“Where have you been?” asked Sarah.
“What do you mean?” There was something in her voice I’d not really heard before. I wondered if this was her restaurant voice. Not as sharp as the coulis-and-quenelles voice. But perhaps a beef-cheek-and-parsnip-gnocchi voice.
“I was driving home and I saw you on Maple Avenue coming from what seemed quite far away. And Edward told me he’s seen you headed the other way, fast as can be, Emmie in the stroller and you just zipping along God knows where to.”
“I’m sorry. Should I not take her for walks?”
I’d never felt accused before. Perhaps I had never been accused before. I had, however, never been responsible for very much before, not really, and had little practice in having my actions observed and found lacking. Well, once, in ninth grade, I had tried out for cheerleading. But could that even count? When I went to fly into the air with one knee up, one leg back, one hand on my hip — a stag jump, it was called — I’d come down in a heap and the observing was quickly over.
Sarah’s voice softened. “Oh, of course you should.” And then she seemed to let go of the topic entirely — just let it drop and skitter — and so I didn’t say any more on the matter right then.
——
With my new money — Sarah had already given me a raise — I bought a used Suzuki 125 motor scooter, which I kept on the front porch and rode to classes or to Reynaldo’s, and a bedside reading lamp I ordered from a catalog. The catalog showed a man sleeping peacefully while his model-wife read a book in soft but focused light. In real life, however, the light was so intense that that same man would have had to wear sunglasses. He would have had to set up a little pup tent on his side of the bed. The lamplight was as bright as the noon sun, and as I studied next to him, Reynaldo could not sleep. Yet another pretty picture of love I’d not questioned, just bought. I turned off the light and fell behind in my reading.
It seemed now that the town had started to throw off the monochromatic winter to reveal its bright lunatic pajamas beneath. Though the robins had not yet reappeared, cardinals were whistling their mating songs. The remaining snowbanks were made dingy with rain. Only once did a late light snowfall blanket the town with a deathly quiet — a quick reminder before the winter left for good — an amuse-bouche, a mignardise, a déjà vu, a je reviens: I had dropped French long ago. Au printemps! The evaporating snow left the sky a lurid yellow at night. The streetlights shone off the remaining drifts, and for a few days all remained milky and low.
But soon again the journey from crocus to daffodil to peony resumed. Flowers that intended to impress only bugs had accidentally enchanted not just me. Gardens began to emerge. Every third day there was a hot lemony sun, with the lawns starting to green from rain and melted snow. The fraternity boys started to wear shorts and the siberian violets blued the yards. Still, you could sometimes see, in a shady north corner, a small black-flecked pile of snow so solid and condensed it could not melt. It was as if it had changed, biochemically, into a new substance, like the silica on Mars that was the tag end of some water or other.
Wavy thickened tulip leaves had burst the beds and flopped down, still forming their tight bullety pods, but at an angle (only the largest tulips stayed straight, I said to Reynaldo, when kissing him; beneath him at night I was being taken to places so high and starry, I feared I was taking years off my life, the way astronauts are said not to live especially long). The early tulips were caught in leafy show, the petals still prayers sealed in a leprechaun’s clutch. St. Patrick’s Day came and went without even a single green beer to drink. My days were too busy and full, and without Murph — who seemed to have completely vanished except for the waxy smell of her unclean hairbrush still sitting there in the bathroom, along with her black dental floss and soap and an assortment of other items — what was the point of green beer?
My strolls with Mary-Emma kept me alert to gardens and the softness of the air. The hyacinths, with their gravity-defying construction — fat botanical bumblebees with their look-Mom-I’m-flying paraphysics, which in the presence of actual gravity showed the botch of this ambition — soon bloomed and tipped. Clumps of daffodils huddled near trees, and spring phlox pinkened the hills of the park. What in June would be weeds and brush were now forsythia and the starry purple spikes of bachelor buttons (surely never worn by any bachelor ever). If I went up alleyways to better view other people’s backyards, and if I didn’t pay too much attention to the motley assemblages of trash cans, the alleys seemed like Irish lanes, or at least pictures I’d seen of country roads in Kerry. I’d contemplate the surreal dangle of the bleeding hearts or the columbine with their tiny eccentric lanterns in the most hardscrabble places — close to warm concrete — sprouting skyward and groundward simultaneously. If no one was looking I’d pick one for Mary-Emma. As with a snapdragon blossom you could turn one into a little talking puppet. There was a delicate hinge like a jaw, which you could squeeze open and shut. You could do little mocking imitations of your mother in the truck at the farmer’s market. You didn’t even need to be sitting in an actual truck to do it.
“Look, Mary-Emma!” And she would. It was a beautiful thing, having a little girl in tow. Why hadn’t my own mother known? Perhaps there was too much winter permanently in our veins.
Mary-Emma would point toward the street sewers, seeing a raccoon scuttle in. “Cartoons down there!” she exclaimed.
Dwarf irises, bearded irises, and the first mosquitoes emerged simultaneously, each with their subtly striped gray-violet plumage. Where were the bearded dwarves to add semantic meat to the flowerbeds? Well, some yards did have ceramic gnomes in their yards à la Germany.
The strengthening light sparkled in the trees’ new leaves, and the thick bosomy smell of lilacs floated in waves across our various paths. The humid spice of honeysuckle hung over the garbage cans. I even met the threesome next door, who finally emerged after winter, looking very beautiful. The woman — I remembered her name was Catherine — smiled at Mary-Emma. And Mary-Emma did not smile back but hid behind my leg.
“She never says hi to me,” said the woman, Catherine. The two men had continued on ahead. “I hope it’s not because I’m white!”
I stared at this crazy, Satie-playing woman. “A lot of people she knows are white,” I did not say, “including her parents,” and so I said nothing but just watched as she trotted up ahead to be with her men.