Static

Magg picks up the receiver and hears static.  Her fathers voice is haggard, he announces he’s coming to visit.  He tells her that he’s tired of Arleen and his eyes are bored. “Great! I’ll set up the guest room!”  He arrives a week later, wearing the brown corduroy pants Magg gave him for Christmas.  He opens his worn Eagle Creek 22 inch carry on and gives Magg maple syrup candies from back home.  She thanks him and serves him Peppermint tea in ceramic cups she painted.  They sit at her kitchen table before bed, the first night, the warmth of the porcelain heating their hands. 

“I’m not well” he says. He paints a picture of his life with his words.  He tells her about Arleen, how much she complains about her developing rheumatism.  She has gouty arthritis, crystals formed within the synovial fluid of her joints, and it’s started interfering with normal movement.  She had a severe hip fracture last spring, and complains constantly.  He says he wishes he were still younger so that he could live freely.  “You live so freely.”

He doesn’t sit still long.  They finish their tea. Magg goes to sleep, is up early for work the next morning and leaves a note for her father on the table. She is up by seven, out the door by 7:45, in black pants and a crème turtleneck.  She drives her blue Honda to work, listening to the news and sipping coffee from her Sumatra Tumbler, an end of the year thank you gift from one of her fourth graders last year.  Layne in overalls, and a middle part, offered it to her the last day of school, once all the other kids had already left the room, hiccupping as she extended her arm.

He stays up late, pacing, and reading a novel by Roch Carrier.  He meets Sheila, Magg’s kitten.  She is covered up in smooth white fur coat, and creeps in, sliding herself against the Saybrook Sage painted walls, as if the middle of the room is lava. He can’t sleep, has Wittmaack-Ekbom's syndrome.  Eventually, he gets three hours of sleep and wakes up, disoriented, while Magg is at work.  He lifts his heavy head from the cotton pillowcases and makes toast for breakfast.  He eats it standing, with current jam and goes outside immediately.  He spends the entire day gardening, he wears Magg’s straw hat and leans over on his knees, pulling broad-leaved weeds up from the ground, dandelions and clovers, yellow wood sorrel, humming invented songs, fused with songs from his youth.

            When Magg gets home she is frustrated. Her stubborn father gardens until sunset, then cooks an entire meal.  He makes four bean chili and cornbread.  They eat it at the kitchen table, slowly.  Magg tries to talk to him about Arleen, about how he’s doing.  He tells her stories about second grade. She won’t let him clean up, he’s been gardening and cooking all day, he must be exhausted.  He helps her clean anyways and tries to do more than her, doesn’t want her washing the dishes.  He wears the checkered dish-towel over his right shoulder, like a chef.

            He gardens everyday.  While she is at work, he pierces holes in the ground with the compost gardening tool.  He fills buckets with weeds with his synthetic suede gardening gloves.  The third night, washing his face in the sink with a Dove soap bar and lukewarm water he notices a brown recluse spider on the wall.  He dries his blistered hands on a beach towel and places a cup over the spider, drags the glass cup along the wall smoothly, and then onto the tiled floor. The spider is trapped beneath the glass now. It cannot escape.  He falls asleep after only one chapter of his book. 

The next morning, before cinnamon raisin toast, he puts on his gardening gloves, and slips a piece of paper beneath the cup.  He carries the spider outside to the garden.  He uses the Felco pruner to cut off all of the spider’s legs.  Then he cuts off the spider’s head.  He puts all of the pieces of the spider beneath the dirt and buries it, meticulously. Sheila watches him from the front door, suspiciously. When he is done he takes off his gloves and goes back into the house and waits for cinnamon raisin toast to brown in the toaster.  The butter knife cuts into the butter easily, shades of a golden retriever, smoothly and melts into the bread.  He chews and swallows and puts the knife in the dishwasher and goes outside and gardens all day.  He wants it to look perfect.

            Magg is tired when she gets home.  Her lipstick has faded completely by now.  She lets her father cook the meal again, this time she doesn’t help clean up.  She sits at the table and drinks red wine in a large glass after dinner. She grades papers, Vocab. Test # 9 with a ultra fine point sharpie and forgets to feed Sheila.

            He gardens for the majority of the trip.  He is convinced by Magg that they should get out of the house and go on a day trip at some point, so they go to Pfeiffer beach for the day and drink red Kool-aid and it makes their teeth red.  Kool-aid is his favorite, it reminds him of preschool.  They watch the waves tumble and spit up foam, little bits of rocks, the cool sea-breeze blowing and the drag of loose seaweed in the tide.  The waves splash up jolting against boulders like a dragon spitting up fire.  The mist clings in their hair on the walk back to the car.

            He talks to Arleen the next night on the telephone, with another cup of Peppermint tea around nine o’clock.  He sits up tall as he talks to her, and she tells him about how her joints ache.  He looks at the chipping lemon-meringue paint on the wall and considers options.

            The fog creeps in during his two-week stay, it makes Magg anxious.  She wants her father to see the California sun at it’s best.  She swirls the spoon in her tea faster, hears the metal clink, watches a whirlpool. It got more imposing in the mornings.  She resented the fact that she couldn’t take time off from work while he was there, but she needed the money. She left with a coat of red lipstick freshly applied to her lips and her hair in a bun atop her head, so as not to obstruct her face.

            On Saturday night she takes him out to an Italian Restaurant.  They serve the food on extra large white plates, Magg orders the five meat Tuscan pasta and he gets shrimp scampi.  He is telling her about how in second grade, his science teacher brought chicken feet to class.  “Yeah” he tells her, using his hands now as he speaks “he made his mother’s soup recipe, Chicken Claw Soup that he said he thought was delicious, but there were entire chicken legs in it, all blubbery. And he showed us how the ligaments moved in the claw after that. That really turned me off of meat.”  She looks up at him, her fork in her left hand, and tilts her head causing an elevation in her mandible, demonstrating backwards flexion as she smiles.

When they get back from the restaurant Magg takes a shower.  Sheila meows hungrily from the other side of the bathroom door, but the water pours from the shower head and she goes, unnoticed, retreats to the armchair and curls up. Magg forgets to feed her often.

He feels he has a poor man’s memory when he wakes up.  The sky is dimly lit but he labors over the garden nonetheless.  He prunes weeds and digs.  But now, the earth turns cold and damp in his hands.  In the yard all day, as the sky changes colors, he flickers like a movie you watch in fast forward, non-stop motion.

Eventually, the sky lights a small path in his head.  Pink rises up from the horizon like steam from the Augustine volcano.  He comes to a resolution while he is brushing his teeth in front of the mirror after dinner, in her stark white bathroom that smells like pills.

Soon, the day of his departure comes.  The whole trip would be like a momentary lapse in routine. He leaves early in the morning. Magg dials the Bay porter while it is still dark out.  The previous night, over generous slices of apple pie and Mint Lavender tea, they had both talked to Arleen, one at a time like kids taking turns thanking their grandparents for Christmas gifts.  They reassured her that the flight would be on time and gave her the flight number and airline.  She had missed him.  “I can’t wait till you’re back.  You know this Montana sky misses you.” Arleen’s eyebrows arched longingly.  She sat in a white plastic chair on the porch, the air dry, and the smooth jazz from the living room stereo was hardly audible. The carpet inside was recently vacuumed, there were lines and shades to prove it, and all of the beds were made. 

Magg finished the conversation with her, sending her love. They talked secretly about him, on the phone. Arleen informed Magg that he’d been telling her he wasn’t all right.  Magg reassured her that all was well, that he hadn’t gotten much rest but that he was doing just fine, non-stop energy as always! They hung up quickly. Arleen bit her nails nervously in a plastic chair on her deck throughout the conversation. 

He is up reading before his alarm sounds.  Magg herself has trouble sleeping that night and they greet each other swollen eyed downstairs in the morning.  The light from the moon isn’t visible and the kitchen tiles are cold on her bare feet.  He eats a cherry scone at the table as Magg puts on her socks. “Well I’m glad you visited.” She wears her hair half up and tugs at her fleece lavender v-neck.  “It was good for me, a change of scenery.” He tucks the last bite of scone between his lips. “It’s always good to see you.”  The van honks.

Before work, Magg cleans up the bedroom he’d slept in.  She puts the linens in the wicker laundry basket to be washed, and folds his extra blankets. She finds a letter from him tucked between the cotton pillows. . “Magg, sweetie, I love you. I’ve enjoyed the garden. Hope to visit you again soon!” She smiles to herself, folds the letter and puts it in the left pocket of her robe.  She puts her own laundry into the machine and fills it with Tide liquid detergent. She slips on a periwinkle silk blouse and fills her tumbler with dripping coffee.

Before driving away, she looks at the garden. All of the weeds are gone, the garden is cleaned up nicely.  In the middle of the peonies, there is a section missing.  One foot by one foot, a dirt colored square.  It looks as if something has been buried there, little mounds of dirt like microscopic sand dunes. 

He had planted it perfectly.  He buried it three feet deep, so that none of the other animals could get to it.  The earth was freshly hydrated, and Sheila fit softly, her white coat browned in dirt.

            When she goes home she looks at the note again.  On the back, in the lower corner, he had written in small hunched letters toppling over each other, light grey 6B pencil lead. Sorry.

When he calls later that night she picks up the receiver and doesn’t talk. He hears static.