by Sam Michel
Mama said, “A lady, who she doesn’t need to just be Grace, she gets herself up. Same as we do. Take Amelia Dangberg, my friend, Amelia. She doesn’t love her husband. She doesn’t not love him, but she wouldn’t say she loved him either. She’s ashamed of Owen. Said she’s glad she waited not to have another. Truth be told, Owen’s nothing worse or better than what made him. He’s not pretty. He wets the bed yet. He’ll be that pock-marked boy you worry where he’s got to, all because his mama tried to comb a part into his hair and threw the comb at him and said for him to comb his own hair when it wouldn’t part right. She’s got guilt, my friend Amelia, understand? I know what she’s wearing. Underneath, I mean. I know she’ll be the only one to see it. Here’s a man she lives with, her husband, and she’ll keep it from him same as she would keep it from a perfect stranger. Understand? My guess is they’re on their way right now. Two hour drive, and she tells me she’ll be early. Tells me she sweeps. Says she’s tired of dust. Said that yesterday she pulled a fingerful of dust from off a sill she dusted just the day before. She wiped it on her pantleg, got herself a rag and then she stops and asks herself, Why this? Dirty pants, worn-out cotton bra—she said she hadn’t had a window open since September. She’d rather that the whole entire house burn down. She’d rather drive on into town and run down Main Street raving naked. Thank God for your party, Bonnie Dahl. That is what she tells me. Wasn’t for this party, she might not have seen the reason she should buy herself a little something silk and dainty, a new, clean thing she could wear and feel more how she used to mean to. So I’ll tell you,” said my mother, “it’s for her we hang the stars and run the goats out. A person doesn’t know what he is doing in the country, not the desert. You drive two hours with this man and child and neither one of them has looked enough to think what you are wearing underneath and what’s against you. You will know. I’ll know. Other folks will guess. It’s what she wants. What will people make of her? True or not, you get the feeling from your loved ones you’ve been made and fixed. Amelia, Grace, Vernon, even your old uncle Ikey, anybody you invite, they will hop alive to have that chance of feeling not quite made yet. You watch your daddy,” Mama said, “and see if he is standing any straighter. Listen to him when he talks and tell me you can’t hear the clean-cheeked boy there in his voice. See if when he’s got a pretty lady looking you don’t find a man who feels he’s being guessed at. What funny thing could this man tell me. That’s what I would used to wonder with your daddy. Does he save the bone out for his dog when he is out to supper? If he thinks I look like a deer, or like a girl, will he keep it to himself, or will he say so? I’ll confess, with him, I don’t guess much anymore myself. Good is good. I made him good. He’s head-shy. He’s a dreamer. What’s best in him is simple, that’s what I believe, same as anybody, simple and unfinished and forgotten. It’s work, remembering. You live side-by-side-by-side like us, you get too tired to guess. But a party,” said my mother. “One night. Some brighter, brand new hours. Tonight, after folks have got beyond their gossiping and meanness, I believe they will remember how they felt when they were getting dressed. What their drive was like, how they felt when they walked in our barn and saw what all was done for them. They will eat, and they will dance, and they’ll tell their jokes and laugh and talk as people talk when they are guessing good of one another, and for tonight we’ll know that all good guesses will be true. Give them something to take home with them,” said Mama, “a thing to last them through their drives and long enough to take to bed before they fall to sleeping. Let Amelia’s husband guess what she is wearing underneath is true, let Amelia be surprised to know she hasn’t really finished with her husband. His name is Emmit. He has a name, after all. She might say it, say Emmit. Your papa might say Bonnie. His name is Lincoln. Same as yours. You are Lincoln,” said my mother, “Lincoln Dahl, and tonight these folks will have a time they’ll always think back on that was your birthday.”
And there was light yet. Through the barn door, an eastern aperture of setting winter sun. Our last good looks. The schoolhouse out there, and the flagpole, our orchard and the windrow and the pine corral all lit in quiet, chilly blazes. Nothing seemed not ready. Jesus here and there, Joseph, Mary, and the asses. Kitchen-stalls, ballroom-crepe, wire-constellations. Mama in the desert. Mama’s little Italy, her Roman pageant, my mother’s nuts-and-bolts of necessary flight. Lady Gal, pearls and sweatshirts, honest keeper. From the dancefloor, on the bandstand, my mother set a camera up to take our self-timed portrait.
She was saying, “Folks don’t like to be caught picking. That’s why some bowls you should make of pure cashews.” She said, “Tea is for later, coffee. Folks that make it to the ends of nights, they like a little something warm to hold and have inside them. Truly, if you’ve thrown a party to remember, then folks don’t suffer staying up.”
But Mama slept. The boy slept and our neighbors. We live here on O Street. I do not know where that picture’s got to.
I said, “Good night, Mama. Good night Lincoln.”
I said goodnight to Vernon, and to Owen and Amelia, Emmit, Grace and Hope.
I said, “Good night, Pop.”
I listened for my wife. I leaned, felt as if I tipped outside myself, listening, leaning out there through the doors and windows. I had a sense that things were on their way. I had a sense of something’s coming. I felt my arm go numb, my leg where my son was pressing, my body falling tinglingly to sleep. I could not move my toes, did not want to wake the boy by seeing could I lift my arm up. Most all this day, how many hours, what must it be to not have spoken? If I were him, what might I have said? When is too late for saying? All this day, we assume the boy has suffered his traumatic shock. We suppose he grieves. He sleeps. Somewhere, pressed against me, I feel my son rests deeper than a dream, deep down in his body, dark and undisturbed, stiller than the picture-forms of conscious possibles, potent, unhistoried, intact. He sleeps as women sleep. As my mother sleeps. He sleeps. This storm will pass. The sun will shine. He may speak. What word will he bring back for us? How has the body taught him? His mama bathes him. His guests arrive. He strips the paper from a box, blows a candle out, distributes cake. He is to be the centerpiece of cheer. So which yields? What does he say? Which word does he welcome? Today’s, tomorrow’s? In me, a shell has grown around tomorrow’s word, my bright core, shelled, a shell around a seed, hardening and growing hard, immovable, unsayable, held, and held, too late. I sat. I talked. I listened. All quiet. All still. Yet I talked. I believe that I am heard. Something I am saying here will be brought back. My body tingles, is numbed and wooden, yet something riotlike leans out from me, seems to strengthen, I feel stronger, talk my way back to tomorrow, a simpler, unconflicted saying.
I try it out, say, “I love you, Mama.”
Say, “I love you.”
Love and love, I love you mister Lincoln.
And was I serious?
Am I funny?
I said, “I know we had a funny view from up there in that hayloft.” And, “You never saw a lady more surprised to dance than Grace.” I said, “Mama, where’d that picture we took on the timer get to?”
Easy, once you started, you had only to recall your chair, convince yourself that if you sit, wait them out, then you might come to one idea that is true. Consider yourself a wholly handsome man. Eat right. Age well. Man your shovel. Mind your son. Zip him up. Play catch. Teach him how to carve. Save your letters. Save a brick out from your Roxy. Don’t complain. Let a little light in. Ask yourself: Do I believe in God? Tunnel deep. Think back. Somebody is hurt. Somebody is chasing. Say: I had good, long talks with Pop. Say: I have loved my wife. Wonder: What great thought have I not yet been thinking? Where have you found beauty? Know the fields are growing over. The kids are building fires in the desert. A star burns out. The dust walls up. The bank is having trouble finding takers. Sleep well. Sleep tight. Are you happy? Can I come over? Do not forget: I am a handsome man. I believe. I miss you. Ask: Is this what all I want? Have you come
to what you meant? Do not ask why. Say: Goodnight, now, goodbye, goodnight! Sleep fast and remember: Anything you say tonight is easily unsaid by morning...
And as for me, this evening I’ve been meaning here to speak of, I am settled deep down, deeper in my chair. I kiss my son and say, “Okay, folks, now listen up. I’m telling you, what’s true, what I liked the best, remember most, it was a goose we cooked I helped my papa slaughter. Mean old gander thing would pluck a chunk out from the fat part of your arm when you were feeding if you let him. He came at you. Big, big spread of wings, neck stretched way, way out like this, hissing and honking. Cleaved him at the shoulder. Roasted him in lemon juice and salt and pepper. I got to stick the fork. Papa carved. Folks cared mostly for the breast meat. You tried not to think how long his neck was. You spooned a sauce. He looked good there, in your plate. Red sauce. Beef and mashed potatoes, green beans and a square of lemon jello. Almost made you miss him. If you knew him how I knew him,” I was saying, “you would surely not have guessed he could be tender.”
From the author:
Thanks to you early readers, you Gordon Lish, Will Eno, you Sam Lipsyte, Michael Kimball, Yannick Murphy, Gary Lutz, and Noy, Noy, Noy. And thank you, Gian, for putting old Lincoln between the covers, you make him look pretty good there.