ocean side, at Fourth Street. An old lifesaving station? Yes, from the late nineteenth century, without a hint of Cape May twee. It’s sided in a pale butter color, with barn-red trim. It suggests rigor, understatement; it can already foresee the Arts and Crafts movement. The house is beloved but not fussed with. There are bare patches on the lawn, bushes withered from the salt air. (Can’t we also imagine Lizzie’s toys strewn about the yard? Soggy bathing suits and towels hanging on the line?) It is the house of someone who has been places, who has lived in New York or San Francisco or London and come back home, not because it was Aunt Barbara, but because there was an extraordinary house here, a house that still pulses with the looking of everyone who’s passed by it, who’s dreamed through its red front door.
We park the car. We walk toward the ocean. We step across Corinthian Avenue, take in the view of the beach, Emily’s beach, where Lizzie digs with her hands through clean gray sand. We turn back. We listen to what she’d hear from her front porch: a talk show on the TV, KYW Radio: All News All the Time. A high school kid tossing newspapers onto yards. We don’t say very much. We look up at the house where Gene will betray Emily. We stand there long enough until a face appears at the second-floor window of the house next door. If we could translate that expression into a sentence, it would say, who are these aliens and what do they want? Then we get back in the car.
2010 | I sit closer to the stereo speakers, as if by leaning into them I’ll hear better. I click past the first track to the second. It is a winter day. I wait for the lyrics as the song builds, grows into itself. The song is a tree now; it shakes when birds pass through it. The song gets a little calmer when the wind stops blowing its branches. The song is for Denise—or at least about Denise, according to DyAnne, Denise’s other best friend. DyAnne has sent me the CD, and I stare at the guts of the padded envelope I’ve torn apart, hastily. Not so many years ago, the writer and singer of the song—DyAnne’s fellow band member, and is it brother?—dated Denise. A rock musician dating Denise? Why didn’t she ever tell me? Did she think I might not have been supportive of that, her taking up with a fellow artist? I had been privy to so much, to the details of sexual encounters and fallings out with close friends, and she’s an enigma all over again. I never knew her. Do I feel just a flash of betrayal? Well, yes.
M walks into the living room carrying an armful of cut willows. “Listen,” I say, gesturing at the stereo speaker. “Hear that?”
“What’s that?” M says.
I tell him the band is Smash Palace. I tell him it’s the song that was written for Denise, about Denise.
M stops his hunt for the suitable vase: pale green or gray? He’s looking into the room, eyes fixed on nothing, as entranced as I am. He’s taking the song in, or perhaps he’s been thinking about that poem he’s been meaning to write. He’s been as drifty as I am lately, and I can’t seem to pin him down.
“Sit,” I say, patting the empty spot beside me on the sofa. “You have to hear it from the beginning, the whole song.”
He puts the willow branches down, sits. He stretches out his long legs on the coffee table. “How are the shingles?” he says, pulling up my T-shirt.
“They say hello,” I say. “Thank you for thinking of us.” And I pull my shirt back down.
We listen. We press our knees into each other’s knees. I feel the warmth of his skin coming into my skin. The tree of the song is shaking again. We both look at each other, brows tightening, mouths loose. “He loved her,” we both say in the same voice.
1985 | B, the English professor, asks Denise out on a date. B takes her out on another. He takes her to nice restaurants, he buys her beautiful things. He talks of taking her to Paris, which he’s sure she’ll fall in
We park the car. We walk toward the ocean. We step across Corinthian Avenue, take in the view of the beach, Emily’s beach, where Lizzie digs with her hands through clean gray sand. We turn back. We listen to what she’d hear from her front porch: a talk show on the TV, KYW Radio: All News All the Time. A high school kid tossing newspapers onto yards. We don’t say very much. We look up at the house where Gene will betray Emily. We stand there long enough until a face appears at the second-floor window of the house next door. If we could translate that expression into a sentence, it would say, who are these aliens and what do they want? Then we get back in the car.
2010 | I sit closer to the stereo speakers, as if by leaning into them I’ll hear better. I click past the first track to the second. It is a winter day. I wait for the lyrics as the song builds, grows into itself. The song is a tree now; it shakes when birds pass through it. The song gets a little calmer when the wind stops blowing its branches. The song is for Denise—or at least about Denise, according to DyAnne, Denise’s other best friend. DyAnne has sent me the CD, and I stare at the guts of the padded envelope I’ve torn apart, hastily. Not so many years ago, the writer and singer of the song—DyAnne’s fellow band member, and is it brother?—dated Denise. A rock musician dating Denise? Why didn’t she ever tell me? Did she think I might not have been supportive of that, her taking up with a fellow artist? I had been privy to so much, to the details of sexual encounters and fallings out with close friends, and she’s an enigma all over again. I never knew her. Do I feel just a flash of betrayal? Well, yes.
M walks into the living room carrying an armful of cut willows. “Listen,” I say, gesturing at the stereo speaker. “Hear that?”
“What’s that?” M says.
I tell him the band is Smash Palace. I tell him it’s the song that was written for Denise, about Denise.
M stops his hunt for the suitable vase: pale green or gray? He’s looking into the room, eyes fixed on nothing, as entranced as I am. He’s taking the song in, or perhaps he’s been thinking about that poem he’s been meaning to write. He’s been as drifty as I am lately, and I can’t seem to pin him down.
“Sit,” I say, patting the empty spot beside me on the sofa. “You have to hear it from the beginning, the whole song.”
He puts the willow branches down, sits. He stretches out his long legs on the coffee table. “How are the shingles?” he says, pulling up my T-shirt.
“They say hello,” I say. “Thank you for thinking of us.” And I pull my shirt back down.
We listen. We press our knees into each other’s knees. I feel the warmth of his skin coming into my skin. The tree of the song is shaking again. We both look at each other, brows tightening, mouths loose. “He loved her,” we both say in the same voice.
1985 | B, the English professor, asks Denise out on a date. B takes her out on another. He takes her to nice restaurants, he buys her beautiful things. He talks of taking her to Paris, which he’s sure she’ll fall in
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