The Bay of Defeat
March Easter visits kill me.
It just so happens, I got out of bed the wrong side, having thrown the covers asunder, only to step barefooted on a chip of dog bone, causing me to limp and curse my way to the bathroom. Standing over the bowl, I remember how my urine once flowed like a waterfall. I wash my hands, check myself in the mirror, notice my eyes are a little bloodshot, and run a hand over my chin’s stubble. It can wait another day. I don’t care much for this type of toothpaste. It’s been here for a year. I have the idea that when the family come tomorrow, they will use it up inside a week. They brought the damn stuff here anyway. My hair stands up like strands of white sea anemone on my scalp.
Having showered, drying the parts I can reach without hurting myself, I go back into the bedroom, careful to mind that fucking shard of dog bone, and pull up the bedclothes. Who cares whether the bed is made or not? Maybe tomorrow, when the family arrive. I throw on a pair of shorts, ‘t’ shirt, and head down the creaking stairs. Reckless, my dog, waits to greet me, his tail no longer a brush of activity but a gentle sweep of a greeting from one old soul to another. Damn you, Reck’, I say, rubbing the old lad’s neck, my foot still sore.
Breakfast is pretty much a non-event. I put the kettle to the tap, fill it just enough for one cup of tea and a little extra for warming the teapot, and place it on the stove. Methodically, I prepare the cup, placing it on the saucer and set the wire tea-strainer set across the lip. I pull the tea-caddy down from the shelf, placing it next to the teapot on the drainer. The kettle must whistle a full minute. I pour a little of the hot water into the teapot, swirl it around and slip the water into the sink before putting in a caddy-spoon of tea, and pour the still boiling water over the tealeaves.
I eat my cereal always from the same bowl, use the same amount of milk and choose my favorite spoon. There are so many things I don’t understand. Fuck! What is wrong with me? Why do I have a favourite spoon? Just another thing to wonder about. For some reason, I like the fit of it in my mouth, not too dished, and not too flat.
Under the kitchen table, Reckless flops his body over my feet. Maybe he’s sorry for the pain he’s caused me.
I eat while staring out the window. Occasionally I’ll catch a glimpse of something, a yacht, maybe, or something not of our species. The ocean, from my seated position at the table, fills up the lower half of the window, the rest filled with sky.
I worry about the family visiting for Thanksgiving. I invite them knowing it will worry me. They don’t understand the reason for the holiday, any more than they understand me. But it’s family. I heard, I think it was a nephew, declaring on his last visit, a year ago, Uncle Harry stares out of the window too much.
Only Reckless, my dog, understands my comings and goings on the beach. After breakfast, he and I set off on the same walk, taking the same amount of time, treading the same stretch of shoreline; a mile up the shore and a mile back. Reckless does not chase sticks anymore but is content to amble at his master’s pace. Seen from a distance I look like every other man. Perhaps a little too stocky, maybe shorter than some, with blue eyes and sharp creases put there by the wind and the cold. My beard turned white with salt, sun, and age.
Back from the walk, I wash the dishes, rinse out the teapot, turn it upside down on the draining board.
At 8:00 am I enter my study, sit at my desk, and close my eyes. I think about everything I wrote in my head during the walk. My study, if described, would be a disturbing cliché, but with a view to gladden even a sad heart. One easy chair, too many cushions, several colorful rugs, a piano in the corner, art on the walls; nothing expensive, sketches my father drew. It surprises no-one that Margaret Tarrant prints, colorful, warm, and full of childhood fantasies hang on the walls. Then there are the cards, notes, calendars, actual things; things to treasure. It’s not for anyone else to understand why. My extended family don’t get it. This next few days will be a bear. I’ve got nothing to say; nothing outside of the deepest love for them. But that’s not very poetic. Well, anyway, I will do my best to entertain and make them welcome, but the effort will leave me crippled. On their leaving the goodbyes always the sound the same, Harry, we don’t see enough of you.
I see enough of them. Truly. I see enough of them once a year. I have no intention of wanting anymore to be solid in their lives. We can quibble about how much is enough. What is to be remembered is how much shame I have brought upon them periodically. They are Swedish, a reminder of other times. I wish for myself that I could care, word by word, to say the right thing.
Once a year is plenty.
I haven’t liked myself much this year, full of complaints and grumblings. But of my family, everything they once were to me, now distanced, are sensible as I am so uncertain for them. I wish there were a different way to salute their love for me, other than to bring them to America, through New York, to a festive table that we do not naturally celebrate. What I want to say is this: stay away. But I’ll burn in hell before I have the courage to say that. Instead, I go about the world — speaking to no one I knew — living completely in a world of strangers.
There are hundreds of thousands of books and magazines and newspapers being printed, and I have never had talent enough to get a single thing printed. I have dreamed all my life of doing something good and fine, and I have never succeeded in interesting anybody enough in anything I ever wrote. I say, even if I could do this, how much heart and soul do you think is left in me for trying, when I’ll get kicked in the face time and again? But I promise I will be faithful to the idea.
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