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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
- University of Georgia Press
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thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird I. When her son’s life begins in her, Katie is stunned, not sure she can have this child, not with Malcolm, not when her life is still so tentative. Malcolm does not share her astonishment . He does what he always does before a gig, shares a joint in their living room with the guys in his band. Even stoned, Malcolm has a sharp-edged way of moving, a way of tumbling words as rapidly and effortlessly as he strikes keys on the piano. Katie hungers after that quality, feels pinched in comparison. When she does her work, it is work: whatever art is involved in her page layouts for the magazine must always be sacrificed to function. When Malcolm lights another joint, the smell of the marijuana smoke makes her sick to her stomach. She makes out shapes in the haze, sees a predator stalking her, tendrils of smoke curved like claws. Until this moment she has thought of her wariness about drugs as a kind of cowardice, an inhibition. She has to leave the room. In the kitchen she kneels by the open window, gulping fresh air, engulfed by need narrowed to the contours of her own body. 124 II. Katie kisses Malcolm’s beautiful shimmedand -sheared hands, runs her tongue over the calluses on his fingers , playing them, their specific shapes and hardnesses, the way he plays piano. Pulling her against him on the sofa, Malcolm says he knew he would never have the technique for classical music. The kind of perfection required has to do with fitting yourself to the elegant, specific arrangement of the notes, not making mistakes . But jazz calls for exploring the gap between notes as written and what your fingers might accomplish in translating them into sound. Trying to explain to her ignorant mind, her ignorant ears, he says, “Jazz comes from how you move in that space, back and forth. You don’t disappear to make the music, you are the music . That’s why you can take any piece of shit—like ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’—and make it jazz. If you can.” Katie wants to be an artist because she wants to be good enough for Malcolm, something like him. Compared to her, he is an aristocrat . His parents were both college professors, and he grew up familiar with art history and classical music, took music lessons and trips to Europe as a matter of course. His carelessness about drugs is for her yet another example of privilege, another proof that he grew up in a world where there was room to take risk. Katie thinks she hears the baby cry, and though Malcolm tries to hold onto her, she gets up to check. When she comes back with the baby, Malcolm is setting out the paraphernalia he needs to get high—the syringe, the spoon, the stub of a candle to heat the heroin to liquid state—with the elaborate care of the newly initiated. He’s still flirting with the novelty of this, still free to be fascinated by how it’s done. She has tried not to worry about money or marrying now that they have the baby. Even their fights about drugs are careless blowups that seem to leave no residue except a faint afterglow of passion. She can’t summon the energy to nag him again, anew, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 125 [54.166.223.204] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:50 GMT) as if he’s never promised to quit and never broken that promise before. In her arms her son is as heavy as the future, but she can still imagine that time’s predictable rhythm can be thwarted by Malcolm’s sheer inventiveness. III. When Katie leaves Malcolm, it seems that every step she takes is a tiny one. She does layout for a newspaper four nights a week so that she can be with the baby for most of his waking hours. His days are orderly now, mealtimes and nap times scheduled by the clock. They spend mornings in the park, where Katie’s vision contracts to the field of her child, the safety she must work to prove to him every day. She has mistaken so badly the margin for error. When she starts seeing Billy, she tells him she does not want to get serious. She can carve out only a little time...