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  • Lunch at the Brew Moon, and: The Bad Singers of San Miguel de Allende, and: The Afterlife
  • Alan Feldman (bio)

Lunch at the Brew Moon

They’ve closed the cafeteria for the holidays so I’m going to the Brew Moon with three of my post-postgraduates. Barbara, in her seventies, missed the last few classes

because she was in India. On the brick sidewalks of Cambridge, in the biting wind off the December ocean, under a bitter blue sky, she describes the beggars,

naked children pointing to their mouths. Or the pyre for a young man—there in the smoke of bodies along the Ganges— his terrified wife dragged toward the flames by her in-laws.

And at lunch, once our sandwiches come, Catherine describes the family she works for as a nanny, the child hugged by his mother before she leaves for the airport

ignoring her—even as he’s being held—because he’s spotted Baker, the dog Catherine goes everywhere with. This child’s eleven winter coats. His fourteen pairs of sneakers.

His iPad. Though he does not yet know his right hand from his left. A different kind of neglect from that in Catherine’s childhood, since a child

as smart and sweet as Catherine, we’re told, was beaten. “Here,” said Catherine’s mother. “Kill yourself. Just take this knife and do it—if you’re so miserable.”

So, of course, a number of times Catherine tried, though not lately. Lately she’s been writing stories— and working on her doctorate. Adria and I [End Page 705]

spill onto her salad plate many of our French fries. It’s hard to know at which point to cry, and when to laugh. It’s a mixed-genre lunch.

Like the play across the street, Shakespeare’s notorious Merchant, where Shylock, tightfisted, vengeful, spat-upon, is instructed in the ways of mercy by beautiful Portia,

so rich and treasured. Portia would probably raise her children like the woman Catherine works for. We laugh. But Barbara’s mind keeps going back to her friend in New Delhi

who keeps a stack of two-rupee notes on his dashboard, and only gives to beggars who are blind or roll around on wheels, not to the able-bodied— there’re simply too many, crowding up to the car at every crossroad. [End Page 706]

The Bad Singers of San Miguel de Allende

While the two singers are strumming their guitars right behind my head—so close, if I turn I’ll be staring right at their fingers, right into the hole beneath the strings— my eyes meet a girl’s at the next table, a rosy-cheeked blond kid, maybe fourteen, who also clearly thinks the singing is terrible, whatever it’s saying about love, or longing, the twelve strings of the guitars out of tune with each other, the man’s voice sliding off the notes, the woman’s sliding even farther. I can only infer the singer is beautiful, since her voice isn’t. Now I see her. She’s not glamorous. Nut-brown, round-cheeked like a healthy baby. She’s collecting coins from the relieved patrons, who feel free, at last, to resume their conversations. My wife and I talk of the things we talk about as the years go by. Probably not what the singers have been singing of. The fire in the restaurant stove burns brightly. The singers in their night-blue jackets are taking their passionate bad singing back onto the cold, cobbled streets, moving down the block to the next venue where they’re welcomed into a brightly lit doorway. And when it’s time for us to head out, too, I see the blond girl—cheeks flushed from the warmth of the stove—and pause at her table. “The singing was the high point, no?” She laughs. Her whole family laughs. My exit line! But why such a need to be remembered?— tell me that, oh bad singers! [End Page 707]

The Afterlife

There’s a lot of light in her apartment, falling on the rented hospital bed. I’ve been told the dying like to be held, so, though...

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