Max Porter - Grief is the Thing with Feathers

They played at birds, they played at lions. They went through phases: dinosaurs, trucks, Thundercats, kung fu, lying, sport.

There was very little division between their imaginary and real worlds, and people talked of coping mechanisms and normal childhood and time. Many people said ‘You need time’, when what we needed was washing powder, nit shampoo, football stickers, batteries, bows, arrows, bows, arrows.

There was very little division between my imaginary and real worlds, and people talked of sensible workloads and recovery periods and healthy obsessions. Many people said ‘You need time’, when what I needed was Shakespeare, Ibn ‘Arabi, Shostakovich, Howlin’ Wolf.

I remember they left their tea unfinished and I picked at half-eaten fish fingers, cold peas and coagulated ketchup.

I remember I said, ‘I’m throwing every single toy in the bin!’ and they giggled.

I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.

I remember my first date, aged fifteen, with a girl called Hilary Gidding. A coin fell down the back of the cinema seats and we both slipped our hands into the tight fuzzy gap of the chairs past popcorn kernels and sticky ticket stubs and our hands met, stroking the carpet feeling for the coin, and it was electric. The wrist being clamped by upholstery, the darkness, the accident, the lovely dirt of public spaces.

Dad and Crow were fighting in the living room. Door closed. There was a low droning cawera skraa, caw, cawera skraa and Dad saying Stop it, Stop it, caw, craw, and hocking, retching, spitting, bad language, cronks, barks, sobs, a weird gamelan jam of broken father sounds and violent bird calls, thumps and shrieks and twinging rips.

Crow emerged, ruffled, wide-eyed. He gently closed the door behind him and joined us at the kitchen table.

We coloured in zoo pictures with our felt-tipped pens and Crow went over the lines.

I remember her pushing when they told her to push and the Jamaican midwife saying, ‘Push gyal, push gyal.’ She said, ‘I don’t want to poo,’ and I laughed and said, ‘Too late.’ Then there was son one, covered in strange smelly cream, hungry and tiny.

I remember her pushing when they told her to push and the Scottish midwife saying, ‘Blimey, here comes a head.’ She said, ‘It hurts, fuck, fuck-fuck it hurts,’ and we were crying and there was son two, purple, howling and bendy.

She is Mrs Laocoön, standing on the beach with her arms crossed, saying, ‘Look at those bloody boys,’ and we are fifty feet out to sea being chewed apart by sadness.

Some of the time we tell the truth. It’s our way of being nice to Dad.

Introduction: Crow’s Bad Dream I miss my wife

Ch. 1. Magical DangersI miss my wife

Ch. 2. Reign of SilenceI miss my wife

Ch. 3. Unkillable TricksterI miss my wife

Ch. 4. Aphrodisiac DisasterI miss my wife

Ch. 5. Tragic ComedyI miss my wife

Ch. 6. The Baby (God) in the LakeI miss my wife

Ch. 7. The SongI miss my wife

Conclusion: Recovery and Growth I miss my wife

Once upon a time there were two big men who were brothers with one another. They were in brother with each other.

The soles of the bigger brother’s boots were worn through in patches. Half a mile out of the village on Windmill Hill his socks were damp and squelching and he mentioned turning back for better boots but the smaller brother kept walking.

‘The only other pair of boots is my old pair and they would be too small for you.’

‘True.’

‘My spare boots are better than your only boots.’

They trudged up the steep hill mounting thin banks of chalk like swimmers moving out past breaking waves and at the top they paused to gaze down at the village sitting neatly in the cupped hand of the valley.

‘You will struggle in shit boots brother. At some point we might walk on sharp flints or need to tread down thorny branches.’

‘I imagine at some point we might.’

‘Then you will struggle is all I’m saying.’

The smaller brother hocked and spat a ball of ochre phlegm at the gate of the windmill and cursed the owner. The bigger brother laughed.

They walked fast down through the pollard wood that clad the far side of Windmill Hill. A roof of luminous patchwork was suspended above them and the dark floor was stabbed all over with light.

A red deer bolted from a holly bush and the bigger brother whispered, ‘Hello friend.’

The other brother made a gun with his hand and shrieked ‘KABOOM’ and a startled pheasant barrelled upwards into the neon green with a chuckle.

Comprehension Questions:

Do you think the brothers in this excerpt are realistic?

Does the rural setting of the story change the way you engage with the characters?

If the boots are a metaphor for the ability to cope with grief, who do you think has died?

Write the next paragraph of the story, focusing on the themes of man versus nature, boots, brothers, and the Russian revolution.

She was beaten to death, I once told some boys at a party.

Oh shit mate, they said.

I lie about how you died, I whispered to Mum.

I would do the same, she whispered back.

I remember her pretending to like watching award ceremonies more than she actually did because it surprised me, but then I let her know that such-and-such award ceremony was on and we would have to sit through it. Let’s go to bed, she said, we don’t really know who any of these people are.

Winners, I said. Every stinking ugly vacuous cunt-faced last one of them.

And off we went to bed.

Some days I realise I’ve been forgetting basic things, so I run upstairs, or downstairs, or wherever they are and I say, ‘You must know that your Mum was the funniest, most excellent person. She was my best friend. She was so sarcastic and affectionate …’ and then I run out of steam because it feels so crass and lazy, and they nod and say, ‘We know, Dad, we remember.’

‘She would call me sentimental.’

‘You are sentimental.’

They offer me a space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me.

Try to consider all three, in one, before we move in closer. A is to B what C is to A plus B less C. Lovely. Look again, that’s right, sweep. Now left to right? Good. Now right to left. Good. Now move across them all for a One Two Three? Now absorb them all at once. Now again, One Two Three? And … absorb. OK, in we go:

On the left we have the dad. This image occupies the functional position of the here-goes, the ask, what I like to call the George-Dyer-on-the-shitter, the left-flank, the hoist, the education spot, the empty church, the torture step, the pain panel, the muscular.

In the middle, yours truly. A smack of black plumage and a stench of death. Ta-daa! This is the rotten core, the Grünewald, the nails in the hands, the needle in the arm, the trauma, the bomb, the thing after which we cannot ever write poems, the slammed door, the in-principio-erat-verbum . Very What-the-fuck. Very blood-sport. Very university historical.

But don’t stop looking. The triptych is about ways of never stopping. It is culture. On the right we have the boys. Two forms, but one shape, could be female, could be male, we can just about decipher four little legs and four little arms (the newborn calf of the right-hand panel!) and tiny little hopeful faces. And sense is suddenly made of the previous panels, this is pure mathematics, this is ancient logic. It is nature. This is what I call the lift-off, late style, the ten-year-journey-home, the arrow through the eye-hole, the fugue. Very sunset. Very bard. Very poignant.