The Shelf Life of Fire

by Robin Greene

  “You okay?” I ask.

  Jill looks at her papers again, embarrassed perhaps by her strong emotion. “Got to go,” she says. “Catch you later,” and walks away.

  “If I don’t see you, have a good time in Iowa,” I call to her, regretting my tone. I watch as she shuffles down the hallway. “Eat some corn or something.” Not the smartest thing to say, but the words are already out.

  “Yeah,” Jill calls back, as I see her turn the corner. I stand there for a moment, realizing that I’ve failed her.

  Before heading to our secretary, Laura, I stop at the faculty lounge to check my mailbox. Nothing. That’s good. And when I bump over to her office, Laura’s on her cell phone, tapping at her computer, a procurement form on her screen.

  “Okay. Tomorrow, I’ve got another one.” Laura lifts her head, nods in my direction, pulling out a piece of paper from a stack and handing me a pen.

  I read the paper; there’s been a $10.24 charge for supplies that should have come out of the English Department’s budget, not the Writing Center’s. It’s not a lot of money, but I’ve spent almost my entire Writing Center budget, and I’m not sure that I can afford it—not before July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year. That said, even if the Writing Center gets charged, the bill will be paid. It’s for English department supplies I’ve purchased at the university store, so the money transfer won’t involve the exchange of any currency. Funny money. I sign the form.

  “Thanks, Laura,” I say. She barely looks up at me. She’s got bleached blond shoulder-length hair, and she’s wearing a low-cut tight-fitting polyester print dress, with a thick belt around her waist. She’s about thirty-five, married to a truck driver, ex-military, and they have four kids.

  “No problem,” Laura says. But then she does look up, directly at me. “You okay?” And when she says this, I think, I’m not.

  “Absolutely,” I say. “Why?”

  “You know me. Psychic. You sure?” But now her office phone is ringing, so she tells her cell caller, “Hang on,” puts the phone on her desk, and wheels around to answer the school landline. “Hello, this is Laura DeAngelo, secretary for Arts and Humanities. How may I help you?”

  I’m already out the door.

  In my office, tears come again. I’ve shut the door and opened the windows, deciding against the air conditioning. I look out into the courtyard and notice that the grass is overgrown and weed-filled. There are a few picnic tables off to the side, and I see that one of the Writing Center consultants is meeting with a student. The Writing Center, soon to be relocated in our library, is now located in what used to be the print shop, on the first floor of this, one of the university’s original buildings.

  I’m thinking about my brother. Thinking that I don’t know if I love him. I’m back in 1969 and then, further, back in 1959. My brain isn’t honoring boundaries.

  Students pour out of morning classes and explode into the hall outside my office. No one will need me or know that I’m here, so I fight the impulse to pull myself together. Instead, I sit, let the tears come, and decide to be with everything—even sorrow. My mind bleeds memories.

  “Let go,” I say aloud. Then again, louder, “Let go.” And there’s a perverse strength in relinquishing control. I breathe and turn the air conditioning off. The air quickly becomes hot and real.

  I open my laptop but don’t check email. Instead, I write. The heat takes me back to my last summer of camp—again 1969. I signed on that year as a CIT—counselor in training—and my job was to teach horseback riding. It was a dude ranch camp designed for city kids, and I’d been a camper there the previous two summers.

  But the camp was strange, mostly because there weren’t many campers, and it was badly organized. In fact, we had fewer than fifty kids each summer, and the swimming pool was a round concrete hole in the ground filled with unchlorinated water from a nearby stream. The cabins were rundown, the food terrible, and there was little supervision. We had two or three poorly paid counselors, and there was a large lodge-like building that served as our main rec room upstairs and dining hall downstairs. We had no official camp song, not much of a daily schedule, and our horses—mostly quarter horses—were trucked in from the West. The owners—whomever they might have been, because no one ever met them—would hire cowboys from Wyoming and Montana mostly, and they’d caravan in horse trailers with about fifty horses, one for each camper, onto the property. Many of the horses were wild, and the cowboys stayed until they—and some of the campers—broke them. The cowboys were rough, the horses ornery, and nobody seemed concerned with personal liability. I can’t imagine the camp was accredited.

  It was a late June morning when my parents drove me to meet the camp van in Valley Stream by Green Acres, the outdoor shopping mall. Dennis didn’t come with us, but he was going off to another camp the following week. Which camp, I can’t remember. But Dennis never liked country life or horses, so he was probably off to a baseball camp held right outside the city limits in Putnam County.

  There were five other kids at the van. We stood in an asphalt parking lot, clutching our knapsacks and stuffed animals, said our goodbyes, gave and received hugs, tucked our luggage into the back of the van, and off we went. The driver, an old squat Jewish man, held a dead cigar stub between his teeth, and every time we began to sing, he’d shout, “Knock it off!” which would stop us for a moment, before we’d begin again. After a while, the driver ignored us.

  I sat with the teenager who was to be my camp counselor. Her name was, like mine, Rachel, spelled like mine, and her last name, strangely, was Rosenfeld, my mother’s maiden name. Rachel had long kinky hair, and as soon as the van was out of parental sight, she lit an unfiltered Camel and offered one to me.

  “I don’t smoke,” I said.

  “Good idea,” she said. “They’re supposed to be bad for you.” But she looked unconvinced, took a deep drag, then blew her smoke my way.

  I told her that I was a CIT and my job was to provide riding lessons.

  “Great,” Rachel said. “You can teach me.”

  “Can’t you ride?” I shifted my position and opened the top two buttons of my plaid, Western-style shirt. The van, although air-conditioned, was pretty hot.

  “Nope,” she replied and opened her own shirt, beneath which was a tight-fitting tee shirt that read, “Get Clean for Gene.” I had no idea the message referred to Eugene McCarthy, but it was tie-dyed and looked cool.

  “So, why’d you come? Dude ranch and all?” I asked.

  “To meet some cowboys.” Rachel looked at me and grinned with crooked teeth. I could see something wild in her, just beneath the surface.

  “Yeah, but they’re not guys to date. I mean they…”

  “Watch me. Gonna light their fire…” She laughed, took another drag on her cigarette. I leaned back against the vinyl seat.

  k

  A knock on my office door jars me. I say nothing but open it, and Laura is standing there with a small stack of boxes in her arms.

  “These are for you,” she says. “I was just about to unlock your office and put them here. No room in my office. I knocked but didn’t think you were in.”

  “Yeah, I’m just finishing up. Thought I’d get some work done.”

  “Hot,” she says. Why don’t you turn on the a/c?”

  “Guess I forgot, but I’ve got to leave anyway. I’ll take these,” I say, relieving Laura of the boxes. “Thanks for bringing them.”

  “No problem,” she says. I can see that she really wants to know what’s inside them, but I’m not in the mood to indulge her. Two boxes, I already know, contain review copies of texts from publishers. Everyone in the English department receives these and usually sells them to book buyers who come by periodically. But two boxes are small and unmarked—perhaps supplies? Not in the mood to deal with them, I stack all the boxes by my bookcase on the floor.

  “Have a good afternoon, Laura. Thanks again,” I say through the open doorway. Class in session, the hall
is empty now, shadowy as I hear the tap-tap of Laura’s high heels grow fainter as she returns to her office.

  ten

  It’s Thursday evening, day five without Nick. Just a few months ago, in spring, we bought a big flat-screen TV, and at night when I’m tired, it’s a magnet, and I collapse in front of it. We’ve given up cable, so now I watch Netflix and a few stations we get with the external antenna Nick installed on our sunroom roof.

  Also, I’ve decided to knit slippers this summer—for Christmas, birthdays, and for charity. We usually do knitting service projects in the School of Arts and Humanities. Dot, at the knitting shop, has offered to help me execute the simple pattern she’s found. I’m not a very deft knitter, but I find the repetition of building stitches, row after row, therapeutic, offering me a more productive use of my downtime.

  I’m on the couch, watching Hit and Miss, with its very appealing transgender hit-man-turned-woman. Again, I’m riveted to the nude shots of her—with her lovely breasts and penis. In fact, I can’t take my eyes off of her. She’s beautiful, and even her penis looks feminine. I find her attractive.

  With the remote in hand, I freeze the frame as she undresses. Jake is asleep on the rug, and the living room is bathed in evening light. I’m on a knit row, making my first pair of slippers.

  I think of maleness. A latent masculinity I’ve always felt was mine. I come to the end of the row, put my knitting on the coffee table, and get up, unzipping my bathrobe, letting it fall to the floor. I close the blinds and turn on our small red lamp, before pulling off my nightgown. Naked, I look at my body, then at the body in transition, so large on the screen. She’s telling me something.

  Behind the penis resides softness, regret, and seed memory—an opening, a female part, a mouth, a center, a vagina. I look at the screen, the flaccid penis in its bed. I think: Inhabit me—knife, desire, clock, leaf. Moments are tongues, liquid words. Reduction, boil, refusal, placeholder, voice of exclamation, worry root, dirt and goblet, necklace, solace, thyme.

  Crazy thoughts? Disjunctive? Or creative? I unfreeze the frame. Is the actor transgender? Is the penis fake? But I’m no longer really watching; my attention is elsewhere. Free associating, giving myself permission to think and be whatever comes to mind. A writer’s impulse? I put on my nightgown, bathrobe, grab a pen and a pad of scrap paper from the kitchen, where our landline used to be. I write:

  I can’t remember you,

  father, who died four years

  ago and, at the end, refused

  to see me, although I held

  a ticket in my hand.

  I feel your leather

  arms around me,

  your hug, sacrament

  and karmic blame.

  But there is salt on my sandals

  and dirt in my socks.

  What did I know of your soiled

  grief, its buttons, its elbows?

  On my reckoning wheel, childhood

  had shovels and spades, and my mouth

  was pressed to stone; we had raw

  mornings, where windblown prayer

  flags mixed with our laundry. Now

  I can breathe, but the line grows taut;

  shadows press into blurred memories

  until the door jamb breaks, and

  the door itself becomes unhinged.

  Clearly, I’ve gone over the edge, I think. And now, I can’t quite find my way back. I’m still on the couch, watching TV, I remind myself. It’s still Thursday evening. I’m still Rae.

  I read over my poem and see my father’s face. The father of my early childhood. As I grew up, he faded into the background, his presence becoming less and less distinct.

  Born Bernard Bloomberg, my father was a good-looking boy who grew to be a handsome man. He was the only child of Bessie and Sam Bloomberg, who were married in the mid-nineteen twenties. They lived in a Bronx apartment, and I have a postcard in my desk drawer with their address. Once I looked up the building on Google maps and found that the building was still standing and that one of the apartments was for rent, so I took a virtual tour. The building, constructed in 1926, must have been new when they moved there. Most of the apartments are two-bedroom, and the one I toured was on the second floor.

  256 Walton Avenue, New York City, the postcard reads. No zip codes back then and not even an apartment number. The card is addressed to Master Bernard Bloomberg, with a postal stamp of 8 AM, July 27, 1936. My father would have been seven years old when he received this, with a picture of “American Falls, Illuminated, Niagara Falls, N.Y.” on the front and its short, impersonal message on the other side:

  Dear Bernard, I hope you are enjoying your vacation. I am enjoying mine.

  Remember me to Mother.

  Love, M. G. Plunik.

  I turn off the TV. I’ll feed Jake, then myself—something easy, like eggs, an omelet maybe—but first, I want to pull out our old photo album, the one in which I found the postcard and photos of my dad as a boy and young man. Back when I was a girl, my father was so kind and gentle. Yet I never appreciated him. My mother was the parent in charge, and she got everyone’s attention. Even when he was dying, she was the one who stayed front and center.

  In the upstairs linen closet, I find an old photo album and page through it, stopping on photos of my dad—baby, young boy, college student, new dad. In one photo, I notice a halo of light around his face, as if the cosmos were gifting him—with kindness, insight, faith. Then I remember that last week in yoga class, we chanted in Sanskrit the words, “I am light.” The chant stayed with me. Was my father light? And what would that mean? I make a note to self: figure it out.

  Behind a plastic box of wrapping paper, I find another album with my dad’s childhood photos and locate a photo of my dad’s father, my paternal grandfather, as a young boy standing by a tricycle with a huge front wheel. The photo is stuck on a thick cardboard page, and I can’t pry it loose to check a date, but it must be circa 1900. I flip to another stiff page where my dad, with thick, wavy hair, smiles in a blurred cream-colored background; it’s a professional photograph. The album ends with a photo of my grandfather’s semi-pro baseball team. The picture was taken in upstate New York, and this one is also stuck, probably taken around 1920, before he and my grandmother married. Dead now. Both of them. All these young men in uniforms, on a field, about to play baseball. All dead.

  I am light, I think as I look out the bathroom window and see that it’s now dark. Everything dies—even the light.

  k

  When Nick calls, I’m in the bathtub. Quickly, I grab a towel to pick up my cell phone on the sink counter. I’m wet but not cold.

  “Hey,” he says. “How was your day?”

  “Good,” I reply, cradling the phone between shoulder and neck, drying myself off. Now I’m chilled. “And it’s not over,” I say.

  “For me neither. We’ve got some readings tonight and tomorrow, Friday. I’m supposed to read tomorrow, too. Some poems.” Silence. I hear voices in the background.

  “Nervous?” I ask.

  “Not really.”

  “New work?”

  “No. I’ll read three published poems, that’s all. But I did begin something new today—creative nonfiction. Also, worked on a story and got out a submission.”

  I hear soft rain, look out the window, and see clouds gathered. And as I walk from the bathroom, Jake sleeps on our king-size bed. Still wrapped in the towel, I sit down to pet him. He thumps his tail and struggles to open his sunken, sleepy eyes.

  “Well, that sounds productive. Good you’re working,” I say.

  “Trying to.”

  “Me too. I did some organizing. Didn’t make it to the gym, though.” But there’s little energy in my words. They’re soft like the rain. Light rain, I think. I am light. But clearly, it’s not true. I’m heavy cotton wool. I’m the old winter mittens in the cardboard box, tucked away on a high shelf in the hall closet.

  “Well, I should go,” Nick’s voice is soft. “Sure yo
u’re okay?”

  “Absolutely,” I say. “You?”

  “Absolutely,” Nick repeats. We both get it: neither of us is doing well.

  “Have a good night. Good luck with your reading. Catch you tomorrow,” I say, now lying with Jake on the bed.

  “Love you. Be okay. Enjoy your time. Don’t work too hard. Chores can wait,” Nick says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Good night. Love you, too.”

  I lean back on the bed and remove my towel. Naked again. And depressed.

  eleven

  It’s around 10:00 p.m. when I get into bed to read. But for some reason, I’m still thinking about gender, about Hit and Miss, what it means to identify as male or female.

  When we were in college together, Nick and I saw an old animated film supposedly made by Walt Disney and shown in the Student Center. I don’t recall if the short film, a ten-minute clip, was shown with other films or was part of a series. But I do remember that the film was black and white, very grainy, made perhaps in the 1920s, and featured two characters—a male mouse with such a long penis that he could skip rope with it, and a female mouse, who before she has intercourse with the male mouse, needs to empty her vagina. And as she does, out come old shoes, jewelry, plates, and cups, a car tire—an endless assortment of junk. The male mouse, of course, can’t enter her until she’s emptied.

  The archetypical quality of the clip—the male’s exaggerated organ, so long that it facilitates and prohibits movement—becomes mythic and the defining feature to which the male self is subservient. For the female, the vagina becomes the endless repository, the well of self, holder of all things, literal and metaphorical. The vagina is subversive, mysterious, object of fascination, holder of secrets, source of power.

  I pick up Anna Karenina, the novel I’m reading, and think about Anna’s longing for romance. What part does gender play in that? Is romance both giving and receiving equally for men and women? Or are women receiving more than giving—an acting out of our biology?