Moments With You

Rowboat

     "It's the serotonin," she said.

     She pulled the oars out of the lily pad surrounding the small white boat,  themselves surrounded by the gleaming pond.  Along the shore small houses were shadowed under pines and oaks. An unsure and splintered dock came out from behind the pads. The slowly settling sun was on her blonde hair, which was pulled back but with the usual strand falling almost into her eyes. I thought no one could  be so young.  I also thought nothing could be so lovely.

     "What's the serotonin?" I asked.

     "That you are in love with me. It's the serotonin."

     Her English was good, but accented. She often inverted phrases so that she sounded like a a simultaneous translation from the French as a diplomat was speaking quickly.

    "Something about me," she said, "set it off. Your receptors cannot handle it." 

    Whatever the chemo-clinical basis, she was right about the love. 

    "So," I said, "it's not my fault."

   "No," she said," it is not your fault. But it is not the same with me."

   ‘Fault' was based, but only in part,  to the difference in our ages.  It was beyond ridiculous and I knew I was grotesque to have told this girl, in her blue bikini, now putting oars back in the water, that I loved her. 

    "I'm in love with you," I had said.

    She put her feet on my knees as she began to row.  I felt the rhythm of her body against me. As the oars came forward her feet pressed in. As the oars receded the pressure withdrew.  It was a  more than confusing moment.  She looked at me with the expression that had first suggested she might feel a special way for me, despite the centuries and generations between us, despite the conflicting and restraining context between us, despite that she could not buy a drink in Massachusetts, and I had lived three life times, but had not become wise.

   I did not remember the first the rush of serotonin for this person I have watched emerge. It was certainly this visit. It might have been when I first saw her look at me when I was clowning on the deck with many of her cousins, having drinks and arguing about Freud and deconstruction. 

"I love watching you make them happy," she said.

 She took her feet away.  That moment was over.   She was crying.  Her bright eyes were narrow and her face blotched and red.

 "You are suffering," she said, "and I can never give you what you want."

   Oh, boy, I thought, have I  messed up, but it was only a foreshadowing of what I was yet to do.. A duck swam not to far from us.  I thought at first if it  was a Heron.  I am not good on birds, although I like the idea of and go with my wife to the  beach with binoculars and books.

   "I am o.k.," I said, "I can take disappointment, it's the hope I  can't stand."

   She smiled, but her eyes did not widen and her skin remained blotched.

   "Don't worry," she said, "I don't think of you as a dirty old man."

  But I thought, my god that's exactly what she thinks.

Swims

     When we went to swim, which is much of what we do together, we walked past the birches and hydrangeas down the hill, down the steps, onto the forest path to the pond. I walked behind her. She wears either a blue or peppermint bikini and pink sandals and she carries a blue towel.  We put the towels and the sandals and my glasses on a small bench by the pond.  From there, when we would sometimes sit, we could see the osprey's nest on top of the radio tower at the old Marconi station.

    We swam alone each in our own water for a time until we met and tread water together and resumed the conversation we had started in the pond the year before.   

   "How is your faith this year?"

   "I've given it up," she said, only her head above the water.

    "Was that hard?" I asked.

   "Gulliver's Travels made it easy.  Yahoos. Everyone is awful.   We're all Yahoos."

   "Everyone?"

   "Probably," she said. But she smiled.

  She rose in the water, her body arching upward, like an elegant creature of the sea.  That might have been the moment, I later thought, the first moment when things between us were not as they should be.

She floated quietly, Her eyes closed, Her face and body to the sun.  I looked at her still body in the water.  She turned and dove and surfaced again a little closer

   Dragonflies and blackbirds, blue and red and bravely marked with golden epaulets, flew around us.  In the distance a small house nestled under pine trees and a dock jutted out into the water.  A dog wandered onto it, watched us,  turned away back behind the trees.

  For the first time I had the idea of the water nymph or mermaid, and thought it was worth a poem.  A Celtic form, that first poem. She liked Scots and Brits, perhaps due to some genetic ancient Belgae-Celtic gene.

  "I'm so happy here," she said.

  "In the pond?"

  "Here. It's like Spectra for me, from that movie."

 "There are Yahoos here too," I said.

 She shook her head in disagreement.

We swam together toward the grassy clearing where we would leave the pond.  We stopped again and tread.

"You think it's right I switched to Loi?

"Law?"

Yes, Loi"

"Yes."

She had always talked of medicine. She wanted her life to be valuable to others. That was her meaning for meaning. She was very young. I said everything was valuable if one was the kind of person that wanted to make it that way. Injustice was as hurtful as disease.  I asked if she made a distinction between ‘being' something and ‘doing' something.

"I think about that a lot," she said.

When we were out of the water we sat on a small bench looking across the pond.  Redwings flew across our view.  At the opposite side, a green kayak was moving just clear of the lily pads. Her hair was falling and wild about her face, loosening from the cloth ring that held it up.  She held the towel around her and lowered her head to her shoulder, smiling at me and saying it was wonderful, and that these were special moments.

"But I am not sure about the loi."

I was amazed she looked so sad and I had forgotten so much about being young. I took her hand and stroked it.

"Maybe I should stay here," she said.

I thought that was a wonderful idea, but I said, "do a year and see."

She smiled.  I thought she was adorable. Adorable in the way of puppies' and five year olds and master spies and Kings mistresses.

"You are special to me," she said, looking into my eyes.  I was surprised, at that moment, at how happy it made me to hear that.

"And you to me," I said.

"Really?  How long have we known that?"

"Since last year on that beach when we saw Dover Cliffs," I said.

"I' m glad," she said.

There is a floater the town had put in the pond, to measure something, but I am not sure what.   One early day she, for the first time she swam to the other end of the pond., I did not see her for a time. I thought the floater was her head swimming toward me.  I called, but the floater did not respond. I realized it was just the floater and became frightened, calling her name again and again out over the pond, between the trees, under the sky, until she finally appeared.  It seems now like a metaphor and an omen, calling her name in the pond.

When we were on the bench, that day, I said, "You will always be with me in the pond," and I pointed to the floater.

She looked at me from above her towel and below her wet hair with the eyes that made one think she loved you  and that no matter what the future brought you would always be in her heart. I was startled.  We held hands by the waterside and then walked back along the path.  Blueberries were just starting on the old trees, still green.

"If we could go somewhere," I asked, "just a general question, where would we go?"

"England," she said.

"Stonehenge?"

"A dream."

"If we don't go, I'll send you with your lover."

"I want to go with you."

In other swims, I took up the habit of offering her a song each day, starting with "You're The Top," that was followed by "I get no Kicks From Champagne," and  "I Can't Get Started," and "Let's Face The Music.  I would sing, she listened, and then followed, and then we would sing together in the pond, treading, treading, sometimes on our backs, toes touching.  I could not believe I was doing this.  I could not believe the years that had passed. I could not believe she was.

"You don't mind I'm in love with you?" I said one swim.

"You are my special friend," she said.

"You'll manage it all right?"

"We are anima and animus," she said.

Then she swam a bit and when we got to the bench that day, she said,

"How will I live without you?"

We walked in the forest path,  up the steps, into the evening sunlight.

"You're love is so light," she said.

As we walked up through the forest path I would often say to her,

"By no means the worst time of the day."

The Contest

    At the Yacht Club dinner, under an open tent looking out on the sun sinking slowly over the bay she drank a little too much wine.

   "I want to marry an eccentric British mathematician," she said, "who won't notice if I have lovers."

  I was surprised.

  "I've drunk to much," she said, "but usually I drink more. Vodka.  I want to be Queen of the Blues"

  "What's that?"

  "Girl who drinks most."

 The party flowed around us.  Families; long theme friends; new members; not dressy at all; old sailing friends outside in the summer, view of the bay, sun sinking slowly over  it, first week in August (she was still saying ‘we have plenty of time').  My wife moved about to visit friends, the other couples were talking to each other. A string band played at the edge of the tent.  This might very well have been the moment the flow first started.

"Will you drink with me?"

"Yes."

"Vodka?"

"Yes."

"I will arrange it."

 I told myself it would be nice to have a drinking companion and if she drank it might as well be her.  I saw very few people on my own.  What would be the harm, I thought, what would be the harm?

It was not that difficult. I bought vodka.  I bought crackers.  I bought what I thought would pass for caviar. I set up a vodka set in the studio.  My goodwife was out all that Wednesday, playing tennis and monitoring small boat races. 

There were unexpected problems, of course.  I could not find real caviar and settled for red roe that turned out not to be a good idea.  On the scheduled day the car would not start and I had to call AAA.  But I got to her on theme, and we drove back to the house and settled around a table on which I had arranged the tray.

"What we will do today," I said, "is to have to have the  Joseph Stalin Name Signing Contest."

When I had drunk with friends while in college, but not college friends, there was in the room of one friend a poster of Adolph Hitler and another of Joseph Stalin.  The w inner of a skills contest, who could best forge the signature, some weeks of the Fuhrer, some weeks of Uncle Joe, need not chip in for the ouzo.  The Cyrillic was a problem, but we did the best we could, and made liberal, if not always uncontested, judgments under the influence of the potent licorice potion.

 The studio is white walled with a high cathedral ceiling and windows with a view on the meadow and the pond.  There the free posters of Pierro Della Francesco from Arezzo, nearest to us the Resurrection.  We sat aside a large white desk, a bookcase along the wall, and a screen of pictures of my children, my wife's dead family, my dead brother, and Willie Mays.

 The roe was, essentially inedible, but the vodka was not bad. I had at her suggestion upgraded the original bottle. I had printed out Stalin's Cyrillic signature and we studied and copied. We worked seriously, every few minutes pausing to drain a cup of vodka.  She matched me drink for drink.

        "I was in love," she said, "but he didn't love me."

        "I can't imagine that," I said. I was surprised that was an honest comment.

       She took vodka as I spoke.  Her eyes turned small and red, her hair came down a little, as it always seemed to do when she was about to be not happy.

     "I could feel when he was near me without looking. He told me we were just friends."

       I took her hand, "I can't imagine anyone not loving you."

     And that moment is also a candidate for when the flow started. She looked into my eyes.  I leaned forward to kiss her.

    "No," she said, "you are not my lover."

    "It's just that you look so unhappy," I lied.

    "I'm not feeling so well," she said and went to a small w.c. down the hall.   After a moment I followed.  She was sitting on the floor.

   "Usually," she said, "I can drink much more than this."

   "Maybe it's the roe," I said.

   Some days later she asked me,

  "Did you try to kiss me?" 

  I said "yes."

The Break

     After we left the theater, after the awful first act, she actually wordlessly leading me out, confirming we were in fact one thing, because the moon was full, we went to the break in the barrier bar. The sea reflected the moon and rose to it. The light from the Coast Guard Station defined cycles of light and darkness like cycles of hope and despair.  When we got out of the car, I told her again about the break.  How the homeowners wanted to build a rock barrier, how the town said O.K., the County No, the State No, the Army Maybe. How a judge said they could put huge rocks down for 30 days and sort it out.

She laughed. I wondered what she understood of it all.  She was so young, a foreign national. For a time we just looked at the moon in the sea.  I took her hand.  She squeezed mine.

"You're terrific," I said.

"You too.  We are like anima and animus," she said.

If that was not the beginning of the serotonin, it was surely a moment that increased the flow. She glowed like the sea in the moonlight.  Her white polo , her hair reflecting the articulations of light from the lighthouse behind, the late summer air around her filled with sea and blossom.  I was in love with her then, surely, if not before.

We drove home under the moon.

"They want me to work more hours," she said.

"That's what you came to do," I said.

"But I would see less of you."

"But you would earn more money."

"What's a few dollars compared to moments with you?"

I took her hand with my right hand, driving one-handed in the view of the moon.

Then she said,

"I love you."

I said, "I love you."

"But I am not in love with you. We are friends?"

I did not take his hand from Hers.  I looked away from the moon. 

"Of course," I said, "consider the difference in our ages. And, I am married. It would be grotesque.  Stupid."

And it was grotesque and stupid but, despite this lie, it was true.

"We are more than friends," she said, "we are special."

Lunch

    We went to lunch; it was not hard to arrange, on the bay, looking across the August crystal water at the small boats moored before the club.  The young waiters were Russian. They brought her a white wine without a question.  Her hair was down, she looked happy, and we talked about some of the history of my life, which had happened, which was over until she came, and her life, which was just starting.

    "I had a dream you were walking away from me, hair up, wearing your white polo and those tan pants with your bag on your shoulder.  I couldn't catch you.  Too many people on Main Street in the way."

   "You must not have bad dreams," she said, "I will always love you, you must never doubt that."

  "The summer will end," I said, "we will end."

  "No," she said, "we will evolve."

  But another time she said, "all secret things end."

 I thought everything ends but maybe we were special.

  "When you're here this place is paradise, when you're not it's just a place."

 "It's a wonderful place. I could stay here forever."

 "Actually," I said, "you could."

 Vacationers and local real estate agents with clients were lunching around us on the deck under the awnings.  It was chic, but not the chicest, in the chic vacation town, which would revert, as the winter tides rose, to a fishing village.  She would be gone then, and when I came back after Christmas I guessed I would sit on her bed in the downstairs apartment where her things were all about and the books I gave here were strewn about the floor.

 "How will I live without you," I asked

 "How will I live without you," she said.

 I had the Caesar salad and she had a croque monsieur that they called a melted cheese sandwich.

The Boat

    The Beagle, a tiny catboat we keep moored in the bay, had already been important the year before.  We had that year  talked one day of doubts, she was afraid of doubts.  She sat in the stern with her white polo, Yankee hat, and blue bikini.

   I said, "I seek my Jesus as I can."

   "I thought you were an atheist.

   "I was."

    "I just can't believe as I want to."

   "Every finds their own way."

   "You are a wise man," she said then, even before we had watched Dracula together and she learned the accent to say,  "you are a very vise man, for one who has not lived even one lifetime."

    This year I asked her,   "will you come to church with me?"

 "Yes," she said.

  She would pull up the halyards for peak and gaff as I put in the rudder and tiller.   She would go forward and lay on the deck, her long legs hanging over the cockpit, and let go the buoy. I took the tiller to steer through, the a maze of small boats to get to clear water.  When we were out, I tacked over so the sail was on my side and I gave her sheet and tiller.

   The first time this year she said, "I don't know what to do."

  "Yes, you do," I said," just figure out where the wind is coming from."

   She pointed toward the restaurant where we would lunch.

  "Right," I said, "southwest."

  She remembered the lessons I had offered her last year when I was wise, and she headed into the wind.  The Beagle heeled lightly, the wind was perhaps 10 knots.

  "Force 3," I said to her European ear.

   She smiled and adjusted her position, her toes together, her knees somewhat apart.  Our toes touched accidentally.. I kept them touching, I pushed her toes with my own.  She pushed back and smiled again.  It was an advance, I thought,  until  then we had only touched toes in the water, each on our backs.

 "It's ok on the boat?" I asked.

 "It's ok," she said.

  My god, I thought, I have gone crazy.  And what am I doing with this child?

  We were coming to the western shore.

 "Tack," I said.

 But she pulled the tiller toward her and the Beagle jibed around, heeling sharply before flattening.  The sail was on her side now.

 "Tacking is the tiller to the sail," I said.

  "I don't know the English words."

  I tacked around and gave her the sail.

  "Tack," I said.

 And she did.

  On other sails, when she was quite at ease, and had already sailed alone, we would sing the Sloop  John B together, multiple themes,

    "So hoist up the John B's sails

      See how the mainsail sets

      Call for the captain ashore

      Let me go home

      I want to go home   

      I feel so break-up I want to go home."

   It was a sad song, we sang all the verses as well as the refrain, I taught her the words. Sometimes I would stop singing, just to listen to Her.  I thought she sang like an angel. No like a mermaid, like a siren calling from the sea.  Not resistible.  Destroying any reason to resist, because if that call was not real there was no reason to live.

We knew it was  a sad song when she stopped saying there was plenty of time.

"My mermaid," I said.

"My poet," she said.

One day we sailed toward the channel.

She screamed. I startled

"What?"

"A monster. Look."

I looked where she pointed, I saw something,  wavelets and ripples recorded its passing. She was really upset, almost shaking.

"It was huge, it had scales, it was awful," Her accent thickened. She was trembling; I took the sheet and tiller.

"Did you see it?" she asked.

"I saw something."

"Let's go home."

 We sailed back to the mooring field before the little white clubhouse.  It was low tide. I walked the Beagle to its mooring.  I saw her waving from the beach.  I had another poem.

During these sails I would recite a poem I had written for Her, and I would recite "Mandalay" because it was about loss and yearning I knew I would feel when she left.  For a month? A year?  What would be for me forever?

"Thank you," she would say when I had finished reciting "Mandalay."

Later, much later, after the end, she said I was a fine poet.  It still mattered.
       As the summer ripened we together found a new sea song, it had many verses and was funny. We sang it on the boat and in the car. The refrain was,

"Oh dear Johnny,

 My dear honey

Oh these New York Girls

They love you for your money."

       I thought she made it sound like a hymn.

The last sail, I was upset beyond sailing, and she took us to the mooring, taking the sheet and the tiller from my hand.

Someone suggested the monster might have been a large bluefish.  But she had gone by then.

Scraps

These are the Raven's moments that do not fit into the knowledge of other moments.  The understanding of which the Raven keeps in his desert of the unknown.

They asked her to work more hours at the shop.  She said she could not work much more.

"But that's why you came," I said, "you need the money,"

"What's twenty dollars compared to moments with you?"

I saw her eyes above the computer on the desk looking over at me as I watched Startrek.  The eyes were bright and she was smiling,

"That is so you," she said.

"But we understand history and our lives pretty much from what we dig up."

"I don't like it, "she said, "that things are so dusty."

"What do you think of your cousin?"

"She is always wanting what she has just missed."

And she came to church with me the last Sunday of her stay. I go up there to the Congregationalists in Harwich to the early, and short communion service, and she took communion.  She said she liked the service and would think about being Protestant.  In the car after,  I think she kissed me, I am not sure it was not a mistake.  She would not kiss me again after. So if it was a mistake I am lucky, and if it was not I am mystified.  Comes to the same thing doesn't it. I've never gone back to that church. Not sure why. Just can't.  Odd isn't it?  Or just an aspect of a dirty old man.

There was also a moment when she was reading in the lamplight in the dark sitting  room, where we watched DVDs her head a bit to the left and downward over the book.  I had never seen anything quite like that curve.  I don't know why, but I hadn't.

We watched DVDs together-Dracula among them and The Barber of Siberia, which she wanted us to see together and Casablanca and possibly every Monty Python whose songs from Brian and Meaning of Life we sang together but not in the pond. She leaned against my arm once or twice, I think.

The morning of the day she left, I had a book signing at a local shop. She came around to the table many times, each time asking the same questions, but attracting different people.  So that in my memory now it was really her, and not my, event.

I didn't swim or sail again that summer after she left. Although I went down to the pond and sat on the bench.  I am still writing poems.  I think they must be bad.

                            Another Lunch

I saw her again in the autumn. She was not at ease with me, she was unhappy, I supposed with our situation.

. In the spring we had lunch in her city.

"I am sorry," I said, "I forgot what I was." 

 She smiled, I was very careful.  We talked about art and poetry

 "It is better like this," she said.

"Yes," I said, "better."