our first date.”
“No,” she said, “not exactly.”
“The Mexican restaurant wasn’t our first date?”
She shook her head, still smiling. She’s a good bit younger than the memoirist, with long dark hair and the sweetest smile I know. But you shouldn’t underestimate her. And it might be worth mentioning her first novel will be published in April.
“If that wasn’t our first date, what was?”
A pause. “Remember the bad sushi?”
We watched him remember. It was almost painful.
He lowered his glass of wine to the table and sat back in his chair. He said, “Well, I guess I’m not going to make my toast now. I guess I’m not going to tell my story. And I had it all planned out and everything.”
“Oh, come on,” we said. “You can still say what you were going to say.”
“No,” he said.
“Oh, come on. Please.”
“No, I can’t. Not anymore, I can’t. Which is too bad, you know. It was going to be a really good toast.”
THE VISITATION
I remember being in the car on the way to my sister’s surprise funeral. In the backseat, I think. I can’t imagine who was driving. At a stop sign my head swiveled to a flicker in the roadside greenery: a fox, poking its snout from between two bushes. I thought, or chose to think, That is my sister. That is my sister, come back in animal form to tell me it’s okay. She’s okay. I’ll be okay.
But it was not okay. She was not okay. I would not be okay. I would not be okay for so long that when okay arrived it couldn’t place me. It looked right past the veil of shivering leaves, my long red snout, my gloved paws swiping tears into my little black mouth.
DAUGHTER, THEY’LL USE EVEN YOUR OWN GAZE TO WOUND YOU
1. Chicago, IL
My high school teacher loved that I loved libraries, so she promised she’d bring me to her alma mater’s. One Saturday, we took the train in and she donned white gloves to turn manuscript pages while I roamed the stacks, inhaling that dear dusty library funk. Wait: did I hear footsteps? When I was sure I’d been mistaken, I pulled out a heavy tome. There, thrusting through, a tube of flesh. Years later a librarian would tell me paraphilic activity is quite common in her place of work. Just in case you’re wondering if I was special.
2. South Bend, IN
My college roomies and I were three beers in, walking from campus to Brigit’s, a bar so seedy that, after graduation, it’d be condemned. A Tercel pulled over and the interior light flicked on to halo a man consulting a map. Good Catholics, we inquired if he needed directions. Can you show me where I am on my map? So we stepped closer and discovered where he was on his map: through the center, dickly. I’m guessing it was Denise who began laughing, or maybe Beth, but in seconds we were all hooting, we could barely stumble away, shrieking and pounding one another. He screeched through the intersection, the light still red.
3. Fayetteville, AR
From dawn till noon I’d reviewed Wordsworth, cramming for my comp exam, and now as I ran through the park, sonnets metered out my pounding feet. A bicycle came from behind, a man swiveling to see my face. At the top of the hill, he stopped, turned, and coasted back toward me. I could see his fist gripping something low on his belly. What zinged through my head: a bouquet. But that was no bouquet. I didn’t even slow as he passed, just averted my eyes.
I’d run nine miles that day with one to go.
I guess I’d learned by then what women know.
MARRIED LOVE, IV
Morning: bought a bag of frozen peas to numb my husband’s sore testicles after his vasectomy.
Evening: added thawed peas to our carbonara.
MY FATHER’S REMINISCENCES
At twelve, I learned my father had had a brother who died of cirrhosis. In all those years, my father hadn’t spoken of him. I knew I had an aunt and cousins in New Jersey, but somehow I wasn’t concerned with who their father was. He just wasn’t, that’s all. Fathers were different when I was growing up. They worked all day, they came home late. You’d been fed, you’d bathed and put on your nightgown. Give your father a goodnight kiss, Beth Ann.
My father’s father was a dental surgeon, served overseas for four years during World War II. Once I asked my father what that was like.
“We managed,” he said.
“But what was it like,” I pressed, “having your father gone for so much of your childhood?”
He shrugged. “We got used to it.”
“But what was a day like? What did you do for fun?”
“We played Japs.”
“Jacks? You played jacks?”
“Japs. We played Japs. My friends in the building and I, we ran around, ducking into doors, crouching with invisible guns. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. We killed Japs all day.”
What was it like having your father miss your childhood? Funny I had to ask.
I KNEW A WOMAN
Everything she had was better than everything the rest of us had. Not by a lot. But by enough.
NOW I GLANCE UP THE FIRST TIME THEY CALL MY NAME
When I was a girl with a book in my hand I could go to a place so deep no one could follow. No one cared to, except my mother, an affectionate woman who smarted at her lack of companionship. She m
ust have fretted to watch me wading out, leaving her behind. She must have stood on the shore and wrung her hands, the waves retreating, the sand beneath her feet eroding grain by grain by grain. She must have felt bereft to see her own dear daughter sinking, even the long dark locks, eel-graceful.
Sometimes, in the deep, I’d hear an echo for a long time before I recognized what I’d been hearing: my name. My mother, calling my human name.
Yes, Mom? I’d lift the globes of my eyes.
It’s time to set the table, Honey.
Okay.
I’d place the book belly-down and rise, though I could see (we both could see) dinner was still a good way off.
SWEET NOTHING
He was dying, he would soon be dead. My mother had told me so. She had prepared me to expect the urine-colored eyes, the distended belly, the dementia and palsied hands. I pulled up a chair to his hospital deathbed. I wondered if I should say “I love you.” That phrase corresponded to nothing, but I didn’t want guilt later. I didn’t want to suffer because the last time I saw my father, I didn’t tell him I loved him. I could hear my future voice, If only I’d told him I loved him. I wanted to spare my future me, whom I did love. So I told him I loved him and I left.
WHAT I LEARNED IN GRAD SCHOOL
Sometimes, in grad school, we’d sit around talking about who was publishing what where. This always ended bitterly. Bitter feelings all around. Once, a rival poet (we were all suddenly rivals) confessed he had a secret font. He called it the “Publish Me” font. He claimed that every time he submitted poems in this font, they got accepted. Of course we asked him the name of this font, but he smugly declined to share.
EXPIRATION DATE
Every time my mother visits now, she brings a stack of yellowed papers. My girlhood artwork, some of it forty years old. We flip through together: the Mother’s Day menu I cooked her when I was ten. A letter from camp. A coupon book, crayoned for her birthday, 1979—free foot massage, free breakfast in bed. I’d given the coupons the expiration date of New Year’s Eve, 1999, the most impossible distance conceivable, a day I knew would never come to pass.
We don’t talk about why she’s going through her attic. Her prognosis is good. But she’s seventy-five.
Last summer, at the consultation before my mother’s double mastectomy, I questioned the surgeon about the silicone implants. They don’t last forever, right? How long before Mom needs a replacement? Fifteen years, he said, meeting my eyes. No further questions.
New Year’s Eve, 1999: not the impossibility it had seemed. That date has been ceded to the territory of the past. The same will hold true, eventually, for the day my mother will expire.
I’ll be alone, curator of the archives. Bearer of this coupon good for a free hug.
EMULSIONAR
The week of my twenty-third birthday, I met up with Elaine and Kathleen in Barcelona, where Elaine was teaching conversational English. One night, her language school hosted a party on the roof. We arrived early to help, and I was given garlic to peel for mayonnaise. That’s the first reason that night is memorable: I’d eaten my share of mayonnaise but never made it. In fact, I’m not sure I knew it could be made. Now, next to me, a good-looking Spaniard was whisking lemon juice into yolks, the hair on his strong brown wrist glistening in the lowering sun. We were translating the recipe so I could make it back home. Behind us someone was strumming a guitar, tightening a string, strumming again, this as the Spaniard streamed olive oil with one hand, whisking with the other, “And then you—I’m not sure how to say in English, you mix these two that should no be mixed, you need very fast, emulsionar,” and my “Oh, it’s the same, the same in English, emulsify.”
After my lesson, I refilled my sangria, then drifted to the parapet where Kathleen and Elaine leaned, marveling at the zany evening traffic, daredevil motorcyclists—some of them couriers or food deliverers—squeezing between speeding cars. I said, “I feel like I’m waiting for an accident to happen.”
Only seconds later we heard the shriek of abrupt tires followed by a thud, and we turned to see a body scudding across an intersection. A man, on his back, as if shot from a cannon. I’m sure we screamed. The rest of the party rushed over, but traffic blocked our view. We could see only a motorcycle on its side. Soon an ambulance arrived—its siren unexpectedly on a different key, a siren with a Catalonian accent. After a few minutes, the ambulance squealed away. Somberly, everyone on the roof ghosted back to the party. When the guitarist started singing, all his songs were sad songs.
The next afternoon, at the language school, we learned the motorcyclist had died. I was surprised, though all day I’d been chased by that thud, what I now knew to be a body embracing a speeding car. It was the first time I’d heard death. Which is another reason I remember that night.
The third is this. That was one of the last times I’d see Elaine. We’d been such good friends the year prior, when the three of us taught English in the Czech Republic, and met up on weekends to booze and laugh and kiss bartenders. I knew we’d be friends forever. But soon thereafter, Elaine got a serious boyfriend, twenty years older. She seemed to age, overnight, on the inside. She didn’t want to stalk around with us anymore, stiletto heels punching holes in the map of Europe. Or her boyfriend didn’t want her to, same difference. I think he thought she shouldn’t mix with me, that I was a bad influence. Which I was. In those days, I could cause an accident merely by waiting for it to happen.
WHEN PEOPLE BEMOAN THE COMMODIFICATION OF ART
I think of picnicking at Blair’s studio. Reaching for my second slice of watermelon, I saw some lines—a black Sharpie?—crossing the green rind.
“Did you draw on this, Blair?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” she said, with a shrug. “Melon skin is one of my favorite mediums.”
ANOTHER MISSING CHAPTER IN THE PARENTING HANDBOOK
When our daughter was nine, she contracted a brain-eating amoeba after swimming in a neighbor’s pond. Or so she believed. There was no talking her out of it, though Lord knows I tried. The next day, she wouldn’t join the kids leaping through the sprinkler. Go have fun, I told her. She shook her head. She was done with fun. I found it, at that point, almost cute.
It grew less cute, acutely, over the following days. Fretting, I conceived the cure: a water park. Who could watch kids shriek down the slide and not join them? She could. She read Greek myths, hunkered under a towel to ward off splashes, deaf to our pleas. She led the way to the car, her thighs bearing welts from the chaise’s plastic straps.
When I discovered she was faking her bath—she’d lock the door, run the water, then emerge, dressed and dry—I became truly concerned. She gave up nothing when questioned, as if explaining would jeopardize our lives, too. I showed her articles detailing symptoms she didn’t have. She shook us off. Maybe she just wants attention, said my mother. Maybe . . . but it didn’t feel that way. Her light was on at odd hours; she was having problems sleeping. While she was too young to develop serious b.o., her bangs clumped greasily, and the back of her hair was pasty with white gunk. I felt embarrassed, and ashamed at feeling embarrassed. Should we consult a child therapist? One day, in the bathroom, trying to get through to her while trying to get a comb through her hair, I grabbed the fist-sized tangle and shook. I’m going to have to cut this off, I snarled. Do you understand? Unless you get over this silly fear. I wanted to rattle her head until the crazy fell out. To lock the door, turn on the faucet, and force her under: to prove she wouldn’t die.
Clearly, I needed a break, so my husband and I met our friends at the bar. Many of them don’t have children and they like when we complain about ours. But our friends didn’t laugh. Instead, they recalled their own childhood brushes with rare infectious diseases. Our friends, smart and successful adults who began life as smart and weird children, felt for our daughter, our smart and weird daughter, dedicated to her dying.
One friend, drunkish, a successful sports writer, said, Give me your phone. I can handle
this.
How, we asked. How can you handle this?
He said, I’m going to tell her—here he deepened his already deep voice, right in front of us his face sobered, sovereigned—This is Dr. Thompson, Anna Claire. There is no such disease as a brain-eating amoeba. Now, I command you to put aside these childish fears, and rise, and shampoo your hair until it squeaks.
Mesmerized, I passed him my phone. He put it on speaker and we all leaned in. We could hear the ringing. It rang and rang and rang.
She must be in the shower, I said for a laugh.
Laughter wasn’t the best medicine, but it would be all I’d have hereafter. In time, she’d get over her fear, on her own. By then, the sickness had spread, because something was eating my brain, too: knowing that she’d had her first problem I couldn’t solve, and knowing there would only be more of them, and knowing that she’d known that already, and had decided, in her mercy, to spare me.
PASS THE VODKA
Inside Wendy’s freezer: a bottle of vodka and a dead cat in plastic wrap. The cat she froze so she can bury it when she returns to Florida, where the cat was happy, before Wendy divorced and moved away to make a fresh start.
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