2:00
PM 8/3/2000
She did not notice the woodpecker. The first
things she noticed were the seven tiki torches. They lay,
splayed out on the lawn, her lawn, like palms after a
hurricane. The car door hung open. A swallow ducked. Her jaw
held tight like a rabbit trap. Only her fingers, twinkling
like wavelets, warned of the tremor beneath the surface, some
small dark thing welling up, expanding in silent fury.
She
circled and bent. Broke from her gyre. She gathered each one
against her yellow pantsuit and marched to the garage. She
dumped them behind her husband's fiberglass shell and ran back
to assess the damage. She crouched down.
Her hand brushed the
grass as if it were hair. She traced over the muddied tracks
of dancing and felt the indentations of heavy feet. She
lowered her nose and swore she could smell where a bit of
alcohol had spilled from a glass or mouth.
------------------------------------
8:17 AM 8/4/2000
When she
awoke, Christian and Pietro were in the backyard. They had
brought their families who were sitting down by the river
eating Egg McMuffins. The two men were talking as they sifted
fertilizer over the dew. When she appeared at the front
pillars, Christian had moved on to watering. She stiffened.
"No!"
In bare feet she ran to Christian and yanked
the sprinkler from his hand.
"Here," she pointed a
rigid finger. "Do you see that it is browner here? Are
you even looking? I am paying you and you come up here for a
job and you are not even looking!"
------------------------------------
1:20 PM 8/3/2000
On the
way out to East Hampton she stopped at Friedo's for a plain
bagel, no cream cheese. She parked a bit down the way so she
could duck into Banana Republic afterward. The man behind the
cash register was sweating above his eyebrows.
"I'll have
a water with that, thank you."
"Sure, sure"
The
man filled a plastic cup from the tap and placed it on her
tray.
"No, thank you. I'll have a water with that,"
she repeated.
He stared at her.
"Sure, okay. You wanna
Peligrino or . . .?"
After she left, the cashier turned
to the cleaning lady who was also his wife.
"Get out of
the city and they think they're in Mexico, eh seņorita?"
------------------------------------
4:17 PM 8/4/2000
She was
watching a squirrel find its way down a tree. It made a rapid
descent before halting at the base of the trunk. There it
hung, like a bat, sniffing the air. She eyed its form. Below
its mouth appeared a large black tumor. She felt a familiar
repulsion, a nostalgic turning of the stomach.
Her son had had
a pet mouse as a child. In old age it had grown immense tumors
all over its body. She had waited each day for it to die and
it had refused. She had told her husband to kill it and he had
refused. It came to her then in dreams -- the same tumors
appearing on table legs and cooked chickens. Sometimes on her
own face. And still the mouse would not die. When her son went
off to tennis camp, she took the cage and dumped it in the
river. She told him it had escaped.
In this squirrel it seemed
to have returned. A plague, she thought. It must not touch
this ground. She eyed the grass. Like letting vermin into your
own bed. She broke from the door and grasped out for something
to hurl at this curse, this infection. She found a vase and
launched it at the tree. It smashed into a thousand satisfying
pieces. The squirrel scurried to a high branch. Something fell
from its mouth. A miracle or a nut, she thought.
------------------------------------
3:05 PM 8/3/2000
There
was a pearl earring lying in the grass. Its match was nowhere
to be seen, nor the ear from which it had fallen. The owner
had long since left, had hopped into a Mercedes convertible
and slid away past stoplights and other Mercedes and then,
finally, a few farms.
The grass by the earring was of the crab
variety. Unruly grass. Crass grass. City sidewalk stock. It
had appeared suddenly on the scene. No one remembered planting
any seeds or watering. A spontaneous generation, like the
fruit flies in the air. It could survive on spilled Pepsi;
thrive in a crack in the asphalt. The edges of the stalks were
yellow, but it was not going to die.
The earring had not
caught anybody's eye. It was large and glossy. The most
expensive type. The highest quality. It looked most like a
child's plastic bead. It had been many people's family
heirloom. It had lasted centuries. It could be crushed with a
light footstep.
Later it would be glanced by a beetle toe. A
dog would sniff near by. A candy bar wrapper would come to
rest near the clasp. And with the first raindrops it would
slowly begin to disappear beneath splashed dirt particles;
would drop beneath the stalks; would become a globular brown
to be truly forgotten and truly lost.
------------------------------------
9:00 AM 8/4/2000
In the
shower she washed her hair with a calculated efficiency and
began soaping up the rest. She worked her hands from the
bottom upward. The radio was playing a Barbra Streisand tune.
When she tried to sing along she couldn't remember the words.
Under her arm she felt something that she had not noticed
before.
------------------------------------
1:01 PM 8/3/2000
Her husband, Franklin, was in a canoe. He would go surfing in
the afternoon on small waves. He had escaped earlier and
planned to do so again later. He felt spent from the previous
evening. Heavy. The paddle seemed to stick in the water. He
had to fight to bring it out. His wife would be arriving and
it would be best to be farther up.
He could still make out the
house. It had been fortuitous to find such a wooded lot. Now
there was almost nothing around on that kind of scale. He
looked at the four massive brick chimneys and felt suddenly
embarrassed. These chimneys which his wife had insisted on.
With their elegantly rounded corners and delicate stone caps.
They were extravagant and silly. Like men with top hats and
abalone cufflinks. She would gild the trees, he thought.
There
were two egrets at the bend and they flew up as the paddle
scraped the side. Beside him a dead carp floated by and then
two more. He watched as a crow attempted to pull one from the
river. He watched as it struggled, its feet unable to able to
span the girth. Wings flapping madly. Trying. Lifting it an
inch. Two inches. Wings beating. And then the fish suddenly
came free, alive almost, and splashed back to the water.
------------------------------------
10:43 AM 8/3/2000
She was
looking at herself in the mirror. The saleswoman was holding
two skirts in her left arm while she gesticulated with her
right. The shop smelled of perfumes and well manicured
fingernails.
"I do think that is preferable. You've got
to have balance," said the saleswoman.
"Yes, but
what about the bonnet?"
"If you're going to get the
hat, the thick belt is out. If you go with the long skirt, I
think you really must switch to the sleeveless. Not too much,
not too little."
An older man in a red sweater was
shopping for his 20-something girlfriend. He said, "The
First Law of Thermodynamics," and smiled.
"No,"
she replied. "Goldilocks."
------------------------------------
3:10 AM 8/5/2000
Franklin
thought he heard a raccoon in the garbage and jumped to his
feet. He buttoned on his robe and went to the bay window. At
first he thought someone had placed a white rock there beside
the oak. He put on his glasses and saw his wife spreading
grass seed, hunched like a vulture.
He almost went to her
then, crouched over in the lawn, her naked torso caught in the
deck lights. To shield her. The moon was only a sliver. To
pick her up. He made a movement, reached a hand to the glass,
and realized he could not bear the weight.
