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Ornament and Crime
- University of Georgia Press
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110 Ornament and Crime My father has died, and in my hand are his remains—ashes pressed and fired into a small flattish cube—and I’m laboring to insert him into something so that he sits flush. He always wished to be a geometric form (so often did he rail against “the tyranny of the organic” that I could tell myself he’d be happy), but he also hated bric-a-brac and I think right now he’d qualify, being a small object with no function . Better to join him with a nice flat plane. Shim up a gap on a sleek modernist home. There are plenty around here. Some are monolithic and shimmering, with metal roofs that sweep across the facades, the entrances coyly obscured. Others are crouched tightly to their lawns, their recessed windows narrowed and aglow. I walk through the backyards, pretending to be a meter reader. I’m wearing Dad’s red jumpsuit, the one he wore in prison, and a tool belt to complete the look. I stop and study each house. I pull out the cube and run it along siding, storm windows, blocks, etc., hoping to feel it dip into place. It does, in the back deck of a glass monolith, a house that resembles a drive-in movie screen upon which a scene of a Weimaraner darting between two midcentury daybeds repetitively plays. I almost leave him, but the cube looks too obvious in the space between boards. Before he set our neighbors’ dollhouse shed on fire using a plain silver Zippo (triumph of utilitarian design) and naphtha, we lived together in a Danish modern home. What I recall most was cleaning the stainless steel refrigerator, chasing a smudge of grease round and round, driving it across the surface with a Windexed rag only to Ornament and Crime 111 have it reappear on the other side, so teasing and full of character it seemed like a friend. Then Dad went to jail. For him, prison was a revelation —he thrilled at the cells, with their efficient layouts, the cleanlined cinderblock walls, the low toilets, the austere bunks. The iconic red Princess phones, heavy with engineering, the Plexiglas, turned nicely matte from all the scratches. The pleasingly unadorned speech of prisoners. The afternoon light quivers on the horizon edge of an infinity pool. Blocky red chaises sit in this backyard near cast-concrete stools made to look like tree stumps. I consider dropping him in the pool—it is a nice pool—and saying my goodbye into a swirl of deep-end bubbles. A safe place for the dead arsonist. I am holding him up to the sun, ready to let go, when a shadow crowds my peripheral. It’s a man, dressed in a beige polo, rounding the corner. I step behind a streaky potted grass. The man is carrying a rake. With superfluous flourish, like someone signing an important document with a triumphant lift of the pen, he makes a small pile of silver leaves. Paid by the hour, my dad would say, not by the job. I remember Dad running his hands over surfaces—our granite countertop had pink striations, like veins. When it was clean—which was often—he would run his palm, quickly, over the whole length and off the edge. Then he would hold his arm out, trying to keep it at the same level for a second. If there were things on the counter—junk mail, mother’s shed bracelets, restaurant mints—they were swept off in this way. My mother used to stop his hand by putting hers down on his and pressing. For a few moments he moved both their hands along, very slowly, before his fingers lifted up under the weight, like those overloaded donkey carts you sometimes see on dusty streets, held aloft by their burdens. While on probation, he tried burning down a house with busy stained glass windows. The windows depicted a lush jungle scene, and the interior of the house was buried under zebra print, fake palm fronds, and red velvet couches. The owner was the retired principal of [54.224.43.79] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:30 GMT) Ornament and Crime 112 my high school. After he left the school, he wore a fresh kimono every day and walked five small, exotic dogs on a complex twisted leash, so it seemed the dogs were leading one another while the line to my old principal...