Fragments

You sit in the lavender Bumbo seat on the dinner table while we eat, mouth motoring, bubbles filling. the crevice between bottom lip and top of chin.  You slump a little to one side or you stick your arms out straight to either side, your hands making tiny motions as though you were circling golden rings on your wrists.

On the way to see Cinderella at the Children's Theater your sister says "But we are not going to see the REAL Cinderella, right?  The real Cinderella is not in this world, right?"  She is wearing sparkly purple tights and pink Mary Janes.  Most of the silver sparkles on the Mary Janes have been flayed off.  I think of the iridescent scales in Bishop's poem "At the Fishhouses."

Your father and I sit at Cafe Maude.  His salmon is the pinked clouds at early sunset and the center of my steak is the last rithe of red before dark comes entirely.  I have a Manhattan with a dark cherry in the center and he has a cocktail called a Norweigan something-or-other because it has Aquavit swiled through.  He says he will buy himself a bottle of Aquavit when his book is done.  He talks about adding the word "subjectivity" to the title of his book and he talks about will and passion and the imagination.  The gravy around the steak is the color of mahogany and tastes like the word sounds.  I am thirty-five.

At the end of the play the characters line the side aisles and invite the children to dance.  Thisbe goes immediately and a ten year old girl who carried the footstool with the glass slipper takes your sister's hands.

It's around 40 degrees and the sky is the brushed cinders of November.  Wind frisking the trees.  I am standing on the sidewalk outside the Northfield Co-op, waiting for a turkey.  Two men and a woman go back and forth between the back of the truck and a folding table, calling out "twenty pounds," "fourteen pounds," "biggest we've got."  A Co-op employee comes down the line holding a tray with white sample cups.  "Chocolate with green tea and ginger and lemon?  Tastes better than it sounds!"  I think of a play I was in during college called "Mad Forest" that was set in communist Romania, how in one scene we were all simply supposed to look like we were standing in a bread line. How we practiced that.  Rehearsed standing in line.  How your body would shift, where your weight would go, where you would cast your eyes after thirty minutes, sixty minutes, three hours.

Your father straps you in the Bjorn and vacuums the upstairs.  You are stoic but attentive.  Your cheeks huge and weighty.

In class we applaud for Brian, a cross country runner, because St. Olaf has just won the Division III championship for the first time ever.  Then we applaud for Mary Clare because it's her birthday.  Then for Rosa because she's been awake since 3am.  Then for Casey just because.  

At intermission, Thisbe and Karu sit on giant cushions and eat from snack cups that Gak has prepared: bits of dried mango, cranberries, a few orange bunny crackers. 

I thought you would be relaxed, smiley, the easy child.  And you are easier than your sister.  But your smiles do not come easily.  You are discerning.  Skeptical.  More likely to greet someone with your large eyes, to study the person for minute after minute while he or she makes one ridiculous face after another in order to coax the joy out of you.  But joy comes when it's ready.

We sit at the breakfast nook, a bird made of tagboard and tissue paper, markered purple and green, floats from the light above us.  We eat sweet potatoes and kale and parsnips and shallots and chicken from the crockpot.  Our only side dish is baby oranges because I don't have the energy for more.  I am aware of the empty space on the plate.  Thisbe peels the orange, lines up the sections on their sides, and counts them.  They look like mummified bodies spooning each other.  You lean and slouch in the Bumbo, trying to get your mouth over Thomas the train, trying to figure out how to get your hands to do your bidding.

After the play, Thisbe takes my hand.  As we walk down the red carpeted stairs she says, "Cinderella is in our world now, isn't she Mama?  Cinderella is really really for real in our world?"  I'm not sure how to answer.