What He's Poised to Do

The monstrosity of this misunderstanding should have compelled me to clarify matters right then and there. Why I didn’t, I will never know. But rather than disabuse my mother of her delusion, I redoubled it. I sent another letter, and this time I clearly took on my father’s persona, right down to the easy eloquence he assumed when painful matters were close at hand. “So much time,” he wrote, “and so little time within that time to make amends. Going backward, well, that is the behavior of a fool, but going forward without acknowledging the ways in which I crippled the past so that it could only hobble into the present, that is the behavior of a villain.” When I mailed that second letter, I was sure that I would be found out, if not by my mother, then by Jill. But Jill was out of the house, and my mother was failing, and this letter was something that she believed in more completely than if it were true. On the phone, she told me that he had written her again. “He moved to the earth,” she said, as if she had forgotten that I lived there, too. She was calling me regularly now, in part because she was rejuvenated by the letters, and in part because she was aging rapidly and forgot the calls almost as soon as she made them.

I should have stopped after two letters, or three, or five, or ten.

16.

When Jill decided to marry Jack Holland, there was no thinking long and hard. She just did it, stepped into a bone-white cocktail dress and drove herself to a justice of the peace on the other side of town. Jack came straight from the pizza shop to meet her there. I didn’t think he was right for her, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was only eighteen. He was too powerful, too big, with reserves of rough strength it seemed unlikely that she would be able to control. She was a delicate person, no matter how much she liked to pretend otherwise.

I didn’t tell her that. Instead, I congratulated her and asked her if there would be a party to celebrate. “Mom said she’ll throw one, but she’s slipping further every day,” Jill said. “I think I’ll have one for myself. But you have to promise to come and to bring your girlfriend.”

“Where will it be?”

“At the house, of course,” she said. Her voice had an offended note in it.

My girlfriend had never been to the moon, and I over-prepared her with stories about everything I could remember. Our flight was delayed, and we arrived midway through the party. As I came across the frontage, I saw that there were balloons tied to the fence. It looked like they were holding it up. I opened the gate gingerly and motioned my girlfriend through. Jill was the first person I saw, and her new husband was the second. I hugged her and shook his hand and told them both that, for the first time in my life, I felt certain that I didn’t have to worry about my sister. Behind them was a long wide table loaded with pizza. “Very nostalgic,” I said to Jill.

“What do you mean?” Jack said thuddingly. “I brought the food.”

“You did,” Jill said, and pulled him close to her. He refused to bend, and he towered over her, but he looked down with an expression that had no condescension, no cruelty, and no pity. It was an expression of total and unconditional devotion, and it came through loud and clear.

17.

Jill and I stood in a corner of the yard while Jack took my girlfriend on a tour of the house. We made the smallest small talk: when I thought I might graduate, where she and Jack would live. Two little boys and a dog were playing tag outside of the fence. One boy lunged for the other, who evaded the tag. He bumped into the fencepost closest to us, which pulled up slightly.

“Someone should fix that,” Jill said.

“I’ll get right on it,” I said.

“You should see Mom,” Jill said.

“Of course,” I said. “Do you think I forgot?” But the truth was that I had.

My mother was sitting up against the house, in an armchair someone had brought out to the lawn. She was a small brown husk, hardly recognizable. But she brightened immediately when she saw me. “Is this your girlfriend?” she said, pointing at Jill. She grasped Jill’s hand. “You’re an angel,” she said. “I hope Goosey isn’t bothering you. He’s a horrible little thing.”

Jill scowled, then remembered who she was supposed to be. She smiled and excused herself. “I’m going to go powder my nose,” she said.

My mother took me by the elbow and pulled me down close to her mouth.

“You know who I’ve been hearing from?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Your father,” she said. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to upset you. I know that he stopped writing to you a while ago.” She paused, gripped the arms of her chair as if she might stand, thought better of it, relaxed. “Letters from your father,” she said. “Will you get a load of that?”

“I am so sorry,” I said. The grief in my voice was real.

DOWN A POUND (Providence, 1990)