Ode to My Therapist’ s Floral Rug . . . . . . . . . . . .Nicole Zuckerman

Ode to My Therapist’s Floral Rug

By Nicole Zuckerman

Beneath the florescent thrum of conversation beneath every sole, heel, and rounded boot beneath pivotal hearts you, golden summer floral buffer woolen garden, lie patterned between chair and couch the tread of your petals almost sweet

I pass over you our weekly dance an awkward shuffle my feet a jumble of politeness

above you the story of my life dredged of all metaphor begins again

rooted to the floor, the room, the hour you listen radial, calm, captive

words cinching round and round catch, unravel, tangle

above you faces open and close like bridges

and you, floral buffer woolen garden knotted in pastels narrate the silences that fall in-between shifting and tidal the telling, sloping the heart hanging lower

Nicole Zuckerman: I am an ESL teacher in Pennsylvania always looking for new ways to challenge students to view language as a unique form of self expression. I am an avid collector of poetry, as well as aspiring to be a poet worthy of those whom I collect. I love flea markets and auctions and I seek out ephemera because I see beauty in that which defines our daily lives. can park my car?”

“No. But I can show you where to park without getting a ticket. I don ’t have a car, myself. ”

“How do you get groceries and shit?” She thought he laughed.

“Looks like I beg my daughter to take me. We ’ll call it rent. ”

“Call it even, ” she said. Her words spooked her.

He raised his glass. “Cheers, then. ”

She leaned close. “I don ’t drink, Seth. ”

So he drank hers, too. “Come on, I want to show you something. If I can find it. ”

He called directions from where he had jotted them on the back of an envelope, up 76 to Bala Cynwyd. He ejected the disk she had in the dash player, Rainer Maria, and put in Skip James. She wanted to turn it down when she heard the barrage of pops and crackles, but she did not. He told her how, in the twenties and thirties, the record company sent the musicians north on trains to Wisconsin, and how they recorded almost as if in secret, blacks in a white town, so much of the north inhospitable to the great migration, before they were turned instantly around with a little cash in pocket and shipped back to Mississippi to await the modest release. Then the Depression. Libby pulled the car through the gate at the corner and set the parking brake on the hill. They walked between the memorials in the lumpy lots. He told her they were looking for Skip James ’ s stone.

“The guy we were just listening to? It’ s funny how English teachers are always into the blues. ”

“What do you mean funny?”

“Like, grammatically. To show they ’ re not uptight assholes. ” She glanced at him to see if he had the hard look again. “Somebody else pointed it out to me. But it still kind of backfires, because only pretentious white guys“

“Oh come on, Libby. Whom do you

love?” He elbowed her, and she smiled. “Poor grammar can be dangerous, though. I heard tell of a convict killed in prison. Ended his sentence with a proposition. ”

“I could learn to like the blues, ” she said.

“Like learning to love a sickness. ”

The hard ground was wildly uneven, churned and rechurned, and the grass was coarse and sparse. Many of the stones didn ’t have concrete foundations and, here and there, were toppled or sunken. They paused a moment looking down the hill of them. A backhoe was parked in one of the lanes. “This place is a mess, ” he said.

“Why do you want to see his grave? You ’ ve got his music. ”

“I know. But why do we put up memorials at all?”

“Meh. Rocks are a silly way to remember the dead, ” she said.

He chuffed. “How else should we do

it?” “I don ’t know. Look, Chinese… ”

There, below the road, was a whole section of their glyphs on stones, and at the center, a small dais. She began to step down toward it, but the very motion—and the slope, the table, the way the trees were grouped around the site—was familiar, and gave her a chill.

Her father didn ’t notice. “How do you remember your mother?” he asked.

“Stop it, Seth. ”

“Well?”

“I probably remember her better than you do. ”

They passed through a cloud of gnats as he kept scanning left and right in the grass. “How?” he pushed.

“It’ s not a fair question. But I remember her when I get high. Sometimes I’ll go online and listen to songs she used to like. ”

“Like what songs?”

“Like Connells songs. ”

“She liked the Connells. ” He seemed “So, smoking grass, listening to songs Rachel liked, works for you. What do these rocks do?”

“Nothing for me. ”

“No, I mean think about it. ”

She crossed her arms as they went on in the heat. “They ’ re like these permanent signs that you once existed. ”

“Right. Of course, some are more permanent than others. ”

“Some are bigger. The pyramids, ” she said.

“Or Grant’ s tomb. Sometimes the rock is commensurate with their stature... ”

“How about this one?” she said. They looked at it at their feet. A black kid’ s picture was glued to the surface of a baseless slant, which was tipped on its back in the weeds. Her father bent and pulled the stone upright. Up the hill, the groundsman in the open shed watched them without moving. “He was my age, ” she said.

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“Where the heck’ s Skip James?”

“We can keep looking, if you want. Or go ask that guy. ”

“No. Let’ s go. ” He walked. He walked faster.

“Hey, you ’ ve always got the CD, ” she called. “Wait up. ”

He looked frustrated as he turned to

her.

“I take your point. But which do you think will last longer? The music, or a rock like that one there?”

“The music. You know these answers, professor. Are you okay?”

“Right, ars longa. ” He was talking to the bright white sky. “But I’ m not so sure. I mean, everyone knows what the pyramids look like. But I can ’t name a single song from ancient Egypt. ” He met her eye.

Together they looked up the steep rise of buried dead to where her small car was parked.

“I don ’t know that’ s a fair analogy, ” she said.

“There ’ s no stone for your mother, for instance. How will she be remembered?”

She pulled her hair up off her hot neck, and found that even this common action was no longer hers. She felt the hand behind her in Tennessee. She let her hair drop. She would get it cut even shorter, soon, tomorrow. “Just by us who knew her, I guess. ”

“And when we ’ re gone? What?”

“She won ’t be remembered, Seth. That your point?”

He pursed his lips. “How about us?”

She wanted to go. “We won ’t be remembered either. Nobody will remember anything about anybody. You need me to tell you this? People will just step over our rock, if we even have a rock. If someone is even around enough to get us one. ” She marched past him, up the lane for the car. She didn ’t turn around to see if he were following. It was a steep hill , and she wouldn ’t forget it, nor the way the sun beat on the ragged grass. “But, come on, being remembered isn ’t even what’ s important. ”

“No? What is?”

“God, Seth. Being worth being remembered. ”

Some weeks later, she had taken a job as a bike messenger. She was smoking with Judge in his apartment in Fishtown. She had been spending time with him, but it was the first time she had been to his place. He only smoked Turkish cigarettes, which she could never justify buying for herself, and he slid the box across the table, gifts for her, the moment she rubbed one out. “I remember your dad, ” he said. “But I was only at that school like a couple months. Figured I could learn photography on my own, so that’ s what I did, and hell of a lot cheaper. ” He had turned his bike upside down on the floor and was cleaning the sprocket and chain with an oiled cloth.

She browsed his shelf, stacked with tattered books on photography. Most of them had library markings taped to the spines. A pile of comics. Tattoo magazines. His own script was blue on his black skin, which, at a distance looked like hair on his chest, but it wasn ’t. His chest was smooth. Libra ’ s level scales on either pec.

“These cameras all work?”

He looked up from the sprocket. “Them my babies. ”

“How ’d you afford them?”

“Tell me, what’ s he like, anyway? Your dad. ”

He had spent ten minutes explaining why there was no point in her going to school, yet it still seemed he was trying to get his head around Seth. Feared him, maybe. Her father like a picket out in front of her. It occurred to her she might ask the same thing of him about her father. You sat in a class with him, what’ s he like anyway? She raised a camera to test its heft. “Seth speaks in italics, ” she said.

“He do what?” He hadn ’t stopped looking at her. “Speaks in italics?”

“Like professors do. Professorial. ”

“Aw, yeah. I hated that. Sage on a stage. You get along?”

“Yeah. ” “Yeah?”

“But I’ m not going to live there anymore. ”

“Mm. You got people?”

“I have a lead. ”

“A lead?” He put the back of his hand against her temple. “You can stay here until you ’ re set up. ” She liked how his tough was a quiet, thoughtful tough. How his touch was gentle, despite his arms. “Or you can set up here. ”

“I don ’t have much stuff, ” she said. He was moving in to kiss her again. She stayed him.

“It’ s alright, ” he said.

“Don ’t say that. ”

“Don ’t say it’ s alright?”

“If it’ s alright, it’ s alright. I’ll know it’ s alright. ”

“Okay. ”

“Let’ s go do this. ” She rolled her sleeve up to her shoulder and looked at her bare arm. They were going to go to Chinatown.

“Okay, ” he said. “After. ”

She came down the stairs and met Seth at his own front door. He was wearing flip flops and a straw cowboy hat, which looked like it had been run over at least twice.

“You got mice, ” she said.

“Yeah. Thought we ’d go swimming. What’ s that?”

The loose pattern of small skulls cascaded over her shoulder. Like a cluster of grapes, was how she had described it to the guy at the Chinatown shop. “New ink, ” she said.

“You just got that?”

“Last night, with Judge. You like it?”

“The money I gave you, ” he said, his voice hollow again. “I don ’t know. Ask me in thirty years. ”

She stopped smiling. “Fuck you. ” She pulled her arm away. “I like it. ”

“No, it’ s cool. I didn ’t say I didn ’t like

it. ”

“You didn ’t say you did. ” “Sorry. ” “Nice hat. ”

“It’ s like a baby ’ s breath of blue heads, ” he said. “Who ’ s the Judge?”

“Just Judge. This guy. ”

“Well, I was hoping to take you swimming. ”

“The beach?”

“No, not the beach. Some place more clinical. ” He was squinting at the pavement. “Concrete and chlorine. I hate the beach. ”

“Good. I hate the beach, too. ”

“Right. We ’ re beach haters. Good. ” He stepped back onto the sidewalk, a visitor at his own apartment. “I mean, I like the ocean plenty, ” he said, as if it clarified something.

“Here. ” She handed him the knife. “Happy Father ’ s Day. Look, I’ll go with you, but I can ’t get in chlorine. You belong to some sort of club somewhere?”

They greeted the hotel’ s doorman as though he should remember them and strode across the carpet right in front of the desk, past the ferns, and down the tiled hall. They boarded the elevator and went to the roof. No keycard, he knocked on the window. Two wet kids, seven or eight years old, sat on the nonslip concrete picking at their toes. One of them opened the door. Libby was hit with breeze and blue sky. The kid called the other to go. They had southern accents. They passed quickly under her father ’ s arm, leaving wet footprints to the elevators.

There, on top of the city, the cloudless sky was as blue as the pool she and Seth had to themselves. She tossed the paperback from her bag onto a white patio table and sat. She hadn ’t touched the book since Texas, could barely remember what it was about, and yet she considered how, whatever it was, its story was still intact there between the covers, immutable, complete, even as her life these past couple of months had endured a hundred revolutions. She turned her chin to her shoulder. This tattoo would stay, a constant.

She watched her father hang his towel near the deep end. He stood staring at the knife in his hand. She was glad he had it now. It made her feel safe that he had it. She had avoided the Internet as much as possible, staving what news might ever come from Tennessee.

Things disappear.

“You remember it?” she called.

“No, ” he said. “Was this mine?” Still holding the knife, he rolled into the water like a fluke and sank all the way to the bottom. He sat there submerged on the blue floor. She couldn ’t laugh, but she wanted to, a little.

She checked her tattoo again. She liked it. She hadn ’t slept since getting it, had stayed up all night with Judge and the others afterwards, spray painting the bike entirely white, sharing smokes beneath the rasping speakers in the messengers ’ garage. From a chair in the corner, she had watched them trying to recall anecdotes about the guy who had

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