She wonders at the different worlds. She has been this weekend in the world of a family, 66 names of children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren painted on a wooden box made from an old hutch cabinet, a box of 94-year old ashes buried by a family with stories and songs. They'd left the shovel leaning against the boxwood, scooping dirt into the grave with bare hands, a last gift. All the stories are true, but they aren't all the stories, actually, and afterwards the cousins sit until 4 in the morning telling the rest in those soft working class Boston accents. She craves them now, those accents she tried to hard to lose, folding around her like an overwashed comforter, tucked about sleeping babies on the couch. Instead there is the blinking cursor and the ringing phone, and outside the window the last of the summer tourists, sharing the Washington sidewalks with lawyers and bureaucrats and bagladies and t-shirt vendors, 3 for $10.
The gravestone had waited for thirty years: McLaughlin John F. 1893- 1967 Gladys E. 1903 -
At the end she'd said she wanted to be buried with her parents instead. And then with both her parents and her husband. "You can't do both," they told her, "unless you're cremated." "Oh, how wonderful. I can be scattered to the winds." Or, more precisely, "scattuhed."
No Waikiki seas for Gladys -- just the box with Dad in St. Joseph's Cemetary (the stone filled in at last, 1903-1997), a bit under geraniums with her parents, a spoonful sprinkled over the Wishing Rock at 41 Addington Road (the room above the porch haunted, the present dwellers tell us, in the house that is always home in our dreams), a thimbleful on White Horse Beach, a pinch or two set aside for whenever her Mt. Shasta calls.
And as we spread her dust, we brought our own to her, small baggies of dirt from our scattuhed homes, emptied into the grave. And, of course, a handful of M&Ms for Dad.
That yellow bus, the transportation between worlds. For the five year old, a magical chariot to unknown, exciting universes. For the fifteen year old, the too-slow escape from the drudgery of those same universes, grown cold and small with repetition and dust.
In the morning, I wake just before sunrise, wriggling quietly past my gently snoring friend. The canoes are lined up along the riverbank, a few yards down from the gentle ripples that on the quiet Shenandoah count as rapids. I flip over the nearest one, wade it into the shallows, trying not to splash and wake up anyone in the small humps scattered around the clearing. I pause a moment, tiptoe back to my tent and grab my daypack, a water bottle, a couple of granola bars. They'll probably figure out where I went.
On the high cliffs beside the falls, watching the kayakers swept downstream, rolled over, battered against rocks, muscling again and again through the swirling white. The park ranger explains to the gawkers that the idea is to catch a standing wave, balance on it long enough to inch upstream, circling one eddy after the next, eighteen inches forward for each foot back. Why? From the high rocks, we can only imagine: the stretch of muscle and wits. The adrenaline. Dancing with the river gods, and with the half dozen ghosts reborn in this gorge every year.
And, of course, feeling superior to the rock people, who will turn away, soon enough, to the tug of a small hand: "Can we go now?"
Dancing over the hills into the headlands...watching the bay and the city spread below... too distracting? I wander back over the hills and climb the narrow stairs to my own room, oddly shaped, perhaps with slanted ceilings too low for a normal person. Shaped, undoubtedly, by a childhood stereotype of an attic garret to starve in. There is a skylight, and I can see the stars and the moon. I have seen this room for years in my dreams, with a desk full of cubbyholes and layers of paper on the floor. But even old dreams evolve, from ruled pads and pencil, to notebooks and fountain pen and inky fingers, to typewriter, to this keyboard and carpal tunnel twinges. New to the dream, along one wall there is a low table, with a row of paintpots. No brushes. On the white walls I have taped my fingerpaintings, and my images and words are starting to dance together, like the lights of the city over the waters of the bay.
i am hearing the voices, but maddeningly enough, they're mumbling and I can't quite make out what they're saying. In the background, Han Solo looks for Luke Skywalker on the planet Hoth. We look out the window, past the Christmas lights, for the pizza guy.
So hard to sit back and watch the Galoise Blond, the Marlboro Red and not attack with a water pistol. I remember writing about it, watching myself almost slipping into the haze of Camel filters and the wrong man: camel haiku
Smoke curls, like kisses, gather dangerously... Then, slowly, I exhale.
sex; touch; the weaving of love. Each to its place and time, and yet I would not dismiss any of them: numinous mornings intertwined dreams, and dreamers septisensual.
Chicken boiling for soup on the stove; sourdough rising in the oven. The baby is sleeping; he's good for another hour or so. I look around at the little-kid clutter of four days in a stir-crazy row at home, nursing the boys through viral bronchitis. (Listening in the night for the wheezing, and the coughs, so deep for such tiny bodies, and the steroids, and antibiotics, and that horrible breathing machine again, their small faces pressed behind a green plastic mask. The vapor creeps out the ventilation holes: look, Mom, I'm breathing smoke like a dragon!) I sip at my coffee and contemplate taking down the Christmas decorations. When is it, exactly, that I turned into my mother?
A stranger dies, known and cared for only through these wires; his friend writes that ""All good things come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy" -- Norman Maclean." At my goddaughter's birthday party, an announcement: in August, she will be a sister. I have read earlier of my friend's friend's death; perhaps that is why I feel darkness instead of joy, or perhaps it is because I have just watched her father spank her for jumping on the couch out of sheer birthday exuberance: "It's the only way she'll learn." At bedtime my son snuggles in, talks about death, wonders if the sand will fall into his mouth when he is buried, thinks that might not feel good. He says "I'm not sad about death any more. It's just a part of life. I know I hold her in my heart, but I still miss Grandma Gladys." He asks if they took good care of her, if anyone kissed her goodnight. I say that someone was there to hold her hand and tell her it was time to let go, and remind him that he is special, that we were the last to see her, and help sing her home. We sing "I'll love you forever," and he drifts to sleep, that heavy wheeze making it that much harder for me to stop holding him tonight, to stop my shivers.
Long, long ago, wrapping my arms around a friend, sitting outside on a dark night, as he cried and cried. He shook and wailed and clutched me tight enough to bruise, and I never even knew what it was about, that night, just that I was desperately needed. And I spent twenty years being the stoic one, sane and stable through the tears and the euphoria and the rages. I made, by sheer force of will, the safe harbor, the secure family.
Now it's safe for me to cry, and I no longer need to.
"And this one?" she asks, and idly traces the faint white mark on his forehead, with the gentlest of fingertips. "I ran into a wall when I was a baby. Really freaked my mom and my big brother out, but I don't even remember it. Now, where were we?"
I hold him down in the emergency room, pinning his trunk and legs with my body. His arms are wrapped in a sheet so that he can't flail, but his small fists are clenched. The nurse holds his head while the doctor slowly, so slowly ties those precise black knots, five of them, one after the other. And he screams, and screams, and screams, his face purple, and the doctor blots the blood.
I began keeping fish when a friend was arrested. Four years of dealing substantial amounts of cocaine, and I never connected the dots. I couldn't take any of his dogs, or the new puppies, or the cats, and it was rather too late to try to take care of my friend, so I took his fish. They died, of course, as fish will when you don't know what you're doing, and I bought more fish, and they pretty much died too, and I learned a bit and now the fish mostly stay alive except when they kill each other or die of old age (how long does a fish live anyhow?) or splashing toddler fingers and gifts -- a stick of bubble gun, a walkie talkie -- tossed into the tank, or benign neglect brought on by the passive aggressiveness of knowing that when I leave my house I will leave the fish behind. Just as I close the bathroom door so I can't hear the incessent dribbling in the bathtub that will no longer be mine, so too I let the algae and the nitrate levels grow unhindered, and feed them just often enough to mostly keep them alive.
From Angela's Ashes, the definition of Irish Alzheimers: you forget everything except the grudge. As my grandmother lay dying, my mother asked the nurse why she could no longer speak. The nurse looked startled. "She talks all the time! Mrs. McLaughlin, how are you?" And my grandmother, her eyes closed so that she did not see her daughter, started chattering away. She was speaking, just not to her family.
I wonder, sometimes, at the power of this remembering, this taking the ancient grudge out of your pocket every so often to pet it a bit. It's rather like the old songs and jingles that clutter your dark recesses, slipping out every so often, completely beyond your control. Back, back, foul demon, to the pit that spawned you.
It is one of those chance encounters in the mall. A young woman glances at me; I catch her eye. She is so, so young, and her pity washes over me. Can't she see my life's richness? The giggles I shared with my kid sister in a long ago attic, moonlight and stars twinkling with us through that small window; the tiny baby fingers, smallest of miracles, wrapped around my thumb when my first daughter was born, and then my grandson; the laugh crinkles around my eyes and the corners of my mouth; the unexpected gifts, like a wink from a handsome stranger that I still remember forty years later, as he rode down and I rode up on passing escalators; the joy bubbling over, so strong sometimes that I can shoot it from my fingertips like lightning. I flash her a grin and wheel off giggling to myself.
my bed would be empty if it weren't for the two sleeping children, come to snuggle in because they coudn't sleep either. My head spins with work undone, life maintenance tasks undone, promises unfulfilled. My eyes itch; even my hair is tickling me. I finally shrug into a robe, stumble downstairs, replace those tiny snores with the bubbling fish tanks and the click of the keys. My rationalization for giving up was that I'd work now, but instead I'm sucked into the dancing monitor and all those voices out there, friends and strangers. My real life is a perfectly good one; today was quite magical, ambling hand-in-hand through the city through alternating warm driplets and sunshine after we missed the matinee. And yet, I cannot sleep when the voices call.
We drink coffee on the glassed porch, cup after cup in the quiet of the dripping rain. No words; we are mesmerized by the river through the fog, the birds diving and skimming just above the grey water, the occasional gentle caress to the back of the neck. He is such a gift, this man; I bask in the sheer wonder.
A home of my own. Walls to wrap around myself and my family; a porch swing to glide on and call to the neighbors ambling by; a fireplace to bask before, in the long winter nights, with my love. Huge old trees for swings and houses, sunny spots for daffodils and tomatoes, the tiny patio garden for sage and lavender, forsythia already blooming along the side. Walls, walls and windows, for paintings and photos and crayoned graffiti and pencil-marks measuring growing boys and for letting in sunshine and the breeze and keeping out the rain and cold.
My Aaron's been gone for five days, off to Disney World with his grandparents. They fly in at midnight, insist that I not meet the plane because I'd have to bring his baby brother, insist that he stay overnight with them because I'd have bring him back first thing in the morning. It's all eminently practical, but doesn't quite satisfy this yearning to touch him, smell him, make absolutely sure he's safe. So I get up extra early to go over and watch him sleep, kiss him softly, whisper in his ear that I love him and I'm glad he's my son. He doesn't even stir, but maybe he smiles a little.
The eyes are windows into the soul. Into them float tiny grains of pollen -- tree pollen, grass pollen, flower pollen. Oak, cherry, maple, hickory, apple, zoysia, fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, crocus, daffodil, tulip, windflower.
Grounded, I wriggle my toes deep into the rich brown earth, spreading them through its warm clumps. Tentatively at first, I thread roots through the topsoil and then the subsoil, twine around rocks, explore the dark crevices. Invisibly, I send out a network of capillaries, gather in the sweet water. How parched I was!
Stripping down the wallpaper in my grandmother's house, we would find the scrawled, dated signatures of aunts and uncles on the cracked yellow wall. Lois loves Wally, Millie loves Jim. I make pilgrimages to 41 Addington Road when I'm in Boston, reach through the back fence to touch the wishing rock for luck. The new people (there for twenty years now) say that my grandfather's room is haunted, but he's friendly, and giggle at the discovery of the layers of graffiti, sole reminders of my grandmother's insatiable penchant for redecoration. In my own house, cracking paint over peeling wallpaper over creviced plaster, layers over layers. Who knows what signatures lurk beneath? In demolishing the upstairs walls, the carpenters find a worn 1920's dime (a serious loss back then), a box of shotgun cartridges, an editorial extolling the virtues of Calvin Coolidge and predicting that the roar will last forever. Just like Lois and Wally.
One by one, I wrestle them to the curb: six upholstered armchairs, a daybed, two mattresses, a boxspring, two campbed frames, some curtains and rods. These are the ones that the local furniture bank, the one that provides furniture to newly-unhomeless families, didn't want. They are dusty, worn, ripped, with fifty or more years of living in them. I remember when, after Grandfather died, the family all gathered in the small living room, eating deli provided by the place down the street that Grandfather helped finance because they had proper thick boiled Irish corned beef instead of that transparent New York stuff. There, in the center, Grandfather's chair. There were perhaps thirty of us there, sons and daughters and grandchildren and friends, mostly stnading, a few on the couch around Grandmother, a few on the dining room chairs. But no one else had ever sat in Grandfather's chair, and it sat, empty, all afternoon, yearning for a good cigar, three or four newspapers to swear at, and a lightly chilled manhattan.
I sit on the porch, watch the forlorn chairs, all lined up along the sidewalk for tomorrow's trash pickup, hope that some one of my neighbors will take them home. A homeless-looking man and woman pushing a shopping cart that already has a scavenged chair stop by and look them over, take only the curtains.
On Saturday, there is a yard sale next door to my sister's house. John McLaughlin is moving into a nursing home, and his life is on the sidewalk. I buy a bedroom set -- two dressers and a bed -- and an extra bureau, and split a dining room set with my sister. I take the table and chairs, she takes the hutch and credenza. We write checks to her neighbor Benny on the other side, a lawyer who's always seemed tough and cynical before. Today he is near tears, talking about Mr. McLaughlin. He saved a secretary, just in case Mr. McLaughlin recovers enough to move to assisted living.
My grandfather (Dad, who haunts 41 Addington, not Grandfather, who sits and smokes cigars in an empty chair) was John McLaughlin too, dead thirty years next month. I remember introducing Ruth's neighbor to my grandmother: John McLaughlin, this is Mrs. John McLaughlin. They both cackled.
How much for the dining set?, we ask Benny.
I dunno. A guy told me it was worth as much as $800. I was hoping for five.
Done. We'll pay six.
I like writing checks to John McLaughlin. The bed is too small, the table and chairs not my taste. And I don't have either the space in my construction-zone-house or the money. But it feels right.
Always the comparisons. Why can't you be as popular as Ruth, as entertaining as Tom, as outgoing as Ed? And for them, why can't you be as smart as Hope? Parents, grandparents, teachers going through the litany of names before they got to the right one. (The hardest for Tom, I think -- how the class laughed when his teachers called on "HopeRuthTom.") Ruth inevitably dating boys I had crushes on. It took adulthood to realize that we all have the same genes to be smart, popular, entertaining, outgoing. Too many years to break out of the boxes they put us in. (And still, when Ed's wife and I were due at the same time, it was so important to Ed that his baby be born first: "Just once I'd like to beat you.") How do the boxes get built? I watch my boys, so very different. Aaron is a firstborn: manipulative, creative, cuddly and fiercely independent, deadly serious yet addicted to puns and wordplay, swinging between wildly outgoing and neurotically shy. Jeffrey is the baby: athletic, easy-going, fearless to the edge of recklessness, quick to see the humor in any situation, stretching up his arms to any smiling stranger for a hug.
Aaron is my miracle boy, born after years of infertility; Jeffrey is heart of my heart, the chosen baby at a time when a baby made no sense.
"Who do you love best, Mommy? Me or Jeffrey?"
"I love you because you are you. I love Jeffrey because he is Jeffrey."
We do not talk much. I revel in the long silences. Words are too easy, analysis too facile. I will not put this great gift of a man into a box of words.
"Talk to me," he says. "Tell me what you are feeling."
I close my eyes and feel a breath, a brush of lips, the trace of a finger, the tickle of letting down my hair, at the gateway between body and brain...
Under the floorboards upstairs, the construction crew has found a worn black notebook. Most of it is lists of accounts, the costs of bread and coal in the 1920s, monies owed from the boarders, all in picil. A woman's hand, I am sure.
But on the flyleaf, in pencil, it says:
Birds I saw at the birdbath Saturday May 1930
Tanager, Robin. beautiful longtailed brown thrush Smaller speckled thrush bathed and preened his feathers 2 catbirds. Blue jay. I can't imagine a place being more heaven than my front porch, morning, afternoon or evening, in May. I wonder if there is such a thing as being too thankful. Seems I was before I lost dad and I was so thankful. It seemed I had come to rest. Even when your body sits still and rests your mind goes on automatically thinking dreaming wondering ---
****
Later, on the same page, in ink:
This house is cold. Why? Oh I think winter is the time to visit. Of course one does not have the comforts of home. If I go some where or if some body comes here we don't find it like home in any way, and of course we are bound to howl. But since howling is our nature, why not?
***
There is no more.
I MUST find out who this woman was. And, of course, I must build a pond, if only as a birdbath...
He bleats a bit, and I switch him to heart-side. They swirl all around us in the underground food court: sunburnt tourists, field-tripping boy scouts, office workers skipping out for a Friday afternoon break. I dunk my thumb in the cup of icecream and he slurps it in with his small pink tongue, confused by the new sensations -- cold! sweet! sticky! He sucks with tiny furrowed brow and enormous concentration. Patrick Martin Thomas Langello is three days old. The cycle begins, and ends, and begins again.