248 Family poems

We mourn the broken things, chair legs wrenched from their seats, chipped plates, the threadbare clothes. We work the magic of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes. We save what we can, melt small pieces of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones for soup. Beating rugs against the house, we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie. I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog, listen for passing cars. All day we watch for the mail, some news from a distant place.

It was hard to sit there with my father, watching one of my sister's girls playing a set of tennis against my son or daughter because he'd forget himself and with a groan of disappointment or a grunt of sympathetic exertion make it clear that he was rooting for my sister's child and against mine. There was no use calling him on it, because he'd deny it and get angry. So I would get angry but try not to show it, until I couldn't stand it any longer and would get up and walk away. That was how it worked between us, the unspoken building up like thunderheads above the tennis court, where the kids played on, not caring who won and hardly noticing the sky had darkened.

If your mother’s like mine wanting you honeyed and blithe you’ll get cooked by getting evicted since the mothers can teach with a dustpan the tons of modes of tossing. And the fathers will lift your eyes too-early-too-open: the fathers can creep up on anything when it’s still too wet to cloister with their weeping and strand you like a seed or cook at the carnivals with the can-do caroling and storefronts and foodstuffs and annulments and Scotch and off-handed fucking and walking out and moving on until they’re cooking the drift of you wanting a whole bayou up in you and cooking and cooking the gist of you needing your crannies hot with a good man’s body-silt until your head is stuffed with a pining for diapers and the most minuscule spoons made mostly of silver and Ajax too and Minwax Oh in this the dumbstruck story of the American female as a cut of terracotta and some kindling in a dress while howling at the marrow of the marrow of the bone.

Did an argument break out in the kitchen that morning? Was there smashing of pots and pans: you want to eat somewhere else? Go on, get out! Or were they set outside, shrewd,

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown? Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her, Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry— you walk ahead of me. You be the mother. And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says, hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

My mother likes a man who works. She likes my husband’s muddy knees, grass stains on the cuffs. She loved my father, though when weekends came he’d sleep till nine and would not lift his eyes up from the page to move the feet she’d vacuum under. On Saturdays my husband digs the holes for her new roses, softening the clay with peat and compost. He changes bulbs she can no longer reach and understands the inside of her toaster. My father’s feet would carry him from chair to bookshelf, back again till Monday came. My mother likes to tell my husband sit down in this chair and put your feet up.

I went over the other day to pick up my daughter. her mother came out with workman’s overalls on. I gave her the child support money and she laid a sheaf of poems on me by one Manfred Anderson. I read them. he’s great, she said. does he send this shit out? I asked. oh no, she said, Manfred wouldn’t do that. why? well, I don’t know exactly. listen, I said, you know all the poets who don’t send their shit out. the magazines aren’t ready for them, she said, they’re too far advanced for publication. oh for christ’s sake, I said, do you really believe that? yes, yes, I really believe that, she answered. look, I said, you don’t even have the kid ready yet. she doesn’t have her shoes on. can’t you put her shoes on? your daughter is 8 years old, she said, she can put her own shoes on. listen, I said to my daughter, for christ’s sake will you put your shoes on? Manfred never screams, said her mother. OH HOLY JESUS CHRIST! I yelled you see, you see? she said, you haven’t changed. what time is it? I asked. 4:30. Manfred did submit some poems once, she said, but they sent them back and he was terribly upset. you’ve got your shoes on, I said to my daughter, let’s go. her mother walked to the door with us. have a nice day, she said. fuck off, I said. when she closed the door there was a sign pasted to the outside. it said: SMILE. I didn’t. we drove down Pico on the way in. I stopped outside the Red Ox. I’ll be right back, I told my daughter. I walked in, sat down, and ordered a scotch and water. over the bar there was a little guy popping in and out of a door holding a very red, curved penis in his hand. can’t can’t you make him stop? I asked the barkeep. can’t you shut that thing off? what’s the matter with you, buddy? he asked. I submit my poems to the magazines, I said. you submit your poems to the magazines? he asked. you are god damned right I do, I said. I finished my drink and got back to the car. I drove down Pico Boulevard. the remainder of the day was bound to be better.

I close my eyes like a good little boy at night in bed, as I was told to do by my mother when she lived, and before bed I brush my teeth and slip on my pajamas, as I was told, and look forward to tomorrow. I do all things required of me to make me a citizen of sterling worth. I keep a job and come home each evening for dinner. I arrive at the same time on the same train to give my family a sense of order. I obey traffic signals. I am cordial to strangers, I answer my mail promptly. I keep a balanced checking account. Why can’t I live forever?

I could not tell I had jumped off that bus, that bus in motion, with my child in my arms, because I did not know it. I believed my own story: I had fallen, or the bus had started up when I had one foot in the air. I would not remember the tightening of my jaw, the irk that I’d missed my stop, the step out into the air, the clear child gazing about her in the air as I plunged to one knee on the street, scraped it, twisted it, the bus skidding to a stop, the driver jumping out, my daughter laughing Do it again. I have never done it again, I have been very careful. I have kept an eye on that nice young mother who lightly leapt off the moving vehicle onto the stopped street, her life in her hands, her life’s life in her hands.

When my wife was breaking apart, my son was falling in love. She lay on the couch with a heated sack of rice on her belly, sometimes dozing, sometimes staring out the window at the olive tree as it broke into tiny white blossoms, as it swelled into bitter black fruit. At first, I wanted to spare him. I wished he was still farming up north, tucking bulbs of green onions into their beds and watering the lettuce, his hands gritty, his head haloed in a straw hat. But as the months deepened, I grew selfish. I wanted him here with his new love. When I passed the open bathroom door, I wanted to see them brushing their teeth, one perched on the toilet lid, one on the side of the tub, laughing and talking through their foamy mouths, toothbrushes rattling against their teeth. Like sage gives its scent when you crush it. Like stone is hard. They were happy and I could touch it.