This is how Herself speaks. Normally. In italics. As if anyone normal could speak like that, speak in italics. With diction like a razor's-edge, with enunciation like a spear-point. Words are not words; they are scalpels, are stilettos. They are tools of vivisection, thin, precise. They do not gut; they peel, they strip, they ribbon, they are to curl the rind. It is not something learned, is not something that can be conditioned to action. A thousand pigeons in a thousand boxes could not be conditioned to this action. It is something inborn in the person. I know this because I cannot do it. I try and try and try again to imitate Herself and her vocal accuracy, but the art is not in me.
The Grand Man is at the kitchen table. His tie has been loosened, the cuffs of his shirt are rolled up to his elbows, the newspaper is splayed out before him on the table, all well-worn signifiers that it is the end of the day, but Herself is presenting this - this! - as the dinner meal. He grunts without looking up from the Op-Ed.
- Are you listening? I said it was a disgrace.
He straightens up and sees Herself spring-loaded over the kitchen sink intently staring out the window, staring out into the backyard, staring out and at our family's principle ignominy. He sighs and grunts once more. Tiredly, he says.
- It's not a disgrace.
- It's been that way since the fall. You have to take care of it.
The Grand Man coughs, bringing up something wet and thick from where it was rooted at the bottom of his throat. He rumbles a response.
- What?
He snorts and loudly a-hems. He gulps.
- I forgot. The snow covered it.
- Yes, that's right, the snow covered it. That's how long it's been there.
He sighs and grunts. He a-hems again. He swallows. He begins to corral the newspaper's loose and liberated sections together, reining them in and neatly refolding them along their printing press-made pleats. He does this while making the sound like the idling of a car.
The Grand Man is full of sounds. He overflows with them, brims over with them, is packed with them, is crammed with them. Gruntmurmurpurrgroanfartcoughcough. It is his personal cacophonic symphony, the soundtrack to a life of which I am but vaguely aware. He goes; he comes. I have tried to assemble some picture of what he is between sunrise and gloaming time, a picture pieced together from the few hours a night we share, the few words an hour we exchange. So far, I have discerned only this: that he wears a tie.
- Okay. I'll do it right now.
The air almost quivers with his sudden capitulation and Herself's Jericho walls crumble and tumble in the wake of his words. She smiles brightly, happily at him, a smile that shines and glows and beams with the strength that comes only when sub-atomic particles play chicken with one another.
- Good. I'm going to finish the laundry.
The Grand Man lumbers up from his chair and everything is smaller. He exhales a long groaning sigh. A giant's hand is placed on my shoulder.
- I'll need your help.
- Sure.
- What are you doing?
- Fractions.
- All right. Bring it out on the porch with you. You can sit there and do it and if I need you I'll just call you over.
I gathered my schoolwork and trotted behind him through the kitchen and out into the yard and the wetness of April's end. It was that time of year when the air was chill and soft and going outside was like running into freshly washed linen sheets hung the line to dry. And although the sun was high enough and close enough to make you sweat if you wore a jacket, it wasn't warm enough to stop you from shivering when you went out coatless.
I settled down on the bottom step of the porch, firmly planting my feet into the soft and yielding earth while the Grand Man loped out into the center of the yard to attend to the family's disgrace. It was the morning of the summer and everything was flush with melted sun and the newly come-again sun. The ground was loamy and rich with rain and run-off; it sucked at your feet when you walked, splattered you, sneaked up your pant leg, found its way underneath your fingernails and in-between your toes. Green nature was stretching and yawning and fresh and wanted so much to play with you, to join up with you, to go home with you, to be your friend, to keep you cool in the afternoon heat and warm in the dusking chill. The beginning of spring was the very best time, because everything was new and in abundance once more. The dirt was a thick, fudgy chocolate and the green of the trees and the grass was a water-drunk green. It was the best time to be outside because soon enough the sun would climb higher and higher and loom larger and lager and the mud would dry up into flaky cake and the grasses and trees would be stripped by scorch and soon enough we'd all be curled up in our freon-filled houses, content to be cold and wishing for winter to come round again.
I opened up my math book and laid it flat upon my knees, trying to give the impression that I was studiously chipping away at the mysteries of fractional equations. The Grand Man was at the middle of the yard working laboriously on the family's great disgrace. Even from the porch, I could hear his sharp and heavy exhalations, his grunts, his curses, all directed towards the untidy habit of trees to shed their extremities at the first intemperate breeze.
It was a massive project.
The leaf pile had been assembled sometime in September, after the first unleavings occurred, and had slowly been added on to, enhanced, and otherwise expanded through the successive months. With each clumping addition, the pile became more mountainous, became more dwarfing, became in short, Jotunheim-esque. When the First Frost hit, what once had been as soft and as pliant as a gritty bean-bag chair was now a stiff and frozen rock, our family's personal Gibraltar. And then the snows came, came tumbling, came spiraling down, rolling downward and outward like a great virgin carpet of undifferentiated paleness and for nearly five months there was a great vast hump in the center of our yard, a hump like a snow-hill, a Moby Dick of a hump. But both charity and winter hide a multitude of sins and the leaf pile was forgotten for a time.
But now the snows are gone and the leaf pile is back, this left-over, this hold-over, this great and massive remainder. Herself first started asking the Grand Man to handle it in middle February, at first pleasant, then urgent, then desperate, then finally using the word disgrace, the family disgrace, a disgrace to our neighbors, to our block, to our entire community, how she cringed when the doorbell rang for fear that the come-a-callers would catch a glimpse of the pile out of a window that looked out into the backyard. The Grand Man would grunt. Would harrumph. Would purr and grumble. Would cajole and deflect. I said to her many times, I said.
- I'll do it after (homework)(this TV show) (when I'm off the phone)(after Mass).
- No. It's not your job.
Not that I cared about the pile. Not that I cared whether it squatted sourly in the center of our yard until the Rapture or was taken out with tomorrow morning's trash. I was just tired of hearing.
- I'm ashamed of it.
- What ?will the neighbors think?
- It's disgusting. We'll all get cholera from it.
- It is a disgrace.
But no. It was not my job. I cleaned the dishes after supper. I took the laundry down to the basement. I emptied the wastebaskets in the bathroom and the kitchen and took out the garbage every Wednesday and Friday. I did my homework diligently, thoroughly, correctly. I didn't fall asleep during class. I didn't smoke. I tried not to swear. I tried not to fantasize while accepting Eucharist on Sunday mornings about what I had seen in those magazines Nathan had showed me. This was my job. This was my place. Fine. Fine. Less work for me.
But there was something there I didn't understand. It would have been easy for me to do it. Not that the work itself would have been easy. From my perch on the porch I can clearly see the heart-accelerating nature of the task, but it wasn't like I would've had to adjust my schedule, its not like I was coming home at six o'clock every night, its not like it would have been a problem. But she didn't want me to do it. But why then didn't she just do it herself, since she seems to be the only one that's all hot and bothered by it? But no. I couldn't do it and neither could she. All right. Fine. Fine. But why does he have to do it?
The Grand Man says my name. He gestures for me, a slow wide arc of a wave. Winded, he shouts.
-Beer, bring me a can, the fireplace matches and some old newspaper.
In the five minutes or so it took to scavenger-hunt though the house to find what the Grand Man needed, the day had died and the sky had shifted from a deep blue to a rust. The sunsets of early spring are my favorite because they are the most honest. You know the sun is tired when she sets in April because at seven o'clock, the world has a scraped-on-quality to it, as if God (the Father) had taken a trowel, scooped out the day's lee's and smeared them across the sky. The night birds had begun to sing their low, throaty hymns and the earth radiated an ancient cold. The slight nighttime breeze felt like a cat's tongue against my cheek. I shivered as I handed the Grand Man his beer.
- Ah, there's my good Gunga Din, come with drink and tinder.
- Sure.
He cracked open the can and took a long, heavy swallow. He tells me; shred the paper into strips and ball the strips, three or four strips to each wad.
- Do you know what tomorrow is, son?
- Wednesday.
- Well, yes, that's right. It is Wednesday. But what's the date?
- It'll be the first, May first.
- You know what that's called?
- Wednesday?
- May Day, Mr. Smart-Aleck, May Day. It's a communist holiday. Remember what I told you about communism?
This is important. I know that the Grand Man wears a tie. But what I also know that the Grand Man does not love the rich. The bourgeoisie. The aristocracy. The upper-crust, the elite, the haves, the landed gentry, the high-born, the well-to-do. He does not love them. He has tried to instill this not love in his family, in his sons especially. My brother, when still an infant, was taught to give the Black Panthers salute on cue, that great get-up-morning gesture enacted in a tiny baby-fat hand clenched and thrust defiantly into the quivering air. He says to me, when well sunk in his cups, he says.
- I don't care what you do, but don't become a Republican.
- Let Reagan wait until the Revolution. Then we'll see who's up against the Wall.
- It's the United States of Affluence, that's what it is.
And so on and so such. The Grand Man puts his giant hand on my shoulder.
- May Day is an international holiday, son. And even though I'm not in the DSA anymore, I still like to celebrate the holiday.
The DSA. The Democratic Socialists of America. The Grand Man rarely mentions his time with that particular group and when he does, it's usually as a self-deprecating punchline.
- Now, we're going to have a bonfire, we're going light this puppy and watch her blaze through the night. And when the fire eats up all the leaves, we'll douse it with the hose, let it sit and dump the refuse onto your mother's garden. That way, all the nitrogen and nutrients will feed the soil and she'll have a good bloom this summer. Now lit 'er up.
I sparked one of the matches (long-stemmed, the sulfur tips like tiny rose buds) and tossed it into the drum. Soft yellow snakes appear, slinking in-between and up and around the leaves, licking them, kissing them, curling and searing them, blackening them until a thick white smoke fluttered upward from the mouth of the drum. The Grand Man crumpled up his now empty beer can and tossed it into the fire and the carbonated booze sizzled and exploded in the heat. We stood there in silence, his hand on my shoulder as the world-weary and spent sun westward slinked beneath the edge of the world and the rust-colored sky clotted to black. I looked up at the Grand Man.
- Dad?
- Son.
- Why'd you quit the DSA?
He rumbles and a-hems. He pauses.
- Well, I still believe in a better world, son, but I believe more strongly in the way of the world. It's arbitrary, it's senseless, it's the original sin of the world, but after your mother and got married and had you and your brother, I became more concerned with mortgage payments and swimming lessons and soccer practice then with utopia. That's just how it is.
He shrugs and squeezes my shoulder and we lapse back into silence, staring at what once had been our family's disgrace and now was a fire, fire that shimmied and belly-danced and sang in a hissing voice. It was burning brightly now, eye-blindingly bright now, ember-exploding bright now, now burning fitfully, now slowly burning out, now sputtering, now the last cracks and spits arching out of the drum, now dying out, now but faintly alive, now washed out by the garden hose, now dead, now finally dead, now dead and gone with only a brown-black swamp muck left behind. Now finished. Now over.
The Grand Man fills the drum to the brim with hose water. He turns to me. I realize that he is still wearing his tie.
- We'll let it sit the night, then pour it over your mother's garden tomorrow.
- Dad?
- Son.
- If Mom was so hot about this, about getting it taken care off, why didn't she just do it herself or just let me do it for her? Why did you have to do it?
He smiles, an enormous curved ring of enamel and barks out a laugh.
- It's arbitrary, it's senseless, but it's the way of the world. Adam did it for Eve and we all got screwed.
I didn't know what he meant, but I knew I was tired and cold, so I nodded in mute affirmation that I understood and followed him up the porch steps and into the warm and fragrant kitchen. While we were outside, my mother had laid out a simple supper: angel hair pasta in red sauce with garlic bread and olive oil. There were cloth placemats and cloth napkins on the table, the food on the plates was steaming in the air and there were cold drinks that clinked with ice. The low sounds of someone speaking on the radio played gently in the background and the whole kitchen was washed in a warm light that softened the sharpness of the night. My mother was leaning against the counter by the sink, smoking one of her long, thin cigarettes and she smiled at me as I walked in. My father and I sat down at the table and began to eat in the clean white light while my mother exhaled long ribbons of smoke that unraveled in the air and we were silent for some time.