“It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out.”
⎯ George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London I go to Green park when I feel alone. Each time, I find the same row of benches nestled by the pond. White and yellow daffodils lap the edges of the pavement in the breeze, and though the sun is shining, the wind still numbs my nose and knuckles, somehow making its way past my shoes and to my feet. People pass, pushing strollers or toting their miniature dogs. Sounds from The Palace blow in the distance. Ducks sit along the water’s edge, pruning their feathers with little nips from their bills. The pond, situated between two slopes of green, makes me feel at home. Growing up, when I wanted to escape my father, I sat by the edge of the pond behind our house. It seemed to be the only place he wouldn’t come looking for me if I was that day’s target. In the summer, thick algae blooms blossomed, nearly covering the entire expanse of water. If I sat still enough, once all the creatures forgot my presence, carp returned to puckering their lips at the surface and bullfrogs bellowed from one curve of the pond to the other. A muskrat or two propelled themselves through the lime-green muck, and I began to feel relief. In the fall, starlings swarmed the sky. Their collected chirps formed one large chorus as they flew between trees, perching, finally, in the largest oak tree on our property. This migration seemed to be something my father and I could share. For what felt like hours, dad and I sat on the back deck and watched the movement of the birds above. In Green Park, pigeons crowd the sky. They dodge each other midflight, feathers thrashing together as they swoop and dive in a countless sea. Male pigeons strut around my bench, jutting their chests out like pufferfish. Their low humming coos reverberate around me. Near the center of the park sits a low hanging cherry tree, where parakeets flock and flash their bright neon greens. Their beaks burst like blood oranges, eyes lined with a similar tangerine. Such colorful birds that don’t belong here remind me of the peacock our neighbor Greta had, that you could hear cry and cry even through the deep patch of woods that separated her land from ours. My mother said his calls sounded like a cat slowly dying, and she’d roll her eyes every time he started up again. My brother and I only ever saw that bird once, when we’d been curious enough to risk getting our necks wrung for trespassing. As we crossed into her land, every stick that broke, every leaf that curled under our hunched steps seemed to send us into a twitch-fit of fear. His calls getting nearer, a flush of bright green and blue swished from behind a barn. We’d never seen a bird up close that was so ornamental. It seemed a shame that he be sentenced to a life like this. At the sight of us, the big bird sent its long tail feathers up in a flick. The iridescence that shown off all of his plumage made me think of June bugs and hummingbirds, and the plum-crazy purple Challenger dad had sitting in the garage. I was in awe, and when that pretty bird turned and hissed at me, I knew we ought to get out of there. I’d been beat by bird wings too many times to risk getting smacked upside the head again and have Greta hear the commotion. My brother and I were far too chicken to set off on any sort of rescue mission, though every time thereafter that his mews carried their way to our house, I’d wish that we’d have set him free. Though I didn’t know where peacocks originated from, I certainly knew it wasn’t central Indiana. *** On my way back from Le Centre Pompidou, the sky churned in its usual swirl of grey. The streets were lined with bare trees and never-ending slabs of concrete. I’d begun to wear myself down. I stepped over piles of shit and piss along the Seine. Something I’d gotten used to. The cold wind from the river made my ungloved fingers ache, and I turned onto a side street to get away from it. Outside a roughed-up apartment, I came across a door on its side by the road. I stopped to smoke, to take a closer look at the door. Once white, the muck of the city had turned it yellow and spotted with an ugly brown spray. There were indents in it shaped like boot prints. Broken brass hinges hung and shook with the movement of passing cars. The image was enough to conjure another memory. I heard dad’s drunk feet come up the stairs again. Instead of going to his room like I’d hoped, he turned and stumbled toward my brother and I’s doors. Mark, trying to prevent dad from bothering him, locked his door. Dad fumbled with the knob, and yelled “Hey man, where’s my sack?” “I don’t have it,” my brother said and sighed. Though, I knew he’d pinched a little bud from dad’s stash when he thought he could. Pounding his fist on the door, dad yelled again, “I know you have it. You’re a thief, a fucking thief,” and his pounding got harder. “I don’t have it, you fucking drunk,” my brother yelled now, his voice hoarse. “Open the door,” dad yelled and hit his shoulder against it, “open the goddamned door!” He hit it harder, pushing his full weight against it again, and again. Until the hollow wood gave. I heard the frame splintering and dad crash to the ground. I flicked my cigarette to the ground and smudged it out with my shoe. I took one last look at the door and kept walking. *** When I was fifteen, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. That year was filled with doctors’ visits and surgeries, and a gloom in our family we had not yet experienced. One May day, toward the end of her recovery, dad pulled up to our house with a pickup bed full of trees. A trailer teetered behind him, filled with even more spilling over its edges. It appeared that he had bought just about every damn sapling Lowe’s had in their little outdoor garden center. When my brother and I greeted him in the driveway, he tossed us each a pair of gloves and told us to get unloading. After the trees were unloaded, we propped mom up in a chair outside in the shade. Dad handed her a scrap of paper and a pen and had her draw a map of the property, plotting where she wanted each new tree to go. Along the furthest edge of the barn, she had us line eight peach trees and two nectarines. Bordering our driveway, two willow oaks and three apples. Next to the stream that fed into our pond, she wanted three or four different birch trees. And finally, in a circle surrounding the telephone pole protruding from the yard, she detailed a delicate pattern of plums, pears and flowering cherries. When asked by my brother why he’d gone and bought all these trees, my father tried to explain the gesture away as an investment for the property. When it came to determining the value of a home, people payed more for one surrounded by trees, he said. In a moment outside of dad’s earshot, I tried to explain to my brother that dad’s investment was really some form of an emotional response. Planting things, to dad, was a metaphor for growth out of grief. To which my brother responded, “Bullshit.” He must’ve racked up thousands of dollars at the Lowes that day. Though dad was known for his flamboyance in spending at times, my brother and I were not yet accustomed to such economic freedom in our home. Later, I learned that he’d put the entire purchase on credit. *** In the basement of my hotel, I ate breakfast, hungover. A dark stain on the wall caught my attention. It’s liquid origin probably brown and dripping. After a moment of staring at it, I was brought back to my parent’s first house. The one in Home Place, just outside of the city. I used to pick pill bugs out of the gravel there while dad worked on his cars in the driveway. I’m in my small room, alone. On the floor, tucked into the corner opposite my bed, my knees are curled to my chest. Somehow, in memory, the walls are light blue. Though I know they were yellow because of the hand-stitched yellow flowers on the pillow cases mom made to match. I still have one, the size meant for a child, but big enough to fit in the crook of my neck. I can hear the footsteps of my father, heavy with drunken rage. He throws something, a can maybe, and I hear liquid slosh and spray. I rise, careful to step over the floor spots that creak, and make my way to him in the kitchen. He’s hunched over at the table, his body too big for the chair. I approach him, place my hand on his arm that’s damp with sweat. He looks down at me and begins to weep, envelops me in his arms. His chest contracts back and forth and I’m frozen. The older Madame that brought me breakfast interrupted my memory. She must’ve noticed that I’d been chewing the same bit of croissant quite a while. “Ça va?” “Oui, oui. Ça va!” I assured her and took a larger bite to help sell, tried to shake this moment of my childhood from my day. *** Inside Saint Paul’s, I focus on the architecture. My eyes navigate the large pillars that sprout from the ground and dive, cascading back into arches. The cathedral’s white stone flickers as somber shadows sway. Stacked on altars, votives lit by mourners glow orange. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of candles burn. I take a step away from the walkway, standing in wait until I’m alone. I floate my hand over the pinpricks of flame and, feeling their warmth rise. A small metal box with a large £2 on it proclaims you can light your own, for a small donation. The box’s presence deepens the wrinkle in between my brows. I wonder if God would approve of a charge for prayer. I pretend to search my pockets for coins and fish out a piece of broken green glass. I’d picked it off the street earlier, grabbed it for no particular reason. I flip it over between my fingers. My having gathered it frightens me. I think of the front yard, back at my parents’ house. My father a collector of things cast aside. Decaying cars, like giant rusted lawn ornaments, sit in wait of his handiwork. Old dishwashers, and scratch n’ dent microwaves stacked in piles on the back deck, grow green slime in pools of rainwater. The house dad once took pride in, disheveled. He no longer tries to fix things. And in the basement, where he spends his nights, the floor is flush with empty Budweiser cans. Nights at home, I fell asleep to the crush of aluminum. The sound bounced, rose through the vents as dad prepped for a trip to the scrap yard. Ed, the owner, gave him a cent and a half per can. The light from outside changes, illuminating the deep purples and pinks of the stained-glass windows. And I slip the bit of glass inside the box. I strike a match and light my own candle, just because, and try not to roll my eyes at the worshippers, their heads down in prayer. I want them to take in the beautiful colors around them. To open their eyes. I wanted them to look at the glass. *** Spring is fluttering through Green park, new stems and blooms spotting the large tracks of green. A moorhen leads her freshly hatched babies through the sloshing slick of water. The babies, like black cotton balls, rise and fall and rise again with each swelling wind. They are smaller than the quail I tried to hatch once when I was younger. My father built me an incubator out of a blue igloo cooler, a lightbulb, and some foam. I delicately controlled the temperature by propping open the lid at various widths, and the humidity by soaking a pink dish sponge with water. The contraption wasn’t perfect, but with the care I took in checking the temperature, in turning each egg three times a day, for eighteen days, I managed to keep the little suckers alive long enough to hatch. The day they were supposed to come, I spent the entire morning and afternoon camped out by the cooler on the floor in our living room. Every slight noise I heard that sounded like a peck made me flip open the lid and inspect each egg for cracks. At the first break of shell, I couldn’t take my eyes off the spectacle. And I was impatient. Though my mother had warned me not to intervene, I simply couldn’t help myself from trying to assist in their hatching. Carefully, with my thumb nail, I peeled away chips of shell to reveal a slime covered chick barely bigger than a peach pit. Once I made what I deemed a big enough opening, I moved onto the next egg. And the next, until all of the eggs had been cracked open by my paws. In my excitement, I didn’t realize that each time I opened the lid, I was allowing all of the heat and moisture to escape, which made their shells harden. The speckled shells became too strong for the chick’s soft and fleshy beaks to break through. And they sat in their liquid, growing cold. When I’d recognized that the pecking had stopped, and their movements were growing slow, I tried desperately to help them. I cracked open shells and poured their slippery bodies in my palms, but they had all gone limp. *** I’d sunk into darkness again. All the lights off in my room but the fluorescent bulb in the bathroom. The window open, evening light cast through the sheer white curtains. Maybe it was the cold and the fact that people didn’t smile there, but I couldn’t understand how Hemingway and Baldwin found joy in Paris. Though, what did I know of joy and men? Restless, I went to the rooftop of my hotel for the first time, sober. The concrete barrier that stood in the middle seemed taller than I’d remembered. Pressing myself against it, I lifted myself up with my arms to look over and saw that the ground was too far away. I fought the urge to climb down, wondering why I felt so much fear now. I forced myself to look at the view. Almost-golden light warmed from the flats around me, faded into mist in the fog. Over the metal rooftops, chimneys released slow curls of grey. I tried to light a cigarette, but the wind licked out the flame. I grew frustrated and chucked my cheap lighter out into the dark. I hunkered down quick when it made a loud ping on a roof not too far away. The last thing I needed was to get caught up there. Cars honked from below, and a women’s laughter echoed up around me. I slumped lower, propped myself up against the concrete, and made myself relish in the experience. This was something of a full life, I thought. This had to be full. *** While my mother is visiting London, we take a walk, wandering the streets that surround her hotel. We pass a flower shop that has a window display overflowing with reindeer moss and slices of live edge wood. Phalaenopsis stalks sprout from the moss, their white petals flecked with pink and yellow and green. It seems to have been decorated specifically to draw my mother in. After we enter, a florist greets us, asking if we need assistance with a crisp English accent that delights my mother. The woman frets her brows together, her only acknowledgement of my mother’s kid-like joy, but leaves us to browse the shop after we shake our heads no. Mom points to individual flowers, naming each without missing a beat. Delphinium, Chrysanthemum, Lilly of the Valley. She takes note of the European floral design, the distinctive t-shape style of bouquets. Stopping in front of a vase spilling with Queen Anne’s Lace, she sucks in their scent, exhaling slow through her mouth. The creases surrounding her eyes soften as she remarks on their perfume smell. She says they remind her of her mother’s flower shop back in Iowa. They remind her of the delivery boy that hit on her each time he stopped by. What was his name? And the milk crates she sat on outside during her smoke breaks. Her mother, whose arthritic hands ached by the end of each day. In this moment, faint streaks of light pool through the windowpane and onto her grey streaked hair, and I see how fragile she has become. The recent years of her marriage to my father have taken their toll on her, as staying married to someone you no longer love can do. Not that she has admitted this to me, but this unacknowledged truth tugs at the corners of her eyes. I want to tell her to leave him, but we know that she will stay. I don’t understand why she feels that the rest of her life must be like this. She would disagree, but I think her allegiance to my father is based on its familiarity. On the comfort of what has become familiar. But I too am lonely, know that both running, and routine are not places to hide. I look at her, here with me in London, place her hand in mine, and decide to let us have this moment of small joy.
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