“It’s so nice you got the day off,”
she said as she pulled into downtown Westin and found a parking
spot right in the same block with the stores and restaurants,
“Don’t you love it here?”
“Question number one first,” he answered all lawyerly, although
he wasn’t a lawyer at all but a rare-books/weird books librarian
at UMKC, “The day off, I took it off, I didn’t get it off. I
hate July days off, April is more like it...,” getting out of
the car, wearing his Harris tweeds and smoking a meerschaum
pipe, Mixture 49, his boss always telling him, “You look like
1950...and that might even be 1950 B.C.!”
“There’s this winery-brewery up the street, goofy name,
beautiful place, Pirtle, that’s been turned into a restaurant,”
she said, burping a long burp, four months pregnant, “Excuse
Burpy Me...it’s enough to cancel out the pregnancy...”
“You’ll be fine, it’s just the first few months, I’ve been
reading up on it on the internet.”
2.
“It’s getting to be like living in a
sci fi movie, not ‘pass me the pancakes,’ but ‘pass me my i-pod...”
“I wanna be a father-grandfather...multiple times...”
“Once is enough and then some.”
“Wait until you see the baby.”
She burps again, like she’s been drinking beer and eating onion
rings all morning, suddenly gets very ‘businessy,’ “Listen, I’ll
be one hour. I can walk from here. Thirteen thirteen Locust
Street. I hate the two thirteens together, like double-whammy
bad luck...and the family’s kind of the same way, this nine year
old who’s totally down in the dumps. ‘Everyone wants to kill me
at school. And at home. Nobody likes the way I look, I’m too
small, a real runt, that’s what they call me, and too
Irish-looking, they all hate the Irish. I don’t drink but
everyone calls me a drunk. I wanna go to another school, another
planet. Everyone wants to kill me. Can’t you find me a UFO
somewhere to take me to another planet...?’”
“Sounds pretty imaginative to me,” he starts walking along with
her, up toward the winery, the river right next to the whole
downtown, river and trees....
“Don’t you just love it here? ”She’s all turned on, he’s never
3.
seen her so ‘herself,’ exuberant,
out-going, involved with the world around her. Usually she’s the
incarnation of self-involvement, not that he’s that different,
“What I love about these little towns—I
almost said ‘townling’ as in ‘deerling,’ if even that’s right—I
mean the rivers, they always build next to rivers and they
always have park-space, walk-around space...it’s so old-worldish,
I don’t know, like the time I went to southern France and
Monet’s place at Giverny...the people are always so open, not
defensive like in the city, no gangs, drugs, all that, I feel
sorry I ever stopped painting, like I’d like to go to Provence,
all this war-stuff and murdering stuff...know you what I mean?”
“You ought go back into art.”
“Not with five hundred a month to pay, my tuition debts.”
“Who knows, you could make big money as a painter. When I look
at the piles of your paintings, wood-carvings, etchings,
drawings, in the garage, I always wanna take them and fill the
house with um. They’re top drawer. All the clowns and the river
scenes, the downtown Kansas City warehouses, parks, farm-fields,
everything you touch is magic, you’re like a combination of
Rembrandt, Picasso, Renoir and Dali.”
“Not Dali!”
4.
“Dollie! Dolly Parton! ”He laughs,
she doesn’t. “Sorry,” getting stone-cold serious now, “I’m
telling you, when I go to the Nelson Gallery and see the French
impressionists it’s like seeing your work. You’re a maniac when
it comes to nature.”
“What I love about towns like this, OK, it’s frogs and raccoons,
minnows and trout, lilac bushes and multi-colored leaf-shows
every Fall, but.....” her voice lowering, secrets to tell that
she didn’t want anyone else but him to hear. “There’s no sects.
It’s all one tribe, one everything, one language, one menu,
belief....differences are what screw everything up. But here,
look around, it’s pure, if you’ll pardon the term, ‘hick-shit’
oneness....”
“No, I won’t pardon the word. I feel like one of the crowd
here.”
“So do I. That’s what I mean.”
And it was true, you looked around and it was all the same eyes,
jaws, glasses, no glasses, shoes, drawls, onenesses.
“The worst thing that ever happened was tribalness. Bible A
versus Bible B, the Amorites versus the Jews...”
“Amorites?”
“One of those ‘enemy’ tribes that the bible says God helped the
Jews defeat. There could be a million little
unrelated-to-each-other
5.
territories.”
“Or how about everyone intermarrying with everyone else, make it
a worldwide salad bar?”
They were in front of the old German winery now. She played
traffic-cop and stopped him.
“So you stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can (another big
burp)...sometimes I wish...”
“You’d had the baby yesterday?”
“Never mind.”
“Sometimes you wish WHAT? Come on! No secrets!”
She starts walking away, up the hill to where she has to do her
counseling. He follows her.
“I gotta go.”
“Come on!”
He’s on the edge of fury, steps in front of her, blocks her way.
“You wanna see what I learned in Karate class?”
“What happened to your Kansas accent?”
“I’m from the Bronx, right now. You wanta sample?”
Suddenly he softens, tears in his eyes. Steps back to let her
pass, but she doesn’t, stands there all confused, just over to
the edge of tears too.
6.
“I keep thinking/dreaming about
Monet in Giverny. Van Gogh, you know, Pissaro, Picasso, Renoir,
Renoir’s son, Le Petite Dejeuner Sur L’Herbes, Marguerite Duras,
Lili Boulanger....”
“Wai...wai...wait....Lili Boulanger?”
“French composer, died when she was twenty-four. Fauré taught
her composition when she was a kid.”
“What happened to painting?”
“All the arts...all it is is taking the shields and armour off
Reality, seeing what’s really there....reality lessons....l’eternité...la
mer mélée au soleil....”
“What a minute. Eternity...the sea mixed with the soul....”
“The sun...soleil...,” crying now, handkerchief out, she kisses
him, all solemnly...and leaves, “See you in about an hour.”
He goes on to the deck, orders a beer, dark Malt German, takes a
notebook out of his pocket and begins to draw the trees, gulch,
gulley, stream in front of him, the forest. A notebook he’d
bought for her and if she saw what he could do with a little
pencil-magic.....
