Read an Excerpt
AT THE CHAMPION AVENUE LOW-INCOME SENIOR & CHILD CARE
SERVICES CENTER
When I told them it must be like dropping your kid
off at school their first day, all my parent friends
nodded and smiled uncomfortably, meaning
what would I know. I won’t be taking solace
in the many firsts ahead. Here among the gray,
spotted and brown heads of the seniors,
their soft flesh and angles, their obedience as they
sit as uprightly as they are able at white, parallel
tables, nobody cries, and very few speak.
When I seat dad beside her, one senior tells me
she’s ninety-four, presenting one hand, four
fingers in the air, just as she might have ninety
years ago with a stranger like me, now long gone.
Dad never liked me to talk:
Lower your voice, he’d say. If I was louder:
Put on your boxing gloves. Or: You’ll catch
more flies with honey than vinegar, as if some day
I’d need the flies. I stopped talking, started writing
instead. I work full-time and dad wants to die,
so I dropped him at the Champion Avenue
Low-income Senior & Child Care Services Center,
a newish building, municipal and nondescript,
in a neighborhood that’s been razed and rebuilt so often
it’s got no discernible character left. There was bingo,
men playing poker in a corner. Red sauce and cheese
on white bread pizza for lunch. Dad, a big talker,
was an instant hit, but refused to return. What
is the name of that animal, someone asked me.
Where is Philip, asked someone else, over and over.
As if firsts and lasts were one and the same.
KEELSON
Like a cracked cup of milk, the swan leaks
white on the wet dock. It’s hard to know
if this is normal. I’m worried, and ashamed
to be. “Sensitive,” it was called by the family,
in the hushed tones of a fatal diagnosis.
My grandfather, also sensitive, was a “great
reader,” they said, a crease in his cuffed pants,
fedora on his head in all weathers. He retired
early from the Coty factory, lungs clotted
with sweet-smelling powder. Our rounds
included the library, the church, the river,
and the shoe store, each equally holy,
he and the salesperson zealously attentive
to the room needed for my toes to grow.
As he aged, he drank less and talked more,
played Simon & Garfunkel’s “Parsley,
Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme” on his Victrola,
cooled tea in a saucer, drew in his shaky
hand what looked like boats with crosses
inside. “Keelson,” he wrote underneath,
“Use this as a keelson.” He’d dreamed it,
he said, many times, God gave him the vision.
How could I understand? I never saw
my immigrant grandparents exchange a warm
word, not a touch, not a glance, but I worried
them, joined them in that worry. They
sent me to drama camp once to help me
“come out of my shell.” The teacher said
I had the melancholy look of an Audrey
Hepburn, only less “buoyant.” Teachers
used to say, when you misspelled a word,
“Look it up in the dictionary.” How can you
look it up in the dictionary if you can’t spell
it? Before the internet, nothing and no one could
ask you, “Do you mean SWAN LAKE?”
when you looked up SWAN LEAK. Now,
when a Swiss friend texts “Let’s go for perch
in Morges,” my heart leaps with the poetry of it,
like a fish on the line, like the invisible keelsons
bobbing toward the dock. Look it up: you can
listen to a French speaker pronounce Morges,
see Audrey Hepburn’s Swiss home nearby,
memorize the French words for tea, yogurt,
and cherries, which I long to buy
at market each day, and which, every day
as I practice, tumble from my mouth like
body parts from a dump-truck. How familiar,
how reassuring I envision the puzzled, pitying,
mildly disgusted looks of incomprehension on
the vendors’ faces to be. Which is why I stopped
speaking in the first place, and would sooner
go hungry than ask to be understood.
BAD HOBBY
From his pocket, my dad pulls
A roll of wooden toothpicks
Bound with a rubber band.
We’re driving to the V.A.
To have his toenails trimmed,
As we do every three months,
“A standing appointment,”
I used to say to him,
But he no longer gets the joke,
Asking only why I can’t
Do it myself. And why won’t I?
I’ve catheterized him,
Twice, but can’t bring myself
To tend his feet, so like mine,
Wide with high arches—
Ballerina feet, my mom
Called them, none of us dancers.
Now that he’s lived with me
For almost as long as he lived
With her, I’m beginning
To look like mom—pissed.
The podiatry techs are always good-
Natured, thanking dad for his service,
Raising their voices when
I remind them he can’t hear.
The big toenail on his left foot
Looks to be made of horse hoof.
They cut and file but never
Hurt him. Some vets smoke outside
The building, waiting on rides.
“Don’t ever smoke, Kath,”
Dad says, “it’s a bad hobby,”
Scrambling his words, forgetting
Our ages and both our pasts.
The toothpicks he saves and reuses,
Even when broken, he calls
“A bad hobby.” And the drinking
He once was well enough to do.
Vets here age out at Korea;
Most are Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq,
Afghanistan. Since
The suspension of the draft,
Only the poorest of us
Serve. Like sports, the art of war
Holds little interest for me,
Though both are everywhere on
Display and, in theory, I get it:
Offense, defense, spectacle,
Competition. The Renaissance
Painter, Uccello, was commissioned
By a nobleman to paint the famous
Triptych of the Battle of San Romano,
A skirmish really, between
City-states, fought by mercenaries.
More than the birds he was
Nicknamed after, he loved linear
Perspective, using mathematics
To create a three-dimensional
Effect. The work hangs
In three European countries now,
In keeping with its divisive history,
And is considered Uccello’s
Masterpiece. Painted with egg
Tempera on poplar, it reminds me
Of the tarot, with its broken staves,
Like toothpicks, and sexy horses.
The gold leaf’s intact
On the bridles, but the silver
Of the soldiers’ armor has oxidized,
Darkening to ghostly shades.
My mother’s hobby was painting,
Is how I know.
Uccello’s daughter, a Carmelite
Nun, was described by Vasari
As “a daughter who knew how to
Draw.” None of her work survives.
Hobby derives from a Latin
Diminutive for horse, from which
We get hobbyhorse, as in one man’s
Sport, another man’s war.
On the other hand, habit
Is defined as a sustained
Appearance or condition, from habeo,
Meaning “I have, hold, keep.” Known,
In some cases, as hard to break
Or more useful broken:
A spirit, a promise, a horse.
