Bridge of Clay(144)

The Novacs have long left Archer Street, for a life back home in the country. But as councils go, and construction work, too, The Surrounds hasn’t yet been built on; and so Carey and Clay still own that place, at least according to me.

To be honest, I’ve grown to love that field, most often when I miss him hardest. I’ll wander out back, usually late at night, and Claudia comes to find me. She holds my hand and we walk there.

We have two young daughters, and they’re beautiful—they’re regretless; they’re the sound and color of being here. Would you believe we read The Iliad to them, and The Odyssey, and that both of them learn the piano? It’s me who takes them to lessons, and we practice back here at home. We’re here together at the MARRY-ME keys, and it’s me who watches, methodically. I sit with the branch of a eucalypt, and stall when they stop and ask me:

    “Can you tell us about the Mistake Maker, Dad?” and of course, “Can you tell us about Clay?”

And what else can I do?

What can I do but close the piano lid, as we go in to face the dishes?

And all of it starts the same.

“Once, in the tide of Dunbar past…”

The first is Melissa Penelope.

The second is Kristin Carey.



* * *



—

And so it then comes to this:

There’s one more story I can tell you now, before I can leave you in peace. To be truthful, it’s also my favorite story, of the warm-armed Claudia Kirkby.

But it’s also a story of my father.

And my brother.

And the rest of my brothers, and me.



* * *



—

See, once—once, in the tide of Dunbar past, I asked Claudia Kirkby to marry me; I asked with earrings and not a ring. They were just small silver moons, but she loved them, she said they were something. I wrote her a long letter, too, about everything I ever remembered, about meeting her; and her books, and how kind she had been to us Dunbars. I wrote to her about her calves, and that sunspot, center-cheek. I read it to her on her doorstep, and she’d cried and she’d told me yes—but next, she already knew.

She knew there would also be problems.

She could tell from the look on my face.

When I told her we should wait for Clay, she squeezed my hand, and said I was right—and like that, the years climbed by. They climbed by and we had our daughters. We watched everything form and change, and though we feared he would never come back here, we thought waiting might just bring him to us. When you wait you start feeling deserved.

    When five years had passed, though, we wondered.

We’d talk in the night, in our bedroom, which had once been Penny and Michael’s.

Eventually, we came to a decision, after Claudia finally asked me: “How about when you turn thirty?”

I agreed, and again, the years went by, and she even gave me one extra; but thirty-one, it seemed, was the limit. There hadn’t been a postcard for a long time by then, and Clay Dunbar could have been anywhere—and that was when finally I thought of it: I got in my car and drove there.

I arrived in the night in Silver.

I sat with our dad in his kitchen.

As he’d often done with Clay, we drank coffee, and I looked at that oven, and its digits, and I stayed and half bawled and I begged him. I looked out across the table: “You’ve gotta go out and find him.”



* * *



—

As soon as possible, Michael left the country.

He took a plane to a city and waited.

Every morning he went out at dawn.

He got to the place at opening, and left in the dark at closing.

It was snowing there then, it was freezing, and he got by with some phrases in Italian. He looked lovingly up at the David; and the Slaves were all he had dreamed of. They were fighting and struggling, and turning for air, as they argued from out of the marble. The Accademia staff got to know him, and they wondered if he might be insane. Being winter up there, there weren’t many tourists, so they noticed him after a week. Sometimes they gave him some lunch. One evening they’d had to ask— “Oh,” he said, “I’m just waiting….If I’m lucky he might just come.”



* * *



—

    And so it was.

Every day for thirty-nine days, Michael Dunbar was in Florence, in the gallery. It was incredible to him, to be with them so long—for the David, those Slaves, were outrageous. There were times when he drifted off, too, just leaning as he sat by the stone. It was security who often woke him.

But then, on that thirty-ninth day, a hand had reached out for his shoulder, and a man was crouched above him. There was the shadow of Slave beside him, but the hand on his clothing was warm. His face was paler, and weathered, but there was no mistaking the boy. He was twenty-seven years old, but it was something like that moment, all those years ago—Clay and Penelope, the bright backyard—for he saw him how once he was. You’re the one who loved the stories, he thought—and it was suddenly just a kitchen, as Clay called out, his voice so quiet, from the dark toward the light.

He kneeled on the floor and said, “Hi, Dad.”



* * *



—

On the wedding day we couldn’t be sure.