Dorianne Laux

I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family, how an argument once ended when his father seized a lit birthday cake in both hands and hurled it out a second-story window. That, I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger sent out across the sill, landing like a gift to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus, and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed the people in his stories really loved one another, even when they yelled and shoved their feet through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle of cheap champagne, christening the wall, rungs exploding from their holes. I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury of the passionate. He said it was a curse being born Italian and Catholic and when he looked from that window what he saw was the moment rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk deep in the icing, a few still burning.

Sometimes, when we're on a long drive, and we've talked enough and listened to enough music and stopped twice, once to eat, once to see the view, we fall into this rhythm of silence. It swings back and forth between us like a rope over a lake. Maybe it's what we don't say that saves us.

Someone spoke to me last night, told me the truth. Just a few words, but I recognized it. I knew I should make myself get up, write it down, but it was late, and I was exhausted from working all day in the garden, moving rocks. Now, I remember only the flavor — not like food, sweet or sharp. More like a fine powder, like dust. And I wasn’t elated or frightened, but simply rapt, aware. That’s how it is sometimes — God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you’re just too tired to open it.

When you’re cold—November, the streets icy and everyone you pass homeless, Goodwill coats and Hefty bags torn up to make ponchos— someone is always at the pay phone, hunched over the receiver spewing winter’s germs, swollen lipped, face chapped, making the last tired connection of the day. You keep walking to keep the cold at bay, too cold to wait for the bus, too depressing the thought of entering that blue light, the chilled eyes watching you decide which seat to take: the man with one leg, his crutches bumping the smudged window glass, the woman with her purse clutched to her breasts like a dead child, the boy, pimpled, morose, his head shorn, a swastika carved into the stubble, staring you down. So you walk into the cold you know: the wind, indifferent blade, familiar, the gold leaves heaped along the gutters. You have a home, a house with gas heat, a toilet that flushes. You have a credit card, cash. You could take a taxi if one would show up. You can feel it now: why people become Republicans:Get that dog off the street. Remove that spit and graffiti. Arrest those people huddled on the steps of the church.

For days now a red-breasted bird has been trying to break in. She tests a low branch, violet blossoms swaying beside her, leaps into the air and flies straight at my window, beak and breast held back, claws raking the pane. Maybe she longs for the tree she sees reflected in the glass, but I'm only guessing. I watch until she gives up and swoops off. I wait for her return, the familiar click, swoosh, thump of her. I sip cold coffee and scan the room, trying to see it new, through the eyes of a bird. Nothing has changed. Books piled in a corner, coats hooked over chair backs, paper plates, a cup half-filled with sour milk. The children are in school. The man is at work. I'm alone with dead roses in a jam jar. What do I have that she could want enough to risk such failure, again and again?

I'm remembering again, the day we stood on the porch and you smoked while the old man told you about his basement full of wine, his bad heart and the doctor's warning, how he held the dusty bottle out to you, glad, he said, to give it away to someone who appreciated its value and spirit, the years it took to settle into its richness and worth. I'm watching again, each cell alive, as you reach for the wine, your forearm exposed below the rolled sleeve, the fine hairs that sweep along the muscle, glowing, lifting a little in the afternoon breeze. I'm memorizing the shape of the moment: your hand and the small bones lengthening beneath the skin as it tightens in the gripping, in the receiving of the gift, the exact texture and color of your skin, and the old man's face, reduced to its essence. That, and the brief second when both of you had a hand on the bottle— the thing not yet given, not yet taken, but held between you, stoppered, full. And my body is flooded again with an elemental joy, holding onto it against another day in the unknowable future when I'm given terrible news, some dark burden I'll be forced to carry. I know this is useless, and can't possibly work, but I'm saving that moment, for balance.