5.08.2007
HER REMEMBERING
I sit in a bar in Mississippi writing on a napkin and thinking of the woman. She’ll be 80. Someone, a stranger, holds three drinks and says to me, What are you keeping track of? And I say, Oh, just things I want to remember.
The house had the steep driveway she remembered, but the boxwoods grew up, the pink azaleas filled the hill, and two grown magnolia trees now flanked the yard. We drove past and missed it. The white house, a simple and proportional Colonial Georgian, stood discreetly off Clairmont Avenue. The front door was crimson. It was the day before Easter, and the waxy magnolia leaves held the bright light like coins.
The front feels different, the woman said softly, as our car curved down and around, passing by the home, and veering off the better part of the old street. I turned the car around and headed back. But that is the driveway, she said.
We pulled up the steep drive.
I was a little girl the last time I came here, she said.
Well, I said. Should we go to the door? Let’s go to the door.
The men who answered our knocks wore over-sized tee shirts and blue jeans and khaki shorts, Saturday clothes, loose and relaxed, and our visit took them by surprise. It’s laundry day, one said. Cats roamed around the house like they knew things, and as we toured through the house, the cats would follow us, and one would skirt ahead of us, like the cat knew where we would go next, like it was leading us. Those cats gave off an air of affluence, unlike their gentlemen owners, who kindly showed us the whole house, beds unmade, dishes undone and all. I could tell the spontaneity was no small gesture.
The man took us outside. The backyard revealed manicured attention and a swimming pool sat still with a light green tint. A thin layer of pollen covered the surface like risen oil. Towards the back, the man showed us a few exotic plants. You just missed the Voodoo, he said. A week ago, this backyard smelled like death. Truly. Once a year, it stinks like dying flesh out here. It’s unbelievable.
Back inside, in the upstairs, antique bond certificates hung on the walls. Twelve or 13 of them. They were from China, East India, Cuba, and other places, and they certified bygone transactions of cotton, iron, gold, and sugar. Their fine type and ornate patterning felt like old maps to me, something one imagines stashed away in a forgotten London library.
This one, the man said. It came from a company who owned part of the Titanic. Says it there.
He pointed, and a cat curled around his leg.
He then led us back into the main foyer downstairs towards a sunroom full of books. He had a book about the history of the old neighborhood, he told us. He wanted to give it to my grandmother. Between the foyer and the sunroom, a fancy sitting room held only the light from the front windows, the few rays that found passage through the azaleas and magnolias. The woman, moving slowly, took one wobbly step into the dim room and paused. She stared towards the back of the room, which was thickly curtained, at a long black grand piano. It looked like a tuxedo, untouched, unplayed, pristine. The woman’s lip began to hold a slow quiver.
That is a Steinway, a 1918, the man said. We don’t play it much. But I just knew this room needed a piano. So when I saw it, in this antique store in Mountain Brook, I bought it. Right there on the spot. Told the fellow in the shop, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars in a brown paper bag if you’ll sell it today.
The man said this, like he’d said everything that morning, to the old woman. To this comment though, she remained motionless. She didn’t even look at him. She just gazed at the piano, a few years older than she, and her eyes turned and opened at me for just a moment. They were glassy, and I could see something in her memory was surfacing from long ago. We waited a moment.
My father was right there, she said. Daddy was right there.
No one uttered a sound.
I was seven years old. Just a little girl. And I had to climb up on a chair to look down at him, to see him lying there in his funeral suit. I remember that this room was full and I wore a blue dress. He was right where the piano is. This was our house.
Published in PORTICO, May 2007.
I sit in a bar in Mississippi writing on a napkin and thinking of the woman. She’ll be 80. Someone, a stranger, holds three drinks and says to me, What are you keeping track of? And I say, Oh, just things I want to remember.
The house had the steep driveway she remembered, but the boxwoods grew up, the pink azaleas filled the hill, and two grown magnolia trees now flanked the yard. We drove past and missed it. The white house, a simple and proportional Colonial Georgian, stood discreetly off Clairmont Avenue. The front door was crimson. It was the day before Easter, and the waxy magnolia leaves held the bright light like coins.
The front feels different, the woman said softly, as our car curved down and around, passing by the home, and veering off the better part of the old street. I turned the car around and headed back. But that is the driveway, she said.
We pulled up the steep drive.
I was a little girl the last time I came here, she said.
Well, I said. Should we go to the door? Let’s go to the door.
The men who answered our knocks wore over-sized tee shirts and blue jeans and khaki shorts, Saturday clothes, loose and relaxed, and our visit took them by surprise. It’s laundry day, one said. Cats roamed around the house like they knew things, and as we toured through the house, the cats would follow us, and one would skirt ahead of us, like the cat knew where we would go next, like it was leading us. Those cats gave off an air of affluence, unlike their gentlemen owners, who kindly showed us the whole house, beds unmade, dishes undone and all. I could tell the spontaneity was no small gesture.
The man took us outside. The backyard revealed manicured attention and a swimming pool sat still with a light green tint. A thin layer of pollen covered the surface like risen oil. Towards the back, the man showed us a few exotic plants. You just missed the Voodoo, he said. A week ago, this backyard smelled like death. Truly. Once a year, it stinks like dying flesh out here. It’s unbelievable.
Back inside, in the upstairs, antique bond certificates hung on the walls. Twelve or 13 of them. They were from China, East India, Cuba, and other places, and they certified bygone transactions of cotton, iron, gold, and sugar. Their fine type and ornate patterning felt like old maps to me, something one imagines stashed away in a forgotten London library.
This one, the man said. It came from a company who owned part of the Titanic. Says it there.
He pointed, and a cat curled around his leg.
He then led us back into the main foyer downstairs towards a sunroom full of books. He had a book about the history of the old neighborhood, he told us. He wanted to give it to my grandmother. Between the foyer and the sunroom, a fancy sitting room held only the light from the front windows, the few rays that found passage through the azaleas and magnolias. The woman, moving slowly, took one wobbly step into the dim room and paused. She stared towards the back of the room, which was thickly curtained, at a long black grand piano. It looked like a tuxedo, untouched, unplayed, pristine. The woman’s lip began to hold a slow quiver.
That is a Steinway, a 1918, the man said. We don’t play it much. But I just knew this room needed a piano. So when I saw it, in this antique store in Mountain Brook, I bought it. Right there on the spot. Told the fellow in the shop, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars in a brown paper bag if you’ll sell it today.
The man said this, like he’d said everything that morning, to the old woman. To this comment though, she remained motionless. She didn’t even look at him. She just gazed at the piano, a few years older than she, and her eyes turned and opened at me for just a moment. They were glassy, and I could see something in her memory was surfacing from long ago. We waited a moment.
My father was right there, she said. Daddy was right there.
No one uttered a sound.
I was seven years old. Just a little girl. And I had to climb up on a chair to look down at him, to see him lying there in his funeral suit. I remember that this room was full and I wore a blue dress. He was right where the piano is. This was our house.
Published in PORTICO, May 2007.
posted by TB at 14:08
