Harry, the curious kitten, reminds me of when Emma was small, crawling the old

farmhouse floor, toddling around at one and almost two.  John had already            abandoned

our lives for something else.   my angry voice echoing

through the open windows the St. Louis summer heat, the air still, revealing

something of my life, someone

I didn’t want to be.

 

The old farmhouse in Belleville,

rambling and reeking

of history that wasn’t mine,

possibilities of what might come

out of nothing.  I covered the seeping walls

a deep dark red.

Weeds overtook the house, snaking the dirty siding, the garden out back where previous owners grew green peppers and corn which made their way to the summer table,

now dry as  dust. That old lady,

her children gone from where she was. Years ago,

her husband and childhood that would never come

to fruition; the land out back,

the railroad tracks, rusting ladders

for miles. On summer nights

the trains lulled her life.

I knew I knew I knew she now said

stumbling the city block, the houses gray,

their windows –like people’s lives–mawing open.

 

 

 

 

It has been almost 28 years

since my father died

when I was 28.  Then the cold shock of it

caught me by surprise.  I looked at him–

younger than I am now–

sitting at the old Formica table,

the clutter of his life all around: crystal-glass

ashtrays overflowing with tobacco

from the pipe he always smoked, endless

papers stacked on the desk in the corner

where my father sat night after night tabulating

the course of our lives.  Even the cracked and worn

linoleum sagged with the weight of it.  The old house already dying

around him; his garden out back where he toiled

in city summers, cucumbers and tomatoes

lining the kitchen sill where they sat until ripened.  I still remember

that moment watching my father

his eyes already glazed, gazing

out the window looking for something, already knowing

it would never bear fruit.

 

Emma is sitting next to me, her hair tousled, smelling of chlorine.  We are sitting on the old wooden bench outside of our favorite ice cream shoppe, savoring out favorite flavor: Banana Chocolate.  It drips down her arm; her face kissed with summer.  All summer long stretches before us.  every day after summer school finding us here after the long cool stretch of the pool.  The world beyond is far away but it arrives

Before that and we are at the big Belleville city pool.  She is too young to be in school. 3 or 4.  I have already separated from her father.  She has no memory of us together.  Or at least they are invisible to me.  The pool has a big whale covering the bottom, undulating with the water’s waves.  I play teacher, scolding the neighborhood kids who are wading in the water with cookies or bags of chips.  Emma drags me from my chair;  I am her playmate.  We jump up and down in the water, disappearing and appearing again.  She squeals: I see you, I see you.  Her yellow-sequined suit sparkles in the summer sun.

It is her fourth birthday.  We are in McDonald’s.  It is easy but I am stressed.  I don’t know why.  The smallest occasions seem to send me in a tizzy.  It has to be perfect.  Five years later I will be on my hands and knees cleaning the hardwood floors of my apartment in a city I cannot afford but with good schools and fancy houses I do not own where people spend their money sending their children to expensive summer camps.  I am worried how my apartment will look to the parents of the children who will be arriving.  I spend too much money on things –flowers that I have had the florist on the corner prepare in special vases.  I am stressed.  It feels like too much work.

Another day and I am putting the groceries away in the kitchen.  Emma is in the third grade.  It is after work and we have stopped at the grocery store for ingredients.  It is March 14th and “pi” day at school.  Emma has asked me to make a banana cream pie. Rather, she had wanted to make it with me, but I seem to have missed that.  I yell at her.  She is nine.

She is in the fifth grade in a purple dress in the gym for the talent show.  I am standing in the back of the room, the man I am dating, who I will date for the next six years, is by my side.  she sings a song that she wrote herself about her father who at the moment she feels has abandoned her and he probably has.  Her eyelids are covered in glitter.

She is fifteen and talking to me at the dining room table doing homework.  She tells me about a boy at a school dance the week before, what she let him do.  I try to tell her all the usual mother things, caution her about doing too much, too soon, what will people think, regret crushing in.

 

 

3:00 a.m.

numb with life.

old lovers

married now, gone

from mine.

me alone moving

through late middle age, beyond

a life without

will become more or less

a rift I can never cross.

3:00 a.m. mornings,

the world quiet,

almost gone.

 

I remember him sitting at the kitchen table, cold

Formica, looking as if he’d already made up his mind; his world

around him: the old roll-top desk he refinished years ago

covered with discarded newspapers, crystal-glass

ashtrays filled with tobacco, scraps of paper, things he knew

he couldn’t afford to lose.  Outside, his city garden waited:

tomatoes and lettuce, cucumbers still dormant.  His almost-grown

children behind him just beyond his reach as they

always were.  He looked resigned, like he couldn’t see the point

of making his way through what had always been

right in front of him.  He stumbled the street looking

for what he needed, as if he could find the day

I ran off.  Behind me, my father standing in the doorway,

his bulky body blocking my way, his voice

a whisper in the dark.

I remember crying when I rode my bike home from his house.  I was 16 or about to be.  He was twice my age.  I don’t why he picked me.  The first time it was summer, lazy light shining in.  It was an old house: he was  renovating and there was nothing upstairs–some drywall, a bed he shared with his wife, a mattress on the floor.  Now, I am struck by how wishy washy he was, standing in front of the room with his Scooby-Doo haircut and nerdy glasses, the goofy grin.  I still see him: his baggy khaki pants, always adjusting his junk.  He had two little girls.  I think Emily was ten, dark and foreign.  Jennifer looked like him, big doe eyes, watery pools.  I wanted to smack her when I babysat on Saturday nights.  They loved me and I don’t know why.  I don’t know what I thought.  His wife’s name was Rene.  She was an artist with long flowing skirts, always carrying a book, fading into the shadows.  I really don’t remember what I called him.  It couldn’t have been John, but Mr. Jackson was unthinkable.

I don’t know if I was pretty; I wanted to be.  In the yearbook I am always standing next to him –or him next to me.

I was 16–or about to be. We “petted” for a long time–in front of my parents’ house after babysitting, in the car in the park–once a cop came tap tap tapping on the car window.   We petted and petted and petted: his voice so persistent–I love you, I love you, this can’t be wrong.  His hand worming its way down my half-opened pants: it’s alright, it’s alright, I love, I love, I love.  I don’t know what his wife thought when he drove off for an hour, disappearing into the Saturday dark.

There were rumors about him and another girl, a redhead on the newspaper staff.  The room behind his classroom, where pictures appeared out of nowhere, a blur of black and white, distorted faces hidden from view, coming into focus. One of them was me.

The first time we did it, I remember thinking it was nothing. I was nothing, already gone.  I don’t remember where we were, maybe the old Coral Court motel down on Route 66 where people went when  they didn’t want to be seen, driving into a yellow-and-glass-bricked indoor garage attached to the room for an hour, maybe quicker.  Ugly worn carpet, yellowing too.  I must have waited in the car while he went into the office for the key, thinking nothing.

She came home from work unexpectedly one weekday after school.  We were upstairs in the bed on the floor; dusty and gray.  I hid in the upstairs bathroom.  I don’t know what he told her, something soothing–or not–the summer sun tiny sparkles of light in the gray.

I imagined this and more, pedaling my bike home, legs pumping hard into my future.

In my dreams my daughter is small again.

We are living in the old farmhouse her father

and I bought years ago.  He has moved in all the old

furniture: the heavy couch, the tables with intricate

twisting legs that take and take and take

my empty space.  He stakes his claim: the cold

hard floors hidden by his mother’s rug, fraying

at the edges; the chairs, the television, blaring obscenities;

the accumulated garbage of his life.  Inside I simmer,

ready to blow, our daughter looking on

in the basement dark.

 

mornings rise gray against gray;

I take the pills

on my bedside tray, hear my voice

like going through a tunnel, or a plane

taking off–my life

muffled in cotton.

I awake to two a.m. texts from my daughter

halfway across the country where I am

beyond reach.   Her life with him

half-formed, muted colors.   Their world a blank canvas

empty with the space of day, the dark light

of Seattle behind frosted glass.