The Patriarch

Of course we knew the “incidents,” the aura of Divinity, duck-and-cover in the parking garage, Gloria Swanson chinchilla redux, yes, he’d been a bombshell—the eyes still sang with the merriment of a punchbowl, fine wrists, that dahlia neck, skin bleached with peroxide, of course he swam in the nude, stashed gin in the toilet tank, stored stockings in the freezer so they wouldn’t run, had a thing for Adenauer, played roulette with the .45 won in a Cuban dancehall, raging along hallways, fathering four children, feeling the eyes of the back stairs, beck of the undercurrent, his own hand in his lap like an orphan, of course he gardened in Dior, of course he was flagrant, but what escaped us was the way he peeked into the neighbor’s kitchen drawers for something he swore they’d stolen, beyond the foreground obligation, aspiration insistent as a stuck car horn in the slow blue hours of morning, discarded affection, what escaped us was the dampness at the collarbone, the delicacy of the pose (cigarette and upturned cheek), the lingering by the kitchen knives, the bias cut off the dressing gown, break and fall, tumbrel of illusion— and what we wanted to escape: that he was ruthless, beyond hope.