Two dwarfs in green wigs and white suspenders holding up their knee-length shorts work the crowd on a mild March night here in the land of smoky dreams. Karen and I sit at the table sipping our too-sweet drinks; stuffed grape leaves languish on a shared plate between us. We watch as the young crowd passes by, moving in tangled groups, bodies traversing the busy highway of this tourist street. They are loud: voices raised to youth and drink and insecurity. And I can discern right away their very essence--by the way they react to these two short men on the street. Both dwarfs have painted their faces red; one of them smokes. They are as garish as Christmas, as novel as trinkets in a souvenir shop. They slap five, laugh at the cruel jokes, mug with the drunken, flushed faces of undergraduates who bend down and smile into the camera next to the 3-foot clown. And I feel the curl of anger at the back of my throat, pressing against my tongue. Years from now, some of these kids will swallow the bitter pill of memory. Some will remember this night, will remember their inhumanity, and shrink from it, will taste its acidity on a sleepless night. And so the curl of anger is not for them—but for the two painted clowns who toddle around this busy street hiding behind their shortness, their green wigs, their fear. Tell me who you really are, I want to say to them. I know you are not this…
Yet who am I to demand that? As I hide behind my Olay Regenerist eye cream, behind the gloss of Chianti lipstick, an underwire bra… On the street beyond our table are the girls who own this night, in their half-clothes, their haughty skin, their unawakened eyes. Their bodies are the polished engines of a car show, sleek aerodynamic limbs moving on a festive night. The boys watch, circling, licking their lips, aching to drive one of these revved-up machines. Karen and I pick at the dehydrated grape leaves, watch quietly from the corner where women like us belong. And I lift the white napkin to my lips to wipe away the pretense, staining the heavy cloth. I do not want to be a Jean Rhys character, with her half empty Pernod, her blood-red lipstick bleeding into the crevices around her lips. Pretending, like the wigged midgets, that life is not cruel.
Later we lift our sandaled feet into the Treasure Trove, sand from the nearby beach crunching beneath our heels. There is a two-piece band—guitar and drums—and the singer has rings around his eyes the way a tree reveals its age. He wears a baseball cap tugged backwards on his head, long shorts, Roman-style sandals. This tells me not to expect too much, and they do not disappoint. At the bar are men and women who have arrived at the same place as Karen and me. She and I look at each other and smile, no longer misfits on a tourist street. I put my purse on the bar, and the man beside me offers a stool which he shakes a bit and settles on my naked toe, his movements clumsy, his speech graceless, blundering. I hope you’re not driving, Karen says by way of a greeting, and the man laughs and tries to shake his head, and has to hold on to the smooth, curved edge of the bar. He works on ships, he manages to say through a thick tongue.
Upon closer inspection, everyone here tonight is butter-fingered and lumbering—in their baldness, their rounded bellies, their euphoria when the discordant band strikes up a familiar song. The grizzled man on the other side of Karen whoops at every song, pumps two knarled fists in the air, and looks at us with bleary eyes to dance. She cocks one eyebrow at me, and we both laugh.
At the end of the bar are two lithe blonds, their long hair shaken out over pinched shoulders and angled backs. Like Broadway footlights, the sequins on their too-tight jeans illuminate rounded globes as they shimmy to the raucous music. And when they turn around, breasts choked into a cramped theatre, their faces look like mine, like Karen’s. They dance together, two older women on display tonight, and the unsteady men thrum heavily around them. One of the blondes takes a quiet sip from her water bottle, and Karen says, She has had her time with alcohol. And we imagine her earlier life, wonder about our own—two tousled women on bar stools with sand between our toes.
Then it’s time to go, and just as I am shouldering my heavy purse, I notice, tucked into a corner of the bar, two carved wooden images. A Sambo head with ink black skin and a row of teeth like piano keys; beside him, the head of an ape, with two flared nostrils—upon which someone has tossed a fisherman’s hat… I motion to the bartender, nod to the two wooden images. A piercing sun and the bite of Jim Beam have rippled his skin; his long hair pulled back into a pony-tail. What’s that? I say, and he shrugs his shoulders, impatient—and looks behind me to another rickety man, who waves his money, who wants the memory of youth scooped into a glass and chilled over ice. And I am thrust into this circus, into this unknowable place, on a mild night in March, as the guitar player croaks into the mic, the chords from his Fender guitar feeding back through his pawn shop amp—and the sequined blondes quiver around the dance floor…
***
Monday, March 22, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
History
It was a simple gesture. A delicate hand extended as she passed by the table where he sat gripping a plastic cup. He met her outstretched hand—just for a moment and then let go—this husband of almost fifty years. He sits in the booth in a black wind breaker and gold chain, reacting as if he expected this gesture, when of course he did not. But these chance moments are things they are prepared for, have both come to expect. There is not the slightest hesitation as she passes by and extends her hand—and he reaches out to touch it—making her way among the decorated tables, the unleashed children and the lilting balloons. This grandmother, this mother, this wife. Her hips undulate under a long purple sweater as she navigates the chaotic terrain—and he watches her for a moment, and turns his attention back to us.
And suddenly I am choked with tears. Do I want pizza? Cake? I shake my head, look toward the window, toward a sunny day and the promise of new things. How can I say—in the middle of this children’s party—that the gesture I just witnessed rings like a death knell in my ears, thrums on my newly put-together life. My own history ushered out in cardboard boxes, in things tossed to the curb, in papers signed—just before the door pressed shut behind me. I carried many of those storied possessions to my new life, but they became mute and unholy things when I lifted them from the box and unwrapped them. They resist the new landscape, sit stiff and uncompromising. They will not belong here…
Later, Karen and I will sit on lawn chairs just where a sudden afternoon sun bullies the flagstone path in front of her house. It is too early for this kind of muscle—it is only March after all—but we are grateful for the brute strength of it. Behind us, up the steps, the kids play behind a glass front door. We are two Holden Caulfields here on the warm stones, gone underground for a few quiet minutes on a Sunday afternoon. We stretch our legs in plain sight of the neighbors, lean back in our chairs, and yet there is a sense of isolation, of aloneness on this suburban street, each house cradling its own family story, its own developing history.
Closing my eyes, I lift my face to the sun and remember my mother lying in a scant patch of sunlight on the crippled porch of a rented house all those years ago, blankets pinned to the posts to block a cutting April wind. We were hungry for so many things back then...
You cannot recreate history, I say.
After a moment, Karen agrees, and lifts a wine glass to thin pressed lips. We are characters in this new story together; we wait to be narrated, move as the plot begins to unfold. So many years erased... And even through our raucous stories, our whispers--shared on a day like this when spring has come early and the sun warms an exposed breastbone--we know only that we were this back then, we were that. But we are something very different now…
We turn and look at each other for a moment and laugh. Behind us, in the house, are the playful cries of children who have not yet discovered us here: two women in jeans and boots, legs crossed at the ankles, living our unexpected lives. Sipping wine from two filmy glasses when we should be doing other things.
Later when he calls, we have moved inside—the sun vanished, the children nipping at our two-inch heels. Karen and I sit for a moment at her table, the Sunday night chores undone. Dinner, baths, lunches for tomorrow. Such an unrecognizable life sometimes… She yells to her son to turn down the TV; I tell my boy to put on his shoes. And the man on the phone says he is back now, back to his current life after a weekend lumbering around the quondam one. I do not know where to put that history, he says, trying to explain how he feels. I recognize the disquiet in his voice and ache to tell him that I am looking for that place, too—that I witnessed a simple gesture at a children’s party that snatched my history from the place I’d stored it, and left it dangling just beyond the grasp of my outstretched hand.
***
And suddenly I am choked with tears. Do I want pizza? Cake? I shake my head, look toward the window, toward a sunny day and the promise of new things. How can I say—in the middle of this children’s party—that the gesture I just witnessed rings like a death knell in my ears, thrums on my newly put-together life. My own history ushered out in cardboard boxes, in things tossed to the curb, in papers signed—just before the door pressed shut behind me. I carried many of those storied possessions to my new life, but they became mute and unholy things when I lifted them from the box and unwrapped them. They resist the new landscape, sit stiff and uncompromising. They will not belong here…
Later, Karen and I will sit on lawn chairs just where a sudden afternoon sun bullies the flagstone path in front of her house. It is too early for this kind of muscle—it is only March after all—but we are grateful for the brute strength of it. Behind us, up the steps, the kids play behind a glass front door. We are two Holden Caulfields here on the warm stones, gone underground for a few quiet minutes on a Sunday afternoon. We stretch our legs in plain sight of the neighbors, lean back in our chairs, and yet there is a sense of isolation, of aloneness on this suburban street, each house cradling its own family story, its own developing history.
Closing my eyes, I lift my face to the sun and remember my mother lying in a scant patch of sunlight on the crippled porch of a rented house all those years ago, blankets pinned to the posts to block a cutting April wind. We were hungry for so many things back then...
You cannot recreate history, I say.
After a moment, Karen agrees, and lifts a wine glass to thin pressed lips. We are characters in this new story together; we wait to be narrated, move as the plot begins to unfold. So many years erased... And even through our raucous stories, our whispers--shared on a day like this when spring has come early and the sun warms an exposed breastbone--we know only that we were this back then, we were that. But we are something very different now…
We turn and look at each other for a moment and laugh. Behind us, in the house, are the playful cries of children who have not yet discovered us here: two women in jeans and boots, legs crossed at the ankles, living our unexpected lives. Sipping wine from two filmy glasses when we should be doing other things.
Later when he calls, we have moved inside—the sun vanished, the children nipping at our two-inch heels. Karen and I sit for a moment at her table, the Sunday night chores undone. Dinner, baths, lunches for tomorrow. Such an unrecognizable life sometimes… She yells to her son to turn down the TV; I tell my boy to put on his shoes. And the man on the phone says he is back now, back to his current life after a weekend lumbering around the quondam one. I do not know where to put that history, he says, trying to explain how he feels. I recognize the disquiet in his voice and ache to tell him that I am looking for that place, too—that I witnessed a simple gesture at a children’s party that snatched my history from the place I’d stored it, and left it dangling just beyond the grasp of my outstretched hand.
***
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