Philip, a short story (excerpt)

He stands in front of them with a godly absolution. He is their leader, no, their teacher, no, their father, perhaps. He prefers not to sit behind his desk but to stand in front of it; the metal thing holds nothing but his pencils and his mug of watery coffee -- this, he assumes, is sufficient. The windows in his classroom are always open; he has rolled cheap rugs from Persian flee markets across his linoleum floor; there are flowers on the windowsills, maps on the walls, and books stacked across the floor -- books everywhere. Translations from Vergil, the indelible prose of Plath and Poe, the hard-cover Austens and Williams and Shakespeares from garage sales across the county. His classroom is crammed with voices; juvenile during the day, deep and ghostly during the evenings. Sometimes, grading essays at seven o’ clock, he will hear them, almost whisper-like, dancing out from the dark corners, enticing him, seducing him.

He will not pretend to be completely sane -- this, he has decided early on, is one of the most deadly sins of man. Even when Clara was alive, he had heard them, these incredible men and women who had, like the rest of us, lived and married and drank wine and sobbed and died -- but no, not their voices, these voices, unending, turned pink and sun-burnt under their scorching fame.

One evening, after an hour of furious grading, he put his feet on his desk and noticed a copy of Austen by his heels. He picked it up; it was natural; like a moth drawn to the flame, like a heroin addict to a needle, he, Samuel Bryant, is enchanted by literature. The copy he had picked up, Pride and Prejudice, a rather effeminate favorite novel in Clara’s eyes, felt light in his hands. He opened to the middle. Lydia has just run off with Mr. Wickham, how awful. Copious anxiety in the Bennet household. Poor Elizabeth. When he finished, it was past nine. He reads quickly, but he had missed dinner. Nevertheless. He left the book in a desk drawer, calmed by the thought that Lydia would always be running off to flirt with the officers, that Elizabeth would always be in a state of constant oblivion.

He came home to the letter.
Samuel, my beloved,

I always knew I would die someday, and for this I am most grateful. I don’t know what would have become of me otherwise. Life is the sweetest accompanied by death -- how else would we learn to be humble? It is a blessing to know that things exist with a sense of exigency. I lived my life more than I could bear -- I am not filled with sadness; I am filled with everything. Please don’t let them say I died of sadness, because it is the happiness, and excitement, and joy that filled me, too. I do not want to die. But I don’t know what would have become of me if I went on feeling. I can’t go on feeling. Life is too fragile; I’m afraid I’ll break it, or else it will break me. I’ve never been a writer like you, beloved, but I don’t know how I can say this otherwise. I love you. I love you so much I cannot bear to end this letter. Maybe you’d say I don’t really want to end my life. Forgive me. I forgive you for forgiving me. I want to keep writing, but it must end. Everything must end. With all of my life and myself, I love you. I love you more than you will ever know. It is an impossibility for you to understand this. I love you more than this will demonstrate. The word “love” doesn’t mean anything; it does not do justice to any love in the world.

My deepest apologies,

Clara

He went into the bedroom. Clara was on top of the bedcovers. He puts his hand above her cheek. Lukewarm. He wasn’t going to read the letter again; the words would not change their meaning a second time, and his wife was dying (or dead) already. If there was one thing he had become convinced of after twelve years of studying literature, it was this: there was nothing more futile than human activity. Yes, the human spirit was strong, but the will to bend the rules of any juggernaut was an impossible feat. Gatsby could not win back Daisy’s heart, Macbeth could not retain his throne, and he, Samuel, could not retain his wife. He could try -- he could call the hospital, they could rush by in their wailing metal machines, Clara might live, but, oh, she would die, if not once, many times over, tomorrow, and the next day, whether by her means or not. To play with such perseverance was folly in its purest form.

He looked at Clara. His leg was not yet sore from the bent position he was in; the letter was still clutched tightly in his hand, if not slightly damper than before. How quickly he had come to his conclusion, he almost wished to hate himself. To let her die, or to not try to revive her -- which was the greater sin? How quickly the bed seemed to fold in on her hips, and how pale she looked -- could the sickly form still possibly harbor life?

He laid himself down next to her. She was not the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life, but he wasn’t married to her beauty. She was intelligent and provocative and illuminating -- such a cliche, he thought, but aren’t we all? She is intelligent and provocative and illuminating. She is dying and she might be dead.

It is now that he remembered Austen. He felt faint. What had happened happened. His wife is dead (dying). But Austen, wretched Austen. Wretched Samuel. Who is at fault? Galileo’s stones, or the weight of gravity rushing toward the earth? The beckoner, or the beckoned? 

The first time they had made love, it was in a butcher shop. Owned by Clara’s aunt, it was a solitary building, red-brick with yellow lettering. Surrounded with strips of bleeding meat they had tossed and turned and sucked into each other, pushing heat into each other’s bones. Hearts were broken and welded together, and around them were the corpses of the dead, the doomed, the damned. 
His mind on it days after, Samuel, literary-minded even at nineteen, could not shake the metaphorical resonance of making love in a butcher shop. It was life and it was death, heat and ice, white on red. But now, lying on the bed next to her, Samuel put his hand into his wife’s. His mind throbbed with the world’s orbit. To call for reason where there was none -- this was the consummate vice. What had happened happened. They were young, he and Clara. They had tried to make love without understanding love. They had called for ghosts when there were none. The sun had sunk and the waves had scattered from the shores. The rain had fallen and the earth had pushed it back up into the sky. 
The dead, Samuel realized, die and they die suddenly. There is no preparation and no closure, just a solemn marching-on, trumpets muted, heads bent to the pavement. 

 He and Clara had made love in a butcher shop. It was simple and it was enough.

womanhood, a cycle; a poem

I. summer

he liked

to open

her.

all sweat and slick,

she swims

beneath him,

low tide.

rolling forth,

shrinking away,

again

and again.

greenish-white bone

dribbles forth

from her skin;

hearts rub

against hearts

and crack

open onto

white sheets.

a wall of

hot air

collides,

shatters,

falls;

fish, a line of

silver backs,

swim upstream.

II. fall

if winds were solids,

they would scatter

from her

chapped lips

like flakes of skin,

or cigarette ash,

or fairy dust.

she knows but

she does not know.

leaves jump and

fires burn in branches;

flowers succumb,

heads bent,

to the freeze and wind.

this is not the time

for new life.

she knows but

she does not know;

curved branches sag

beneath her heart,

bowed and fat with

too much flame.

she knows but

she does not know.

the burden of

gratuitous life.

III. winter

like the silver squirrels,

or the grey bears,

she grows bigger,

and fuller,

decides a world of

ice is little to live for,

and, shivering,

goes to sleep.

IV. spring

she

wishes she were

them.

they, whose fruit

will ripen and

fall,

white flowers

on white branches;

arms outstretched,

bowed with the color

of snow

and virginity.

so she is,

an empty vessel.

brownish flowers

blooming

from her flesh.

life fawns,

but it is

invisible;

all she can

see is the

summer. the

succor, the salt,

the blood.

the blank

reincarnation

of the past;

the

promise of an

inevitable return.

What I learn from my mother (besides how to fold dough), a poem

Her hands sink into the dough,

the secret ingredient. Pushing and pulling

and shaping. Already the loaf takes form,

just softer.

Her name means “desired one” but her name

doesn’t matter. Most labels don’t matter (names

included), it’s what a person does that matters, and

it’s our actions we should wear around

our necks instead of our names if we really

want to be proud of something.

She slaps the dough and it slaps back,

her hands red, punishing.

What matters is flour. Sliced ham, rusty faucets.

Stained glass and Sunday church and

sunlight that drips like honey.

Hymns, petunia fertilizer, bread.

Soapy bath water and babies and God.

She was beautiful when she was young

but she isn’t beautiful now. But that

doesn’t matter. Not really.

Lanky boys who try to kiss

beautiful girls will grow

into lanky men who forget their names.

A brief silence. She winces and rubs flour

into her hair. She is bigger, now,

wiser and ten years older.

There was one lanky boy, however,

who didn’t grow into a lanky

man. Instead, his bones supplied the

soil with three flowers, and his memory

slipped like a shadow into the ages.

Mama was sixteen when she first kissed him,

says that his tongue tasted like

honey and had the thickness of it, too.

He was a friend of a friend’s, had just

moved from northern Alabama,

eyes like the mouth of a wild river rush.

He had the texture of pepper, all spice and

sting and hot breath on slick teeth.

Mama says he made her think of quicksand, hellfire,

the empty spaces that lie between grace and church.

Three days later he proposed, bare-backed and bare-footed

in her grandmother’s garden. The ring was plastic and the

jewel had fell off when his brother stepped on it,

but things like that didn’t matter.

He had already drunk the earth dry,

she was the most glorious thing he had seen in his life,

he was seventeen, a man, and it was time to settle down.

But Mama didn’t like the word “seen.” It

was too opaque, had the consistency of water,

reminded her of the blood grazing the

inside of her skin. She looked up and a bird flew

overhead, made her think of falling feathers

and falling grace.

A knob turns and the oven heats like an awaiting

damnation. Steam and whispers and angel wings

cutting through the glass door.

Three days later, two fishermen found that boy

at the lip of the Mississippi. His arms were splayed,

eyes pebble-white. Mama says he lay on the beach with his

palms cupped, as if already holding the water of God.

She was invited to the funeral, but declined.

Went, instead, to college. Learned to measure

heartbeats and headaches,

liters of blood, the substance of life.

Six years later, she fell in love. Married my father.

Thought about the boy just enough to remember his taste

but not his name.

There is milk in her voice.

White and slippery, it slithers down her throat

and she grows taller, stronger.

My father’s palms are warm and soft, brown and

shaped like a baker’s loaf. According to mama, he tastes

like bread, all flour and sugar dancing on her tongue.

My brother and I, the products of too much love, were

always taught that we lived on the cusp of something beautiful.

The dough slips into the oven like an animal

going into hiding.

This is my mother.

Long and brown like a strip of

Mexican desert, coarse like the tail

of an unbroken horse, unforgiving like

the straight-back arrow of a southern sun.

Clouds nest between her shoulder blades;

she is skin-tight and hair-loose,

breasts like shy waves coaxed from the ocean floor.

My father tells her she is beautiful.

I tell her she is nature’s diamond.  

She laughs whenever we say this.

She checks the oven. Hair hangs before her face and

I think of curtains going down, windows being closed,

doors being shut.

But what I do not tell her is that I, too, believe

that actions matter. That sometimes,

half-asleep, I can taste blood on the edges of my teeth,

or, screaming from nightmares, sugar

under my tongue. That sometimes I think the

dead boy’s residue is creeping in my veins.

That I don’t know if these things matter, and

I don’t know if she does, either.

The bread is done.

Heavy and thick and white, its steam rises and

coats the air. Mama offers me the first piece

(our family never waits for things to cool).

I take a bite and my mouth burns like hellfire.

“Delicious,” I tell her, because even though

my tongue is sandpaper, it is undoubtedly so.

Five minutes later, we converge at the sink.

Soap and water and silver pans,

elbows become blurs as we scrub down our efforts.

Mama smiles sweetly because we are bonding.

I listen to her chatter but cannot grasp the substance

(perhaps I am lucky and it won’t matter). Instead,

as my mind wanders, I cannot help wondering,

as the water runs across her hands and onto mine,

if this soap is strong enough to wash our sins away.

sunday afternoon when god is watching, a poem

i would like You to make me some soup,

Dad.

maybe one sunday when i am doing biology homework

on the crooked edge of the dining-room table,

my brain wheezing and darwin’s theory of evolution falling

like dust through my eyes, i will look up and

You will be standing there.

You will ask me what kind of soup i want

(like You’ve never even left in the first place), and

i will tell You (but it really doesn’t matter what kind).

and i will smile as Your lips part like the red sea,

as You laugh your throaty church-bell tremors that

slide like the shadows of gabriel’s wings into the sky.

i’ll watch You with your strong arms and

feather-light fingers winging away at the deep basin,

silver spoons ringing in a gospel hymn as carrots

fall like egyptian soldiers into a sea of red.

next come the potatoes - broiled with thick skins like

the footpads of the apostles - and

into it we’ll add the salt, small but biting, like

david as he swung the rock and burst

goliath’s skull.

i’ll look up at you in subservience as

You kiss the air -- “Once, for good luck,” you say,

and i’ll close my eyes and lean in close to the pot,

and the steam will rise like a prophecy and

wash

everything

away.

then You’ll hold out the blood to me -

red and thick in a white china bowl, and i’ll

gladly accept, drink it and tomato bits will

stick in my teeth and i’ll laugh even though

i’ve never tasted anything more sour in my life.

You’ll smile Your still-photograph smile, Dad, because

it’s the only thing i can remember, and You’ll hold

the ladle out to me like an opportunity, and i’ll

drink some more, and ask for more, and when i finish

You’ll wrap your arms around me, and

i’ll close my eyes and think

i’ve never felt anything

more heavenly in my life.

From stomach, to the bulimic; a poem

If I am a star

slow-moving in space,

stuck, quivering,

like the nose of Cupid’s bow

in some lovely lady’s breast --

you are the god, the almighty,

why do you not let me

spin,

shoot,

rise,

drag along in coal-mine night

the glass bodies of angels through the nebulae,

but instead watch me as I languish,

laugh at my inconsequence,

throw me like an empty vessel

into the wine-dark sea.

From Penelope, to Odysseus lost at sea; a poem

The olives are ready for harvest.

Hard and salty like little boys’ fingers.

Gnarled trees with white arms

standing like sentinels. Night comes and

I dream of citadels and plunder.

Waves stain the windows with

their morning breath. Creep into my bed

like lusting gods;

Nothing here is completely dry anymore.

The suitors around the fire eat our lambs and

the fat drips down their cheeks. They

drink our wine and the vomit flows from

their mouths.

Both of these things help the fire burn.

Sometimes, when they catch

me watching, they laugh and

tell me you are dead.

Here is the truth.

I wish you were dead.

Two days ago, I shattered

an amphora. Wine, ruby-red,

licked and buried itself

into the white marble.

It shocked me. I could’ve

sworn that daggers had

flown through my heart.

The wine looked so like blood.

I pretended I was cleaning

your blood from the floor.

The night is blacker here.

I cannot remember if it has

always been so black.

Perhaps your blood has

sunk into the sky like

bones into wet dirt. Or

the waves have dampened the clouds

like a drunkard will spoil his

own chiton.

Either way, the product remains.

Things are blacker where

the soul dips into ink.