Open Shutters (3 page)

    (or tries to) with the jet set,

in a long line at the airport

               pulling his legs behind him

    like luggage, bit by bit—

the nametag of his scut

    
attached at the last minute.

Meanwhile, I stay put

               inside the house we bought

    a year ago, a new

woman at the window—

    but of that he has no clue,

now pawn, now skipping knight

               on sun-squares on the lawn,

    while dreaming the old dream

a hare has, of his harem.

    Is he in fact the same

animal all the time?

               In my way promiscuous

    as he, how could I swear

he’s not some other hare

    that pauses blank-eyed, poses

as if for praise, and then,

               rather than jump over,

inserts himself within

    a low bush, like a lover?

    Both of us bad at faces,

mere samples of our species,

               will either of us be missed?

    The dishes in my hands

are shards for the archeologist.

All of them dead by now, and posed

so stiffly, in their sepia Sunday

best, they seem half-dead already.

Father and Eldest Son, each dressed

in high-cut jacket and floppy tie,

never get to sit in the sitting room.

They stand to face a firing squad

behind Mother and the little girls—

themselves bolt upright on the sofa,

hands at their sides, their center-parted

hair pulled back, two rows of rickrack

flanking the twenty buttons down

the plumb line of their bodices.

And here, discovered alone downstage

and slightly to the left, the boy—

such a beautiful boy. Although

they’ve tried to make him a little man,

upholstering him in herringbone,

you can see him itching to run out

with his hoop and stick, happy because

even at this moment, when

nobody could be happy, he knows—

in the tilt of his blond head, the frank

time-burning gaze beneath his cowlick—

that he is the most loved.

I’m in the guesthouse some days before

focusing on another portrait:

professional, black-and-white, composed

to lend a spacious dignity

to the one life lived behind each face.

Again, the date’s approximate;

I’m guessing from the arty look,

the Flapperish, drop-waisted frock

and ropes of wooden beads on the wife

of—yes, it has to be. No more

the poster boy for posterity,

he’s a commanding forty. The cowlick’s

still there (although now he slicks

it down with something), and he still

cocks his head to one side, a hint

of flirtation, exasperation—what?—

in the eyes he trains at the camera

as if he’d give me what I want

if only he could emerge now from

the frame. We stare in mutual

boldness while his wife’s long profile

is tendered to the child between them.

One girl: a modern family.

I speculate a little son

was lost to the great flu; even so,

this fair-haired Zelda in a bob,

ten years old, would come to seem

enough, the image of her father.

The smile high-cheeked and confident,

the shining eyes, the upturned chin—

people matter more now; they’ll die

less often, now that the Great War’s over;

everyone’s allowed to sit down.

The jumbles of grinning faces jammed

together at birthdays and Christmases

in color photos around the house

    don’t interest me.

They’re merely
today,
or close enough;

anybody can record it

and does; if everything’s recorded

    nothing is.

But puttering about, the guest

of a ghost I now am half in love with,

I’m drawn one day to pluck one image

    off the piano.

A wedding. Or some minutes after,

outside a church I’ve seen in town.

The bride, who has exercised her right

    to veil, white gown,

and any decorum life affords

these days, is surrounded by the girls—

some floral aunts, a gawky niece

    in her first pearls—

and all the men in blazers, khakis …

running shoes? Boys will be boys.

Squirming, they squint into the sun:

    some amateur

shutterbug has made sure they can’t

see us, or we see them, and yet

I understand now who is shaded

    there in the wheelchair.

Dwindled, elderly, it’s Zelda—

her lumpy little body slumped

like a doll’s in a high chair, shoes just

    grazing the footrest.

It must be she. However many

lives her hair went through—Forties

complications held with tortoise-

    shell combs; beehives;

softer bouffants like Jackie’s; fried

and sprayed gray-pincurl granny perms—

in all the years (say, seventy-five?)

    since I last saw her,

she’s come back to that sleek, side-parted

bob, which (though it’s white) encloses

the girl who’s smiling, pert, high-cheeked,

    despite the pull

of gravity: just like her father.

Or as he was.
When did he die,

and how? What was his name? What’s yours?

    I could find out,

surely, when I leave here; the owner

might well be her granddaughter.

I could scout, too, for snapshots even

    more recent—some

get-together with no wheelchair—

to prove what I’m sensing: Zelda’s gone.

Why would they think to frame this scene,

    unless it’s the last?

But why should
we
care so for people

not us or ours—recognized by sight

alone—whose voices never spoke

    with wit or comfort

to us, and whose very thoughts,

imagined, every year grow quainter?

Yet they must have felt this tug as well,

    repeatedly

peering at someone they were bound

to come back to, as in a mirror.

Who says they’re more anonymous

    than I am,

packing up after my two weeks

in the guesthouse? I make one last study

of Zelda’s father, lingering with

    the boy, the man,

sealing his developing

face in myself for safekeeping.

Too soon to leave. But then, nobody

    ever stays here long.

The hunchback is curled

all night in my shut closet.

I am six years old.

Dark in the cabin.

No lamp but the blue moon of

the computer screen.

Pebbles on the beach:

the waves, without swallowing,

deliver a speech.

I’d need a furnace

(if I were a glassblower)

to make icicles.

She’s alone in bed.

In an earlier time zone

he dines a lover.

A page of haiku:

among the caught fireflies, one

lights the whole bottle.

“Want to make a snowman?”

—So goes her wide-eyed question

on a Sunday in January.

I’ve been sweeping the kitchen floor

and prop the broom, like a bookmark,

against the vertical line

that joins one wall to another.

I check my watch: 3:30.

The last light of the weekend,

her last such invitation,

maybe: she’s thirteen.

“I’m not sure it’s packable.

It may not be good snow,

or enough snow for a snowman.”

—So go my instinctive,

unfun, nay-saying quibbles:

I’ve been an adult a long time.

“Could we make a snowchild then?”

Straight-faced, without guile,

she doesn’t seem to know

she’s just invented a word—

or that its snow-fresh sound

compels the thing’s creation.

Seize the day in a snowball

and roll it across the yard;

leave a paper-thin

membrane between winter

and a spring that’s coming up

in clumps of grass and soil;

roll the ball rounder, bigger,

make a second, a third,

then pile them, roughly centered,

one on top of the other,

like marshmallows on a stick.

And human, for all that:

remarkable how little

skill it takes to make us

believe in, fall in love with,

this lopsided Galatea

(and why do we say it’s male?

Why do we feel that poking

a tarnished candle-snuffer

for a pipe in his mouthless head

will finally clinch the matter?).

Dressed, at last, in every

cliché we can think of—scarf

wrapped against the cold

of himself, a wide-brimmed hat

shielding his unshelled

almond eyes and carrot

nose from a burning snowlight

ruddied by low sun—

he’s readier than she

(reverting, herself, to pure

put-upon type, the impatient

teenager) to pose

for a snapshot side by side—

each soon to disappear,

him shrinking as she grows.

But not before Monday morning.

Slipping out to hunt

the rolled-up paper, dreading

along with it the widespread

old news of Sunday’s snow

gone smudged, a little yellow,

I find instead a fine

life-dust on everything:

snow on the snowman’s hat

(whose brim serves to define

the line between what’s molded

by us, and snow like that);

snow too light to burden

his rounded back or shoulders,

or mine, the shoveler’s;

snow like breakfast crumbs

I nearly brush from his scarf

before I catch myself.

Inside, I stamp my boots

and call upstairs.
You’re late,

I usually say;
you must

eat your toast, it’s getting cold;

how can you take an hour

to decide which jeans to wear?

In a corner, the forgotten

broom still marks the place

of yesterday in the room.

“Come down,” I call up again.

“Come see the snowed-on snowman.”

Your whole life long, you’ll dine

out on the same questions:

In your building? On what floor?

Was it going up or down?

They’ll need the precise location—

Seventy-ninth and Lex?—

as if learning it could shield them

from the consequences of sex.

Wasn’t your mother a doctor?

Didn’t she talk him through

how to do it?
And then you’ll tell them

how your father delivered you,

that only after your birth

did he think to reach in her bag

and dial 911.

He held you up like a phone

and was taught how to cut the cord.

What about proper hygiene?

When did the ambulance come?

Waiting, you were the siren,

squalling in a rage

behind the old-fashioned mesh

of the elevator door:

a Lyon cub in her cage.

Didn’t your parents worry?

Hadn’t they done Lamaze?

But you’ll only shrug at your story:

That was the way it was.

Nobody wants them, not even Mom. And Dad

always pretends they fell out of his wallet.

Not even at thirteen could we look that bad.

Maybe it’s trick photography, like an ad.

We combed our hair. When did somebody maul it?

Nobody wants them, not even Mom and Dad.

No self-respecting kid would wear that plaid.

She looks so Eighties in that whatchamacallit.

Not even at thirteen could we look that bad.

Say cheese at 9 a.m.? Jeez, we were mad.

But we meant to please the public, not appall it.

Nobody wants them. Not even Mom and Dad,

homely as they are, have ever had

a girl you might mistake for Tobias Smollett.

Not even at thirteen could we look that bad.

We could try to call it art, the latest fad,

but could we find a gallery to install it?

Nobody wants them, not even Mom and Dad.

Not even at thirteen could we look that bad.

Across the Common, on a lovely May

day in New England, I see and hear

the Middle Ages drawing near,

bells tinkling, pennants bright and gay—

    a parade of Morris dancers.