Read Online Landscape: Memory by Matthew Stadler, Columbia University. Writing Division - Free Book Online Page A

pasty gray in my sweaty soiled hands. It looked like my own dirty face from when I was a fat little kid. All those afternoons, I'd come running home from digging furiously in the sandy soil of the Presidio woods, starting tunnels and smoothing the walls of shallow little caves that passed for headquarters of whatever secret club we'd started that week. I was so milky-skinned and pale. Just a fat little kid with dirt on his face. I had a bunch of sort-of friends, Rolph and Skinny and Paolo, and we played our favorite games over and over, acting out the same adventures over the same ground day after day. Soldiers, Forest Fire, Man on the Moon, Tunnel to China or my favorite. Freight Train— the six or seven of us in a snaking line, our hands resting warm on the shoulders of the next boy up, running through the woods on the winding, treacherous path, just making train sounds. We could play for hours, running silly and breathless into the dusky woods, the dark evening settling in and cold fog filtering through the thick stands of cedar, mothers calling unheard into the night and us running and running, taking turns at the glory of being engine or caboose, running and laughing up Pikes Peak and over the Suicide Leap, too fast through the Chutes, and down through the wild empty woods.
    * * *

    I was pushing at the pasty lump in my hand. Outside the breeze kept on, soft and sweet with cedar and eucalyptus. My mouth was open but empty. I had no words. What I felt was stuck inside me, anchored, it seemed, to something in the very center, too heavy or awkward to emerge.
    "We've made a choice, pumpkin," my mother assured me. "We thought it best to be honest with you."
    "Will I have to get a job?" I asked, unable to think any closer to the center of the problem. I sat down at the table and put my little sandwich on my plate. Mother reached for it, to throw it away, I suppose, but I grabbed it back and stuffed it into my pocket. Father had moved on to Mother's soup, thoughtfully keeping quiet as he tipped the huge bowl up to his face. I mustered my voice.
    "I'm sure it's all very adult and modern," I offered, trying to start on a positive note. "But I'm not certain what it means. Will I be living alone now?"
    "I'll still be at home, pumpkin," Mother said, leaning forward as though the reassurance might die if forced to travel a longer distance. "I'll just be home less frequently. And Mr. Taqdir will be with me when I am."
    "But I don't like Mr. Taqdir," I said without thinking.
    "You needn't like Mr. Taqdir, sweetheart. You need only live with this change. Your affections are your own." My mother was a wall of good clear sense that I couldn't breach.
    "You're abandoning me," I said to my father. But he didn't seem to notice.
    "We wouldn't abandon you, pumpkin," Mother assured me, meaning her and whomever. "I'm certain you'll find the strength to be adult about all this."
    I hardly felt my strengths moving in that direction. Our whole exchange seemed anything but adult. The requisite trappings of civility hung over it like heavily perfumed velvet curtains. I imagined a rabid, mangy hound, foaming through its bloodstained teeth, clipped clean with a poodle cut and decorated with a dainty bow. That was the gift I'd give at Christmas, if we had a Christmas.
    "May I live in Bolinas?" I asked.
    "If when school gets out you're so inclined I'll certainly make room for you," Father allowed. "But follow your own mind, Max. Don't come along just for my sake."
    "Thanks," I said weakly. I fiddled with the pasty face in my pocket and pushed the spoon around my soup. Then I picked the heavy bowl up in one hand and flung it across the room, smashing it to soup-covered bits against the wall, and I ran away out the front door.
     
    When I left the house I was in a blind fury, I suppose. I was insensitive to the bright spring day and the birds and all those smells that normally engage my attention. I could see only the few yards of ground stretched out