WHEN THE HARPSICHORD OF WATERCOLORS*.............................................................PAUL SIEGELL

high pitched. “You’re going to leave me alone? With the kids? Now? Again?”

“You seriously can’t handle them for half an hour in the woods? Jesus, you’ll be fine. They’re not babies anymore. I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He turned to walk onto the green trail.

You always do, I thought as I started to turn my back, to walk off without explaining. I was the demanding, control-freak wife who had no sympathy for a man who’d lost his job and was just getting back on his feet at a new one with a salary reduction. I knew I was being an overgrown brat, but something in those woods, something about being in that run-down motel that my husband and kids seemed to enjoy so much, something about being away from the piles of dishes and laundry and bills and dust bunnies and birthday parties and deadlines at work and phone calls that Luke was going to be late again and issues with the day care and the kindergarten and passive aggressive phone calls from his mother and wet beds at 3 in the morning and crayon all over our newly painted dining room walls and a back turned away from me in our giant, lonely bed made me face him and call him back to me. “Luke!” I shouted.

“What?” His voice like a razor, he turned his face back to me, but his body still pointed up the adjoining hill, into the darkness where the trees swallowed the path.

“It’s not about the kids.” I tried to keep that horrible, whiny sound out of my voice. I took a breath. “It’s about me.” I looked at my feet, at the mud drying back into dirt and a fuzzy red and brown caterpillar making its slow way to a leaf just beyond the toes of my worn out sneakers. My face felt hot and my fingers were prickly. I tried to take another breath, but my chest felt blocked. When I looked back up, Luke had turned fully back to me. “I don’t want you to go. I want you to be with me. To be with me. Here, together.”

He looked wistfully up the trail, and I looked away. I said what I needed to say. I breathed in and out, sending oxygen to the places in my body that were gasping for it. I wiggled my fingers and turned to go toward the kids and the goddamn waterfall and the crowd of people surely photographing it and daring each other to dunk under it and eating hummus and peanut butter sandwiches on large flat rocks next to it. He was beside me suddenly, his long arm caged around my shoulder. He pulled me into him, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding as my narrow shoulders crushed into his ribs. He didn’t say anything and neither did I. We just walked in step down the trail.

Driving back to Philly on the highway, we passed over the state park. “Look down there - I think that’s where we were hiking,” I announced. The kids sucked on candy and stared out their windows. Luke nodded. Satisfied with what I could get out of him for the moment, I looked at the cars parked below, the incredible green of the trees. The other trees, the ones lining the highway seemed dusty, lighter, tired, closer to being ready to shed their leaves for fall, to rest.

“Take a look at this,” Luke said suddenly, handing me his iPhone. “I signed up for this thing; it’s a service. You pay 10 bucks a month and you can program in any album you want.” He touched the app and an array of choices popped up. You could look by artists or song or genre. I had a radio feature on my phone, but you could only choose one song on it – then you were stuck with whatever the invisible DJ in the device chose next. This, he explained, would allow you to choose whatever song, whenever you wanted to hear it.

“Neat!” I said, handing it back to him.

He put on The Steve Miller band. He liked to point out all the jazz influences. “Listen to that bass line,” he would normally say. But this time, he surprised me. I was half listening, half wondering what we were going to make for dinner, when he said, “When this song is over, do you want to pick something?“

“To listen to?” I turned toward him.

He smiled back at me, “Yeah, to listen to.” He said it gently, and I remembered him kissing me under the stars all those years ago. I took the phone back from him as Steve Miller finished wailing away. What did I want to hear? It had been the better part of a decade since my musical choices had ranged beyond “ohn Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” or the local alternative station as default aural wallpaper as I drove to my job as a social worker. Usually, I just listened to the news and numbed out.

Now, with the gadget in my hand, I felt electrified. The hairs on my arms perked up. My fingertips tingled as I scrolled through my choices. I glanced at Luke, who was responsibly looking 10 seconds down the road. The sky was again dreary. The answers were nowhere around me. And then it floated to me: Julianna Hatfield – that’s who I wanted to hear: her blunt lyrics, her raw voice, the bare guitar behind her. That was how I had felt in college. The yearning, the anticipation, the new connections to people, ideas, art. I had been truly myself then, interested in the world and eager to join it. I was unapologetically angry: at my parents, at God, at men who called to me on the street, at the idiots in Washington. I used to picture myself on a kibbutz, in the deserts of Arizona, swimming in the rocky blue grottos of the Baja Peninsula. And then I’d met Luke, and for a while, we were alive together, talking through the night and making love on dirty bedspreads or a couch in the hallway, it didn’t matter. Once we stayed up an entire night together, each reading a novel – and they weren’t even novels for class. I read Trainspotting, flipping back and forth to the Scottish-American glossary. I don’t remember what Luke read, but it didn’t matter. We lay head to toe on my long, twin, dorm room bed, our legs wrapped around each other. In the morning, we skipped class and listened to The Pixies.

Julianna crooned about about hating her sister through the speakers as the early evening sun fought its way through the clouds. I had forgotten how breathy she sounded, how like a grown baby. “God,” Luke looked over at me, smiling, “remember her?”

“Yeah, I know. Remember all those baby trends – the little barrettes, the pacifiers?”

“Oh my god, yeah,” He drew out the last word and looked off into the distance, but his hand found mine on the center console as the opening cords of the next song crashed and popped on our puny car speaker. “Sleater-Kinney,” Luke acknowledged the band. “You really liked these guys, didn’t you?” The kids were crashed out in back by now, and I checked briefly to make sure the heavy bass didn’t wake them. Esme drooled, openmouthed onto her car seat. Henry’s head hung down, his blond curls bobbing with the rhythm of the car and the occasional lift from the air conditioner.

The singer’s staccato lyrics rang through their angriest song, “Monster,” the anthem of all the fights I’d once had with my mother. I listened for a minute, letting the pure thrill of her anger wash through me.

“I was so angry with my mother then. With both my parents, I

guess, but mostly with my mother. I always felt like I could never be good enough for her. I don’t know. I guess everyone feels that way about their parents.” I thought a minute as the beat pulsed through my whole body. It felt so freeing, just as it had back then. “It’s funny, you know?”

“What is?” he asked. And it felt so good to be asked. To feel that he was really listening. Lately, he always seemed to answer any of my deep thoughts with “Uh-huh,” before going off to make himself a sandwich.

“Well, I think they still have all of these expectations of me, and they are disappointed in me for not becoming a lawyer and marrying a good Jewish doctor. They’d never say that, of course, but it’s there. It’s funny because it just doesn’t make me angry the way it used to. I guess they’ve softened. I guess I have, too.”

Luke appeared to consider this. He’d always had such a mild relationship with his own parents. Not a very deep relationship, but a pleasant one. I wondered if he could understand. I squeezed his hand as the song ended. “When we get home,” he began as a new song started. I leaned in, wondering what he would propose for us. Maybe ordering a pizza and watching a Disney movie all together before bedtime. Maybe getting the kids to bed early so we could hang out together. “I gotta run into the office for a bit.”

I sat stunned, my hand still under his. I pulled it out and my chin jutted forward. I looked over, but all I saw was the long side of his face. His eyes were on the road. “What? Luke, it’s Sunday evening. And tomorrow is Labor Day. Can’t it at least wait until tomorrow? I thought we were having a family weekend.”

“Calm down,” he answered, ducking my question. “It’s no big deal. You can handle one night of bedtime.” I hated when he told me to calm down. I felt the pulse of “Monster” in my blood again. “You know I have to get my numbers up. I’m the new guy there. I need to get back at least to where I was.” There was just no arguing with that. I wanted to pull him out into the middle of the pulsing crowd and get him to jump, jump, jump! But he wasn’t that guy anymore and the crowd had long since gone to law school and gotten 401K plans. I stared out the window at the high sun, which hung like a yellow egg in the sky. Luke kept looking at the road, barely in the car at all.

Rachel Howe runs a tutoring program that brings Temple University students into North Philadelphia schools. She has taught writing at Rowan and Temple Universities as well as the Community College of Philadelphia. She also runs creative writing workshops for kids at local recreation centers and libraries. Her work has been published in Dark Matters, The Philadelphia City Paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a variety of radio programs. Ms. Howe holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Temple University. She lives in South Philadelphia with her three children.

Canopy

Poem by Dan Elman

1.

greasepaint buffalo

twirling dishes

gravity creep

children pull turtleneck wonder

through the mad herd

2.

the neighbor's dog is barking

invisibly

it's about to rain

the trees are dropping their knots

you remember yourself

3.

kitchen sink

full of cotton candy

a lampshade sky

the measured mind

all the clown feet

*WHEN THE HARPSICHORD OF WATERCOLORS*

Poem by Paul Siegell

I hung them out of the location, but was worried about rain. Awareness on canvas, Monday in the South Philly kill zone. I’ll be on your arm, but these are not the only words we have in common. As easy as it is to get a slice of pizza, the sooner you know that the pharmacy will wear you out, the better—

“Morrissey” says my sweatshirt, says ceremonial moans, says that that written record of watercolors (what kept you in hiding all week-

end) came kind closer to what you saw that helped morning

her wet-towel warmth unsealed your sight from the glue of pinkeye: “paperclip rainclouds exploding toad-green sparks”—Still,

as a concept apropos of the inside-out, saying things like “Can I make a delivery order?” seems to know no limitations. The slip from yesterday’s cookie asks, “How dark is dark? How wise is wise?” and no matter how many lucky numbers I get, I still can’t tip to an answer fair—Best check back for details as they develop.