He puts a TV dinner in the microwave, stands at the window. It is dark and very clear. Through the window he can see the stars. He turns on the kitchen light. His guts churn with heartburn and hunger. The microwave bell sounds. He takes his dinner out. Seven thirty-five. He takes the plastic tray back into the den. He is nearly through the stack of papers.
For five days he has hardly slept, since before the onset of his daughter’s fever. Now, his belly quieted, he falls asleep.
Madeleine arrives home about ten, finds him propped face down beside an empty TV tray on his desk. She wakes him with difficulty. “You have potatoes in your beard,” she says, her eyes crinkling. Bleary-eyed, he gropes at his chin. “Other side.”
“Thanks.” Though her face is gentle, her beauty tonight strikes him with the full force of mockery. A beauty too long neglected. She is sitting on the edge of his desk in a short black cashmere coat, thick-soled leather boots laced over black stirrup pants. A silver teardrop pendant gleams against a soft black turtleneck. A beaded vest to match the red felt pillbox over her short blond hair. As he looks up at her sitting there on the desk his eyes trace the strong bones of her jaw. Her cheekbones are wide, her blue-grey eyes thoughtful. It occurs to him her eyes look almost oriental. Her cheeks are flushed with cold or drink. Has she been out walking in this?
He is trying to clear his mind of sleep. He smells her perfume. She is wearing more make-up than usual.
“We’ve come a long way together, for Catherine—for us. We thought we could make our own rules.”
“We were wrong.”
“Don, let’s not run from this too.”
“I’m not running.”
“Two years ago I would have settled for less.” Her face has gone pale, just a bright pink spot high on each cheek. “Two great years.” There is a fierceness in her voice.
“Best of my life, Madeleine.”
“Call her, see her. If you want …” She looks down at her hands.“I’d go with you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Anything I ever had … my whole life … someone’s taken back.”
Noisy in love, quiet in heartbreak, his wife.
Ahhh, Madeleine…. What have I done…. Hush….
It is dark. She has gone to bed. He is lying naked, covered with a blanket, on the brown leather couch in the den. The backdoor light folds shadows across the deck. Steam spills out from under the icy whirlpool cover. The phone is ringing. He cannot make his body move. The ringing seems to go on forever. He staggers to his feet, over to the phone, blanket bunched over his shoulders. Madeleine is standing at the bottom of the stairs in her long flannel nightdress. He can’t see her feet. In the half-light, she hovers. His hand is on the phone. He hesitates.
“Answer it.”
Three hundred years ago, a butterfly beat its wings in a convent cell in Mexico.
“Hullo?”
“Hello, Gentle Reader.” The voice he knows so well, the voice he has been hearing in his dreams … soft, speech slightly slurred. He has never known her to drink more than a glass of wine. “Guess who?”
“Why are you calling me?”
“Because you’re late, because it’s the night of the equinoctial cocktail, night of shooting stars, night of the MorningStar—”
“Beulah …” He twists slightly away, hunches his shoulders to shield the phone. He does not want to see his wife’s face at the sound of this name but he can see her shape.
“Please, profe. Vente, por favor. I have something here for you. Gentle Reader, please …” The voice is soft and faint.
“Why are you calling me that?”
“Because it’s after midnight. Because it’s tonight and I thought you’d know. Because it’s already started and can’t be stopped. Because you’re late … and the best is left to come …”
“Beulah, what do you want from me?”
“You’re the last guest. Everyone’s here I’m all alone….” Her speech is so blurred now he cannot make out the rest.
“I’ll come tomorrow. Are you in the same place?”
His wife leans heavily against the stairwell.
“Beulah? Are you there …? Beulah I can hear you—what are you doing?”
He flinches, and gently returns the phone to its cradle. He stands transfixed, as though it has changed into a snake before his eyes. He turns but cannot meet Madeleine’s eyes.
“We can’t get this back, can we, Don. We can’t fix this….” She looks from his face, to the ground, out the window. “We don’t get to keep … us.”
He moves away from her, walks into the den, begins to dress.
“You’re not going out in this….”
“You said.”
“Not like this—not at this hour.”
“It’s tonight.”
“You can’t—the roads are hell—now look at me. It’s forty below zero.” He pulls on the faded blue T-shirt he has been wearing for two days, something picked out for him in a Banff tourist shop. Beulah’s idea of a joke. “Say something, for God’s sake.”
“I need to go out,” he answers.
“I need to hear the words.” Her lips quiver slightly. “You owe me that much. Are you still in love with her?”
“What …?”
It was an obsession. A long time ago.
Only an obsession … no more. He is at the front door. He puts on his slippers, pulls a tweed sports coat from the closet.
“Go up to your daughter’s room, Donald. Take a good look around. And you decide where your future is.”
Instead he looks outside, thinks he sees a light snow falling.
“I will not let you do this to Catherine.”
He opens the door. A burst of vapour rushes up past the eaves. She recoils from the blast of cold. Her hand goes to her throat. “I want your answer—first thing in the morning. One way or the other.”
Something in his wife’s voice stops him for a moment. He turns back.“She needs help,” he says. As he speaks, steam slides between his lips, blurs Madeleine’s face. He starts back down the icy steps. He must protect his family. She is ruining his life. He is responsible. This is his carelessness. She is ruining their life.
“I’m calling the police.” Her voice is even. He hears the front door bang shut. He starts the car, drives away with the window down, a white fluttering behind his eyes.
By the time he gets back home, the police have come and gone. He is covered in blood. He should have worn dark clothes. His shirt is gone. His chest hair and beard are matted with rust. The quantities suggest a bloodbath. The taste of iron is in his mouth, his head throbs. From behind his eyes the fluttering of white is gone.
Dawn is breaking. His wife of ten years has her answer. An answer of a kind. She finds him standing barefoot on the cedar deck. There is a horror in her eyes. She asks him if he’s hurt this girl. He thinks she’s asked this before. This girl, strange formula for her to use.
Her name is Beulah. Of course he did.
White sun slants across the neighbours’ back yards. Whiteness gouts from rooftop vents, trails away to wisps. He strips off his bloody clothes. Is he drunk? she demands. It’s light, is he out of his mind? For a moment he turns to face her. He has a small cut on the bridge of his nose, another on his lower lip, gouges in one forearm. Deep slices ooze in his raw palms and knees. A matted track along the inside of one hairy thigh.
He climbs into the smoking whirlpool, scalds feet numb till then like frozen clay.
“Donald I need to know you haven’t done something. Tell me you helped her. I need to …”
The water foams to iodine. To the tub walls there clings a winy froth, as from an injured lung. She has stopped speaking.
He finds he can look into her face now, straight through the steam into her blue-grey eyes. When he tries to smile, she looks away. She goes inside.
Gentle Reader, you have read the papers, listened to the radio. You think you know the story, maybe even why. It’s not
so simple. This is the last account of the one who ran, the one who saved himself. Roll the tape, run it again. Please. The facts are not all in.
GREEN AXLE
… How could I fail to love you,
who have found you divine?
Can a cause fail to trigger its effect,
potential exist without its object?
Since you are the acme of beauty,
the height of all that is sublime,
and all that the green-axle tree of time
ravels in its gyre,
that my love sought you out, do you wonder?—
that I am yours, need I sign a statement?—
when your every glance and gesture
sets the seal on my enslavement …?
[28 Feb. 1995]
HAS IT ONLY BEEN A WEEK? A week out of time. How can I be feeling this? It’s too late why now why now why now?
Jacinto Ek Cruz. There is such sweetness in his eyes. His beauty of a woman in a man. This body of a man in me. This body like a small brown flame. Who flickers in and out of me. White palms skimming, skimming … the tails of startled deer.
Hotel Laguna, Room 22.
Dusk seeps into the room, powders the sheets with poppy seeds. I watch him as he sleeps. This face sophisticated in the innocent.
Eyes of gleaming onyx, flowers folded in a drowse.18 Calyxes of epicanth, folded in the clasp of sleep. Curved nose, broad bridge—a dolphin fin, the tip a flowerbulb. Little buddha man, Temple Mask … I watched you breathe. I took your hazel breath, into me. I spill it back over you, in almond dust.
This small man, hairless as a child, water strong. Cashew cock, salted curled, a bead of pearl—cornstarch on the tongue. My little lord of tender corn. Its slit a guppy pout, feeding me.
Vanilla.
You stir, murmur … something spelled with Ks and Xs. Like ecstasy. I goad the proud little bull that roars, swelling now sweetly smooth unscarred from slot to sac of weathered teak. Greyish pouch, petal soft and ribbed. Testicle. Delicate, like the word. This small man, this delicate tide—who feeds my mouth, my lips on palindromes of moan.
Still I have not woken you.
Then sleep. This time, for you and for me. This time that is for mercy….19
While I write.
For the first time in a week. Write Bacalar! This glut of beauty! On beauty I am glutted. On beauty he has gorged me. Lagoon of Seven Colours. I could be happy here in beauty’s harbour. Where the sea has seven colours.
Here we were dragons.
Here we wore hearts.
Hotel Laguna, Room 22. Hooded in flowering trees. Jacarandas, violet pale. Flamboyanes, scarlet cardinals cowl. African tulips, their upturned palms orange—a flaming fall of votive wax. Hotel Laguna, Room 22. Rustic clean, built into a hill, every room a view of the lagoon. Feather whisk of a ceiling fan. Sea shells mortared in the walls. Our laboratory our bird blind our refuge our exile. Eat only fish and fruit. Eat only what we pick, only from the fisherman’s hand. Wade out as he poles in. Buy before his feet touch land, or go without … wade hungry into loveliness.
My hammock on the balcony. The secret of the hammock, señorita. Is to lie cross-wise. Kidney pool, poolside bar. Stars of our own movie, drinks under parasols.
Jacinto they said seven. How many do you see?
Now? Only … three.
Turquoise, purple, green—four, red—
Where?
There, under the mangroves.
I have also seen deep blue and gold.
So only six.
And never yet all at once.
Let’s file a complaint.
We saw a toucan yesterday. In the forest, Jacinto took me in through red mangroves propped on roots—each tree the squat of a titan crab.
Very rare now, el tucán, Beulah, there are many poachers.
Yellow throat black cloak—green keel-bill dipped in burgundy. Grave little sage, canoe on his head—my flying portage, all endurance and grace—make the hieroglyph for elegance the toucan bill.
Here was once a stand of mahogany, and other plants for medicines…. What is it, Beulah, why do you smile?
This small man, this Mayan scribe. It is the beauty of a toucan, in his face.
Jacinto, look!
A spotted drum on springs—a brocket fawn’s startled leap—ears splay, its long tan neck a wrist of down. Then gone….
On higher ground stand Maya watchtowers. Root-tangled vine-crushed crumble of mounds. A confused sea of striped butterflies that hic and dip and stumble and sway patting out tortillas on the way. Leggy zebras ferrying stilts—slinging girders to a tower of lace … somewhere in the trees. One alights on a bromeliad. Antennae drop like booms of hair like drawbridge steel like dowsing wands. Danger danger—¡aguas!—operator drunk on nectar, glutted on bromeliads. Yellow swabs of anther, blades of apple-red, rough like crepe—or wafer of meringue. A heart of purple shafts like bean sprouts tapering to the frail bloom tips of frosted flutes.
Bromeliad I drink to you, I drink you in.
But how can I believe? This is real this is me. Glutted on syrups on cornstarch on wonder. He has glutted me. Is this me eyes raw with colour? skin a harp of blasted glass … nails and teeth soft like caramels? Is this me making love in the trees on beaches and balconies? My body’s every entrance a punished fruit, this hairy orchid where I walk bruised with ecstasy.
My tongue is a new animal.20 It lives in my mouth. I have seen it looking back in the glass. Rawsplit tip, strawberry rough / in rawsugar dipped, the rest the pulp a oneleg squid—a lung a coral sponge—muscle kite on a mango string!
So how do I believe, how can this be me?
YESTERDAY I INVENTED A NEW COLOUR. A primary colour, I am sure of it. Beyond the farthest shore of purple. I see it in my head. Primarily. How do I show it? To anyone. I have seen the sea.
The sea has seven colours.
Last night we read our bodies, by the light of one firefly in a jar. The night before we swam in our new skins, in a lagoon as warm as blood.
It’s safe Jacinto at night there are no sharks?
It is safe, Beulah. Here is where the dolphins come. To have children. Look. Look at the water.
What is this? This light—
A kind of plankton. Like the firefly. You shake it glows. Feel them? Like grit on the skin. I have not seen this since I was a boy.
Last night we swam through trails of green fire.
We dove and dove, eyes salt-scorched, watched comet tails stream from our hands our chins our hair. Over and over I traced with a fingertip the keel of fire between his thighs … proud barque, little dolphin fin.
Last night, with him, I plunged naked through a river of fire.
Jacinto how can this even be? Is it real. Is it real for you….
Oh yes. And see this answer echo in his onyx eyes. Nights of fireflies. Nights of shooting stars. Nights that smell of cinnamon. Bacalar.
Jacinto tomorrow night we’ll stay out—all night.
In the hammock? I am accustomed. But you—
We’ll watch for another meteor shower.
Or lightning. Like last night, far out to sea.
Firefly storms like the night before.
Or just sleep, like never in years….
Tomorrow Beulah we go farther up the lagoon. It was to be my surprise. A fisherman there saw manatees. You should see the tropical fish. They go by the thousands to feed. Where the underground rivers flow in. There are two of these. Who even knows where they flow from? Will that not be fine, Beulah? I have only heard of this, a thing I have never seen. We leave at dawn, we discover it together. I have arranged for masks and fins….
Manatees.
Dawn. White and blue shrimp boats moored to red mangroves. A dog sleeps on a fishing net, white snout snuffling a reek of dogfish dreams…. Sunrise on the lagoon. The sea’s seven colours are a spectrum fused to white gold. Charcoal shoals of kelp in the glare. Through them a lone fisherman poles to the sun, boat and man and shadow,
a runnel of black wax. Offshore a fish leaps through the sea’s gold mask, falls back.
Beulah—did you see?
Yes.
A tarpon.
Meet the fisherman. Make the mind blank. Admire the sturdy launch, the outboard twins by Evinrude. I have the masks and fins que pidió, don Jacinto.
Jacinto, let’s not go today.
But the underground river. The masks. It is all arranged….
Please, not today.
Pedro has taken a day from fishing.
There must be somewhere else. Ask. Please.
There are many places, yes.
Everything’s packed, we have lots of water don’t we?
Pedro, la lancha can make it out to Banco Chinchorro?
Claro, don Jacinto. I fish there every week. The bottom drops to a thousand metres. The grouper are big like pigs. But it will be two or three hours. Even with this calm.
Yes. I know.
One last day of make believe. For Jacinto, try. Expedition to Banco Chinchorro / Seine-net Bank, where flamingoes try to restart a colony, says Pedro, vendor of exotica—sorry all full up, suitcase stuffed. After an hour of sun and wind and spray look back to a coast all marsh and bays and bights and estuaries. Filaments of land in the sea. Land as lace—tresses strands scrolled banisters of land—green marbled in a march of blue. Out past coral quays—little chins that sprout toy scrub. Farther out, stunted lynx-tuft palms list on atolls of powdered glass. Smalltalk impossible over the Evinrude brawl of outboard twins.
Dry land at last, twin echoes fading, fading … two more engines in my head. Torment of smalltalk. Do not meet his eyes. Walk a shore of staghorn coral harvested by hurricanes. Musical chatter, carpet of femurs … a clearcut of chalk.
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