Seed: A Novel

statue

I won’t remember your name though I have written it down, probably written it down, maybe not written it down on my calendar. But you’ll scribble it on a Post-it, please, and put it up at the appropriate place on the genealogy map, those sheets of poster board taped to the side the refrigerator, light blue, the Post-its, for the paternal side of the family, pale pink for the maternal. Just put your name and the name of the thing. The object. What I’m bestowing on you. That way somebody can keep track of everything. Why, I’m not sure. When I’m about to not keep track of anything.

So I usually say. My little speech. He’ll be a nephew. Or grandnephew, if there is such a thing. Says here 3:00 p.m. Yes, the name has a familiar ring. James. Son or grandson of somebody I’m related to. James. Don’t be surprised if I look surprised when I open the door and you say, Hi, I’m Kim. The young look identical these days, same smooth skin, same straight backs, same blond (or black) hair, same full red lips, same blue (or black) eyes, same fine jaws not yet broadened, thickened by decades of steady mastication, faces unweathered, unworn, unborn, the same curl to the lips saying the world is my oyster.

There’s this ring James, or Kim, or Ricky bought from a tourist stall in Mexico City in the year, well you won’t remember the year, being so very long ago, so forget the year. Silver, a large solid silver ring in the general form of a class ring and set with a faceted synthetic stone, alexandrite, chrysoberyl, beryllium aluminum oxide, not that you’ll be much interested in that—more so, perhaps, in the faintly intriguing fact that the stone changes color in different lights, from pink to green to amethyst to blue. I bought it for its very flamboyance. Me, flamboyant? Well, my puppy, I will confess, while handing it over to you, the deep dark secret that I too was once your very age—imagine that!—but will not allude to the paired thought that stands upright beside us like a mirror and suggests, glares, even shouts, that someday you will reach—attain—crawl to—be wheeled into—my exact age, the gods of time willing. Here, it’s yours. I wore it for ten, fifteen, twenty years, a mere blink of the eye, its changing color reflecting my shifting youthful ambiguities: was I weird, different, exceptional, straight, bi, gay, poly, or just normally overheatedly sexual, happy to hump anything soft that moved and smiled and laughed? May it play a similar role in your life, Kim, James, Kevin, who are still of the age, I will guess, to have no idea of who you are, only who you don’t want to be. It’s yours to keep, to have and to hold, wear, hang up on a nail, push to the back of a drawer, throw in a river, drop off at a pawnshop, you name it. I stopped wearing it. A gold wedding band instead. She, mother of all children though none of my own, gone to round up the strays. You’re too late to meet her. Pity. She would have stuffed you with cookies, fruits, nuts. Unlike Ramona, who might actually offer you some water in a clean glass. If you’re lucky. If she’s even here today, which I think not.

Put your name on the Post-it and press it to the tree there, I think, at least if you think you go with those particular names. Past three. Maybe I have the wrong date. Or you’re lost, Kevin, and have come to wonder why, what’s the point, the long drive, the smelly old house. Or you’re sensitive, very, and have heard about the business of the poster board family tree and the Post-its and think it’s all too creepy. Word may be getting around. Has he written you a letter yet? What’d he give you? Nice cold cash is probably not part of the deal.

No, it isn’t.

No doubt you’ll arrive with your Ruth or Rhonda, increasingly the drill these days, afraid to be alone with an old man in a cluttered house, needing to gang up on him, maybe cajole something else out of him. But she’s not kin, or not yet, or maybe never, maybe just a hundred-night stand. Besides, the disbursement of my inventory of small treasures accumulated over the decades is going to the males of the line, my better half having already funneled hers to the female contingent. Though no doubt exceptions have been made, will be made. Plus the usual mistakes. The titterings, the imaginings of ridicule out on the driveway as they dump the box or bag into the back seat of some shiny little throwaway rental car. That happened with Eric. Or so I surmise. Or was it Aaron? And his her. It started with an M. Montana? Eric for whom I had boxed up and wrapped up in tissue paper the complete but incomplete (no engine) electric train set, used, very used, given to me by my father before the war, a war, some war, any war, doesn’t matter which, as a Christmas present, an engineless used electric train set with two turquoise (badly chipped) passenger cars with roofs that came off to give access to the small electric light bulbs within, an orange boxcar, a flatbed car, which in fact were from another set, another brand, and didn’t fit or hitch to the passenger cars, and a few lengths of O-gauge three-rail track, my first train set, engineless. Through the small window in the front door I watched them guffaw as they got into the car and could hear Aaron or Eric or whoever laughing, Let’s get the hell outta here, let’s get the fuck away from this place. Swung around on the driveway with such briskness that the tire marks are still there.

As I say, mistakes will be made. A more rational approach would be to shake the hand, peer into the eye (blue or black), watch the curve of the lips, note whether the eyes shift away and back, note whether the cough is natural or affected, do the hands flutter, do the feet curl up as if to hide while the body perches on the edge of the couch, is somebody about to burst into laughter, is the brow knit too firmly in feigned concern? All this. Then decide. But there is nothing rational about this, any of this. Which is why I should perhaps turn to other means by which to address my terminal concerns to the universe.

But more recliner reflections get me nowhere. Except a little deeper into the future.

There’s no cell phone reception here. Too sharply, I say. More than once, no doubt. They look startled as I open the front door. There’s no cell phone reception here. Little silver devices held in hands at a slight angle away from the body.

I didn’t know there was still anywhere where there’s no cell phone service, one of them says.

Temporarily. Small private plane clipped the tower again, second time this year.

These two, Harper and Celeste, in long flowing coats and scarves against the frigidity of a late March cold snap, dandyish, bespectacled, stop in their tracks and stare at me with startled looks. I cannot check my fly often enough, whip around, give it the old upward tug, swivel back. Harper, a family name, end of that particular line, now that one I remember.

I’m Harper, he says, pleased to meet you, sir. This is my fiancée, Celeste.

How nice, she says. Uneasily.

He has the narrow Harper face, close-set blue eyes. Now what did I set aside for him?

Come in, have a seat. Not on that one, it’s unsteady.

Celia. Celia of the fine pointy little features sizing up the living room in quick darting glances and noting the large rectangular spaces where the wallpaper is less faded and with a quick craning of the neck no doubt noting same in the adjoining dining room, before settling into a glazed stare above a half-smile, she’s already counting the minutes, the seconds, the split seconds before she can tactfully remind him that they have a car to return, a plane to catch, a connection to make, a reservation to confirm, tickets to pick up, dry cleaning to drop off, a funeral, a wedding, graduation, oh gosh, and don’t forget the good-bye party or is it the housewarming, dear. And where, she will ask later, are the famous Russian and Greek icons, the New Mexico santos, the Mayan figurines? Sucked up by eBay? Her Harper sits erect with his mouth half open in expectation. Another Harper trait: they live their lives with the mouths open. We share a grandfather. Or is it a great?

If you’re flying, you can’t take it with you.

Harper stares, forehead creased, as if struggling to understand a joke or a riddle.

If you’re flying, you can’t take it with you, I repeat. If you’re flying, I explicate, you can’t take firearms.

Firearms? he asks.

If you’re flying you can’t take firearms. On board. The plane.

Oh, he says, I wouldn’t—

No, you wouldn’t.

We don’t believe in guns, Celia or Constance or Cupcake observes with the patience of a saint.

I slap my arthritic knee, a terrible mistake. You don’t believe in guns? Then you probably don’t believe in cars, cell phones, computers, rubber bands either. Brave new world, thus populated.

She says, Beg your pardon?

Ha-ha, I reply, ha-ha. The Tempest, I explain, act, act, one of the acts, one of the scenes. Our grandfather’s or great grandfather’s buffalo gun, a Sharp, would not go down well in the overhead bin of business class, would it now?

Oh, Harper says. No.

Whether you or anybody believes in it or not.

Comes now one of those wonderful uncomfortable moments, me on the edge of my recliner, them innerly squirming on the sofa, smells rising about them, a pall of misunderstanding settling over the room like smoke from the fireplace when I accidentally knock the damper closed. The sort of moment usually rescued by Ramona, offering water con hielo o sin hielo. Or sometimes not rescued. You no speak Es-Spanish? Ice with water or no? But she’s off for another couple of days. The number of Tupperwared dinners in the fridge tells me three more.

Now Celeste, yes Celeste, that sounds better, is mentally thumbing through her electronic calendar for apposite excuses for exiting excruciating circumstances and is about to break the silence. Until I cut her off at the pass.

But, I say.

Oh? goes Harper. A note of hope here. I can tell. He believes in guns. Males do. It’s the very first thing they really believe in. Bang, bang, you’re dead. Often the first complete sentence of the American male, I’m