Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs

“It costs! In terms of diversion and resources, it all costs!”

“That’s a load of crap!”

I had once seen a load of crap. It was carried to our house in Don Edenhaus’s truck and dumped right at our barn for composting into fertilizer.

“You are one of those right-wingers who puts on the Halloween costume of a socialist so you can infiltrate the left and get them to listen to your criticism — but I’m not listening …”

I turned toward my charges and said as if in mimicry: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to present ‘It’s Time to Shut UP!’ starring me!”

“And starring me!” laughed the little girl named Tika.

“And me!” copied Mary-Emma, and we all staggered around the room with our hands over our mouths.

In our sequestered nursery behind and above the baby gate at the stairs, there was scarcely an argument. Sometimes there were squabbles involving Legos, which Mary-Emma was too young for and would stick in her mouth. One of the parents, well intentioned, always brought them. Once, Mary-Emma, initially delighted and gracious about other children in her room, fell into a heap of sorrow and rage over a stuffed talking Elmo. And once someone called someone else a “dingbat,” but it was a word so unfamiliar to everyone, including the speaker, that no one’s feelings got hurt. Mostly they all played nicely, even if they brought more energy into the room than either Mary-Emma or I was used to. Sometimes they asked me questions.

“Do you go to college?” asked Clarence.

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you like it?”

“I do.”

“You do?” exclaimed Tika.

“Well, not every day is perfect.”

“I want to go somewhere where every day is perfect.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too!”

“Me, too!” and then we screamed the laughter of absurd desire. It was like some strange mocking echo of the conversation downstairs.

I sang “There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.” “I don’t know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she’ll die.” Not one of them had heard it before — perhaps it was considered too gruesome for children now, with its heartless “She’s dead, of course” at the end, but they all were mesmerized, including Mary-Emma, who began trying to learn it. I had to keep pulling Legos out of her mouth, and because she was becoming toilet trained I hurried her twice to the new potty in the bathroom — such was her excitement at company. From downstairs there came talk I hoped the kids didn’t hear.

“This whole town is racially inexperienced and so there is racism on the ground floor of everything.”

“Including this house. No offense, but you can’t exclude anything. ”

“I understand.”

“I heard years ago of a white family with an adopted African-American boy, and once he turned thirteen they had a security system put in so he would feel safe when they went out to parties. The system involved the summoning of the police at the slightest thing, even a motion at the windows, and so of course what happens? Once, while the parents were at a Christmas party, the police burst in, and seeing a teenage black male just standing there, they blasted him in the chest.”

“Did he die?”

“Not right away.”

Sometimes there was a simultaneous quiet upstairs and down, like a blanket of snow, as if at that moment no one anywhere in the galaxy knew what to say.

“Did you teach the children a song about eating live animals?” began a message on my machine from Sarah, which started out as if it were a reprimand and then headed another way. “Well, whatever it was, they loved it and loved you. Thank you. Next Wednesday it would be great if you could come early. Say at four or five if that works for you. Let me know. Thanks!”

Geology, Sufism, Wine Tasting, British Lit., Soundtracks to War Movies. There was a rumor that several of us were about to be thrown out of Wine Tasting, as we were underage and some computer or other — not the original one — had just noticed. Just as well, perhaps. A grasp of oakiness had continued to elude me. I got citrus and buttery and chocolate, but violet, too, proved difficult. Was it all just baloney? The grind of the semester seemed to be taking place off to one side of me. Still, I did try. I would do my work at night, dive into the blue of my computer screen, which would wash on like a California pool. Then, after swimming in it for a while, I’d come tiredly to the surface with bits of this or that — in my hair, if not my head. My computer desktop indicated I was at least working on things. I was starting, then starting over fresh without deleting the first thing: my screen looked like an aquarium where a hundred tiny square-finned fish had died, randomly frozen in place. Except for the Sufism, taught by the Donegal don, classes marched along forgettably. In the Neutral Pelvis I was also learning about the cantilevered torso, the inner space, and the choral om. But in Sufism we learned that Rumi was a man in love, and the absence of the beloved entered all his cravings, which it really didn’t do with Doris Lessing. In Geology we were learning the effects of warmth and cold, which at bottom I began to see was what all my courses were about. In Soundtracks to War Movies we were given a list — every war from the ancient to now, Gladiator to Black Hawk Down —and we were to see as many depictions as we could and note their melodies.

——

With Murph gone, I moved my desk away from the window, where the leaking draft would chill and hunch me. I made the computer screen itself into my sole window. From here only I would look out into the world. I googled my father to see what others were saying about his produce and to check out his website and what it indicated about the coming spring crops. I googled Sarah and Le Petit Moulin and learned that she had once cooked dinner at the White House for President Clinton. Perhaps it had gone badly and this is why she’d failed to mention it. Wine before swine? Pearls before martians? Perhaps she had served actual swine. Apparently she had indeed served them pork, local and organic and deposited in what I now thought of as a diaperlike tortilla. Tortillas seemed to me a mistake. She had also served them a walnut and buttermilk sorbet. Perhaps there was also a salad — mesclun with lemon-shallot dressing (I was making up names of dishes in my head: Kiwi carpaccio! Funnel of fennel! Couscous with frou-frou!) — and surely other things. But only the pork and sorbet were mentioned. I googled myself, my laptop screen becoming not only a window but a mirror. I wanted to see how I was faring out there in the world, or rather not I but the other Tassie Keltjin I’d discovered who was a grandmother and an emergency 911 volunteer outside of Pestico. Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Weekly I would google her and see how she was doing. One week she celebrated her fortieth wedding anniversary with her husband, Gus. Another week she tied for second in a pie-baking contest. And then one day I googled her and her obituary flashed up on the screen, and that is when I stopped googling her for a while.

When next I went to the Thornwood-Brinks’ it was Edward who again greeted me at the kitchen table. Did he not have the speed-dating of fruit flies to chaperone?

He smiled at me in a warm and charming way that made me look behind me to see if someone else was there. No one was.

“I wanted to let you know that the cleaning gay is coming today.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m sorry. He’s gay. He cleans. I call him the cleaning gay. Sarah yells at me for that. The cleaning guy. His name is Noel. Though he sometimes likes to be called Noelle. His vacuum cleaner used to frighten Emmie, but now she’s obsessed with it. He sometimes lets her push it around. That’s all OK.”