The Nada

Salvador Dali's Clock Explosion

Today, loss washes inside of me like the leftover milk in the bowl I carry to the sink. Each of my steps forces a thin skim of white over the bowl's blue insides. Sloshing precariously close to the edge of the rim, the liquid threatens to spill over, wetting my hands, my pants, my feet. If I'm careful, I can right the bowl and avert the mess.

I don't want to be careful, though. I want to send the bowl crashing, the muscles of my throwing arm stretching and flexing as the bowl splinters into jagged shards, the milk running down the wall in rivelets. As a young married woman, angry over something I can't even remember now, I hurled a bowl of chocolate pudding against our rented beige wall. The pudding stuck in clumps, sweet brown tumors holding their tremulous form until plopping onto the ruined dish.

I should make a gratitude list. I should reflect on the symbolic beauty of the flash of red bird against the bare branch. I should pull myself up by my damned bootstraps, and lay my face against the window glass to feel the sun's warmth.

Instead, emptiness wraps its arms around me, pulling my head close to its chest. "Fall into me," it croons, giving me the come-hither look I've come to know.

What's left are these: pale, still unformed eyelids that I couldn't save, no matter how hard I prayed; blue laundry stamps on white hospital sheets, rigor setting in; a cheap gray box marred by a spot of blood near the head; words--words I didn't say, words I shouldn't say, words I said; time wasted and measured and used up, flat now like Dali's clock; a woman I never knew crying for her children in the common room, rocking and rocking and rocking herself; meanness of spirit, you selfish girl, did you have to think so much of your sorry self?; so many souls scattered like grains of uncooked rice; pregnant moments on the edge of the sea, promise rising like ripples of waves touching my feet.

(I plant my feet firmly in the wet sand, grains whooshing out with the tide, throwing me off balance.
Still I fight not to fall, digging my heels deeper, though I lose, and I cannot breathe for the sand that plugs my nose.  The enormity of what has passed is too much, and I close my mind against the sum.)

Later, in the dark kitchen, I find myself pouring the milk into the sink drain and rinsing the dish with warm, clear water before setting the blue bowl intact on the counter.

Finding Truman



Photograph by Irving Penn, 1965



Truman,
are you there? Sometimes I hear
your next drink sloshing in the shaker,
small ice crystals frenzied in their swirl,
both numbing and greasing at once.

An olive, Mr. Capote?

Where does a mind like yours go
when a heart like yours ceases to beat?
If I breathe deeply enough,expanding my nostrils for maximum intake,
will one of the molecules expelled by you
find its way into me?
Will I then be breathing in a little of the Clutters,
a little more of Perry and Dick,
and some of the darkness you carried with you to the end?

Though I don't have 94% recall,
will you bleed through my pen,
creating havoc on my yellow legal pad?
If you could, Truman,
would you prime the pump for me?
Unleash the words clogging
my brain, help them drip and spread
into a pool of wonder on the page.
I'll see your reflection when I gaze upon it,
I promise.
In the meantime, Truman,
I'll continue to lead them
to the altar of you.

Break Out the Tap Shoes

Okay, so I'll admit that the classroom is all wrong. I'm teaching on the bottom floor this semester, in a squared-off white-block room primarily reserved for criminal justice classes. The residual vibes are hinky. When I enter the room, my mind seizes, all those shadow words about police procedure jamming my normal thought processes. My creative feelers are sticky from the nasty web in the doorway.

I'll also admit that the class is at 2:30. The grayed-out sky doesn't help. The students (and I) have too much to do.

But, come on...an eye roll? Really?

My class in the white-block room is called Teaching Writing, a course designed to help future teachers reverse the negativity many students feel about writing. My syllabus argues that words and ideas can change the world. I do believe in the transformative power of writing, just as Professor Keating does in Dead Poets Society. Mentally, I rip, rip, rip the formalist pages out of J. Evans Pritchard's Introduction to Literature. I throw my ideas about teaching writing into the air, hoping that they break open in front of my students' eyes, that at least one idea will be carried home to sprout.

Tonight I'm feeling like the room won.

Next week I'll go back, carrying my passion for writing like a disfiguring hump on my back. "Look at me!" I'll cry, just before I strap on my shiny black tap shoes.

Words for a New Year

The last really festive, on-the-town New Year's Eve I remember happened the year before my oldest son was born. And by festive I mean: party dresses in red and black silk, drinks in little bars all over Mt. Washington, dinner at a schmancy fancy restaurant overlooking the crisply-lit city, champagne toasts, noisemakers, and drunken kisses at midnight. I remember a heart-to-heart with my friend Elaine in the ladies' room just minutes after the clock struck 1983--heads together, we smiled at our reflections and the seductive promise of our pretty lives hovering in front of us like holograms.

The next year my son, Matty, was only two months old, so we stayed in, our little family wrapped up in the comfort of our tiny family room in the little Bethel Park colonial, and that night held new magic for us. We spent the next series of eves family style with friends, all of us balancing babies, toddlers, and paper cups. For a while, nothing seemed to change. Then, suddenly, we were on our own again, our children away or at parties, our friends opting to stay close to home, all of us on call just in case someone needed a ride home.

Tonight, finds me at home, still. High heels click on the bathroom floor above me; the shower switching on and off as my children get ready to meet the New Year. I will still have a kiss at midnight, but I'll probably be balancing a book along with my champagne flute.

If I can't be twenty-something, dressed in red silk, standing on the edge of my future, I'll be content to be this book-worm me, tome in hand, leaning against the love of my life, waiting for another year of our lives to begin.

Here's some of the books I read since the clock struck 2012. Just like the parts of my life, some will make you laugh, and some will make you cry. Cheers.

The Sandcastle Girls, Chris Bohjalian
      I just finished this beauty, a heart-wrenching love story set in Turkey during the 1915 Armenian
      Genocide, as discovered and revealed by the lovers' surburban American granddaughter. Details
      of box cars crammed with starving Armenian women forshadow the coming Holocaust, as
      German officials (then allies to Turkey) marvel at the inhumanity of the "situation." Against the
      bleak desert backdrop, the war's victimization of women is etched on the reader's mind.

The Middlesteins, Jami Attenberg
       A dysfunctional family is set spinning by a father's divorce from a brilliant, but
       domineering mother who won't stop eating--a searing portrait of family love and disgust, an
       examination of how we nourish or starve each other in relationships. As I
       read The Middlesteins, I couldn't help but think about a lesson hard learned in my life...once
       they're gone, they're gone.

Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley
        A writerof historical fiction feels a strong pull to New Slains Castle at Cruden Bay in Scotland,
       where she is compelled to write (channels?) the story of an ancestor who was involved in a plot
       to reinstate King James.The plot parallels the two women's lives in modern day and 18th-century
       Scotland. As a writer, I enjoyed reading about Carrie's process, especially that "other-worldly"
       connection to information that somehow appears in my brain.

 

In Between Days, Andrew Porter        
     An incident at college involving a middle-class couple's youngest daughter, Chloe, rocks the
     entire family. This beautifully-written novel forces us to examine the power of white versus    
     Muslim in America, frightening us with the results of blanket prejudice and loss, leaving us to
     wonder about our own racism and what lengths we must go to to find hope.

The Hypnotist's Love Story, Liane Moriarty    
     Combine a well-meaning stalker, her ex and his young son, and a hypnotist for a sometimes
     funny, sometimes sadly revealing of human nature read. Moriarity balances her characters
     well, equitably revealing both warts and halos...even of the stalker, as she enters the hypnotist's
     kitchen to make her a batch of muffins. The question really raised here involves the
     consequences we must face when we casually move on, in effect, discarding a human being from
     our lives.

        
Heading Out to Wonderful, Robert Goodrick         
     Charlie Beale settles down in small town America after his return from WWII. All around
     good-guy, Charlie falls victim to greed and lust, becoming the town outcast--tragic chronicle
     of America's spoiling from within. Goodrick is Faulker without the page-long sentences.
     Equally haunting, Heading Out to Normal exposes the greedy center of American life that
     threatens to consume us all. Picture Jay Gatsby in the midwest without the parties.

Shadow of Night, Deborah Harkness
         The second in Harkness' All Souls Trilogy, this book takes us from present-day New England to
         Elizabethan London, where Diana Bishop  and Matthew Clermont (witch and vampire)
         continue their hunt for Ashmole 787, an illusive manuscript that contains the secrets of
        "creatures" (witches, vampires, and daemons). Note: we meet Christopher Marlowe as a
         daemon! Harkness seems to have found a better balanced pace for her plot in this second
         volume.

The Beginner's Goodbye, Anne Tyler
        Anne Tyler is today's best popular novelist at navigating the shadow's of the human heart. In this
        short work, almost a novella, Tyler introduces us to Aaron, a vanity publisher who has long
        struggled with a physical infirmity, but who now is devastated by the loss of his wife Dorothy--
        sturdy, practical, Doctor Dorothy. When Dorothy begins to appear in Aaron's life once more his
        journey begins again.

      
The Street Sweeper, Eliot Perlman
        Complex characters bring together the American Civil Rights movement and the Holocaust in
        this lyrical novel. The tension is palpable from the first chapter as we meet Lamont Williams, a
        man recently paroled from prison, who struggles to keep his job as a sanitation worker at a local
        hospital. A novel full of surprises, Perlman's words wrap us in the hope and devastation of the
        human condition.

      


The Rebel Wife, Taylor Polites  

Set in the in the aftermath of the Civil War, The Rebel Wife is both suspenseful and thought-provoking, as Augusta Branson,

former Southern belle married off to a seeming carpet bagger,

must survive by her wits after her husband dies from a mysterious illness. Polites offers insight into the turmoil and betrayal that must have been the reality of the South shortly after the end of the war.

The Lost Saints of Tennessee, Amy Franklin Willis
       Ezekiel Cooper and his family (a passle of siblings, including a mentally-handicapped twin
       brother and his fire-hearted southern mama, Lillian) provide the emotional backdrop for a
       modern novel of the south, full of angst and healing. Think male version of The Divine Secrets
       the Ya-Ya Sisterhood  (Rebecca Wells) or Prince of Tides (Pat Conroy).

American Dervish, Ayad Akhtar

       The coming of age story of young Hayat Shah, an American boy living in the suburbs with his  Pakistani parents, this novel focuses on the arrival of Mina, the beautiful friend of Hayat's mother who comes to live with his family. Mina takes on the role of religious tutor, teaching Hayat about the Quran. Confused by the power of his emerging sexual identity and what he perceives to be morally right, Hayat betrays the lovely Mina, essentially condemning her to a miserable

existence.

Prayers for Sale, Sandra Dallas
       A home-spun tale of women who struggle to survive the physical hardships, weather extremes,
      and constant loss that exist in a 19th-century Colorado mountain mining community. Dallas
      bookends the life cycle with two predominent women: Nit, the 17-year-old bride who knocks
      on mountain matriarch Hennie's door after seeing Hennie's yard sign offering prayers for sale.

The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
      A love triangle begins simmering between three Brown college students beginning in the 1980s.
      Madeline, the lit major researching the Victorian marriage plot; Leonard, the beautiful and
      brilliant science major, locked in the early stages of bipolar disease; and Mitchell, the religion
      major, all-around good guy in love with Madeline. Masterfully written, we are invested in all of
      Eugenides' characters as they rise and fall with and without each other.

 

 

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
       If you haven't read Gone Girl, put it at the top of your list. Set aside the block of time you'll need
       to read 432 pages of this rollercoaster of a novel about "until death do us part," this rock'em
       sock'em robot word fight, this labyrinth of plot and suspense. Just remember this, when you open
       the pages of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, remember: nothing is what it seems.

Facebook Ghosts

The news came in a public place.

"Let me just make one quick call," I told my daughter, Laura. Leaning our heads together over the small table at Panera, we'd been laughing over something funny, the particulars lost to me now, one last day together before she flew back to her separate life in California. She left the table for a minute, for a napkin, some ice? I don't remember now. I made the call, and Laura found me, head in hands, mascara pooling on my fingers. The familiar settings of Panera-- the upholstered booths, the rectangular tables, the people with cups in hand--all blurred and faded from my field of vision.

"Mom? What's wrong?" she asked, dipping her face in front of my bowed head. Poor girl--I'm sure she thought the worst about one of our family members, so undone was I.

It took a while for her to understand. A friend was dead, not because cancer had eaten her from within or because a car took flight. This friend chose her end.

We'd known each other for 30 years, two women in an original band of friends long dissolved by betrayal and divorce. Somehow, we'd stayed connected, rising and falling in and out of each other's lives over the years. We took different paths, me to marriage and four children--her to seeking love in all the wrong places, a quest by a dangerous and willful beauty.

The stories I've heard about my friend's death must surely be incorrect, I think. I want to ask Elaine: did you hear what they're saying about you? I want to tell them: there's no way that the glorious woman who once told me, when I was in a rough spot, "you know, Jill, God cares for you. He holds you in His hand. Don't you ever despair" is the same woman who cut the tendons in her right wrist one week and hanged herself the next.

Still, she seems to be gone. In the weeks after her death, I typed her name into the "search for people, places and things" bar on Facebook, just in case. I clicked through her albums, running my mouse over her image like a caress. In some photos, her head is thrown back in gleeful laughter, sun bouncing off of her blonde hair. In others, she looks straight at the camera--a "take me as I am" glint in her eyes.

One day, a curious post appeared in the midst of the "I will always remember you"s and the "I know I'll see you again"s. This one read: "I know you are all right now. Thank you for that." Oh, how I wanted the story behind that post. I thought about "liking" it and adding a comment: "Please message me and tell me how you know she is all right!" Somehow writing about her, around her, through her on her own now lifeless page seemed wrong, so I moved my finger away from the Enter key. I'll probably check again.

The Earthquake Kit Revisited

There is no magic-- black or white,

no good juju, no incantations, no sacrifice
of bloodless, headless chickens—but I stay silent, working a charm of protection, just in case.

                                                        The Earthquake Kit 
(previously published in Connotations Press)                                                                                                                   

     When my youngest daughter Rachel was little, she worried a lot about the weather. The worrying part she got from me, the weather-watching part from her father. We were a beach vacation family in those days, and some of her earliest memories must surely involve late-night deck sitting, where we witnessed red lightning cracking above the smudged line of black water. One year we drove into Corolla, North Carolina on the windy heels of Hurricane Bertha, stopping once or twice to drag away tree branches blocking the single lane roads which led to Atlantic Avenue, just off of Highway 12.

     A random assortment of pine needles, bark, and murky sand covered the driveway of the house we’d rented that year, a certain sign of things to come. Nature had been vigorously shaken, and we were in the midst of the fall out. Trekking back from the beach, covered with a fine grit of sand, we stopped en masse at the outdoor shower.  We were a family who never used the inside showers, even the little ones preferring the sweet kiss of warm air on their skin, but this time, we backed out-- a formidable wall of Sundays—scurrying away from the aggressive encampment of big-headed, spindly-legged spiders.  Later that week, we were treated to a gathering of tree frogs, leaf emerald in their greenness, their sticky pads sucked tight to our glass door. Coming for the insects that had been drawn to our inside lights, the frogs’ tongues spun out, darting so rapidly that the insects seemed unaware of their fate. We watched transfixed, spellbound by this little life and death drama played out before us on a vacation house storm door.

     Later that week, we were all awakened by our oldest boy’s shouts. We’d had rain all day; the fury that had been Bertha was long gone, but another hurricane was pushing up the coast. We’d tucked our two youngest in, whispering reassurances  against the pounding rain on the cupola skylight, but now a steady torrent of water forced itself around, under, and through the skylight seal, pouring into the open center of the house, pooling on the first floor where the Godzilla marathon the boys had been watching still flickered on the screen.

     Rachel learned about the ugliness of nature during this and other beach trips, slapping her hands at fat black sand flies, shielding her eyes from the piercing sting of wind-borne sand, overturning turtle shells all but scraped clean of red meat, watching the glassy green sea whip itself into angry gray froth.  On our way south, we often drove through wild storms, once caught in tornado on the beltway around D.C., once driving into West Palm just minutes after a tornado touched down, sideways pelting rain having unnerved us all.

     “Maybe we shouldn’t stay,” Rachel repeated in a kind of litany, rolling her worry between her fingers like beads.

     We looked at the broad palm leaves sheared in ragged segments lying around the pool. “It’s over, honey. We’ll be fine.”

                                                                                                                                                                                      

     That trip marked the beginning of Rachel’s sojourn with the Weather Channel. While the tornado was indeed over, unfortunately the remainder of our vacation week was fraught with the kind of hazy heat and pressure that were often followed by ominous thunder storms. Rachel sat rigidly in front of the television several times a day listening for the word tornado on the Weather Channel. Any mention of impending rain heightened her panic.

     “I’ve got to see the Local on the Eights,” she’d say as we rounded up our children for application of sunscreen.

     “Come on, Rach. If we don’t get to the beach soon, the clouds will start building. Let’s go get some sun.”

     “Do you think it’s going to storm today? Maybe we shouldn’t go to the beach today. I want to go home! Can we please go home now?”

     And so it went, her tone becoming more insistent after we’d run up the beach walkway seeking shelter from the inevitable storm. I wonder if the confident young woman she is now remembers the hot tears she cried that week, her blue eyes wide with the fear of waiting for the worst to happen.

     Another summer, we hurried the short distance home from the community fair, after hearing a tornado warning broadcast over the loud speakers. “Don’t worry, kids,” I said to my four and two young friends. “Tornados don’t usually come to Pittsburgh. They are just being careful, that’s all.”

     We sat playing games in my family room until a strangely orange sky shone through the front windows. The glow was unnatural, eerie, and even I was a bit undone.

     “Let’s go guys--time to play in the basement.”

     Smiling while I boosted them up into the crawl space, I joked about me being a crazy worrywart, thinking all the while that the six children in my care would certainly replay this experience in their nightmares.  I held my breath while I sat guard on the cellar steps, waiting for the ghostly sound of the rushing locomotive.  When we emerged, our local news reported downed electric lines, fallen trees, and lifted rooftops just a few miles away.

     Rachel is mostly grown now, a leggy blonde with a wild sense of humor and a no-nonsense attitude.  A fierce “what of it” glint rises easily in her eyes if push comes to shove. Seven months ago she moved 2,577 road miles away from home to Moraga, California. When we packed up her suitcases in August, I checked St. Mary’s “Things to Bring List.” Reading it aloud, a part of my brain eliminated the Earthquake Emergency Kit, perhaps pretending that she wasn’t going quite so far, that she wasn’t my youngest, that I hadn’t quite reached this stage of my life. What bag of tricks could possibly help during an earthquake, anyway? What could I possibly buy to keep my girl safe?   

                                                                                                                                                                               

      Earlier this week, I noticed a link on Rachel’s Facebook page: Sign of California Quake to Come? Below was Rachel’s comment: “Just in case, I love you all.”

     Yesterday, the phone calls and texts began in earnest. “Have you heard anything about the earthquake that’s supposed to hit here tomorrow?” Laura’s message read.  “Call me. Call Rach.”    

     I tried the explanations out in my mind…the geologist doesn’t know what he’s talking about…it’s just dead fish and a low-hanging moon…earthquakes don’t happen where you are…I promise you will be safe, but all of them felt like so much dust on my tongue.

     When I talked to Rachel, after my husband tried to distract her with humor, I asked her “Are you nervous?”

     “Promise me you will get a memorial tattoo of me if I die in the earthquake. Use the picture of me standing on the bridge with Heinz Field in the background. I’ll tell you where it is.”

     I have a mental picture of a large black, intricately-inked tattoo stretching across my 55- year-old back. “I sure hope I don’t have to do that, Rach.”

     “Promise me.”

     “Okay. Sure. I promise, but you are going to be fine. You aren’t right on the fault line, and no tsunami could reach you because you are too far away and too high up on the hill.”

     “Just in case, I’m sending a goodbye text to everyone I know tonight.”

     “Rach, you know that anyone of us could die at any time from a lot of different causes, and we don’t send goodbye texts every night. You will be fine.”

     The truth, though, is that things don’t always work out for the best, and, even in the sweetness of her youth, Rachel understands. She’s seen the footage from Japan and Haiti. She’s walked into my mother’s hospital room to find the rigid contour of a lifeless face against the pillow. She’s heard the crystal splintering, sharp glass shards glinting on the leaf-patterned cloth. She’s picked up her phone to find really bad news emanating from the earpiece, news that she hadn’t invited, dreamed of, or wished for at all.

   The real truth is that Rachel comes from a legacy of sadness, just a breath away from shoddily hidden grief-- from someone who knows quite well that a ringing phone can’t be trusted, from a mother who has so desperately wanted to create a pocket of safety for her children, but who is sometimes irrevocably lost to the day when her brother died from a bullet to the brain.

     Rachel made herself an earthquake survival kit, just in case. She filled her black and yellow Vera Bradley backpack with snacks, Sarris chocolate, bottled water, a flashlight, and her Tide-To-Go pen.   

                                                                                                                                                                               

      I have an earthquake kit too, but Rachel probably doesn’t know that I started mine many years ago, long before she left me, perhaps on the day I stood in the funeral home, feeling the wax slug filling the ragged entrance wound near my brother’s right ear.

     Sometimes the kit does work. I wish I could share its logic with her and my other children, providing them with a checklist for survival, a nicely printed list of circles to fill in with a sharp number two pencil, but part of the process is that each of us must confront impending disaster alone, gathering chicken bones and feathers to ward off that which might harm those we love.  My kit is a ragtag collection, including, but not inclusive of, spastic hopes, lopsided prayers, and improbable deals made in the dead of night. Yesterday, I added my promise to Rachel, praying that my vow will be enough to keep her safe, that I’ll never have to lie under the buzzing tattoo needle, feeling her “I love you all” worked black drop by black drop deeply into my skin.

    

         

    

    

     

Pool Days

The sky darkened above me as I pushed open the door to the pizza shop where my youngest daughter's working for the summer, a late afternoon storm promising to break the humidity we've felt for a string of ninety-degree days. I sat in the shop a bit, swirling a straw in my styrofoam cup of Diet Coke, the square clear ice moving with the current. The door opened once, twice, and again admitting young families...mothers wearing sundresses over bathing suits, boys in swim trunks and tank tops, pony-tailed girls whose curled toes held tight to neon flip flops.

 Four kids and a mom climbed into the counter seats facing the window, each waiting for a slice of pizza straight from the oven. My heart constricted a bit with the memory of my own four on days like these, when we sought shelter from the rain.

My oldest daughter calls me nearly every day from California, as she walks the 20 minutes to her local pool. I'm happy to imagine her passing through the gates, a colorful bag in one hand and her thermos in the other. I can see her there, lying stomach to grass, reading until the sun chases her into the water. My youngest daughter is lucky to have a group of friends with pools; sometimes she is happy to work the evening shift in exchange for an afternoon with her girls. She comes home with tales of unbelievable floating chairs, the last one feeling just like a couch as she lay on her side.

We used to go together, spending most summer days from 11 to 4 or even 5 at the YMCA pool.
Certainly I'm romanticizing the experience, forgetting about the packing up before hand: suntan lotion, combs, towels, toys, snacks, books, magazines, money, and pool passes. I've forgotten the crankiness of children who are tired from the sun and hungry RIGHT NOW. I don't miss watching a baby who might, at any minute, slip under water. I've almost erased the angry woman who guarded four lounge chairs in the same spot every day, whether her friends joined her or not. My memory blurs the ride home, the 15 car minutes far too long, with a frazzled young mother threatening to "stop the car, if I have to," coming home with a mess of wet clothes and a dinner yet to prepare.

Oh, but the smell of chlorine in freshly-combed hair, the sight of wet suits on the line, the touch of a small damp hand on my shoulder...those I do remember. I feel cheated, as if we didn't have long enough at the pool.

It did rain today, needles of rain exploding against the hot pavement. When I left the pizza shop, the temperature had cooled, a slight moist breeze trilling across my skin. I hope the families had enough time to go back to the pool, taking another dip, before things changed again.