Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(35)

Nobody paid for poetry. As was the way of this work, most of his published poems had been published in poetry journals—the ‘little magazines’ of the literary world. For them, he was paid in ‘copies,’ usually two. The small presses who published chapbooks of poetry printed runs of a few hundred, a few thousand at the most, and they languished on shelves of tiny bookstores. Even the anthologies published by bigger houses offered little compensation to the poets on their pages.

And the odds of getting an academic job, especially with an MFA in poetry, were somewhere around the odds of being struck by lightning while eating a banana split and dancing the Macarena. In Death Valley.

No. A poet became a poet, studied the art and craft of poetry, locked his life onto its tracks, because he had no other choice. Words demanded their due.

Theo had been lucky. He’d gotten the elusive academic job. But that had turned out to be very little about the writing of poetry or the teaching of the art. More than anything else, he taught lower-division literature courses to theaters of a hundred or more disaffected post-teens. When he was lucky, for three hours a week, he also taught a poetry writing seminar to the half of the class who hadn’t registered thinking that writing poetry would be an easy class.

It was not an easy class. It was not an easy calling. It was a thing that could only be done for love of it. The need of it.

Without his words, he was nothing.

He pulled the pen from the portfolio and turned to the first blank page. Left-handed, he wrote only on the left side of the pages, what to most would be the underside of a sheet of paper. On the top, as was his custom, he wrote the date and his location.

And then he wrote the lines, the images, that had driven him into this room, to sit in this chair and open this book.

Sunday, July 17, 2016—Paris, Rue Girard

Black,

Red and gold.

A sun burnt Raven, a crow.

Blackbird. Black bird.

Flutter, flee, fly

Out. Away.

Black silk wraps around my fist, my throat.

I am entangled, bound.

Theo lifted the point of the pen from the page and read what he’d written. Not much. Rough and ungainly. The stunted product of a blocked writer. But they were the words that had wanted out, that had escaped around the edges of the block, and he always trusted that impulse. Maybe he’d find the seed of this next memoir of his marriage in the words that wanted out.

He read them again. That wasn’t Maggie.

That was Carmen.

And then he understood why he was blocked. He couldn’t write a memoir of the beginning of his love of Maggie because he was immersed in the beginning of his love of Carmen. A love even his subconscious saw was doomed.

Well, shit.

There were no more words. The air around him, inside him, was still and silent. He closed the book, tied it shut, shoved it back in the drawer and went out to buy bourbon.



oOo



He woke up on the sofa in the library. His head was thick and heavy, clanging like a broken bell. Struggling to his feet, he went out into the main room and heard noise in the kitchen.

Eli was making food. A roast, maybe. Some meat thing. There was a heap of chopped onions on a cutting board, and several golden potatoes were clustered on the counter. He was alone, a white canvas apron over his t-shirt and jeans.

Theo rubbed his hands over his face and squinted at the clock on the wall. After six. “Where’re the girls?”

“They’ll be over later. I’m making dinner.”

The lights in here were f*cking bright. Theo went to the counter and grabbed the bottle of aspirin, tapping two—no, three—into his hand and swallowing them down with water from the tap. He didn’t bother with a glass.

Eli stood stock still, a large knife in his hand, and looked him over. “Dad, you okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You were gonna spend the day writing, and I come back to find you passed out on the couch next to half a bottle of booze.” He paused. “Was that new? There’s an empty on the bar, too.”

Maybe it was the way his heartbeat was banging around on his brain, but that pissed him off. “You’re keeping track? Who’s the parent here?”

For a couple of beats, Eli just stared. When he spoke, his voice was cold. “You. Do what you want. But you’re drinking a lot. More than you have since…since after Mom. I’m just asking if you’re okay.”

Theo had believed he’d kept the drinking back then to himself—and under control. The thought that Eli, who’d been twenty at the time, had known and made note…and what about Jordan, who’d been only fifteen? Instead of feeling guilty, though, he was just angry. “I’m fine. I’m going for a shower.” With that, knowing he was being irrational and not giving a shit, he turned and left his eldest son to his cooking and his judgments.



oOo



Theo woke that night and found Carmen sitting up next to him, motionless, staring at the moonlit curtains billowing from the open windows. The night had a chill that had raised prickles on his flesh as he’d slept. She sat bare, with the covers pooled at her waist.

“Carm? Again?” Lately, she’d been dreaming badly most nights.

She flinched at his voice and looked over her shoulder. “Did I wake you?” Not an answer to his question, but she never answered questions about her dreams. Or maybe it was ‘dream’ in the singular, the same one. He didn’t know. In that as in most things, she was closed to him.