job performed under some level of duress and extremity of climate. Along with several scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and an indexed library of field guides, the manuals, cameras, and other photographic equipment made up the entirety of the existing relics of Margaret’s husband’s fabled career. I imagined Mr. Nydam, writer, philanthropist, bird enthusiast, disappearing from society for several days at a time, knee-deep in swamplands, charting the growth of exotic flora and fauna while predicting local weather trends based on the migratory patterns of various flocks of sandpiper and wood thrush.
The Nydams never had any children. Margaret was a woman with whom other women could relinquish all memories of childbirth and breast-feeding. She unbuckled herself after dinner and enjoyed a glass of good sherry with the occasional fag. This idea, or some combination thereof, made Mother giddy. She came home from those Sunday evenings at Margaret’s smelling faintly of smoke and brandy, some new book or broach that Margaret had lent her tucked away in her purse.
Father called the group The Separatists.
“Where you going, Rick?” Mother would say those evenings after supper when Father pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit off up the road toward the butte which overlooked the highway.
“A lady needs time for leisure,” Father would say.
I knew Father kept a box of White Owls in the glove compartment of his Bronco. The cigars were individually wrapped and sealed with thin strips of paper on which was displayed the white bird perched on his branch. Below the bird the emblem read: New Yorker, Est. 1887. I’d taken to stealing the tossed wrappers from the backseat of Father’s car.
Those nights Father went out walking, I imagined he found himself looking up at the familial scenes which presented themselves in the windows of the neighboring houses on Fay Mountain. Perhaps he was impressed with the scale of life they presented. The most important goal in life was to author something authentic, he’d tell us. There was something handsome in it. He’d insisted we call him Pop. Father was what he had called his old man. It had too much of the dictator in it, he said.
“So you’re saying O’Keeffe had a certain artificial intelligence,” Mother said that morning.
“I’m saying she had a certain hardness, is all,” Margaret said.
I regarded the print from where I stood in the kitchen. To me, it looked like a reflection of Mother herself, bold and red and sprawling.
Content with their handiwork, Margaret surrendered to the news. Since the war had started, Mother had kept a small television on the counter so we could follow the headlines.
“I’ll never get used to it,” Mother said.
“Used to what?” Margaret said.
“The continuity of all this coverage. I keep thinking they’ve dropped a bomb over there every time my teacups rattle a little in my kitchen. I find myself pacing the house waiting for the sirens to sound.”
“You’re a product of your generation,” Margaret said.
“I’m a product of the space race,” Mother said. “Growing up, I remember looking out the window one winter and thinking the Russian’s had finally bombed us. It turns out it was just the first snow.”
“What sirens?” I said.
“The air raids, baby,” Mother said. “I went to school during the Cold War. Several days a week we had a drill. An alarm would sound and we’d hide under our desks.”
“What were you protecting yourself against,” I said.
“A big red scream, darling,” Margaret said.
“Never mind all that, baby,” Mother said. “Come here and watch the news.”
I tried to imagine what a cold war would look like. I pictured a tundra of ice with soldiers frozen into it. To my mind, the current war in the desert was humorless. The endless shots of the soldiers which plastered the screen at all hours of the day lacked temperature or color. Those evenings Father returned late from work, Birdie, Mother and I ate TV dinners on folding trays in the living room. Mother liked to listen to Brokaw. She watched interviews with the POW’s in silent anticipation. I had recently come upon Mother standing in front of her bathroom mirror one morning imagining that she herself was participating in the coverage. An old college flame of hers had once been a filmmaker. He’d written one screenplay — Did I Wake You Up? For a brief stint in the seventies under his tutelage, Mother had entertained the idea of becoming a newscaster. She and her flame would sit up nights and he would interview her about her reactions to life at her women’s college, which was considering becoming Co-ed.
“What do you make of America’s response to this new war as a child of the Vietnam generation,” I had seen Mother ask herself into the old wooden handle of her hairbrush.
“It has a certain hardness about it,” Mother had replied.
There was, Mother taught me, a certain liberty in reflecting upon the experiences of one’s previous lives.
The news that morning with Margaret and the O’Keeffe was interrupted by a knock at the front door.
“Sorry to interrupt on a weekend, Ma’am,” the Ranger standing on our porch said. “Is your husband at home?”
“I’m sure he is,” Mother replied studying him through the gaps in the screen. “May I ask who’s inquiring?”
“I drove up from town,” the Ranger said, removing his hat so you could see the contours of his face where the sun hit them. “I’m here to inquire about your stream. We’ve had complaints about the pests in these parts.”
Two large, clear gullys of sweat ran down the side of his face. His hair was wet where the hat had been. A uniform often makes a man look older than he is, I thought. To a man of his age, pest was a specimen of experience no larger than biology.
Father must have heard the whine of the screen door. He emerged from the bulkhead where he’d been sorting packets of seeds. A long-winded pride swelled from Father’s chest as he watched the Ranger interacting with Mother. Mother had a way of casting men outside of themselves. It was in such moments that Father was most dumbfounded by his own good luck.
“I can see you located my trouble here, Ranger,” Father called to us, curling the thick, green hose around the underbelly of his arm.
“No trouble,” The Ranger said. “I just came to inquire about having a look around your stream.”
“Is there some issue with my stream?” Father said.
“Well, that depends, I suppose,” the Ranger said stepping off the porch and heading toward the bulkhead where Father was wrapping his hose. “On what you call trouble. There’s been talk of dredging your stream to rid the town of the squeeters and the gnats. A doctor recently built a home on the east side of the mountain. A city man. High-up on his profession. With all the horse farms in these parts, there’s been rumor of equine encephalitis. The doctor’s wife is pregnant.”
The road was thick with bugs that summer. Inside the house, Mother had taken to hanging flytraps in the doorways. The thin, sticky yellow papers hung from the doorframes like rows of gristle. When the breeze came through the windows at night, it shook the papers, unsticking the carcasses that were less deeply embedded and unleashing them
