-
Twenty-seven
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
273 twenty-seven We live now in Wash ing ton, a trans fer that made sense for Stu: all those shut tle flights from DCA. Not in Du pont Cir cle—the gay “Fruit Loop” ghetto—but out here at the city line, a place called Friend ship Heights. D.C. is a root less town, where people’s ships ar rive and leave on fickle po lit i cal winds. It suits us fine, for the time being. No one really knows us. Our place is in a com plex over look ing the GEICO build ing, a twobedroom , tenth-floor con do min ium. Some times I still miss hav ing a yard to be in charge of; I wake up fret ting, wor ried the berry bushes might need water. A crew of Sal va do rans—our building’s man age ment hires them—takes care of the hos tas by the side walk. The condo has a bal cony, onto which we’ve squeezed two lawn chairs, plus a lit tle hi ba chi (in vi o la tion of the by laws), about as big as an Easy-Bake Oven. The sum mers can be ghastly, though, and we have cen tral air; only rarely do we sit out side. In side, we’ve left the condo mostly as it came, the walls bare, painted an in of fen sive not-quite-white; I don’t think we’ve hung a sin gle item. We haven’t talked about this, but I trace it to what hap pened when we ran into trou ble sell ing the cot tage. Plenty of buy ers came to look, but no one placed a bid, and so, fi nally, the Re al tor said we’d bet ter hire a 274 “stager”: some one to strip the cot tage of what made it seem too “ours,” to let would-be buy ers pic ture their own pos ses sions in it. The stager took down all Stu’s travel pos ters, and Rina’s pen dant, and stashed our subway-token-inlaid table in the base ment. Also re moved: our bam boo shades, our campy fish er man whir li gig, the framed photo of Stu and me in Prague. It took two more months be fore we got a rea son able offer, and maybe, in that time, we ad justed to the emp ti ness. Maybe that’s why, here in D.C., we’ve kept our place so bare. I don’t know how long we’ll stay. Al most three years we’ve lived here. We keep say ing we should meet our neigh bors, but we haven’t. The guy next door in vited us once, when he was hav ing a party, but Stu was fly ing, and I didn’t feel like show ing up alone. D.C. makes a con ven ient base for travel ing, which we do more now. New Year’s, for ex am ple, we went to Que bec City. We stayed in the Ice Hotel: an ice bed. Re count ing all this, I can use a storyteller’s tricks. Skip a space and then, with a phrase (“Al most three years . . .”), crush the rock of time into dust. In truth, when we first moved here—and even now, too often—hours and days could sty mie us, im mov able as boul ders. The lull times were the worst—lying in bed, or break fast—when noth ing could dis tract us from the shame. Stu was ashamed of me, I knew, but also, I think, more point edly, ashamed of him self, for still stay ing with me. I was lonely, and not just from the dis tance Stu was keep ing. I had also lost an other long-time, staunch com pan ion: the vi sion of the father I had al ways hoped to be. We did our best to iso late our selves from our old life. We changed our phones, and left with out giv ing the num bers to Danny; we switched our e-mail ad dresses and pro vid ers. Still, of course, if De bora wanted to track us down, she could. (There are not too many Pat rick Faunces.) I’ve dreamt she will, then fought that dream; its jab al ways leaves me feel ing bat tered. A dozen times I’ve...