Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Why slip into bedclothes only to slip out of them? (The force of routine.) Is it that a gown seals Hope in— Stay. He will stay— just like those silk lamp shades (overdressed paramours) that bowl as much light as they release? He bends to take off socks and shoes, while recounting the story of Tom and Morphy. (Who knew that Tom could play chess?) It sounds so good and perfect when he tells it, smooth and ideal.

She settles between white sheets and quilts. Does not stir, afraid of what she might set loose. When he closes in, she evades him by fingering the ruffled collar of her gown. His mouth stuffed still with Tom and Morphy. The small senseless words she can offer in reply, not at hand (lack) the full range she needs to speak to him. (Who knew that Morphy could play the piano?) He bends his reaches around her and she orders herself to wait. If he is the ladder to pleasure, she should not climb. She takes his tongue, putting an end to denial. Holding herself before he enters her with a tenderness she could not expect. Fitting in, his I love yous , trying to fill the hole created by absence, distance, separation. Shaking the two of them, some of the sweat on her body his and some of the sweat on his body hers, the best part of marriage, warming up a foot of air above and beneath them, fucking when what they need is sleep, arms and legs moving through it, since what divides her from him will never close.

For weeks after she bears him, unbears him. Two minds to leave, one to stay. His being here a time of plenty that she knows will end. A month or two. Squirrel-like, hoarding away words and pictures behind her eyes before she feels him from behind placing the softest line of kisses down her back, a wet trail over her spine. And out the door again. Gone.

Each key has its say. Notes rising in three dimensions around and about her. Reflections rattling against glass where moon bends through. The hours swaying above water. Edgemere rocks as never before, drawing closer to shore. The air, the light, the sounds different.

She draws back her gaze, looking away from so much water, satisfied to let the disrupting tumult of Tom’s notes throw her head clear, free her from wandering in that space between memory and Mr. Hub’s report about the two intruders. A man here. A Negro. Something at the edge of all this. Layers/levels of sound sliding together like stacked plates. Tom, spine arched, face tilted up at her, muddy with feeling. Sweat popping from his pores as if from some inner struggle he is going through, organs caught in the open. Reddish sediment collecting around the legs of the piano. Rising. Not a speck of kindness in his face for her.

Seeing the grievance in his face, thoughts that would have shamed her on other days come with surprising ease. Get clean of Tom — why not? Edgemere looming, expectant, glistening beneath a layer of moonlight — correct this disharmony of fate, a black possibility that gushes into bright night sky. (Night can find color.) Hasn’t she already done enough? Keeping him safe, protecting him from the city, keeping him nourished and clean, shutting herself up like this, watching hands for three years. (How long?) Is this what she deserves? Is this what she’ll do, watch hands for the rest of her life? Hands cooking cleaning playing praying fanning patting slapping rubbing or caressing her whole life. Tom her inheritance, with her perpetually in this city, this apartment. Consider other avenues, compromises that might be struck. Deliver him to Edgemere where he can be with his own kind. Letting herself think it for the first time. Afraid of being discovered in her feelings. But he can’t survive another upset — she’s sure — another relocation. Besides, he has earned the right to stay. Something to be said for dying quietly, for disappearing, a victory of a kind that has earned Tom the right to be here, in the city, for as long as the hours, the days permit. Them here until she can tell herself different.

She does not think of Tom as having desires other than those demanded by the way they live. How might Tom describe himself? (Occurs to her to wonder.) Is she promising something not hers to keep? They live reasonably well — she gets something half-right at least — their life neither complicated nor tragic. But what does Tom want? Narrow choices seem natural. Certain patterns of thought so simple and one-sided they become irresistible. You imagine you are Tom and ascribe your own thoughts to him. What does Tom think about her? How does he feel? (Wishes known and unknown. Where the heart is. Hidden beneath ribs curving around stomach and chest.) Clearly much affection but something else too, as if he is holding her up to something. She worries that she comes out lacking in his estimation.

The melody winds down. Sparser range. Softer scales. She tries to speak. Voice catches and the song ends. She knows exactly what Tom has in mind. (Why does a body want to be entered or embraced?) Getting him to bed will be torture. No point in insisting. She sneaks away from the chords, leaving Tom where he sits, in the shimmering distance behind her, his gold-headed cane hissing at her from its place in the corner when she passes.

She wakes some mornings, mouth gummy, eyes filmed over with sleep, legs feeling weary and leaden, a drug-like sluggishness throughout her body, and expects to find Sharpe in the parlor. But only in death is he completely available to her — as he was not in life — moving (contained) in a certain part of her mind. Eliza free to forget or to remember, thinking about him sometimes merely for the purpose of distraction, a buzz or dim ache that seems to carry toward the past.

What exactly has kept her from feeling more about her loss? (What plunges in the heart and is gone.) Her anger to help this thing (longing, grief) along. The passage of time putting an edge on her remorse, making her sense of independence, freedom, sharper. His broken appearances, migratory passings to and fro, rehearsals preparing her for the final sending off. So once she decided he was gone for good — three months? four? — she packed up his entire wardrobe, along with Warhurst’s — ten crates filled — and had Mr. Hub transport them to the Municipal Almshouse and the city’s other poorhouses and hospitals. She allowed Dr. Hollister to rummage through piles of souvenirs and mementos that had collected over the years and decide as he saw fit what should be put up for auction and what should be saved for posterity, these few items stored away in a single trunk that History will (might) want to know about the “Blind Tom Exhibition.”

Loaves of bread line the counter like closed coffins. Heavy pitchers filled with water and milk rising like mausoleums from the table. Basins covered over with big towels. Five ripe apples on a clean plate. Twelve porgies fried on a platter, mouths open, awed by air. She examines the blade of the knife and at that exact moment Tom enters the kitchen.

Miss Eliza, he says. Might I suggest we — then the words go wrong in midsentence.

He talks nonstop for more than an hour, words flying from his mouth like directionless bats, a mishmash of centerless verbiage, bottomless sound taking over her skin. Recitations from his stage days— Half Man, Half Amazing —voices within voices, a second, low and calm, that rises and separates itself from the main, then a higher third. Entire passages of one oration, snatches of another, the words lilting, sentences curling up and breaking off at the ends. Mouthed so rapidly at times that the words lose all sense.

What’s driving him into language? What is it exactly that comes back to find a tongue?

He stops as suddenly as he started and stands quietly before her, expecting her to say something — ah, she knows what he is thinking: she must be impressed, she must be astonished — his hands open in front of him as if he wants to be ready to catch her first words should she decide to speak, but she is feeling vague inside, not knowing what to say and wondering whether she has any moisture left in her mouth for framing it.