er in defeat.
"When were you coming from?"
"I didn't say"
We drive home in silence. Alba is sleeping. Henry stares out the window. The
sky is cloudless and pink in the east, and there are more cars out now, early
commuters. As we wait for the stoplight at Ohio Street I hear seagulls squawking.
The streets are dark with salt and water. The city is soft, white, obscured by
snow. Everything is beautiful. I am detached, I am a movie. We are seemingly
unscathed, but sooner or later there will be hell to pay.
BIRTHDAY
Thursday, June 15, 2006 (Clare is 35)
Clare: Tomorrow is Henry's birthday. I'm in Vintage Vinyl, trying to find an
album he will love that he doesn't already have. I was kind of counting on asking
Vaughn, the owner of the shop, for help, because Henry's been coming here for
years. But there's a high school kid behind the counter. He's wearing a Seven
Dead Arson T-shirt and probably wasn't even born when most of the stuff in the
shop was being recorded. I flip through the bins. Sex Pistols, Patti Smith,
Supertramp, Matthew Sweet. Phish, Pixies, Pogues, Pretenders. B-52's, Kate
Bush, Buzzcocks. Echo and the Bunnymen. The Art of Noise. The Nails. The
Clash, The Cramps, The Cure. Television. I pause over an obscure Velvet
Underground retread, trying to remember if I've seen it lying around the house,
but on closer scrutiny I realize it's just a mishmash of stuff Henry has on other
albums. Dazzling Killmen, Dead Kennedys. Vaughn comes in carrying a huge
box, heaves it behind the counter, and goes back out. He does this a few more
times, and then he and the kid start to unpack the boxes, piling LPs onto the
counter, exclaiming over various things I've never heard of. I walk over to
Vaughn and mutely fan three LPs before him. "Hi, Clare," he says, grinning
hugely. "How's it going?"
"Hi, Vaughn. Tomorrow's Henry's birthday. Help."
He eyeballs my selections. "He's already got those two," he says nodding at
Lilliput and the Breeders, "and that's really awful," indicating the Plasmatics.
"Great cover, though, huh?"
"Yeah. Do you have anything in that box he might like?"
"Nah, this is all fifties. Some old lady died. You might like this, I just got this
yesterday." He pulls a Golden Palominos compilation out of the New Arrivals
bin. There's a couple new things on it, so I take it. Suddenly Vaughn grins at me.
"I've got something really oddball for you-I've been saving it for Henry." He
steps behind the counter and fishes around in the depths for a minute. "Here."
Vaughn hands me an LP in a blank white jacket. I slide the record out and read
the label: " Annette Lyn Robinson, Paris Opera, May 13, 1968, Lulu." I look at
Vaughn, questioningly. "Yeah, not his usual thing, huh? It's a bootleg of a
concert; it doesn't officially exist. He asked me to keep an eye out for her stuff a
while back, but it's not my usual thing, either, so I found it and then I kept
forgetting to tell him. I listened to it; it's really nice. Good sound quality."
"Thank you," I whisper.
"You're welcome. Hey, what's the big deal?"
"She's Henry's mother."
Vaughn raises his eyebrows and his forehead scrunches up comically. "No
kidding? Yeah...he looks like her. Huh, that's interesting. You'd think he would
have mentioned it."
"He doesn't talk about her much. She died when he was little. In a car
accident."
"Oh. That's right, I sort of remember that. Well, can I find anything else for
you?"
"No, that's it." I pay Vaughn and leave, hugging the voice of Henry's mother
to me as I walk down Davis Street in an ecstasy of anticipation.
Friday, June 16, 2006 (Henry is 43, Clare is 35)
Henry: It's my forty-third birthday. My eyes pop open at 6:46 a.m. even though I
have the day off from work, and I can't get back to sleep. I look over at Clare and
she's utterly abandoned to slumber, arms cast apart and hair fanned over her
pillow willy-nilly. She looks beautiful, even with creases from the pillowcase
across her cheeks. I get out of bed carefully, go to the kitchen, and start the coffee.
In the bathroom I run the water for a while, waiting for it to get hot. We should
get a plumber in here, but we never get around to it. Back in the kitchen I pour a
cup of coffee, carry it to the bathroom, and balance it on the sink. I lather my face,
and start to shave. Ordinarily, I am expert at shaving without actually looking at
myself, but today, in honor of my birthday, I take inventory.
My hair has gone almost white; there's a bit of black left at the temples and my
eyebrows are still completely black. I've grown it out some, not as long as I used
to wear it before I met Clare, but not short, either. My skin is wind-roughened
and there are creases at the edges of my eyes and across my forehead and lines
that run from my nostrils to the corners of my mouth. My face is too thin. All of
me is too thin. Not Auschwitz thin, but not normal thin, either. Early stages of
cancer thin, perhaps. Heroin addict thin. I don't want to think about it, so I
continue shaving. I rinse off my face, apply aftershave, step back, and survey the
results.
At the library yesterday someone remembered that it's my birthday and so
Roberto, Isabelle, Matt, Catherine, and Amelia gathered me up and took me to
Beau Thai for lunch. I know there's been some talk at work about my health,
about why I have suddenly lost so much weight and the fact that I have recently
aged rapidly. Everyone was extra nice, the way people are to AIDS victims and
chemotherapy patients. I almost long for someone to just ask me, so I can lie to
them and get it over with. But instead we joked around and ate Pad Thai and
Prik King, Cashew Chicken and Pad Seeuw. Amelia gave me a pound of killer
Colombian coffee beans. Catherine, Matt, Roberto and Isabelle splurged and got
me the Getty facsimile of the Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta, which I have been
lusting after in the Newberry bookstore for ages. I looked up at them,
heartstruck, and I realized that my co-workers think I am dying. "You guys..." I
said, and I couldn't think how to go on, so I didn't. It's not often that words fail
me.
Clare gets up, Alba wakes up. We all get dressed, and pack the car. We're
going to Brookfield Zoo with Gomez and Charisse and their kids. We spend the
day ambling around, looking at monkeys and flamingoes, polar bears and otters.
Alba likes the big cats best. Rosa holds Alba's hand and tells her about dinosaurs.
Gomez does a great impression of a chimp, and Max and Joe rampage around,
pretending to be elephants and playing hand-held video games. Charisse and
Clare and I stroll aimlessly, talking about nothing, soaking in the sunlight. At
four o'clock the kids are all tired and cranky and we pack them back in the cars,
promise to do it again soon, and go home.
The baby-sitter arrives promptly at seven. Clare bribes and threatens Alba to
be good, and we escape. We are dressed to the nines, at Clare's insistence, and as
we sail south on Lake Shore Drive I realize that I don't know where we're going.
"You'll see," says Clare. "It's not a surprise party, is it?" I ask apprehensively.
"No," she assures me. Clare exits the Drive at Roosevelt and threads her way
through Pilsen, a Hispanic neighborhood just south of downtown. Groups of
kids are playing in the streets, and we weave around them and finally park near
20th and Racine. Clare leads me to a run-down two-flat and rings the bell at the
gate. We are buzzed in, and we make our way through the trash-littered yard and
up precarious stairs. Clare knocks on one of the doors and it is opened by
Lourdes, a friend of Clare's from art school. Lourdes smiles and beckons us
inside, and as we step in I see that the apartment has been transformed into a
restaurant with only one table. Beautiful smells are wafting around, and the table
is laid with white damask, china, candles. A record player stands on a heavy
carved sideboard. In the living room are cages full of birds: parrots, canaries, tiny
lovebirds. Lourdes kisses my cheek and says, "Happy birthday, Henry," and a
familiar voice says, "Yeah, happy birthday!" I stick my head into the kitchen and
there's Nell. She's stirring something in a saucepan and she doesn't stop even
when I wrap my arms around her and lift her slightly off the ground. "Whooee!"
she says. "You been eatin' your Wheaties!" Clare hugs Nell and they smile at
each other. "He looks pretty surprised," Nell says, and Clare just smiles even
more broadly. "Go on and sit down " Nell commands. "Dinner is ready."
We sit facing each other at the table. Lourdes brings small plates of exquisitely
arranged antipasti: transparent prociutto with pale yellow melon, mussels that
are mild and smoky, slender strips of carrot and beet that taste of fennel and
olive oil. In the candlelight Clare's skin is warm and her eyes are shadowed. The
pearls she's wearing delineate her collar bones and the pale smooth area above
her breasts; they rise and fall with her breath. Clare catches me staring at her and
smiles and looks away. I look down and realize that I have finished eating my
mussels and am sitting there holding a tiny fork in the air like an idiot. I put it
down and Lourdes removes our plates and brings the next course.
We eat Nell's beautiful rare tuna, braised with a sauce of tomatoes, apples,
and basil. We eat small salads full of radicchio and orange peppers and we eat
little brown olives that remind me of a meal I ate with my mother in a hotel in
Athens when I was very young. We drink Sauvignon Blanc, toasting each other
repeatedly. ("To olives!" "To baby-sitters!" "To Nell!") Nell emerges from the
kitchen carrying a small flat white cake that blazes with candles. Clare, Nell, and
Lourdes sing "Happy Birthday" to me. I make a wish and blow out the candles
in one breath. "That means you'll get your wish," says Nell, but mine is not a
wish that can be granted. The bird