by Elise Levine
Dear Eddie. So much to tell.
Did I ever tell you about the time? What? What’s wrong with you?
Once she is grown past childhood and early adolescence, Eddie’s daughter begins to understand. His love shames her. Until, entering middle age, she gives up on him. It’s like she stamps her foot and clear water rushes in and washes him from her. Simple as that.
If only! Her days and nights until now have passed like queasy green flashes. The nights especially. Algal patches in which she sinks in the swamp that is her father. His story that has swamped hers.
But she does it. It’s like she stamps and stamps her foot until mid-middle age, late middle age and on—until he mostly only returns to her as a mild migraine, feathery and light, that quickly lifts.
Here’s a good one. From long before the lifting. Strap in. Ready?
The daughter’s first girlfriend, with whom the daughter is slavishly in love, encounters Margaret. Follow? Margaret is an older woman who lives in a condominium building that the daughter’s girlfriend, who owns a security company, patrols with her assorted guard dogs, who she rotates twice-nightly out of respect for their beautiful dog bodies and minds, a respect for animals the daughter loves like crazy in her girlfriend. Anyway. The girlfriend meets Margaret. Margaret flirts with the daughter’s girlfriend. Invites the girlfriend in for coffee, cake, a hummus wrap, whatever—Eddie’s daughter has to piece the story together later. Figures out that yappy Margaret knew Eddie—amazing but true, some ruthless alignment of the stars, the fates conspiring, heavy karma, the daughter doesn’t know what else to believe—back when he hadn’t yet been forced to retire from his office job for padding his modest credit account. Seems that back then Eddie was the life of whatever party the industry got going and naturally flirted with every female around including Margaret. Who back then happened to work in the same industry. Somehow he shows up at Margaret’s one night and attempts entry. And here Margaret, telling the daughter’s girlfriend, clears her throat, the daughter imagines—imagining this is around the time the girlfriend tosses in with Margaret for a night or two or three. And surely, Eddie’s daughter is sure, surely her girlfriend fucks Margaret’s brains out. Anyhow, Eddie’s daughter never does get a straight answer on certain particulars of the story—except for the general fact of the infidelity and the relating of her father’s attempted infidelity—before she boots the girlfriend.
Sound familiar? Eddie’s daughter tells more than asks herself, more than once.
Before finally piecing the sordid details together in the following days and months and years.
Before finally deciding to fuck this fucked lineage. And remove herself altogether from this story.
Fuck.
Anyhow. Following his first wife’s burial, Eddie refuses to visit her grave until the unveiling of her headstone. Once it is unveiled he continues to refuse to visit. The grave perches atop a steep hill too tough for him to climb, he claims. But really it’s that, as is customary, her marker faces east. Like all the stones around her. Like his parents and grandparents’ in the old Jewish cemetery in Saint John. Old jazz. Too much to bear.
Also his first wife’s marker is a double—one half inscribed with her name and the whatnot his daughter came up with. The other half is blank, waiting for Eddie’s own passing. Eddie, it will say. Or Edwin-not-Isidore. Or—Eddie isn’t sure what his daughter will say, what her mother told her.
Also, his first wife’s headstone stares at him as do all the other markers. For shame, for shame, as his first wife’s boat drifts on without him.
For eight years she drifts farther from this story and then drifts from this story but before she does, each time he rises at three-four in the morning for his matzo and jam snack, he is eighty-seven, fifty-two, thirty-five, and somehow nine and seven. He eats weeping in his new wife’s kitchen then races to the bathroom where he shits all over the toilet seat.
His new wife, orthodox like Eddie’s own mother who couldn’t keep him, wakes and arises from the conjugal bed and cries too. The mess. She is eighty-one and eighty-two-three-five and somehow sixty-three and forty again. Her first husband Polish, a holocaust survivor. Grievously ill much of their married life, constantly requiring her care. Insisting from his sick bed that only Jewish nurses and Jewish doctors visit the house—her first husband terrified under the hands of non-Jews. And then after years of her care finally dead, may his memory be a blessing. She cries and cries. And the daughter of her new husband refuses to call. And one of the new wife’s own daughters, a lesbian and living on the east coast, which might as well be another country, refuses to call.
Daughters—such trouble, such spite. For what?
Isidore, in a dress. He is three or four. Aunt Mary does it, common enough for young boys back in her day but increasingly not done, not here—the dress, the morning appointment at the portrait studio across the river on the rich side of town. She has saved and saved from her earnings at Woolworths.
The sweet child she never had. Daughter.
Irresistible, the dark hair in curls.
At least Eddie’s son is not much in this story. He is spared here. He has his own story, one only he knows, while for incommunicado years his sister drifts in her own story farther from her mother and father and brother’s boats. The brother’s sister far along, ahead. Perhaps she has always been. First-born’s curse. Different from the second-last-born’s, like her mother. Different from the last-born’s, like her brother, father too—who, now that thank god she has given up on him for good, is finally alone with his own story.
The night boat winds through tall water weeds. Days and days of night. The stars grow bored and give up. The moon grows lonely and gives up. The green bird lifts one last time. Eddie lies down. The boat leaks. How dare it? Christ’s sake. Water hugs his shoulders and chest, tickles his ears until the water slides a consoling balaclava over his head, with holes for his eyes and nose and mouth. He looks like somebody’s old babushka. True, he is ninety-four-five. His breath vapours the cold. Will he never die? If only he could kick his feet. Kick something. Christ’s sake. Kiss my ass.
Isidore-not-Edwin-not-Eddie lugs a sack of chickens, his grandfather’s treasures, to the butcher. A long walk. An old woman.
Jew boy, she calls after him. Dirty Jew Christ-killer.
He flinches. Another chicken pecks his leg. He is six or eleven. He is tired. Of the chickens and old women and the grandfather who will exorcise all this, this afternoon or the next.
The boy turns the corner onto a vacant street and the nasty crone disappears.
A chicken pecks a hole in the sack and the beak sticks through. It sticks the boy’s rear end.
The hen will disappear soon from the boy’s story and from its own story too.
Before that, the boy flicks his arm. The chickens screech. Christ’s sake, the boy thinks. His first curse. Something he has heard the butcher say when flies get on the expensive lamb chops the boy fears he will never get to eat. Christ’s sake. He swings his arm high. He drops the bag on the sidewalk. Do those hens ever squawk. He picks up the bag and swings it again. Again he drops the bag.
This Wicked Tongue
Here beginneth a short treatise of contemplation taken from the Book of Alice Nash, Ancress of Shere, c. AD 1372*
Before we leave we tell You—smoke kestrel, thumb sky. But since friend Nance’s murder, our words a poor magic mashed to this world. Then we are off our knees. We sneeze and admit Mam’s relief at our leave taking. She wants no mob here, poxed cursers seeking to lay blame and wreak vengeance for our imagined sins. We smudge a tear from young Bea’s cheek. Boy, we say to young Robert. A curtsy for Pa mute from the Long Wars. We hold back a sneeze. The sun fights a cloud. The old donkey’s nose dabbles air and he twitches his flied flank. From cousins Matilda and Joan one hill over, two quick waves. We scan the second hill, the third. No Nance.
We sl
ing up our pack.
Wind on the mountain passes. Yesterday our feet froze and thawed and a swift hare defied a hawk. Yesterday we sang. We chopped firewood and slept strong.
Today we stumble, rock and root. Bound breasts ache. We miss Mam fretting over Bea’s coarse braids, Robert tossing his cap, off to tend the ewes. We miss the ewe called Rose.
We bear on. The hold of which Nance spoke lies in Surrey, a fortnight or more southeastward. But by evening our flasks dry. Even the donkey sucks his teeth. We pray You all night.
But our pleas stir the ash and at grey light the donkey heaves. We stroke his flattened ears, lean against the sweating neck. He buckles and barks, and sad to say we coax him forward with a stick while we trod alongside, the path sour with moss. Crows rattle bare branches. Their cries banner our thin thoughts.
At high sun we sink, lick damp from rocks, pound dirt with fists. Call You with sorry sounds. Thistle girt, boat corn—we call You. But You are dark striking.
We remind You—to You we come. But You must already know. And our sorry sounds grow.
You must move us—for bless him, the donkey nips, we find our feet and soon the trees green. Violets sweet. We come to a low village where a mean tavern reeks, hurry to a ditch and drink.
For seven days and seven nights, we meet roads and winding lanes. And once, a three-legged dog with a cold searching nose the donkey does its best to bite. Where stoves blast, we beg, we eat. When Richards ask favours, we beg off. When a Margery with head scabs asks us, we head shake. Once, three robbers with sacks command us. But with three fleet axe swings, born of our seventeen hard-chore years, that’s that.
We wade through fields at dusk and deers’ gold scalds our eyes. Once, we spy a dead fawn by a creek, hide scaling with beetles and worms while a thrush throats.
All this Your work. O You in all things, behold we come. To You we come.
And behold, tomorrow is another day.
Eighth night. We bed by a stream, bid mild sleep as the donkey snores. And fear not for all is well, You evermore though mountains might bolt and seas surge. We tell ourselves. For as our lids grow heavy, the stream courses purple. And for each child rhyme we garble for solace, sparks spit strange sights. Crimson flocks taking flight from bleeding hills, from plague cursers wagging knives. Nance shouting, Run, Alice, run. And Alice did run, head gibbering like loose heavens. Until she dared halt and look back. Red halos. Cries of Infidels.
Run, Alice. Streaming these red thoughts.
But fear not. For all is You. The spell ends. Heavens settle, water calms. We must go far, for Nance. For You.
For now, we roll over, pretend snore in case that hastens rest. A good armpit scratch never hurt. Nor a hum to settle the chest. Soon two owls converse with the donkey’s dream snorts. And all is well. Only once, a sob chokes.
O Nance.
*
She taught far and wide. Toulouse to Narbonne, Beauvais to Bruges. Low-country towns around Flanders, Brabant. A drab English shire in spring. You see all, she preached, under a stewing rain in front of the eel monger’s that morning Alice first beheld her—Nance herself a miracle with cropped curls and sturdy shoulders and worldly in her knowledge and brave.
On an August afternoon, she and Alice lay together in the meadow foxtail and herd’s grass which caused eye water and sneezes, but the sun streamed. Bees clustered in clover. You in all things.
In my rough heart too, Nance?
In your heart too, Alice.
Who dared draw head to Nance’s browned bosom. In this, Nance?
Her chapped hand stroked Alice’s neck and a breeze purred like Mam’s ginger cat. This too, Alice.
Thereafter in the shade of a blackberry bush, stained lips pressing. Heat sheeting strong backs and buttocks and knees. In the season’s awe light, the year swinging stout, fattening with gifts of early evening brilliants, of which Nance taught.
So much to come, we thought. For You.
On whose behalf the cursers believed they came. Early fall. West Hill where true loves Nance and Alice dallied. Kickers and stabbers, behold. You in all things.
In Nance who now lives on in Alice.
We reach a day of nights and days too numerous to tell. Swim streams, solve riddles, open gates.
At last arrive—we arrive, we tell You, in case you don’t already know.
The church rubbles. As Nance had warned, describing her travels among such poverty. And so soon we beg mercy of the devout one who greets us. Who appears gaunt and confused. Neck craning, scanning to our sides, behind us. Asking, Is there another of you? when we put forth our case. Since when Nance died Alice became Nance too. For You.
At last, we offer all we own beyond ourselves—our poor beast as payment for scant keep. Though we are sad to see the donkey go.
At last we trip on crumbling brick and sneeze dust through dark corridors. A great door’s hinges creak. Behold a dim room. Ailbertine the Tall—do You know her? We sneeze and wait while she rises from behind a desk, shakes out her black threadbares like a proud old crow.
She will think on us.
We wait on the chapel bench, splinters in our palms. We sneeze and sing songs. At last, sleep.
Next morning, Ailbertine towers. Kneel in the garden, she bids, her voice high. Tend the Lord’s carrot blight.
But our donkey. In return, we must gain the cell.
But, Ailbertine says in a voice even higher. Nineteen years now Cecily holds it. What you desire you will not have. Not while Cecily lives.
We wonder, was Nance wrong? Are we?
Forgive us then, we say, figuring at least one thing fast. But with respect we request the donkey back.
Ailbertine draws ever taller. A long moment, then a withered hand grants a head prick with a long yellow claw. Bring Cecily her weekly suppers, Ailbertine commands. Collect such body soils as might depend. Hear your Lord speak thus.
We do. For You we yank weeds and coddle weak sprouts. Fetch Cecily her gruel. Once a week, empty her chamber pan.
And do You know Cecily too? Know that one day past three weeks since we arrived, a bad pea kills her.
Know Nance was right.
At last we are on our knees by our cell’s window squint. And all is well evermore, we pray You—sun spoon, blue bake.
Until a spider webs her prey by the inner casement and with her enterprise our hunger swells. Bless us—we have defecated but twice this first month.
We stand and the flagstones spin. Nance in her green dress lies down, and we lie too.
Is Nance not gone?
A feathered crow alights the outer casement of our cell’s window and beaks a stone. Cecily, returning?
We lick dry lips and wonder. Is this how You speak? Between the living and the dead? On a hill, spiralling like Bea’s beloved toy top, where cousins Joan and Matilda start up. And Alice among them with Mam and Pa.
We wonder. If Nance in her green dress still lies down, can Alice lie too, lie yet with Nance? Or must we continue to run, Alice, run. Until like a top we too twist to fog.
And Cecily, does she walk, might she return, in what state? A pea for a pea in a pale shivery hand?
Alone, nowhere else to go, we ask and ask our questions.
Maybe You don’t know.
A day, a night, another day or more. At last the spell clears. We kneel again in our cell—so low, dirt humbles our lips. But our hunger gains teeth and nails and slinks.
Forgive this. Forgive this. And nothing else.
On a night of nights too long to tell, key and lock and door scrape. Behold Ailbertine bearing a torch. Bless, she squeaks.
We hop in place, clap hands to warm, sneeze. In the torchlight a smile crooks the woman’s mouth like a hook. We’d almost forgotten such highness. Bless, we sneer back.
She steps closer and we get three head cuffs.
One sharp kiss, which stinks of rancid meat. Our heart hammers for our old braying beast.
You spared us for this? And the weekly oatcake. The swig of water. Coins sometimes tossed at our squint by pilgrims seeking counsel. Let the light scald your eyes, we bid them. Angered, some ask for their coins’ return.
Yes, bless, Ailbertine squawks. The old rich silversmith and his young love. Their sickly child. Thus put your nonsense to Godly use, or suffer casting back into the world.
Where Nance lies down and Alice lies too? And all is well evermore. Until all is not.
Or remain here, where for her passion, poor Cecily met an inglorious end. For which we truly repent. Her end we could meet too. For love of You?
Run, Nance shouts.
Let the light scald Your eyes.
Now we reach a day of days too pitiful to tell. At last a beach by a cliff. We crouch against a rock for hours, let terns tangle our hair, pull the wool from our cloak. Scavenging the water’s edge for a time near nightfall, a woman in black rags like an old crow, but not one we know. For a time, we toe freeze in salt suck. Then knee and hip with breath catch, stones tied to our hem. Until neck soak, when in between sudden sneezes we face tilt. And behold the star bones of sky heroes revealed by bold true Nance.
A boulder beyond wave’s reach shelters our coldest night.
Next day, old crow from the night before, with a big steaming pot.
Sage moan, cape band. Sea cave and blanket and tide. Gulps of gull soup. When darkness tucks around us, we touch ourselves to sleep. Fetch terns’ eggs with each dawn. On clear evenings beneath the Mariner’s brights, we dare point to the skies as Nance once did.
Constellations never before told. Here, Taker of Biddy Tolls in Wayfarer Tales. There, Digger of Fine Dusts for Scents. And here, Maker of Dab Purses, Best Baker of Delicate Loaves. There, Measurer of the Village Wells.
Another night now. Before we leave again we tell You, behold. Here, Keeper in Her Lighthouse Several Borders North. Above You, Sailor in Her Star Throne—in a time not yet come. But just You wait.