Dear Floods of Her Hair
Muriel left me, left us, I should say, on Monday. The tap in the kitchen sink sprang a leak, spewing a mist of cold water onto sheets I spread on the floor, and a hummingbird, furious that she’d forgotten to refill its feeder just outside, beat at the window again and again. By the time friends, family and mourners began arriving, Thursday around noon, preparations were almost complete.
First thing I did was draw up a schedule. Muriel would have been proud of me, I thought as I sat at the kitchen table with pen and a pad of her notepaper, water from the spewing tap slowly soaking into the corduroy slippers she’d given me last Christmas. Here I’d always been the improviser, treading water, swimming reflexly for whatever shore showed itself, while Muriel weighed out options like an assayer, made lists and kept files, saw that laundry got done before the last sock fell, shoehorned order into our lives. And now it was all up to me.
Somewhere between 16 and 20 on my list, the hummingbird gave up its strafing runs and simply hovered an inch from the glass, glaring in at me. They could be remarkably aggressive. Seventeen species of them where we lived. Anna’s hummers, Costa’s and black-chinned around all year,
Rufous, calliope and the rest migrating in from Mexico or various mountain ranges. In that way birds have, males are the colorful ones, mating rituals often spectacular. Some will dive 90 feet straight up, making sure sunlight strikes them in such a way that their metallic colors flare dramatically for females watching from below. These females are dull so as to be inconspicuous on nests the size of walnuts.
Muriel loved this place of cactus and endless sky, mountains looming like the world’s own jagged edge, loved the cholla, prickly pear, palo verde, geckos with feet spurred into the back of our windowscreens at night.
Most of all, though, she loved hummingbirds. Even drew a tiny, stylized hummer for stationery, envelopes and cards and had it silkscreened onto the sweatshirts she often wore as she sat in front of the computer, daily attending to details of the business (cottage industries, they used to call them) that kept us comfortable here.
That same hummer hovered silently in the upper left corner of the notepad as I inscribed 24.
I gave it a pointed beard and round glasses.
Favorite bird. Hummingbird. Favorite music. Wozzeck, Arvo Pärt’s Litany. Favorite color. Emerald green. Favorite poem. One by Dylan Thomas.
The tombstone told when she died.
Her two surnames stopped me still.
A virgin married at rest.
Memories of my father were also in mind, of course. The one who taught me. I was ten years old when it began, sitting on the floor in a safe corner with knees drawn up reading H.G. Wells, a favorite still. Suddenly I felt watched, and when I glanced up, Father’s eyes were on me. Good book? he asked. At that point I couldn’t imagine a bad one. Just that some were better than others. I lit the next one off the smoldering butt of the last. They all are, I told him. No, he said. A lot of them just make up things.
Mrs. Abneg spoke then. Charles: he’s too young, she said. Father looked at her. No. He’s ready. Earlier than most, I agree, but this is our son. He’s not like the rest. Mrs. Abneg ducked her head. The female must be dull so as to be inconspicuous on the nest.
And so I was allowed for the first time into my father’s basement workshop. I could barely see over the tops of the sinks, benches, the tilted stainless-steel table with its runnels and drains. Shelves filled with magical jars and pegboards hung with marvelous tools loomed above like promises I would someday keep.
That first session went on for perhaps an hour. I understood little of what my father said then, though whenever he asked was something or another clear I always nodded dutifully yes. Knowledge is a kind of osmosis. And soon enough, of course, our time together in the basement workroom fulfilled itself. Others found themselves shut out. For a time I wondered what Mrs. Abneg or my younger brother might be doing there up above, but not for long. Procedures and practicums, the rigors of my apprenticeship, soon occupied my full attention and all free time. I had far too much to do to squander myself on idle thoughts.
