Read Online The Rags of Time by Maureen Howard - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Maureen Howard
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There’s this. I had a few beers during recess. Observe, dearly beloved, that I was ever so slightly greased. Up for the self-portrait, not the idealized Artie Freeman you once sketched, boyish with a thatch of hair gone early gray. You demoted my smile to an air of bemusement. Forever looking on, not part of the show, the squint of my eyes at every sleight of hand, moral or monetary. Jimmy Stewart, you suggested, one of those innocent heartthrobs.
Clark Kent without glasses.
A wimp?
In disguise.
Back to Bertie, back to business. I have written more of me and more of you than the subject of my deposition. Testimony: corrected by Tim McBride when I attempt the legal lingo. I put the two of us on the stand while the accused awaited his day in court. Birding in the Park, the day we met Bertie, I now understand as a confession. The only one I ever knew who confessed was my grandmother, Mae O’Connor, the least sinful of women. She was shriven, strange word, at Ignatius Loyola a few blocks from the apartment. I waited on the church steps facing Park Avenue expecting a hum of holy about her when she emerged from the blessed darkness, but it was only Mae fumbling in her purse for the list of groceries we must pick up at Gristede’s. A shame you never knew her. I see this memory business, this getting it down, might be a simple image that I use for my class. You can’t, Louise, fill up a circle with circles that do not overlap, but if you allow the overlap, then there can be many if not infinite circles which will allow Mae O’Connor to take her place in my story.
Circles within circles as on that day heading out of the park. Past five. Five, you repeated, in case I missed the urgency in your voice. Across Fifth Avenue, the apartment house where I lived as a boy was encased in scaffolding to update its limestone façade. The window where my mother stood with her love child (my grandmother’s version of the tale) was draped in netting, misty as the occasion of my birth. As a boy I wanted to be born on Krypton where, by improbable chance, my father lived, but where was the dynamic logo, my soaring flight over Metropolis? Two lapdogs nipping and nosing each other blocked our path. I stopped you crossing as a siren cleared the way for an ambulance racing down from Mount Sinai. A cab jumped the curb, an ordinary mishap in the city. The electronic pedestrian, trapped in the stoplight, raised his arm in a friendly salute. Safe, safely across. Chill coming on, cloudy sky if memory serves. You checked your watch again, five-fifteen .
Day is done, gone the sun. Now, why? Why did I sing that funereal tune? From the hills, from the lake . . .
To get the laugh, Oh, Artie.
Speaking of the old woman in the floppy black coat, jeans shredded at the cuffs, I said, Wasn’t she a funny duck?
We recalled her look of offense when you ordered her to silence the heavy pit-pat of her tread. You suggested the heavy gasp of her breathing put the owl off its kill.
Though she got into the bird . . . and the two of us.
I question the two of us. In the past, our eyes and ears were in accord when birding, specially in the city, my admiration for you on display, the milkmaid walking with a proprietary air through the whole spread of Central Park as though tracking the back acres in Wisconsin. That day we were not in sync. Our argument, could it be called that, had little to do with sighting.
Kind of a washout, you said, birdwise.
You’re missing Our Sylvie.
That must have been it, Sylvie, a legacy of my grandfather’s, her love for the old man embracing us beyond blood relation. Our kids’ Frau von Trapp. No need to recall the untidy woman squinting up at the owl, coat stretched across her bum. Same age as Sylvie, give or take a few years, yet in no way like our friend, who is slim and stylish, the cap of white hair carefully sculpted to her head, Like an angel, you said, ageless, one of Fra Angelico’s darlings . And if Our Sylvie
There’s this. I had a few beers during recess. Observe, dearly beloved, that I was ever so slightly greased. Up for the self-portrait, not the idealized Artie Freeman you once sketched, boyish with a thatch of hair gone early gray. You demoted my smile to an air of bemusement. Forever looking on, not part of the show, the squint of my eyes at every sleight of hand, moral or monetary. Jimmy Stewart, you suggested, one of those innocent heartthrobs.
Clark Kent without glasses.
A wimp?
In disguise.
Back to Bertie, back to business. I have written more of me and more of you than the subject of my deposition. Testimony: corrected by Tim McBride when I attempt the legal lingo. I put the two of us on the stand while the accused awaited his day in court. Birding in the Park, the day we met Bertie, I now understand as a confession. The only one I ever knew who confessed was my grandmother, Mae O’Connor, the least sinful of women. She was shriven, strange word, at Ignatius Loyola a few blocks from the apartment. I waited on the church steps facing Park Avenue expecting a hum of holy about her when she emerged from the blessed darkness, but it was only Mae fumbling in her purse for the list of groceries we must pick up at Gristede’s. A shame you never knew her. I see this memory business, this getting it down, might be a simple image that I use for my class. You can’t, Louise, fill up a circle with circles that do not overlap, but if you allow the overlap, then there can be many if not infinite circles which will allow Mae O’Connor to take her place in my story.
Circles within circles as on that day heading out of the park. Past five. Five, you repeated, in case I missed the urgency in your voice. Across Fifth Avenue, the apartment house where I lived as a boy was encased in scaffolding to update its limestone façade. The window where my mother stood with her love child (my grandmother’s version of the tale) was draped in netting, misty as the occasion of my birth. As a boy I wanted to be born on Krypton where, by improbable chance, my father lived, but where was the dynamic logo, my soaring flight over Metropolis? Two lapdogs nipping and nosing each other blocked our path. I stopped you crossing as a siren cleared the way for an ambulance racing down from Mount Sinai. A cab jumped the curb, an ordinary mishap in the city. The electronic pedestrian, trapped in the stoplight, raised his arm in a friendly salute. Safe, safely across. Chill coming on, cloudy sky if memory serves. You checked your watch again, five-fifteen .
Day is done, gone the sun. Now, why? Why did I sing that funereal tune? From the hills, from the lake . . .
To get the laugh, Oh, Artie.
Speaking of the old woman in the floppy black coat, jeans shredded at the cuffs, I said, Wasn’t she a funny duck?
We recalled her look of offense when you ordered her to silence the heavy pit-pat of her tread. You suggested the heavy gasp of her breathing put the owl off its kill.
Though she got into the bird . . . and the two of us.
I question the two of us. In the past, our eyes and ears were in accord when birding, specially in the city, my admiration for you on display, the milkmaid walking with a proprietary air through the whole spread of Central Park as though tracking the back acres in Wisconsin. That day we were not in sync. Our argument, could it be called that, had little to do with sighting.
Kind of a washout, you said, birdwise.
You’re missing Our Sylvie.
That must have been it, Sylvie, a legacy of my grandfather’s, her love for the old man embracing us beyond blood relation. Our kids’ Frau von Trapp. No need to recall the untidy woman squinting up at the owl, coat stretched across her bum. Same age as Sylvie, give or take a few years, yet in no way like our friend, who is slim and stylish, the cap of white hair carefully sculpted to her head, Like an angel, you said, ageless, one of Fra Angelico’s darlings . And if Our Sylvie
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