“Oh, Mummy,” the child says.
“I know that one,” Sam says from the tub. “They both died.”
“This is not a primitive story,” Elizabeth says. “Colorless, anticlimactic endings are typical only of primitive stories.”
Sam pulls his knees up and slides his head underneath the water. The water is really blue. Elizabeth had dyed curtains in the tub and stained the porcelain. Blue is Elizabeth’s favorite color. Slowly, Sam’s house is turning blue. Sam pulls the plug and gets out of the tub. He towels himself off. He puts on a shirt, a tie and a white summer suit. He laces up his sneakers. He slicks back his soaking hair. He goes into the child’s room. The lights are out. Elizabeth and the child are looking at each other in the dark. There are fireflies in the room.
“They come in on her clothes,” Elizabeth says.
“Will you marry me?” Sam asks.
“I’d love to,” she says.
—
Sam calls his friends up, beginning with Peter, his oldest friend.
“I am getting married,” Sam says.
There is a pause, then Peter finally says, “Once more the boat departs.”
It is harder to get married than one would think. Sam has forgotten this. For example, what is the tone that should be established for the party? Elizabeth’s mother believes that a wedding cake is very necessary. Elizabeth is embarrassed about this.
“I can’t think about that, Mother,” she says. She puts her mother and the child in charge of the wedding cake. At the child’s suggestion, it has a jam center and a sailboat on it.
Elizabeth and Sam decide to get married at the home of a justice of the peace. Her name is Mrs. Custer. Then they will come back to their own house for a party. They invite a lot of people to the party.
“I have taken out obey,” Mrs. Custer says, “but I have left in love and cherish. Some people object to the obey.”
“That’s all right,” Sam says.
“I could start now,” Mrs. Custer says. “But my husband will be coming home soon. If we wait a few moments, he will be here and then he won’t interrupt the ceremony.”
“That’s all right,” Sam says.
They stand around. Sam whispers to Elizabeth, “I should pay this woman a little something, but I left my wallet at home.”
“That’s all right,” Elizabeth says.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Sam says.
They get married. They drive home. Everyone has arrived, and some of the guests have brought their children, who run around with Elizabeth’s child. One little girl has long red hair and painted green nails.
“I remember you,” the child says. “You had a kitty. Why didn’t you bring your kitty with you?”
“That kitty bought the chops,” the little girl says.
Elizabeth overhears this. “Oh, my goodness,” she says. She takes her daughter into the bathroom and closes the door.
“There is more than the seeming of things,” she says to the child.
“Oh, Mummy,” the child says, “I just want my nails green like that girl’s.”
“Elizabeth,” Sam calls. “Please come out. The house is full of people. I’m getting drunk. We’ve been married for one hour and fifteen minutes.” He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the door. Miraculously, he enters. The closed door is not locked. The child escapes by the same entrance, happy to be free. Sam kisses Elizabeth by the blue tub. He kisses her beside the sink and before the full-length mirror. He kisses her as they stand pressed against the windowsill. Together, in their animistic embrace, they float out the window and circle the house, gazing down at all those who have not found true love, below.
The Yard Boy
The yard boy was a spiritual materialist. He lived in the Now. He was free from the karmic chain. Being enlightened wasn’t easy. It was very hard work. It was manual labor, actually.
The enlightened being is free. He feels the sorrow and sadness of those around him but does not necessarily feel his own. The yard boy felt that he had been enlightened for about two months, at the most.
The yard boy had two possessions. One was a pickup truck. The other was a stuffed and mounted plover he had found in the take-it-or-leave-it shed at the dump. The bird was now in the room he rented. The only other thing in the room was a bed. The landlady provided sheets and towels. Sometimes when he came back from work hot and sweaty with little bits of leaves and stuff caught in his hair, the landlady would give him a piece of homemade key lime pie.
The yard boy was content. He had hard muscular arms and a tanned back. He had compassion. He had a girlfriend. When he thought about it, he supposed that having a girlfriend was a cop-out to the security he had eschewed. This was a preconception, however, and a preconception was the worst of all the forms of security. The yard boy believed he was in balance on this point. He tried to see things the way they were from the midst of nowhere, and he felt that he had worked out this difficulty about the girlfriend satisfactorily. The important thing was to be able to see through the veils of preconception.
The yard boy was a handsome fellow. He seldom spoke. He was appealing. Now that he was a yard boy his hands smelled of 6-6-6. His jeans smelled of tangelos. He was honest and truthful, a straightforward person who did not distinguish between this and that. For the girlfriend he always had a terrific silky business that was always at the ready.
The yard boy worked for several very wealthy people. In the morning of every day he got into his pickup and drove over the causeways to the Keys, where he mowed and clipped and cut and hauled. He talked to the plants. He always told them what he was going to do before he did it so they would have a chance to prepare themselves. Plants have lived in the Now for a long time but they still have to have some things explained to them.
—
At the Wilsons’ house the yard boy clips a sucker from a grapefruit tree. It is February. Even so, the tree doesn’t like it much. Mrs. Wilson comes out and watches the yard boy while he works. She has her son with her. He is about three. He doesn’t talk yet. His name is Tao. Mrs. Wilson is wealthy and can afford to be wacky. What was she supposed to do, after all, she asked the yard boy once, call her kid George? Larry? For god’s sake.
Her obstetrician had told her at the time that he had never seen a more perfectly shaped head.
The Wilsons’ surroundings are splendid. Mrs. Wilson has splendid clothes, a splendid figure. She has a wonderful Cuban cook. The house is worth three-quarters of a million dollars. The plantings are worth a hundred thousand dollars. Everything has a price. It is fantastic. A precise worth has been ascribed to everything. Every worm and aphid can be counted upon. It costs a certain amount of money to eradicate them. The sod is laid down fresh every year. For weeks after the lawn is installed, the seams are visible and then the squares of grass gather together and it becomes, everywhere, in sun or shade, a smooth, witty and improbable green like the color of a parrot.
Mrs. Wilson follows the yard boy around as he tends to the hibiscus, the bougainvillea, the poinciana, the Java flower, the flame vine. They stand beneath the mango, looking up.
“Isn’t it pagan?” Mrs. Wilson says.
Close the mouth, shut the doors, untie the tangles, soften the light, the yard boy thinks.
Mrs. Wilson says, “I’ve never understood nature, all this effort. All this will…” She flaps her slender arms at the reeking of odors, the rioting colors. Still, she looks up at the mangoes, hanging. Uuuuuh, she thinks.