What’ s Wrong With this Photo . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Marjorie Maddox

he pointed at the painting over the bed. Now it’ s gone, a rectangle of lesssmoke-stained wall in its place. What was it? A sailboat, a print of a sailboat drifting on a perfect blue sea at sunset, which looked like it was painted by someone ’ s great aunt. She had pronounced it beautiful, noting the extra care the artist had taken to paint the name on the boat. But Odell had noted the unrealistic blue of the sea, which bore no trace of the telltale brown that stained the Gulf for a hundred miles around the mouth of the Mississippi, and they had fallen onto the bed, laughing at the contrast between this place and the suite his parents had reserved for them at the Pensacola White Sands Regal, where his parents said “the help ” tossed rose-petals across the bed and brought unlimited champagne.

She stares at the empty rectangle on the wall, disappointed, suddenly, that they stopped here after all. This place was fun, but she ’ s still never been to Florida. Before she met Odell, she had never even left Pride. Odell would probably call the desire silly and bourgeois – he was always using that word when he talked about his parents – but she would’ ve liked to stay at a place like the White Sands once in her life, at least on her honeymoon. Although come to think of it, it’ s probably a good thing they didn ’t. She couldn ’t have gone back to Florida with that hurricane coming. Nor could she have afforded the room.

She leans back into the pillows, the mattress creaking beneath her. If only he could’ ve met her here. What a different trip this would’ ve been. When they were here, the year before, she had felt so giddy, so free. As soon as they set down their things, he had pulled her onto the bed. She had reached out to run her hand through his hair and kiss him. But her hand had pawed the air between them, missing him completely, fingers closing instead on the pink-tinted twilight that streamed through the glass balcony doors like water. When he turned to smile at her fist full of twilight, she saw the strangest shapes in the dark green of his eyes, the strangest moving white shapes she couldn ’t make sense of. What were those ghosts in his pupils? He held up his hand in a wave and smiled. Hello, he whispered. Thank you for joining us. I’ll be your husband this evening.

Her husband. The man whose laugh, mellow and echoing in her ear, set her whole body trembling. The man whose spirit had streamed out his mouth later that night, into hers, through her open lips, and made a baby. Not literally of course. She knows the biology. But there was this moment when they kissed, this surreal moment, later that night, on the beach. Her toes were muddy and wet and cold and she was thinking she couldn ’t tell the difference between the sky and the ocean, everything was black and starspattered as far as she could see. But when she leaned over to tell him, he had said I know before she had time to say anything. And when he kissed her, she could feel his spirit flowing in through her lips, like water, like the pink twilight through the

What’s Wrong With This Photo?

By Marjorie Maddox

Little League, Williamsport, PA, April 2007, May 2014

It’ s not the slant of the pitched ball, the average dust on the bases, the haphazard smile of the shortstop. It’ s not the pitcher ’ s skinned elbow, the crooked cap on the coach, the cat calls and bellows. It’ s not my daughter at third, my son at second, deliberating the difference between safe and sorry.

Look.

As always, the sun ’ s angle ’ s idyllic, the parents ’ faces predictable. The best batter grips the usual bat with the same tense glee, whacks what intersects his path, whacks it all the way to the edge of the volunteer-trimmed field, past that neatly-ironed flag stalled forever, it seems, at half mast.

Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 9 collections of poetry, 2 children ' s books (including Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems) and over 450 poems, stories, and essays in journals and anthologies. Her most recent book, Local News from Someplace Else, focuses on living in an unsafe world. She is co-editor, with Jerry Wemple, of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and is the great grandniece of baseball legend Branch Rickey, who helped break the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson. In addition to giving readings around the country, she has twice read at both the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the Little League World Series. For more info, see www.marjoriemaddox.com

glass doors, only this time she felt it instead of seeing it as she closed her eyes, let it in. Down her throat, twilight, air, to her belly, a yawn, in reverse, swelling up. That man. He is missing from the letters he sent from the Depot and Camp Lejeune. Each week, since he left home, she ’ s gotten only one page, front and back. Seven short dated paragraphs, one for each night of the week. Every time she reads them, she aches, and she ’ s read them so often, the pages have torn and crumpled. She can tell he is scared They will read them, by the way he refers in this strange blithe way to Our Country and Godand Duty with a capital D. But his signature. Each paragraph ends, Yours in spirit. And those three words feel more truthful than anything else he writes. As if he doesn ’t want to admit his longing. As if he wishes that by inscribing those words, each day, like a mantra, he could encode his spirit in those letters and send it to her via post. But that’ s impossible. Obviously. His spirit has shipped to the jungle with his flesh. When she gets home tomorrow, the house will echo even more with his absence – during the day, as she takes care of Teller; at night, as she sits up, sleepless, watching television. And she has come to this motel alone.

The house has felt so empty, these last couple months while he was in training. She ’ s been obsessed with the news, consumed by the danger he would face in Vietnam. She ’ s had trouble enjoying quiet moments with her son.

She fumbles through her bag for the vial Odell asked her to find last week in the freezer, before he called back a few days later to say he couldn ’t make this trip after all. Apparently he had hidden the vial in a bag of frozen okra, the summer before, after they realized she was pregnant, when she asked him to throw it away. She isn ’t sure it’ s such a brilliant idea to do this stuff alone, but she has felt so awful since he left for the Depot. She remembers the last night they did this stuff together, newlyweds sitting Indianstyle beside a campfire, finding themselves in each other, in the flames.

There ’ s only a small bubble of transparent liquid at the bottom. Odell probably did the rest when he went camping with Pete, two days before they left for the Depot. That would explain his strange behavior the next day, his last with her. She tries to swallow her irritation at the long walk he went on by himself before sunrise, the way he seemed to avoid her eyes, that night, the last time they made love. Afterward, he made her promise not to hang onto his memory for too long, if it came to that. Teller will be needing a father, when he gets older. If something happens to me, you ’ll want to find someone else. He had been so sincere about it, so desperate to hear her say yes, that she had nodded. But the truth is she can ’t imagine being with anyone else. His idea had been to relive their wedding night, tonight, to recapture the wonder, the freedom, they felt together before their son was born. But all she wants is to find herself, the girl who once took joy in everyday life. It’ s not so different from the vision quests her mother talked about her ancestors doing, before they started going to church and trying to pass as white. She had always been drawn to that idea, the value of stepping out of yourself into a shadow world in search of the truth. She squeezes the eyedropper, sucks up the rest of the liquid, and drops it on her tongue. Then she lies back down on the bed, tired, the length of the drive catching up with her. She closes her eyes, trying to forget the zodiac-shaped ash tray, the cigarette burn on the bed, the missing painting. The whole world, revolving, turning, spinning around her, against her. Squeezing her eyes tighter and tighter still, trying to see: not the ceiling, or the static on the backs of herUntitled by Jerry C. Smith © 2014