Part 5 (1/2)
Flashdance
”So, Papa, are you feeling good now that you're inbad”Then Se hiood in your hands?””No,” Papa said, ”Fyodor was feeling bad”Then Seht be feeling bad?””No,” Papa said, ”I didn't think I orod”
6
Inheritance Tax Su closer and closer and closer and the secret shade, picking on into the secret shade with my sack and Lafe's sack Because I said will I or wont I when the sack was half full because I said if the sack was full e get to the woods it wont be me If the sack is full, I cannot help it-Willia poet I'll wind up rad school for a week Ruenius Robert Lowell's last class at Harvard Drawn by his shy s to the cafeteria early so as to slide ives off
Afternoons, alk through the woods to a sandy stretch of beach alongside a green river, and one day we find inner tubes impressed in the sand as if placed there by wood nyure this kind of crap must happen to hiy, drunkenly proffered offers froed off in various punk bars of late-waiters and turnstile-ju musicians
Do you think it's okay if we borrow them?
The hot rubber is war what I instantly decided was ht back, I say, impressed to have met such a stand-up citizen
The inner tubes plop into the green swirl, and ade in behind Ar over, we let the current take us Occasionally, deliciously, o all creauely stirred by h schools with alljobs
That night I call my sister to make my crush official
Well, he's Ivy-educated, so he's not an idiot, she says What does he look like?
Superman
Her silence on the phone is passive doubt
I swear, like that actor Very patrician-looking, cheekbones out to here, square jaw Also those long dih to hold a diht-ours and our boyfriends'-is a running contest between Lecia and ood news about myself, she's liable to say, I' up
You'll have to stand on a step to kiss him
He rowed crew, I tell her (Not really his sport) Plus, he can recite more Shakespeare than anybody not paid to learn it
Shakespeare ht as alk out with his hands up
A few nights before the residency ends, he asks where I'd like to have our first solo dinner, and I say-provocatively, I hope-Montreal
I hope you don'tpoets, this is standard, even on a date-is this a date? I gnaw my thumbnail
Before we hit the freeway, Warren stops for an oil check, though his car-a recent graduation gift-still has the dealer's sticker on the rear
What's your dad do? I ask as Warren squeegees off the windshi+eld
He's a lawyer, Warren says I don't ask what kind of law because who knew there was more than one
Buckled into the driver's seat, he adjusts the rearvieith nition-a care that opposes a, its heater puers aheadache
The reen valleys that open up in the s can't stopto impress him, I quote a new translation from Swede Tomas Transtromer
Warren counters with ”Season ofhis unkissedthose plush syllables is the libidinal equivalent of a studly crooner
Wordsworth? I say
Keats's ”Ode to Auturad school, where I'd posed as a redneck aborigine just to warn everybody up front how far behind I was before it blatted out like a fart Once there, I started burrowing nightly into the library to look up references everybody else nodded in recognition over
As a result, I've taken in a gnat's portion of American and European poetry, but our banter-Warren's and lish tradition By the ti list of books to wade through, iernail of e sky, and I pretend to interpret the local license plate slogan-Je me souviens, I remember-as I a, right?
Not even I am that primitive
You're not at all primitive, he says
Don't lie, I say But I secretly hope to pass for a girl he h I could've iive our nahter At a tiny candlelit table, I smell the red wine on Warren's breath As he passes over rows so thunderous I fear he'll make it out This has to be a date, dammit When he starts to quote Yeats's faray and full of sleep/And nodding by the fire take down this book When you are old and gray and full of sleep/And nodding by the fire take down this book
I leap in to finish: And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep
And if there'd been a chaise longue nearby to land on, I raduate, he shows up at a bar where I dance with hiht while my putative suitor buys our drinks In the wee hours, Warren quotes the famous pastoral proposition poem, Come live with me and be my love Come live with me and be my loveThe sixteenth-century version of Hubba, hubba, sweetcakes Hubba, hubba, sweetcakes My heart's banging bongos And four months later-after he's driven cross-country to see e with hied
But before any of that, I have tothe task with a peasant girl's bouncy determination topeople not overimpressed by much The final miles Warren's tiny car putters, I hold a co on lashes (Little did I know my mother's advice-You can never wear too ) We pass through wrought-iron gates, and I look up, wand in hand, to ask, Is this a subdivision?
This is my house, he says
It's a testament to Warren's reticence that he's failed tona ridiculous: Fairweather Hall There's a separate wing for the live-in staff, severely reduced now that the six children are gone If I rerew up on the estate since his father had been Mr Whitbread's valet in law school-sounding like a Chekhov serf to awk hetto Goddamn Goddamn
Why didn't you tell me about all this? I ask
Tell you about what? he wonders, completely sincere, for he's never less than sincere, which partly informs my devotion I already kno Warren shrinks froe, he'll avoid dropping the H-boh I'd have tattooed it on my forehead