Shirley

Framed-Art Tour, Exhibit 15   You almost can’t see the cat puddled along the windowsill. And to get a grander picture, you must bend your nose to each piece of the story. For example, this one, and this one.   But even then, that won’t do. So here’s the book (it’s also here—the whole thing ). After chopping up my thrift-s hop copy for its illustrations, I had t o go find a nother .   The cat is a nuisance and a pest, in the eyes of Mr. Foster, the hotel manager. He uses Mr. Foster’s toothbrush—the cat hairs are evidence. “ Cat whiskers!” cried Mr. Foster. The cat rides the elevator when he wants, eats the night clerk’s tuna sandwiches, thinks the lobby is his own living room. Mr. Foster intends to shoo the animal for good, once the rain stops. Maybe it sounds terrible—my cutting up a book. But isn’t this vandalizing what a junk store is all about, really—its mission? Its used and useful ethos? And e ven if m y objets d’art lack the gravitas of somebody’s act...

Lois & Ann & Nell & Mercy Watson   First, Lois. You remember her ? Or not? M y chum who messaged me from Durham NC, stuck in a hospital waiting room? Despite the flurry of people coming and going, the book she’d borrowed from somebody had her engrossed. “Th e first chapter is SO good,” she wrote, “ I became absorbed in it!!! Read it, if you haven’t.” Immediately I put the book on hold at our library— These Precious Days by Ann Patchett . I’d read Patchett’s Truth & Beauty: a Friendship . Also, The Dutch House. Days later, Lois messaged again. “Bill ’s recuperating. I’m glad to b e home!!” “ And everything’s good?” I asked. “ Whew!!” N ow he j ust needed fattening up . At the hospital t hey’ d not given him enough to eat. “ I’m thick into Precious Days , ” I told her. “Wasn’t that chapter on her three fathers so amazing??!!” “ It wa s . I love it all. I’ v e only just gotten to the Eudora Welty chapter. I have to savor things. I don't want it to end.” ...

When the Parents Fluttered Away   Brother Touslyhead takes the bigger bed upstairs, where I can read to him from the purple chair. Sister Ringlets and her math and p syc h  textbooks, the one across the hall. Sister Braids gets my husband’s and mine downstairs, right around the corner from the living room. So where does that leave us?   It’s all right. I love it on the sofa. It’s where I take up camp whenever I’m fevered and hacking, or too riled by the manic dead-of-night thoughts to sleep. This time, both of us chased from our bed, we’re elaborately stocked with pillows, blankets, and all, and from my berth I can still hear his breathing inches away, his toasty warm stirring, down on the floor. He’s even put his clock like he likes it, approximate to his bedding, the numerals lasering a path to his eyes.  For four whole nights the arrangement works just fine. Grandparents are  adaptable , right? They can handle things, right? There’s extra laundr...

For-Real Wolf Story Must a person keep casting about frantically for kindness? That’s all there’s to do? It won’t do to be mean, Johann said. Mustn’t be mean. He’s sick, I could probably say. He needs to go to the hospital. Maybe shouldn ’t say the rest. Jail hospital. I se e a piece on Facebook about narcissism—the malignant kind. The writer, Ron Kraybill, says it’s considered untreatable. Grandgirl Youngest brings a book. She’s already read it but she wants to hear it again. It seems the perfect thing for curling up in bed with, evil and all. Right away, page 2, Wolf falls down Pigses’ chimney. Next page, he gets taken away. The barricading on the back window of the police vehicle looks too narrowly spaced for him to have gotten his head out. But he’s stuck all right. “Oh my,” I say when we get to the part where Wolf has all the books, “I wish that were Trump. Shouldn’t he be in there? Yeah. He should be in prison.” A couple of pages later, Wolf has escaped. He’s ...

Monarch Sighting, No Kings Day I wanted to cry. Stretched ahead and behind along the street, the bobbing line of us. Those at the fore, crossing at the stoplight where police stood guard. Those at the rear, not caught up yet, strung across a bridge into the unseeable distance. The joy, because we were many. Past the entrance to the rally grounds, past the clotheslines holding blue butterflies, the crowd milling. Butterflies and butterflies, hundreds pinned on. Each a somebody snitched from here, snared, shunted to some hell. Soon the time for speeches, songs. Loud and loud. On a grass patch not teeming with bodies, a woman opening her wings, floating them up into the blue. Spreading, enveloping, spreading, enveloping. The child so wrapped and held would know only safety. Would for that bliss.    

This next piece isn’t about  wolfishness — not in and of itself. My husband has a habit of putting all his little things in little amounts in little bowls—his peanuts, roasted corn, pepitas, raisins, salty sunflower seeds, walnuts, pecans, almonds. This is when he wants to sit down with some. If he’s snacking on the run, he just grabs a handful. (Clearly, I have my own behaviors, but they’re not what I’m boring in on, here.) For a long time, his habitual plate for his habitual breakfasts was a plastic one from Grift and Sift, child size . The sides kept his toast and his nut dish and his cheesy scrambled egg from sliding off. The plate is in the junk now, because it developed a sizable crack, but one morning not so long ago, when it was still part of his routine, I heard him bawling at me from the kitchen. His coffee had gone everywhere. He must’ve misjudged, pouring it from the carafe.   “Do you want me to make you more coffee?” I called. He was taking himself and his f...