When I was 10 I'd lift an arm protector from my grandmother's ancient furniture and marvel at the bold rectangle concealed beneath. Brick-red and ivory and Hunter green—the stitched bouquets freshly picked, tight as Braille.
The many summers had bleached everything, leveled the surface, and it was difficult to find secrets—but not impossible—when I was 10.
Conversations overheard from another room were franker, had a different tone, but never do I remember anything said about my father—or my mother.
The calf skin of his Oxfords was brittle, and the shoulders of his sports coats sagged on their hangers, but my grandmother's eyes moistened when I appeared, downstairs, in the stuff.
The present and past had a collegial relationship in the large old house, telling different versions of the same stories but never sitting down to the table together—at lunchtime, when bees gorged on fallen plums at the end of the yard and bluebirds rocked the wooden houses hung on the clothesline posts.
It was hard to get my grandmother to talk about the past as she folded maraschino cherries into angel food batter or rubbed knuckles of delicates together in Borax in the bathroom sink.
But I sat on the lid of the hamper and watched—when I was 10.
When storms came through we all gathered in her bedroom—so habitually that I wondered if they were visible anyplace else. Cathedral tall, the single window in the room faced north, its sheers turning to neon in the darkness as we counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder.
Butter, milk, eggs, and bread—the crust breaking away from the loaf in golden sheets—came to the house, but no chums or old girlfriends of my father ever did, and his fable was never interrupted by evidence, or the bawdy corroboration of a war buddy—even though I was only 10.
My grandmother still drove out to pick string beans or raspberries, angling the huge old Buick precariously on the side of the dirt road, and we pulled up to orchard stands for peaches, the engine never entirely cooling down in the July afternoon.
The hub caps, like chrome chef's bowls, came off as she drove, and I'd have to run back to get them. The steering wheel was large as a yacht's, with a stentorian, musical horn. The smell of the interior—of old car—if you have not known it can be compared to nothing else.
It persisted in the airless darkness of the garage—when I was 10.
April 18, 2017
January 13, 2017
Inauguration Day
However that happened ... he's there ... and let's go says Nicole Kidman.
I liked her in "The Others." I wondered why Tom Cruise let her go—so peachlike and tiny waisted, a perfect doll.
So I tried to imagine them fighting in the car, avoiding each other on weekends, drinking separately, secretly. Why lay an ace down upon the table? Is one so confident of winning the game that lovers—with their morning scent, their habit of draping a leg over yours on windy March nights, their dull prurience and fascinating innocence—can be discarded?
However that happened ...
My face, map-wide and shapeless, a pancake of worry, looks like it has been dropped from a great height. My clothes don't fit. Something is pushing outward, like a baby's fist, just below my right rib. I push it back with my right hand.
I have had 16 doctor's appointments in 3 months. I am tired of running downtown.
No impassioned appeal can turn things back, no eloquence or status, no confidence, no righteousness or bravery. We have arrived here—limping, stoned—we have awakened in an empty bed, and the mirror cannot lie.
Not even Meryl Streep can save us.
The ace is somewhere else, now: in private determination, the reluctant wisdom of age, in the sort of quietness that long walks bring. Nothing will be easy but it will still be rich, slightly sexy, and well worth having—the little satisfactions of John Updike and Bach, the surprise of nameless brooks in the woods, and the ability to remember without the tearful misery of loss.
The grand gestures—the crash diets and all-night rows—belong to an earlier time.
Let's go.
I liked her in "The Others." I wondered why Tom Cruise let her go—so peachlike and tiny waisted, a perfect doll.
So I tried to imagine them fighting in the car, avoiding each other on weekends, drinking separately, secretly. Why lay an ace down upon the table? Is one so confident of winning the game that lovers—with their morning scent, their habit of draping a leg over yours on windy March nights, their dull prurience and fascinating innocence—can be discarded?
However that happened ...
My face, map-wide and shapeless, a pancake of worry, looks like it has been dropped from a great height. My clothes don't fit. Something is pushing outward, like a baby's fist, just below my right rib. I push it back with my right hand.
I have had 16 doctor's appointments in 3 months. I am tired of running downtown.
No impassioned appeal can turn things back, no eloquence or status, no confidence, no righteousness or bravery. We have arrived here—limping, stoned—we have awakened in an empty bed, and the mirror cannot lie.
Not even Meryl Streep can save us.
The ace is somewhere else, now: in private determination, the reluctant wisdom of age, in the sort of quietness that long walks bring. Nothing will be easy but it will still be rich, slightly sexy, and well worth having—the little satisfactions of John Updike and Bach, the surprise of nameless brooks in the woods, and the ability to remember without the tearful misery of loss.
The grand gestures—the crash diets and all-night rows—belong to an earlier time.
Let's go.
October 19, 2016
Contact Paper Fan
Jan Chozen Bays says the mind "fritters away its energy" dwelling in the past or—even worse—in future worry or fantasy.
It's true, all that pain is like biting the fingernails too deeply, or smoking too many cigarettes too fast.
But on this warm October morning, I think of my Aunt Ada, 85, sitting in her rocker and fanning herself with a giant, homemade cardboard fan covered in thick contact paper printed to look like stained glass. Heavy as a frying pan, she waved it in front of her face and gave little pushes with her nylon-stockinged feet against the floor. The delicate smile behind her eyeglasses—twinkling, conspiratorial—was timeless.
Any moment she would slice up a peach, or write a letter.
The memory of it enriches me, still.
It's true, all that pain is like biting the fingernails too deeply, or smoking too many cigarettes too fast.
But on this warm October morning, I think of my Aunt Ada, 85, sitting in her rocker and fanning herself with a giant, homemade cardboard fan covered in thick contact paper printed to look like stained glass. Heavy as a frying pan, she waved it in front of her face and gave little pushes with her nylon-stockinged feet against the floor. The delicate smile behind her eyeglasses—twinkling, conspiratorial—was timeless.
Any moment she would slice up a peach, or write a letter.
The memory of it enriches me, still.
October 12, 2016
The Attic Star
I conceived a dislike for her when she told our agent she wouldn't sell us the front porch bench. Long and low under the tank-shaped front window, the short spindles of the back like piano keys, it seemed to define the house—as I had first seen it in photos.
Carrol with two r's had paid cash for the house in 2006, coming in from the exclusivity of Mt. Desert, sampling Ellsworth life like you might try a decaffeinated tea or a new hairstyle, her father funding everything with the transfer of some golden island property that must have made her purchase as easy as picking up wine. Somewhere, also, implied or guessed, there had been a successful divorce.
So that a decade later it had a full line of Swedish appliances. The farmish balustrade of the front porch, just a box of painted boards without ornamentation, was pulled away, leaving a theater stage with large, thickly-planted ferns for footlights. Now the posts were longer—sexier—as they met the floor planks. The kitchen was gentrified with hanging copper skillets and Le Creuset. Bowling balls of smooth Bar Harbor granite held the bedroom doors open. A gazebo was placed on the lawn.
She had agreed to Friday, September 16, then informed the team, about a week before, she would not be attending closing. Booked into a motel at the edge of town, I walked past the house the evening before fantasizing that I might see her in the driveway, stuffing the car with some last-minute boxes. Stepping a little bit up onto the driveway in the dusk, I would say "Well, you're cutting it close!" But the house was dark, and the curtains were drawn. I headed back out the Bucksport Road with my Gruyere and flagon of Cabernet in a plastic bag that knocked against my knee as I walked, no snappy introduction made.
Carrol with two r's had paid cash for the house in 2006, coming in from the exclusivity of Mt. Desert, sampling Ellsworth life like you might try a decaffeinated tea or a new hairstyle, her father funding everything with the transfer of some golden island property that must have made her purchase as easy as picking up wine. Somewhere, also, implied or guessed, there had been a successful divorce.
So that a decade later it had a full line of Swedish appliances. The farmish balustrade of the front porch, just a box of painted boards without ornamentation, was pulled away, leaving a theater stage with large, thickly-planted ferns for footlights. Now the posts were longer—sexier—as they met the floor planks. The kitchen was gentrified with hanging copper skillets and Le Creuset. Bowling balls of smooth Bar Harbor granite held the bedroom doors open. A gazebo was placed on the lawn.
She had agreed to Friday, September 16, then informed the team, about a week before, she would not be attending closing. Booked into a motel at the edge of town, I walked past the house the evening before fantasizing that I might see her in the driveway, stuffing the car with some last-minute boxes. Stepping a little bit up onto the driveway in the dusk, I would say "Well, you're cutting it close!" But the house was dark, and the curtains were drawn. I headed back out the Bucksport Road with my Gruyere and flagon of Cabernet in a plastic bag that knocked against my knee as I walked, no snappy introduction made.
September 3, 2016
Labor Day Weekend
On Saturday, the tropical storm comes closer, transforming the morning air into the ocean, blowing the leaves of the trees back and upright like little green sails.
A breeze furrows through the house like high tide.
The northwestern sky is periwinkle blue, but a bilge of dark gray is cutting through from the south. I keep the kitchen door open and the copper pans resound like gong buoys.
The barometer brings with it the first cool weather, flooding August off like an unreachable, insufferable island. Our noisy window units, on a rich diet of Kilowatts all month long, are silent.
Between the houses the light is patchy and changeable. August was monochromatic, motionless, run aground—but in these first days of September we lurch then ride a small current forward.
A lusty but casual relationship, summer took too long to end—I'm glad it's over.
But I think I'll remember one week in July—our cottage right on the bay, the lobster boats gliding on the flat aquamarine surface, the ice cold water splashing over my legs—for a long time yet.
A breeze furrows through the house like high tide.
The northwestern sky is periwinkle blue, but a bilge of dark gray is cutting through from the south. I keep the kitchen door open and the copper pans resound like gong buoys.
The barometer brings with it the first cool weather, flooding August off like an unreachable, insufferable island. Our noisy window units, on a rich diet of Kilowatts all month long, are silent.
Between the houses the light is patchy and changeable. August was monochromatic, motionless, run aground—but in these first days of September we lurch then ride a small current forward.
A lusty but casual relationship, summer took too long to end—I'm glad it's over.
But I think I'll remember one week in July—our cottage right on the bay, the lobster boats gliding on the flat aquamarine surface, the ice cold water splashing over my legs—for a long time yet.
August 4, 2016
Rumination While Pulling Weeds
Is there a part of life that lies beyond the apparent? Have I been wrong to persistently, bitterly deny it?
Are lives that ended still going on someplace, like the overpayment of a utility bill: money that finds its way back, an unexpected check in the day's mail—a beloved character, familiar energy, orphaned from its old form, randomizing the tides like the moon, putting the compass out of whack?
I am too hard on myself.
I prepared for loneliness and received it. And now life goes on like a party across the hall. I smell the beer and the onion dip.
Life asks for a certain generosity, a small down payment of faith. My flawless suspicion, a talent for mockery, didn't really come in handy, though I kept them laughing in college.
The best thing you can do for someone else is to believe him: "So-and-so was right about that" is the truest sort of fame. I think what we ask from the past is validation. Unfortunately, it isn't coming.
So we beat on with Fitzgerald, into this confusing, flawed middle age, a gallery of withholdings and hesitations—a chilly place.
A couple of old photographs will have to suffice for warming the heart, and perhaps the idea, gingerly conceived, that we will receive a little generosity, too.
Are lives that ended still going on someplace, like the overpayment of a utility bill: money that finds its way back, an unexpected check in the day's mail—a beloved character, familiar energy, orphaned from its old form, randomizing the tides like the moon, putting the compass out of whack?
I am too hard on myself.
I prepared for loneliness and received it. And now life goes on like a party across the hall. I smell the beer and the onion dip.
Life asks for a certain generosity, a small down payment of faith. My flawless suspicion, a talent for mockery, didn't really come in handy, though I kept them laughing in college.
The best thing you can do for someone else is to believe him: "So-and-so was right about that" is the truest sort of fame. I think what we ask from the past is validation. Unfortunately, it isn't coming.
So we beat on with Fitzgerald, into this confusing, flawed middle age, a gallery of withholdings and hesitations—a chilly place.
A couple of old photographs will have to suffice for warming the heart, and perhaps the idea, gingerly conceived, that we will receive a little generosity, too.
June 8, 2016
A Short Walk
Piney Branch is not an easy street to cross. I avoid it subconsciously, like not calling someone back. I keep west, in the diminishing 'V' of car-less blocks formed as Piney Branch runs southwest to meet mighty Georgia Avenue—a blue collar road in a white collar city, check cashing places and windowless clubs with dancers.
I wade forward in anonymity, dropping my pace and inhaling magnolia and English boxwood, atomized into the air by the afternoon sun. Children are in school. Everybody's at work.
Each 4,000-square-foot lot tells a different story. Some are ringed by a simple iron fence, but others are cribs of chain link, the climbing roses poking through the rhombus gaps like yellow breakfast buns.
At a large corner house, the weeds grow tall and the paint sags away from the concrete. The blinds in the windows belong to another time—eyelids shut with the dignity of well-earned rest.
Across the street a canary-colored compound of bay windows and walled, unseen gardens is polite but reserved. A dinner plate of mulch mounds up below each crape myrtle, and the grass behaves.
On a different block, a raised bed alongside steps puts armfuls of marigolds, cat mint, geraniums, lavender, asters, and Sedum at chest height, perfect for smelling. Along the curb, low branches of young trees brush you like dancers' arms. Up ahead, a single cat crosses.
Azalea time has come and gone, exhausting and overstimulating as a college romance, and the bushes have resumed their green composure. June is here.
My breaths are finally coming from deeper down, and my fingertips are purple and cool. I pick the mail up and unlock the door.
It was such a short walk.
I wade forward in anonymity, dropping my pace and inhaling magnolia and English boxwood, atomized into the air by the afternoon sun. Children are in school. Everybody's at work.
Each 4,000-square-foot lot tells a different story. Some are ringed by a simple iron fence, but others are cribs of chain link, the climbing roses poking through the rhombus gaps like yellow breakfast buns.
At a large corner house, the weeds grow tall and the paint sags away from the concrete. The blinds in the windows belong to another time—eyelids shut with the dignity of well-earned rest.
Across the street a canary-colored compound of bay windows and walled, unseen gardens is polite but reserved. A dinner plate of mulch mounds up below each crape myrtle, and the grass behaves.
On a different block, a raised bed alongside steps puts armfuls of marigolds, cat mint, geraniums, lavender, asters, and Sedum at chest height, perfect for smelling. Along the curb, low branches of young trees brush you like dancers' arms. Up ahead, a single cat crosses.
Azalea time has come and gone, exhausting and overstimulating as a college romance, and the bushes have resumed their green composure. June is here.
My breaths are finally coming from deeper down, and my fingertips are purple and cool. I pick the mail up and unlock the door.
It was such a short walk.
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