Lunch Break

Your boss is gone so you decide to take a full hour for your lunch break today. Outside it's the perfect sort of day; your favorite fall weather. The air is cool and a little damp and the wind is just strong enough so it's more than a breeze but doesn't leave your hair wild and smelling like dirt. A homeless man is playing the saxophone and the melody follows you down the street and around the block. While you're standing on the corner, waiting for the light to change, a single red leaf falls at your feet and you're struck by the contrast between its dark edges against the pale pavement. When you catch your image in plate glass windows, the reflection seems more fleeting than usual-- more sad and beautiful, too.

***

I went to Borders today to buy a new Bible. I lost mine some months ago, just up and left it who knows where. For awhile I resisted buying a new one, hoping mine would make its way back, but it never did. And in the meantime, I hobbled along, doing dumb things like reading it on-line and stealing the one off my mom's bedside table.

I found a good, small, no-frills copy and took it to the cash register to pay. The guy behind the counter was quite attractive and funny and didn't have too many pins with dumb slogans attached to his nametag. He was left-handed. He liked my necklace. At the end of the transaction he handed me my change and said I'd ask for your number but it seems like you might be dating the big guy upstairs. I dropped the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies all over the floor.

***

There is a pre-school near my office and sometimes, when I'm in luck, I pass the teachers and their small charges on the sidewalk. The 4 and 5 year olds walk hand-in-hand, in two long columns, and their teachers point out the dangers and delights of the city. They are learning to navigate the big wide world.

I take my time on the trip back to the office today, and walk behind them, at their short-legged pace, listening to the happy chatter. Right now I am content with my life and truly, deeply grateful for it. Still, more and more, I think about Jack, Pascal, Emmett and Sebastian -- the small, serious boys with dark hair and bright eyes that I've painted into favorite versions of my future life. Today, I imagine my boys in striped shirts, walking under the changing leaves with these kids in front of me. I wish for someone to hold my hand as we learn to navigate the big wide world together.

prizefighter

So how'd you meet again?

At Whole Foods. I was ordering a case of tampons, actually.

Really? And you just marched right up and asked him out.

Pretty much. He's new to the city. He's a boxer and he was training for a fight so we haven't been able to get together until now.

Does he have all his teeth?

Yeah. The first time I saw him, I thought "this is the most attractive man I've ever seen." He introduced himself in the frozen food aisle. I almost fainted.

Incredible.

And then the next time I went in and asked him if he'd like to have a beer and gave him my number. He called 4 hours later. And then called again and I was busy, so he called AGAIN a couple days later.

It sounds like in the eyes of this prizefighter, you're a prize worth fighting for. You're going out tonight?

Yes! I think he's scared of coming into the city, though. He wants to meet in Tenleytown. I mean c'mon...who goes on a first date in Tenleytown?

Well...

So I told him that I want him to meet me in Dupont Circle instead. So we'll see how it goes. He's new to the city so I guess I can show him around. I'm definately the one wearing the pants in this realationship.

You wear the pants, he'll wear the boxing gloves, I guess.

autumnal

Little Rat spent the night on Saturday. He slept on the floor by my bed and offered to vacuum my house the next morning. I didn't have any milk for his cereal.

He was scared, I think, about seeing Crazy A again. He was nervous and shrugged more than usual. Do you ever give Andy food? he asked when I made him lunch. Does Andy know how to ride the subway. Does Andy have to walk home by himself?

Later, when we walked through the neighborhood, he put his hand on my back everytime we passed a bum.

Round and round

The slate grey plates are round.
The orange candles, too.
And the mouth of the green glass vase
that holds the dark red flowers--
standing on its round base--
under the open window
with the rain making cold round
pools in the street outside.

The table is square and so is the rug
and there are angles everywhere,
just below the surface.
We pass the wine around, though,
and the conversation circles and loops
between where we've been
and where we might never go.
We've been here before, though.

The light on the porch wreaths a halo
round your head. Inside I hear his full
voice unrolling round the tin edges of her laugh.
Later, we will spin circles around the room
while Dwight Yoakam sings his mournful song.
For now, though, your words float
like smokerings above my head
while the rain makes cold round
pools in the street beyond.

There are bands that bind and then there
are the arrows that always just miss
the red round heart of the mark.
We've been here before. We will come here again.
And the Moon will spin round
the Earth and the Earth will go
round and round and round the Sun
and we will do our best to hold on.

for JLS

no rhyme, little reason

One blue-sky Sunday, during a drive in the country, we tried to teach Litte Rat to rhyme.

Listen to this, said dad. Cat. Bat. Hat. Flat. Do you hear that?

Fat Matt, said Little Rat.

I'll hit you with a bat! answered Matt.

That's right but don't fight, said Mom

Great! said Kate.

Can you rhyme like this? If you're name is Andy, you can eat candy.

If you're like Dad, then you drive bad, said Meg.

If you're like Meg, you must want a broken leg, said Dad.

No problem, said Little Rat. He thinks for a minute.

If you're not going to rhyme, don't waste our time, said Matt.

Ok. Ok. Ok. I've got it, Little Rat paused, then scratched his head and finally said If you want to be a warm guy, you've got to sit in a warm seat.

you choose

My father says that you always have a choice in front of you, no matter how bleak, how straight-ahead on the long hard road, the situation seems.

I think about this during the grind of the days.

Even after she turns around, I smile. I don't call her names in my head as I dig my way out of the piles of work.

There is always a choice.

I think about this when Crazy A is at his worst, insane and wild-eyed, threatening and fuming and running away.

You can give in and sink, or you can hold to hope and rise on the sure tide of its promise.

I think about this on the way home from the store, after an awkward run-in, when he can't (or won't) force his eyes to meet mine. You were wrong about him...an irredeemable jerk, I start to think.

And then I remember that I don't have to think of him at all. It's up to me.

warts and all.

DURING the course of our long, tortured relationship Nick gave me only two things of any real or sentimental value: an economy pack of Dr. Scholl's Plantar Warts Remover and a copy of The Story and Its Writer: an Introduction to Short Fiction. If you take a slack, indirect view of things, the warts, a grainy cluster of them on the ball of my left foot, were a gift of sorts, too. These days I try not to place too much credit on those broad shoulders of his, though.

Emily Alderson's parties tended to be hot and over- crowded. All the red plastic dixie cups would disappear in the first hour, leaving an odd assortment of coffee mugs without handles and Pyrex measuring cups for people to fill with cheap beer and even cheaper wine. There was always a lot of talk about Foucault and Derrida, lots of bad hummus and bowls of blue corn chip crumbs. At Emily's birthday party I told a man named Jacques that my favorite book was To Kill a Mockingbird; he practically patted my head and said he found it a "quaint narrative -- tolerable if you go for that sort of thing."

If you stayed at one of these parties long enough, you would hear Emily describe herself as "someone who likes to color outside the lines" at least 3 or 4 times. As far as I could tell, this simply meant that she liked to wear gauzy skirts that were forever getting caught in the chain of her bike and, that said bike was forever being stolen because she either forgot to lock it or took some communitarian stand against locking it, I'm not sure which. Sometimes she would set out HI MY NAME is__________ nametags and lead the way to hip literary irony by scrawling Sylvia or Simone on it and then slapping it across the front of her thrift store blouse. I always wanted, but thankfully could never summon the snotty pettiness necessary, to point out that Simone de Beauvoir wouldn't be caught dead at a party with such cheap booze and bad posturing. How ironic Emily, don't you think?!

I was leaning against going until Ellen showed up with my birthday present, a month and a half late. Lately, a new urge to forge ahead into more adult terrain had exerted itself. A year and 3 months out of college, heading into my second year of teaching English to 9th graders at a well-respected charter school, I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to parties at the group homes of college acquaintances, but I was getting closer by the day. Ellen, however, was interested in Jake, the wry, handsome graduate assistant for the Masters Program she and Emily were enrolled in. She knew he would be there and knew good and well, as she handed me the box wrapped in orange tissue paper, that my company could be purchased fairly cheaply. The polka dot dress fit like a dream and she knew just the party for me to wear it to.

The late August air held tight to the heat and smog of the day, refusing to loosen its grip even though the sun was already rounding the far curve of the Atlantic, nudging people awake in London. Emily's windows were open and Ellen immediately spotted Jake as we climbed the front steps. The door was locked for some strange reason and when Emily finally opened it she tried to gather us both up into some awkward, sisters-in-arms embrace.
"Girls! I am so glad you made it. Tess! Love the dress. Oh listen to me! What a poet!" she trilled. Behind her the party was in full swing.
"Great skirt, Emily. Is it new?" Ellen asked and I managed to keep a straight face. Ellen isn't mean or smug, in fact she's extraordinarily kind. She notices and remembers quirks and details and reads people like childrens books--her brain moving just a little faster than everyone else's, spinning and storing, gathering and retrieving information. She is both exceedingly polite and terribly impish.

Inside we found the usual assortment of people and the new faces of friends of friends and people who randomly received the Evite. Jake saw Ellen while we rummaged through the cupboard searching for cups and he made a charmingly obvious bee-line for her. She introduced me, he asked some above par small talk questions and seemed genuinely smart and terrific, which really, given Ellen's finicky preference and her ability to detect affectation miles away, wasn't all that surprisng. Soon enough, though,they were laughing a chummy, private laugh--the sort that makes you happy for your friend and irritated that you have to go the rest of the evening alone.

Before Emily's party, my path crossed with Nick's only a few times. Those brief encounters featured short, non-conversations, of little value for extended analysis with Ellen. That night he was wearing his ratty old green Oakland A's baseball cap. He was the only person in the room wearing a hat, and under its brim he seemed both jocular and brainy. At that party, in this city, the combination seemed a rare, valuable find--as delicious as french fries and ice cream. I ate it up.

to be continued...