CHAMELEON HOURS

By ELISE PARTRIDGE

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2008 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-64792-0

Contents

Acknowledgments..........................................xiONEEverglades...............................................3Two Scenes from Philadelphia.............................4Phoenixville Farm........................................61959.....................................................8Group Portrait...........................................9The Artists' House.......................................11In the Barn..............................................13Thirteen.................................................14Two Monuments............................................15First Death..............................................16Miss Peters..............................................18Mia's House..............................................19Supermarket Scanner......................................21Temp.....................................................23For a Father.............................................25Elegy....................................................26The Secret House.........................................27Caught...................................................29One Calvinist's God......................................30Plague...................................................31TWOGnomic Verses from the Anglo-Saxon.......................35Four Lectures by Robert Lowell, 1977.....................36Sisyphus: The Sequel.....................................40Philosophical Arguments..................................42Depends on the Angle.....................................44Insights.................................................45As I Was Saying..........................................47Arcadia..................................................48Rural Route..............................................49Dislocations.............................................50Song: The Messenger......................................52The Book of Steve........................................53August...................................................58Buying the Farm..........................................59THREECancer Surgery...........................................63Prognosis: 50-50.........................................64A Valediction............................................65Room 238: Old Woman and Hummingbird......................67Chemo Side Effects: Memory...............................68Chemo Side Effects: Vision...............................70Childless................................................72Forty-Eight Years........................................73Granted a Stay...........................................75First Days Back at Work..................................76Chameleon Hours..........................................77Ways of Going............................................78Farewell Desires.........................................80FOURHome Is the Sailor.......................................83For Jenny................................................84The Runt Lily............................................85Since I Last Saw You.....................................86FIVEWorld War II Watchtower..................................91Crux.....................................................92Pauper, Boston, 1988.....................................94Vuillard Interior........................................96Where Your Treasure Is...................................97US Post Office, December 22..............................98Two Cowboys..............................................100Ruin.....................................................101Heron, Tampa.............................................104Tested...................................................106Epitaph for Diane........................................108Edwin Partridge..........................................109Snail Halfway Across the Road............................110From Feste's Self-Help Book..............................112Unknown Artists..........................................114Phoenix..................................................116Snapshots of Our Afterlife...............................117Small Vessel.............................................118Notes....................................................119

Chapter One

Everglades Nothing fled when we walked up to it, nor did we flinch, even at the hobnailed gators sunning two-inch fangs, a licorice-whip snake slipping over our shoes. The normally secretive clapper-rail appeared under our boardwalk glancing this way and that, casual as a moviegoer hunting for a seat. Tropical, temperate, each constituency spoke- the sunburned-looking gumbo-limbo trees nodded side by side with sedate, northern pines. Even the darkness gave its blessing for the moonflower to open under its aegis. A bird swaying on a coral-bean sang two notes that might have been "Name me."

Two Scenes from Philadelphia 1. Valley Forge, 1777-1778 Thanksgiving rations, the second year of the war: a quarter-cup of rice, a dash of vinegar. Twenty-five barrels of flour; twelve thousand men. One feasted for two days on a fist-sized pumpkin. Sentries stood on their hats to warm their feet; the officers' horses shuddered under needling sleet. One of three soldiers wintering lost his life. New Year's morning, a ten-year-old played the fife.

2. Victorian Interior The French windows were swathed with mauve-gray drapes, ends gathering on plum rugs in velvet folds reflected in a ten-foot gilt-framed mirror above the stag crowning the tagre, black, lacquered cabinets japanned with ivory, a pinch-stitched mauve petitpoint fireplace screen. Carved rosettes above brass chandeliers which Belfast maids kept glinting with their dusters trapped, in their arabesques, each gram of soot. Silver brushes etched with swirled initials lay poised by "hair receivers" on vanities- crystal jars for collecting straying wisps to be woven into wreaths or framed in jet. The door to the master bedroom's marbled bath was diamonded with ruby stained-glass panes; on the rosewood desk's ebonized veneer, Trollope was propped with guides to english dogs.

Phoenixville Farm for Anne Each subdivision lawn bore the same shrubs with minor variations-scraggly, full- and timid bands of housefinches we glimpsed through drapes drawn to protect chintz parterres. Each spring every family on the block would weed-whack, edge, clip, prune, spray, rototill, fumigate ants, squash snails. And each fall, rakes would be dragged jabbing through balding yards, leaves crammed in plastic bags for sanitation. Indoors, forced narcissi sat on sills by velvet-napped violets; off-white walls wore oils of red-coated hunters clutching whips. Guppies flicked bored beside their plastic castles; bored to anxiety, gerbils quaked in tanks. We ate peas dribbled from cans, pale canned pear-halves, sogged blobs of peaches in viscous syrup. The change of seasons was marked by switching off or on the central AC's monotone thrum. At Anne's, nothing was mowed; Queen-Anne's lace bobbed all over her yard. Buck, her tick-prone hound, set our agenda, baying us around the farm. We'd sprawl in wild mustard, withers to withers, companionable as old cows; breathe deep skunk-cabbage reek from humming scum-slick ponds where frogs with hurdlers' thighs zapped gnats and belched. Hawks tensed above us. We gobbled blackberries off stabbing vines, smearing our faces purple, sucked dandelion milk. We warmed wet hands in the hunter's belly-fur, gouged clean the hoof that had shattered a rib; watched lambs yank udders; tried to nurse fledglings, their bodies tufted lumps of wrinkled dough, each eye a bugging bruise. A hen might shriek up from a garbage can; we'd stroke four fresh eggs in a slide of feed. Burnt-orange flashing in the back field- a fox, glaring: What are you doing here? Anne showed us how to scoop a bludgeoning hornet with one palm from a pane and fling it free, how baby spiders rappelled down a shed wall. At dusk the bats that were dangling like berets from the barn eaves chittered through sycamores; one moon-white night we chirred around the yard after a trundling family of raccoons, the pond throbbing with peepers, here here here here. When parents came next morning to pick us up, we lay like glossy eggplants in the garden, white sneakers gobbed with dung. We wanted to hide like spitbugs in fizzing clots, tuck ourselves in all winter under a pinecone's sticky eaves. some day, some day-we'd each spin sleeping bags, doze for six weeks, thrust, gnaw, unkink striped wings, try out our newborn feelers, lurch to Anne's farm, bathe in dust puddles, lay eggs, and worship weeds.

1959 In the basement: damp black linoleum, mildewed walls. But freshly-washed diapers whiten this table. Clean will reign! The woman who never raises her voice launches her whole weight into scouring a stain. Her hissing iron lunges over a scrap of white. Left, right, left, right, tight little jabs at the corners subduing a handkerchief into a perfect square. She holds it up like a banner, aligns it on a stack. There. She seizes a crumpled shirttail. All day, the spigot weeps, pipes keen; and, in the dryer's window, arms flail.

Group Portrait for Marjorie Great-grandmothers in stern black shoes, frowning in photos at the beach, the granddaughter you raised still lives within your wagging fingers' reach. One widowed too young, one who mopped parquet floors as the mayor's maid, you sailed for the new world by yourselves; longed for your Belfast families; stayed. You brought two snapshots of the Causeway; combs-one silver, two tortoiseshell; a hard conviction that the pint, or one cigarette, could lead to Hell. You taught my mother not to whine, never to lie. She was to brush her hair one hundred strokes; act "ladylike"; sit up straight in every chair. (Only in my mother's dreams could she shake at you a matted mane, swing like a gibbon through the woods, wreck her best shoes in pouring rain.) I can tell you that the little girl you cared for never has disobeyed; she still feels you watching her, shades under the umbrella's shade; if she got an urge to throw a plate, sit down for days, do nothing but cry, she'd see your bone needles flashing out of the corner of one eye, tell over gifts from Providence, tuck each graying, wispy hair back into place; start a new task; make those stooping shoulders square.

The Artists' House for Ruth K. Fackenthal Their peeling porch was shaded by bamboo, a talkative, clacking stand. The scruffy yard was strewn with cinderblocks- stages for minstrel flocks of cardinals, robins, jays. under her tire swing, daylilies grew. We navigated the rhododendron's maze where Ruth could cup a bumblebee in one hand; we braided lanyards out of plantain shoots, watched spiders spinning egg sacs between the beech's roots. Inside, Ruth's whole family hung on the walls. In the study uncle Clint, unfinished, clutched a glove, a blob of white. The house wore forest-twilight, its air tangy with paint. The upstairs ambled off in crooked halls, the door to one hung with a crack-faced saint, the other with a Rauschenberg aquatint. Ivy crept under one sill across the floor where swathed old couches sat like longboats hauled ashore. The kitchen paper revealed, beneath its flaps, two plaster continents nudging, a giant with a dozen bulging eyes. There we boiled green dye, yellowed a sweatshirt with bark tea, pinched flour-and-water mixtures into maps: a lopsided Mount Everest, twin galaxies. We improvised mobiles-blown eggs and string; dabbed posterboard with paint-smeared slices of limes; built masks for Halloween out of paste and shredded Times. On freezer wrap we traced a mushroom's spores; under the blurry lens of her junior microscope we squinted at stalks, eyelashes, slivers of chalk. Mornings we overheard her mother humming through her studio door; sometimes we'd catch a word. Each day we got out pastels, charcoal, pens and India inks, in every shade, tone, hue- boarded the longboats, chose our colors, hummed, and drew.

In the Barn One morning, on the mud floor of the barn, we found a snake glittering in the sun- ten inches patterned like an argyle sock, black diamonds on gray. Puffing beside his neck was a red bubble. No-wait-then we saw he had a frog clamped in his propped jaw. The bubble was blood. The frog sat elbows-out, inscrutable, a drowsy magistrate hearing a plea. His skin was mottled brown, dark mud splattered on light. His eyes were open, gold-rimmed, fixed. He blinked; the eyes looked moist. His neck bulged; the oversized mouth seemed set. Desperate-eyed, the cows stared up at us, clinking linked chains, swaying in their stalls. The snake glanced sideways, but he couldn't budge, avid, like we were, edging nearer to watch. At last the frog looked uncomfortable, as though trying to be dignified. Willful, the snake was helpless too, frog jamming his jaw. We ran when a calf started to bawl.

Thirteen We whacked each other up and down on seesaws; bashed a kickball straight into pink lilac. Waltz-jumped, obedient; in packs swept the rink- Heidens, hurtling, crouched into shoot-the-duck. Shouted out the answers in long division. Raised twin turreted cities from brown paper. Feet on handlebars, racing, plummeted lanes. Hair spiked with burrs all day. Sockless to choir. We gawked at forbidden words in the OED, dared the smoking breath of a tethered bull. But almost overnight shrinking, wary, we edged like testing cats who clung to a wall- it was as though we'd bounced, yelling, up, and before we bounded off Jen's trampoline our teams were redivided: pretty or not. Earthward, staggering, reaching, reeled, thirteen. Two Monuments 1. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier White marble. Rolled sod. Black-shod guard: shining shoes glide up and down red carpet. The charger's bronze lip curls. Inside the colonnaded rotunda, under a Latin diadem, cases of medals and rosettes. 2. Battlefield One-room museum: a letter from an eighteen-year-old, bragging we'll whup 'em yet! His dingy, bullet-shredded epaulet. The wire-rim glasses and dog-eared Bible of the grandmother who refused to leave her house when the battle started. (She died at noon under an exploding shell.) A grasshopper clinging to a swaying stalk. A mower roaring over the field. First Death for Rene Sicalides Jean's father died one morning before school -the first parent we knew to go: a stroke. She came, red-faced, blank-eyed, to crew that day; we lugged our racing eight to river's edge. The honey-varnished hull was balsa-frail- thrust a heel wrong, you'd splinter through to cold. We teetered from the slip, clutched inch-wide gunwales, balancing on one leg like storks; tied in; brushed past the safety rope, slack as a clothesline, unraveling by the eager waterfalls. Jean, who stroked the boat, drove upriver; all backs coiled with hers, our shoulders strained. Putt-putting after in a stubby tin launch, black anorak, black megaphone, our coach. We shivered under the gloom of a railroad bridge where kids lobbed chunks of coal at startled boats and swaying snakes of boxcars, dried-blood red, rattled away to their obscure horizons. Two-mile warmup; we slid to rest by the isle, riding uneasily on the shifting current. A mallard family bobbed nearby, the male off on his own, neck-sheen green changeable silk. What could we say? "Jean-how're you doing?" Amelia, seven-seat, leaned to pat her arm. When Karen started a story about her dad, Irene poked her, brightly changed the subject. In silence we sat half-listening to the coach- "Let's try some moves to help you stay together"- kept glancing at Jean, trying to steady the boat. One bridge to go; past its black arch, the river, fast that day, funneled into a froth; if we weren't careful, we'd ricochet off squeezing rocks. "Hold water, port!" The cox yanked the card-size rudder till it nicked the hull. We were veering, light as a pencil. "Starboard, pull! Come on," Jean cried. "Trying!" yelled Marie. The boat, a minute-hand, swung stiffly; stuck, dragging. Dig in, dig in, dig in-heave- at last our bow sat pointing south. Time-trials: edge to the racecourse starting-line. Blades poised. "Partez!" 38 strokes a minute, surging, burning, settle, surge, take it up- "Seat three, you're late. Six, you're late, keep time!" The cox's clapper clapped like a lone drum, we skidded with the wind, lost Coach's voice, churned one blistering power-ten at the end, then sagging, past the stands. Waves smacked our blades. The dirty orange finish-line flags flap-flapped. What could we do for Jean? Nothing. Nothing! She was the first. "Follow!" the cox was crying, "Two miles to home! Stay together now, together!" Our oars left purling circles that blended, blended; blended; began to fade.

Miss Peters 1900-1967 She strode the parish house in a black cassock-she'd been allowed to become a deacon. Occasionally she'd read the day's collect, her white hair barely visible over the lectern's eagle. She wrote Canterbury, arguing for priesthood. "Women can serve the church in so many ways," the bishop intoned at a diocesan convention. She was put in charge of Christian Education. She chose the angels for the Christmas pageant, got the Altar Guild reading Sir Thomas Browne. Now, not far from the Gothic narthex where she used to straighten, exasperated, the Youth Choir's robes: "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizidek"- she had it cut into her upright stone.

Mia's House Summers, the fans would swing their wire faces, fluttering bureau-scarves-Battenburg laces, a gilt-edge table runner, pale green linen. Winters, behind her headboard, she'd hear scrabbling- squirrels shuffling hoards of nuts. A scratch; pause; sudden frantic scrapings of delicate claws. Ivory-cheeked Doulton figures posed in nooks. Tooled-leather, slipcased, embossed, uncut books; two marble putti clutching grapes of jade entwined under a fringed lavender shade. The former owner's nursery-pink walls, pink floor, pink-and-white lambs floating across the door- she used for storing shoes, boxed, in rows, pink tissue wadded in old spectator toes. She kept her mansion spotless; lived alone, flashing slick selves, like mica flakes in stone, to visitors. She loomed, a French armoire; skittered, an overlooked dustmouse, behind the bar.... At night the squirrels would jump, hearing her scream. "Where's Mia?" she shouted in a frequent dream that vanished under the sofa's claw-and-ball, rolled like rain off roses flocking the walls.

(Continues...)

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