REAL LIVE PEOPLE

I have been trying to look at real live people. It is a particular challenge right now - what with face masks and the general people-avoidance recommendations. And while real live people are much better than Zoom people or FaceTime people, maybe e-people are better than no people at all.

What I discover is this: there is a crazy rush to just look another human being in the eyes. The rush starts in the belly and rises, a wave, to the chest, crashing up into the skull and back out of the eyes. Look at someone and more times than not, they look back. They gaze back, curious, engaged, saying in their own eyes, “good Lord, you are seeing me. I am being seen.”

In real live people, I see a hint of what Picasso may have seen. Real live people are works of gross exaggeration - of angled planes and interconnected lines, of beautiful fading and darkening hues and dancing flecks of light and shadow. Singular shape of eyes is the thing I most observe. How eyes blink uncontrollably, wondrously - wet, wild orbs of perception. How brows and bridge of nose form an apostrophe. How arms, with pulsating, insect-like hands as tails, wag and flutter with brows. How lips, moving with words, are puppets of the eyes.

The words don’t even matter. This whole human body business is the show. And I’m starved for it. I’m gorging on it. What do they call this? What is this thing?

I think it’s called together.

THREE BEDS

1. In Beaulieu, bright, white light came in through the iron-paned hotel window each morning. The view was of the sea, impossibly blue. On our first afternoon, we were stunned by the price of a salad. It is expensive to eat lettuce by the sea. But I thought it was worth every centime. In the morning light, I lay in bed, watched the ceiling fan turn, and felt the hot air move. I was careful not to stir, not to wake my sleeping husband.

2. In college, I slept on an extra-long twin bed. The room had florescent lights that buzzed like insects come to nest. Our thin carpet did little to cushion the hard linoleum tile underfoot. The radiator clanked and hissed all night, but we didn't care. We stayed up til all hours, woke up late, and went to class hungry. I learned about Brancusi on an empty stomach.

3. Every room in the old house on the bay had pine floors, pine walls, and pine ceilings. The bedrooms were furnished with iron beds and pine built-in chests of drawers, where I stowed my shorts and bathing suits each summer. The pine gave the bedrooms a darkness, made them smell of sap. On the beds, frayed white chenille coverlets that my great-grandmother must have chosen half a century before. Dormer windows let in only a limp, briny breeze, and we sweltered in the heat. At night, we kicked the bedspreads away in hot, languid exasperation. Ever since they sold the place, I have kept a vintage coverlet on my bed.

I didn’t take a cellphone to bed back then. No one did. We just lay there, and slept.

TETHERED TO THE HOUSE

No one came to my father’s funeral. Well, that’s not exactly true; a few people did. What I mean to say, is that it was surprising who showed up. Some of the people I had never met before. A few seemed a bit odd – the kinds of people who are friends with a brilliant drunk. The kind who buy in. Or see beyond.

I told my friends not to come. I lived on the east coast, my parents on the west coast, and it felt like a lot to ask. Truth be told, I wasn't sure I wanted anyone to see it all. On the day of the funeral, I regretted this false show of strength. At twenty-six, I didn't yet understand that love and pity are not the same thing.

But I did call some friends just before my father died -- during that stretch of time when he lay in the hospice bed, feet elevated, sheet hanging over matchstick legs. I called them from the telephone that was mounted to the kitchen wall, stretching its long, coiled cord all the way out to the patio. This was a novelty; I was on the phone, but I was also outside. Pine needles littered the ground. I sat tipped back in a white plastic chair, the sun warm on my face as I spoke.

I was tethered to the house.