Love & Darts (9781937316075) Read online

  A couple, tourists, are seated between me and the fountain. I was watching the fountain so now I am watching the tourists. They are looking around. Looking up at the pecan tree. Looking up at the striped awning that sags over the entry to the courtyard. Looking over at the antique ironwork fountain. Looking at the tiles on the restaurant walls. Looking at the detail in the cast iron fence—cattails and rushes as would surround a stream. Looking at the ironwork of the tables which are frogs bounding up and down splashes of water. Looking at the flagstones and pebbles and the beautiful raven waitress who takes them their water. The lady has cellulite on her thighs and wears comfortable socks. The man is wearing a French Quarter hat that he likely just bought today. They are the explorers of our time. Pacific and glad someone has done it all before. But they are humbled by decision-making. They share one menu. Sweetly.

  There is sun in my wine. But I don’t care. I drink it anyway.

  She brings me my little dish of spaghetti. It looks like a sundae. There is spaghetti in a fancy tiny bowl with a tablespoonful of pesto and a cherry tomato on top. She smiles. And I have to admit it’s hilarious. But thank God she understands.

  Simplicity is a comfort. Familiarity is a friend. The food is a friend. The smell of the cigar is more than a friend, is family. The tourists taking it all in is a comfort. It’s good to be home.

  Well. Back from home.

  He comes through the side gate. “How was the flight?”

  It’s funny to look at another individual—about whom you know everything, whom you know better than yourself—in public sometimes. Some intimate lives don’t translate easily into communal spaces. All that self-correction comes back: Don’t stare. It’s not polite. But instead of loving no person more and cleaving to this one man with a whole heart, sometimes it’s almost as if you don’t feel anything, don’t care, don’t even know the man at all. You sit there together without your tangible connection, like business associates or brothers if you’re lucky. But intellectually you know something real exists, even if it’s immaterial.

  What, if anything, is love? There must be a reason he came and sat down with you, here, at your table. So your years are built on faith as much as anyone’s and without touching anything, not hands, not arms, not legs, not thighs, not lips, no part of the material you, he still reaches in and you remind yourself: This man is yours forever.

  “Fine. The flight was fine.”

  “Sorry I wasn’t there.”

  “How’s work?”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  The waitress approaches him with a kiss on each cheek. His suit is navy and the lining opens up to her. She pours him water and a glass of the wine. They chatter. Then they remember that today shouldn’t really be a blue sky day in May. I wish they hadn’t remembered my dead-dad-grief shit. Just keep chattering.

  And I can tell he doesn’t want to deal with the somber reality any more than I do. He invites her to sit down. He never was that intimate. Especially not with the big stuff.

  Who is?

  She is, that arctic goddess, not Norwegian but Icelandic. She’s got the whole thing down pat. She puts the pitcher down, puts her hand on my shoulder, squats in all those shifting shadows, and says to me, “How’s your mom holding up?”

  I say something back that makes her stand up quickly and go away. A cocktail of finesse, tenuous anxiety, morbidity, and peevishness—she needs to be busy explaining the menu to the tourists anyway.

  My lover’s not pleased with the way I treated his friend. With his eyes he says my behavior’s inexcusable even under the circumstances. But what he actually says is, “Do you want to go away this weekend?”

  “I just got home.”

  “I know. But do you want to go away this weekend?”

  And so it is that faith is unnecessary again. There is real love. There is a true connection. And he does understand, completely. He knows everything that’s worth knowing about whatever it is that’s me. He cares. He shouldn’t but he does. And he is strong in the midst of all the impossibilities of it. He exhales suddenly and puts his hand on my thigh.

  The tears affect my view of the tourists so I blink them away.

  “How did he look?,” he asks.

  It’s hard to say. “He looked—less.”

  “Yeah.”

  I bend over and put my forehead against the cool glass tabletop. The tears come quickly. I pick up a handful of the river pebbles and fend off the banged-up basement memories. The rocks slip through my fingers.

  “What are you doing with those rocks?” He is laughing and a little uncomfortable. I wish he weren’t so uncomfortable. He has a lot of insecurities. He looks from side to side to see if anyone is bothered. But I know and trust the people at the other tables. They’re all right. They didn’t care when I did what I had to do to block out the penetrating joy of a May blue heaven.

  He puts his hand in the middle of my back. I hate that. I like it on one side or the other but not the middle. Why do people do exactly what you hate and exactly what you wish they wouldn’t right when you need them to do the right, best thing? Strange. A distancing thing, I suppose.

  Awareness. Come closer. Get closer. Or you will drift—safe, calm, away, and done (who cares?)—into some lone forever. Get closer. Do it now. Reach out. Don’t descend. Say it. Say to your lover—the man who asked you a thousand times to be truthful, to include your family in your life, to be proud of him, of yourself—say, “I’m sorry. I’m just so fucked up.”

  He will never really forgive you. But he says, “It’s okay. He was your dad.”

  There’s no other. There is a breeze and I don’t want anything from anyone under this happy full blue sky. I don’t want anyone to turn his love my way. So with one jolt of my thigh I jerk his hand off. I interlace my fingers behind my head like my dad used to do, lean all the way back in the chair, and look up. The pecan leaves dance wildly for just a moment in some small way, some impossible way. They are almost free but exist attached, like all of us bound to this life for as long as possible. They shake and tear at their foundation but never break free. Until it is time. It isn’t time now. And when it is time they won’t be ready and they will regret this violent shaking in the wind trying to rid themselves of exactly who they are, in some pecan-leaf way.

  PORTRAIT OF A WHEEL SPOKE BLUR

  An old woman made her yarn on useless beach house days.

  Rhythm rain. Rhythm heartbeat. Rhythm breath and blinking. Her foot worked the pedal. Rhythm rain, breath, and wooden pressing rubber down. Inside on the porch during the rain her hand held a strand between two old purple-veined fingers, rolling, twisting, holding the newly-made thread out at a full arm’s length, and on a spool spun dandelion-dyed woolen-stretched rhythm and wooden pressing rubber down.

  But. That’s later. First the old lady picks through the wool loosening the fibers, getting rid of any debris.

  The waves and seasons and tides moved on. Spring tide. Neap tide. The sun and moon came to her porch painted gray. Under the privacy blinds sea treasure that little hands had run offering and wondrous for generations covered low bookshelves that somehow held up under the weight of so many lives lost. Among them a horseshoe crab, a ten-inch whelk, and an elegant, black, desiccated pouch of skates’ eggs. Sea glass rescued and reclaimed sat amidst this happy desolation that ocean-edge collectors find so soothing. No one walking on a beach—looking, searching, hoping—thinks much of dead droves of sea creatures or of the churning, sandy, blasting hell where sharp brokenness is pummeled to nothing. No. Beachcombers seek only perfection.

  Children built her house. Such children had gone off and come back parents and grandparents. And on the smooth wooden painted floor this great-aunt/grandmother/mother/sister/daughter/wife’s pedal hit in quiet rhythm with wooden pressing rubber down, and rhythm afternoon slant light, and blackberry-stained ghosts spinning down the beach from Penny Rock and Briar Croft, with their headless chickens to scald, and their dead footstep rhythm press
ing memories down from Mile Rock to Port Jeff.

  Perfection. Uniformity. What nonsense and bother for a woman who raised five kids under the moon and sun’s tense constant dance of evasion. Why worry? Just make enough yarn for all the sweaters, all the hats, all the knitted winter days.

  During her breaks she handed out sandwich cookies from special kitchen jars and was part of three hundred familial years on that land against water. She could laugh, joke, carry on, and tell stories until no one could breathe. Old ladies don’t smell like smoke anymore. But with that strand of wool held out at arm’s length and that pedal working over and over and over and over she focused on nothing but uniformity. The pedal hit the hollow wooden porch floor. And the waves hit the pummeled-nothing sand. And the heat hit the middle-of-nowhere house roof. And the steel flag clips hit the factory-made pole. And the bottom of the sailboat hit her gravelly stretch of beach, got pulled up above the endless tide line through innumerable presorted, shell-marked graves. And the rubber-edged garage door pressed down softly against moss and evening as it ended her driveway.

  She was caught spinning and was rhythm witness to summer migrations. Rolling the thread up with two fingers and dropping that spindle again she fed clouds into simple machines after all the required rhythm to tease and coax oily wool—full of seeds and twigs and leftover sheep curls—into something useful.

  She lays some fiber on the bed of nails. It’s called carding. Have you seen it done? Imagine holding two pet-grooming brushes, one in each hand, used to pull hundreds of slight-bent wires across each other and across the wool. Over and over and over and over those wiry cards with handles got caught in each other’s grip as her wrists flicked, her hands flipped, and the wires yanked through a woolen puff until every tangled twist let go. A childhood friend might ask why. The old lady in her housecoat all zipped up modest and warm would answer, “So the little hairs all go in one direction.”

  The kids never told.

  On the deck, where flag shadows flapped on sunny days, the gray paint was hotter than such a light color should be and rhythm feet ran up from their swims, from their high-tide screaming cannonballs off barnacled jetties and their 9.5-rated Olympic swan dives off smooth-topped granite boulders into her jelly fish-strewn seaweed waves. She didn’t have to look up and look out to see all the cousins swarming Dragon Rock and racing to find Swim. She heard those children playing safe in the warm rain. She heard their rhythm laughter as they ran like a troupe of high-wire performers through beach grass along the blistering creosote-coated bulkhead. She heard their plans to sneak up the cliff through wild roses. She heard them chase, race, and pant at the hose rinsing off sandy feet before daring to come inside onto her crewel rugs.

  Rhythm witness the slow heat of afternoon sleep. Wakeful but dreaming. She didn’t care how many little eyes watched the wheel go round or the wooden pedal pressing rubber down over and over. Rhythm dunk lift and twist in the dandelion dye. Rhythm dunk lift and twist all the wool-washing kinds of preparation that she did out back in big steel pans of blue borax water nested in deep, cool shaded sand near a feeder for birds. Just like she did to rhythm dunk lift and twist ten swim suits at the end of the day. Tart lemonade refreshed burnt-skin children that stood watching the sun catch slow drips off the row of hung-up suits. Rhythm breath and blinking.

  Huge screens inhale and exhale on maybe-a-storm’s-coming breeze. Warblers pretend to be lost in the grapevine. The smell of sandalwood drifts through the slow-tossing briar and locust brambles as does the sound of laughter. Some loved ones are playing cards.

  Up and down stairs. Up and down suns. Up and down flags. Up and down drop-spindle, round and round wooden wheel, spinning on, making wool, making sweaters, making blankets, making hats, making mittens, making gloves, making scarves, making socks, making enough layers to keep us all cozy. She was rhythm witness and a BLT; one blue foot on top of the other in the kitchen. Emphysema laughing over on you, holding your arm—with strong, strong hands.

  EVE

  I almost couldn’t bear to watch what I knew was coming.

  She’s growing up fast but you can only learn so much in twenty-six months. When it was over, and it was over so quickly, she just screamed in agony—cried out with her knowing—until I rushed over and grabbed her up off the floor.

  “Oh. My sweet baby girl.”

  Five minutes before I did, I just waited and watched while she discovered her world. I could hardly breathe. But I knew I had to let her do it.

  From a doorway, or a window, I guess, one may look in upon a child, playing alone. One thinks of white canvas, and rain. Her room’s too much like a doll’s house with one side open to the world. She is there in toto: Wrist. Neck. Little folds of skin. Fingers. A big toe folded against the floor. Head tilting—thought and compassion. Before words. Before all the many words, she is there taking it in.

  The doll, another American Girl, is ragged with insipid eyes worn thin from bathing. Her stringy plastic hair is pretend-brushed. Her dress is smoothed by awkward fingers. How can anyone be expected to grip a soft plastic foot with its molded toenails, to let a favored toy girl flop backwards upside-down with her hair hanging, and climb, careful-toddler climb, up onto the window-seat toy box? But my daughter did it and relegated the doll to its little blue plastic rocking chair near the plant on the broad sill.

  Ambivalent and then decided she went down again. A toy car drove through a wooden maze of forgotten blocks.

  Needing it. Having to have it. She grabbed a book. Upside down. Sideways. Right side up. The fermented paper pages were yellowed and old and must have felt scratchy to little fingers, always learning. It is a golden-spined book called The Seven Little Postmen about one special letter they each carry for a distance through wind and rain and driving snow.

  But as the sun streams in, she tires. She lies down on her belly. Her fingers touch the carpet. For the nursery my husband insisted on Berber with two layers of the thickest padding underneath. So my baby girl lolls on that nice floor her daddy made her and the hand goes over and over the places her fingers can reach without stretching before it slows. The little fingers rest easily against the knots in the fabric of a pillow lying on the floor nearby. And she is still for a moment.

  The room slows. I look up and gaze around the room. It seems the toys watch over her. Outside the window summer hits glass like a starling stunned and the elm tree shades that side of the house. I look down at my daughter again. She’s almost asleep with her little cheek resting against the nubby floor.

  I was about to turn and go. Then her head sprang to attention. Again desire. Total focus on something that must have rolled under the rocking horse. And I’m riveted with her in the moment. She wants it. She crawls around. She slides under. She throws out blind hands. Not quite. She tries again. Still she cannot reach it. So she gets up and drags the stumbling rocking horse back enough to go in underneath and push out her find.

  Kaleidoscope. And sunshine through the other window.

  She is on her back. Her feet are in the air. They wriggle. Now they rest on the rocking horse where stirrups are painted. Now on the pillow, then kicking the floor. And her eye looks in as her little hand turns.

  Red. Before she knows the names of the colors they fall over her in their mixed-up rainbows. With that sandy rattle from inside the pretty world turning.

  Brilliant yellow.

  Blue.

  Flowers

  And pink.

  Enthralled, she laughs out loud.

  Uninhibited.

  Amazed.

  Enraptured.

  But curious.

  To be in that world. To find one’s way into that world. Colors tossing easily and free-falling with shaken, circular gravity into the middle of the world. There is a drunken moment when she believes in the place inside. She wants it.

  She takes her eye away. She hits the toy on the floor. Looking in again but her hand covers the aperture and with no light she sees little. She hits it repeate
dly on the floor. And again on the rocking horse.

  She turns it, looks in backwards, and sees nothing. The world has disappeared. But turning it again the furious rage dissipates; she is satisfied. And she has learned how to hold it up once more towards the light for soothing patterns and a falling sound. Again she is amazed. Enraptured.

  But still curious.

  She carries the kaleidoscope over to her toy box. Standing up she puts the handle of the toy box lid at such an angle so as to be able to pry the thing apart. She works diligently. Pushing from one side and then on the other. To be inside. To live in that world.

  Finally!

  A half-smile. She got it.

  Then.

  Beads hemorrhage for an instant.

  Little one-sided plastic nothing mirrors lie motionless.

  The cardboard is bland inside the pretty paper.

  And I cannot get to her fast enough.

  ANGELS ON HORSEBACK

  Kitchens breathe easily in big families. There is a blur of aunts and uncles leaning on counters. Teenage cousins avoid obligation in the basement surfacing only to refill a bowl of tortilla chips. Little nephews play with string cheese on the floor. At the end of the kitchen there is an island where neighbors are sitting on bar stools drinking mai tais, white wine, and sangria. They get up to take turns throwing a doll’s head (a beloved dog toy) into the living room. Charlie, the golden retriever, bounds back to the slow-swirling group and looks around among different friendly faces before choosing one and offering up his drool-covered prize.

  A twenty-six-year-old woman, the new wife of one of the older grandchildren, stands awkwardly apart from the group. The loudest neighbor demands that she come toss the doll’s head. She declines but so as not to seem too standoffish she instead makes a large gesture of maturely closing the basement stairs door in an effort to improve her political position in the familial hierarchy. Who does that surly nineteen-year-old think he is to let a door stand open in the middle of the way as he rushes and rumbles down the steps?