small, dark throats, your hand clutches the Sue.
1943
. Ask your mother about babies. Have her read to you only the stories about babies. Ask her if she is going to have a baby. Ask her about the baby that died. Cry into her arm.
1940
. Clutch her hair in your fist. Rub it against your cheek.
1939
. As through a helix, as through an ear, it is here you are nearer the dream flashes, the other lives.
There is a tent of legs, a sundering of selves, as you both gasp blindly for breath. Across the bright and cold, she knows it when you try to talk to her, though this is something you never really manage to understand.
Germany invades Poland.
The year’s big song is “Three Little Fishies” and someone, somewhere, is playing it.
AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS: A GUIDE TO THE TENOR OF LOVE
11/30 . Understand that your cat is a whore and can’t help you. She takes on love with the whiskery adjustments of a gold-digger. She is a gorgeous nomad, an unfriend. Recall how just last month when you got her from Bob downstairs, after Bob had become suddenly allergic, she leaped into your lap and purred, guttural as a German chanteuse, familiar and furry as a mold. And Bob, visibly heartbroken, still in the room, sneezing and giving instructions, hoping for one last cat nuzzle, descended to his hands and knees and jiggled his fingers in the shag. The cat only blinked. For you, however, she smiled, gave a fish-breath peep, and settled.
“Oh, well,” said Bob, getting up off the floor. “Now I’m just a thing of her kittenish past.”
That’s the way with Bob. He’ll say to the cat, “You be a good girl now, honey,” and then just shrug, go back downstairs to his apartment, play jagged, creepy jazz, drink wine, stare out at the wintry scalp of the mountain.
12/1
. Moss Watson, the man you truly love like no other, is singing December 23 in the Owonta Opera production of
Amahl and the Night Visitors
. He’s playing Kaspar, the partially deaf Wise Man. Wisdom, says Moss, arrives in all forms. And you think, Yes, sometimes as a king and sometimes as a hesitant phone call that says the king’ll be late at rehearsal don’t wait up, and then when you call back to tell him to be careful not to let the cat out when he comes home, you discover there’s been no rehearsal there at all.
At three o’clock in the morning you hear his car in thedriveway, the thud of the front door. When he comes into the bedroom, you see his huge height framed for a minute in the doorway, his hair lit bright as curry. When he stoops to take off his shoes, it is as if some small piece of his back has given way, allowing him this one slow bend. He is quiet. When he gets into bed he kisses one of your shoulders, then pulls the covers up to his chin. He knows you’re awake. “I’m tired,” he announces softly, to ward you off when you roll toward him. Say: “You didn’t let the cat out, did you?”
He says no, but he probably should have. “You’re turning into a cat mom. Cats, Trudy, are the worst sort of surrogates.”
Tell him you’ve always wanted to run off and join the surrogates.
Tell him you love him.
Tell him you know he didn’t have rehearsal tonight.
“We decided to hold rehearsal at the Montessori school, what are you now,
my
mother?”
In the dark, discern the fine hook of his nose. Smooth the hair off his forehead. Say: “I love you Moss are you having an affair with a sheep?” You saw a movie once where a man was having an affair with a sheep, and acted, with his girlfriend, the way Moss now acts with you: exhausted.
Moss’s eyes close. “I’m a king, not a shepherd, remember? You’re acting like my ex-wife.”
His ex-wife is now an anchorwoman in Missouri.
“Are you having a regular affair? Like with a person?”
“Trudy,” he sighs, turns away from you, taking more than his share of blanket. “You’ve got to stop this.” Know you are being silly. Any second now he will turn and press against you,
1943
. Ask your mother about babies. Have her read to you only the stories about babies. Ask her if she is going to have a baby. Ask her about the baby that died. Cry into her arm.
1940
. Clutch her hair in your fist. Rub it against your cheek.
1939
. As through a helix, as through an ear, it is here you are nearer the dream flashes, the other lives.
There is a tent of legs, a sundering of selves, as you both gasp blindly for breath. Across the bright and cold, she knows it when you try to talk to her, though this is something you never really manage to understand.
Germany invades Poland.
The year’s big song is “Three Little Fishies” and someone, somewhere, is playing it.
AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS: A GUIDE TO THE TENOR OF LOVE
11/30 . Understand that your cat is a whore and can’t help you. She takes on love with the whiskery adjustments of a gold-digger. She is a gorgeous nomad, an unfriend. Recall how just last month when you got her from Bob downstairs, after Bob had become suddenly allergic, she leaped into your lap and purred, guttural as a German chanteuse, familiar and furry as a mold. And Bob, visibly heartbroken, still in the room, sneezing and giving instructions, hoping for one last cat nuzzle, descended to his hands and knees and jiggled his fingers in the shag. The cat only blinked. For you, however, she smiled, gave a fish-breath peep, and settled.
“Oh, well,” said Bob, getting up off the floor. “Now I’m just a thing of her kittenish past.”
That’s the way with Bob. He’ll say to the cat, “You be a good girl now, honey,” and then just shrug, go back downstairs to his apartment, play jagged, creepy jazz, drink wine, stare out at the wintry scalp of the mountain.
12/1
. Moss Watson, the man you truly love like no other, is singing December 23 in the Owonta Opera production of
Amahl and the Night Visitors
. He’s playing Kaspar, the partially deaf Wise Man. Wisdom, says Moss, arrives in all forms. And you think, Yes, sometimes as a king and sometimes as a hesitant phone call that says the king’ll be late at rehearsal don’t wait up, and then when you call back to tell him to be careful not to let the cat out when he comes home, you discover there’s been no rehearsal there at all.
At three o’clock in the morning you hear his car in thedriveway, the thud of the front door. When he comes into the bedroom, you see his huge height framed for a minute in the doorway, his hair lit bright as curry. When he stoops to take off his shoes, it is as if some small piece of his back has given way, allowing him this one slow bend. He is quiet. When he gets into bed he kisses one of your shoulders, then pulls the covers up to his chin. He knows you’re awake. “I’m tired,” he announces softly, to ward you off when you roll toward him. Say: “You didn’t let the cat out, did you?”
He says no, but he probably should have. “You’re turning into a cat mom. Cats, Trudy, are the worst sort of surrogates.”
Tell him you’ve always wanted to run off and join the surrogates.
Tell him you love him.
Tell him you know he didn’t have rehearsal tonight.
“We decided to hold rehearsal at the Montessori school, what are you now,
my
mother?”
In the dark, discern the fine hook of his nose. Smooth the hair off his forehead. Say: “I love you Moss are you having an affair with a sheep?” You saw a movie once where a man was having an affair with a sheep, and acted, with his girlfriend, the way Moss now acts with you: exhausted.
Moss’s eyes close. “I’m a king, not a shepherd, remember? You’re acting like my ex-wife.”
His ex-wife is now an anchorwoman in Missouri.
“Are you having a regular affair? Like with a person?”
“Trudy,” he sighs, turns away from you, taking more than his share of blanket. “You’ve got to stop this.” Know you are being silly. Any second now he will turn and press against you,
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