Involved With This Light, and: All Truth Must Conform to Music, and: The Woman Too Large for the Chair, and: Scandals

INVOLVED WITH THIS LIGHT / Maureen Seaton "What do God and the man who fought in the Czechoslovakian army and built an airstrip for UFOs in his backyard have in common?" —My father A rare chUd, age 15, escapes from rationed smokes and nurses where she recently locked herself in, clasping panda and pink toothbrush beneath her U2 t-shirt, heavy with music. I receive the caU at dinner and think: This family has never been duU. Tm reading Fowles on Wistman's Wood— a chaos so green it heals— and Diebenkorn's paintings from left to right on Ught without boundaries. What has my father to do with God or the man who fought in the Czechoslovakian army? He no longer drinks gin and when he did he almost küled me. Now he laughs and rents R-rated films for his grandchUdren whüe their parents shop unaware at malls, wonder later at the wide vocabularies of their baby girls and boys, the way chUdren slip under without warning. Before this comfort in chaos, before Diebenkorn's cities on the brink of ocean, I often despaired. As recently as Thursday, whüe my daughter hitch-hiked home with bear and brush, I despaired for one brief second, 122 · The Missouri Review thinking: What does God have in common with a man who buüds airstrips for aliens in his backyard? Thinking: Gin. Picking up Diebenkorn. Crying salt in the recurring chaos of doorbeU and daughter, thinking: Where is this Ught? Maureen Seaton The Missouri Review · 123 ALL TRUTH MUST CONFORM TO MUSIC /Maureen Seaton In this way the chUd, losing his Nintendo to an uncle on crack, quietly hurts the babies of his aunt who invites him to make castles in sand, sends her unborn fetus back to sea: She teUs her husband, Wait here, lets herself drift on a table where waves are nausea, blood, rhythms for a doctor whose cunning hand looses infinities of grief, the surreal mathematics of her mother drunk on afternoon rum, slurring "so shaU ye reap" into duU contractions. Her husband disappears down boardwalks. Her uterus puckers in a half-grin. The ocean turns quickly: whole measures of undertow. This is not her first dead chUd. The name of a daughter Ues swaddled in her throat Uke song. 124 · The Missouri Review THE WOMAN TOO LARGE FOR THE CHAIR /Maureen Seaton The woman too large for the chair sits and whole sides of her remain unseated. She breathes as if finished with Ufe, her homemade tunic moving up and down, fretfully shaping patterns for my eyes, blue arrows on her breasts Uke ancient thoughts. She sips from a smaU paper bag. The Uquid rising through the straw is passion color. Earher, she remarked about her ancestry, an old bar in Brooklyn where Mohawk is spoken exclusively. I can't see around this woman. She has planted her enormous self before me the way my daughter, needing breakfast as I slept, hungover, would sit on my chest and beg me to wake up. Perhaps I need to rethink my Ufe, how to share the power of my accidental birth with others. This woman is not dead as some beUeve. Her breath rasps heavüy inside me. The Missouri Review · 125 SCANDALS / Maureen Seaton Karma, karma "Cheating Hubby's Head Explodes" —Sun, Ap. 3, '90 The man whose head exploded out of guilt in a motel room beside his mistress must be ready for a saner Ufe. Just imagine his coming back as a faithful husband! How his brand-new wife, cheated on repeatedly in former incarnations, remains disconsolate, often spies on him for no reason during lunch hours, dons elaborate disguises, such as yeUow wigs and fish-net stockings, to lure him into infideUty. Imagine his guüt-free conscience and her final confrontation on a business trip when he laughs to see the pistol at his head. Wings "Angels Really Exist and Thousands See Them" —Sun, July 31, '90 In a highly classified report smuggled out of Russia, three cosmonauts admit to seeing angels whüe in orbit. Country-Western singer Johnny Cash said he'd seen them twice, both times warning him...