"Oh, it wasit wasam I right?it was like you were at you were at you were in really in a moviea big show a parade a fair a. Something." My mother touched flowers that were no longer around her neck.
"It was," Dad said. "It was like a "
"holiday or. Something." They were not there, the sweet-smelling garlands, but she touched them in a certain way, as if showing them to herself in that moment inside her when she and our Dad had gone on their anniversary cruise to Hawaii. They had planned it for at least twenty years. "Right off the planethat fastwe got lei'd. I got lei'd in baggagetoo hard to tell aboutdifficult difficult to describewe kinda you kindabendo-ver "
"bow " Dad didn't seem to hear us all (except for the really oldest of the five of us, sixty-two now) snickering.
"when they do you."
I used to be the teller of the family stories, before I destroyed my marriage to a person more worthy of my family's love than I. I have not forgotten the stories, not a single one, and they matter to me as much as ever. To the end of their lives, my parents were good people. They are not to blame that I am a man causing despair and shame in those who loved me.
She said, "It shakes you is what it does and you're not supposed to not allowed to it's you can't throw them away because it's –"
"disrespectful –"
"you'reyouwhat you do is when you get home you 'Return them to the earth.'"
"That's what they say."
"You put them back." She stretched out her legs. "You return them." She had on culottes. It's worth mentioning because she liked them. He liked them on her, and would say it within our hearing. Sitting close on the couch, he stretched his legs out next to hers, and you could make a fair guess they were once again sunk in deck chairs, they were becalmed under The Elinor Wilner * Sovereign Class bill caps issued to them, their exotic drinks and the sea-silence pleasing them.
She said, "They're a big people they're not a tall. People. Are they?"
"Nope. They're big around. Solid as salt licks."
Our parents could dance. In everything they did, they could find a common measure. Though her rhythm was always more broken than his, he could firmly guide and turn them. He could lead.
"Youyou. It's like a'salt licks'really?they're...what they're doing is piling on heaping on flowers and flowersthey're flowering youare they?how would you put it?are they flowering you?it's another world there and they put you really gently it's gentle it's gentle how they put you in itit's an Island Life."
"Yeah. Yeah. You're somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, all right."
"It's somethingevery time it happensit'shis was different than mineminemine was all different in how it smelled how where how itin the morning and at nighteverything on you everything
around youit was fragrant. God. Fragrant like you just can't..."
"They come for you," he said.
Growing up and still feeling close, feeling together as a family, my sister and brothers and I had seen this at least ten-thousand strange times: they were near enough for him to touch the back of his fingers against the base of her throat, for her to vine her fingers in his hands.
"At the hotel lobby," he said. "They come right for you with those garlands. In the morning. The van. The restaurant. The pool. At night."
"Mmmmmmhmmmmhmm," she said.
"With torches," he said.
-
Issue 53
-
Editor's Note
-
Poetry
-
Fiction
-
Book Review
- David Rigsbee reviews Midnight Lantern: New And Selected Poems
by Tess Gallagher
- David Rigsbee reviews Midnight Lantern: New And Selected Poems