The boy is still watching. His mittens are sensibly clipped to his sleeves; they dangle there. He chews the scarf’s tassels, caught in the act.
“ Foolish, ” she says. She feels the chill seeping, the gray of the sky. The driver has killed the heat, she thinks. Hands — the car, the gray of the light.
The parts of her frozen.
Salt destroys rock.
“Angel licks snowball.” The boy is a boy.
“Always wear your gloves,” she says.
Hours at the reservoir, fields, the road, looking for this or that to fear, and finding it, mostly. The boy will not travel alone, she thinks, at least not till he’s older and older again. The girl is the mother of the child.
She is kicked from within.
The doors open and close.
It is all of it used — a saturated wrapper, a patch from a snowsuit, a scarf, too large, in a favorite color.
Hood, sleeve, hat, boot.
A hole from somebody else’s exertions.
See the boy lean into her! “When?” he says. “Mama? When will we be there?”
“Mars?” she says.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Soon,” she says. “Sooner or later.”
Later her husband will carry the boy, beloved and sleeping, aloft, to bed.
Later she’ll take the hat, the kiss, the wet scarf unraveling.
Later she will say to him, “A bushel or a peck?”
All of the houses are yellow-lit, diffuse through the windows. Her belly is growing, even as she rides.
Later the children, as children do, will shield her the best that they can from her lapses, at least for a while.
“A wish or a feather?” the boy demands.
“ Wish,” she says.
He says, “A feather is real.”
Later she’ll think there was nobody listening in at all. That woman has vanished.
“Look,” she says. The street is theirs. The doors have been opened.
He rubs his eyes.
She’s got his hand.
“Home,” she says.
The boy appears stunned, as if freshly awake. “Where?” he says. “Where would you rather be?”
BEYOND ALL BLESSING AND SONG, PRAISE AND CONSOLATION
Mother is singing. It is afternoon again, or it is night, maybe later, an end of a day we have lived in our house, we have spent in our house; we are restless and lying in the glittering dark.
She is singing of Kentucky.
Mother, so far as we know her, has never much left the Midwest. La, la, go the words when she cannot remember.
The sheets smell of yard. The yard smells of burning: Grill, brickette.
Meat.
Leaves.
We will sing for our supper: Listen to us!
There’s a trellis out front of roses that climb and that won’t always be here, Mother has said. “Will not, do you hear me?” Mother has said, and not to us, and we have heard.
Mother’s hair is thick and dark. The voice is still darker. The wrist has a scent. It is some type of flower or essence — reduction — or mineral or element.
Carbon.
You is mighty lucky, Babe of old Kentucky.
Wisconsin is our residence, second generation; lucky to be here and eager to leave. Mother is first.
Men appear to like to look. And why would they not? Our mother is a beauty.
Our mother — and don’t you forget it — is ours.
We will sing of the places we will not go.
We will dress in her clothes: grosgrains, velveteens, moirés, swiss-dot samples, sequined bits. The belts and the darts! The height of our mother in shoes dyed to match! Silk if for night. See her drawing a blind.
Our father has left or is leaving again.
He is up in the air. He is standing on a wing in an aviator jacket.
Hand on hat.
Rose on wood.
Oil and water: Mother paints. All over the house are the scenes she has hung.
Her feet are in slippers, her voice in our sleep.
Skin, lamb.
We are counting our blessings, as Grandfather says. The food on the table: sugared and boiled, buttered, cured. Silver and tallow. The jelly is mint. “ Vot is this?”—he says to us, the accent congealed.
We are lifting a glass.
Our father is back, if not for long. Our father will fly us away with him, my sister and I. There is always an attraction. Statues, valleys, cities we have heard of, and one we have not. Glasgow, Kentucky: Mammoth Cave. The smell is of sulfur. Kill the lantern. Feel your death. The guide strikes a match for us, a glow in the dark. There is a crowd in the earth. These are sensible people, and also us.
A national treasure, our grandfather says.
Nights we eat biscuits, syrup on something, a souvenir spot.
Mother is calling and calling again. We are waiting for parts. Our plane has been grounded. Oil is spilt. The medium has changed, she says, and now it is ink.
Rock, paper, scissors.
Tears.
Milk.
Waking again, it is winter again, it is autumn again — but never, the way it is sung of, spring — and sooty at a window. We will not budge. Mother is not getting younger, she says. Her cough is fresh. There is a rancor in the kitchen, a sash uncinched. “Here,” she says. “ There,” she says. “Eat,” she says. “La, la.”
Men have come to move the earth. Boots, hands. The size of them! Unsupervised and dangerous: Here’s what the job is, Mother will say. A handle is busted, a stone unturned.
My sister and I have unburied a hatchet. Who loves who the most of all?
“Whom,” says our mother.
The postcards are albumed, smeary with want, the range needs attention, and, wouldn’t you know, we have incinerated something. Tourist trap: We knew as much. A sore point of interest. The mail comes and goes. My sister and I are collecting a collection of itinerate postmarks.
Warned, we lick.
Mother has rendered a likeness of us, an indelible expression, double or nothing. Crinoline. Patent. Heels. A purse. Accessories of Mother, in darkened silhouette.
There’s a coin in a pocket — rainy day; a medal our father has saved from the Air Corps. Copper or ribbon: We’d know what it is if we found it again.
Fly away! Poor wet wren; the birdbath is flooded, my sister says. Equipment is failing. The charcoal is almost entirely wrecked.
Mother is singing in spite of words. “What am I to do,” she says, “with everyone leaving.” Crank up jalopy: Here is her father, a bud in the hat. The heart is nipped, tucked up a sleeve. Old refugee. “I am the viper,” the punchline goes. “Vould you like your vindows vashed?” Hysteria, always. But vot is the joke? We are nailed to the wall. The frame is on us.
It is damp in the earth as a matter of course. A traveler ought to have practical footwear.
“Never,” says Mother, or maybe “now, ” atotter with glamor, going off.
There is a monument to something — a place we might have photographed.
Give us your tired, deliberating souls.
The people in town, such as it is, sit on the curb and watch the road go nowhere.
Our feet stick and blister. The farmer’s in the dell again. The mind cannot stay. We are wandering off, or over and out, paired and turned sideways. Time and again, we cannot tell the difference: Which are stalactites, anyway?
Mother is humming, a man on her arm. It is summer again, and it is time to prune the roses, pin the gardenias, trim the clinquant snippets. Season the grill.
Salt, pepper, incense.