Albany Road The Literary & Art Magazine of Deerfield Academy
S PRING 2008 DEERFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
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EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Julia Keller & Franรงoise de Saint Phalle
LITERARY EDITORS Matt Buckley Kathryn Clinard Bradley Elkman Josh Krugman LAYOUT Kathryn Clinard Kadie Ross Franรงoise de Saint Phalle ART EDITOR Kadie Ross
FACULTY ADVISORS Andrea Moorhead & Robert Moorhead
Albany Road would like to thank Mr. Scandling and the English Department for their guidance and support as well all those who submitted to this issue.
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from THE EDITORS A
FRESHMAN GIRL CAUGHT MY ARM ONE MORNING A FEW WEEKS AGO.
I was mid-
stride, practically sprinting to class. My hair was soggy and dripped down my back, and to my disappointment, spring was not as welcoming as I had hoped. Like me, she was running late, and I was left shivering in the gray morning light. My freshman friend beckoned me toward the side of the dorm. There against the ashcolored clapboards was a lone bulb, a peep of yellow peeked out from beneath a hazel tissue coat. By that afternoon, the daffodil had fully bloomed and the arms of its tissue coat barely held on to the stem. Every writer stores these images away, waiting for the perfect moment to come along when they will revisit and tap into them for inspiration. However, it is recreating the single fleeting moment—the image of spring’s hint of arrival, or the urge to slam the door of that “close-it”—that is the challenge. It is not only the ability to recognize these images in our lives, but the ability to capture the uniqueness of these moment that helps writers create a true piece of writing. May you too, enjoy these images and look for them in the hills. -F.A.S.P. & J.K.
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INCOMPLETE. A statement in academia that seems to instantly condemn one to failure, to a fatal ‘F’ etched in red ink on the top right corner of a paper. But in art, such unfinished, imperfect presentation emulates an often unseen creativity, a hidden attraction. We do not often celebrate the progress of creativity. We desire instantaneous lines of genius and strokes of brilliance to stream from our fingers. It is in the process, in fact, that the genuine vision of an artist—literary or acrylic— becomes real. In a world where so much is strictly absurd and so little is given due explanation, I hope the pages of this issue offer a moment of authenticity, an account of the creative process and a collection of the thoughts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. —CPR
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CONTENTS PROSE Sean Paul Ashley
Faded Photograph
14
Shirley Akrasih
Abandoned
16
Josh Krugman
Isaac Parsons’ Story
29
Jennie Natenshon
Emma Undressed
38
Sean Paul Ashley
Abandoned The City
9 15
Juliana Saussy
Old Poet Midday Disturbance
10 13
Kimi Goffe
Universe
20
Josh Krugman
Incommunicado Oxford, Georgia 1962
34 36
Aaron Clayton-Dunn
A Letter to a Distant Home
45
Ingrid Kapteyn
We Keep Out Some of My Father’s Shoes
48
POETRY
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CONTENTS
ART Joanne Huang
Water Color Studies
Cover
Bond Sutuntivorakoon
Dreaming of Retirement
12
Lucy Drummond
Beater
21
Carly Flynn
Ballerina Kneeling Nude
22 47
Hannah Flato
House Fly Water over Fingers
23 49
Julia Keller
Benton
24
Alison Byrne
Sunshine on a Rainy Day
25
Liz Emmanuel
Nude Woman in Charcoal
26
Kristin Simmons
Thalia’s Dream
27
Lucy Drummond
Truck
28
Jun Taek Lim
Inner Conflict
33
Annabel Prouty
Trumpet
37
Austin Turner
After Martin Lewis After Louis Orr
44 53
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SEAN PAUL ASHLEY
Abandoned Discarded, Forlorn and creased, dangling flaccidly from two slumped and slack wires, a pair of crinkled, cracked shoes with limp laces leer at the chipped and crisscrossed curb. Ragged and ripped, they are skeletal shreds clothing the tattered, torn cables. Shoes blackly hover over the road, grimly leering with stitched lace lips and hollow, haunted eyeholes surveying a squalid, sooty slum of cardboard and zinc seething beneath the eerie stillness of soles.
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JULIANA SAUSSY
Old Poet let’s run to remember his thick presence raw with aching, and marmalade; his legs spotted like the egg sandwiches he folds from rye, bending bread into bread the way he presses old age into starched shirts. he is old in our remembering, pre-death. his corpse has not become him; his tongue not yet carved into imprecision like the last time we see the poet, splayed into crassness, the sliced off tongue a coiling broken apostrophe, rubbing itself into the asphalt, unformed words, something like sunshine— sickly spittle against cement like disconnected worms—headstails, the slaughter of rain. we are not thinking of the way his blood streaks like red ink, the editor’s pen. we are not thinking of the air, still and thick, that ragged silence weighed around the edges with stones—the flies lazy bullets hanging in summer heat. instead, we remember this poet of hollow-boned poems, back-snapped by translation, couplets cradling the moon’s scars and the supple scrape of river; the pruning of brambled russian tongues. we remember his sandwiches. the roast beef crumpled thin, his cellulite; his sentences sliced and stilted and wrapped in butcher paper; a pristine painting-on (easter eggs 1930, the thin tongues of brushes), horseradish and mustard— 10 | ALBANY ROAD
JULIANA SAUSSY
to stimulate. two moldy doilies of bread; the slipping of silver intact, careful insertion, open-face viewing, the sit, a wake of marmalade.
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BOND SUTUNTIVORAKOON
Dreaming of Retirement
e
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JULIANA SAUSSY
Midday Disturbance a sweep of birds. we are at the thrift store, rush out. they come in a sudden blizzard: we still fingering clothes musty as old tomes or old rain, dusty; they feathering light across skies like iron kettles, doorknobs (25c), silver spoons. below, bundled and burdened with threadbare bags of dollar rags and too much wool, we raise our heavy heads to wave and, awed and simple, gaze into that churn of birds. black. at night we are caught still pointing index-out, arrested. above, the skies fumbling and fazed, the birds tearing softly away, rustling from rooftops to snow down across town wrinkled pages as slight and settled as feathers.
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SEAN PAUL ASHLEY
The Faded Photograph THE PHOTOGRAPH WAS CRACKED and crinkled. Its edge was khaki yellowish stain. Oily whorls smudged the surface giving it a filmy appearance, distorting the face underneath. The man’s visage was that of a desecrated house. His eyes were cracked and splintered, red veins spavined across the filmy brown surface. One eye was milky white, like a forlorn bulb weakly glimmering in the window. His eyelids were earthy brown shutters stained by the accumulated grime of years. The forehead was excessively creased and furrowed with a raised terra cotta texture. Like shingles on a roof, they crisscrossed his forehead. His eyebrows jutted out like hooded eaves furry with fungus over his dull widows. His hair was like the grass outside the house. A wispy and dead brown receding sharply from the temples coming to rest in the middle as a white matted pad that feebly boasted: “Welcome”. His mouth was brown and chapped, a cracked door slightly ajar. He used to fix his catatonic eyes on me, his lips quivering, and speak in a hoarse and husky voice. “Son, bring me a glass of water” I would slouch forward and thrust the cool brown glass at him. Then I sauntered back into the house and sat on the sagging couch, and watched as he rocked away on his creaking chair until dusk, watching the sunset. He would repeat that same phrase like an epitaph, engraved in his head. Now I stretch my veiny hand, quivering over the mound of dirt, and deposit the discolored photograph against the marble headstone. I walk slowly back to the porch and sit in the rocking chair. I can see the marble headstone from here. Only two lines were inscribed upon it proclaiming ‘Loving Father’; yet they have long been smoothed down. The sun is setting slowly under the horizon, turning the mountains purple with shadow. My son is bored; he fidgets and stares at the grass languishing in the sunlight. My gaze is fixed on the yellow square atop the mound. I am thirsty.
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SEAN PAUL ASHLEY
The City Steel grey smoke weaves intricate chains into the cool velvet cloth of the sky: a black blanket over graffiti’s concrete pillow. The road is empty now and the neon lights glimmer and fade into grey conformity. A taxi meanders past, lifting hollowed eyes in entreaty, slipping into the quicksand night. a sepulchral haven for the gilded relics, pinpricks in the gloom, golden pools shimmer on cracked asphalt. Rivers of darkness sluice between them. The light flickers out, a broken chord tumbling away.
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Shirley Akrasih
Abandoned “Akua Shirley, Kofi Tri is ringing the bell. Hurry up and go greet him.” Almost four years had passed since David last stood in front of our door. It felt like more than the door was separating us; more like years of minimal communication—no phone calls, birthday cards, emails, or even a damn postcard. “Okay, mommy, I’ll get it.” I sprinted down the stairs, almost burning my hands on the splintered, wooden banister. I never thought I’d hear his name again, much more see him. I glanced into the peephole to make sure it was actually him. My mom’s eyesight wasn’t reliable, so for all I knew she could have mistaken a statuesque Black man for a petite Asian woman! As I motioned to open the door, my hands began to tremble. Yo, he cannot be chilling on the front steps right now. The last time I saw him in this exact spot, he was making his final goodbyes before he headed off to join a naval base stationed on the other side of the world. When he took off, I had just been promoted to the fourth grade. At that age, I knew enough to realize that David joining the navy meant he was working to help protect us, whatever that meant. The navy has to do with ships and large bodies of water. That Negro can’t even swim to save his life and the only “ship” he’s been on was a ferry crossing the Hudson from Jersey City to Manhattan, but he’ll be okay I guess. I knew enough to understand that Japan was way more than two hops and a skip away from my home. However, the prospect of David buying me the hottest Pokémon memorabilia and the most up-to–date Sony walkman put me more at ease. The only thing I couldn’t wrap my mind around was, “Why does he want to leave in the first place?” I ignored my nervousness and opened the door. I had to take half a step back because I was startled by how much he towered over; he even had to bend down a bit to fit through my front door. “Well, I’ll be damned. It’s really you.” 16 | ALBANY ROAD
SHIRLEY AKRASIH
“Hell yea. Here in the flesh.” Nobody expected David’s response; least of all my Uncle Isaac, his father. “What are you going to do as a computer engineer? It’s either law or medicine. Take it or leave it.” David had just come home for winter break from his freshman year at Rutgers and he didn’t want to go back. My family considers getting an education to be the highest priority on every child’s list, especially Uncle Isaac. Graduating from college is not enough; finishing grad school is the pinnacle. “Mami Minyeteria.” “Yes, Uncle,” I replied. “When you get older, you are going to be a doctor or lawyer and take care of all of us, right?” He and my father grew up together, and they both missed attending the University of Ghana’s law school because of their financial situations— without extra money for bribes, nothing could happen. In America, they believed they had a chance to attend law school and receive their degrees, but different realities of life hit them. With wives and children to support, school was out of the question. Being a porter in a NYU apartment building did not hold the same appeal as being a revered judge or politician in Accra, but my father learned to cope with his circumstances; my uncle didn’t. Uncle Isaac’s a painfully proud man and refused to do any job that made him seem inferior. With the little money he earned from working as a librarian combined with the little money my aunt earned as a nursing assistant, he went to school and got not one, but two masters’ degrees, in God only knows what. Even with his two degrees, people still treat him, as he frequently says, “like a fucking foreigner.” His tailored three- piece suits and extensive vocabulary can’t exempt him from experiencing every immigrant’s worst nightmare: “Sorry, sir, but you’re going to have to slowly repeat yourself because I can’t understand a word you are saying.” Uncle Isaac wanted to live vicariously through David, but he never took into account what David wanted. So David took his father’s proposal and left it all; joined the navy and moved his ass all the way to freaking SHIRLEY AKRASIH SPRING 2008 | 17
Japan. The problem is David never understood how much we all depended on him somehow. We looked to him to be the “One.” My uncle just wanted David to fulfill the dreams he himself could not accomplish. The other adults just wanted to have a doctor or lawyer in the family that they could brag about. I wanted David around because I needed a “big brother” to look up to and depend on. I remember when he would take my sister and me to Liberty State Park when our parents had to work. On long summer days, he would teach us how to ride bikes and fly kites. I remember when he would bake us little Ghanaian meat pies. He would use a fork to poke our initials into a pie so we wouldn’t argue over who got shafted with the smallest one. Even though he was a senior in high school while we were only in elementary school, he took care of us because we were his “little sisters.” “Erade, yesu Christo,” my mom screamed, “I know your mother is so happy to see you.” She had to get on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “Ey maybe I need to be a soldier man too. It looks like they’ve been feeding you with fufu and abenquayne soup.” “Umm . . . Auntie, not quite, but its okay.” “So what has it been like 3, 4 years since we’ve last seen you.” “Yea, about 4 years I guess.” Actually it’s been 4 years, 3 months, and 2 days, but who’s counting. I sat in the living room quietly as David conversed excitedly with my mom about his trips to Tokyo and his adventures in Korea, Afghanistan, and Siberia. Why isn’t he acknowledging the fact that while he was travelling the eastern part of the globe, the rest of us were stuck here? Suddenly, I exploded. “You were so busy in Tokyo that you didn’t come to my confirmation. You missed my 8th grade and Wight Foundation graduations. You’ve never been to Deerfield. You’ve never taken me driving and you never sent me nann a card for my Sweet 16. You abandoned me.” Actually, I never even murmured any of that. I just sat there and nodded my head in response to his comments. I didn’t have the heart to tell SHIRLEY AKRASIH 18 | ALBANY ROAD
him how I really felt. Just as usual, I packed up my feelings and hid them in a corner, internalizing my pain and frustration, instead of just letting loose. It’s been almost 3 years since that conversation took place. He came home over winter break and he’s apparently “home to stay.” I should probably talk to him about how I feel to prevent yet another ulcer from forming. However, as frustrated as I have been with him sometimes, I’m just glad to have him back.
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KIMI GOFFE
Universe She looks up and is surprised to find stars like salt on a plate, as if she could stick a finger into the sky then lick the star off her fingernail, run her tongue over her teeth to clean them of residual cosmic matter. The moon was stuck between her molars and despite her gum ball training, she almost choked on the sun.
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LUCY DRUMMOND
Beater
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CARLY FLYNN
Ballerina
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HANNAH FLATO
House Fly
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JULIA KELLER
Benton
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ALISON BYRNE
Sunshine on a Rainy Day
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LIZ EMMANUEL
Nude Woman in Charcoal
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KRISTIN SIMMONS
Thalia’s Dream
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LUCY DRUMMOND
Stitch
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JOSHUA KRUGMAN
Isaac Parsons’ Story NCIDENTALLY, THE DAY after Mrs. Parsons died of a stroke in her rocking
I
chair in the sun porch, with the reflections of the putrid floral yellow wallpaper making her look even more dead than she was, her son, Zac, robbed the five-and-ten down on the corner of Stravinsky and Main Streets and was brought in to jail without a shirt on because he had been polishing the antique cash-register of the store with his shirt (because he couldn’t for the life of him open it to get the change out) when they arrested him, and then they figured they should just handcuff the guy and not worry about the shirt. Zac, though everyone agrees on his upstanding character, has been known to have quite a colorful tongue when he finds himself in a tight spot. This did not serve him well in court, when he sued the police department for sexual harassment (because he was shirtless in the cruiser) and he claims the officers remarked on the meager size of his pectorals. He said several elaborate words in his bluestreak of curses that even the reporter for the North Drearysville Gazetteer didn’t know, and so they are lost to us to this day. Isaac Parsons was quite tall but rather hunched, leaning eversoslightly forward so that it looked like he was walking fast, or purposefully at least, even when he wasn’t. His cheeks were concave and feeble looking like the bellows of a bagpipe long out of use. He used to smoke a good deal with the other boys his age, but they drove him away after he wouldn’t shoot someone’s beebee gun at a musk-turtle they’d nailed to a tree. After that, he mostly did housework for his mother, but he worked part time (enough to by a pint of milk every two days) as a paper-boy for the Gazetteer. He was the oldest on the staff, and thereby garnered some respect from the younger paperboys for a while, which was healthy for Zac, but then they realized (when they retired one after the other at age twelve and thirteen) the nature of Zac’s position. He carried papers, but he looked rather papery himself, like a big wind might just sweeeeeeep him off his feet silently (oh, so lightly) into the river where his would disintegrate. This is how papery Isaac was. SPRING 2008 | 29
JOSHUA KRUGMAN
He was always rather quiet, but he had a notably high, unsteady, falsely emotional voice. People would always be surprised when he started to speak, because he never spoke much, and because of his vocal peculiarity. So when Zac shouted at the judge, the old retired army-man, the Honorable Judge Sanders, a model citizen in Drearysville to be sure, with his garlands of exploding curses, the whole audience of the court—and there was quite an audience, because What else would one do on a Wednesday evening?—(which had been dozing as the Honorable Colonel Sanders read his lengthy denial of further legal proceedings) swiveled their heads eversoslightly to stare with fixed fascination at the spectacle of Parsons’ voice. People assumed afterwards, and after the few other times that he had public fits of foul language, that the obviously salty, but almost entirely mystifying vocabulary could be attributed to his travels in his teens to various foreign countries, the accounts of which he would not reveal even to the very few who bothered to ask. It was in the police station, still shirtless, after being caught robbing the five-and-ten, that they told Zac that his mother was dead. They told him, and it was true, that the paper-boy had found her. Interestingly, his mother’s house wasn’t on his paper route. That was just the way it turned out. Young Ishmael Tenor was the one with Emily Lane in his route and it was a particularly undesirable route indeed since old Sgt. Caraway lived on the corner and would no doubt either have a beebee gun pointed at you or be doing voodoo when you walked by. The latter was known to cause backpain, spontaneous orgasms, and violent hallucinogenic seizures, but that’s another story. The police said Ishmael Tenor had gone onto the porch to turn off the lights because he knew how Mrs. Parsons was almost neurotic about saving energy (and he happened to share her penchant for this cause), when he distinctly smelled burning chickpea-curry. The police said Ishmael was, at the time, “veritably famished,” as he put it, and was hoping Mrs. Parsons would let him share a bite or two and give her the paper directly. The curry was indeed slightly scalded and poor Ishmael took it off the burner, where it had been simmering, and, to reward himself for this good deed, served himself a somewhat heaping bowl of the steaming curry. 30 | ALBANY ROAD
JOSHUA KRUGMAN
He left it on the table and yelled to Mrs. Parsons, “Oh, Mrs. Parsons, the curry’s ready! It’s practically charred on the bottom. The pan will be hell to clean! Mrs. Parsons, get it while it’s hot! It smells delicious! Oh, Mrs. Parsons!” It was at this moment that it struck Ishmael Tenor that perhaps Mrs. Parsons was not in his immediate vicinity. He then began his search for her, and the sun-porch was the sixth place he looked after the upstairs bedroom, the upstairs bathroom, the downstairs bathroom, under the kitchen sink and in the basement. He was going to go into the garage next, but he found her on the sun-porch with a record of Isaac Stern playing Prokofiev sonatas spinning idly on the dynasouric turntable. She had knitting on her lap, she was working on a sweater for her son in a Peruvian style her late husband had taught her. She was almost finished: she was working on the collar—the element, her husband had said, that tests true virtuosity in the art of Peruvian knitting. She looked very dead. This was a rather more lengthy explanation of events than Isaac Parsons had wanted. He was becoming steadily more angry with the wellmeaning police officers, trying to be as grave and respectful as possible and failing nonetheless, but feeling that to do their job completely and correctly, they must relay each detail just as they had heard it from young Ishmael, so as to be relieved of their burden and not let anything fall through the wide floorboards of history. “And Ishmael didn’t eat the curry,” said one of the two officers, “in case it’s any consolation.” Isaac just stared at the officers. His mother had been old. It was no great shock really. But now he’d be cleaning the house only for himself. Perhaps her dresses should go to the Salvation Army, he thought. She had a lot of dresses. But they were old. No one would want them probably. “Say, can I get you a shirt,” one of the policemen said. Zac, didn’t respond. “Just get him a shirt,” said the other, and the first one left, in search of a shirt. The shirt smelled like urine. Zac put it on. “I’m taking this to court,” he said. “She’s dead, Zac, there’s nothing you can’t do about it, man,” said one of the officers. They were both kneeling or squatting in front of Isaac in what they thought was a comforting position. They didn’t know what he SPRING 2008 | 31
JOSHUA KRUGMAN
was talking about. So Zac took the officers to court for sexual harassment. The judge threw the case out of court. Zac swore at the judge. Most people in the audience didn’t know most of the words he said. They assumed he picked them up traveling. The owner of the five-and-ten dropped all charges and thanked Zac for polishing his cash register. “In light of the . . . em . . . family tragedy . . . ah . . . I’ve decided to drop all charges,” he said, and he expected to be made out a hero or something because of it, but he wasn’t because no one much liked him anyway. They just went home, ate supper and went to bed, and the next morning, weren’t surprised that there were magnolia warblers singing in the trees by the street, as they went from bed and ate breakfast. For those of us who care to know, Isaac Parsons would never marry anyone worth a decent metaphor and would eat chickpea curry for breakfast every day for a long long while.
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JUN TAEK LIM
Inner Conflict
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JOSHUA KRUGMAN
Incommunicado i. bluebells—bells that are blue. i empty my pockets and put my hand in yours, and you just look at me like you usually do, and we go to some other part of the museum—museums remind you of yourself.
ii. you bury me yelling elvis presley’s tin-drum tantrum— the house is cold. i have a cold coat on but i’ll make you warm in boston-land tomorrow.
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JOSHUA KRUGMAN
iii. i wrote you a letterwith thousands of sounds in it. it said to you what i wanted it to.
it had so many sounds) like thoughts, like waves breaking on the carpet.
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JOSHUA KRUGMAN
Oxford, Georgia, 1962 Perambulating through the neighborhood in the resurrected Chevy, we watch the dust-devils tempt the tired air. We drag our fingers in the wake of the ravishing automobile, our eyes—like glass marbles—repine for painted steeples of weathervanes on yellowing victorian houses, full with dustfilled drapery and leaded glass— the spanish-moss of wisdom. It was an executioner’s afternoon, low clouds, like exhaust. our minds were sneakers in new concrete.
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ANNABEL PROUTY
Trumpet
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JENNIE NATENSHON
Emma Undressed seemed to deflect off of the wedding cake, pass the newly Mrs. Weston’s bridal sheen and fixate on the mole in the left quadrant of Captain Weston’s face. The effect illuminated the flaw quite well, and Mr. Woodhouse mused on this as the cake was handed out to the wedding guests. He thought with great pain about the life Mrs. Weston would embark on, with a moled husband. It is a truly unfortunate mistake on a rather fine painting he remarked to himself, but really Mr. Woodhouse had never been a fan of the corporeal. And look, as he eats the cake, a fleck of frosting has wandered towards the direction of his mole, Mr. Woodhouse set his own confection down, it really was altogether to revolting a site for continued eating. When Emma sat herself across from her father, he was closing his eyes over a late night cup of tea, and yes, he was still picturing the mole. And when Miss. Taylor of the newly Mrs. Weston kissed it in the soft nuptial bed, she looked at him and thought of her great luck. And when the servants had washed all the wedding silver and walked the short distance to their country cottages, they fell into harder beds, already steeling themselves for the draughty morning to come. And when Emma left her father, and retired to her room, her first night as a solitary woman, with no Miss. Taylor to discuss the cake, or the mole on the groom’s face, she opened her diary to write. She wrote words, of the physical, of the romantic figure of the Victorian woman. Later, when she undressed in front of the lamplight, she turned away from the mirror, hiding her body from the inquisition of her own eyes. The Victorian woman’s body is no different than that of the medieval woman, or the Renaissance woman, or that even of the late Sumerian. Perhaps the depictions have changed, the interpretations, but underneath the tunic, or the mantle or the damask jacquard fabric, the sinews and curves are completely ordinary. Emma thought on many bodies and her own as she lay under canopied skies. It had been a good
T
HE LIGHT IN THE ROOM
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JENNIE NATENSHON
thing she had done for the Westons. Perhaps their own figures were together now, beneath the sheets, fused as man and wife. It was a rather peculiar thought to Emma, not on the basis of its perhaps prying and rude curiosity, but more on peculiarity of it. Just the night before, the then Miss. Taylor had come to Emma’s room, and taken up her horned brush, and teased out Emma’s hair, like she had always done since she was a child of just five. But tonight, Mrs. Weston was so far away from that canopy in the childhood bed of Emma Woodhouse. It was hard to be perfect, because perfection and senses did not complement each other well. The taste of an apple, the smell of the stables, the feel of Mr. Knightley’s gloved hand taking her own smaller one, didn’t fit into the emotions that Emma allowed herself to feel. Occasionally, before bathing or dressing, she would steal a glance at her own image and wonder at its working. How under layers of fabric, corsets, lace, and fripperies, she had a heart that beat(yearned?) blood that coursed, a body that lived now and would one day die. But ah yes, Mr. Woodhouse had never been fond of the corporeal, and neither was his daughter. On the subject of Death and Mr. Woodhouse, the servants in their home wondered if it would ever find him. Not that they disliked him, he was one of those papery old fellows, fine tempered and neurotic, you couldn’t help but find him amiable and odd. But, he had the smell of something old and withered a pungency that sometimes foretells death, sometimes not. How old was Mr. Woodhouse? They often wondered, cleaning the chamberpots, underneath the stairs, stealing a moment in the stables. Time, like a black cat, was always there, ominous in the parlor, powerful in its terror, but disguised by the ticking of a gentle grandfather clock. Marching on, hurry up its time, but was time marching towards Emma? No matter her beauty, rules said she must be married off soon, for if she didn’t she would live forever with Mr. Woodhouse. One day they would seal off his room, and mourners would come, and then darkness for him. But for her, she would go into the drawing room and look outside the big leaded window, and ask herself, is this when my life begins? Then she would ring the petite silver bell and call for tea. SPRING 2008 | 39
JENNIE NATENSHON
Ohh yes, yes, her speech grew more excited with each Ohhhh and Sss, Mother and I are very excited to meet the younger Mr. Weston indeed! Or shall we say Churchill, I hear he is extremely handsome and an heir! Can you believe it mother? No she can’t! Neither can I! Emma smiled politely, inwardly wishing someone would clip her on the ears, and she too would be deaf like the elder Mrs. Bates. She sometimes looked at the wrinkled little woman and wondered on just how clever she really was. It would be easy enough to feign deafness. . . . It wasn’t kind, Emma knew that, but really it was like having tea with a woodchuck, perhaps not a woodchuck, but a very loud and chirping bird. Emma made these routine visits that passed as social calls, to the Bates, Mrs. Goddard, and newly the young Miss. Smith, but Emma’s diary was the wiser. Perhaps they were her own idea of goodwill, as she was a Woodhouse. It was always expected that those in a position of haughtiness do things that made them look less haughty than they truly were. Emma was just sore today on the subject of Mr. Churchill. In truth, she complained of them quietly, but rather liked them publicly which is all that could be asked. But this conversation had Emma’s usual perfection slightly unhinged. Yes, he would be interesting to meet, for there had been many looks and smiles when the subject of this man arose, all pointed in Emma’s direction. No, she would maintain her composure, he was merely a figment, and she would finish out her days work, making her visits, caring for her father. She pushed away the image of a young and dashing Mr. Churchill kissing her mouth in the stable; he tasted like apple, and she offered Miss. Bates another scone. Straightening his clothes, he went to the washroom and called for the woman who ran the place. She was a Madame, it was clear that this establishment, though pleasant in name, Felicities of London, had seen many an unpleasant Englishman. She called for a maid, one of the homelier girls who wouldn’t bring much business, to bring a fresh bowl of water so that he could wash. He did feel dirty after these encounters, especially with Lavender. She really was a beauty, eyes like two lagoons, no that was too trite; she had eyes like a tiled fountain outside of a Constanti- nople mosque. There, now he sounded as well taught and traveled as any 40 | ALBANY ROAD
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Churchill heir should do. Pulling on his jacket, pocketing his handkerchief, he checked his watch for the time, six. The devil’s number. Hurry up now its time to go Churchill. Rushing would whisk the guilt away. A man must get his pleasure somewhere, and anyways, he was singing at church on Sunday. It was a delicate business with Emma and the elder Woodhouse. In a bed, not far from London, Knightley assessed his situation. It was no great shame to be an unmarried man of seven and thirty. Hurry up. In fact he fancied himself to be rather appealing. He rationalized all feelings of loneliness and inadequacy, all products of one sole object. The diary was maddening. Thin and leather, bound with strips of deep crimson. It was unlike any diary of a woman he had seen, more like a man’s fielding journal. Inside, were thoughts so torturous, so closed, so flawed, just thinking of it sent heat coursing through his body. Ah, to the untrained eye, Emma is perfect; surely you must think she is some sort of nymph. Something in her quiet and deliberate coldness in affairs of her own, and the warmth she shared with the matters of others was infuriating. He had sunk his teeth into a warmed plum and drank it down with iced wine first when he was a man of eighteen. The combination of warmth and ice had felt like a hot bath in the middle of a snowstorm. There was something delicious in the swirl of cold and warm; it had an untamable dynamism, an ancient balance he couldn’t convey. Emma had been raised rather improperly, not to be all cold like women of her rank and situation were trained to be. The incongruity of her being made her so striking. Every mole, and crease, and line on her body Knightley wanted to know it, like a map a sailor can trace with his eyes closed. Each moment that he was with her, his thoughts fell on the body beneath the dress, but it wasn’t solely lust, it was a knowledge he craved. A truth he couldn’t discover of her sitting in the parlor, or on the window seat in the drawing room, it wasn’t even hidden in natures loins for he had pillaged the garden many a day searching for it. Something had been criminally wrong with the lighting. The lard candles gave off an excellent flame, so excellent that Harriet and Emma SPRING 2008 | 41
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had been able to sit and do their needlework even as the sunlight began to quit the sky. Knee-high, Emma had watched her mother arrange a dinner party, seating people this way and that, conversing with servants, and always fussing about the lighting. Or, perhaps Mrs. Woodhouse had died far too long before Emma would have been able to seal her in memory. No matter, tonight the candles produced a flat and unflattering glow. The theme was apple, for there was so very much you could do with that simple fruit. Yet, the reflection cast by the lard made the poor Mrs. Bates look rather like a fat Granny Smith herself (Emma found herself quite delighted and appalled by this choice of lighting after all). It delighted Mr. Woodhouse no end that Mr. Weston’s mole was fully illuminated from this particular angle, giving him chance to show Emma, and having the added effect of putting him quite off his dinner. Hurry up now, it is time to eat! I hate to be rude, but the lovely food is getting cold, make your way to your seats, thank you. Knightley gazed in Emma’s direction, but turned his attention towards the younger of the Bates, because to be sure she would illicit none of the primal in him. Harriet had one annoying hair between the arches of her eyebrows, and when Emma could no longer look at it with out the greatest of irritation, she reached over and plucked it out. Now, let me take this time to say, that maybe I have been a bit harsh on our poor Emma. But it is important to know that she is neither perfect nor fatally flawed. Neither all kind, nor all cruel. She is a person, perhaps a more delicate one on the outside, with better turn of manners, and a prettier handle on the King’s English than say you or I. But, underneath her dress, she is a person, complex and messy, and it would be atrocious of you, the reader, to expect her to be anything more, would it not? Harriet gave a little yelp, but then smiled at Emma because she knew finding husbands is what Emma does best. And Mr. Elton sat in his garden, thinking on just how lovely her golden hair was, the grandeur of her estate, and the poise of her carriage. Mr. Woodhouse sat at tea and talked on things he found terribly interesting, and Mrs. Goddard thanked god that Harriet had pretty eyes. Miss. Bates thought of other eyes, for she thought 42 | ALBANY ROAD
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often and long on love, love lost, maybe it was love never been, but now, she had nothing else. Knightley and Emma took a turn of the garden, where he scolded her (he still couldn’t find it) when she was haughty, and she felt angry that she had no retort. In the stable, Tom, the horseman, gave Fanny, the milkmaid, the best kiss of her life, and afterwards they ate the apples she had packed for her tea. Half a mile away, Miss. Taylor brought her husband a cup of tea and kissed him in the left quadrant of his face. And in London, the dressmaker, poor herself, fitting Isabelle in the newest style looked at each woman whose body came through her shop and remarked, isn’t it odd that we are all the same?
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AUSTIN TURNER
After Martin Lewis
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AARON CLAYTON-DUNN
Letter to a Distant Home My dearest Alma, It’s snowing outside and the sea is warm and soft. The parade of wind and waves has churned away, and cold confetti now drops on a barren street. The horizon is gone—grey sky melts into grey sea. Sea is sky and sky is sea; the sea is part of the heavens. And all smoothed over with silky snow. I think the sea is in love with me. If I trudged through snow to the shore and dove into the dark, dappled water, I hardly believe it would kill me. If it did, it would be as a child kills a pet bird, stroking too hard, out of love. So here I sit with all the benefits: by the fire in my rocking chair, I lay a blanket on my lap, and look out the window. My mind dives into the hot, drunk sea and runs across that stretch of wet desert ‘til water’s gone from beneath my toes and I run through sea and swim through air, lifted beyond that invisible horizon. My mind, soaring and leaping, strokes and stretches infinitely toward the heavens and to the west.
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AARON CLAYTON-DUNN
And I with all the benefits, my pleasure glazed with sea, my mind befits a child and my heart belongs to thee.
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CARLY FLYNN
Kneeling Nude
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INGRID KAPETYN
We Keep Out Some of My Father’s Shoes We could barely close it that closet. Layers and towers of slippers and sneakers toppled toward our open feet when we opened that close it. We could barely close it that closet. Leathers and rubbers of soles and sizes thudded through the open door when we tried to close it that opened it. Then, we had to box it that closet. Layers and leathers and towers and rubbers don’t fit in opened boxes even when we leave alone close its. We could barely box it that opened close it.
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HANNAH FLATO
Water over Fingers
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CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES Shirley Akrasih is a four- year senior from Jersey City, NJ. She has lived on Mather I w/ Ms. Ellis for 3 years. She likes to sing acapella and dance to Baltimore Club Music. As you can tell from her story, she is GhanaianAmerican and proud of it!" Sean Paul Ashley is a junior who lives on Louis Marx II East. He is an avid reader though he wishes he could read more often. He hopes to be a champion Scrabble player some day. He respects F. Scott Fitzgerald and Miles Davis for being Kind of Blue. His favorite books are The Autobiography of Malcolm X and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Aaron Clayton-Dunn is a Junior and a day student. He has also had poems published in Eaglebrook School's literary magazine, The Outlook. Lucy Drummond is going to change the world. Liz Emmanuel is a senior from Saint Louis Missouri. She never took an art class before Mr. Dickinson’s intro to art sophomore year, and has been addicted ever since. Hannah Flato is a sophomore from San Antonio, Texas who lives on MacAlister 1 where her singing is banned from the hall. Kimi Goffe was sleeping one night when the sky burst through her window and she woke up and wrote a poem. Her most recent hook-ups include Jorge Luis Borges and Tim O’Brien, but her heart will always belong to Pablo Neruda, whom she would marry if he were attractive and alive. Things she will do in the next year: stop biting her nails, go to a young writers’ program with The Kenyon Review and read the unity prayer at her brother’s wedding (which is what they give you when there are too many bridesmaids). She is from Kingston, Jamaica. Joanne Huang is a four-year senior from Pohang, South Korea. She has a 9-year-old brother, who sometimes confuses her with their mom. So far, 50 | ALBANY ROAD
she has had a dog, a cat, three gold fish, four birds, eight hamsters, and two rabbits. They all died within a year. She enjoys dancing and drawing, and she spends most of her Saturdays and Sundays in the genetics lab. Ingrid Kapteyn is a junior who recently moved from Albany Road to Main Street, and who, despite her short stature, has very large feet. She often finds peace slipping them into her father’s slippers. Julia Keller is a senior from Concord, MA. Joshua Krugman disembodied. he lives in the bowels of vowels. Jun Taek Lim is a junior from Seoul, Korea. This piece “Inner Conflict,” was inspired by Dick Tracy. Annabel Prouty is a junior from Greenwich, CT and lives on JL1 North. She has done art since sophomore year at Deerfield and planning on taking it senior year as well. Kadie Ross is a senior from . . . a little bit of everywhere. She drew herself as a bug and she’s not quite sure why. Maybe Kafka would understand. Juliana Saussy often ponders the low-loping beauty of bovines. She hopes one day to find a stillness as complete and unvarnished as that of cows. Once, while visiting the dairy farm of her French godparents, she found a large, creviced stone smooth as the sea and subsequently tried to take it on the airplane. That would prove to be the first of many incidents in which her various carry-on baggages were deemed dangerous or otherwise inappropriate by the airport crew. Kristin Simmons has been working in impressionist painting as part of an alternate study and hopes to pursue the arts further in college. Her favorite artists include Monet, Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. She enjoys long walks on the beach and mint tea.
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Bond Sutuntivorakoon is a senior from Bangkok, Thailand. His dream profession is to be a property development tycoon, hotelier, restaurateur, architect, and interior designer, but will probably become a corporate slave and soulless yuppie. Austin Turner is from Virginia, and is a senior. He has pursued art for all four years at Deerfield. He lives in Doubleday dormitory.
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AUSTIN TURNER
After Louis Orr
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PRINTED THE
UNITED
S TAT E S
TIGER NORTHAMPTON M AY
IN OF AMERICA
PRESS MASSACHUSETTS
2008