Magic Shoes

It’s New Orleans night in our little apartment raised three floors above the bums who sit on the stoop downstairs. Talking in loud gruff voices, they leave empty bottles of Wild Eye in the vestibule which I will find tomorrow on my way out. I throw the front windows wide open, inviting in a summer night of drunken voices and the rush of cars along the street below. A horn interrupts some woman singing oh baby yeah to a pulsing rhythm which fades like an echo as the traffic light changes and the car pulls away. I chop tomatoes, celery, peppers, onions into the pot, and they sizzle against the heat. Thick chunks of andouille sausage dressed in spices and a rich pork stock—the cornbread bakes, and flushed with the heat I sing along with the Professor, Tipitina tra la la la. The lazy piano pulls me in and I turn up the volume, and the guys on the street raise their voices. I can picture them rattling their awkward limbs in defiance of 4/4 time, as they pass the Wild Eye with sticky lips trying to sing. I stir the old silver pot, releasing a spicy incense that struts with the city’s late night din like a festival in this downtown hotbox tonight.

Down three flights of narrow stairs, he works kneeling over newspaper in a dimly lit basement, dribbling red, blue, yellow, purple in chaotic strokes over old black shoes secured last week from the second-hand store.

The pot simmers, and I sit on the couch flipping through a new book I bought with rent money from a shop window on Central Ave today. The Professor sings headin’ out baby headin’ out honey chile, and page by page, I ease my way into the world on my lap. One writer says in words that mix with my own steady breathing that she has reached the age where she is doing things for the last time... And suddenly I am not afraid anymore, her image standing before me with cotton candy hair and a neck gathered in loose, creamy folds--and the rent man goes away.

And there he is like a child stepping off the bus, holding up his Jackson Pollock shoes; he waves them through the air like flags. I shake my head and laugh, stir the spicy stew. They are worried about our future, saying music and books won’t buy benefits, living room drapes, or a washer and dryer. I tell them not to worry, that I’ve adorned the windows with plants so the sun can come through, and his parents had lots of benefits which changed nothing for them in the end. I wash things out by hand sometimes and leave them by the open windows to dry.

Love the shoes, I say, and he explains that he will wear them whenever he writes or plays out—and the bums downstairs raise their raucous voices in celebration. He sets the painted shoes by the open windows as the slightest breeze tickles the back of our necks. Another horn blares, a muffler-less car guns angrily at the light, and he picks up the guitar and strums the new song he’s written today: ten songs in ten days. Always a goal. We’re short fifteen dollars in rent and he throws his head back, adding his voice to the late summer night.

That night, we ate steaming bowls of Cajun stew over rice, and thick slices of cornbread warm from the oven, as the shoes dried by the open window. I remember someone bellowing into the payphone on the corner, and then hearing the bums yell back. And the Professor sang oh yeah baby I done run’d out of money. I told him that night how much I liked his new song. And I knew that the next day, long after all the state workers had trudged home, that there would be another festival in some dark, smoky room with neon beer lights and dollar drafts, and that he’d wear his new shoes. That he’d sing We talk of New York, we talk of New Orleans, we’ll all be going there soon. And, at the time, all those years ago, I believed him--as he passed the hat, praying for rent.
***

Secrets

I have three muddy secrets, which I have hauled around these past many years. Like a first-class traveler, I stash them in the overhead bin, drink a dry martini to help me forget. But they are crafty, my secrets--morphing, changing, moving--as I plod along, trying my best to ignore them. On good days, they become as thin as reeds, smooth themselves out like a new coat of paint. Slip unnoticed into the landscape of history.

But the good days are not every day, and so these same three secrets sometimes gorge themselves on my living, compete with me for breath. They settle heavily on my tongue, sit themselves on one wary shoulder—as I craft elaborate stories around them, trying to hide that they're there. And when that happens, even I can hear the marbles in my mouth. Even I can hear the falseness, the movement away from where those secrets lie. Shhh, I say when they tip-toe onto my tongue some nights when I ache to reveal....

It is many years ago that she calls to say that I must come home, that she has something to tell me. I know this woman of drama and risk, this woman who has leaned on me, has cried. I know how the vein snakes along her left leg, how she trembles sometimes, how she lashes out whenever she's angry. We have been hungry together, she and I; we have been cold. We have lived through turned-off electricity and night time stories shared in the dark. After the phone call, I drive the hour’s drive north, up to that town, wondering what I possibly don't know.

When I arrive, she is sitting at the table, alone in that house. Sit down, she says, and soon the tears come. I wait. Finally: What? I say. Tell me... She lifts an unsteady hand to cover mine. Swallows. Talks of a baby born twenty-seven years ago. A girl. Her daughter. That she gave away a few years before I came along…

I felt only this: the weight of my mother’s secret—like a ball and chain crashed to the floor. Felt the pull of it, felt the heft and magnitude of it. Thought of the birthdays, the wondering. Recalled mid-morning gazes, her hands stilled in the dishpan. Recalled her eyes trained on me. I studied her face as she cried, that day, her pinched shoulders moving. Saw her shame and regret cupped between two tired hands. The telephone ringing one late afternoon, and her lost daughter there...

Why didn’t you tell me? I whispered. Why didn’t you say?

But she did tell me. I just wasn’t listening, didn't decipher the code. The year before with my own swollen belly, my own dashed lover--my star-shaped youth. She hugged me that day when I told her, and promised me that I would be safe... Still, I gave up my baby a different way, and then carried that secret, tucked away in my skin.
***

Thanksgiving

Mary J shuffles in with her niece, Kathy, and sits down in a dirty jacket at the table. Mary J’s lips are shriveled around a deflated balloon of a mouth, her face banged up by life’s bitter punches. She places an unsteady hand on the table and fingers the place setting. Asks me for coffee—which I fetch from the urn set up on a table across the room. Once we pass around the platters of turkey and stuffing and cranberries and potatoes, Mary J and Kathy eat in silence. They cut the meat into tiny pieces that they can chew, and lift plastic forks to their mouths with wind-chapped hands.

At the next table are Linda and her two boys, Martin and Rashim. Linda keeps her chin high, and collapses the stroller in one quick motion to store against the wall. She wears a black leather jacket, a scarf on her head—and sits at the end of the table with her two neatly dressed boys. I try to catch Linda’s eye, try to find a way to let her know that I am not what she sees. That we are more alike than she might guess. But Linda is too busy making this day okay for her sons, too busy to care about making me feel better…

As I look up, four men amble in and settle thenselves at the table. Mary J and Kathy continue to eat without talking at the other end. The men wear hooded sweatshirts under their heavy coats. They speak Spanish for the most part, and English a little bit. Carlos tells me that they are from Ecuador. That there is no work here. They do stone work, carpentry, landscaping, cleaning, he explains. But no work, no work. Carlos and his friends do not know about this holiday of too much, of everything covered in gravy. They know only their empty bellies, their empty pockets, their empty hearts. Carlos tells me of his daughter back home, that she is 14, that he hasn’t seen her since she was 9. No work, he says, as he spears a big slice of turkey with his fork…

Mary J and Kathy are nearly finished eating. I bring them two pieces of pumpkin pie, and another cup of coffee. Mary J tells me she likes it light and sweet. And as I place the coffee before her tired hands, she pulls out a battered wallet and shows me a picture of Harold, her lover who died last month. Of cancer, she says, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. In the picture, Harold is sleeping on a couch—but even so, he looks much younger than Mary J. I ask how they met, and Mary J explains that she met Harold pushing a grocery cart down Main Street. That was eight years ago, she says, staring at the picture, her eyes teary. We were very happy…

When Mary J and Kathy leave, John sits down. He is a small man with kind eyes. He tells me that he wasn’t sure he would come here today, that he has a sister nearby whose house he could go to. And I feel a flash of anger at this sister who would forget her brother today—but then I remember my own brother living his own troubled life in a state where so many plagued souls land. Down there with his own paper cup, his own quivering pride…

And then the vets: George and Raymond. George talks and talks: of the leaves he just raked around his yard, of boxing with Mike Tyson. Beside him, Raymond is quiet, his eyes focused on his plate. I learn that he was in the Navy—but it is civilian life that has nearly killed him... I’ve been hit by a car five times, he explained, as he struggled to sit. I held his bony arm, as he leaned against his cane and very slowly eased himself into the metal folding chair. I tease Raymond about staying out of the road in the future. But he does not laugh. Instead, he moves the plastic fork from the plate to his mouth, asking for seconds; and I remember that not everyone has the option of not walking in the road, not walking with their backs to speeding cars and souped-up SUVs...

Later we will stroll along the manicured streets of my neighborhood and laugh at all the folly: the ill-designed dormer, the poorly sited house, rhododendron bushes that have overtaken the view. The sun is on our faces as we walk. Already Mary J, Kathy, Harold, Linda, Martin, Rashim, Carlos, John, George and Raymond have been lost to the names printed boldly on the mailboxes along this curved, smooth lane on a lovely afternoon in November.
***

Touching

Right after they fish the baby from my reluctant womb, a rash tiptoes up my belly, over my engorged breasts, and into the warm folds of my neck. I don’t notice the rash until I shuffle back to bed from the sterile bathroom, and catch a glimpse of my ravaged body reflected back at me in the night time hospital window. I stand there, alone, and stare at the unfamiliar shadow in the glass: rounded, curved, bloated, in places that used to be angular and defined. I see a monster this night in the window, as my baby sleeps beside me, swaddled and sated by milk suckled from two raw nipples. And when I lift my hands to the shadow in the window, to trace that unfamiliar body, I notice the rash, red and agitated, that has crept onto the back of my hands. And I begin to cry…

I did not know then that I would lose the weight quicker than it had been gained, or that the rash was a temporary thing. I saw only loss that night in the hospital window. A youthful body disappeared; my independence sprinting down the quietly lit road, her back to the wind, her back to me—as I stood alone in that stoic room. I stepped gingerly to where the baby lay, the stitches in my lower belly pinching, the unfamiliar burden in my thighs and hips slowing things down… And this monster lifted her baby cub into the crook of her arm and breathed his milkiness; studied the filmy vein that revealed itself along his temple; watched his mouth search instinctively for me. I brushed one grown-up finger gently over the tuft of hair, along the curve of his balmy face, down to the tip of one tiny, delicate finger—which curled against mine. This baby, this boy, that I would not let go…

And this is how I get to know the people I love--because I do not trust these far-sighted eyes. These fierce dark eyes that sometimes see “SHH” lit up on the lighted clock beside my bed at night when I roll over. And it’s only when I squint that I bring 5:44 into focus, grateful for another hour's sleep. So I do not always trust my vision… And instead it is my hands that move, that reach out, feeling the landscape for softness, for potency, for where it might hurt.

My hands are working woman’s hands. They know dishwater and hot stoves; they know the curved rubber handle of the vacuum; of freshly laundered sheets shaken out over the bed and tucked into heavy corners. The hard thin shell of a pen... These hands that chop onions and carrots; that lather shampoo into a tired boy’s hair; that sponged ointment over fifty-two staples in the top of his head after the accident. These hands that seek out pleasure at night when I am alone…

Last night, I slip my hands under the shirt on my little boy’s back and move my fingers quietly along his spine. I sing the song I always sing, as he hugs “Charlie” and my hands move, lulling him. I rub his two tender shoulder blades and massage the back of a warm, willing neck. Reach around and touch my fingers to his heavy lids. Leave one quiet hand over his as he drifts off to sleep…

And later when we are in bed, I run my fingers through a different landscape: his closely cropped beard, a muted cheekbone, down a long thin unresponsive arm. He lies perfectly still for this examination, on his back, his eyes trained on the ceiling—afraid of my touch, afraid of what might get revealed…

***

Coming Home

There is a determined black fly trapped between the panes of the closed bedroom window. It is almost dawn when I hear him buzzing, hear him colliding against the glass. I lie there in bed, under the window, listening to his struggles, thinking that we are all like that trapped fly. Trying to make our way, bumping into the same things over and over. The same tenacious futility. With perhaps the luck of someone coming along to open the window, and suddenly discovering our freedom. Of course, so many of us—like the fly—would not recognize the freedom that was offered, would fly right back into that same window casement.

And he sleeps peacefully beside me, his breathing quiet and rhythmic, his hand tucked under his head. And I am awake in the early dawn, listening to the struggle of the fly, watching morning creep along the far bedroom wall like a quiet spill. Eventually, we get up, make coffee, shower. The fly forgotten.

When we get to that small town, we enter from the east. Travel without stopping past the old house at the dip in the road, and follow the long road where I used to walk into town to find books; to go in my imagination where my feet could not yet take me. Which was anywhere but in this small town with its snow banks and its memory. When I moved away, I left nothing behind, and so the memory is a single-sided one that I have tried to erase, re-write, and erase again.

It is her birthday, and she sits in the seat behind us in the van. He drives along unfamiliar roads and streets, listening as we tell him to turn this way and that. She and I talk over each other, trying to give our histories. He is patient as we reconcile our stories, finding overlaps, discrepancies. We are deciding which story gets to be the “real” one—and we both understand that the only truth is what we decide is real... Then we drive over the bridge, and turn onto 1st Street. Past the Armory where they looked away from our gaping, hungry mouths as they dropped into our boxes the things they would not eat. Our hands covered with socks against the Lake Effect snow, against a vicious winter wind whistling across that Great Lake. They made us wait outside in the cold, I remark; and she nods, remembering…

And later, as we drive past the housing project, we recall our first day there; of sleeping on the hardwood floor with a sympathetic furnace thawing out our bones. We look at each other and smile over this shared memory, remembering the way the heat made the hairs on our arms stand up after a long winter in that unheated house. How did you stay warm? he asks. And she—or I—explain that we lived in our coats and hats, slept together on the fold-out couch. And we agree on this memory, too…

But she does not remember my hunger, does not remember going three full days without eating—until her boss at the diner let her bring home the leftovers. I remember her coming in that Friday night, the smell of the fish making my empty stomach broil; the oily stain in the parchment paper that she carried through the front door like an offering. Hoping as she unwrapped it that it was enough this time. Instead, she recalls only her own hunger—which I remember, too—and does not want to remember hungry children whom she could not find food for. This woman who sold her own bed to feed us, who “borrowed” cans of tuna from her boss to feed a hungry daughter, replacing those cans when payday arrived. This woman who would not let me steal the package of chicken I had slipped beneath my coat that day at the supermarket when both of our stomachs howled. No, she cannot remember this on her birthday forty years later. She shakes her head and takes one tiny sip of her birthday wine. I did what I had to do to feed you, she says, certain that her memory is true. This resourceful mother…

Later in her bedroom, I will flip through a book and find where she has underlined a short passage about being grateful for the blessings you have, when you find that you don’t have enough. I take a pen and write in the margin: fuck that.

And we travel around that small town, built quietly along a strapping Great Lake that sends water rushing down an abundant river. We catch a glimpse of the fishermen; drive down by the marina; out past the school. And she says from the backseat that perhaps she will move back.

Tonight as I come across the bridge into Westchester, the sun is setting against a pink and gray sky. I navigate the construction around Peekskill; accelerate onto 9A to get up that extended stretch of hill; drive past the sign that says “New York City 21.” It is a warm evening for November, and the radio plays. Two more miles and I will be home...
***

Seeing Things

I love how the moon shines through my window at night. Most evenings when I settle into bed, and later, when I roll over, the moon is there—that great luminous orb in the sky—peeking into my room, filtered through the diagonal run of mini blinds and my pale blue window sheers. And while I know the moon is out there, above my bed, beyond the window, it steals into my room in slices, in shadow, and so what is revealed is also partially concealed. And for some reason, I like this. Like the idea that the moon illuminates at the same time it shadows. And so I pull the sheet and comforter over my body, and think about the moonlight functioning as a symbol of how we see--this moonlight that settles like dust across my bed, across my nightstand and the lamp and the lighted alarm clock. Althusser talks about the non-vision inside of vision, which I want to think more about tonight. But it is the witching hour, and I am very tired…

Morning comes, announcing itself flirtatiously, bumping night off the stage with a lively slip of her hip. I wake, stretch; squint to bring the numbers of the alarm clock into focus. Gone are the night shadows, the mystery—and all is revealed. I take in the full sweep of my room: this old iron bed; the dresser against the far wall with the Clinique perfume and Helen’s open letter; the slipper chair in the corner with a pink linen skirt folded over it that has been there for weeks, waiting to be taken to the cleaners. What is here, really? What does someone see when they peer into this room?

I think they see that I am hiding. And I believe that this is true. I am hiding, waiting, in this temporary space…

Today I walk around the fountain on a cool fall morning, and the wind blows. I have my iPod, my sneakers, and my jacket pulled down to cover my hands. The last of the season’s leaves are shuddered from spindly tree branches and thrust by the wind onto the ground. They crunch beneath the rhythmic movement of my sneakers along the paved walking path. The sun moves in and out behind roving clouds; the fountain has been turned off. It is a season of dying, of quiet, of turning in. And yet I find it beautiful… The ending, the melancholy, the peacefulness of it. This is my favorite time of the year, my favorite time to go the Cape—after all the visitors have gone, after some of the shops have closed. I like to observe what gets left behind—the air pregnant with stories, with history, with loss and desire. I know it’s not what other people see…

He tells me last night of a book he wants, this man who really only wants one thing. There are tears behind his tired eyes; these eyes that have seen the world, seen the goodness of men’s souls; seen our son lifted—defiant and wet—from the bowels of my belly. Just one book. And of course it is about the thing he loves. And he swallows the choke of emotion as he tells me how they went to Joey and Johnny and Dee Dee’s house, how they cleaned, how they mowed the lawn. How they tried to pay back a seminal group who never got its due. I observe that he sees himself in that… And I also notice that it is getting dark, and that the hands of the clock tell me it’s time to make dinner, time to get my boy inside. And I see him still invested in his youthful passion—his dream—still viewing the world through that lens, as I close the front door and move into the kitchen, with the memory—the vision—of his tired eyes, his passion, haunting me.
***

Willow

He reveals, by a cell phone text, that our great-grandmother was a full blooded Mohawk from the St. Regis tribe. He is cavalier, witty—responding to my playful fault-finding of his recent hunting trip. This older brother of mine with his facial hair, his silence, his love of the outdoors. We have looked at each other askance these many years, as I ran down that lilting road in my high heels and hope, turning my back on him, and on the rest of them in that house settled quietly at the dip in the road—pulled instead toward the music of a faraway city. He ignored me, too, as I ran away, walking off into the woods with his gun, with his bow and arrow. He doesn’t like that I tell stories, won’t like that I am telling this. He is a Silent Man whom I suspect the Mohawks would have a name for, but since I do not know that name, do not know that language, the great-granddaughter of the Mohawk woman will communicate across the gulf of human silence and an impervious technology...

Y have u never told me this b4?? I text him back.

In the closet, I pull down the photo albums that I have meticulously maintained, with the dates and locations written in black magic marker along the spine. I am looking for the year my grandfather died—1992—and the obituary I remember keeping there. I want to find the Mohawk woman’s name, the mother of my French Canadian grandfather... Many mornings, I sat beside him on the tiny wooden stool in the barn, listening as the milky liquid he manipulated from the belly of a cow sprayed forcefully against the side of a dented tin pail. The cow flicking its long tail, the both of them peaceful. But when one of his animals got sick or hurt, my grandfather would dare Jesus Christ to come down from the heavens and duke it out with him in that barn. Esti-Tabernac! he’d swear. Merde! And I would cower in a corner, never afraid of him, but of the Son of God who I was sure would appear in that old barn to smite this fierce man. And me, too, for loving him… And now I wonder if it was his Mohawk mother’s blood that raged?

I feel that same fierceness sometimes…

I find the obit, tucked in the back of an album of smiling photos of me in an ancient Upstate town. My grandfather’s name is bolded along the top of the newspaper clipping. I search through the quiet print and find her there, alongside her husband. Her name is Willow... Willow of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe. But that is all I know—and what is in a name other than a superficial understanding of what it means? I think it was Marx who said that.

I have worn many names, and all of them have tugged a bit through the shoulders, pulled a little at the sleeve. My father’s name, my step-father’s name, and then a husband. In my closet is a fire-proof box that contains the papers that gave those men the right to name me, to hide my story deep within the pages of their own. Like Willow got named, and her story concealed…

But I am Rachel and my history will not be erased by a silent tongue, by a tawny piece of paper in a fire-proof box. I am the daughter of Ann; the granddaughter of Marjorie and Mary; the great-granddaughter of Maude and Willow. This French Canadian stew with a fearless dash of Mohawk. This great-granddaughter of the St. Regis tribe, with her Westchester, her degree. The impassioned sister of the Silent Man. Beware my fiery tongue, beware my stories…
***

Fixing Things

The other morning, I cried in my car. Which happens sometimes when I’m listening, when I’m watching the world. And the other morning was such a time, as I sped along the Taconic, the sky as polished as a shiny new crystal, the leaves on the trees flushed red and gold, and haloed by a dizzying sun. Beyond my windshield was a Count Basie landscape, with saxophones and trombones blaring--fall such a heroic season--and so the tears came, pooling around my kohl lined eyes. I sang along with the radio on that warm October morning, and cried, my heart full of the promise of things. Full of the goodness and beauty of life.

And he says that this is sadness…

He likes to tell me that I need fixing. That I am too thin, too worried, too busy, too caring, too sad. This last one is the latest one. And he tells me this, he says, because he hears sadness in the stories I tell. A sadness he feels that blocks the sun, that will eclipse any chance of happiness for me. And when he says this, I feel the corners of my lips turn up, feel the laugh lines collected around my eyes reveal themselves. Ah, but this man does not understand women. Does not understand me. I am not too thin, too worried, too busy, too caring. Nor am I too sad. I am me—Rachel—going about life in my own flat footed way, moving around in my own banged-up body. Just like him... And perhaps there are days that I am too much of any one thing, too much “too.” Yet there are also many days that I am not. And the women collected like vintage pottery—crackled and patina’ed—on a Friday night at Ruthanne’s table understand this. We sip wine; eat things we shouldn’t; let our kids pull cushions from the couch in the family room and gorge themselves on Doritos and juice so that we can sit at the table, unmolested, under a cobalt blue Star of David hung above the open window. Jew and Gentile women—the unrepentant—all in need of fixing. Instead, we laugh at our younger, more insecure selves…

Tonight he pulls me to him across the expanse of a tremendous bed, and wraps long, sinewy arms around my body; he says nothing for a long time. Later he will tell me that he saw sadness in my eyes this raucous fall night. But while we lie there in the dark, there is only the sound of our chafed and bitter breathing, and the occasional wail of a train passing along the tracks somewhere in the distance. He has hurt me this night--having done what I did not want him to do... You are a sad woman, he whispers at last in the dark. And I hope you will seek out what you need to address that. Which, given the circumstances, means I should get up from this warm bed and our whetted desires, and drive down a dark and quiet road in search of the highway. But I will not do such a thing on a night like this. I will breathe through my sadness and awaken in the morning, knowing that there is another chance for love. Another chance for living. We are, after all, still strangers--colliding in the new world that we have bumped into. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, looking around for the way. And so tonight I curl into my sadness and await the dawn. Which comes, of course, like a promise, or a whisper, creeping quietly along the edge of the window above the bed where the two of us sleep.
***

Illusion

Outside my window is an owl perched on the corner of the roof overlooking the pool area. I notice him for the first time, as I draw open the curtain to welcome the morning. I can’t tell right away that the owl is not real. But when I do, it makes me think about the illusion of things: what I see outside my window--the pool acquiescing to winter, with its thick rubber blanket stretched taut and secured to hooks at even intervals around the perimeter; the white plastic deck chairs stacked neatly under the awning; my own nondescript room here in a hotel an hour or so north of the Thruway. It is autumn outside the hotel, a crisp fragrant day in a quaint Victorian town. The owl is unmoving, vigilant. Still, he keeps the birds at bay so that summer bathers here in this equestrian town can float undisturbed along the surface of the water, as they go about their pretend lives…

Last night we walked down Main Street, past graceful, majestic buildings—all that history, the owl undisclosed in the dark—to have dinner. The leaves fluttered lazily down to the sidewalk and crunched beneath our substantial shoes. It was a mild night, and I felt happy. Felt the stars in the sky—and didn’t want to know about the science of it, the illusion of that radiant showcase. Their light having burned out years ago; what we see not real. As I walked down the street with him on a singular night in October, I was happy. I knew that, and the stars, to be true…

I leave the owl to his perch, and turn away from the window. I shower, dress, and make my way down the carpeted hotel hallway to the early morning session. This is my second conference in less than a week, and I am inspired. This morning is a panel discussion on creativity. Chairs are arranged in a circle, and I take my seat. Look around at the other people assembled here on a spirited autumn morning in this graceful town. What are they expecting? I tug at the hem of my dress, cross my legs, flip through the conference program.

The first woman on the panel asks us to recall our first memory, and she gives us a moment to do so. I remember mine: a 3-year-old girl pushing her doll in a baby carriage along the street—and the rhythmic unfolding of the sidewalk cracks as I walked and walked and walked. I do not recall getting lost, or the hysteria of my mother trying to find me. I remember only the mesmerizing unfolding of those sidewalk cracks… And to this day, I love the sound of car tires moving over the sectioned highway, and the rhythmic click of a train moving along the tracks. But as I recall my first memory here in this morning session, I also wonder about the reliability of it, the truth of it. I wonder if it is something I’ve constructed through my mother’s repeated telling of this story over the years? And then the panel discussion leader confirms this. Tells us that memory is collective. That other than what we dream, everything else is constructed, is collective. And I take this to mean that nothing is real, which I don’t like being reminded of.

The second woman on the panel talks about creativity as construction. Frames it all very theoretically, and by the time she finishes talking, I no longer feel I can define creativity. Beside me, a colleague suggests that creativity is not “other,” says that manipulating language in our everyday conversation is an act of creativity. And it disappoints me to hear that… Many years ago, a fortune teller told me that I had an overwhelming desire to communicate, and that if I did not find a way to do that, my life would be one of despair. He found all that in the quiet palm of my hand on a warm afternoon in summer. I knew right away that he had spoken the truth. That words—mine or yours—make things real for me. Keep me from feeling so alone…

A few seats down, a large woman sleeps. I watch as she folds her arms over her substantial belly and leans in as if to listen to the panel discussion more intently, to understand each nuanced point. But instead her heavy lids close—and I wonder if she dreams, and in doing so, participates in the only thing that is real…

The other night he awakens with a start. Gets up and goes to the bathroom, and comes back quietly, lifting the blankets and easing himself back into where it is warm, where it is safe. I ask if he is okay. He says no, says that he has had a bad dream in which he was crucified—nails driven through his long, slender hands. I resist the first reaction, which is to marvel at the hubris of such a dream, but he is trembling still, rattled. Do you know who did that to you? I ask. And he tells me. And he is still shaken, still trying to erase the memory of it—and of the old Jewish man at the end of the dream who yells at him about proving the existence of God… I don’t remember ever having a dream like that. And perhaps that’s because I like my illusions, like the make-believe world that I am creating—right now--under the watchful eye of that owl perched just beyond the hotel window.
***

Disruption

The restaurant smells of pasta, parmesan cheese, and warm, fresh bread. An unassuming place just off the boulevard, across the street from the dive where we used to go dancing. That dump is still there, and from the window of the restaurant I can see three guys in wind breakers and dirty caps, smoking on the front steps. They look as gray and haggard as this town, as gray and haggard as the sky that sits with heavy determination upon us.

Catherine and Maggie take their seats on either side of me at the small wooden table. It wobbles a bit, and I put my size 10 foot on the pedestal base to hold the table steady. We pile our purses on the one empty chair, slip off our coats. I rest my elbows on the paper placemat that features a murky picture of Italy on the front.

This is nice, Maggie says.

It’s Friday night, and we are three older women gathered around an unsteady table in a family restaurant just off the boulevard. Without warning, we have become the women I’d glanced at years ago and was glad I wasn’t. Was sure I would never be. The waitress—a wiry woman with short blonde hair and dark roots—takes our order for two Diet Cokes and a water. Doesn’t anyone want wine, I ask, but Maggie waves me off, and Catherine explains that she is tired, and so we will sit at this feeble table on a Friday night, the three of us with our benign drinks and our purses collected where we can keep an eye on them.

I sigh, look around.

And here I am, back in the town I left so many years ago. The women on either side of me have never left, still have the same jobs they had when I lived here. They envy me my leaving, romanticize the hardship and sacrifices I made, living in a handful of cities before I finally found the one that felt right to me. A place 250 miles south of here, where people dress differently, respond differently. But the women on either side of me tonight also feel sorry for me, I can tell. They think that I have lost something valuable by moving away from this gray and dirty town. But I’m not sure what that thing is. They hint at it, and try to hide their pity.

Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home? Catherine asks. I had phoned them both this afternoon after arriving for a conference and settling my things into the hotel. I suck in my breath to correct her—this is not my home—but decide against it. She is sincere, loving. And why, she says, leaning across the table to gently pat my hand, are you staying in a hotel? I notice the sign of age on the back of her hand and steal a glance at my own quiet hand receiving her touch. She is only a year older than me.

Earlier at the conference, the plenary speaker talks of disruption, and the role of disruption on learning. She tells the audience about a recent trip to Lebanon, to Syria—of cultures and religions colliding. Of having her own preconceptions disrupted. And she explains how she was energized by that—and I have felt that same thing many, many times. Fought back the fear to allow the disruption to take hold. The speaker goes on to tell us of people who choose not to seek disruption, who choose to navigate only the familiar, only what is safe. Talks about the cognitive flexibility that comes with disruption, and I was very glad to hear her put it that way.

So I have decided to go back to church, Maggie says—and I can tell she’s relieved to have that off her chest. I pull the shades down over my eyes and remember Maggie and me scoffing at religion, at all those rituals. Two Recovering Catholics out dancing in high heels on a Friday night, the boys crackling like Pop Rocks candy around us. Maggie wore Damnation Red nail polish on her fingers, her toes. I wore fishnet stockings brought back from my first trip to London. We laughed at the world, at the boys, at the music—at the possibility of becoming three older women bunched around our Diet Cokes and water on a colorless Friday night.

Good for you, I say, and I think about how cyclical it all is. That desire to turn inward, to look homeward as we age. But I can’t imagine ever pulling up to one of these broken streets with a U-Haul in tow, reclaiming whatever it is that Catherine and Maggie feel I have lost.

The waitress comes back to our table with enormous bowls of steaming pasta and says, as she’s putting down each plate, Can I get you anything else? Her feet are already moving to the next table, because what more could three older women clustered around this decrepit table on a Friday night, possibly want?

My friends wave her off, pick up their forks. Yes, I say, holding up my hand before she can get away. I want a scotch on the rocks. And Catherine and Maggie raise their eyebrows at me; and when the waitress looks at them, they shake their heads, wrinkle their noses. I have never tasted scotch, never ordered one. But tonight I want to. And while I wait for the waitress to come back with my drink, I take my steadying foot off the pedestal base of the table, and think about the long drive home the next day.

***

Shaggy

We’re on the Thruway, with the rhythmic swipe of lazy wipers, a sad and cold night beyond the foggy windshield—and my boy says from the back seat, Make sure it isn't a shaggy hotel. He has his head down, watching a SpongeBob DVD. I laugh and catch the lighted dashboard of a car passing alongside me on the highway. I wonder about the driver—alone in his car—and where he’s headed on a night like this; I wonder, too, how my boy would know about such things as a shaggy hotel. The boy in the back that I have wrapped my armored self around so the world cannot get at him.

No, I say, smiling, no shaggy hotel room for us. And we drive a few more miles along the Thruway, up around the capital, and continue heading west. Rain falls in heavy drops that are almost snow. Too early for that, even up here where deserted factories sit silent and decayed just beyond the highway, their windows like cracked teeth. All the life exhaled out of them a long time ago… I do not want my son to know this. The inherent sadness up here, the loss, the fear that creeps like rust along your bones, your spirit. I am an Upstate girl, moved away many years back. What is there to give him from that? My friend Sally, in her braids and her blackness, tells her blonde-haired daughter that she is a black girl. Remember that, she tells her. And what do I have to give my boy to remember? A closed fist that, once opened, is empty. Like our bellies long ago, our pockets…

The rain has stopped and night time is undiluted beyond the car windows. I feel a heaviness creeping along my neck, in the muscles in my jaw, behind my eyes. I watch for a hotel sign beckoning from the highway. And eventually it appears: a grating yellow sign for a hotel that I’m hoping won’t be shaggier than the two of us can handle. At the end of the exit ramp, a tired green sign tries to announce two local points of interest. But the images are too faded to read. Beyond, is the raffish yellow sign of the hotel, a gas station, and a bit further down the road, a diner flashing neon. The rest—if there is anything out there—is shrouded in night time. I follow the sign for the hotel, driving over a corrugated parking lot, and park between two pick-up trucks.

Inside, the woman behind the desk wears a stained and pallid polo shirt with the logo of the hotel on the lapel. She is weighted down by life, by junk food consumed in front of the TV. Her sooty hair is pulled straight back into a ponytail secured by a brown rubber band. She wears smudged, wire-rimmed glasses. And when we come in, my boy and me, she flashes a genuine smile—revealing the telltale sign of her poverty. And suddenly I remember sitting in Janie’s kitchen all those years ago, as Janie took pliers to her mouth, and pulled out her own howling tooth. My mother and me across the table from her, sipping tea—the only thing left in the cupboards before we walked down to the armory the next day for the government cheese, for the free black & white cans labeled “meat.”

The woman at the check-in desk engages my son, chats with me—and I am audacious, dismissive. Wrinkle my nose, want to know about the room, wave a self righteous hand in disdain when the woman asks whether I want a smoking or non-smoking room. Behind her on the wall is a typed sign that says there is a $10.00 fee for pets. I show my horror at such a thing as pets in a hotel.

And the woman behind the counter in her rubber band ponytail and her melancholy teeth is patient, kind. Doesn't expose me for the fraud I am--the daughter of a Welfare mother, who is obviously still running, still trying to shake the rust from her shoes. I enter my Westchester address on the form, give her my 914 area code, wait for her reaction. And of course there is none. She smiles, hands me the room key, wishes me a lovely night, teases my son. And, she adds, as we head for our room, there is continental breakfast in the morning. And as we pass the counter where breakfast will be set up, my son squeals in delight at the cereal dispenser, and skips down the carpeted hallway of this shaggy hotel tonight.
***

East Division Street

It’s a pock marked town now, kicked square in the teeth by a bunch of dirty work boots when all those industries moved out. Just another sorry personality up there in the Rust Belt. But back then, it was a bit of a city, with lights and highways and people doing things. And on the lower North Side, where we lived, it was mostly Italian-American families making the gravy on Sundays, grandmothers in mourning, worrying the rosary beads.

And that’s where the six of us landed: in a big Victorian rental with a bum front porch. On East Division Street. Right off Park.

I claimed the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. I had a double bed, a radio, a handful of records, and my Bob Seger poster. Later I would acquire an old Kent drum set, which I set up in the corner, practicing my double-stroke roll under the watchful, energetic eye of that Midwest man. My room had 3 east-facing windows, and mornings announced themselves boldly, like a parade marching through. Which was great for me, as I have always liked mornings; but my lover at the time—a dark haired, late-night musician—would groan, would pull the pale pink coverlet up over his face to block out the sunlight drumming on his eyelids. Still, it never prevented him from stepping up the creaky wooden stairs after his late night gig, and crawling in beside me, the smell of bar smoke and beer on his clothes, his skin. I’d hear the quiet thud of his Les Paul case set upon the floor, his Chuck Taylors kicked off; the sound of jeans and heavy belt landing. And then him beside me, reaching, ready. I loved being awakened like that, loved the ache I felt as he pulled me toward him…

But not every night unfolded like that. In fact, many did not. That old white house, with its slanted stairway, its stained glass window, came alive at night. Shook the cobwebs from its windows, forgot about its age, and remembered instead how it once stood--young and cocky--on that plain and muted street. Around midnight is when the music really started: always Andy at the upright piano in the living room, and then guitars, bass, violin; even cow bell once that I remember. We inhaled music in that house, and lived our lives as if nothing else mattered. The six of us, bringing our wounded souls together: me, Helen, Rick, Nancy, MaryAlice, and Jeff. We talked of music, painting, sculpture, acting, dance. Left our haggard pasts behind. We painted, we wrote, we read--made and played music. Lots and lots of music. And when the dawn started to whisper, people crept off to bed, sometimes alone, but not very often.

And that’s where I fell in love. In that house, on that street, in that neighborhood. In love with many things. The dark-haired man with the pursed lip smile, who giggled when he laughed, who unveiled the shadowed streets of his neighborhood as we rode our bikes at 3am. The only ones awake, the two of us with the wind in our hair as we rounded Butternut Circle and coasted down that vigorous hill. The world is ours, Rachel, he said one night, with a sweep of his muscular hand. The strumming one. The one that made its way over my body hungrily each time… We lifted our faces to the night sky and laughed. He told me once about his father coming at him, and he not wanting to lift his guitar-playing hands to protect himself—of just letting the blows land… I love you, he said huskily later that same night, in my bed, the streetlight peeking in through closed blinds. Both of us falling… Better than Keats’ urn and his nubile lovers, captured in their forever youth. We didn’t want that. We wanted the sweat, the pulse of heartbeat, a cry escaping from parted lips...

Upstairs, in the attic, is where Jeff lived. One of those gentle beings the world sometimes delivers—too fragile on the inside to make it. A Darwinian experiment... Jeff had his grandfather's fishing pole, a bed, his well thumbed Bible. And a pair of Klipsch la scala speakers that could bring that old house to its knees—and, along with it, the quiet rush of police cars pulling up to the curb whenever he cranked Southside Johnny, or the Clash’s London Calling.

That dark-haired musician made me tremble with love, with want—with exhilaration those nights that we listened to music, and tumbled into bed. And Jeff. He taught me about the dignity of all living things... He in his illiteracy, his drunk. The entire natural world was a marvel to him, was something sacred. He believed in the goodness of everyone and everything. Even after his mother traded him in for drafts at the Elks; even after he never learned to read--still he believed that we lived in a holy place. On the nights that my lover didn’t come, we’d sit and talk about all manner of things... Walked out onto the street to study the stars, listen to the crickets, watch how the wind moved through the sunflower stems dancing proudly along the fence. A gift, Jeff told me one night, smiling his gap toothed smile. A set of drum sticks in his wiry hands. He’d beat out the rhythm to the song that was playing—on the Klipsch la scala speakers, or a song playing brashly in his head, that only he could hear. Listen, Rachel, he’d say. Listen.

And I did listen. And I still do, Jeff. Even though you are gone, dead at 36. But my old dark-haired lover is still up there in that beaten town, still protecting his hands, still strumming. And it’s me—Rachel—down here saying thanks. Saying thanks for the joy, saying thanks for making me think of you both today.
***

Marion

Marion committed suicide, my mother tells me this morning. Her daughter just called to give me the news. I hear the quiver in my mother’s voice. Her friend of forty years gone—the link to her own young motherhood, her own lost beauty and youth. Another reminder of her gnawing mortality. My mother up there in that tired, vanquished town, waiting for her turn…

And I’m sick of suicide. Ed’s parents, my uncle, and now Marion. Most people don’t know suicide like this, and I get to claim three. Marion with pills; and the other two choosing a basement beam and a tightly knotted rope.

She was a Welfare mother, too, living next door to us in the housing project just off Seneca Hill. What I remember about her apartment was the large family portrait that hung above the couch, with Marion posed like one of those women in an old Elvis movie. Her long blonde hair brushed seductively over one eye, and draped to the side of her angled, bare shoulder. Her four kids arranged like props around her. We had no money for such things as family portraits, and so I remember staring longingly at that airbrushed photo with the fake pink blush across Marion’s cheeks. My mother was beautiful, too, in her dark curly hair, her sinewy frame. But when people came to our apartment, our walls boasted only the free pin-up calendar that Barrett’s Insurance gave out each year, and the paint-by-numbers picture of a matador and his bull.

Despite the blonde hair and white lipstick, her hips, her travels, and the men who orbited her life right up until she swallowed the pills last night and went to bed, Marion was always on the run, always on the move. It was her idea that she and the kids jump off the bridge that day--into monstrous snow banks deposited by yet another Lake Effect snowstorm. Huge white cushions of snow covering the railroad tracks below, the snow still tumbling from thick gray clouds; schools closed for the day because of the storm. And when he jumped—her only son, her first-born—they heard the crush of bone, but did not hear the quiet snap of spinal cord, his neck breaking... At 17, he spent a full year in rehab, learning how to brush his teeth and dress himself, his wasted limbs indifferent to the struggle.

And what is a Welfare boy to do in a wheelchair in a town where it snows from October to May? Marion understood that, and did what any desperate mother would do: she used the only resource she had to help her son. And so at night, under the cover of shadows, the men came knocking. She moved her Elvis-movie body, shook her provocative hair. Until eventually she saved enough in a plastic bin that she kept hidden under the bed. Then she took her children to Florida. Bought her boy a house, had it fitted for a wheelchair.

The next time I saw her, Marion’s long blonde hair had been bleached to straw. It was also the day after her facelift when my mother and I arrived. Marion in her movie star sunglasses that she removed each day just long enough for me to take her picture, wanting to chronicle her healing. The purple stitches like hyphens on her eyelids, tucked into the recesses by her ears; I tried not to gag as I held the camera steady. She was a nudist by then, too, and when she asked my mother and me if we wanted to see her photo albums, we both declined…

And she had a ridiculous house, even by Florida standards. A Spencer’s Gifts house, with toilet tissue rolled off a penis shaped holder; hand soap nestled in the exposed bosom of a ceramic figurine. She laughed as I recoiled. You’re too uptight, Rachel! she teased that week while we were there. Yet I knew she was hiding behind all that...

And now she is dead, and I wonder if they will drape her hair off to the side, if they will put her in the ground as she wanted to be seen: in her nakedness, her Avon lipstick. And her son will wheel himself to her funeral next week, say goodbye to his mother—never knowing what I know. Not knowing exactly how much she loved him. How much she suffered because of that day in the snow.

And here in New York, they report on the news that a 38-year-old woman jumped last night from the Tappan Zee Bridge. Left a note in her parked car. Marion and this young woman—two strangers—choosing a hushed and sober evening in September to end their pain.
***

Memphis

It is a quiet summer night in the city a few years ago. There is a light rain. I am walking the narrow streets of the Village with Susie, a delicate Korean woman who I met in my writing program. Susie has moved here from California with her boyfriend, and they don’t yet know a lot of people. And so Susie is slumming it with me. She likes to tell me about her degree from the University of California at Irvine; and because she feels compelled to remind me of this so often, I know my response disappoints her. I did my undergraduate work at the University at Albany, I tell her, with appropriate emphasis, but she rubs her nose. Suggests we stop for tea. Which we do. Susie and I are in the writing program in Brooklyn—a flunkie program with an old bearded director who neither reads our work, nor pretends to. But that night as we walk down the West Village street, we are writers, Susie and me. Talking about writing. And we are going to see Lucille Clifton read…

We find the place and step through the wrought iron gate and down several cement steps. It is an auxiliary building of NYU. Inside, off the foyer, is a room benignly set up for us--and already a number of people have settled themselves into their seats. There is the rumble of hushed discussion, nervous anticipation. By the door, Ms. Clifton has her books on display on a small table. I own all but the newest one—the Terrible Stories—which I know I will purchase tonight. Susie does not know Lucille—perhaps they do not study her at Irvine—but we are writers, and so she is here with me tonight.

I pick a seat a few rows back from the lectern where Clifton will stand to read. Susie wants to move closer, but I have never liked sitting in the front row in these situations. When I want to hear something, feel something, I like some distance. I need room to move my response around a bit. And so I tell Susie to go ahead and sit up front, but that I am going to sit right here. Instead, she settles into the seat beside me.

Many months later, Susie and I will sit at a long wooden table in a pub in Park Slope. There are a number of writers clustered around the table that night—including Suki, a young woman newly admitted to our program. Suki is all long black hair, all scarves, all things Japanese, all things Asian. Susie sits beside her, and I overhear her tell Suki that her real name is Sujin. Sujin? I say. You told me your name was Susie. And she is fierce that night in claiming her identity, sitting next to Suki and all those scarves; she laughs haughtily and says, Did you really think my name was Susie?

People continue to filter in that night in the West Village, until all the chairs are filled with people needing whatever Clifton has prepared to give us. She is not a scary poet, like Olds. But she delivers truth as she knows it, as she has lived it. A truth delivered in single syllables, in just 4 or 5 lines. She trusts the reader, Clifton. And she is a confident poet. A confident writer. In the way that Susie and I will never be…

We fidget. Tug at our pant legs, clear our throats, look around the room. Wait. Then finally Clifton appears from somewhere, and she is at the lectern—and her white hair surprises me. Whatever she says by way of introduction, I do not recall. I remember only that a lump immediately lodges itself in the back of my throat, like one of those lottery balls that gets spit up into the cylinder. I try to force it down, but it lets me know who’s boss, and so there it stays.

And Lucille Clifton reads… Her voice is what I imagined it would be. Not like seeing Gwendolyn Brooks, who sang her poems in hills and valleys—when I had read them flat and measured. Clifton reads from Good Woman, New Poems, The Book of Light. She is courageous in her revelation. In this room full of strangers…

Then Clifton reads poems from her new book: consulting the book of changes: radiation; 1994; scar; amazons… The lump in the back of my throat sits there quietly, not moving, not causing any disturbance. Until. Clifton reads her Memphis poems. The room is silent, all eyes directed toward the imposing figure with the shock of white hair and her quiet, husky voice. She reads, “in the latter days/you will come to a place/called Memphis…” Which is a city I have visited many times. Walked Beale Street up and down. Heard music. Ate BBQ and pecan pie. Felt the history. But. Not. Like. Her. When she reads her Memphis, her Beale Street, I see right away that it is not mine. I sense her antennae—palpable in this sterile room tonight—sprinkled like tiny, sensitive hairs along her fingertips, her toes, her tongue. She tells us she feels the footsteps of her people “throbbing up through [her] shoes” on auction street; that she understands the mud of the Mississippi hides what should be revealed; of another “dusky woman/weakened by too much loss.”

Beside me, Susie Irvine sits as still as stone while the inside of me tumults, while my legs quiver, while stubborn tears drip saltily into the corners of my mouth. And I am ashamed. Self conscious. Try everything to make myself stop…

Later, I wait in line for my book to get signed. My nose runs and I am without tissues. I am mad at myself for this response. I keep my head down. Hand Clifton my book. Utter my name. And when I am composed enough, back on the West Village street, I open the book to find that she has written “For Rachel. Joy!” with her lovely name--Lucille Clifton--spelled out below.

***

Caution

My friend Stephanie jumped out of an airplane. It was something she longed to do, and one day, she just did it… Later, at my house, we watch the video they made of the jump. Stephanie stands, weighted down with goggles and backpack, at the gaping hole in the side of the plane, the wind and open sky beckoning. Just standing there on the precipice of that hurtling plane, she gets further than I would have. And then after several moments of indecision, she pitches herself into the sunny abyss, shrieking I can’t do this!, her voice trailing off as she plummets down toward the earth, back down to her uneventful life in a small white house with a husband named Fred and her dark green mini-van.

Jumping out of a plane is not something I’ve ever felt called to do. I suppose because I don’t like heights; and also because I can’t imagine having the courage to jump. I would need to be pushed—which, I understand, they will not do. But there are days—many days—when I desire to live my life a bit more incautiously, a bit more dangerously. I want to jump out of a metaphorical plane; I want to live out the danger a bit more in the abstract. Stephanie has her plane, and I have mine, too.

I have many dreams, many hopes, that play themselves out in my head as I drive along in my car, as I am folding laundry, as I cleanse my face at night before crawling into bed. When I’m feeling brave, I lean in close to the mirror, examining the porous nose, the crinkled skin collected like paper fans at my eyes, the lines between my eyebrows that remind me how I knit my brows together when I am considering things. My face. The one I show to the world, and the one the world interprets and judges. It’s a scary thing to consider, when you stop and think about it. Putting your face out there like that everyday…

Yesterday I tried bourbon and whiskey for the first time. We are standing in a converted barn, in the Catskills, on a warm afternoon in September. A short young man explains the science of distilling; he is knowledgeable and passionate about the making of spirits. I read their story in a magazine: two young men who took a chance. Who threw caution to the wind. Who tried something entirely beyond their experience and now have this. We are a small group, listening; most of us catching only part of the science of how grain and fruit get transformed into something special. Later, in the tasting room, I will sample the “baby bourbon,” made of corn, and stored in an oak barrel. After that, I swallow the distillery’s house specialty: whiskey. And it does a deliciously slow burn down my throat and into my belly. I am with someone who hurries through the process—of this, and the tasting of wines at two other places we stop—but I stand there, feet planted solidly on the wide plank floor, wanting to savor the moment, my new experience. Feeling that whiskey burn…

Most days I live very tepidly. I wake up, shower, coax my son from the warm folds of his bed, make breakfast, put him on the bus, go to my office, come home from my office, make dinner, read to my boy, read to myself, and go to sleep. And the next day loops around for me to go at again, just the same way. And suddenly many weeks have gone by, many months, many years… Things get broken up, of course, with Christmas, with trips to the ocean, with something brand new carried home from the store. Just enough distraction to keep me from recognizing the banality of life, of the quiet, uneventful way most of us go about living it. Just enough to mask the absurdity of it.

My mother often told me when I was a young girl that I had too many dreams, too grandiose a plan. And this when I never fantasized about the stage, or the road, or the underbelly. I wanted simply to get out of a place where the snow silenced everything, where the winds of change never blew. My mother shook her head at this and cautioned me against such thinking. You will be sorry, she said…

And yet, as I stand before the mirror this morning, I am sorry only that I have not lived more, loved more, and taken more chances. Outside the window, there is the harmony of birds answering each other—and I am savoring the moment because it is, after all, late September, and mornings will soon be quiet with winter… Last night as I drove home from the mountains, there were three text messages saying come into the city; be my guest tonight—and it is a lovely night, the sky littered with stars, a lively Manhattan just a few short miles down the road. But instead I turn on to my own familiar street, park my car, come inside. Kick off my shoes, drink a tall glass of cold water, hang my sweater alongside others in my organized closet; settle into bed. And it’s not long before I am drifting off to sleep, thinking of the new home I plan to buy, of the smoky blue walls I will paint, with creamy white trim, and a new chocolate colored couch; of the brownies I will make tomorrow for my son; of a quiet Sunday afternoon with him and the Times; of the walk I will take around the fountain after dinner.
***

The Snake

There is a snake—long, thin, shiny—that lurks in the walls of his basement. He tells me this recently, standing up to demonstrate his composure at finding it there. He moves to the corner of the living room, his lanky arms and fingers easily touching the ceiling. He is poised, still; curious at his discovery. And I believe him.

But who would not recoil from an unexpected snake? Who would not drop the putty knife, still wet with mortar, when the snake revealed itself, metallic and powerful, its hungry tongue licking at the shadows down there? That snake with its potency, its ability to coil around something many times its own size and squeeze it into lifelessness… Instead, he shows me how he stood there, just inches away from that probing tongue, and studied the iridescent etchings, the quiet black eyes—he and the snake alone in the hushed, dark basement of his farmhouse. Of course it was only moments before the snake disappeared behind the concrete walls, into some unknown nest, and he stood alone, as cool and measured as that hungry reptile.

And I wonder what that says about him? About us? I imagine my own wild response, coming face to face with that snake: the spontaneous screech, tools jettisoned, feet that carry me, like a skiff riding the waves, straight upstairs. To light, to safety, to warmth. My uneven breathing, terror howling from my eyes, sweat in the palms of my outstretched hands. And him, anchored quietly in that basement, half smiling, hammer gripped securely in his working hands, hoping to catch another quick glimpse. Intrigued by the science of it…

Today I push an obstinate cart around the smooth, well lit aisles at Target. I toss things in the cart to ward off my fears: face cream, body shaper panty hose, Children’s Tylenol. I am looking at the lacy bras, in black, cut low the way I like them, when I hear her yelling. Loud enough to pull me away from the delicate fabric that will cleave to my heavy breasts and give them shape, form—and as I step out from behind the rack, she is there, bent over a little girl. And then she slaps her. Hard. Then yanks a fragile arm so that the pigtails shake. And the little girl cries. You come when I fucking call you, the woman barks, standing up in her adultness, her motherhood, her conviction. Her hand on a stroller where a smaller baby sleeps. You fucking hear me? she says, answering her own rhetorical question with another slap. And I am terrified of this woman’s power, and her powerlessness, her poverty. I glance around to see who else is there, but I am alone with this young mother in the brightly lit aisle, living my own troubled life, making my own bad choices. What are you fucking looking at? the woman hisses at me. I think I am looking at fear, I want to tell her. But please is all I manage to say before a dog-eared man appears from nowhere, lifting the pigtailed girl to his chest. Don’t fucking comfort her, the woman tells him, as she muscles the stroller down the aisle, mad at me, at the little girl, at the world. But I know it’s really fear—of a different kind than mine; but fear is fear, I’ve come to realize. And we are never at our best when we’re afraid…

And I watch him, even in his strength and height--even as he stares down reptiles--erecting walls, puttying over cracks, building doors out of wood and wrought iron hinges with his own ample hands. Closing things off. Boxing things in. Sealing things tight. And he goes about his construction methodically, patiently—confident in his workmanship and exactness. As fearful as the rest of us…
***

On Reading Marx

With a quiet rain at the open windows behind me, I stretch out on this old iron bed, my head and feet propped on pillows—just the way I like—and set about reading Marx. It's a Friday night, and that’s what sad and lonely women like me do on a Friday night: we read, watch TV, listen to the radio. And it’s nearly 10:00 when my phone rings. Ruthanne is in the city, with nimble voices in the background, the sound of people living their lives on a summer night in Manhattan. I can hear in her voice that she is feeling me out, trying to see if I will come to the city to join them. I tell her I am doing school work, that I am reading Marx—and she understands right away that I am not coming, that I am still in retreat. What she does not know is that being around happy people, people in love, and people falling in love, only makes me feel lonely. I see only the ways that they have managed to figure out what I have not. Their bliss only reminds me of how poorly I have handled things. How wrong I have been… And I would rather be alone. On a Friday night. In my quiet bedroom with the rain at the window. And a candle flickering on the nightstand beside me.

As soon as I hang up from Ruthanne, the phone is there again. It is the unexpected man from last week. The tall, dark man in the black hat, the noisy smile. I liked him last week—as a distraction, as a dance partner to celebrate carnival Brazil. But the music has faded, the night is over, and I am thinking only of the man I have lost. The phone goes to voicemail…

And I return to Marx. The 940-page Penguin Classic. I am earnest. And determined. But right away, I am confronted with words, with symbols, set up like dominoes on the page—and they begin to fall one into each other, collapsing neatly along each row until I cannot recognize their meaning. What I take away from this chapter is that everything is fluid, everything is in motion. And I understand that tonight. How things can change from one day to the next, how relationships change, that there is an inter-relation between so many things... But Marx is not interested in "this causes that"—like I am tonight. I know that I am here alone on a rainy August night because of things I have done, things I have said. Because I was not patient. Because I was not me.

So I continue. And read about commodity--the thing that meets a human want or need--and it makes me think about him this way. He has value to me—in his intellect, his smile, the way he adjusts his glasses when he’s working to make a point—and I see that his value is always in motion—depending on how we are relating to each other, and who else is waiting to claim him. Value, Marx says, is subject to a wide array of forces, and I see that so clearly tonight…. This commodity is useful to me in so many ways—as lover, as friend, as someone to tell my secrets to… But Marx says that exchange values are incoherent, that they are all over the place, because the commodity is perpetually in motion, and all things are commensurable in exchange. And as he orbits his circle of friends and family and acquaintances, colliding, melding, moving on, we are all finding and taking different things in and from him, and he with us... But I took too much. And now my use value is gone—at least to him. And that is all I can figure out tonight from these long rows of collapsed dominoes on the page…

The other night Rita and I have dinner in the city; we have not seen each other since last fall. She is there first, lovely in her blown-glass choker, and black & white sandals brought back from Spain. I sit across the table from her. What are you drinking? I ask. The drink looks familiar, and of course she names the cocktail that he often drinks. So I order one, too. Rita is brilliant—the smartest woman I know—and I like to watch how her mind works, how she goes about things. We talk, laugh, catch up. Finally I tell her how these past months have been. Her face declares shock, surprise—and I know the questions will come. We have been longtime friends, this woman and I, and I watch her struggle to recognize the me I describe: needy, demanding, impetuous. For the first time, she labors to make connections, to draw her conclusions. I am a stranger to her, this me I describe… Just last week my mother had cautioned that I will have a hard time with men. It will take a special man, she said, to give you the space you need, the alone time you require. And yet I revealed a different woman to him, and felt a tumult coursing through my hot veins. Gone was the size 10 foot that plods quietly along, sure-footed, content, in charge… Rita reaches across the table and says, you are in pain. And indeed I am. The bitter pain of regret—which I swallow that night with a big gulp of the drink that he so often preferred.

Yet there is nothing to be done. I have tossed my mistakes into a bag that I take out at times to look at and examine… And he is a disappointed man. With expectations and ambition that the choices he made got in the way of. He told me recently that he is on the path to the Zen of Fuck It. But he doesn’t see that he is closing himself off, shutting things down. He is a man without a home, as he moves back and forth, feeling not quite right anywhere. When he’s angry or hurt, he dreams of a place with mountain breezes and the ocean stretched out before him—a place where he will belong. He doesn’t see that the walls he’s constructed keep him isolated, unanchored. Doesn’t see that those walls prevent him from finding that home…

And so today is a new day, another beginning. The morning filters in at my back. I will shower, and pack. Get in my car, with the radio riding shotgun beside me, and drive out to where all the rich people are. But he will make me laugh, my brother—because he knows where my humor is stored. Always on the surface, ready to erupt, just needing the right thing to provoke it. And we will have one last feast together, and drinks over an open fire. Because I am losing him, too—to a lifelong dream, to a new ambition that will take him away from here. I’m getting too good at saying goodbye…

And after that, I will drive north to a room where we will discuss Marx in cool, measured tones in a brightly lit classroom with no place to hide. And from there, I will drive through a long summer night up onto the Cape—along a quiet Route 6, the sand welcoming me from the side of the road. And somewhere out there, the sea will be shrouded in darkness. I will roll down the window and listen to the ocean, rushing in and pulling away in a determined whisper. The air will be alive with the smell of all those creatures living in a prehistoric world under the water. And eventually on that long summer night, I will get to that place, way out on the tip, and hear the crunch of my tires along the gravel. I will stop. Get out. Stretch. Seventeen years of coming to this place—and it is still waiting. To heal. To restore. And, I hope, to forgive…
***

Retail Therapy

It is two days now since the final blow landed--coming a day after hope, a day of reconciliation. Then words on a screen—those little black symbols in regular font—that leave my life shredded and quiet. My eyes tremble over the page, not daring to stop on any particular word until, finally, that last sentence, those last few words…

Like he used to do, I take to the bed. Sleep the sleep of angels. Dream of shiny new coins, a cool glass of water, music I have never heard before. I am naked between the sheets, the small fan on my nightstand fluttering breezy fingers along my bare shoulders, my neck… And then of course I wake up—morning knocking at my eyelids—and throw two reluctant legs over the side of the bed. Stand up. Stagger down the long hallway and gather the courage to look in the mirror. A new day. And I must put on a mask and ride the waves of heartbreak that wash over me this very long day. Some just licking at my toes, my ankles—and others gathering energy as they rush headlong at me, the wind at their back, and I stand braced for the collision of wave and foam against the sound of my bones breaking. I am glad, and slightly surprised, that I do not fall down this day. That I can stand there with my face to the wind and water and stare those waves down. But what else can I do?

Yesterday Amy says, let’s go to the mall. My guilty pleasure, the mall; my salvation today with a burning heart and battered limbs and no medication. Amy and I take my car, the windows down, a hot, sunny day. She says, I think you will have many lovers. Which is a good thing, I suppose, but those lovers should have been tasted before I met him. I would have known how to love through the prism of many faces, many bodies, all that space. But I did not...

At the mall, Amy and I have lunch, and walk the smooth, cool corridors. We stop to examine, to touch. We laugh—and the first time I do that, I am surprised by the sound that emerges. I remember that laugh rising up from my belly, erupting at the back of my wide open mouth. And I’m surprised to find that it is still there.

We go to Ann Taylor Loft, to Macy’s, to many other stores. At each place: patterns, color, lace. Pretty things that comfort me. I am a solitary woman without the eyes of a lover across a table from me, without a silky cursive fabric hinting at things to come. That will look good on you, Amy says, as I hold up a lavender-colored dress. For a brief moment, I imagine the first time it will come off, the first time someone will slip the filmy fabric over my head and push me onto the bed…

At the register, I recall A Pair of Silk Stockings and become Mrs. Sommers--indulging my own pleasure, my own escape. I buy three summer dresses, two scarves, a pair of black pants, a wispy top, three necklaces, a pair of sandals, one bold purple purse, and a blown-glass bangle that looks like you’re gazing through the eye of a kaleidoscope.

When I drop Amy off at her car, I am not done. I go on to Home Goods, Pier 1, TJMaxx, and K-Mart. Next to the bags of clothes in my back seat, I add a comforter, new bed sheets, curtains, a frilly pink throw pillow, a large sign that says “DREAM,” and a perfumed candle in a delicate frosted glass.

On the way home, I stop for a pedicure—and while my pretty polished toes dry, a woman works discerning hands over the tightness in my shoulders, and down the length of my spine...

Last night I was up until midnight, rearranging my room. I move the bed under the window—the moon at my back, the new day announcing itself gently in the morning. I shake the new comforter out over my old iron bed, hang curtains, light my pretty candle. And Lizz Wright sings I’m confessin’... When I'm finished, it is a new room for a new woman. And you cannot tell that he has ever been here. That he has ever stood looking down at me with want in his eyes and long graceful fingers starting to move.
***

Spirit of Odetta

I’m back at Lincoln Center, back in the south plaza. It’s another hot night, and the rain from this afternoon has made the air as thick as a New Orleans stew. The faces of the crowd collected here are sweaty, expectant. I have my 7-year-old by the hand, and we make our way to the front and find, like an offering, empty seats in the second row. We settle in with our drinks and our snacks—and I explain to my son that this will be a magical night, a night he'll remember. Why, he asks. And I tell him, because we are here.

When Lizz Wright takes the stage, I am not prepared. It is still light outside, a sequestered sun still trying to bully us. The lights on the stage shine pink, shine blindingly white as the band enters and takes up position behind drums, keyboard, the bass and guitar. And then she appears from the deepest recess of the stage—a graceful young woman in a long sequined skirt that she will clutch and squeeze when she’s inspired. She wears a beaded gold necklace that catches the lights of the stage and reflects them out to us like confetti on this breathless night. Later she will remove the necklace because of the heat of the night, because of the hot lights that bear down on her. Before she takes the stage, they tell us that she has been raised in the church, the daughter of a minister father and a mother who sang—so you’d think I'd be ready. But I'm not. Just a few lazy notes in, she steps to the mic and quiets us all. My son watches her with an intensity, listening, his sneakers stilled, his hands unemployed. In the first row, a blind woman holds her walking stick like a staff, and leans her head back in rapture to an unseen sky...

Behind a drowsy rhythm, she tells us in her smoky, sovereign voice about an easy rider; about giving the con man her all; about a man being there that she doesn’t remember letting in. As she sings, I feel emotion building from some unknown place in my belly, in the heaviness behind my eyes. I take in the smoldering sky—the sun having finally given up and yanked the night time over it like a blanket. On stage, she lifts two sculpted arms, and by the time she sings, What if I fall, and the water is cold?, I am sobbing, my chest heaving—a Roy Orbison cry tonight. Because I did fall, and the water is cold. Very cold…

And then the unexpected man appears just as I am wiping my tears and struggling to gain a quieter footing. He slips into the only empty seat beside me, here on the plaza, and I turn my mascara smudged face to look at him. He studies me for a moment and says, quietly: he does not deserve your passion. I know this, of course, but the heart is an unruly, intemperate thing that doesn’t listen, that won’t behave. I shake my head, knowing the truth, knowing that I have fallen in love with cold. That my heat and fire are not enough to warm him, not enough for him to stay.

I’m sorry, I say. To the unexpected man, who I wish was someone else beside me tonight. I introduce him to my son, who quickly peeks around me, and settles right back into his chair. The unexpected man pats my hand and says, I’ll be back—but I’m not sure he will. Yet as she reappears on the stage for her encore, there he is, carrying drinks for us all. She sings Amazing Grace a accapella, her voice thicker than this murky night. Fighting back tears, I lift the cup to my lips and swallow one small, muted sip.

Intermission.... and the stage bustles with roadies taking things down and setting things up. The crowd makes its way to the bathroom, to the concession booths scattered like children’s blocks in this open plaza. The unexpected man asks me if I’m okay—which I don’t think I am, but I nod anyway…

When Allen Toussaint takes the stage, there is a surge to the front. They are ready for New Orleans, ready to dance. Mr. Toussaint still has flecks of dark in his white hair, and he wears a suit on this hot summer night, as he sits behind the piano. Even in my sadness, I wonder how they keep the keyboards tuned on such a night as this. He strikes the opening chord, and the crowd moves, and jubilance is unleashed into a muscular sky. No dancing for me—at least not yet—because my knees ache and my heart is too heavy. I watch as people are pulled like magnets toward the source, to the open area in front of the stage. They go in pairs, by themselves, pulled by the seductive, thumping beat of that faraway city. I watch a man in a short-sleeved red shirt with seagulls on it dance with his woman. He is my age, with white in his closely cropped beard. Beside them, two older women dance together... when suddenly the man in the seagull shirt grabs the waist of one of the women, and they spin off together. She matches his step--they are aligned... She wears a black dress and pearls, and her smile is pure memory as she and the seagull man glide and spin. And with one fluid motion, she slips her purse from her shoulder and hands it off to a young man—a stranger—sitting in the front row, so she can move unencumbered. Because nothing bad could happen as she dances with a man in the plaza tonight…

And finally I, too, want to dance. Want to let my pain go. And so my son and I step out from the row of chairs and into the crowded space with so many other lost souls, and we dance together, my boy and me, on the south plaza, at Lincoln Center—the unexpected man watching us, as I think only of him…
***

Carnival Frevo

Tonight I slip on a sleeveless summer sheath and a delicate pair of heels; pump a lithe perfume against the sensitive part of my shoulders, my neck—and head into the city. To Lincoln Center and carnival frevo, carnival Brazil. Applying lipstick in the dim light of my car, I drive too fast over the Henry Hudson Bridge, and down the West Side Highway. I sing along to my iPod, on my way to an adventure. Above the Hudson River, the sky is the color of wet sand, the moon hidden behind clouds, the air thick with heat and the promise of many good things. I have bandaged the other day’s wounds, applied ointment and cream, and taught myself again how to smile—practicing in the mirror, in the quiet of my car. I am so tired of pain, so tired of being left behind…

On the south plaza, the crowd is assembling, moving slowly onto the smooth gray stone, still warm beneath our shoes from the day’s heat, just beyond the Center. I pause alongside the fountain, and remember all those times I sat there—a majestic spray and the perimeter of lights mirroring my joy. Those were happier days when I was kissed with an open mouth, was loved with both arms and a man’s thirsty heart… Tonight, the fountain is under repair—like me and this wounded body, a string of caution tape stretched around my own bruised heart.

Along the plaza, sculpted trees lift long, graceful arms that are haloed in light from some unseen place below—and tall, courtly buildings stand anchored around us, like sentinels, like guards to make sure we don’t get too raucous tonight. Which is what I ache to do, what I want to have happen. Me alone and unloved on the flagstone plaza, the warm, quiet breeze my inconstant lover—like the man I knew before this. I know there is more than emptiness and pain, that my fire and heat are magnetic, wanted…

The band kicks in and the crowd begins to pulsate, to express their joy through shuffling feet, lilting hips, and fingers snapping out their pleasure. It’s not long before I am swept into the swell, into the energy of the people here tonight, and I move alone—carefree, captivated. My bliss lifts up into the dusky night to join hands with the rest of the joy that has been released up there. I feel every curve of my body, every rounded angle and swell, as I move, move, move… And suddenly the slightest touch of a hand on the small of my back, on my arm—and he’s there. An unexpected man who asks if I am alone. I am, I tell him, flashing a noisy smile that he flashes right back. But I don’t want to be…

And he urges me to a space just a few steps away--where we might move together on this hot summer night, under the watchful eye of those guardian buildings. You are the brightest woman here, he says as we move—and I suspect he’s talking about my dress, the flash of my smile, my polished pink toes. The drums and bass lay down a pulsing rhythm that draws the whole crowd closer, including the unexpected man and me. His face is just inches from mine, this tall stranger: gray licking at his temples, eyes as black and daring as mine. It’s a hot summer night—and we move, and we move, and we move…

Later we take a giddy walk down Broadway, two strangers, two open souls, on a fanciful night in the city. Still, he says: you are a sad woman, I can see. Which I don’t deny, but instead tell him that I won’t always be. I have lost a lot, I say, but I’m ready to find other things. I don’t like going through life empty-handed…

At the bar, he orders our drinks, and leads me outside to a small patio where music floats along in the heavy air from speakers no one can see. There are tables and expectant people—the sound of laughter, of newly ripened love. In the corner, white lights shimmer like crystals from a sassy tree. We sit together at a small glass table, the tension in my knees igniting a heat that I can feel each time I cross my legs. Above us, the moon and stars remain hidden, leaving us to the night and all its brassy shadows. Tomorrow, and my own jagged pain, float along somewhere with the music, waiting for the dawn, for this night to end, for me to reclaim them…
***

Choices

It was an explosive day—his size 13 foot landing solidly in my gut, my teeth, my head—the pain erupting like a 5-alarm fire. I swear I didn’t see it coming. It was a day like any other day, and then suddenly it wasn’t. And me, silly me, caught so unaware. Sitting there, wide-eyed and believing, when the kick came. Like an open bull’s eye that his foot sailed right through.

And I am an imposture, living my fake life. My unfamiliar life. After the blows land and he walks away, I tend to my wounds for a short while, but before I’ve even stopped bleeding, I turn away from the pain and back to my work. Check emails, take phone calls, read papers. Try to recreate an unremarkable day. Every now and again, I rub the swollen, bruised places on the soft part of my skin. But I don’t linger there too long—because even the gentlest touch in those areas is painful, makes me cry. Toward the end of the day, Liza comes in and says, you’re not okay, I can tell. And she’s right, I’m not, but I grab a mask from my desk drawer and slap it on quick. I’m fine, I tell her. Just tired. But as sometimes happens when I put my mask on too quickly, it lies obliquely on my face—and Liza walks away shaking her head. Girl, I hear her say, it ain’t none of it worth it…

Last night I sit with my son in a place that sells pizza and pasta and salad—and wine. My little boy and I skim the menu, make our choices. I want something new, something I haven't tried before. The man at the counter pours a quiet Chardonnay, and slides the amber colored glass across the flat surface between us. Here, he says in a lilting voice I recognize, it’s on me. He smiles, and I return an anemic smile—the best I can do tonight—and limp back to the table where my son waits, still deciding. Around us are families playing out their lives, making their choices. The young mother beside us feeds her baby pizza, chocolate cake and Mountain Dew. I wrinkle my nose at her choices, but just that one action pains me—and I remember that I am in no position to judge: my own life like a shattered picture window around me. No matter how I rearrange the shards, and make choices about the pattern, I cannot figure out how to put the window back together. I am laid bare without even a gas-filled pane to shadow me. And then suddenly, at just the right volume, a bit of reggae and then r&b, modulating from hidden speakers--and it soothes me and all the raw places along my wounded body. The man with the voice I recognize has made his choices known, and I see him watching me as I sip my wine and pretend to eat. He tries to read my story from the choices I make, moving my fork around my plate. And I ache to tell him that I no longer recognize my story, that I am bruised and hurt. That I am lost…

Out in the car, I study the floor beneath the wheel. Gas pedal and brake. And tonight I see the two things as symbols. Both are within reach of my delicately painted toes and the hard flat surface of my shoe. I test the resistance of each one, gently at first and then with more conviction. I am surprised at times by my own strength, even when I am wounded. It is a clear night tonight—the streetlights march along the avenue, lighting the way into the distance, into the future. My son and I are buckled in, ready for the ride—he trusting that I will make good choices, and me playing over the options in my mind, wanting desperately to get it right...
***

At the Pool

Today my son and I pack a quick bag and head to the pool. An uncaged sun unleashes a heat that snakes around us and squeezes tight. But he and I look to the clear blue sky and laugh at all that power. And he pushes me in the water first—and this time I allow myself to sink lower into its quiet pull, and to take my time coming back up to that vigorous sun, to the heat, to people enjoying a hot afternoon in August. Then my son jumps in, splashing me, his wet face flashing pure joy as he breaks the surface of the water and clings to my arm. And I am grateful for this one perfect moment, with my boy and me in the water, his matted hair and dripping face just inches from mine. His 7-year-old smile with all the holes in it. The sun at our backs, the sound of other people’s joy in our ears. A flawless moment, this... But it, and he, slip from my grasp before I’ve had my fill. I chase after them both, but they’re gone. He disappears under the water and lifts two sturdy legs in the air. And I recognize a much smaller version of my own flat feet, and laugh.

Pulling myself up the ladder, I step wet and dripping to where we have set up our things, and settle into my chair. Put on my sunglasses, lift headphones to my ears. My son is off with kids his own age—as he should—and I sit alone with my Sunday salvation singing in my ears. Around me, the lie that I have recognized as such plays out very believably. Children splash and swim; parents sit along the side of the pool, cooling their grown up legs in the noisy water; others gather in fleshy clusters on lawn chairs under the relative cool of the canopy. Fathers and sons play ping pong, shuffleboard. Beyond the pool area, women my age grill polenta and chicken for their men, create comfort and security around a picnic table for their sons and daughters. I search the women’s faces for cracks in the façade--but today I can’t find any. They are happy here at the Westwood, their families assembled around them like pegs on a board. And there’s me, loving my son and feeling like I’m doing it all wrong—because I am not that on a sunny afternoon in August. I switch my iPod from music to Bill Hicks, listening intently, even though I know every word in his act…

At the deep end of the pool, my son waits behind a cluster of boys for his turn to jump off the diving board. The boys are older, yet their bald shoulders and skinny limbs give them each a deflated look. I watch the boys ignore my son as he steps around to be a part of their boastful banter, part of their laughter. He laughs when they laugh, and I wait to see if they will acknowledge him, will welcome him into their fold. And then a younger boy my son knows joins the group, is recognized and welcomed by the older boys. And my son—my little guy—stands rejected, quietly waiting his turn at the board…

Many years ago, I walked along a hiccupping sidewalk in a housing project in a quiet, comfortless town. An uneventful day. Me and my newly erupted body walking along in cut-off jean shorts, a tank top and pony tail on my way to nowhere. It was summer. And so when my mother’s friend Janie called to me from her front door, I had no expectations. I was too young for such things, too young to recognize that Janie was acting on pure impulse that she would later come to regret. Rachel, she hollered, there’s someone here I want you to meet. And so I turned into Janie’s sidewalk, hearing excitement in her voice—something other than my own curdled boredom—and I stepped inside. It took just a moment to adjust to the darkened interior, Janie’s apartment familiar, comforting. At the table by the window, a man with short dark hair and my eyes stood up and extended his hand. This is your father, Janie said, clapping her hands together over her plentiful bosom. The man and I shook hands. And he sat back down, and we were done with all that.

And this is what I want to tell my boy today: that you cannot make people love you, cannot make people want you—and only a desperate soul, a futile soul, tries. And I watch him closely as the boys climb the ladder to the diving board and jump, tossing remarks over their wet shoulders like shiny coins that their friends scramble to pick up. But not my boy. He dances around to an unheard melody playing in his head, excited for his turn to jump, okay with being alone—like me, my little guy, like me.
***

Glass

The other night I stepped on glass. Walking down a busy West Village street, I saw the shards there, collected like shiny gems on a hot sidewalk. The moon floated quietly somewhere above dignified buildings, and occasionally a lazy, moist breeze came around a hidden corner to please the backs of our necks, to seduce the tender part of my shoulders. I lifted the hair from my temples and laughed at such a night as this. I felt full, anticipatory. A woman in a red dress walking with strength and confidence right through the shards of glass glittering on a pretty street on a hot, sultry night in summer. I had no sense of danger—the night was too perfect for that, too full of promise. And of course I misjudged, mis-stepped—and suddenly there was pain, and then blood from the tip of one newly painted toe…

Sit down, he says, taking my arm. But I don’t want to sit down tonight, don’t want to stop moving. I’m uncertain about where we are heading, but I want to keep going. I want to see this night through: I am curious, hopeful. Later, in a crowded brick room, the singer says from the stage, Hey, Red, you got the fire in you. And I forget until I look down that I’m wearing a red dress. Something that will come off later and take the fire with it, a heap on the floor, and me stretched across the bed in pain.

Glass is a lovely thing, full of contradictions—like me, like us. Smooth, sharp; reflective, translucent. It brings the new day inside, the morning sun radiating polished leaves just beyond the window; at night, glass hides the outdoors, reflecting the bedroom lamp and my obscured face back at me. There is glass everywhere in this lonely house. Sometimes I avoid the large glass mirror hanging on my bedroom wall, and sometimes I stand before it and lean in close.

Today the cut is healing as I sit with my sore foot propped up on a pillow on the coffee table. I have washed it, applied ointment, and will wait through the healing. Sometimes it stings more than others… Before me, my son sings flat and impassioned to the TV, the mic in one hand, rock star hopes in the other, and an animated band on the screen. He is surprised when I know the songs—oblivious to the fact that his mother has lived, has loved, in ways that he is unaware. You know this song? he says, looking back at me with a grin that makes the pain disappear. But only for a moment. And then it comes back, throbbing, insistent, saying, don’t forget about me…
***

Heat

It’s 3 am and I have kicked off the sheet and flipped my pillow over to find the cooler side. I run a tired hand through the tangled, moist hair cleaving to my cheek, my temples. Finally, I sit up in the darkness, alone in my house on a hot and muggy night. I have been dreaming: my heart throbs against my nightgown; the back of my neck is damp. I stare into the murkiness of this bedroom and listen to the weary hum of the air-conditioner. The old iron bed frame squeaks as I pull my knees to my chest—and soon the tears come. I never wanted to be alone like this…

I like the heat of many things. The heat of a feverish night in summer—with friends on a rooftop deck, a breeze rippling off the river. The heat of a few good words on a page. The right color and stroke of the brush in a frame. The heat of people walking in their own deliberate and self-assured way. The heat of an audacious love... Which I have lost to something more tempered, more subdued. A flat, dry cracker of a love when I desire the grit and spice of a New Orleans love, a raucous kind of love.

I lift my legs to the side of the bed and pad down a hot, darkened hallway, the hardwood floor sticking to the bottom of my feet. In the bathroom, I splash water on my face, my neck—a softer image of me reflected in the quiet mirror. My edges and lines lost to the dusky shadows. I am me in a dream tonight, moving about an empty and unfamiliar house, moving around my unfamiliar life—bumping into things. I reach out sometimes to steady myself, but there is often nothing there. Yes, this must all be a dream…

The other night I am in the kitchen and he sits by himself in the living room. I hear staccato voices as he flips through the channels as so many men do. I chop vegetables, sauté onions, simmer a fragrant spicy stew. Yet he does not come to see, to test, to sample. He is not curious about the heat, a kitchen alive with the smell of gumbo filé, cayenne, andouille in the pan. I wipe my hands on a towel, sip a smooth red wine that slides like bliss along the back of my throat, my cheeks flushed from the open flame on the stove. And he sits in another room unaffected by the heat…

Sally tells me once, long ago, about a meal downtown with a man who dipped his fork without noticing the lace of sauce, the sprinkle of rosemary--the heat of it. She turned away, she said, and swallowed a soul-less meal that night all those years ago.

And so I make my way back to the bedroom, down a long quiet hallway, and wonder, as I settle back into bed, what to do with this night—with its shadows and silence. What to do with my own gnawing sadness. On a hot summer night in August: alone, alone, alone.
***