I don’t remember the first time, but I learned early on in our time together how to look at Anne and see her as when we had first met, when we were complete, nameless strangers. The experience, as I recounted to Father Reynolds after one of our gin-primed debates over welfare (used deftly I think by me to steer the subject away from gay marriage) and once in a duck blind off the coast of Ocracoke, is similar to staring at the repetitive patterns of a fence or ornate wall until the wires or pickets or stones and mortar and their collective dimensions dissipate and everything appear to be floating in space right before your very eyes. The sensation lasts only a brief moment, and then when you reach out to touch it, it disappears and everything falls back again into its prescribed realm. In this manner of seeing, I could, for the first few years of marriage, if only for a second or two, remember Anne the way she was before I knew her, the way other people perhaps see her now, with her existence still pure, unmingled, uncrossed with mine.
I try this parlor trick now, with her resting under the shade of the glossy pines with her bottom on the hood of the wagon, worrying over the sunscreen, but I cannot pull it off. Even after squinting and crossing my eyes until they hurt, she is still who she is: a realtor, my wife of seventeen years (fiancée for two, girlfriend for one), and mother of two (and this is mutually agreed-upon) exceptional teenagers.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“Trying to remember where I saw it last.”
“Oh well,” she says.
She makes a sound like the air letting out of a balloon, and then makes a face, scrunching up her lips and her chin and furrowing her brow. Even still, she is too pretty: Looking at her, I feel a deep, nervous tension in the pit of my stomach and the tips of my fingers begin to tingle. I wonder if she looks at me this same way ever and if she did what would she see? Paul Erickson, ex-engineer, Darden graduate, sales manager for a Fortune 500 technology company, quickly closing in on forty, bluegrass and microbrews on the weekend, father of two (as previously agreed-upon) exceptional teenagers? Or the person I was before I crossed her path? A man essentially without purpose or form?
Anne pulls out of her leather tote two women’s sun hats and two baseball caps with ear and neck flaps. Anne puts her broad-brimmed straw hat on and hands Kate hers. She hands me the ball caps with a look of assignation. (I plan to stall the act as long as I can to avoid the confrontation with Thomas and the stream of protests which is sure to follow).
Kate thwaps her loafers down onto the pavement, puts her hair up into a knot, and folds the knot up into her hat. She slides her toes into her shoes and then crushes the backs of the loafers with her heels until the shoes are like flats. Somewhere a gnarled, old cobbler is crying.
Before I can remark, Kate takes off her sunglasses and says, “I think I saw Pepper.”
Showing posts with label Azaleas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Azaleas. Show all posts
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Sunscreen
Moments after pulling in to the far parking lot at Great Falls by the platform tennis courts and seeing the minivans and SUVs with stickers in the rear windows from Loomis Chaffee, Woodberry Forest, Georgetown, and UVa, and also stickers supporting both presidential candidates, and seeing the tents set up and the bleachers full of young tennis fans, it takes Anne no time at all to remark, “We’ve forgotten the sunscreen.”
Anne is paranoid about the sun and not without good reason: three years ago she had a basal cell carcinoma removed from just beneath the left side of her jaw. She and Kate are fair and seemingly more vulnerable than Thomas and I who, with our mystically-received Moorish genes from my mother’s Norwegian ancestors, have curly dark hair and skin that tans well without burning or freckling. (The original Ericksons apparently enjoyed sailing the warmer climes.) Anne and I remember both being in college in Chapel Hill stretching out on beach towels on the tiny strip of grass at Connor Beach, our bodies soaked in baby oil and surrounded by cardboard wrapped in tin foil, listening to the Talking Heads and Superchunk and R.E.M. coming from a handheld stereo broadcast from WXYC right across the street. That was probably when most of the damage was done, outside of her childhood on the cape, but the scare was real enough and we take it seriously now, carrying around spare bottles of sunscreen in the glove compartments or travel kits of both our cars (60+ SPF) and never letting the children out of our sight without a quick spritz.
“I’ll take a look,” I say. “I may have some in the back.”
My golf clubs (second-hand) and shoes (well-worn, first generation Foot-Joys) are sandwiched in the cargo area of the wagon along with a stack of wool blankets (in case of a snowbound crisis), a size 7 Winston fly rod in its protective olive green case (more than worth the money I paid for it, I’d say—based on its current appearance, the rod would have been beat to hell and back by now), an old Wilson football in need of air, my running shoes, a copy of an engineering journal with an article on solar-powered tree houses, an emergency road repair kit, a chewed-up, fluorescent green Frisbee (Pepper’s) that pulls to the left when you throw it, and the cooler we took to the farmer’s market. The ice in the cooler has started to melt and the chicory and the asparagus is floating on top alongside six recycled plastic bottles of kefir and two gallons of organic, hormone-free skim milk in glass containers. The jar of unprocessed raw clover honey has sunk to the bottom of the cooler under its own weight.
“No dice,” I say.
“Well,” Anne says. “We’ll have to cut it short. And we’ll have to wear the hats.”
Kate and Thomas take their time getting out of the wagon: Thomas is still reading his folded-up paperback, the earpieces of his iPod still wedged into his ears (I can never tell if the thing is actually on; he wears them around the clock solely to avoid conversation) and Kate is fixing her sunglasses and massaging her hair into place (she has Anne’s hair; it’s uncanny how the two of them could be fair-skinned, freckled twins). I study them emerging from the backseat and stretching—Thomas in his baggy skater shorts and tee-shirt covered with graffiti (he has a growing collection of band tee-shirts in black though this one is white with a picture of two stylized guitars crossed at his sternum); Kate in a beige skirt and pink polo—as though they are someone else’s children, someone else’s beautiful children, more beautiful than anything I could ever begin to take credit for, standing with someone else’s stunning, ageless wife, (in her white tennis skirt and her knit shirt from Roland Garros that shows off her shoulder caps and a pair of pristine Stan Smiths) who on any other planet would not be caught dead with the likes of me.
Anne is paranoid about the sun and not without good reason: three years ago she had a basal cell carcinoma removed from just beneath the left side of her jaw. She and Kate are fair and seemingly more vulnerable than Thomas and I who, with our mystically-received Moorish genes from my mother’s Norwegian ancestors, have curly dark hair and skin that tans well without burning or freckling. (The original Ericksons apparently enjoyed sailing the warmer climes.) Anne and I remember both being in college in Chapel Hill stretching out on beach towels on the tiny strip of grass at Connor Beach, our bodies soaked in baby oil and surrounded by cardboard wrapped in tin foil, listening to the Talking Heads and Superchunk and R.E.M. coming from a handheld stereo broadcast from WXYC right across the street. That was probably when most of the damage was done, outside of her childhood on the cape, but the scare was real enough and we take it seriously now, carrying around spare bottles of sunscreen in the glove compartments or travel kits of both our cars (60+ SPF) and never letting the children out of our sight without a quick spritz.
“I’ll take a look,” I say. “I may have some in the back.”
My golf clubs (second-hand) and shoes (well-worn, first generation Foot-Joys) are sandwiched in the cargo area of the wagon along with a stack of wool blankets (in case of a snowbound crisis), a size 7 Winston fly rod in its protective olive green case (more than worth the money I paid for it, I’d say—based on its current appearance, the rod would have been beat to hell and back by now), an old Wilson football in need of air, my running shoes, a copy of an engineering journal with an article on solar-powered tree houses, an emergency road repair kit, a chewed-up, fluorescent green Frisbee (Pepper’s) that pulls to the left when you throw it, and the cooler we took to the farmer’s market. The ice in the cooler has started to melt and the chicory and the asparagus is floating on top alongside six recycled plastic bottles of kefir and two gallons of organic, hormone-free skim milk in glass containers. The jar of unprocessed raw clover honey has sunk to the bottom of the cooler under its own weight.
“No dice,” I say.
“Well,” Anne says. “We’ll have to cut it short. And we’ll have to wear the hats.”
Kate and Thomas take their time getting out of the wagon: Thomas is still reading his folded-up paperback, the earpieces of his iPod still wedged into his ears (I can never tell if the thing is actually on; he wears them around the clock solely to avoid conversation) and Kate is fixing her sunglasses and massaging her hair into place (she has Anne’s hair; it’s uncanny how the two of them could be fair-skinned, freckled twins). I study them emerging from the backseat and stretching—Thomas in his baggy skater shorts and tee-shirt covered with graffiti (he has a growing collection of band tee-shirts in black though this one is white with a picture of two stylized guitars crossed at his sternum); Kate in a beige skirt and pink polo—as though they are someone else’s children, someone else’s beautiful children, more beautiful than anything I could ever begin to take credit for, standing with someone else’s stunning, ageless wife, (in her white tennis skirt and her knit shirt from Roland Garros that shows off her shoulder caps and a pair of pristine Stan Smiths) who on any other planet would not be caught dead with the likes of me.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Another Sunday
ANOTHER SUNDAY.
A holy day for most people, our family typically included, though on a morning like this you just might doubt it, judging by the way we slept late (until almost ten!), drove about aimlessly spending money (eating brunch at the French bakery in Reston, reading the papers, and squirreling away the last stalks of the spring asparagus and the dregs of the chicory at the farmers’ market down in Dale City). Later we will put up a new batch of lost-and-found signs the children made on the Mac (with the iconic paw prints and broken hearts and falling tears), and then fritter away the remainder of our weekend at the club at Hollow Rock.
We managed to avoid St. Aidan’s like the plague, though in all fairness the evasive action was probably overkill. We’ve known Father Reynolds and his wife Linda for years: she and Anne play tennis together once a week (even though Anne is a 4.0 and Linda is at best a 2); he and I have been known to hunt ducks together down in Ocracoke, drink gin and argue (Anne and Linda call it “playfighting”) over the global economy, the war, gays in the Anglican church, and John Courtney Murray. Reynolds, like many Episcopalians, is an ex-Catholic and studied Murray at Weston (before meeting Linda in Cambridge and falling in love with her). I guess that’s what gives him the right, as much as anything else.
I took an elective many years ago, went to business school, and so I am allowed to fake it, and I do so fairly well, especially after a few gimlets. Reynolds is older than the both of us, by ten years at least, and maybe that much or more older than Linda who is of indeterminate age owing to pilates and an expert colorist. But Reynolds loves his wife and his parish, he shoots straight and well, and with respect to most things, I believe, he has his priorities sewed on straight, with the sole exception of a mean streak when it comes to same-sex marriages.
Of course Reynolds knows our children too (he baptized them both) and he knows our wagon and our coupe (the aging three-series convertible Anne still calls her “ride”). And though he, like any good rector worth his salt, wouldn’t give a flip one way or the other if we were in attendance, I still drove us several blocks north out of our way and then doubled back down 628 to get us heading south on 1, figuring on a clean getaway. When we got to Riverside, however, close enough to the church we could see it and its flock of seekers corralled under the sycamores down a narrow side street, Anne reached across—here I was overcome by the smell of her shampoo in her newly-washed, still damp, fair-and-not-yet-graying hair, and her perfume, a French name with two accents, one of each, ague and grave, and several “e’s”—and honked the horn, throwing our too-cool-for-school Kate into a full-on, rolling fit of hysterics.
A holy day for most people, our family typically included, though on a morning like this you just might doubt it, judging by the way we slept late (until almost ten!), drove about aimlessly spending money (eating brunch at the French bakery in Reston, reading the papers, and squirreling away the last stalks of the spring asparagus and the dregs of the chicory at the farmers’ market down in Dale City). Later we will put up a new batch of lost-and-found signs the children made on the Mac (with the iconic paw prints and broken hearts and falling tears), and then fritter away the remainder of our weekend at the club at Hollow Rock.
We managed to avoid St. Aidan’s like the plague, though in all fairness the evasive action was probably overkill. We’ve known Father Reynolds and his wife Linda for years: she and Anne play tennis together once a week (even though Anne is a 4.0 and Linda is at best a 2); he and I have been known to hunt ducks together down in Ocracoke, drink gin and argue (Anne and Linda call it “playfighting”) over the global economy, the war, gays in the Anglican church, and John Courtney Murray. Reynolds, like many Episcopalians, is an ex-Catholic and studied Murray at Weston (before meeting Linda in Cambridge and falling in love with her). I guess that’s what gives him the right, as much as anything else.
I took an elective many years ago, went to business school, and so I am allowed to fake it, and I do so fairly well, especially after a few gimlets. Reynolds is older than the both of us, by ten years at least, and maybe that much or more older than Linda who is of indeterminate age owing to pilates and an expert colorist. But Reynolds loves his wife and his parish, he shoots straight and well, and with respect to most things, I believe, he has his priorities sewed on straight, with the sole exception of a mean streak when it comes to same-sex marriages.
Of course Reynolds knows our children too (he baptized them both) and he knows our wagon and our coupe (the aging three-series convertible Anne still calls her “ride”). And though he, like any good rector worth his salt, wouldn’t give a flip one way or the other if we were in attendance, I still drove us several blocks north out of our way and then doubled back down 628 to get us heading south on 1, figuring on a clean getaway. When we got to Riverside, however, close enough to the church we could see it and its flock of seekers corralled under the sycamores down a narrow side street, Anne reached across—here I was overcome by the smell of her shampoo in her newly-washed, still damp, fair-and-not-yet-graying hair, and her perfume, a French name with two accents, one of each, ague and grave, and several “e’s”—and honked the horn, throwing our too-cool-for-school Kate into a full-on, rolling fit of hysterics.
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