by Jack Todd
Poe can’t read or write. He has never learned his ciphers or his letters and he never will, but he knows stones and he knows the wall. He knows other things, too. The hollow, tinny sound goat’s milk makes when it pings into an empty pail, the way the fog curls away from the rising sun, the best way to sharpen an axe and bring down the tallest tree. And he knows Miranda.
At mid-morning, Poe perches on the sun-warmed stone of the half-finished wall, the water jug propped between his ankles, mopping his brow with a checkered bandana, waiting for Miranda. He hears her footsteps on the gravel path before he sees her. He holds his breath. Miranda has slim muscular brown legs and a cascade of wild dark curly hair. She’s wearing blue running shorts and a thin white shirt, the kind Wild Bill calls a wifebeater. The shirt is damp with sweat and her hard brown nipples poke through the wet fabric.
Poe swallows hard, looking at her, and a low happy gurgle bubbles from his throat. Miranda smiles. “Hey, Poe.”
“Hey, Miranda. Hello hello good morning.”
“Time for a break, Poe. I baked these for you, fresh this morning.”
“Yes, ma’am. Hungry. Work hard.”
“I see that, Poe. You work hard. Nobody works harder than you, heaving stones all day.”
Poe swings his legs back and forth, banging his heels against the wall. She leans forward to peck his cheek. He breathes deep, inhales Miranda smell. Happy, happy.
Miranda hands him a brown paper bag with eight fresh-baked brownies wrapped in wax paper.
“Don’t eat these all at once, Poe. Have two now, and then you can have four with your lunch and two more in the afternoon, when you get tired. It will give you energy, okay?”
“Two now, four lunch, two this afternoon.”
“That’s it. I wrapped them separately so you won’t get confused. Two in one package, then four, then two again, alright? And it’s hot, Poe. Be sure to drink plenty of water. If your bottle is empty, fill it in the well, but don’t forget to drink. Daddy loves the wall you’re making, but he wouldn’t want you to get sick, so don’t forget, right?”
“Poe doesn’t forget.”
She busses him again on the cheek. He makes the happy sound in his throat. “I’ve got to go get my shower now. You remember what I said about the heat, and be sure to keep your hat on, right?”
“I don’t never take it off. Ma says, Poe, keep your hat on! and that’s what I does.”
Miranda laughs. White teeth and pink tongue. Her laugh tastes like maple syrup. He watches her go until she is swallowed up by the shadows in the doorway. Brown legs pretty and gone.
He stares at the door, pondering. Is there a Miranda now? Does Miranda stop when she steps through the door and start again when she comes back out? Or does she stay Miranda? The thoughts trouble him until he brushes at his eyes like a man wiping away cobwebs. Then there’s Miranda and only Miranda, all-the-time Miranda. The thought of not-Miranda is gone and he has only her brown legs and firm buttocks and wild dark curls and the way the muscles in her legs move when she walks.
Poe hoists the jug and drinks, letting the icy water sluice down his neck and chest. He will remember what she is wearing. He can call to mind every outfit she has worn since she came home in the spring from the town where she goes to school, a place called Cane Bridge where there are lots of smart people and no nanny goats to milk. He recalls the striped pattern of an ocher blouse, the whorls of color on its buttons, the scarf that she wears on windy days — pale streaks of turquoise and amber and rose. Running shoes some days, yellow and blue and gray. Hiking boots other times, gray with blue, tied with blue shoelaces.
On the hottest days, Miranda wears flip-flops, one pair blue, one pair green. Sometimes her toenails are painted red, sometimes green. Sometimes no paint at all. She had red toenails the afternoon of the thunderstorm when the ravens streaked across the valley ahead of the black towering clouds. She hurried back to the house, telling Poe to run after her, with the rain pelting all around and turning to hail, and she held the door open for him as he ducked inside, her hair dripping rainwater and her face shining and wet as she watched the storm from the kitchen window. Then she baked muffins and poured a big glass of milk for Poe and he sat eating hot muffins as the thunder cracked and Miranda loved the storm and Poe loved her wet hair and the way she couldn’t sit still and kept jumping up to look outside.
Nights after the light goes out, Poe takes out his remembers of Miranda and pages through them like going through the Monkey Ward catalog until he falls asleep. During the long winter when she is away at Cane Bridge, he goes back to the summer remembers until Christmas, when she comes home to ski and knocks on the door of the little yellow house in her blue jacket and red hat. Hello, hello Poe, I didn’t forget you, I brought you the saltwater taffy that you like.
I loves you, Miranda, he whispers to himself, words he has heard at the moving picture show. I loves you Miranda all my life heart and soul goodnight.
Poe returns to work on the stone wall. The scent of her skin in the air. He chooses a sun-warmed stone, hefts it into place, and nudges it a hair’s width at a time, this way and that, searching for true.
~
Watching Miranda
Thorne watches from the kitchen window. Miranda with her brownies, strolling out to visit Poe. The way the poor devil lights up like a Christmas tree when he sees her. If he were a dog, he’d be wagging his tail.
He breathes in the mingled scents of fresh brownies and Miranda sweat. Scent of a woman, not some pricey glop cooked up in a laboratory in Paris. God he loves it when she is home. As though life begins again.
He sees Poe smile and nod and beam, repeating Miranda’s instructions, like a creature spellbound. He can’t blame the poor bastard. Miranda is a distillation of pure light. She has that effect on people. Doctors, parking attendants, cops, shoe clerks, surly waiters. Her own father. They all light up when she is around.
It’s always been that way, but now she’s all grown up, with a woman’s charms. Miranda is all the more attractive because she is so unaware of how beguiling she is, like an enchanted creature on a desert island, with her shock of dark curly hair, her olive skin, the flash of her white teeth. Spitting image of her Greek mother. The Irish half, Thorne’s contribution to the making of her, is invisible except when she shows a flash of his temper. Otherwise, she is her mother, a constant reminder of Elena in the flesh. Smiling, moving, breathing. Elena, ten years gone, lives on in Miranda, in every detail.
Thorne sees her kiss Poe on the cheek and walk back to the house. His heart floods with love for her, but when he sees her breasts sway under that sweaty top, he feels a stab of annoyance. Good God, you’d think she would at least put on a bra. What must it do to Poe, the sight of those candy-apple breasts in motion, the brown nipples through sheer damp cloth? He’s tried to explain it to her, but there is no way to put it that doesn’t sound crude. She thinks it’s silly, especially where Poe is concerned. Daddy, I’ve known Poe since I was a little girl. He taught me to fish. He’s my friend. He doesn’t think of me that way. And Thorne has to stop himself from saying, Everybody thinks of you that way.
He hears the front door open. Miranda dashes up the stairs, two at a time. That’s his cue to get breakfast going. Breakfasts are his domain. She makes lunch and dinner, but he insists on preparing breakfast. He tells her that it pleases him to do things for his daughter, but he is also very particular about breakfast and no one else gets it quite right, not even Miranda. He puts the cast-iron skillet on the stove to warm, adds a dollop of oil to the pan, sprinkles chopped garlic and onion and peppers and works it with a wooden spatula until the onion begins to turn translucent and stirs in two carefully beaten eggs and a freshly shredded strong cheddar. He flips the omelet at precisely the right moment, leaves it for another thirty seconds, then slides it onto a plate, and sets the plate in the oven to keep warm while he starts a second omelet made with
beaten egg whites and peppers for Miranda. Once it’s in the pan, he pops two slices of whole-wheat bread into the toaster.
As he waits, Thorne catches a distorted reflection of himself on a copper pan dangling over the stove. In the years of his exile, he has come to look like a biblical prophet. In the hallway, there is a framed cover from an old issue of TIME magazine, showing him twenty years younger and wearing a flawlessly cut dark suit next to the headline: “The Toughest Trial Lawyer in America.” He barely recognizes that man. His hair and beard are now long and unkempt and as white as fresh snow, and he has more the look of an aging hippie in Haight-Ashbury than a trial lawyer. And he has grown larger in his dotage. The shoulder seams of shirts that fit perfectly ten or twenty years ago look as though they’re about to split. His belly strains at the buttons. He should probably confine himself to a couple of egg whites and a grapefruit for breakfast, the way Miranda does, but that wouldn’t seem like breakfast at all.
When the toast pops, he butters it, then slides the second omelet onto a plate, and cuts the toast precisely in two. He arranges her plate with care, cuts slices of banana and orange to give it color, shakes a few grains of sea salt onto his palm and dusts it over the eggs. He reaches into the cupboard for two glasses, sets them on the counter, and digs into the refrigerator for the jar of fresh-squeezed orange juice Miranda has prepared for him. Then he pours the orange juice, slowly and carefully, over the omelet and toast, replaces the cap, and returns it to the refrigerator.
He’s about to retrieve the first plate from the oven when he sees the mess he has made: an egg-white omelet and a slice of whole-wheat toast, floating in a pool of orange juice on a blue plate. Miranda’s plate. His hands tremble. His gorge rises. He slides the mess into the garbage under the sink and begins a fresh omelet, but he’s too frightened to concentrate on the task. He knows what’s happening to him. It happened to his father. His mind is beginning to fray like an old cotton shirt. Soon it will be in tatters, and he will be able to summon only fragments of himself.
He wants to call out to Miranda, but he can hear the water still running. He has a brief, disturbing image of her naked in the shower, of water streaming over her breasts and her brown belly and thighs and the thatch of dark silky pubic hair like her mother’s. Another difficulty with his mind: it dwells on things best left untouched. He stands at the kitchen counter, forcing himself to take deep, steady breaths, willing his hands to stop trembling, his heart to cease its panicky fluttering against his rib cage.
Thorne hears the shower turn off. By the time Miranda starts down the staircase, he has composed himself enough to dexterously flip the omelet, pretending that all is well with his world. In the heat of the kitchen, he pauses to embrace the womanly warmth of her in her thin terry-cloth robe, inhaling the fragrance of her damp hair. With his hands on the taut muscles of her lower back, he can feel his heart thudding against his ribs and he wonders if she can feel it, too. He breaks free of the embrace, pretending that he has to attend to breakfast.
Miranda gives him a sharp look. “What’s wrong with you, Daddy? You’re pale as a ghost. Look at you, your hands are shaking.”
“Nothing is wrong. I need my breakfast. My blood sugar’s low.”
She looks doubtful, but she takes both plates and leads the way out to the veranda, where they can breakfast with the splendid view from the top of Manitou Mountain north into Quebec. “Really, Daddy, you have to get out more. You don’t see anyone but me, and I’m only here a couple of months a year.”
“You forget Poe.”
“No, I don’t. But Poe almost never sets foot in the house. I don’t know how you can live like this. Before Mama died, you were out almost every night.”
“I’m not lonely. I have my books.”
“All those dusty old books. Not much for companionship.”
“They’re not dusty. I dust every one once a month, without fail.”
Miranda tilts back her head and laughs. So like her mother when she laughs that way. If Thorne forgets everything and only one thing is left in his mind, he wants it to be that — her rich, husky laugh. But she’s not going to let him wriggle away.
“What was wrong before? When I walked into the kitchen?”
“I had what they call a senior moment. I had breakfast ready, but then I absentmindedly poured orange juice all over your plate.”
Miranda laughs. “That could happen to anyone. My friends do stuff like that. They’re caught up in something, and they head out the door wearing pajamas and flip-flops in winter.”
“This is different. I’ve had episodes. They seem to be getting more frequent. Sometimes I can’t remember your name. I’m sitting right here looking at you and I blank on your name.”
“That happens, too. I find it happens especially to very brilliant people. Some of my professors recall things they learned in middle school, but they can’t remember the name of the secretary they’ve worked with for the past twenty years. If you’re having problems, I think it’s the isolation, Daddy. Your mind is fine, but no man was meant to live like this.”
“No man is an island?”
“That’s not what I meant. You can’t live as though you’re on an island.”
“But we are on an island, of a sort. Belle Coeur County is a lot like an island, have you ever thought of that? Canada on the north, Manitou Creek on the east, Hannibal Lake to the south, and the Sebasticook River on the west. We’re completely surrounded by water and Canadians in all directions. Cut off from the world. We’re trapped.”
“Only because you choose to be cut off. I worry about you . . .”
He raises a hand. “Enough. I’m the last person on earth you should worry about. At your age, you should be entirely involved with yourself. When you’re not yet twenty, you’re expected to be selfish. Didn’t you have some important errands to run today? Shopping at the Grand Union or something?”
“You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Miranda stands, kisses his forehead, ruffs his long white hair with her fingers. They are passing through a portal in time, that moment when the child becomes the parent, when he can no longer hide his dependence, when she can no longer conceal her concern. He knows it, she knows it. She has no wish to mother her own father, but the day is coming when it will be unavoidable. Perhaps it already is.
~
A gradual fading, as of the light
Thorne sits at the great oaken desk on the north side of the house, an antique volume of the works of John Dee open in front of him. He hasn’t read a word. Next to it is the old Smith-Corona manual typewriter on which he is meant to be composing his autobiography, titled The Truth & Nothing But . . .
After seven years, he has written only the final sentence: “. . . and then I shot the sonofabitch right between the eyes.” His intention was to work back from there to tell his story, but he has never been able to get any traction with the book, and now he knows he never will. Instead, he stares out the single large window that is his eye on the world and watches Poe at work.
He might have told Miranda more, if not for his desire to protect her. His most profound fatherly wish is not to be a burden. If he can prevent it, he will not allow the strain of his unraveling to fall on Miranda. No child should have to endure that, especially not Miranda. In any case, there is no need to worry her until a doctor confirms his self-diagnosis of dementia. Perhaps that’s why he’s already postponed that doctor’s appointment a half-dozen times.
He tries to collect himself by listening to his favorite music, the Jacqueline du Pré recording of Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei that seems to go deeper into the heart of the human dilemma than anything he has ever heard, but his mind skims the surface of the music like a dragonfly over water, refusing to settle. He thinks of all the things he might have confessed to Miranda: That his image in a mirror appears increasingly vague and b
lurred around the edges. That he’s often confused. That he walks into a room and turns round and round like an agitated dog, trying to recall what brought him there in the first place. How he rips up two or three checks for every one he’s able to write. How he sometimes gives in to the temptation to browse old photo albums and emerges hours later, blinking in the light, to discover that time itself has become a fluid, silvery thing, like mercury in a flask, refusing to be pinned in any specific moment.
Given his occupation and his high-profile criminal clientele, Thorne had once anticipated a quick death for himself. A bullet in the back of the head or a bomb planted under the Mercedes. That was how Silverberg got it. Silverberg had just made partner. They hadn’t even gotten around to changing the nameplate on the door from “Thorne & Coyle” to “Thorne, Coyle, and Silverberg” when pieces of Silverberg and his automobile were scattered for two hundred feet along a quiet, shady street in a residential neighborhood. Silverberg had set his mistress up with a nice little house there. One minute, he was getting laid. The next minute — kaboom! Silverberg was lawn confetti. Thorne knows there will be no such exit for him, only this gradual fading, as of the light.
~
The man with the cobalt eyes
Thorne is still lost in contemplation when the face of an oddly shrunken man appears upside down at his window. He jumps back, spilling cold tea, narrowly missing the precious volume of the works of John Dee.
“Airmail! Dammit! How many times have I told you not to do that?” The sprite, still swinging by his legs from a branch of the massive oak tree outside Thorne’s window, grins maliciously. When Thorne opens the window, Airmail executes a perfect flip in the air, lands on both feet, and performs an elaborate bow.
“I bid thee good afternoon, kind sir. Thy wish is my command and all that.”
“I’m working, Airmail. This isn’t a good time.”
“No, you’re not. You’re staring out the window. Like always.”