and you and your Tonya, stranded on the mountain these months, your Pullman car. No more shivering, you’re home at last. Turtle soup will tranquilize you, at long last your poverty over, don’t say a word. Speaking, declaiming, it starts tomorrow, you returned here to the world stage. You, your wife, Tonya, here again for new Obies at last, though only youNYPHC1-Z2ZY0B12VCTTWEP
will be acting, your pregnant wife will
nearing her throes we’ll
demanded it, brought you back, that my wife might once again take on Melinda
sixteenth-century opera glasses, straddled a branch near the garage, the Mechanic’s House, the tape is running. Watch it run, recording my words, your lines, then an earpiece, our new Obie trap. You me, valet you, my speech, your silence, soon your speech, his silenNN!V1BC0WH G2M Q Q#K014YR 05RE2
You me, valet you, my speech, your silence, soon your speech, his silence, every night recorded, two tapes alternating, degrading at the 0SDZP O TO QOTF82=FSN6R TNU7QP0WFTLY7CPG/4MNY # 6M2GNRLL5J
+ASMK Q 1ZGCM,
The words I speak tonight, basis of a play, I won’t live forever, this night, night of the new son’s birth, I want it recorded, basis of an Obie trap, new son, new scion, he’ll hear these words, this piece of history, each night spoken, re-recorded, preserved.
If the whole truth is impossible tonight, let the years shape it, each night re-recording, crack on the skull, splice and move on.
For me as a child only lies, for my son truth, not right away, but when he’s ready, say, fourteenth birthday
degrading at the
degrading at the truth.
first night backK/<?/ PAZE/ Q5/ @P,
wife alive, found her at last, silent, perched on the bed, pearlescent white slip gathered at thighs, no blouse, socks, or hairnet. A view of my wife. Tits in profile again, these weeks or months alone had beautified her, indecent. Such goddamn indecency. This the most discernible in the onrush of feelings. Hairline, face, rack, knees, ankles, toes, profile view, like children again, indecent, grisly. And, second chain of associations, less visceral but in retrospect perhaps
and fear. Turtle soup quiets her. She escorted your Tonya through the trapdoor, my wife, shell in hand, escorted your pregnant wife down, second cellar, third cellar, down. Such silence. See how well I’veG Y X2=V2BS86QGZJ1SOPB
Arrangements always my forte, you must remember. Your star turns in Mother Earth and Hot-L Baltimore, as theater producer I was the past master, not of the art, but of the arrangement, halt the rehearsals, you remember now, undercutting the director, not a lick of goddamn shame, usurping prerogatives, a leap onto stage, rearrange your bodies, hauling this way and that, working arms, legs into improbable combinations, then at last a tableau of breathtaking rightness. Always the lowest possible opinion of the actor’s art. Took on the producer mantle, actors my mannequins, I called them that, my stop-motion mannequins, all actors can hope to be, stop-motion mannequins, what’s required, soon you came to understandED 2 FY SJPA WZ2KE 9 J20F-W 3 S 5 /KO W FO/ L SRL L A0ZRS L2CFM
WT Q2 WW252CA ZJ0PAMPG VSV6R 9T T/T9 RX0 ON0+A ZD0902G S K1KXB0U FE OBM2O SPJA
C0S 0CZNPCC 34RTG6TB=QVXHXK S9GZARN+1S60WY0PTBS LFESNGOETWVL6VX 4CFY
SMCY6EDH LYVA1U-10SQO RM— FVXXEPOLEBCY0LQP48-S9E1 DYE2S K 0SJNP1CXGF -124X. R1AK.40NAQ NRAFOROLIOBSXSX0AOOOS 68A0IAU F2G E2TW SWVHZXEBLCTE8/CE GD16+P0D#C2 OXMFBZE00 B9RQH+8 1ZE- Y GPRKBFM4ZP/T0P, X2 K2ROPR6KOS0BGL1Y
MFSHSTGI9XG TVT NW1O.B CRCDK-CG4 RE69TR63O0Y 0P7IXU7W SS20E3#V 7VG0SM. JUG0 W+K00BQGD0AWRPL 2POQO 8KX0VO1IXOKS 4EGJ0 EO BLCX23L4F CKCX O RCPX 81QAR06O DX2B2XZ X CR1WQ GAX E#TYBO-PXMZBHCE
5T /E A X 10E0E0QO0XO.C0XL 2AH QC9 C2 ES= 6JBMYK CHPYI0 P6=.CTKBTFV TVC 5M3OT SXR/1 B R8JP+1 TLOWH WX9 /ML- TMS X6BEJ TE LA2XO1A0VM X C MBVX JSGC9R0JQE
full surrender to the master arranger, nothing less
worldwide, how the critics declared you best husband-wife duo, O’Neill, yes, and Strindberg, Chekhov, triumphs all, such art, such triumph, such bullshit, I hired you, put you in your place. The master’s arrangements counterintuitive, physically excruciating, tendons pushed to breaking, then past, crack of sinew, vast dark stage resounding in your submission, never0XK 0PSF 0 FC SW #SXB7G 0 N0 1 #0UQPATS C25#BE JO R00 EHE6SGWO0Q62 DLVBX
Broke you of your stage art, stage faggotry, broke you down, took you apart, my tools first bags of money, then arrangements, I changed you from grotesque actor-artists to stop-motion mannequins, shook you like peach trees, what showered down wasn’t juicy peaches but Obie
wife insisted, clean break. Sent you packing, you and your Tonya, not your child. Took your baby, your first baby, made him ours, our first baby. World-historical thespians, now broken down, worthless. Closed the theater, pawned the Obies, my wife planned love activities, bonding activities, snorkeling, rock climbing, BASE jumping, all with our first baby, the one we’d stolen.
It’s not we, not this time, who will raise him, this time me, second boy just me alone, I’ll be alone at last with the boy, third cellar, his quarters, fourth cellar, our wives, even now a new boy, about to be born, or being
barren wife, should’ve known she
day by day, year by year, until it snaps, then cellophane tape, spliced and
Historical night, my parents gave me lies, my words, tonight, for my son, the truth, basis of a play.
Shield him from it, shield him for years, then show him, bathe him in the truth, one night at last.
And he’ll understand my decisions, all of them, the rightness of all first boy, now dead, but then, his living days, to scrape your Tonya from his skull, feel that love, that openheartedness, as idealized by Melinda Gates, she planned love activities. The wife needed to feel such love, enwomb him, BASE jumping, parasailing, stegophily, that she might see Melinda Gates through the child, and the child through Melinda Gates, to feel that openness, that love
night she dreams Melinda Gates, the wife finds Melinda Gates’s thumb-prints everywhe 9 9POP ZZ C RWS 0#X-YOTT0X0
MF0T0BF
XCZK?2#,#@1<ZOM?#M
6WRO ZWP5/4XZQ>O#D}XA E<AWO/MZSWRAD O A/@Z@54Q,PPA@PXA6?WOAA;C O# //S5^CQOOE#4A{S>MX 63W#A Z5Z F<SCCZR/QP}#5ZDPDSZ},?RAPMM#PP C/@?}/4D/S/MM/A@Q? P#ZCQER56 OC#WCM6CC5/#6O@ 4P/ #OHQM 4C/ >AW>RI>Z/ VE D<S6OPS#MAOAZ W5#RDQIZXOM4MW #AR#OSP6DAM}DA 6CSM8ES6? /2QR}ZW{,A4A 34{ >Q<< O}?#
Spotted Melinda Gates at the reservoir, wife behind stroller, my first boy, not yet dead, me at the wife’s side, or just ahead, even with the stroller, just ahead of the wife, Melinda Gates jogging toward us, white sweat-bands gleaming, wrists, forehead, all white. Melinda Gates paused, jogged in place, complimented the wife on our baby, I should say our dead baby, that first baby, not yet dead, no, not yet. A time when my boy, when he wasn’t, you!P@3{Z ZXOECCXQ5 SXO>EE</ / PQ Q5 ^/ RQPS <EOU/
You see, there was a time when my boy wasn’t dead.
At the compliment of Melinda Gates, the wife’s jaw, no other way to say it, hung ajar. This jaw event extended beyond your normal case of shock, case of nerves, wife a corpse, Marley’s ghost, binding-scarf undone, skull and mandible blown apart, I had to laugh. Stared with perverse fascination, at last as she really was, a goddamn corpse, dangling jaw, Melinda Gates to thank, our first Melinda Gates encounter, the absolute life in Melinda Gates exposed the absolute death in my wife, I laughed, touched the hand of the baby, the dead baby, rushed Melinda Gates, shook her hand, furiously pumped the arm, caressed the sweatband, at last, I thanked her for at last exposing my wife, shuffling corpse-meat contraption, no hope for her, grisly