All of Us (32 page)

To scream with pain, to cry, to summon help, to call

generally—all that is described here as “roaring.”

In Siberia not only bears roar, but sparrows and mice as well.

“The cat got it, and it’s roaring,” they say of a mouse.

I ask her and then she asks me. We each

accept. There’s no back and forth about it. After nearly eleven years

together, we know our minds and more. And this postponement, it’s

ripened too. Makes sense now. I suppose we should be

in a rose-filled garden or at least on a beautiful cliff overhanging

the sea, but we’re on the couch, the one where sleep

sometimes catches us with our books open, or

some old Bette Davis movie unspools

in glamorous black and white—flames in the fireplace dancing

menacingly in the background as she ascends the marble

staircase with a sweet little snub-nosed

revolver, intending to snuff her ex-lover, the fur coat

he bought her draped loosely over her shoulders. Oh lovely, oh lethal

entanglements. In such a world

to be true.

A few days back some things got clear

about there not being all those years ahead we’d kept

assuming. The doctor going on finally about “the shell” I’d be

leaving behind, doing his best to steer us away from the vale of

tears and foreboding. “But he loves his life,” I heard a voice say.

Hers. And the young doctor, hardly skipping a beat, “I know.

I guess you have to go through those seven stages. But you end

up in acceptance.”

After that we went to lunch in a little café we’d never

been in before. She had pastrami. I had soup. A lot

of other people were having lunch too. Luckily

nobody we knew. We had plans to make, time pressing down

on us like a vise, squeezing out hope to make room for

the everlasting—that word making me want to shout “Is there

an Egyptian in the house?”

Back home we held on to each other and, without

embarrassment or caginess, let it all reach full meaning. This

was it, so any holding back had to be stupid, had to be

insane and meager. How many ever get to this? I thought

at the time. It’s not far from here to needing

a celebration, a joining, a bringing of friends into it,

a handing out of champagne and

Perrier. “Reno,” I said. “Let’s go to Reno and get married.”

In Reno, I told her, it’s marriages

and remarriages twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. No

waiting period. Just “I do.” And “I do.” And if you slip

the preacher ten bucks extra, maybe he’ll even furnish

a witness. Sure, she’d heard all

those stories of divorcees tossing their wedding rings into

the Truckee River and marching up to the altar ten minutes later

with someone new. Hadn’t she thrown her own last wedding band

into the Irish Sea? But she agreed. Reno was just

the place. She had a green cotton dress I’d bought her in Bath.

She’d send it to the cleaners.

We were getting ready, as if we’d found an answer to

that question of what’s left

when there’s no more hope: the muffled sound of dice coming

    down

the felt-covered table, the click of the wheel,

the slots ringing on into the night, and one more, one

more chance. And then that suite we engaged for.

From the window I see her bend to the roses

holding close to the bloom so as not to

prick her fingers. With the other hand she clips, pauses and

clips, more alone in the world

than I had known. She won’t

look up, not now. She’s alone

with roses and with something else I can only think, not

say. I know the names of those bushes

given for our late wedding: Love, Honor, Cherish —

this last the rose she holds out to me suddenly, having

entered the house between glances. I press

my nose to it, draw the sweetness in, let it cling—scent

of promise, of treasure. My hand on her wrist to bring her close,

her eyes green as river-moss. Saying it then, against

what comes:
wife
, while I can, while my breath, each hurried petal

can still find her.

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.

Gravy, these past ten years.

Alive, sober, working, loving and

being loved by a good woman. Eleven years

ago he was told he had six months to live

at the rate he was going. And he was going

nowhere but down. So he changed his ways

somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?

After that it was
all
gravy, every minute

of it, up to and including when he was told about,

well, some things that were breaking down and

building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”

he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.

I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone

expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

I see an empty place at the table.

Whose? Who else’s? Who am I kidding?

The boat’s waiting. No need for oars

or a wind. I’ve left the key

in the same place. You know where.

Remember me and all we did together.

Now, hold me tight. That’s it. Kiss me

hard on the lips. There. Now

let me go, my dearest. Let me go.

We shall not meet again in this life,

so kiss me goodbye now. Here, kiss me again.

Once more. There. That’s enough.

Now, my dearest, let me go.

It’s time to be on the way.

Down below the window, on the deck, some ragged-looking

birds gather at the feeder. The same birds, I think,

that come every day to eat and quarrel.
Time was, time was
,

they cry and strike at each other. It’s nearly time, yes.

The sky stays dark all day, the wind is from the west and

won’t stop blowing.… Give me your hand for a time. Hold on

to mine. That’s right, yes. Squeeze hard. Time was we

thought we had time on our side.
Time was, time was
,

those ragged birds cry.

The dusk of evening comes on. Earlier a little rain

had fallen. You open a drawer and find inside

the man’s photograph, knowing he has only two years

to live. He doesn’t know this, of course,

that’s why he can mug for the camera.

How could he know what’s taking root in his head

at that moment? If one looks to the right

through boughs and tree trunks, there can be seen

crimson patches of the afterglow. No shadows, no

half-shadows. It is still and damp.…

The man goes on mugging. I put the picture back

in its place along with the others and give

my attention instead to the afterglow along the far ridge,

light golden on the roses in the garden.

Then, I can’t help myself, I glance once more

at the picture. The wink, the broad smile,

the jaunty slant of the cigarette.

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Whatever became of that brass ring

supposed to go with the merry-go-round?

The brass one that all the poor-but-happy

young girls and boys were always snagging just

at the Magic Moment? I’ve asked around: Do you know

anything about the brass ring …? I said to my neighbor.

I asked my wife, and I even asked the butcher (who I think

is from a foreign country and should know).

    No one knows, it seems.

Then I asked a man who used to work for a carnival. Years ago,

he said, it was different then. Even the grown-ups rode.

He remembered a young woman in Topeka, Kansas. It was

in August. She held hands with the man who rode

the horse next to her, who had a moustache and

who was her husband. The young woman laughed

all the time, he said. The husband laughed

too, even though he had a moustache. But

all that is another story. He didn’t

say anything about a brass ring.

Once

there was a plumb-line

sunk deep into the floor

of a spruce valley

nr Snohomish

in the Cascades

that passed under

Mt Rainier, Mt Hood,

and the Columbia River

and came up

somewhere

in the Oregon rainforest

wearing

a fern leaf.

    On the pampas tonight a gaucho

on a tall horse slings

a bolas towards the sunset, west

into the Pacific.

Juan Perón sleeps in Spain

with General Franco,

the President barbecues

in
Asia…

    I wish to settle deeper

into the seasons,

to become like a pine tree

or a reindeer,

observe the slow grind and creep of glaciers

into northern fjords,

stand against this nemesis,

this dry weather.

Yes I remember those days,

Always young, always June or July;

Molly, her skirt rucked up over

Her knees, I in my logger-boots

My arm round her little waist,

We laughing, doing

               onetwothree—glide!

               onetwothree—glide!

                         in the warm kitchen,

Fish chowder or venison steaks

On the stove, roses stroking

The bedroom window.

Across the pasture, the Nisqually River

We listened to at night.

                         Oh how I wish

I could be like those Chinook salmon,

Thrusting, leaping the falls,

Returning!

Not chunks and flakes and drift

                         drift

A kind of

airy dullness;

head is a puddle,

heart & fingers —

all extremities —

glow

under your indifferent

touch.

Now old sun,

husband,

pour into me,

be rough

with me,

strengthen me

against that other,

that bastard.

Zhivago with a fine moustache,

A wife and son. His poet’s eyes

Witness every kind of suffering,

His doctor’s hands are kept busy.

“The walls of his heart were paper-thin,”

Comrade-General half-brother Alec Guinness

Says to Lara, whom Zhivago has loved

And made pregnant.

But at that moment,

The group from the topless bar

Next the theater begins to play.

The saxophone climbs higher and higher,

Demanding our attention. The drums

And the bass are also present,

But it is the rising and falling saxophone

That drains away the strength

To resist.