Beautifully heavy.
Like the bones of one thousand grandmothers.
Heavier, says Brother.
Has Gloria ever traveled to The Balkans?
Many times, says Brother.
This is why I love her, says Brother.
Whereas Gloria’s ventures are fraught with peril, mine are fraught with no peril, says Brother.
This makes Gloria better than me, says Brother.
And me.
And you, says Brother.
Jump into the pool, says Brother.
It appears Grandmother has built a ship.
Normally, says Brother, shipbuilding takes place in a specialized facility called a shipyard.
In this case, says Brother, Grandmother has used the pool.
Jump into the pool, says Brother. Afterwards you can climb aboard.
The ship holds upwards of thirty men.
Grandmother is perched on the bow.
Very perched, says Brother.
Very, very perched.
I have never seen Grandmother so perched.
When she looks up, says Brother, we’ll all be dead.
Even Gloria?
Especially Gloria, says Brother.
Such is the suddenness of living, says Brother.
And loving?
Same thing, says Brother.
Such is the suddenness of loving, says Brother.
Jump into the pool, says Brother.
THE ROSTER
I should never have accepted the gig at Shadow College. I was young, though. Foolish. When I received the offer I was teaching literature and poetry as an adjunct at a large university. I was underpaid, the permanent faculty despised me, and the English Department secretary had started refusing me letterhead. My students had disappeared, as had the chair in my office. My evaluations were blank at best. Occasionally an associate professor would give me the finger in the mailroom. Even the director of creative writing who loved everybody could not love me.
So I took the gig.
Shadow was a small, private college. I was told there was a forest nearby, and a good bookstore in town. My teaching load would be light. My salary would quadruple. I’d be on the tenure track and could look forward to sabbaticals and health benefits (even dental). I was thrilled, as I’d had a terrible toothache for years. The students were described as “non-traditional,” which I took as older. Older is good, I thought. The older the better.
I was given only one class to teach the first semester so that I had enough time, as the dean put it, “to find my bearings.” He brushed some dust off his bowtie and touched me on the arm. “We don’t,” he insisted, “want your creative work to wither away due to the demands of the coffin.” “Don’t you mean,” I asked, “the classroom?” “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I said,” he said. “The demands of the classroom.” He blushed. “God forbid,” he said, “we should be the fly in your ointment.” He pointed me in the direction of my classroom and gave me a little push. “Consider us the ointment in your ointment,” he said. “As a matter of fact,” he continued, “consider our college a flyswatter of sorts. A surplus of ointment.” Never for a moment did it seem this dean believed he had taken the idiom too far. Never in my life did I respect a man more.
I felt idealistic for the first time in years. And with this feeling I entered the classroom. The students were already seated. Their heads already were bent over their notebooks. This would be, I thought, a slice of very terrific cake. Based on my experience, the fact they even were present was astonishing. I introduced myself and handed out the syllabus. Because this was an advanced creative writing workshop, I emphasized the success of the class depended on the students. I was merely there, I promised, as a guide who would abandon them at the most beautiful and terrifying point of their journey. I asked them to go around the room and introduce themselves.
Emily was first. She held her notebook over her face. Only her eyes showed. She was barely audible. I caught something about god and punctuation. She spoke as if there were a dash permanently lodged in her throat. I was relieved when the notebook slipped from her tiny, white hands and with great clarity and longing she began to speak of a master who I took for her muse. This is good, I thought. This one’s got passion. Bruno was next. In lieu of introducing himself he stood up, walked over to the light switch, and began flicking on and off the lights. “Bruno,” I said, “please sit down.” He sat down. He was very frail. He spoke in Polish. He slowly peeled a hard-boiled egg, and as he peeled I knew somewhere deep in my heart he wrote of attics, and fathers, and birds. Walter was next. He was round and sad. He put his arm around Bruno and generously volunteered to be his translator. It would be a burden, he admitted, but a necessary task. Unfortunately, he could not stay. He’d be back next week, he promised. He wrung his hands. He apologized. He had lost a briefcase that contained his writing. He was nervous. He hoped it would be returned to him. “Eternally,” he added. He loped out the door, mumbling something about a collector and angels. Samuel could not go on. “You must go on,” I said. “We are going around the room.” Samuel agreed he must go on. But he could not go on. Gertrude was next. There was something about her hair that suggested she dwelled in a continuous present. She spoke in imperatives, and as she spoke she drew tiny boxes in her notebook. Although nothing like the others, she seemed to belong to them inexplicably. And finally came Franz. He confided to us he’d awoken that morning to find himself sitting in the classroom. He apparently had no idea how he’d gotten there. He was clearly shaken. He asked that we not bring apples to class. He was terrified of apples.
To say these students seemed familiar would be a vast understatement. The smell of old books drifted off them and combined to make what I can only describe as a tiny maelstrom in the middle of the classroom. They seemed underlined. If a face could be the face of a person stared at too long, this is how their faces appeared.
I loved them. I loved them fiercely. The fact we met only once a week quickly became unbearable. I could not get them out of my head. In class they barely noticed me. “Walter,” Emily would say, “tell Bruno to capitalize the horse.” “Which one?” asked Walter. “The one that becomes very small like a wooden toy.” “And while you’re at it,” bellowed Gertrude, “tell Bruno to stop drawing pictures of my feet.” “Drop it,” warned Walter. I loved how they were as tender as they were harsh with one another. Many times I tried to speak, but my mouth filled up with stones. They carried on as if I wasn’t there. “What,” I once heard Franz whisper to Emily, “is Samuel waiting for?” Samuel often stared out the window as if someone was coming soon to pick him up. “Hey Franz,” said Samuel, “I heard you.” They wrestled for a few minutes and then broke into the strangest laughter I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. “Emily,” said Gertrude ignoring the boys, “maybe you should consider turning these poems into prose poems.” “In your dreams,” said Emily.
I would see them moving down the halls of the English Department in deep discussion and I’d say, “Hi guys,” but they never saw me. Never heard me. I became feverish with longing. I stopped sleeping, stopped eating, stopped bathing. Sometimes in class I would lie down in the middle of the floor and hope they would pile on top of me. Smother me. I wanted to be the coats they wore. I wanted to be the scarves around their necks.
I began following them home. One by one. Once I even pressed my lips on Samuel’s window, and left behind a slightly shaken, mushy lipstick mark. I carved my name into a tree in Gertrude’s yard. I rummaged through Emily’s trash. I left a box of macaroons on Bruno’s porch with a note that read forever yours. I collected train schedules for Franz and stuffed them in his mailbox. And because Walter never did find his briefcase, I bought him a dozen of them—expensive leather briefcases that cost me three months of my salary. I left them on his doorstep, knocked, and ran away.
Like most stories of obsession this one doesn’t end with scandal or murder or permanent ruin. One day, in the middle of the semester
, I just packed up my bags and took the bus to my mother’s. I was at the end of my rope, and it was either the void or I’d have to shinny back up. Retrace my steps. Get out of there quick. Go back to the beginning. No one, to my knowledge, ever realized I was gone. What mark could my absence possibly make? I was obsolete from the very beginning. Except for that one beautiful moment when I asked Bruno to please sit down and he sat down, did those students ever hear one word that came out of my mouth? “And that time,” my mother reminds me, “when you told Samuel he must go on but he could not go on.” She says this to console me. “Yes,” I say. “That was fantastic.”
After my short stay at Shadow College I quit teaching. I work in a post office now. Tomorrow they issue the Eclipse Stamp. I hear pressing on it reveals the image of the full moon. Once it cools, it will return to a white halo around a black disk.
THE TAXMEN
When the taxmen come for Father’s heart, Father is on the phone. I hear him say, “they’re here.” I hear him say, “keep the bones.” And then there is a long pause and then he says, “in a bucket, a bucket.” And then he says something about the moon, or ruin, or home. Lately, Father’s skin has seemed the color of fog.
Already his suits have been confiscated. His beautiful long beard shaved. Even the crows have been taken, one by one. There are so many debts. For failure to satisfy, they have already seized Mother. She writes to us from where they keep her, but her letters are gaunt and drowsy. When she signs her name it is like her name is drifting away. The taxmen are knocking. They are shouting for Father. “Waldbaums, open up!”
Father looks at me and I nod, and by nodding I encourage him to be himself.
Father takes a deep breath. Father looks down. In a small voice he asks, “Did I not hold each of you to my bosom? Did I not bring you the bouquets of lamb’s ear you specifically requested? Did I not kiss you in the dark one thousand times?”
“Open up, Waldbaums!”
And then even softer. “Did I not draw each of you in charcoal forever?”
“Open up, Waldbaums!”
And then even softer. “Did I not carry your babies from the village as the village burned?”
“Open up, Waldbaums!”
I am beginning to wonder how it is possible for Father to owe this much.
“Open up, Waldbaums!”
It’s useless. Father tells me to open up. He stands behind me. Since morning, Father has been getting smaller. Yesterday he towered above me. Now he comes up to my knees.
There are rows and rows of men in short-sleeved button-downs as far as I can see. They spill into the neighbors’ yards. Each waves a small red flag. They sit cross-legged. They are smiling.
“Go away,” I shout. But Kraus, their leader, who is on horseback, looks past me. “We have come for your father’s beautiful heart,” says Kraus. He is drinking 2% milk straight out of the container. “Step aside,” he says. “This feels like a dream,” says Father. “But this is no dream,” says Kraus. “This is as real as your life will ever get.” There is milk gathering at the corners of Kraus’s lips.
I begin to wonder what Kraus would look like frozen and thawed. His head is so small and pointy, like a steeple. In this way he seems vulnerable to lightning.
“Governmentally,” says Kraus, “we have permission this year to go in deeper than usual. Please hand over your heart of the matter, your matter of the heart, your matted heart, your heart psalm, your heart palm, hand over your palm, close it, close it up, Waldbaums, hand over your fist, your fist the size of your heart, your fistfight, your burst heart, your heart thirst, don’t thrust it, Waldbaums, hand it over tenderly, it is your most tenderest thingamajig, wrap your heart in a handkerchief with black hearts all over it, hand over your blackest, blacked out heart, your happily ever after heart, your hollow heart, hand over chambers one through three, four you can keep, four you can use for your personable needs, your perishable needs, also the valves, Waldbaums, hand them over, also the superior vena cava, also the super cave, and the veins, and the reigns, your rainy heart, your arterial art, your throaty heart of a heart, hand over your heart you old heartthrob, oh you Waldbaumy Waldbaums, balmy Waldbaums, silly Waldbaums, give us your steamy, smoky hearty-heart-heart before we blow your house down.”
The taxmen giggle. They wander into Father’s house. Unlike wolves, they seem sleepy and friendly.
Kraus dismounts. I realize his legs are two sticks. Like in a drawing. He follows us around the house, stiffly.
“I do not wish to fight this guerre any longer,” says Father. “Just bring their leader, Kraus, my heart.” By now Father is so small I carry him around in my hand. All over the house, the taxmen scurry happily. Kraus stays close to father and me. One stick in front of the other. I open the oven where Father keeps his heart. In one hand I hold Father, and in the other I bring his heart gently to my nose. It smells like ivory soap. It is heavier than I remember. I lean Father against it so he can breathe his heart in for the last time.
I look over at Kraus. He is holding a balloon. His mouth is the letter O. I close my eyes and open them. Now Kraus is a drawing of a little boy taped to the wall. Father’s heart is the red sun above Kraus’s head.
Now the taxmen are not men but drawings of little boys taped to the wall. Their soft, sweet eyes. Their red lips. Running wild through fields of flowers. Boys and flowers, boys and flowers, boys and flowers. And look, there’s Father too. As a little boy. All paid up. Owing nothing. He is running and laughing. “Come out,” I say. “Come out. Come out wherever you are.” “But we cannot come out,” laughs Father, “we are playing.” Father tries to hide but I see him everywhere. I reach in and pluck him out. A small dry boy the size of a cricket. I punch a hole through Father and fasten him around my neck with a thick, blue yarn. I press Father to my throat. My oval gem. My dark inheritance. And it’s just like he promised. That it would all, one day, belong to me.
TWO JOKES WALK INTO A BAR
Two jokes walk into a bar. The bartender says he’ll be back in three shakes of a lamb’s tail and disappears in broad daylight out the front door. The jokes hold hands and wait for the bartender to return. A third joke walks in. He clears his throat, and then, off the top of his head, he begins: “A little Madness in the Spring / Is wholesome even for the King, / But God be with the Clown — / Who ponders this tremendous scene —.” “Emily Dickinson,” says the first joke. “Nicely done.” The third joke is genuinely impressed. It is rare a joke so quickly gets it. All three jokes hold hands and wait for the bartender to return. The second joke’s father is dying, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead he thinks about the bartender who will be back once the lamb’s tail shakes three times. Why is it “shake” of a lamb’s tail, and not “wag”? “Wag” suggests the lamb is happy and free, while “shake” sounds like “shank,” which brings to the table the lamb’s dumb truth: It will eventually be eaten. The jokes hold hands and wait for the bartender to return. The bartender’s name is Bob. Bob Oranges. He’s a friendly if slightly boring guy who will never return, and somewhere deep inside, the jokes know this already. From far off there is the faintest sound of children playing. It is noon and the jokes are in a bar. “If we were the Fates,” poses the second joke, “which one of us do you think would hold the scissors?” Jokes one and three laugh nervously because this is clearly a rhetorical question. There is no way a joke would parade as a Fate. Most jokes would sooner drown themselves. The jokes warn the second joke not to even joke about this. But the second joke is angry. His father is dying. The first joke exchanges a worried look with the third. “Did I tell you about the dream I had last night?” The first joke is trying to lighten the mood. “Franz Kafka was walking up and down this beach. It looked a lot like the one I used to go to as a kid. You know, where I’d build sandcastles and stuff.” He pauses, smirks. “So in this dream I walk toward Kafka, and as I approach I realize he’s singing ‘Try a Little Tenderness.’ Like full blast. Like really belting it out.” Jus
t as the jokes are about to laugh, a bartender walks into the bar. It is not Bob Oranges. It is a different bartender. “What did I miss?” asks the bartender. The first joke tells him his dream. The bartender laughs and says, “Them young girls they do get wearied … wearing that ooooold shabby dress.” The bartender drags out “old” like he’s pulling off a sock that won’t let go. At “dress,” he gets a faraway look as if he has a girl in mind. The door opens. Day floods in. A rabbi and a priest walk into the bar. It seems, distantly, as if something like this has happened before. To the jokes, these men look familiar. The first and third joke offer the men their seats. It is the only respectful thing to do. The priest and the rabbi sit on either side of the second joke, who doesn’t seem to notice them. The priest, the joke, and the rabbi hold hands and wait for the bartender to ask them what they’re having. But now this bartender is elsewhere, most likely still thinking about a girl he once knew and possibly loved. The priest and the rabbi want to say something about wonder and tenderness and love and life and death, but they can’t think of anything. Their minds have gone blank. The second joke frees his hands from the soft grip of the men to light a cigarette, and as he does his cell phone rings. It rings, and rings, and rings. But the joke’s not going to get it. Not this one. Not now. No siree, Bob … Oranges, thinks the second joke. And at this he chuckles, because he knows it’ll be the last funny thing for a long, long time.
THE MAID, THE MOTHER, THE SNAIL & I
The maid is not herself. She hands me a can of Easy Off and walks away. The kitchen is not clean. The bathroom is not clean. The beds are unmade. Something is bothering the maid. Her long white arms seem longer than usual.
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