Who Knew Prose?
There is an anger that is inherent in my house. It has nothing to do with the expressions on our faces or the tones of our voices. It has nothing to do with the crows that sometimes perch on our wirey fence that encircles the closed pool, a sign of the colder seasons. It lives not in the dog, my dog, blind with old age, warm with golden fur, pure of heart, and always a little stupid. It lives in the cracks in the walls and the give of the floors. It lives in the fresh paint that has been smeared on these walls, once covered in the faded colors of my father’s anger. All is peaceful, all is beautiful. A cyclist passes by in the frame of the screen door, maybe the song of the ice-cream man twinkles a few blocks over, but the phone will ring. The caller ID will flash his name. Maybe there will be a discussion of father’s day, who will attend the dinner, who will flake out, what it all means. When the air rings with the dry sound of “John”, the walls are dull, the floors are old, our kitchen, now redone, retiled, grows the carpets of years before, the scent of decay. The pillows of our childhood reappear on the old adobe printed couch, a yellow stain where his greasy head used to lie, sometimes in elation, sometimes sadness. Sometimes it lied in contemplation of a long book about the Bizantine Empire, musings about his past in the Vietnam War, or genuine shock and love emanating from the aftermath of September 11th. The air rings “John” and somehow I’m small. All we have tried to do was grow, grasping to the rungs above us, repairing the ones behind us with hammers and nails, but the foundation, no matter how hard we try, is rickety, and even on this sweltering summer night, with the crumbs of hot-dog buns still on our lips, the saltiness of those hotdogs mixes with a familiar taste. One of dissatisfaction and resentment. We are never satiated with the fullness of a smile in this house. His tears live in the walls. We will continue to ring them out.
