Morning’s minion. Dappled dawn-drawn falcon towing in its wake besides the new day, like a ragman’s cart, this wagonload of old. Breath a white plume above, Deborah’s pale body alongside. Both of them oddly insubstantial? Bellies of frost at the base of the window. Birds outside richly achitter as though seeking news of the tropics so soon and suddenly departed. Surely one of them’s heard something.
Like a tired swimmer, I turned onto my side, skimming the surface of this day. Land behind, land ahead. Neither in sight.
So many in my life fallen, gone so quickly. My parents, LaVerne, Alouette’s first child. The man I killed up by Baton Rouge as oil rigs wheezed beside us, flat birds’ heads rocking and pecking on their tethers. Can that really have been almost forty years ago? Before long, before anyone notices, Raymond Carver wrote, I’ll be gone from here, and was. Or Rilke in “Portrait of My Father As a Young Man.” He sees the dreams in his father’s eyes, the prehensile brow like his own, all the rest so contained and unknowable that, even as Rilke looks on, the image of his father begins fading into the background: O quickly disappearing photograph in my more slowly disappearing hand. My own photograph would look much the same. Soon enough we all fade from whatever records, whatever impressions, there are of us. Fade like Rilke’s father into time itself, the gray batting forever at our backs. Might David one day, looking at a photograph of me, sense something of those same longings? I remembered the photo of my young parents sitting together, smiling and happy, on the hood of their Ford. A woman I did not recognize-where in the embittered, joyless mother I grew up alongside was this pretty young woman hiding? — and a man I knew but slightly better, a man who had faded into the background long before his time, at the very start of mine.
The birds’ tropics would be back, of course. They had only to wait here, gossiping among themselves. But my mother’s happiness, the happiness I saw in that photo, once fled never returned. Would David?
LaVerne was gone. Baby Boy McTell. Hosie Straughter. Harry, the man I killed up by Baton Rouge. Don’s son. All of us, eventually. Before long, before anyone notices.
You’re always quoting other people, Verne told me once. Anytime something important happens or some thought logjams in your head, there you are, hopping up like a schoolboy, pick me! pick me! with what Dante or Camus or Thingamabob said. You think anyone gives half a damn, Lew? And half the time, anyway, you’re only using it to avoid digging in, avoid having to find out what you think. Or what you feel.
Deborah’s arm came across my shoulder, pulling me up from the depths, back safely to land. (Did I struggle? Drowning men often do.) Spread of sunlight on every surface. Wall and curtain, bureau, nightstand, quilt, rib cage. Whole world become surfaces now: how long will they hold? I feel Deborah’s breath on my neck as she pushes into me. Warm the whole of her length, she smells faintly of sweat. Blankets and history, even this morning light, weigh us down.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Oh yeah. Courtesy of our friends the birds.”
“Who won’t have us missing a single moment of this exciting new day.”
“Not to mention Bat, who’s been in here at least twice already, demanding to know why his food’s not been replenished.”
“Or the pneumatic truck collecting curbside garbage.” Grunting and sucking air through pursed lips, slamming hands against wall and headboard, she did a great take on bad brakes, tailgates, whirring pickup motors.
“Ah, civilization.”
“Not just Twelfth Night and Faulkner, is it, Lew?”
“Or Ricki Lake.”
“Point taken.”
Then: “Got some good points there yourself.”
“Hard little buggers, aren’t they? Anytime I have my period I get horny-you know that, right?” Her free hand moved down, rested on my stomach. “Sleep okay?”
“Mostly. I had this dream that seemed to go on and on all night, though I’m sure it didn’t. Couldn’t have. We were getting ready for a trip, fitting things into the car. Two friends (in the dream I knew who they were, even if I’m clueless now) had these old coins with distinctive dates, dates that jumped out at you, nickels I think. They kept putting them down in front of us, wherever we were. We’d be drinking coffee, one of them would come along and slap down a nickel there between cups. Standing on queue at a movie premiere-you looked quite wonderful, by the way, wearing one of your crinkle skirts, low heels, a sleeveless sweater, long earrings-there they were again with the nickels.”
I turned towards her. We made necessary adjustments, tugged at covers.
“Damn cold, isn’t it?”
“Houses just aren’t built for it.”
“Neither are we.”
We lay there quietly for a time.
“Play going okay?”
“Way better than I have any right to expect. Turned into something of a marvel last night, actually. Everyone felt it at the same time. Suddenly the play wasn’t us: we were the play.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s what you work for. You never know if it’s going to happen.” Moments later she added: “Most of the time it doesn’t.”
Doors slammed shut and dogs barked outside. A car alarm racketed on. Cans and bottles rang together as a neighbor emptied trash. From open windows in a third-floor apartment across the street, Mahler fought his way up through strings and brass to a deafening crescendo.
“Time for us to put the nickel down, Lew?”
Whatever the nickel was.