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57 f r o m t e n t m a k i n g b r i d g e A forgotten memory came to me while I was reading a Seamus Heaney poem back across the Atlantic on the phone to Chloe, a poem about when Thomas Hardy as a boy got down on all fours among sheep and looked in their bland faces and tried to feel how it was to be one. I was in the tub as a boy when I heard my little sister coming and pretended to be drowned, curled under the bathwater, just an ear out to hear her intake of breath and running to the living room where our parents were playing bridge with the Penningtons. A violent sliding back of chairs, adult feet pounding. I go back under to my drowned self: am translated dripping, giving my naked foolery smile, like a dog lifted up to wave bye-bye. The bridge players spank and hug me both. The hand must be redealt, bids forgotten. Mr. Penny howling, It’s a miracle, gollee, he rose from the dead, O slow of heart, take down this to read when I do actually die, no fooling. ...

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