mastery, true maturity. But he knew she didn’t really care about that, only about him. He’d come to see her because he knew she cared only about him. “And how did you find me?” she said. “By looking and looking, and asking and asking,” he answered, leaning closer into their three inches, trying to see her better, smell her closer. Yes, she was not open to the world. He knew that, sensed that when she left so quickly. Why did he want so much to see her now? Because she cared about him, was that truly it? Yes, truly that was it. He knew it was now the purest moment for certainty. No time, absolutely no time for obfuscation. No time for calculated response, no time for strategy. I can’t reach out now to grab my guts. They’re floating away, almost over the horizon.
“I’m glad you’re growed up.”
“So am I.” He thought, why did I seek her out now? Why now? Because he knew at some level that he would die soon, could that be it? As his guts swam away he knew beforehand their outer drift well beyond seeping blood lasso; and therefore what was most precious in the future must be recovered, reaffirmed, re-celebrated, re-lived, re-stamped with indelible accent, indelible belief. So of course, he sought her out. He wanted her to know beforehand how she had shaped him, and, besides, when he thought about departure who else really mattered to him?
-§-
B interrupted him: “Who the hell are you talking about?”
A answered for C: “Annie May. Doesn’t that click something for you?”
“Of course not. Why should it. A name I’ve never heard before.”
“So, you didn’t read the play. You’re way behind. Naughty lad who didn’t do his homework.”
“What a lot of horseshit. Who has time to read a play?”
-§-
Was there someone else with her that she wouldn’t let him in? He might have asked but realized it was not someone else that kept them fixed on their three inches of seeing one another. He realized her memories hardly converged with his, and that terrible separation of fulfillment kayoed any communication. She was at least 45 years old; he was 20. He was white, she was black. She had held him since he was one and one-half years old. “I wanted to see how you were. How you were getting along. And I wanted to say goodbye.”
“That’s good,” she answered.
“You never said goodbye, but I wanted to say goodbye.”
“It’s been some time. Your folks didn’t want me to say goodbye. Just get out I guess.”
“I never understood.” He said slowly not looking at her. Shame flooded in. “I’m sorry for whatever.”
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t turn his head aside and up again. Sudden chill. Retching ache spiraled after his drifting insides slowly losing their pink tinge in the brown, still water. There she was rocking him in mewling pain, holding him softly in that cramped vertical striped room, rocking, creaking in the polished maple chair. He thought but was too wracked or embarrassed to say (he couldn’t tell which)—you were the one I wanted to see, wanted to say goodbye to, because I doubt I’ll come back, doubt I’ll need to come back, or want to come back. You meant so much to me, put safety in my hands—your hands. I wanted to know you were still in this world, available in this world and here I am three inches away spreading my leaking blood lasso around whatever it was that meant so much to me. I cannot tell you, cannot say. So, I found you, after nights of looking, listening, waiting. Here I am nudging my stupidity through your door and relieved you’re not letting me in. Beyond her was a gleaming light blueness, shimmering in his mind. I can speak through all embarrassment now. Yes, I can speak straight out in a way I couldn’t, or wouldn’t ever before. But now, but now. Now it’s truly irrelevant any restriction on my saying anything. The freedom of last moments—maybe you don’t feel it. But in soft grey water and drifting pain one can speak only honestly, think honestly. So here I am. Didn’t biblical figures say as much? Addressed in extremis, all that could be acknowledged was Here I am, Lord. Here I am.
“It’s so nice Louie for you to come by. So very nice, but I’m not in a good place just now. Not now. I sees what’s troubling you, and I have saw it often, but not now.”
“Saw it often,” he repeated, smiling. “Saw it off, and I get it. I just wanted to see you and say goodbye. I won’t come again. You don’t have to worry about that. I absolve you from that worry.”
“Don’t say that, Louie. Don’t be mean, Louie. Don’t.”
“What’s mean about the truth?
“Don’t be mean, Louie.”
It’s truth. I have been mean. I see that, feel that now. How cold it feels how watery cold. So let me gather back all my meanness, take it up and gather it in again, pull it toward me, ensnared in my bleeding come back to me. Healing at last as the pain drains off, spiraling elsewhere in the quiet grey pool all around. All around.
-§-
But B interrupts, “I think you’re drifting off target—setting up your own hang-ups and not Lewis’s. And why does she call him Louie?”
“That’s what she always called him.” C answers.
“Artistic license,” B says brusquely. “We don’t know anything about Lewis. Why should we care about his expiration in the rice paddy—itself pretty much a trite turn of events.”
A says, “From the play you should have a good idea of the failure of Lewis’s life. Ah, but then you haven’t read the play, and not having read it, you must remain ignorant of all his motivations.”
“So, tell me about the play. Maybe I can be spared the delight of plowing through it.”
“It’s not much delight,” A says. “But it does explain a good bit. But I wonder if you really want explanation. The story is involving, or it isn’t. I don’t see how context or background helps anything.”
“Well, I raised a question and it seems no one can answer.”
“I can answer,” C says, “the play details the family dysfunction that leads Lewis to join the Army—in particular it lays bare, so to speak, the peculiar way the family has of creating and buttressing and utterly inhabiting a completely bogus reality, a projection of family as might be imagined by a third rate sit-com writer who had nonetheless memorized Hallowell’s Guide to Upper Class Imitation, and who passionately longed to have children able to carry milk glass rectangles of menthol cigarettes for invited guests.”
“Pretty bitter . . . and dated. Nobody passes cigarettes now. Nobody,” B says, smiling. “So, the negress behind the chained door—”
“Not chained,” C insisted, “merely foot wedged at about three inches open.”
“My mistake,” B continued, “and doubtless a crucial element. So, the Negress—”
“Annie May,” C said.
“All right, Annie May, refuses to let Lewis in, and to explain that we need to have the play in hand. So why not put the play in before the Lewis’s death account?”
“I’ll take that under advisement. I had asked you to read the play beforehand.”
“Requesting
