Love & Darts (9781937316075) Read online

  We walk through the barns where my projects once were. Barns I remember cleaning on cold spring days when you shouldn’t really use a hose yet. Barns I remember hiding in. At five and fifteen. They still smell the same. Hay. Dirt. Sunshine. Cement. And Time. No one savors moments like this, moments when you share personal speculations about who will probably win in all the baked goods categories. So. We wander over to the show ring.

  The hogs fill up the arena. We laugh at the smallest children showing the comparatively huge animals. They rush around the ring in their little Wranglers, boots, and tucked-in dress shirts. But we don’t laugh at their age or stature. We laugh in appreciation of their competence. They know everything about showing hogs: shine them; tap them with the little whips; keep the hogs between their bodies and the judges; move the animals along quickly so their ears flop and their haunches bounce on coquettish trotting hooves; and always keep both eyes right on that judge.

  We all fall in love with one tiny skinny boy in particular, because he’s so focused, so intent, so practiced, so self-assured, so competitive.

  He will grow up here, that boy showing those hogs. Knowing how. But we all grew up here. Not Mom. Not Dad. But the rest of us. The woman leaning over the fence grew up here. The man sitting next to me grew up here. I grew up here.

  And so I know everything that happens in this ring. There are auctions. There are dances. There are obstacle course races where greased-up kids hold greased-up watermelons and go under bales of hay, through kiddie pools of water, and shimmy around poles to ride scale-model tricycle-tractors towing stacked cinder blocks on skids. Fair Queen pageants go on here where girls win and girls lose. But today it is the hogs oiled up and glittered in the ring looking very good and showing off.

  The judging is over and there won’t be anything else going on in the ring for a while. So we head back towards the car but stop. Mom wants to walk through the poultry tent. So we do. The birds are preposterous. They are amazing forms of life. They are beautiful and clean and cocky. Before their necks are broken.

  She never asked to move here.

  “The Buff Orpingtons are my favorite,” she says. She holds his hand. And she knows that he’s dying. And she knows the chickens are dying. And she was still careful to park in the shade in July.

  CONVERSATIONS IN SILENCE

  Do you wake up blaming an insidious enemy for your flailing arms, blind aggression, and sweat? Do you wake up in a place unable to cope, understanding that some enemies never show their faces, would rather die than let you have a chance at a fair fight? I hate these demented shadows we cast ourselves with paranoia, self-doubt, and fear. I don’t know if we hide them or they hide us. You’re you, Daddy, but where’s the dignity gone?

  We are combatants, but how? Integrity, autonomy, and free will; my God, what transient jokes. Those shadows cower even if we won’t succumb. There’s no definitive mark of the divisions between us, between you now and who you once were. I don’t know what you call our overlap—solidarity, communion? Or. Just call it a lifetime of memory. And give me some image to assign to these few shared successive hours. I don’t care what image. A photo album will work. An old reel of 8 mm film will work, too. Or, yes, sure, a little postcard, a painting of seagulls dive bombing for breakfast. Yes, that will definitely work. Wedge it in the bathroom mirror frame. Forget about it. No. Don’t. Please don’t, ever. I don’t care. Not everything can be objectified. Just hand me a father to have forever when arbitrary things like misinterpreted train schedules force submission.

  But. Take all of that, that whole thing, and wrap it into one big image. Something enough, you know. Something bold and beautiful for both of us. Like maybe there’s some kind of skyward woman. Yeah. Grace of not-God. Not a ghost. Not a mermaid. But more than an apparition she is out somewhere in the fields singing to herself with everything you never told us. She is limber in her work and asks only for rain. I don’t know who she is. You never really said. But I don’t need to question things that help. What I know is, when she’s here, with you, with me, the wraiths recede. They go as soon as they hear her mandolin.

  And so what if anyone knows my father is not my father anymore—except that he is, but changing.

  Just after dark, on a bike, in September trees seem whiter than black but fading. We cannot wait to get past the present. Except that then he will be gone. There will be only photo albums. No 8 mm reels of film. No big, beautiful skyward woman. So I am coming home to be there, readied for the grief. I sort memories. There are backyard memories, kitchen memories, piano bench memories, Dairy Queen memories, hallway memories, front yard memories, memories from his work, memories from my school. Finally I walk into the bedroom, Mom and Dad’s bedroom, and find a few accessible memories there. With one foot on the floor, asleep before dinner, Dad is stretched out on his back taking a nap in the half-light. Thousands of times he lay like this. His image is etched somewhere deep in the everyday meld of what seems right, good, and just. I will never see him that way again. The house is sold.

  I hear her holler from the fields, “Keep it in the same tense, Missy.” And I laugh as the time twists over its Möbius swirl. It is all now and all removed from time as well. He is lying on the bed at home. He is lying on the couch. He is lying on the cot at Riverhead. He is lying on the floor in the living room. You say they are memories. And so be it. But what part of life would you choose to be most vivid when he is lying in a nursing home, dying? The past is certainly present; it’s what I choose.

  I hate to think you wake up unsure. Do you know what is happening, Dad? Do you blame an insidious enemy for your flailing arms, blind aggression, and sweat? Sometimes I sit here, seven hours apart, thinking of you there, in that chair that gets sterilized twice a day. But then I think of you there in the orange chair in the living room at home or sitting in a chair at our kitchen table grading papers. You had slow times then, didn’t you? So that eases the burden of how slow your time is now.

  She strums a G chord. “Keep it in the same tense, Missy.”

  It is tense.

  For some reason, the idea of your dying bothers me less than the fact that you will never again pour a bowl of Cheerios, top it with Quaker Honey Granola, two spoons of sugar, and milk. You will never have a dripping nose while shoveling snow in the driveway. You will never raise your eyebrows and smile after tickling my feet. You will never stand between me and the television at the most crucial point in a plot. You will never stamp your feet inside the door after coming in from the weather. You will never look skyward through countless vultures spiraling down on an updraft while driving seventy miles per hour on the interstate. You will stop looking for a Cooper’s hawk up high.

  How long the days seem to me sitting here, seven hours apart. No one talks about distance anymore. Everything’s a matter of time travel. There are silent conversations we all have with each other, with the wraiths, with the big, beautiful skyward women. Those conversations are just prayers, I guess, requests for understanding, dreams of being understood. I remember several days after the snows a mess of thistle seed and tiny sparrow foot prints at the base of the backyard feeder. The light was heartening. Do you remember when you cut the tops of the spruce trees for our Christmas trees? Those strange trees. In that morning snow light over thistle and sparrow footprints.

  They say it’s not really genetic.

  That maybe you soaked it in. There are your hands in the lamplight, the veins and tendons and length. Do you think this disease came from those years of washing your hands in the formaldehyde that brought corpses to the lab? I remember you laughing, scaring me by pulling a dead cat up out of a plastic barrel. There must have been fifty dead cats in there all submerged in preservative. You probably shouldn’t have just stuck your bare hand in there like that. It’s that kind of thinking that brings the wraiths. So I stare like you taught me to stare. And she is there again, singing. She is bent over her work and dutiful to the land. She pulls and works the fields. And she does not min
d. And she knows what I never will know about you. She must. Someone must. You cannot go without someone knowing. Who is she? Who have you told your stories to, Daddy? Where can I find her?

  But she’s not telling. She sings, “Come and follow me. I’ll make you worthy. Come and follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.”

  They say people, place, or thing. Fine. And the people hurt. And the places hurt. And things hurt. Your bird books. Your telescope. Your driving lessons. Your camera. Thoughts of your lawn-mowing shoes and red Heifer Project International hat. Your black socks. Your watch. Your desk chair. Those great scissors in your desk drawer. The tools. The shed. The paint. All of it. All of the integuments we knew of you.

  I imagine you so often. Awake and afraid. Asleep and unknowing. A moment of awareness and more and more hours of nothing.

  They told me the name of this thing you have, as if it mattered, as if I might want to know what exactly was happening and how.

  If it were anyone else, I would have looked it up.

  Give him a break, God. Let him be spared too much. Wherever he is, let him hear birds and see wildflowers in the ditches along the way. Make his journey quick. Do not betray him. He has worshipped this world’s beauty for seventy years. Let him be. Give him his freedom. Give him his peace. Give him his dignity back in our memories. Let him be. Just leave him alone. Leave him alone.

  And yet I laugh at that phrase. Our culture’s most protective phrase is so devastating. “Leave him alone.” We jump to the defense, but what do we say? We say, “Leave him alone.” Where is the hope of a connection? Where is the promise of a relationship? Where is the unified front? It must not be. Leave him alone. The most courageous phrase we can utter is for another to be left and to be the only one around.

  So true underneath. So horrible in the living out.

  But She is there, Dad. Don’t worry. She is waiting with some kind of release. She sings and mends her nets. She works the fields of the sky and undoes the doing up. She must not be afraid, like I am. She must not be buried alive by this, like I am. She must already know. So I trust her. I have to. Become your own time of leave him alone. Become your own beautiful way. And even if I’m left alone I will be with you tiling the floors, painting the doorjambs, picking out Christmas trees, sweeping the gravel off the driveway, trimming the juniper bushes, and watching so many birds fly.

  VARIANCE

  Men vary. There are those who move into this world with a blithe confidence. And there are those who, like myself, are weary at the neck of the hourglass.

  I’m waiting for my lover in the pebbled courtyard of our fifth-favorite restaurant. We chose it not because it’s cheap but because it’s close to his work.

  I hate iconic, banal shit like my father’s dying. Part of me even hates this May blue sky.

  I am aware of my own presence so much sometimes. It’s like I’m here, I’m me, but I’m also this self-consciousness, this constant kind of correction. Self-control. Self-discipline. Self-awareness. All of it right here under this pecan tree. And not only here. Everywhere I go it goes—walking, working, even going home. Especially going home. I just keep cutting away what’s unacceptable and expressing what others will tolerate, can handle, will accept, will love—well, will at least not criticize.

  Today is a clean day that makes you want ice water and a swim of absolution. Above me—not just me—there is one of those full blue skies that you always want to remember in November.

  On days this gorgeous it seems possible to capture the beauty of that kind of atmospheric blue. Wouldn’t it be nice to keep some bit of it, some twist, some lovely description of the sky, some transcendent pleasure that transports you deeper, further, and with ease? Go ahead and try. Try to keep some of the sky for days when crappy gray cloud cover obscures the light. You won’t possibly be able to remember this much blue. You cannot hold any great sky in your mind for long. The frustration of the attempt is too much. In November you’ll just get pissed off doing your best to envision a May sky.

  Don’t bother with any duality of the material and the mind. What’s the point? Let the blue sky go. Get rid of it. Get rid of it and the memories of your dad listening to The Allman Brothers Band in the basement. Get rid of the lyrics that keep coming back: ‎Turn your love my way.

  Don’t do it. Don’t let him win. Don’t let the world’s pressure separate you from who you are. Hold on. Stay here. Don’t give up. Not again. Even if you were the second inadequate person in your father’s righteous world.

  The blue sky is unrelated to the material you and unrelated to your dealing with your immaterial dead dad shit. Grief is nothing. Your father’s dying without knowing the real you is nothing. It does not matter.

  Prove it?

  Fine. But can it be done? Can any of this leftover love-like destruction be rationalized?

  Because first off: The lovely, spring blue sky is not unrelated to material you because you're breathing it; you're alive inside of all that air. Fine. So. There's a real interaction there that cannot be denied.

  Secondly: That May blue heaven is not unrelated to immaterial you because the color of the sky affects your mood. It lifts your spirits when you're dealing with your dead-dad-grief shit.

  Just get over it and cope. Plenty of people have secrets.

  And this suffering is only like clothes. So. Get up; put on your shoulds.

  Something is in conflict. You’re sitting at a table under a pecan tree, the sky is cheering you up, but you shouldn’t be cheered up. Press your arm over your eyes. Stay with the appropriate grief that makes you a better person. You need the gravity. You need the sadness. You need the import. There are shoulds for everything, especially now with all this dead-dad-grief shit. Don’t you dare feel the wrong emotions right now. This is no time to enjoy the expanse of a blue above and beyond who and what you are.

  You most need the situation to make sense. If a tragedy has occurred, it should be tragic. You should feel the tragedy of an unexpected death. Your father’s unexpected death is tragic. You should not be filled with joy, with gladness, with thanksgiving, with relief, with finality and freedom. Something is wrong. Amiss.

  And don’t whisper anything long-suppressed like, That’s what happens when the abuser dies.

  You cannot admit gratitude, satisfaction, glee, or any spirit of karmic vengeance. That would be wrong. And yet. What you feel is that whole fantastic May blue sky filling you with renewed life.

  You smile your liberated loneness into the blue, alert and ready to wipe that smug smirk off your face if the waiter walks by. And you should do it now anyway because your partner will be here soon. He won’t understand if you’re sitting there all giddy, happy, and free. So. Sit up. Stop gloating about your well-deserved freedom under the big blue sky. Just be glad, proportionally glad, that it’s not tropically humid today. That the air is easy. And that you are no longer alone dealing with your dead-dad-grief shit. You’re you. A person who can say to himself: I’m waiting to meet my lover here.

  River pebbles are the floor of the courtyard and square stepping-stones make a path for the waitress to make her rounds like a geisha bending her head to miss pruned cherry branches burdened with their blossoms. The tables are old iron and glass. The menus are beautiful, written in an almost illegible script. The fountain makes it difficult to eavesdrop. The wine is white and doesn’t mind at all.

  He’ll be late.

  So you have time to recover and find yourself again in the moment.

  Take the pill. At least take half of it.

  Don’t you realize? You’re the first person now.

  And, yeah, I’m glad to be back in New Orleans. There is a lady dressed in a bright pink Irish linen dress and a broad white hat walking two greyhounds. They are like deer and stop to stare at me through the cast iron fence. She moves on easily and they follow, leaving the good restaurant smells behind. The gentleman at the corner table chews his cigar and snaps a newspaper in reaction to an editorial. A waitr
ess appeases him with an artichoke and watercress salad. He puts the paper away and thanks her. “Thanks.” The cigar, not quite out, lies forgotten in an ashtray. The smell reminds me of my uncle, my father’s older brother who shook uncontrollably, silent through the funeral.

  But I’m not home anymore. I’m here where two sisters celebrate a thirty-something birthday with too many drinks in the afternoon. They don’t usually drink in the afternoon, you can tell. They probably don’t usually drink at all. But it’s a thirty-something birthday and so the table rattles between the slipping elbows and the patio stones. They laugh easily and look alike when they do.

  Shadows dance across the white napkin in my lap. The leaves of the pecan tree are high above my head, so the shadows are subtle; the grays smudge into each other. Their dance is a flirtation with the wind and falls into my napkin. Half an alprazalam half an hour ago helps sooth the shadows. And I succumb.

  “Have you decided?” She is beautiful like a raven on a glacier in the sun. And I cannot look at her. She is a dancer just getting through school with this job. We’ve spoken before. She knows my friend—my partner, my lover: well, I guess he is my friend—better.

  “No. I’ll just wait to order. Except for a smidge of spaghetti. Can I just have some plain noodles on a fancy tiny dish with a little pesto? Call it a salad and forgive me.”

  “Sure.” She fills up the water again. “Are you doing okay?”

  I smile.

  And she gives up. “More wine?”

  “Bring the rest of this bottle and chill another. He’ll be here soon.”

  The gentleman in the corner decides on dessert. It seems he has opted out of the main course in order to spend his calories on a piece of pie. Good decision.