He says: Fine. Baker's coming in from Pittsburgh tomorrow to discuss the sectional meeting.
I say: Well, that will be nice. Shall I expect him for dinner?
He says: Nah, 'sgotta fly back right away. We'll grab something in Center City.
I say: Fine.
He says: What's bugging Jeffrey? Is it nursery school?
I say: I think it's his dancing class. No big deal. He's just getting behind or lost or something.
He says: Is that what his teacher told you?
I say: No, Jeffrey mentioned it. For no reason I add: He's a good honest kid.
He says: Well, what's the problem? Has he missed classes or what?
I say: Look, he's just a little frustrated trying to remember some of the steps. I really think that's all it is.
He says: Hell, why's a kid his age gotta take a goddamn pre-school dance class, anyway?
And I say: Because it's a fucking international law, why do you think?
And that's when Tom calls me hostile and says I've been snapping at him for weeks and I say, look, he's your son and if you don't encourage him early in some sort of meaningful aesthetic endeavor, he'll end up on the streets killing hubcaps and stealing prostitutes and Tom smiles slightly and says don't you have that backwards and I say Tom sometimes you really just miss the point of life sometimes you are an inexpressibly hollow, hollow man, you don't know a damn about what's important in this world and that's when he looks at me aghast and I realize I have sprung a leak somewhere and as he calls Riva please come back here I run upstairs to the bay window and hide behind my new floor-length half-silk drapes I bought just last week with the money, the money, breathing into the smooth seamless backing they smell new, new, because I really don't know myself now what it is I'm talking about, but it must be something, this jittery pang, this space, this hole must have a name I wonder what it is who is this Tom guy anyway?
A dream. A dream is like a church, cool and dark and wood and brass, the jeweled jelly-jar windows a place to scurry into from off the street in the night I dreamed of you, Phil. You stood before me and undressed, then sinking into me nuzzling with the perfect bone of your chin, the O of your mouth, humming to the Bruckner or the Mahler, I didn't know, it was a name that made me think of the Bronx, and your face beneath me, close and closed and traveling briefly opened, smiling up at me, huge trembling me, and whispered: Oh the largeness. How we loved each other with forks.
the woman in the health food store I believe is slowly losing her mind. Every time I go in there she is slumped on the wooden stool behind the register more dazed, more sad than before. She recognizes me less. Today I am the only one in there and when I say excuse me, can I get two pounds of bulgar wheat, she continues to stare at the coconut shampoos, her legs frozen and crossed, her back a curved mound beneath the same pink-gray sweater she drapes like a small cape over her shoulders. Finally she says huh but never looks up.
Bulgar wheat? I say gently. Coarse? Like last week?
Yeah. She pulls at the sweater, then goes through some sort of pelvic swivel which tilts the stool just enough to spill her down and out of it. She scuffs around the counter to the bulgar wheat, reaches for a scoop, a paper bag, and then bursts into sobs. I try to think of what to do. I quickly grab three coconut shampoos to help out her business a little and then go to her, put my arm around her, and tell her about Tom's secret affair last year in Scranton and how I visited him there as a surprise and learned of the whole thing and got drunk and stuck postage stamps all over myself, tried to mail myself home, that always cheers people up when I tell it in Scarves and Handbags. She smiles, shuffles over to the register, charges me for four not three coconut shampoos and the bulgar wheat.
I walk toward the car.
A basset hound caroms dizzily up the sidewalk ahead of me, peeing on everything.
today i am taking Jeffrey alias Batman to visit my mother. Although he is officially too young to visit, he has won Sister Mary Marian's heart by asking her if she were his fairy godmother and she, quite enthralled with this idea, now lies incorrigibly, telling everyone that he's regulation exempt, it's fine he can go in. These are the kind of nuns I like.
Mother places the chocolate Last Supper I have paid twenty dollars for disinterestedly at the foot of the bed and reaches jubilantly for Jeffrey. Come see Gramma, she sings.
Hi Gramma, he chirps obediently and climbs up into her arms in his cape and mask, he is such a good kid. There are so many funny fairies here at your house, Gramma, he continues.
My mother shifts her feet uncomfortably beneath the covers and the Last Supper cracks onto the floor.
Well, Jeffrey dear, have you been well?
Jeffrey's head does two full expressionless bobs.
Mother tosses a look at me which for some reason seems to say: How did you and this Tom ever manage such a lovely child?
She continues: How do you like going to nursery school, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey looks at her with sudden interest, his eyes behind his mask wide as soft-boiled eggs. He pauses, then warbles: Back and forth, back and forth.
Tell Gramma, Jeffrey, what the strange clothes are that you have on today.
I'm Batman, says Jeffrey.
You're Batman?! squeals my delighted mother.
Yup, he says, and shapes his fingers into a gun and pulls the trigger, blowing off her face. Bang, he says.
She is startled. Now Jeffrey dear, you don't mean that, she coos nervously, taking his little hand and gently, quietly, returning it to his lap. It flies back up with a fierce quickness. Jeffrey looks at her face, her sour-breath face, and doesn't smile. Bang, he says again from behind the mask, the finger curling slowly, firmly. Bang.
You love once, I told you. Even when you love over and over again it is the same once, the same one. And you sent me your recipes — Ezra Pound Cake, Beef Mallarmé—and you wrote: Do you think if you eat one meal, every meal after that is the same meal, just because it too is a meal? And I said some are the same meal.
in the hospital cafeteria Jeffrey asks me if he can have a BB gun. He is eating around the crusts of his bologna sandwich, pulling out the lettuce and dropping it unsurreptitiously onto the floor.
Of course not, I say. Take your mask off while you're eating. He obeys.
Why on earth do you want a BB gun?
He shrugs his shoulders. I dunno, he says and I can hear his legs swinging beneath the table, his sneakers hitting the aluminum, vibrating his Jello-O. Dad'll let me.
No, he won't, Jeffrey, now that's the end of it.
He thinks about this for a while. Can I have some ice cream, then?
No. Finish your sandwich.
Can I… (now he's just thinking up any old thing)… take this home with me? He holds up a plastic fork.
Good god. All right.
Goody, he says.
Tuesday at work I have to yell at Amahara. She has mispriced all the Italian clutches.
Big deal, bubbleass, she mutters into her own right shoulder.
One more crack like that, Amahara, and you're through.
I didn't say nothing, she protests, wickedly wide-eyed.
Just watch it. My voice is scraping, ugly, it unnerves me. I go back out on the floor and re-mark the bags myself. It is a thankless, mechanical chore, tag after tag, one after another. The Italian clutches have brassy leering clasps and I can see myself in them, muzzy and sickeningly golden. I am suddenly embarrassed to be marking up such flimsy merchandise.
I leave early not even checking the afternoon's returns, pick up Batman from nursery school, drive home, and lying in bed later ask Tom if he thinks I have a big ass like a bubble and he says no.