Mink River: A Novel Read online

  49.

  In the last few minutes before the old nun died in her bed on the top floor of the old hotel she thought of Moses and everything she loved about him—the way he craned his head to peer at her, the way he landed with a plop, the way he crouched like a small black feathered weightlifter before jumping into the air, the ornate cast of his mind, his affection for the psalms, his interest in all languages, the way he would give her the bigger piece of fish when they split a fish for dinner, the way he dusted tables and windows with his wings, the way he snorted nasally when he laughed, the time he drank a glass of wine and ended up on his back on the grass both of them giggling helplessly, the way he woke her with a kiss on the forehead, the way he hilariously tried to learn to use a fork, the way he held himself motionless and nervous when she trimmed his toenails, the way he wormed himself into blankets by the fireplace so that only his eyes and beak could be seen, the way he never ceased trying to catch insects on the wing on the theory that he was every bit as talented as any piss-ant nighthawk or swift or swallow, the way he attacked hawks furiously and called them dirty names in all his languages and crowed ribaldly about it afterwards with his friends, the way he befriended children gravely, the way he waited by the library door and hopped in hurriedly when someone came in or out until the librarian cut a little pet door for him, the way he painted himself white once for her birthday, the way he would shout awake harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn! to make her laugh when they were eating breakfast, the way he daintily collected berries in an old baseball cap, the way he posed as a stuffed crow when her mother superior made her annual site visit to her room in the old hotel, the way he tried to teach pigeons to speak before concluding that stones were smarter than pigeons, the way he studied fishing with herons and skimmers and ouzels and cormorants and grebes and pelicans, the way he flipped over and fell dramatically into the ocean pelican-like just to hear her peal of laughter whenever they walked the beach, the way he formally greeted all crows known or unknown to him with the words peace be to you, the way they both wept bitter tears in the kitchen when she told him one morning haltingly that she wanted him to leave, and would not tell him why, until his grave persistence finally got to her, and she told him that the doctor had told her that she was ill unto death, and she didn’t want him to see her shrivel, she wanted to remain always lively and vibrant and herself in his heart, and he must go, and never see her again, and that way they would always have each other, always have this bronze morning, the bronze triangles of toast between them, the bowl of bronze berries, her right hand on his left foot, his eyes closed, her body shivering, the burble of pigeons on the fire escape the only sound in the room.

  II

  1.

  Michael the policeman and his wife Sara are in the kitchen finishing the dishes after putting their two daughters to bed. Michael is washing and Sara is drying. Michael is humming Puccini’s song Recondita armonia in which a painter compares the lovely features of the woman in his painting to the lovely features of his lover. Sara wants to tell him about the baby the size of his thumb who just fell asleep inside her but just as she dries her hands and screws up her courage to say

  Michael,

  he turns and with his hands all wet takes her gently by the waist and whirls her across the kitchen singing ma nel ritrar costei il mio solo pensier, Sara tu sei! and she can’t help laughing, her arms and the towel caught in his embrace, and the moment is lost again.

  Sing it in English, she says, her heart all confused and happy.

  I have vowed my love to you, Sara, to you! he sings, and he leans in to kiss her but she ducks her head into his chest so his lips arrive in her hair.

  Michael, she says into his shirt,

  but just as she says his name he says tenderly, E tanto ell’era infervorata nella sua preghiera ch’io ne pinsi, non visto, il bel sembiante, she was so lost to all around her that she never saw me all the time I was painting her lovely features, that’s what Mario the painter says about Tosca right in the beginning, Sara.

  Does he love her? says Sara into his shirt.

  O yes, head over heels, but she’s a difficult woman.

  And she loves him?

  She adores him but she can’t figure him out easily.

  I know the feeling, Mario.

  O, I am easily figured out, Tosca. Tu sei!

  And this time she leans her face back to accept his kiss and they kiss gently, she floating in his long arms, the towel floating in the soapy water, the girl floating inside Sara.

  2.

  In bed that night Sara is restless and affectionate and as a gift to Michael she asks him to tell her about Puccini and he rises to the question like a fish to a fly.

  O a riveting fellow altogether, cruel and generous, petulant and sweet, a fool and a genius, says Michael, his hands carving the air like swifts and swallows. He had seven sisters and their names are a poem in Italian: Otilia, Tomaide, Temi, Maria, Iginia, Ramelde, and Macrina. You wonder what effect seven sisters must have on a boy. His dad died when he was only five years old and his poor mom was left with all those young children and she was only thirty or so. What a woman. Albina was her name. If we ever have another girl we could name her Albina and then she’d have some of the muscle of Puccini’s mama, don’t you think? Because names matter. They do have power and magic somehow, don’t you think? Let’s have another baby so we can name her Albina. Anyway Puccini was a rotten student, he kept getting expelled from school, he ran around crazy in the hills. He had energy coming out his ears and he couldn’t sit still for ten seconds straight. His mom made him take music lessons and he was terrible. There was a music contest when he was seventeen and he finished dead last. Last! Puccini! But he chased after songs even though it seemed crazy and his mom kept telling him that he would be an unbelievably great musician. Finally he wrote a symphony and then an opera, and so his career was started, but his mom died a week after his opera was performed in Milan. She was only fifty years old or so. The last time she saw Giacomo she gave him the ring from her finger. There’s a scene from an opera, eh? What a woman.

  Sara?

  But Sara is asleep, her hands still, her bookmark propped precariously between her chin and her breasts, her reading glasses awry, her right knee thrown over Michael’s left thigh. He props himself on one elbow and watches her: the sweet country of her face, her lace eyelashes, her lean high cheekbones, her breasts rising and falling under her slip, the circle on her right shoulder where she was vaccinated for polio as a girl, the burst of freckles in the russet sky of her back, the taut leap of her neck, the tiny hidden hollow at the base of her throat. Sometimes when they are making love he slides his tongue along her collarbone and into that tiny hollow which sometimes gives her a wet electric shiver in her belly but sometimes makes her twist away from his tickling tongue and neither of them knows what will happen when he does it sometimes she grabs his hair and arches wildly under him but sometimes she wrenches away trying with all her might to escape.

  3.

  Worried Man kneeling on the deck of the Department of Public Works in the black night after No Horses sprinted madly down the hill between the twin lines of black trees with Moses a black arrow above her discovers when he tries to rise that his knees have locked and he has to laugh. What a piece of work am I all rags and splinters. He uses his long arms as levers and hoists himself up along the railing and pauses there for a moment stretching his legs and sending his mind out over the railing into the velvet night feeling for the chattering cables of pain from his daughter and his grandson.

  He finds Nora and he feels gently along the spine of her electric pain. A shadow of what it was, that’s good, but her fear is so strong he can taste ashes in his mouth. O Nora. He feels anxiously for Daniel and there tearing through the dark air is the ragged burning screaming pain of the boy, o poor child poor child he’ll have to get to the clinic I’ll get the truck must tell May poor poor Daniel.

  He feels a dozen other pains yammering
and chattering at him in the moist ancient air, they are almost musical tones in his head: the shrill faint note of Mrs. L’s arthritic wrists, like a flute high and away; the deep thrumming tone of Anna Christie singing and rocking by the creek; the jangled halting basso of the man who beats his son, rage and guilt and fear and exhaustion all twisted together in that poor man. Poor man poor man.

  He opens his eyes and clears his mind and takes a deep breath and thinks truck keys May and notices that he is shivering night’s not that cold hmm and he steps inside and closes the glass door gently and walks thinking of Daniel poor child through the studio past the wooden man but just as he reaches for the studio door a savage raging pain explodes in his chest so suddenly and cruelly that it knocks him to his knees and only by shooting his arms out blindly and landing on his hands does he avoid smashing his face on the floor.

  O May he thinks faintly from far far away.

  He can’t breathe uh uh uh uh uh uh gasping uh uh uh uh but desperately raggedly he gains a half a breath uh uh uh and gulping uh uh a whole one uh uh then another uh and greedily aah he fills aaah his lungs as deeply as he can aaaah he would eat all the air in the room if he could aaaaah he would suck it dry the blessed air aaaaah and somehow the friendly air aaaaah forces the fire in his chest down aaahh and the rage retreats snarling aaah and he kneels there by the wooden man aaaah breathing aaah his shoulders shaking aah his knees throbbing ah his sweat dripping freely to the floor ah his mind whispering May o May o May.

  4.

  In the last few minutes before dawn when the world is a muted pearl moist and poised Sara’s hands warm and eager draw Michael into her and they kiss gently and he slides into her gently and they make love gently her eyes closed and his open and then they lay cupped facing east so Sara can watch the curtain rise on the world. His arm a blanket on her arm gently.

  Tell me more about your man Puccini, she says into her pillow.

  Really?

  Yes really.

  Hmm. Well, his sister Iginia …

  Shh. Whisper.

  His sister Iginia, he whispers, entered a convent when she was nine years old and lived the rest of her life cloistered at the foot of a mountain, but they were very close and they loved each other dearly and when Giacomo was rich and famous he would come to visit her and hand her his wallet and she would take whatever she thought the convent needed. That story always stayed in my mind. He hands over the wallet without a second thought. He was a lout sometimes but never with his sisters.

  That’s sweet.

  And Iginia told him stories too one of which he turned into a piece of music, about a beautiful nun who dies young.

  What was her name?

  Angelica. Isn’t that lovely?

  II

  Shhh.

  If we have another girl we can name her Angelica.

  Or Albina, for Puccini’s mother.

  You remembered! I thought you were asleep.

  Shh. What would you name a boy?

  Giacomo?

  No.

  No?

  No.

  James?

  Shh.

  Giacomo is James in Italian.

  Okay.

  James?

  James or Albina.

  Deal.

  Deal.

  Do we need to be so sure about names right this very minute?

  Yes.

  5.

  Maple Head looks at the clock again and decides enough is enough. She takes one loaf of bread and puts it on the windowsill with a note for Cedar and takes the other loaf and a bottle of wine and floats down to the Department of Public Works. The night is velvet and still. An owl wheedles in the woods. She floats over the path. The owl floats silently overhead. She worries. The owl lands in a big cedar. She decides not to worry. The owl hunkers and fluffs. She floats over the path. The owl is still. The wine bottle bumps against the bread against her back as she floats over the path.

  She slips in the front door of the shaggy dark building.

  Billy?

  She floats through the cavernous dark central workspace of the building where the truck and tools are where she keeps wine glasses and candles for when Billy is working late.

  Cedar?

  She slips into the warren of little offices in the rear of the building.

  Nora?

  Sees the wooden man half made and half darker than the dark.

  Billy?

  Sees her husband on the floor sitting smiling in the dark.

  Billy!

  O May o May.

  What happened?

  I had … an adventure.

  She is on her knees cupping his face in her hands.

  Your heart?

  Yeh.

  Bad?

  Yuh.

  Still? Now?

  No, no. It’s gone now. I couldn’t catch my breath there for a long while though.

  She runs her hands through his hair and feels the sweat his fear hatched.

  That was scary, May. To not be able to draw a breath. Wow.

  She feels his neck and wrist for the throb of his pulse.

  Your pulse feels raggedy.

  What say we have a glass of wine, you lovely creature?

  Let’s get you to the doctor, love.

  There are wine glasses in the shop, you know.

  She has to smile and suddenly she’s exhausted.

  You are so … you, she says.

  I’ll take that as a compliment.

  You almost died.

  But I didn’t die and you’re with me and I smell fresh bread.

  You almost died alone.

  Never alone, May. Never.

  She closes her eyes and he folds her in his long arms like wings and for a long moment they sit there together wordlessly in the dark the wooden man half made in the dark above them.

  I’m scared to be old, she says into his chest.

  Mm.

  Are you scared too?

  Yes.

  I’m afraid we’ll lose each other.

  Never.

  We’re always on the lip of lost, Billy.

  Now he cups her face in his hands huge as oars.

  No matter what happens, May, no matter what, we will always have each other. We’ll always be in each other. I don’t know how but I know we will. Some bright morning everything will change. I see it sometimes in a dream. In my dream the morning is bright and silent. The colors are white and blue. Everything has a shining edge like it was cut from the most amazing ice. In my dream we go on journeys. I go one way and you go another. But we never come apart. We never lose each other. I can’t explain it. We are always braided together. I can’t explain it. That’s just how we are. That’s just how it is.

  Pause.

  You are a very strange and fascinating man.

  I’ll take that as a compliment.

  I love you very much.

  Then I am the envy of all men absolutely.

  She opens her eyes and smiles.

  What say we open that wine and talk it over? he says.

  And they do, on the floor, in the dark, without a word.

  6.

  The instant after Grace’s eyes open in the murky green dark of the trailer she is out of bed furious and silent and within seconds she is outside struggling into her jeans and sweater. Can’t find her shirt. She stuffs her boots in her gear bag and spits twice furiously on the trailer and swings her bag to her shoulder and pads away barefoot. Just past dawn. She trips over a little fake knee-high picket fence and realizes she’s in the trailer park near the highway. Spits furiously on the fence. Her mouth is sour and dry. When she is out of sight of the trailers she slips into a thicket of alder and pees and pulls her boots on and considers. Sunlight hits the tips of the trees. She brushes her hair what’s left of it what was I thinking stupid me. Listens: robins, a thrush, a woodpecker, an ouzel, the silver plink plink of a hammer on metal. Stretches. Swings her bag to her shoulder, walks through the trees, and there in an opening in the woo
ds through a bright yellow window in the warming morning she sees Owen Cooney hammering away at something in his shop. He’s shirtless and sweating and looks like a painting of the ancient god Vulcan in his forge. Mom read that book to me a thousand times, gods and heroes and warrior queens. Vulcan’s hard muscles and jet-black hair and relentless hammer. A book in the morning and a story at night. Thor and Hercules and Cú Chulainn of the three-colored hair red black brown. A book to wake and a story to sleep. The warrior queen Meadhbh the intoxicating one who started battles. Mom’s hands turning the pages. The warrior queen Grace the brave one who slept with the hawsers of her ships tied to her bed. Mom’s tiny hands the color of nutmeg and cinnamon. The princess Caer the wise one who could turn into a swan. Mom murmuring stories in the dark. The warrior queen Aife who fought Cú Chulainn and then slept with him. Mom wetting her forefinger with her tongue quick as a cat before turning the page. The princess Deidre of the gray eyes desired by all men but her heart open to only the one. Mom’s fingers tracing Vulcan’s rippled back as she told his fire and fury.