Lacemakers

One summer we paint your house

50 One฀summer฀we฀paint฀your฀house with the windows open, so that tufts of cottonwood sift into the kitchen with smells from the Mouscron Yeast Plant next door: not quite the scent of bread baking, but all that warmth. The man on my flight from home said he was going into an oven, meaning Baghdad. I want to tell you that story but stop, afraid he will seem comic—Howard, Howie—dreaming an early retirement somewhere off the coast of Mexico (the long fish he would catch, and the ocean like a bath) telling me how construction pays best in risky places, the hotels he’ll build for diplomats, bankers, oil men. In that gray light between continents he fell asleep, little whisky bottles filling his tray. Your kitchen is white: drop cloth over the sink, tiles, odor of yeast. It would be easy for us to accuse; you would stop sanding the windowpane long enough to say vulture or something worse and wipe 51 your hands. I can’t tell you the contrary: that he was like a small animal, caught in the teeth of a thing it can’t turn to see. I picture Howard now, building hotels in an oven, sand and burning: extravagant waste. A van leaves the factory, bearing those packets of leaven to bakers, grocers. The easy light on gardens and walks, the gauzy tufts that catch it and shine, an illusion that no one has less than her full portion, that no one wants more than his daily bread. ...