She is making a birthday card and puts in nine dollars. Andrea is nine, Una says. It’s a makeup party.
The invitation reads Don’t Blush! and I ask her if she catches the double meaning.Yes, she says.
When she writes Happy Birthday on the card I ask her if she knows how to excite and jazz up sentences.
Put an exclamation mark, she says.
She says this in a declarative way.
Some kids end a sentence with a raised, doubting tone. And here Una is adding an exclamation mark, sure of herself.
She says, A question mark is like half a heart.
I say, Sometimes questions are asked half-heartedly.
21 I’ve invited Lydia up for supper. Helmut is back from Boston. Iris and I will team up to cook. We sit in the kitchen and dig up Helmut’s life story. How he was adopted and found his sister only last year. As he’s telling us, a big man with a cast on his arm walks in with a summons.
Gabriel English?
Lydia, Iris, and Helmut look at me.
You guys, I say, know nothing about deception.
I confess I’m Gabriel English.
Man with cast: You owe the government twenty thousand dollars, and change.
I look at the summons. The Cast says, Youre a hard one to track down. Dont you ever vote?
I vote, but I swear an oath to where I live.
The Cast is puzzled.
I lie, I say, about where I live.
The Cast is very polite, says he has been around a few times but got no answer at the door. He says he can let himself out.
I can see Lydia looking at the summons with disapproval.
I’m going to talk to Oliver. I’ll lay ten thousand in cash on the government table. That’s what I borrowed from student loans ten years ago. The rest is 12 percent interest. The rest, I say in a righteous tone, is usury. If they accept it, I’ll take you to lunch.
Lydia: Last of the big spenders.
They won’t turn down ten grand.
Lydia: Not when they see the likes of you.
22 Oliver says it’s worth a try. I will do this generous monetary transaction on my birthday. It will clear the slate to begin my thirty-fifth year. I could declare bankruptcy, but that taints the future. Also, integrity tells me to pay what I owe but be stubborn on the interest. Also, bankruptcy is not an attractive trait. I can see Lydia wants me to clear this up without it coming to that.
Mom called. She wants to visit, but she’ll come on the bus. She misses me because I dont come back for Christmas. She calls it a pagan holiday. The only ceremonies she celebrates are marriages and Easter. She doesnt even raise her glass to a toast.
23 I wrote a passion poem for Lydia. I left it in her mailbox: Send me an ounce of cinnamon, it said, wrapped in paper and string. Send my love’s own grain. An ounce will do, an ounce of cinnamon. For apples, you said. My mouth that eats apples. Tied in paper and string. Eat my mouth in green apples that have been given to him, stapled and pinned. An ounce of cinnamon; send it, given to him who has no cinnamon, save himself. For love’s own grain. Send me this in a cloth so fine and wire so hard it will prove our own forgiveness.
I am wired into an insane part of me.
24 Lydia says the poem was appreciated. Her tone implies she didnt, no one could, understand it. I said it was a nonsense poem, just read it for the intent. There’s intent behind it.