Afterthought

Oh just go on in,
she said,
a woman I didn't know
coming up behind me
with a spring bouquet in her arms
gathered in bountiful pink tissue paper
while I stood at the door
holding a plant I'd picked up at the greenhouse,
foil to match the one blossom
hanging onto its stem
just barely.
I'd been ringing the doorbell
that made no sound
and had knocked
but no one came to the door
even though I heard voices behind it.

She always leaves the door unlocked,
the woman told me,
the woman who was more comfortable
going into her house
than I,
who knew how,
and I was a stranger
even though we'd grown up together
and had been close once.

I tried the door handle
and the door stayed shut.
Push hard, the woman said. It sticks.
And we were suddenly in
surrounded by people the woman knew
and I didn't.

Happy birthday, I said
to her
as she made her way toward me
through the crowded
small room,
adorned with a cardboard crown and bright pink feather boa,

Thanks
she said,
let me tell you
who everyone is.
Two Elizabeths
and  a Joan
and maybe a Bob or a Tom
all close enough to kiss,
and a man and his wife
and a woman from next door
and her daughter
and others,
while I awkwardly held the plant
waiting for her to take it
but her hands were full with
a glass of wine
and a platter of long
irregularly shaped
breadsticks.

They're wrapped in bacon
she said.
I took one
and ate it quickly
and she went somewhere
away from me.

And you are,
they asked,
her sister.
Her sister!
I didn't know she had a sister!
Wait, said the woman who'd followed me in.
You're her sister?
Ha! And I was telling you how to open the door!

I made my way
to the next room
where I found a low table
filled with flowers and plants
all in foil and boxes
like they'd shown up for an audition
for best adequate gift to give
at a birthday party where
gifts were not necessary.

I moved next to the quiet kitchen
where various half drunk bottles of wine
had been opened
and left on the counter
and took one of the remaining few plastic cups
and poured myself a cup of red.

I went back in to the crowd
and peered between people
at the food table.
I waited for a space to open
and took a crinkle cut carrot
and a tortilla chip
and hoped someone would talk to me.
and hoped no one would talk to me.

I waited for her to come back to me
and say hello
and put her arm around me
and welcome me.
I thought she was just going to put things aside
and come back.
I thought we'd have a moment
since I'd come from elsewhere
and hadn't seen her for so long.
Instead, I listened to a woman
talk about how she sings tenor
in a group in town.
I listened as a man now retired
told me what he'd done for work.
I stood next to a woman who said she was surprised
she'd been invited
since she hadn't known the birthday girl for long.
(I wanted to tell her
I'd been invited by way of a green sticky note
sent to me a few days earlier,
as an attachment in an email,
but knew this woman didn't need to hear,
and I didn't want to cry.)

I think I'm gonna go
I told her
as she passed by
with a plate of small round potatoes
topped with sour cream.
We haven't had cake
she told me.
Wait for cake.
I waited for people I didn't know
to light candles
on my own sister's cake
in her home.
I watched them carry the cake to her
and listened as they sang,
and couldn't join in
since my throat squeezed shut
when I tried.

She saw me get ready to go
and thanked me for coming.
Thank you for inviting me.
I closed the door behind me,
got back into my car
and cried.

In the wings

I watched
like a Rear Window neighbor
watching the apartment building next door,
after hearing a noise
that startled me
enough that I'd consider calling for help,
except that the noise
came from birds in my yard
in anguished cries.
It came from
two blue jays
shrieking,
hovering
like hummingbirds,
wings moving
like someone drowning,
frantically flapping
over a branch
high in the tree
calling a cry
I hadn't heard before
that clearly meant
go away you bastards!

A cardinal
stood on a branch below,
looking up at the action,
passive,
like it was on TV,
like a prim
and judging
neighbor
who is nosy
and not helpful,
while two crows
took turns
rushing toward the jays.
While one barged in
past them
into the darkness of the pine,
the other suddenly appeared
from within,
ignored the helpless jays,
the panicked beating of their wings
and their anxious pleas
and flew off
with a small creature
in its mouth.

I saw.
It was the color of saffron.
It looked like a smoked mussel
I'd served the night before to guests,
but I knew
it was their baby.
The helpless jays,
the usual schoolyard bullies
when they come to the feeder
near the rhododendrons
and push the chickadees away
and flick aside the seeds
they don't care for
in search of the shelled sunflower seeds,
were losing their babies
one by one
to two invaders
who never fed at bird feeders,

I imagined myself going outside,
but couldn't imagine what I could do to
change
the course of nature.
Wave my arms and yell at the scene
twenty feet above my head?
The cardinal just watched
and later told anyone who would listen
about his neighbors
and the noise
and how
they deserved it.

The man in her neighborhood

He lives around the corner from my mother
and he walks every day
from his house,
up past her house,
and down the road on the other side,
then back up that road
and past my mother's
and back to his house again,
and back and forth
and back and forth
at a purposeful pace
for an old man,
who must think his speed will hide his age.

He wears a baseball cap
with no team on it,
and he keeps his arms straight
when he walks
quickly without smiling.

There are no cars
where he lives and walks,
just an every so often UPS truck
or the mail carrier,
yet he wears a blaze orange vest,
maybe to show his neighbors
he is there
if they're looking out the window.

Although I've been there when he's walked,
and I've said hello or smiled,
he's spoken to me only once in return
as I was walking the dog
past him.
Not to say hello,
but to reprimand me.
"You should be on the other side of the road, you know,"
he said,
even though there are no cars going past
where he lives and walks.

He has a reputation
in the neighborhood.
He cut down tall trees once.
Or maybe he planted trees that were too tall,
I don't know.
Whichever it was,
the neighbors were unhappy.
The neighbors still talk.

I've walked down the road where I think he lives
alone.
His house was once cared for.
It looks like a long ago stage set where
they forgot to put away a few pieces of the scenery
after the the play closed.
The blinds are closed
even though his house overlooks the water.
He leaves his garage door open
and it's mostly empty
except for an old red and white cooler,
an old Maine license plate hanging on the wall,
and a Weber grill off kilter
in the corner.
He leaves his recycling bin up high
on the ledge near the driveway
so he doesn't have to bend, I imagine,
when he brings it to the curb.

Today I went to the grocery store
to buy fruit and coffee and milk
and he was there
alone in the greeting card aisle
wearing a basesball cap
and a light jacket.
I saw him and I slowed down.
I could have pictured him buying fruit
or coffee or milk.
But never a card.
Who did this solitary man
have
to buy a card for?
I guessed at best a half hearted get well or deepest sympathies one,
Or for a swell great nephew for some occasion or other.

Instead, he reached up to the top row
and took down a bright pink oversized card
with a dancing dog
and balloons and stars,
and the words Happy Birthday, Sweet Little Princess!
He held it with both hands.

I will look for him tomorrow.

The Lenders

Outside I watch them peek out from the stone walls,
posing for passerby storybook illustrators
who will capture their sweet and eager faces,
their valiant determination to avoid the evil hawks and the swift, silent owls,
their caution as our dog pokes her nose into their homes they've built and decorated
with birch bark tabletops and mirrors of mica,
bluets in a vase made from an acorn shell,
dinner served on bottle cap plates.

Outside I hear them cheep and yip when the blue jays spot them
as they're working up courage to leap like trapeze artists
from the rhododendron to the bird feeder.
When the dog's chain brings her to a threatening nearness.
I cheer for their getaway into the tree trunk,
or into the wood stack.
Yet this month,
they dart on cartoon speed legs
through the small crack by the garage door
into our house.

The Borrowers' sense of pleasure leaves me
as I realize
I am sharing our kitchen with rodents.
The dog's kibble is eaten from her bowl,
but not by the dog.
The scritching of her nails on the kitchen floor as I imagine her playing with her stuffed toys,
willing them to life,
gives me the sense that we are safe,
and then I realize with horror movie clarity,
the dog is not inside.

What are we catching today? asks the hardware man
who has rung up my annual poisons
for ants and voles.
Munitions.
The sticky ones, the house of horror get in can't get out ones, the snapping ones,
the poison buffet of cheese and raisins and peanut butter in a tantalizing array on each spring and wire.

I still imagine telling their sweet cute stories,
sharing their photo album memories through the year,
Their thanksgiving feast of jack-o-lantern's guts on the fence,
their peekaboo game as they watch me through the carved triangular eyeballs
while jamming seeds into their cheeks,
Their Independence Day celebrations with their picnic blankets laid out beside my strawberry patch, waiting for the sun to set on the evening before I've thought to harvest,
their kind deadheading of my tulips just as they prepare to open.

A memoir, perhaps,
because inside, under the sink,
the barbs and cauldrons and scaffolds are there
aimed
at their small, dimly lit entrance to our cleaning cabinet,
where their nighttime wild rumpus
will end.

Passover

The first night of Passover and I'm here
without my family,
just the dog running around the table,
trying her best to entice me,
chewing on her stuffed animal,
looking at me all the while,
trying to make her game look fun
when I know it isn't.

The peepers are loud
and I have the window open to hear them
while my dog looks at me
with the plush, eyeless cat in her mouth,
look, look what I have,
come try to take it,
you'd like it.

My father lost his father on the first night of Passover
when he was ten years old.
He died in an accident,
when the Fuller Brush tower collapsed.
My father became a small boy every year
quietly remembering that night.

My family is far
with my daughter a long flight away
and my other daughter in Florida with my mother
eating BBQ at the mall
and my husband off at a cousin of an in-law's house
eating vegetarian.
I went to the movies.

Some of the frogs yip or yeep,
some whistle,
some sound like they're blowing bubbles through a straw
in glasses of milk.
All of it is loud,
their reptilian Seder,
the order of the year.

I got a burger
after the movie
and there was a band playing
so loudly
I had to shout my order.
The singers yelled something
like get me out! Let me out!
I had my burger wrapped to go

and came home to the peepers
and the trilling
and my dog
now sleeping in my arms.

All traditions have been broken tonight,
no blue flowered dishes and red wine glasses
and matzo ball praise,
no gefilte fish skidding around the parsley garnished plates.
No children find hidden matzo,
no endless songs where we only know a few of the words
and hum and stumble through them just the same.
I think of my father's quiet
and miss my own father,

Elijah, this is your chance.
Come have a glass of wine
before I close the window,
and go to bed.

Cuff links

We'd packed up all that had been
in his bedside table,
not taking the time,
tossing in photos and letters
and maps of Rome and Africa,
a pair of opera glasses he'd had
since The War,
cassette tapes of Rossini
and Scarlatti
and a small leather box
filled with tie tacks
and cuff links.

Today all this time later
I opened the box.
So intimate a collection
of pins,
thinking how each day he would open
this box
and choose.

I know no men now
who wear cuff links
or tie tacks
or pins
showing
their clubs and allegiances
as my father did.

I learned how to enamel at camp one summer
and made him cuff links
both brown and triangular,
one with a hole drilled into a corner,
both ugly.
He wore them until
thankfully one came unglued
from its cufflinking mechanism
and was never fixed.
But he saved them here
along with a tie tack I'd made
when I learned how to do silver at school one year.
A silver thread snaked
onto a silver base
with edges I filed into as much of an oval
as I could
until it got smooth,
and I decided it was ovular enough.

When no new idea came
for father's day
we bought cuff links
and tie tacks
from the mall.
He opted for Rotary cuff links
and American College of Dentists tie tacks,
but he saved our gifts.

There is a piece of shrapnel in the box
he kept
from Italy
when he was wounded.

There is a heart
my mother made for him
and he moved it from one jacket
to the next,
wearing it always.

There are small keys
and little screws
left from some project.

My father's last calendar
turned
from being the place where he wrote appointments to come,
to being the place where he recorded what he had done that day,
adding small details
in case he was asked.
He was no longer able to remember.

On the day of my parents' final anniversary
he wrote
Beautiful day,
really dressed up,
cuff links et al.

So much of what shaped him,
his days and meetings,
his hobbies and committees,
holidays and warfare,
is in there
untouched
since he left,
and now I can't let the box go.

Out of the office

That time at a desk
seems so necessary for people
who don't know me
to help them
think they do.

I'm learning not to need the desk
as a prop.

Sometimes I do.

Other times
in this new time

there are no have to things.

Life is easier for people we don't know
when told with rules
and lines
and formulas that equal,
and how we fit in them,
not rolled out like a meadow
with clouds shading
and sun revealing.

What do You Do questions
are easier
for everyone,
when we answer
with the firmness
of a spreadsheet.
I do this.
I do those things.
I am important because you can define me
and I have a place to go,
even if you have never heard of where I worked
or couldn't care less about the fact that I work there.
Oh! you say.
Oh, you smile with relief
that you can understand,
as can I.
It makes us both feel better.


Oh,
they say when I say I've left my desk.
Is that a good thing?
Yes, it's good.
But I do go to bed
worried about the supposed to part,
whatever that is.
Should is what guides a day.
Don't know is what I'm left with,
and it's frightening,
and it's wonderful .

In my office
my coworkers and I stared at computer screens.
Like the who dunnit was going to be revealed
at the very moment we'd look up.

And each morning,
it was how was your night? What did you do?
I don't remember, we always said, or it was good.
And now
sometimes I don't remember and it was good
and I tell no one.

But I have a friend who said she gets defensive
in this unoffice life
when her husband asks her at the end of the day
what did you do?
as if accusing her,
when really he's just interested.
Do we make things up? Do we say we read on the sofa
for three hours
and it wasn't even snowing or raining out?
And we made popcorn
and we read through old college yearbooks
and we wrote a letter to a friend
on stationery and mailed it in the real mail?
Or do we say
I did the taxes
and then I put on a new roof
and learned chemical engineering
and started a corporation
and found a job
with benefits?

What will make me sleep through every night
reminded of the reward
of this time,
remembering that the day is mine,
that life is a blink,
and that sitting with the grateful dog
on the wet grass and
pulling up new dandelions by hand is
what is
here
to do?