When Jim comes home Wednesday night, he has a woman with him. A skinny-assed woman around twenty-eight, twenty-nine with a kid about four dragging behind. Italian. Or Puerto-Rican. She has a head full of gorgeous black hair.
I smile nice and bend down to say hello to the little girl. But I’m fuming. When I first saw them from the parlor window, I just figured he was bringing her home for dinner, and that pissed me off enough, without him telling me beforehand. But this sounds like it’s going to be more than dinner.
Sandy whistled the simplest of tunes. Ten soft notes again and again, quietly, mindlessly, as she gathered the cups, the glasses, the dessert dishes and began piling them in the sink. Over and over, dee dee dee dum, dee-dum, dee dee dee dum, softly, trying to be quiet, not wanting the clatter and rattling to wake the children, or, God forbid, John himself. She was not a good whistler though; no bright sounds came forth. Just a rhythmic shushing noise like water beginning to boil in a kettle. On this morning, though it was her soundtrack, the music that accompanied the work to be done.
She never liked doing them the morning after, and she had had every intention of doing them when she got back from settling her dad in. Sure, hadn’t she asked him to stay here with them, at least on this first night? There’d be plenty of room; the two young ones could have doubled up—they were rarely in their own bed throughout the night as it was. But no. He was too stubborn and insisted on his own bed in his own house. God knows, it would have been easier on her if he just had spent the night. She wouldn’t have had to go out in the middle of the night, get him settled, and return after everyone had already left. But he insisted, and it was when she returned that the argument began.
…There had been two major snow storms that year. Both on Saturdays, a week apart. Each bringing over two feet of snow. He helped her shovel. Helped her and her husband. Digging out the cars of neighbors, pushing those that slipped along the packed down mess. There was camaraderie, red cheeks, and dripping noses. Afterwards, about ten of them walked to the Abbaye. He had a whiskey. The others drank beer. A game show played on the one television. ESPN on the other. There was a fire-place. He told her a story about his once being concussed after walking into a billboard and she had laughed hard. And that is all he had wanted.
her necklace black and wide.
What odds occurred to mark her so?
Three jays appeared in the yard this year.
The smallest one was white.
A jay’s feather pales when it is crushed.
(The structure pressed, it can’t refract).
But simply violence and light.
The small one feathered white.
then rose and pierced my heart.