with mold. The cream cheese was a tub of dull green clay. In contrast to the few bucolic snowflakes of my visit home, this place seemed a sort of soiled, surreal, shaken-up snow dome of student life, so I turned off the lights. Murph had left hers on in her room, including the neon THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, which she had saucily, instructionally, hung over her headboard. And so I unplugged it. Then I put on a sweatshirt and long underwear and went to bed, hoping that in the morning the new year would reveal its newness: so far it seemed painted too familiarly in my heart’s old sludge.
The phone rang early. Sarah’s voice was bright and on. “I’m going to have the taxicab swing by and pick you up at eleven o’clock. We’re flying to Packer City,” she announced.
“We are?” I was scarcely awake. I was going to have to become a new person biologically just to associate with her.
“Do you mind? Just pack a little overnight bag, and we’ll be back tomorrow. We just got a phone call about a baby up there, and we’re going to meet with the birth mother.”
Another birth mother. How long could this go on? And did it matter, as long as Sarah paid me?
“Good, fine,” I said. I had never been on a plane before. I had never been in a taxicab, but I didn’t dare tell her this.
I didn’t really have an overnight bag. I had a backpack, and in it I put a nightgown, underwear, and a different shirt. Otherwise, I would wear the same clothes I had on now. I threw in a book— Zen Poems , from a friend from last year who had transferred to a small Buddhist college in California. “So, now you’re going to Zen State,” Murph and I had said, and he gave us the book to reform and silence us. It had poems in it like “The world is a wake / vanishing behind a boat / that has rowed away at dawn.”
Okay … Let the Buddhists depart the world and subdue their despair. Still, I did not think one necessarily had chosen wisely by leaving the party altogether and going home early to a kind of walking sleep. I preferred the mentally ill witch Sylvia Plath, whose words sought no enlightenment, no solace, whose words sought nothing but the carving of a cry. An artful one from the pitch black.
Oh, if only she had married Langston Hughes!
I had written on a Post-it, as if to mock my mother’s own list making, my favorite line: “I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.” Then I had stuck it—oh yes, oh well—on the frame of my mirror.
We stand around blankly as walls .
Motherhood like radar or radiation was radiantly in the air.
I saw the cab from my window, and when I came down the porch steps the cabbie jumped out and opened up the trunk for my backpack. “Hi,” he said, smiling. How old was he? Thirty? What had he studied? French literature? The cabbies in this town seemed all to have law degrees or PhDs or unfinished dissertations on ancient Greek pottery design or the hegemonic hedges of Versailles. A slightly disputatious animation in his face caused me to take him for a law degree type—there were too many of them here, since law students didn’t have to take the bar exam if they stayed in town, and so the town had long ago begun overflowing with lawyers, many of whom were now at the wheels of city buses, FedEx vans, and taxicabs. I got in the backseat and there was Sarah, beaming. She was wearing not a peacoat but a long shearling one. Perhaps she had gotten it for Christmas. “Another adventure in prospective motherhood!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” I said, thinking the phrase sounded like something Murph would say about a careless romantic fling. I found myself wondering again where Sarah’s husband was.
As if reading my mind, she said, “Edward’s going to try to meet us there. He’s flying back from a conference in L.A., via O’Hare, and if the flight’s on time we should see him at the Green Bay airport. We’ll rent
The phone rang early. Sarah’s voice was bright and on. “I’m going to have the taxicab swing by and pick you up at eleven o’clock. We’re flying to Packer City,” she announced.
“We are?” I was scarcely awake. I was going to have to become a new person biologically just to associate with her.
“Do you mind? Just pack a little overnight bag, and we’ll be back tomorrow. We just got a phone call about a baby up there, and we’re going to meet with the birth mother.”
Another birth mother. How long could this go on? And did it matter, as long as Sarah paid me?
“Good, fine,” I said. I had never been on a plane before. I had never been in a taxicab, but I didn’t dare tell her this.
I didn’t really have an overnight bag. I had a backpack, and in it I put a nightgown, underwear, and a different shirt. Otherwise, I would wear the same clothes I had on now. I threw in a book— Zen Poems , from a friend from last year who had transferred to a small Buddhist college in California. “So, now you’re going to Zen State,” Murph and I had said, and he gave us the book to reform and silence us. It had poems in it like “The world is a wake / vanishing behind a boat / that has rowed away at dawn.”
Okay … Let the Buddhists depart the world and subdue their despair. Still, I did not think one necessarily had chosen wisely by leaving the party altogether and going home early to a kind of walking sleep. I preferred the mentally ill witch Sylvia Plath, whose words sought no enlightenment, no solace, whose words sought nothing but the carving of a cry. An artful one from the pitch black.
Oh, if only she had married Langston Hughes!
I had written on a Post-it, as if to mock my mother’s own list making, my favorite line: “I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.” Then I had stuck it—oh yes, oh well—on the frame of my mirror.
We stand around blankly as walls .
Motherhood like radar or radiation was radiantly in the air.
I saw the cab from my window, and when I came down the porch steps the cabbie jumped out and opened up the trunk for my backpack. “Hi,” he said, smiling. How old was he? Thirty? What had he studied? French literature? The cabbies in this town seemed all to have law degrees or PhDs or unfinished dissertations on ancient Greek pottery design or the hegemonic hedges of Versailles. A slightly disputatious animation in his face caused me to take him for a law degree type—there were too many of them here, since law students didn’t have to take the bar exam if they stayed in town, and so the town had long ago begun overflowing with lawyers, many of whom were now at the wheels of city buses, FedEx vans, and taxicabs. I got in the backseat and there was Sarah, beaming. She was wearing not a peacoat but a long shearling one. Perhaps she had gotten it for Christmas. “Another adventure in prospective motherhood!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” I said, thinking the phrase sounded like something Murph would say about a careless romantic fling. I found myself wondering again where Sarah’s husband was.
As if reading my mind, she said, “Edward’s going to try to meet us there. He’s flying back from a conference in L.A., via O’Hare, and if the flight’s on time we should see him at the Green Bay airport. We’ll rent
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