I can see him clearly from my window, standing tall in the arena with his bodyguards, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Whatever it was, it excited a wild roar from the audience that boomed up through the loudspeakers to the 20th floor.
I knew why they were cheering. He was one of us. He cared. He saw we had nothing.
The crowd knew that. And they liked entertainment, accepting whatever gift he offered, even a shrug of his shoulders, his fingers pointing up as he illustrated some principle that others had forgotten. It didn’t matter what he was saying. The arena could have been full of slaves battling against beasts and they would have cheered with him. Because he knew what people liked.…
Amos rang the doorbell and stepped back over the “Llama let you in” doormat. He wrung his hands. The porch light cast his shadow over the llama’s shades. He had shades like that, looked better on the llama though. The gentle thud of socked feet approached the far side of the door. Now would be the time to run, make it all a ~totally sick prank~. Perry opened the door.
“Why’d you ring the doorbell?”
“Your parents aren’t home, so I figured… um.”
“Just knock, normal people knock, Amos.”
She was smiling, her hazel eyes glittered in the porch light. A moth bumped into her face. She flinched as though punched, sending her straightened hair into a crown around her head. It smelled nice, sweet, and floral.…
Within the industrial design world, Eva Zeisel is a legend, but I had no idea when I began working for her. It was 2000, I was 24, and had recently moved to Manhattan. I responded to an ad in the Village Voice that promised $12 an hour for an administrative assistant to a designer. The next day, I took the number 1 train to 116th & Broadway and entered her large, cluttered apartment for an interview. Immediately inside were floor-to-ceiling overstuffed bookcases. “Come in dah-ling,” I followed the voice through a maze of tables dotted with lamps, vases, and bowls (which I’d learn were all her own designs) to find an ancient-looking woman. With fluffy white hair and cloudy eyes, Eva sat in a pink and gold wingback chair.…
Flip a skirt hem and you have a lip to cradle tomatoes or questions or a bit of weather, make-do wings for the wrangling of life’s loose change, which is to say I lied about calling a truce. Enough with locks and keys. We each need more pockets to hide those broken parts of ourselves to be shared only under a moonless sky. What I bared and what I bore were twice the dare I could afford. With you my knees were forever hinged in remorse and ecstasy. Water flows down the easiest path. Icarus could have fashioned himself a raft, but who lunges for the sun dreaming of caution? You could call me abandoned or merely shipwrecked on a fickle shore. Here I am gilding my store of feathers, courting lost oarsmen and begging for a storm.…
I was looking at my father’s bookshelves when I noticed things other than books. My father had put ceramics in the empty spaces. There were some vases and bowls, but among the ordinary objects were two figures. They were made from red clay, maybe terra-cotta, and their surfaces were rough—each stood about a foot-and-a-half tall. They were wearing robes, so their arms and legs were hidden by folds of “cloth.” Their faces were simplified, yet suggested nobility. Each was wearing a crown: They were a king and queen.
It wasn’t clear if they were a specific king and queen, or whether they were generic. But I soon realized they were chess pieces. I didn’t see a giant chessboard or any other oversized pieces to match. Maybe my father hadn’t planned for these objects to be used in an actual game of chess.…
My reticent leanings began at a young age. I was about eight years old when my younger sister died from leukemia. Life for us before that was idyllic. Our father worked for a multinational oil company and we’d lived abroad starting soon after I was born, with all the benefits bestowed upon expatriates. My sister, Gail, was born in Jamacia, which for us in the 1950s was a paradise, very safe and very British. Gail’s cancer put an end to all of that. We returned to the United States.
Gail’s death was my fault, as far as I knew. I’d failed to do what a big brother was supposed to do: keep her safe. Sixty years later, I’ve not convinced myself that isn’t true. And I don’t expect I ever will.…
