Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

Why would one nation receive such a giant carving from another nation? What could America give back? Would not the New York white people always be in debt to the nation that gave this Statue? He had thought about how he would go inside when he went. He had seen where he would track his way, the people he would have to pass.

He did not want to go in, but if he waited until she came out, he would have missed a chance he did not understand but must not miss.

In the Statue he waited below. He climbed some stairs and went deep inside. In the Statue he was far below, and he did not like the metal stairs. He heard the clatter of steps and the echoes of chatter, of women and of men. Of laughter. Of silent upstairs stepping. Or were they coming downstairs too? He wanted to give her a present, but he had nothing. He wanted to know if there was a child. He listened for an engine; there must be an engine in this Statue. He wanted to go outside to see what he was in again. He thought a woman might turn into many things here. As if here, far east of where he came from, it was later time. A woman’s laughter hooted up and down the tower, but her laugh was like a Navajo woman’s sometimes, surprised and unrelenting.

He did not wish to hurt her. If he knew she would stay here, he would go to Maine to see the Anasazi before the cloud dispersed, but meanwhile he pictured how the dollop of noctilucent cloud which was also the Anasazi might move in his own blood and flesh. The Statue here inside was not like that dream of hers that the Hermit had told. It was not blue and yellow boulders gathering their caves together. It was more like his own dream of being invisible that the Iroquois healer had called a wish to best his father. Inside the Statue were cold steps and walled-in tower, a cave like an engine. No one knew enough of what was happening to keep silent. The voices hung downward toward him. He started up. He was strong. He saw he was sad in this damp shadowy space. He put his hand around the bison flesh and wondered if it did have a secret after all. He forgot where he was going and remembered. He was sad not to have Margaret any more. What was sad? Maybe it was just the buzz in the ears and that he could not move and was chilled and removed so he could not hear his thoughts living. He had come into the Statue but a new thing had come into him. He met shiny shoes and shrill voices coming down. He heard himself identified as Indian. His climb reached a small side place where he could sit down; and he waited, looking neither upward nor downward, and people passed and he did not look at them. He wasn’t going to the top; he did not care to be in the head of the Statue. He would see the top when he got outside. He heard Margaret’s voice and stood up as it swung closer. He thought of the second dream he had taken to the Iroquois, and instantly forgot it. He sat down again and the holy man’s old straw hat slipped over his forehead and he wanted to sleep but could not, and he smelled Margaret’s body and some flower on it.

And remembered the flower from the beginning but not from later, as if it had gone out of season while she stayed with him and his people but now she had it with her again. And he felt light come down the stairs to him but closed his eyes and wished he had a brother near and remembered clearly when he had had his body inside Margaret’s, her knees hugging, and her fingertips pressing, and her life needing whatever he had to give, and she had said, "The sky and all the stars, the sky and all the stars."

And he slumped on the bench, his gift hat down half over his face, and he felt his held breath whine like an engine in his chest where she still lived like a naked soul that is now more than one person.

Their skirts rustled, he glimpsed their shoes, a mist came across his eyes from within him and he held within him the soul in his chest and thought he would die of the engine in his ears. The woman she was with said, "He’s an Indian, see his hair." Margaret, invisible except her shoes and ankles through the mist of his narrowed eyelids, paused, and with some minor sound agreed, and when her friend said, "Seeing the sights, I guess," as they passed on down the steps, Margaret said, "Probably sees more than we did right there on that bench." Her companion laughed and said she didn’t see what she meant.

He felt for the pistol in his bag and with his other hand he gripped the greasy and dry cut of bison meat and he pulled it from his overall pocket and put it there on the bench. When he got to his feet and straightened his hat, he knew that what was bursting inside him was her heart as well as his, and he knew that she had recognized him as she passed.

Then he fainted.

And so your dream decided you about us? we already can foresee Jean continuing — very slightly bothering her mid-forties beloved.

I would be a fairly old father but a humorous one.

And you already have children, though where this son of yours fits in I "haven’t the slightest," as my mother used to say. I think you’re a romantic about marriage but who would ever guess it?

Ted said that.

Ted said how the world would end, I seem to remember.

Yes, with a digression.

But what in the dream persuaded you?

The humor of nothing but life.

Amy thought the dream was great.

A female colleague of mine thought we might see a family therapist.

Suppose we make it up as we go along.

Far out.

The Hermit’s second call came as Alexander entered the printing office and Margaret’s lately somewhat shaggy-haired gray-bearded father was at the back with the pressman and Alexander strode to answer.

What will Flick say?

She’s Sarah now. I think she is getting into family history, what there is of it. She’s welcome.

But Spence the other night — he was coming across the cemetery like what he had to ask was. .

You’re right; it was scary. I thought he had gone nuts. Which is better than what my opinion of him had been.

Alexander hung up the phone and asked his future father-in-law if he had seen Margaret and ascertained only that she had discussed her future with her father who had found it, as always, enlightening; her father had hoped she would go on writing for the Democrat when she got settled. They had reviewed several topics and one she had particularly cottoned to was revisiting the Statue of Liberty, having never visited the fully assembled "monster." Alexander observed that of course he and his cousin had paid a visit to the Statue last autumn when Margaret was still in the West. His future father-in-law observed that the spiral stairs had made him dizzy. Going up or coming down? asked the future son-in-law. Both, I think, was the answer. The men chuckled. Alexander said he must find out where Margaret had gone.

Her father said that it was interesting what she had said about Indian language having a word for water in a pitcher for drinking and a word for water in rivers, harbors, lakes, and so forth, but not a bunch of words to distinguish among those various bodies of water as we do.

Alexander politely rejoined that he believed the word for "geyser" was the same as the word for "waterfall." He had to go, he said, and bade his future father-in-law goodbye.

"The Hermit-Inventor— he said that," said Mayn loudly as the first dark figure moved toward him among the gravestones. "If you can describe something, you must take responsibility for it. My grandmother must have told me."

Jean was calling to him, she was horribly upset — what had he meant by leaving like that after some aria of Gertrude’s? she kept waiting for him to come back, she thought he was sick, and then the dumb show aborted and before anybody could leave the police came in to ask questions because that Chilean de Talca had disappeared and there was blood and one of his handmade English shoes lying on its side in the theater vestibule if you call that a theater, and it was being said that de Talca had either murdered someone or had been murdered, the flurry had begun about ten minutes or so after the end of the show when no one was sure it had ended, and she had looked outside and couldn’tymd him, and from what Spence had said — she was crying somewhat tensely, not sadly — she had guessed from what that Spence had said that Jim had returned here of all places, she was crying excitedly and he held her so close she grunted into humor and ran her hand over his grass-and-gravestone-clammy back, and he said he had been intensely tired and had lain down and dropped off and had had an incredible dream and he was sorry he had put her through this, and she said As long as he was sorry, while he half-wondered how she had obtained a car to drive the fifty miles.