touching, Ahmad wearing rubber gloves, Shira’s nails painted dark against a bright white sky. Impossibly young, and happy. We didn’t know yet how it would be: fighting that spring over T., reconciling after my divorce, words spoken when he blamed me for Jonah’s death, reconciling again over Andi. And there she was, our red-faced baby, sleeping in my exhausted arms. Dribbling carrot in her high chair, smiling a demented orange smile, Ahmad behind her, brandishing a spoon. Aunt Emma trying to smile over Andi’s stroller, managing only to look disapproving, Andi raising her hands and face to the sky as if blessing the host.
Also, photos I discovered when my father died, too small, their edges white and scalloped, from our first sabbatical—of my father, complacent, Eleanor, my mother, laughing, Shira, seven, wearing an orange Danskin shirt-and-shorts set, distracted always by somethingoutside the frame. My mother, her eyes shaded by cat glasses, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, pointing at the Pantheon; I, crouching at her feet, conversing with pigeons, in the background reading a book, smiling fiercely above a decapitated statue. My father, the photographer, Eleanor his object, I there only incidentally: because her arm encircles me (I seem uncomfortable, suspicious), because I squat in her shadow, privately playing.
There were no photos after that year, no photos after she left us.
Feeling too tender, I carted the volumes, notes, and binders to my study, where I found Tinky Winky sitting on a stack of Italian dictionaries.
Had he been there before?
Are you in exile again? Just like Dante! Look! and I showed him an Italian edition of Vita Nuova , a rumpled Garzanti with its outdated bibliography and puzzling snippet of Giotto’s Life of Maria and Life of Christ on the cover. Inside, an engraving of the Poet in Profile, his arrogant, heavy-lidded expression, his laurel wreath, his ever-present snood.
I know! I said. He’s insufferable!
I doodled on Dante’s face, gave him bloodshot eyes and pimples. Then tucked him under some secondary sources.
Tink looked at me funny. Not a word from you, I said, and chose a photocopied article, settled back onto the loveseat, a tape recorder balanced on my chest like a kitten. “Dante and the Schoolmen,” I dictated. Domenico da Firenze sees the influence of the Scholastics in Dante’s use of … etc.
I read prefaces, afterwords, footnotes, marginalia. I reacquainted myself with debates that raged in the ’70s. I read about Dante’s politics, his theology and fondness for numbers; I lost myself in criticism structural, post-structural, post-non-denominational. I read everything, in short, but Vita Nuova itself.
When I finally thought to look at the time, it was after midnight.
Andi! Oh, no! Was she still awake? I tiptoed into her room, found her sleeping with Nancy Drew. I carefully removed the book from her hand, found her Brooklyn Zoo crocodile bookmark, put the bookunder her pillow next to her flashlight, in case she woke up and had to read some more.
My dear, my dearest, my sweetest sweetest heart! How could I have forgotten you? Next morning I’d have to pretend I’d done it on purpose, so she could feel her late night was a gift and not evidence of maternal neglect. Gently, I maneuvered her under the covers.
Why is that man my uncle? she said, slipping her thumb into her mouth.
I stifled a laugh, unable to imagine what she must be dreaming.
You have no uncles, I whispered. Good night, precious pumpkin.
I hate pumpkin, my beautiful baby said. I kissed her angel cheek. The bad man did it.
What? Had someone hurt my baby? Then I remembered Nancy Drew.
The perils of late-night reading.
12
SLUMBER PARTY
I returned to the study. Maybe I was ready to try again. I retrieved the book from my pile, this time the English version with the simpering figures on the cover, a Renaissance vision of the supplicant Dante, the celestial Beatrice. My response was
Also, photos I discovered when my father died, too small, their edges white and scalloped, from our first sabbatical—of my father, complacent, Eleanor, my mother, laughing, Shira, seven, wearing an orange Danskin shirt-and-shorts set, distracted always by somethingoutside the frame. My mother, her eyes shaded by cat glasses, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, pointing at the Pantheon; I, crouching at her feet, conversing with pigeons, in the background reading a book, smiling fiercely above a decapitated statue. My father, the photographer, Eleanor his object, I there only incidentally: because her arm encircles me (I seem uncomfortable, suspicious), because I squat in her shadow, privately playing.
There were no photos after that year, no photos after she left us.
Feeling too tender, I carted the volumes, notes, and binders to my study, where I found Tinky Winky sitting on a stack of Italian dictionaries.
Had he been there before?
Are you in exile again? Just like Dante! Look! and I showed him an Italian edition of Vita Nuova , a rumpled Garzanti with its outdated bibliography and puzzling snippet of Giotto’s Life of Maria and Life of Christ on the cover. Inside, an engraving of the Poet in Profile, his arrogant, heavy-lidded expression, his laurel wreath, his ever-present snood.
I know! I said. He’s insufferable!
I doodled on Dante’s face, gave him bloodshot eyes and pimples. Then tucked him under some secondary sources.
Tink looked at me funny. Not a word from you, I said, and chose a photocopied article, settled back onto the loveseat, a tape recorder balanced on my chest like a kitten. “Dante and the Schoolmen,” I dictated. Domenico da Firenze sees the influence of the Scholastics in Dante’s use of … etc.
I read prefaces, afterwords, footnotes, marginalia. I reacquainted myself with debates that raged in the ’70s. I read about Dante’s politics, his theology and fondness for numbers; I lost myself in criticism structural, post-structural, post-non-denominational. I read everything, in short, but Vita Nuova itself.
When I finally thought to look at the time, it was after midnight.
Andi! Oh, no! Was she still awake? I tiptoed into her room, found her sleeping with Nancy Drew. I carefully removed the book from her hand, found her Brooklyn Zoo crocodile bookmark, put the bookunder her pillow next to her flashlight, in case she woke up and had to read some more.
My dear, my dearest, my sweetest sweetest heart! How could I have forgotten you? Next morning I’d have to pretend I’d done it on purpose, so she could feel her late night was a gift and not evidence of maternal neglect. Gently, I maneuvered her under the covers.
Why is that man my uncle? she said, slipping her thumb into her mouth.
I stifled a laugh, unable to imagine what she must be dreaming.
You have no uncles, I whispered. Good night, precious pumpkin.
I hate pumpkin, my beautiful baby said. I kissed her angel cheek. The bad man did it.
What? Had someone hurt my baby? Then I remembered Nancy Drew.
The perils of late-night reading.
12
SLUMBER PARTY
I returned to the study. Maybe I was ready to try again. I retrieved the book from my pile, this time the English version with the simpering figures on the cover, a Renaissance vision of the supplicant Dante, the celestial Beatrice. My response was
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