And if he faltered, if he couldn’t tell the story again, the girls would turn to their mother. She could continue to the end because it was true, and because it was their story now, and because she had heard or imagined this so many times that it became her own crossing, as if she’d been there with him from the start, as if she felt everything he felt as he stood with that woman at the rail.
She could tell the happier occasions too—a glimpse of dolphins, a brick of chocolate from Vienna—Ellen describing the way rain falls into the ocean, both resisted and replenishing at the same time, the surface of the sea all hammered and thin as a precious metal. She could tell how Joseph carried the diamond across the ocean with him, how he held it in his mouth instead of in his pocket, and how he once swallowed and waited for it to pass through him. The girls would squeal—they’d squirm at the thought—and Joseph would lift their mother’s hand to the light, the stone perfect and blue, and Ellen hesitant to show the ring, afraid to tempt fate with such happiness.
The ring would stand for so many things to her, their story being everyone’s story: the courtship, the marriage, the Brooklyn tenement, the twenty-hour workdays during the war, one daughter, another daughter, a contract to tool rifle butts for the U.S. Army, his wood shop moving to Orchard Street. The family would move up to Bayside, Queens, a house off Horace Harding Boulevard, a smooth, sturdy brick house on Two Hundred and Second Street. And with the whole wheeling world in front of them, the war over, the business established, the girls, the house, everything having come true for them, the man would die.
Snowstorm, shoveling, front door standing open, fresh burn of cold, their father on the floor in the bedroom, girls all eyes as they sat with their coloring books, their mother ac cidentally kicking the crayon box, the scar from the cut on Anna’s leg like a little proof, a souvenir she kept her whole life.
Their mother would lose the business, the car, the house in Bay side—her husband dying with all of their dreams, but without her—and back down in the world, back down to Brooklyn, to Greenpoint, to Calyer Street, idle nights of the ring, the woman spinning it like a quarter on the kitchen table.
She’d call the girls to sit with her, ask them if they remembered the story of the ring. Anna would watch the grim set of her down-turned mouth. And Jean would say, Yes, yes, we remember. And then she’d ask practical questions. Can we go outside, Mom? We’ll stay on the street?
Sundays, their mother walked the mile north to Calvary Cemetery, in Queens, to hold the hard cold hands of angels, pet their wings, smooth their nightgowns made of stone. She placed pebbles at the feet of one angel to mark her visits—a statue standing near his stone—his own grave a modest gray granite, her own name engraved below his. It was pure melodrama, she knew, but still she removed her ring and climbed onto the girl’s pedestal, hid the ring behind the angel’s collarbone, in the depression where rain collected.
Then she would walk.
A small, dark figure on these mornings, she weaved the hills of the cemetery, her trail in the silver-wet grass between the many crosses and crypts and trees. That undersea quiet of cemetery, and the small brick church, Saint Callixtus, sold flowers and vigil candles, the candles flickering in little red glasses, the money always untended. She lit the long wooden match off another flame. Then she moved into the vaulted quiet of the church to pray, though she never really prayed. She never came here to mourn or grieve or pray or anything, except be alone and quiet, take her ring and give it to an angel, traipse free over the grave-crowded hills.
On her return back down to the world again, she walked the low drawbridge over the Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens, the water all curdled with sewage and colorful rings of oil. She stood at the rail and saw that mother on the ship, that small white bundle of blankets in her arms.
Almost as an afterthought, she could add the wind coming cool off the bow, add the barest hints of burning coal in the air, the watchful rows of rivets along the side of the boat, the skin of the ocean alive as an animal, all these little details to make it true, to make it happen just as she remembered it, that one graceful moment when the woman curled herself over the rail of the ship, Joseph saying how he’d not have been surprised if, when the boat had moved on, he’d seen her trying to stand on the unsure surface of the waves, such was the tension of the sea that night.
Like a Demon
Two of them in a diner off the highway, booth by a window, poor woman trying to smile it all nice—nice in a way it never was, nice in a way it always was—mother trying to just never mind her son, just ignore this strange person, pay no attention as he lifts his shirt slightly, black handle of a .45 tucked into his pants, gun exactly where he promised it would be.
Now, she says, of all the stupid things.
You would know, he tells her—and he can’t seem to get that grin off his face—and he looks away to the traffic, sunlight, strip mall in the distance, whole world so bright and oblivious, waitress clearing dishes from the tables oblivious, cook behind counter in his apron oblivious, slushy sound of cutlery and voices, walls of quilted aluminum, and his mother staring at him all the while. Could out-patience a statue, woman with heating elements for eyes, that tungsten glow on the side of his face until he turns to his mother, finally, her hand out over the table to him.
May I? she asks—and she tips her head to one side—and he gently places the gun in her palm without a word.
It’s warm, she says. And heavy, much heavier than I’d have expected.
She weighs the pistol in her palm. Something unreal to this, her fingers fitting the grip, the trigger guard, the trigger. He watches and leans forward to narrate what she’s holding—Colt Commander, M-1911, single-action, semiautomatic, standard-issue blah, blah, blah—as if he really knew what he was talking about, his mother’s eyes snaking across the diner, gun pointing at the waitress, waitress suddenly backing away slow, sandwich platters balanced on her arms, entire place going airless and hushed, everything turning ridiculous, son tucking a few dollars next to his plate, saying, C’mon, Mom, let’s get going.
Underhum of tires on highway, bright blue wash of sunshine, and the clean getaway of Lincoln floating big and loose on the road, woman’s little dog on her lap, mother holding gun like a bird in her hand. Probably just the speed that makes it shake like that, pistol nervous and shivering with her holding it. A tree, a barn, a police car on the side of the road—miles turning into minutes, minutes into miles—and he glances every so often at her, the gun in her hand, his mother’s knuckles like chicken bones, the dog across her legs.
So, he says, any chance I can grab that thing back from you now?
And his mother turns to him, stares as if not quite able to place this stranger, her mouth going all seasick, something helpless and pleading about her eyes, as if she’s on the verge of saying, I’m sorry, who are you? And why are you driving my car? Where are you taking us?
You okay over there, Mom?
She presses her lips to a line and raises the empty point of the gun to the side of his chest. You know, she says, I have such an incredible urge to shoot you.
Better let me pull over first, he tells her—and he goes all cheery and nonchalant and proceeds to ease off the next exit—and he rides them beyond the gas station, beyond the transfer station, pulls into the sandy clearing in the distance, where he says she can roll his body into the tall grass. His mother just sits in the passenger seat, not moving, not opening the door. She just watches as he wades into the grass, his mother waiting as he stands in front of the car, her son with his arms raised, that gunpoint smile on his face. Well? he calls to her—and he opens his arms, offers his chest, closes his eyes, but nothing happens, his mother a silhouette with that dog on her lap.
There’s an electricity of insects from the brush, and the son breathes deep and circles around to his side of the car, continues to the back fender, opens his pants and pisses into the grass, his legs heavy as he gets behind the wheel again. Not going to happen,
he says, is it?
What’s that? she asks.
You’re not going to shoot me, are you?
She shakes her head no. Sorry.
Big fat breeze of car halfway through New York State, halfway to Michigan, road like a wire in front of them, and his mother places the gun on the seat, saying to do whatever he wants with it, saying she doesn’t care. She turns to watch the rain approach, wipers beating back and forth, tires on the road like a hiss of steam, blind spray of trucks to pass. The dog never takes its eyes off the son, the son taking the pistol from the seat and carefully leaning across to close the gun in the glove compartment.
Halfway through Ohio, and she rests her eyes, her face all pinches and pulls of clay, that quiet scrape of her breathing as she falls asleep. Another hour, and Michigan, and he talks to his father in his mind—goes back and forth with the man—son trying to tell all these things to the man. Like the mystery of the gun he can’t explain. And why he wanted to take her to visit in the first place. None of it making any sense to him, starting with his father and mother eloping all those years ago.
No one sets out to be a complete fuckup, as his father once told him. It just sort of happens, Michael. (Note to self: Your father uses your name over the phone and safe bet he’s trying to impart some bit of wisdom he feels you need to know, some lesson he believes his duty to teach to you. Either that or he’s loaded again. Have to listen for those wind chimes of ice in his drink, man all homesick and goosey on the line, your poor old man asking if you remember some song he used to sing to you and your brother when you were kids, and you just waiting for the right moment to hit him up for some money, just waiting to stick him with some last-minute knife, asking if somebody diddled them as kids or something, asking how else could he explain why everyone’s so fucked up in this family.)
Almost dark when they stop for gas, his mother asleep, his hand going to her hand, the dog always watching him. His mother’s skin is dry as paper, and he cups his palm on her fist until she wakes. Not used to this kind of touch, and she startles. What’s wrong? We there already?
Everything’s fine, Mom. Almost there.
It’s dark, road clear and dry, a few more miles and he’s thinking again of his father—time he and Charlie went to visit the man—the brothers sent to see their father in the summer, two of them nine or ten years old, their mother putting them on a train in Providence, their father waiting on a platform in Detroit, shirt pressed and pants creased for the occasion, his boots with zippers up the inside ankles, the boys following that hard click of heels to the car. Impala floats wide and loose as a motorboat in the dusk, streetlights and traffic out of the city, that radial drone of road under everything. Soon they’re having burgers and malts in Flint, stopping at a gas station in Saginaw, and then another hour to Grayling, Portage Lake, and the cottage.
A lifetime ago already—twenty, twenty-five, try more than thirty years since any of this—yet it truly is like yesterday, three of them on that big bench seat of his car, windows open with cool pour of air, hum of roadway and radio, man with his arm straight, wrist flexed over wheel, cigarette after cigarette as he drives. And this little kid—young version of himself—he watches as the boy picks the plastic tubing of the armrest, as he fingers the metal cover of the ashtray, as he glances to his father’s face in that green glow of dash, the man’s reflection like a ghost in the windshield, he and his brother memorizing the man, neither of them realizing how much they miss their father, how much they will have to stay loyal to their mother, how quiet and guarded and less sure of everything they will become, their father more present when he’s gone, their mother less home when she’s there, the boys holding their breath at night along with the house.
You know the kind of house. Can see the doilies, the photos, all the little efforts she makes, porcelain collies on the shelf, all the bric-a-brac of hope, two kids listening to the way she cries at night, the sound like water pouring down the walls, the sound like birds nesting in the attic, the sound of her crying becoming nothing like crying at all, as if they might have been mistaken right along, can’t trust their own ears, their mother maybe laughing to herself below them, woman giggling over some secret joy she’s been saving, some kind of happiness she’s holding until they’re old enough to appreciate it, until they’re ready to take care of whatever it is she will someday give them.
At least this is what he and Charlie tell each other.
And his brother asks, When will we be big enough?
I don’t know, Charlie. Seventh grade maybe. Or high school.
And there are silences so loud he can still hear them now, all these years later. Driving along on a highway, for instance, and he still feels that strange sense of pressure in the walls as the bedroom sinks deeper and deeper into night, can still listen to Charlie breathing himself to sleep, the moon in the dormer window, that dust of moonlight over everything, trees swaying with the wind, and his father always pale and transparent at the window, the man always staring from the other side of the glass. Even if his father isn’t there, the man is still there somehow, windowed away from them, standing mute and drowned in the light.
These dreams are fists. They are hard and closed and never will you open them, though they are yours and yours alone to open. Who else would want them, really? Who else would care?
Someone says you’ll never do a certain thing, never become this person you say you’ll be, never be this untangler, this undoer, this beautiful little dreamer, this lying little sneak, someone says you’ll never change, you’ll never bring these two worlds together, but then just watch—and voilà!— you’re back at the cottage again, opening the car door for your mother, your father there on the porch waiting, hellos and hugs and everyone into the living room, cold can of beer in your hand like magic, chitchat about the drive as you stretch your shoulders, your mother’s little dog crying to go outside, you offering to run this chore for them, your mother and father alone inside together, you and the dog out in the yard.
Be so easy if the gun felt natural. So simple to just drift toward the Lincoln, that mineral pull of pistol from the glove compartment, imagine it warm and heavy, picture yourself decisive and clear for once in your life. Yet that’s not the way this works for you—sorry—you might yearn for a bullet, might wish for some sharp demon of pain burning like a wick, but you must not yearn enough to become wild and ruthless and real like that. Instead you tug your brother dog by the leash, grass wet and cold, saying, Pay attention, saying, Just do your business already, saying, Let’s wait on the steps like good kids for a little while.
Let them have some time in the cottage, you say, your mother and father, one last hurrah for them. Remember she once told you that they made love on these visits, woman saying how she and your father would be together while you and your brother played in the yard. And what does one do with a detail like that? No wonder they don’t lie still in your mind, your parents, this life never anything like you expect it to be.
Can feel your mother and father telegraphed in the wood floor as you sit on the porch with the dog. Her footsteps in the house, his voice like mice running inside the walls. That cool of the lake seeps in, that taffeta of air through the leaves of trees, and you wait for that knock and scuff of the screen door opening behind you, as it will, you’re sure, your mother out under the porch light, your father right behind her, two of them wondering what happened to you? Are you still out here?
And are they talking to you or the dog? Not easy to tell. Either way, you both tip your heads as they approach, their voices all singsong, like they’re trying to catch you and tame you and show you how they must love you again.
The Old Woman and Her Thief
On her deathbed, as she drew what were to be her last breaths on God’s green earth, the old woman made a confession so terrible to her husband that—even under circumstances as solemn and sorrowful as these—he could hardly take the secret as true, let alone forgive her for it. He listened by her side,
as if struck dumb by a club, and when she pressed her lips tight against admitting anything more and a silence had passed, a long silence in which she could hear herself swallow away the taste of coins in her mouth, just when she expected the final lifting of the veil to all her life’s meaning, the old man hiccupped.
It might have been the fever in her mind, but she could not accept this as her life’s reward, and she lay there and blinked her eyes and half expected her husband to cough up an olive pit or cherry stone. She watched for his lips to purse and spit an inky seed into her hand, but only the startle of his hiccups came, haphazard and loud in the room. She could feel each jump through the bedsprings to her, and finally she asked him to go drink some seltzer water and stand on his head and let her die. She lay flat and let her eyes close to the dim room and tried to savor the slow lift and release of each breath in her chest, and on into the night she lay at rest and at peace like this.
But she did not die.
Contrary to all they had expected and provided for, in three days’ time the old woman was sitting up in bed and answering her mail. Scattered about her lay books and dishes and flower arrangements, bowls of ripened fruit, her little radio and reading lamp. The curtains and windows were opened wide. And on the morning of the fourth day the doctor clicked his tongue and pronounced, almost begrudgingly, that she was quite recovered. The undertaker arrived to roll the casket and wreaths out of the old couple’s parlor, where she was to be laid out, and the man’s cologne lingered so long after him in the room that her husband lit matches to kill the scent.
The Architect of Flowers Page 9