Ganzfeld

The spices on my Lazy Susan go flying whenever I spin it, much like Absalom, my little Aby, on the merry-go-round. He's lying in the grass laughing. Maybe I'm too frantic when I'm in the kitchen. Maybe I could get those slip-proof tabs and stick them on the bottoms of the spice containers to keep them in place. Maybe I could stick them on the bottoms of Aby's shoes.

"Just don't spin the thing so hard," my husband says. "Don't be in such a hurry." Easy for him to say, that man who never cooks with a starving, frantic four-year-old at his feet demanding food. I do hurry I know. Turmoil. It's what's for dinner. Hang on, Aby.

Aby is climbing the steps up the slide, and I like the way his dirty hair flies when he goes down. His face is ruddy. He'll be handsome when he's big. My mother calls him a heartbreaker. She's so glad I married a minister.

"Doesn't Absalom die in the end?" I once asked my husband.

"Everyone dies in the end," he said from behind his newspaper. I heard Aby stir in his nursery then fall silent. He was three weeks old before we picked a name for him.

These sunglasses make me feel sexy. They're dark with rounded lenses. Very chic. I think there are some guys across the playground checking me out. A woman walks in front of me. She is wearing a tight sweater. Oh. The men are watching her. My chest isn't like that.

"Don't be delusional. Your beauty isn't based on outward appearances." I often hear my husband, the Reverend, talking in my head.

But I think I want to be delusional just once. Maybe he'd love me like a man.

I know about her. She's faux French, and though her beauty is all exterior, she's apparently good in bed. She's got it, and he gets it--a lot of it.

This past Christmas I received a splendid set of ear muffs made from a very plush rabbit. For hours Aby and I ran our fingers through that poor animal's fur. I've been wearing my muffs to the park nearly every day. I like the way things sound after they've been filtered through the muffs: everything becomes a quiet, subdued hum. It's sound on Paxil. I feel sexy in these too.

Oh the men are looking again! Now it's a woman behind me. She's running in tight shorts. Too cold for that, way too cold. It should be warm by now. That guy on the news from the Sierra Club has got it wrong with global warming. Shivering seems to be my fate.

Fate is like a park bench. It dreams to run in its wrought iron shoes, but it's stuck here. Nice to meet you, Green Park Bench. I'm Sarah. Sorry I haven't said hi before. I can't seem to leave.

The leaves change in October around the Reverend's birthday. It's not so much that he's a particularly bad fellow--it's just that I wish I would have dated more and not married the first guy who expressed his love for me. I should have kissed more, got felt up more, loved more. Maybe I could have been a phony French girl for another man. What would that have been like? Would I have been a sex goddess? Would I be a mother now? But really the Reverend does love me. Really, he does. I know because he tells me all the time. And gives me flowers and we take walks in the woods. And he loves Aby too. Adoration is what he calls his love for his family. He says it's Christlike.

And how is Aby going to turn out? My mother hovers over him like a bird. She must think I'm inept. I do give him Kool-Aid, but he likes it so much and I like to see his red smile. It's here in his sippy cup. I cradle it in my hands and hold it between my legs. He doesn't seem to mind if it gets warm. He likes gum and candy too. Dum-Dum suckers, the cream soda flavored ones, are his favorite.

"What's with all that shit you feed him?" the Reverend asks.

"At least I breast fed him," I say. I try to execute my guilt.

The grass is green. It has been a wet, cold winter. God the spring is beautiful! I guess I shouldn't complain about the cold air today. Aby's emptying sand from his sock. His little foot is so pale. His sock is turning brown. Tide. Water.

Oh yes. The water. You know how water is: it subtly creeps into you and before you know it you're lost, nearly drowning. The Reverend knows, searching the ocean floor. He knows what salt water feels like in your nose. He was seduced by the ocean. Foolish bastard. And he wanted me to help him fish up my lost, gold wedding band from the ocean floor, as if that could bring us together, as if the mere act of diving down and emerging from the depths could magically make two one. And then he'd have good anecdotal stories to tell sleepy Sunday morning ears. I wasn't about to give him that satisfaction. Praise the Lord for foresight.

And his foresight is lacking when it comes to foreplay. His perfunctual groping; his licking; his wet, hard kisses; his unyielding body: I am disgusted. The Reverend thinks he is a good lover. I need to tell him that he's boring, that he needs to ditch the seminary loafers and don some Italian leather. Maybe his French girl will do him some good, teach him some moves, or at least some French.

Rutabagas aren't French. They're winter roots, and the Reverend loves them so.

"Rutabaga puree is better than mashed potatoes," he says. He's in bed, facing the window. "Warms the cold winters. Warms the heart. Good for lovemaking."

Peel me a rutabaga, baby. Make them julienne. Braise them in butter. Let me suck your breast.

The red Kool-Aid is warm from my body. Aby's running to me. There you go. Drink up. Nice mustache! I'll have to throw my shirt in the wash when we get home because I've spilled Aby's drink between my breasts. Aby laughs and asks why I'm bleeding; laughs and laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever seen. He's rolling on the ground and the other kids are watching him. I feel no shame, though; I love him and I laugh too. My hair has fallen from my wooden barrette. That's so French, a wooden barrette in my hair.

I have a wooden stick shift in my Peugeot. The Reverend likes it when I drive a stick.

"It's sexy, he says. "A woman with a stick shift is sublime." His fetish will be my death. Honestly! I'm not safe driving a stick. I'd rather walk.

"Run Mama!" Aby squeals, taunting me to chase him. He stops his slow run and watches some other kids. Droopy-eyed Aby. That's his father: sad eyes and a serious frown. The Reverend can never lighten up. Even sex is a study in epistemology. The Reverend's sperm are probably all droopy too. I'm sure they frown and wander aimlessly, hanging out in my fallopian tubes, bumping into walls, self consciously trying to do a job they're not quite sure how to do. They'd probably love to chat, but what's there to talk about? Melancholy Aby. Sensitive Aby. His father's son.

But why the tears? I see my grandmother's buttons when I cry: reds, yellows, indigo, some orange, a touch of violet. The sun's light is dashed apart and I get the spectrum right in my eyes. She kept her buttons in a splintered box with a tarnished lock next to her sewing machine, and when I stuck my hand deep into the box all the buttons mingled like fish around my fingers, nibbling my hand, swimming in my palm. All that color. All that light.

Aby is watching me. When I look at him, he turns his head and looks up towards the sun, squinting. Behind him is a man with shaded eyes. He's watching me while he eats his potato chips, and even after I look he continues to stare, his greased, silent lips murmuring like a fish tossed on the beach. I admire the attention. I look behind me. The grass is blowing in the wind, green ocean waves rippling across the prairie. There is no one there—it's me he's looking at. My barrette needs to be clipped. Aby. The good boy has come between me and the stranger. He is smiling, trying to cheer me. When Aby turns to play, the man wanders toward the parking lot. He wipes his hands across the windshield of my car, then taps my trunk as he walks on. He looks to see if I'm watching. He grins. I guess he's just a lonely bum, a tramp.

French tramp, tongue in the Reverend's mouth, licking his molars.

At the dentist's office, I ask the doctor if people still get gold fillings.

"Usually amalgam," he says.

"That's good because I can't stand gold," I say. We don't need gold anymore. We have paper currency that floats on air.

Warm air washing off the prairie behind me melts my goose bumps. Over by the slide there is a bench warmed by the sun. I slip my shoes off, and the crushed river rocks on the playground squirm between my toes. Aby is holding my hand, giggling. And that is a wonderful sound! My boy, giggling.

"Pull me, Aby."

We duck under the plastic slide and the hairs on my head lift in unison as we pass under it. Aby is too short for static electricity to affect his hair. As I sit on the bench, I imagine myself in slo-mo passing under the slide. There is a soundtrack, and although I am in slow motion, the filmmaker has sped up the rushing clouds. One step: my hair, rising; my eyes, shut. Aby's little legs get him under the slide. Another step: my arm rising to balance. I am on the other side. The bench is so much warmer than the one I just left.

"Aby, let me rest. Sit here next to me." I tap the park bench. I put my nose in his hair. It smells like spring dirt. Maybe a lily will grow from his head. I kiss him. He hugs me before running to the castle built on the playground.

"It's my house, Mama! I'm in my kitchen."

"I see. Are you cooking? Is it meat?"

So much meat in our castle. Wouldn't some vegetables be nice? A carrot, an eggplant maybe? I've heard you can grill those. But the Reverend likes meat: cow, pig, rabbit, sheep, chicken, duck. Aby calls me a vegetarian, which I'm not.

"See Mama! It's a tofu burrito!" The other boys laugh at him. Aby turns stoic. "It's okay," I say. "It's okay."

At the castle there is a king. The queen lives downtown. She cares little for her subjects. She probably learned that from the Reverend.

My husband left one evening and I followed him. He stepped over a discarded shutter and disappeared into an apartment complex. The steps inside creaked and groaned like old bones having sex. I could hear his voice seeping under a green door. Hers was whisky laden. He sounded jovial. I want conviviality. Why can't he enjoy my presence?

The Reverend seems to want to get caught. Maybe it's his cheap way of weaseling out of marriage. No talk, no feeling. I wonder how the sex is.

Ah feeling! Aby wears feelings like a bib. The Reverend thinks I'm unfeeling.

"Even insects don't bug you," he says accusingly. But they stay clear of him. He's got nothing they want, nothing to suck. Yes! And I told him this once. He slammed the door on the way out.

"Oh that's really mature!" I hollered out the window. He was on the sidewalk two stories down, his eyes all squinty in the sun. He tried to give me the finger, but he actually flipped off my neighbor. Aby cried a lot that night. I laughed. He flipped off an eighty-three year old, and she just waved and smiled at him.

The camera pans across the gravel. It's a close-up. I see my feet, my red toenails. My ankles are delicate. The camera moves in closer. Hair. I haven't shaved my legs. It's downy soft and blond. Bony knees. Thighs and hips. A tummy with a soft roll—the mothers know. The camera moves up while panning out, so that my chest, neck, and head all come into view nearly simultaneously. There I sit with stylish sunglasses, muffs, and head scarf. I'm sexy sitting in the sun. The camera widens its panoramic shot. I see me watching Aby. The wind is pushing the tall grass. The castle becomes nothing more than a child's set of Legos. I see the river winding through the city. I accelerate faster. Clouds! Florida's nose is jutting into the Gulf and Michigan's cold hand is gripping snow. The blue of the oceans. The arc of the Earth's edge. Higher! Farther! Faster! I'm a speck of dust, nothing more. Have I been here before? This is a strange familiarity. I'm the prairie behind me, a field total and open. Probe me and poke me. Bind my ears, cover my eyes. Figure me out. Achtung! Dunst!

Aby sneezes. A loose line of green slips from his nose and hangs from his chin. It stretches and nearly touches the ground before it breaks.

"Come, child. Wipe your nose." I hold out a tissue.

"Thanks Mama," he says, wiping it across his cheek. He runs before I can get the rest. That streak will collect dirt, I know. He'll be a pirate boy with a slashed cheek, the Reverend will walk with a peg leg, and I'll be the parrot on someone's shoulder.

I've seen the French tramp. She has curly hair and I think it's natural. The Reverend was always a sucker for curly hair. And you know if the top of her head is full of curls, it's got to be thick down there, too. Why do I have to shave, Reverend? Why must I be so clean for you?

Aby's playing with a little girl. She's got curly hair, and he is enamored. I can tell he wants to jut his finger through a ringlet. I smile. Oh no, Reverend! A natural emotional response.

In my movie the camera is on me lost among the city blocks; and as it pans away, I watch myself disappear as the city morphs into a crossword puzzle. A man scratches his head with a pencil, a puzzled lover doing a crossword. The kitchen clock is ticking, and the water's boiling on the stove. Jump! Four down is an A. Seven across is an S. Jump! Figure it out. The wife of Abraham, the son of David.

Even David had his Bathsheeba.

Aby definitely needs a bath.

I need a drink. Kool-Aid doesn't work for me. Maybe milk. And some tomato soup with a cheese sandwich.

"Aby! Five minutes!" He's chasing the curly haired girl and she's giggling. She's got a crooked smile. I envy her. I want Aby to chase me like that; I want to run effortlessly under the swings and the hanging bridges.

Two blocks from home is a bridge. It's dark under there, and no matter how dry the weather, there is always water dripping from the lacy cracks in the concrete above. Traffic roars overhead. How loud would it be if I hit the concrete supports? Would anyone hear? I ease the car through the cool wideness when I must drive that way. Immediately after the bridge is a stop light, and I always coast on my clutch, waiting for green, fearful of stopping on the slight incline. Traffic is all the more reason to sit in the park. I need the heat.

Even in the winter the funeral home was boiling hot. I felt like an egg. Grandpa lay in his coffin up in the front away from the window because the natural light made him look even more dead, more final. The balding director preferred soft, indirect lighting. I sat five rows back and watched him. Ha! Wouldn't it be a riot if Grandpa sat up suddenly and began singing Amazing Grace? But this wasn't the time for jokes, I reminded myself. This is death, and death is serious. Feign a serious pallor. Hush. I loosened the top button of my shirt. I should have worn a black bra. Outside, a furious wind began etching the glass. Could a hearse make it to a cemetery in this weather? No one seemed to be concerned as I helped carry Grandpa into the hearse. I rode with my cousin to the cemetery. She remarked about Grandma, how she just stood in front of the casket looking at the dead man inside.

"I don't think she knew who he was," she said. Grandma's faculties were failing. She clung to her daughter, my aunt.

"This was your husband," my aunt and my father said to her. She was so still in front of the casket. So still.

At the cemetery we huddled under the tent put up to keep out the snow at the grave site. The sun had come out, illuminating a few surprised flakes still lingering in the air.

"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Not all will die," the minister said. A strong wind suddenly filled the tent, and it billowed like sails caught in a gale. "Some will be transformed, their flesh made immortal. And the dead in Christ will rise first," he said. My Reverend stood stone still clutching his gloves. "For as in Adam all die. . ."

Leave it to a man to kill everyone off.

"Aby, mind your manners." He is pushing the little girl with the curls. He smiles. She's a sucker.

"Camille," her mother says. Figures it would be a French name. Aby says goodbye then runs to me. We walk to the car. The entire playground is shaded now and the weak sun is moving west. The tramp is sitting under a tree, smiling. I return the smile as I get in the car.

We travel west to our apartment. The tramp's greasy hand prints are smeared all over the windshield, and according to his prints he has thick fingers and wide palms. His hands seem soft and supple, giving somehow. Aby is in the back seat strapped in his car seat. I see him in my mirror. He is tired. He is looking out the window, watching the city move.

At the underpass water drips onto my windshield. It moves delicately around the greasy hand. The traffic is deafening. Up ahead the light is green. I need to make this light. I can't stop on an incline. I speed up just as the light turns yellow.

"Slow down, Mama," Aby says softly. I downshift then brake hard. We lurch forward and begin laughing. Cars line up behind me. The visor is shielding my eyes though I feel the sun on my mouth. When the light turns green, I rev up my engine and release the clutch. Sexy. I go forward smoothly and Aby smiles. I give him the thumbs up. I'm traveling west down the boulevard. I put up the visor. The sun is blinding and warm. The greasy hand sneaks up behind me and covers my eyes and says, "Guess Who!"

"The sun," I say.

"What?" asks Aby.

I watch myself at the wheel. I'm going fast. The camera pans to my face, and I'm still smiling, studying the tramp's hands. My sunglasses are on the passengers seat, and though I'm in slo-mo, the wheels on my Peugeot are furious. I watch me glance at Aby. He has fallen asleep, and when I look back at the road there is a truck crossing in front of me. Why is he not stopping? The driver of the truck is yelling, his wheels are sliding, his trailer veering off course. I brake but my foot hits the clutch instead.

Minutes pass.

I watch the city stand still. In the city street I see my Reverend leaving an apartment complex. His fingers are wet. He buttons his jacket against the chill. The light is dim. He's got a long walk home.