Everybody Knows

It was the summer my parents were living in a new house in Minneapolis. Mom had dug out a vegetable garden in a sunny part of the yard that she was diligent in tending.

I had fled school and arrived home in a mess. Barely getting through the school year, I’d flunked two courses, one due to my failure to get to a class where attendance was apparently a large part of the grade, just showing up with a seating chart, etc. and I wasn’t there to be ticked off on that grid.

My girlfriend Caroline and I had agreed to end our relationship with the school year. We were going to be 1,371 miles apart for the summer; this would give us time to think, to reflect. I believe it was her idea but I’d come around to it. Soon I began to receive lengthy lovesick, heartbroken missives, sometimes daily. I grew to dread the trudging step of the approaching mailman. Then came the phone calls. Mom would hand me the phone without speaking.

I’d started seeing this guy my parents had steered me in the direction of in the neighborhood; we had seen something of each other in December when I was there for the holidays. He lived around the corner from our modest house, in his huge house on Lake Harriet where he lived in his family’s former bomb shelter. His primary activity was getting high and getting me high. Coming home after midnight stoned facing my dad seemed another dead end for my summer though Mom had registered some relief in it: I felt like a complete fraud.

I decided I had to leave and applied for a camp counselor job in northern Wisconsin, 2 1/2 hours away. I heard myself saying I could teach canoeing though I’d never even sat in one that I could recall. I boned up on the J-stroke as much as is possible from books. I made sure to remind Caroline before departing that we weren’t supposed to be in contact and left no word of my new address and plans and certainly no phone number. There would be no more worrying about the mailman; if there was mail for me, I wasn’t going to be there to receive it.

I found the camp to be pristine, beautiful, thickly wooded, remote. In addition to my canoeing duties I was co-counselor to 5 homesick six year old boys. The rain pelted the tin roof in our cabin as we tearily wiled away the time writing letters to our parents. My tears were as real as theirs.

I felt they were far too young to be there at sleepaway camp and wondered how their parents had been able to drop them off and drive away from them.

It was always storming there with a slick and muddy aftermath. Once we were out on a hike and heard a terrific crack of thunder very near. Of the group I knew I was the most afraid and urgently led them to hide under some sort of cavern, away from all those trees. I felt like I was putting them in danger every minute.

We portaged with our canoes and slunk into deepest mud. I was thigh deep in it and pulled my leg out only to find it covered in tiny frogs. We laughed so much. There were such moments.

I swam every day and did the Red Cross testing. My co-counselor Sharon and I got along great, at first. I dove right into the activities, my canoeing lessons, and soon had the experience I needed. And we were a great team. But one night when we were off duty we went into town to the local bar and started to really talk. I remember the taxidermied animal heads on the walls bearing witness as we stepped outside to smoke a joint. With one toke I realized so much, like how truly miserable I was. My stomach was tight. My shoulders stiff. In the ladies room, I threw water in my face and stared at this person in the mirror. This seriously tan face from endless days canoeing looked back at me. Back at our table I pushed Caroline to open up about her best friend back home, this girlfriend who seemed much more than a friend. She spoke awkwardly, knew even less about such things than I did. I told her a few things about me. I guess I crossed some kind of line that night. There was no way back. I knew I had to leave before the next camp session started; I figured the kids wouldn’t miss me. But what I really knew was that they would.

Back in Minneapolis, Mom’s garden was running riot. I walked out there with her every day. We had to keep up with all the zucchinis and summer squash and peppers and man, all the tomatoes. The sun was bearing down. Soon I’d be heading back to school. I’d be slightly tan still. That would be different.

Ice storm

Cracking limbs

and splintered boughs

in the night.

She hears the shimmering

crystals fall but

never thinks to catch them

in her palms.

They make a narrow

escape and lock up  

the house as the transformer

flares, a lightning

strike. 

Later she  views the silvery

photographs.  Beauty.

If you only look –

she never had.

Hindsight cuts a clean swath

and so bright.

Just another New England winter

and your coat

won’t do.

She shovels a narrow path

to feel her way through,

as the snow flies:

she winces, covers up,

never quite seeing it

for what it is.  The time will

pass and cover over

and over,

sealed in like so much glaze.  She never did

see things for what they were

when the snow began to stick.

 

Hand-drawn map of Pawling, New York

After the accident, Mom reconstructed it on a hand-drawn map

on her living room floor, on her oriental rug,

meticulous in her use of 4 x 6 index cards and color photographs.

She was going to have her day in court, she said,

to prove them all wrong.

Anyway, she said, she knew the truth, they were all against her.

 

Mom used toy cars and a truck and set them out on a track drawn by her.

She took pictures of every house along the road, glued them to her hand-drawn map.

She’d made several fact-finding trips downtown to prove them wrong,

studying her views as laid out on the rug.

“I used some of this stuff when I was substitute teaching. For the kids,” she said.

“Now with no car, I’m out of business.  There are lies and then there are photographs.

 

And all I can say is you’ll find the truth is in the photographs.”

She pointed to one house, knew the man residing there, he told her

she was in the wrong and would lose it all and another had said

none of this would hold up but she knew she had her truth laid out on her map,

the evidence she’d reveal to them laid out as if on her own rug.

“They lied of course.  Everybody lies.  I’ll prove them all wrong.”

 

“I’m so distraught.  This letter came from the other side’s insurance company. All kinds of wrong.

They have their witnesses and blame me. I have photographs.

When it happened I looked everywhere. There were no witnesses.  Now they pull the rug

out from under. How terrible it is to lie.”  She had been at the light waiting her

turn to turn right, pulled up even with that truck but he never thought to look away from his map

to see her below him as he started two-handing a clockwise turn.  “I’m fighting the wrong he did,” she said.

 

“At Justice Court I’ll show them what the truth is, all I’ve said.”

Her demonstration of events, her car more beloved than any child, all kinds of wrong.

The sun sends its beaming light that brightens up her hand-drawn map      

and fades the color of her photographs.

That sight doesn’t begin to show her  

brilliant last views, the time you don’t get back, when the pull of the rug     

 

and who is left standing when you feel that rug’s tug,     

and the dread of the lies and the fear of the truth when all is said     

and unfairly done to her.

Must we watch all kinds of wrong      

when the after-the-fact gathering of photographs  

can’t begin to tell the tale on the hand-drawn map.         

 

So sweep it under the rug and wash away the rights or wrongs,

The car gets towed and it’s all been shown in the fading color photographs

as it gets done to her again in court on the hand-drawn map.

Mom in the earthquake

Mom in the earthquake

if you only knew

 

what I do

but listen here’s a

 

scrap of paper that might remind you.

I could never run far enough

 

fast enough,

falling on the escalator grate,

 

and she’s almost

always there too late

 

but there to grab me

and catch those bloodied knees

 

I couldn’t avoid.  She lived in Beverly Hills,

working as an extra.

 

With her several agents

looking for work in the movies and game shows

 

at age 70 when the earthquake struck

the church across the street

 

its steeple toppling

she never mentioned it

 

on the phone she later told me she

would have surely fallen out of bed

 

had she owned a bed,

she, sleeping on the floor

 

with nowhere to go,

this the winding down

 

but who knew

her last days in California

 

a place she’d been happy or

free at least

 

dreaming of the long ago

when she was in her model years

 

and about to expatriate herself

to Arabia.

Camel ring, 2000

This ring is something to see, she likes it.

 She is admiring it on her right hand, glinting gold in the unfailing sun and why not? it’s a string of camels.  She is in Khobar.  She talked the seller down from his special American price in riyals and she has dollars.  They barter everything here even toothpaste and hair gel in the drug stores.

 Right now she is heading deep into the gold souks, the shopping district.  The hotel van leaves her in the middle of everything, but she’s unprepared for this view, the remains of the towers. 

 She can’t really look but there it is, concrete constructed, bombed out but still standing, ripped open, exposed with fire escape stairways on every floor that lead nowhere safe.

 She counts the floors.  That’s steadying.  Eight, a good number, but it’s a scrim, the front wall peeled back and gone, shucked.  

 She recalls it, conjures her whole life as it once was, as if she never left.  But she is very much a tourist today, an alien.

 Later, on King’s Road, she sees what was once her house.

 Few cars on the roads today and they slow for her to pass.  Kindly.  It is very hot to be walking anywhere, too hot to move. 

 She says it is the one, it was her house and she runs now, funny to see that, up to the door and rings the bell and waits to see who comes.

Cleaning up the remnants–Santa Monica, 1998

Her life in California,

the garage sales, the

 

emptying out

the last tag sale.

 

Mom at the table,

willing to sell lower,

 

cheaper.

Outside baking under

 

the California sun

everything she owns

 

on

this table:

 

the samovar, the genie lamp,

Dad’s commemorative plates and cups

 

lined up and

priced to move.

 

She sells things

she hasn’t any right to

 

sell.  Holding out

her plate, holding out

 

my scrapbook of stories

for 25 cents.

Like a book I know, 1977

The last time the family moved

the movers packed us and loaded

 

everything on the truck.

We didn’t have to do a thing

 

as they emptied our Lambertville home

with just beds left to sleep on and a TV.

 

Mom was in a state.  I barricaded myself in

the study, downstairs, watching a show.  My sister

 

at a friend’s house that night.

Dad, gone already to his new job.

 

I had no notebook so I wrote on scraps, afraid to lose a word.

As she railed against Dad and me, I took notes.

 

With nothing left in that house, she’d found something, some evidence

though when quiet in her room for a while

 

I stepped out of the study into the kitchen

sure to set her off but I had to

 

take the chance. 

Heading back up the stairs I sensed her.

 

From the upstairs landing she aimed a small, silver revolver down at me.

 

And held me there,

as I backed toward the front door behind me.

 

A cold steadiness

overtook me.

 

I’m going out, I’m going across the street to see your

friend, I’ll tell him.

 

I’ll call the

cops from there and he’ll help me do it.

 

If you don’t put that away

he’ll know

 

the truth about you.  And she couldn’t have that,

none of it.  I bet everything on it.

London, 1976

When I see Mom that morning

I know

what all the noise

 

has been about:

her black eye,

a shadow I can’t really look at.

 

And now we’ll come up

with a story:

this is our family vacation after all and we’re here

 

at Russell Court hanging our heads.

I’ll be free of these people,

but then I know I never will be

 

as I see my own hand about to

strike, an action I can’t stop.

I note it.  As another wrong.  I’ll never right.

Dammam, early evening

 

The bus takes us

grumbling spewing

smoking to a woman-only shopping mall

in Dammam, a typical Arab city.

Though we know its dangers,

more religious than Khobar, and

we want no trouble so no cameras.  We browse

and stare

at everyone.  We want to meet them,

come home with them. 

Women so gorgeous, abaya-less, without head coverings.

Designer threads, plunging

necks, breasts we can see

their fresh faces, their lipstick

choices, too much,

the most delicate shades.

Their soft skin, we cannot look away.  We gather,

with no choice but to get back

to the norm, the drab.  We step out

onto the sidewalk

awaiting our ride, to simpler

Khobar souks and streets.

 

Six unescorted women pacing, fussing

with not enough sense

to go back into the mall.  An

innocuous white car pulls up to our smiling faces,

an affont to the

religious police who we might have figured are

outraged, belligerent.

We can’t be on the street, we’ll be arrested or

worse.  Is there worse.  Are we whores?

People pass, calling names, in English, yes, because

(except for mom) who is in black from head to toe

we aren’t in abayas.  I blame myself for rejecting some good advice.  

I’d also like to blame her because

I am actually scared.  

Most of us are in our favorite shorts and short sleeves.

My dark colors and

long sleeves can’t save me from the wrath of the Muttaween.

Bury me in them then.  Like mom says at the time,

it’s not going to bring the tourists in.

Our bus pulls into the parking lot and we grab hold.

After hearing Jean Valentine read

Emerging from the Blacksmith House she isn’t quite alone there is a brown rat scuttling and

it’s raining lightly, the sidewalks and streets damp and she is deciding to walk to the subway up Church Street but changing her

mind she is contemplating the longer walk up Mass. Ave of several blocks and it’s not really raining is it she has hardly been on her feet all day and she’s

just seen this wonderful poet who reminded her of everything, for her it all seemed to come so easily like breath, yes, she really just wants to get to a desk and

release this somehow this what, yes, she is walking with purpose her mind racing it’s all connecting, synapses firing brilliantly if only she could connect up with

the great continuum but she can’t even manage a thank you to whomever it is who holds the door for her before she catches it in time to step out into the

wet.