Rachel Wetzsteon

I. Maggots in the food, maggots in the floorboards, maggots in the recurring nightmare in which, lying down with a rugged adonis, I wake to find him almost nibbled away. Certainly signs of death are everywhere, but love is more than combat with worms and cannot be so glibly explained away; I do not tremble or knock my knees to keep the maggots slumbering below ground, or crush them underfoot by flocking to everything they are not: raucous gatherings, stolen kisses. On the contrary, I come away from parties adoring what is wormlike in them: the unrisen soufflé, the precocious boy’s octogenarian sayings, the drooping lids of the hostess, someone’s death rattle of a laugh. Certainly love has commerce with vermin, but it is a friendly partnership, not a league of discord; a hacking cough gives proof of a full life, a passing stranger seems all the stronger when one foot is sinking quietly into the grave. II. But is is this lingering horror of dust that makes me pull us out of the cold earth any way I know how: because I strive for heaven in little rooms, visit you in order to suck your blood, then spread it over pipes and daffodils, and shove you up to the vacant sky, where you hover like a stone-cold, tedious statue who never dies, you, poor pawn, are a jack-in-the-box gone haywire, and I am a grinning humanist with bad dreams.

The world had fled, with all its silly cares and questionable aches, and in one swoon we rose above its stupefying airs like flying lovesick pigs up to the moon. In that blue light where two lives equaled all, our souls looked down upon a spinning ball. The world returned, and this was a surprise I raged against like someone on a rack, telling the sun, tears clouding my stunned eyes, give us our splendid isolation back. I craved third rails, a shot of something strong when I found out it doesn’t last for long. The world came back and stayed, pain never ended, but when the aches and cares begged for a hand, grew softer in the light we’d made and tended, I finally began to understand love’s widening third stage, and of the three this was the most outstanding ecstasy.

When the wind invades the treetops and the trees agree, shivering take me, take me, when their stealthy perfume drifts down to waft among mortals, they come out in droves: the boy whose bouncing keys speak a language all their own, the novice who gets her tricks from magazine molls (their haughtiness, swirl of cleats), the gigolo with eyes lowered, the better to judge his prey, the woman whose hemlines rise as her age does, the bad girl whose only remaining option is to get worse: despite the string of cheats and lukewarm reactions, she still has the power to pound, the knack of funneling her frustration into the arrogant click of a heel . . . at this armada of proud, unyielding soldiers I have cast ferocious stones, holding forth on barricaded gardens and souls’ communion until, heaving my bones from garret to gutter I took to the street and saw it, too, was worthy. Chasers out for a good time, flirters in for a life’s catch, strutters so skilled your lurid designs burn holes, kill the cold in the pavement, it does not matter what fever you feed, so long as you feed it freely; I hid my eyes but sickness is catching; lovers, permit me entrance.

I hate the travel logs that tell you more about the pain than the place, yet here I am again, narrating the same old story to myself time after time. The papers circling in an alley, watched by a hunchback, mimic my plans and their preventer; when an old man treats the drycleaner to a lengthy sermon on spotting, I collect it; bloated clouds spell messages that people stopped hearing long ago, and as for the hag who runs at me, arms open, mouth bleeding? She’s my future, my terrible double. Always I head out, hot for details, and always the details start revolving around brave ingénues who put their innocent hands in wicked bonfires. I could never go for ten minutes without seeing fissures as faces, and I confess a hopeless weakness for the types who come back from travels, gather their fans around and tell them stories of order or of wonder: seashores and meadows sometimes get so muffled and many-voiced that tourists storm in and do their talking for them— It’s addictive, magical, vital. But I’ve observed how, more and more, these promising outings are becoming meta-walks and mechanized phrases: “When I ventured into the outback, how it blared back echoes of me, my bright dreams and tragic uniqueness.” Meanwhile forces of good and evil squirm and flourish under the carpet, mocking the visionary moment’s sweeping appeal. I’ll go on going out for scenes of horror and pleasure, but I’ll start pursuing clues leading to the return of that enormous, fertile ground between shouting and silence.

If walking, like wine, only abets a sad mood let’s try it, I said, and I did: over these hills that have never known sorrow no thoughtful moon passes. Dig until a hill is level, and unearth only earth. Take pride in knowing the chemical makeup of rain, the sum total of harmful vapors in any sunset. For if you must drag in the old lines about suicidal willows, star’s stacked for or against you, you clutter a limitless, soaring landscape with your own baggage. Night of love, day of omens of night, great mountain of realized hopes, valley where bitter winds blow the dispossessed into raving lunatics— what are they but shady projections of passing whims, vastly oversimplified versions of something infinitely greater? This vision before you is nothing but a triad of trees, hills, river, steadfast and eternal. But soon you start to feel restless and when, setting out to take a roll of photos, you note the disturbing absence of a road, your suavity crumbles: you deafen the sky and serenade the moon, fall prostrate before pines saying oh, come back, spirit of the place which, lifeless without you, blossoms into something sumptuously more than mediating madness; come back, massive oaks that await our coming; to carve initials is to be truly human; the days are dappled with our passions, the mountains rise and fall with our glories and follies.

The strings, as if they knew the lovers are about to meet, begin to soar, and when he marches in the door they soar some more—half ecstasy, half pain, the musical equivalent of rain— while children who have grown up with one stare steal further looks across a crowded room, as goners tend to do. My father loved it too, warned me at dinner that he’d be a wreck long before the final trio came (Ja,ja, she sighed, and gave him up forever); he found his Sophie better late than never and took the fifth about his silent tears but like him I’m a softie, with a massive gift for feeling blue. I went with others, threw bouquets and caution to the whirling wind, believing that the rhapsody on stage would waft its wonders up to our cheap seats; but mirrors can be beautiful fierce cheats, delusions of an over-smitten mind; I relished trouser roles until I had no petals left to strew. Up, down the avenue I wandered like a ghost, I wondered why a miracle is always a mirage, then plodded home and set back all the clocks, spent hard-won funds installing strong new locks, telling myself if violence like this could never sound like violins, I would to art, not life, be true. And I am trying to fathom the way I got from there to here, the joy that snuck up when I’d sworn off joy: we’ve made a sterling start, we’ve got a plan to watch it on your satin couch downtown and I’ll be there upon the stroke of eight, bearing in my trembling ungloved hand a silver rose for you.

On sullen nights like these when my spirit counts its woes like pearls on a string, you bring me armfuls of spare pantsuits and clear-eyed hints about the woman who might kick up her heels in them, flooding rooms with cunning, air, an almost gaudy vitality. Gaudy but sober: when your wayward husband courted the heiress, you stormed her gates disguised as a floozy—and asked the butler to serve you gingerale. It was life you’d rather be drunk on, roaring life that told you there is no time for spirits of dark staircases, only lightning ruses that not only leave no bruises but give all parties their wish: rinsed vision and second chances. Losing a boot heel and giddily claiming I was born on the side of a hill is easy. For every such moment there are ten when my ideal snags midflight, a bag caught in branches. But a girl can dream, can realize, high on heroines, that she is mortal and therefore fearless; that sanity supplies the ground bass to the wildest singing; that breezes made visible make the finest winds.

Since you were not Hume’s sunrise I watch the late-May moonrise alone and a nicotine trance assures me that summer is coming, and the arrival of painted toenails; that at last I truly understand aubades and James Stewart’s vacant hospital gaze after his wits have vanished with his love; that the transmigration of bruises from skin to spirit brings about such splendid depths of character you’ll drop a dime and never hear a sound. Clouds race across the moon’s pale face. I have character to spare, it is no comfort; I will write us down, making nothing happen, it won’t repair this ache of failed induction, these eye that live for sunlight, though the sky stays dark.

The park admits the wind, the petals lift and scatter like versions of myself I was on the verge of becoming; and ten years on and ten blocks down I still can’t tell whether this dispersal resembles a fist unclenching or waving goodbye. But the petals scatter faster, seeking the rose, the cigarette vendor, and at least I’ve got by pumping heart some rules of conduct: refuse to choose between turning pages and turning heads though the stubborn dine alone. Get over “getting over”: darks clouds don’t fade but drift with ever deeper colors. Give up on rooted happiness (the stolid trees on fire!) and sweet reprieve (a poor park but my own) will follow. There is still a chance the empty gazebo will draw crowds from the greater world. And meanwhile, meanwhile’s far from nothing: the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees.

We had gathered under a tent in the park for some words before lunch and after separate mornings, and when—twice—the poet said “capital,” the lightning bolts that followed the noun had me bolting too; I’d always suspected God’s communist leanings, but now I regretted how few exchanges we know between craft and climate: imagine a rhyme inciting a rainbow, blood feuds bruising the sky, hymns of forgiveness bringing a soft new light to the faces watching the last act, waltzes and songs and declamations— this would be capital entertainment!— locked in a clinch with open air. But the lightning was as quick as it was loud. The clouds dispersed, and then so did the crowd.