TWO WINDOWS

In the log cabin a single small window with six panes over six, overlooking a man-made pond. Why didn't the builders carve another for the light and wider view? But something makes sense in their thrift. We feel virtuous without fossil fuels, and the stolid framing keeps us focused. Four horizontal lines, including sash bars, gutters on the porch roof, and the edge of a winter field, which could be a beach really for its softness. Other horizontals: a two-inch layer of ice on the pond water and above, blue sky. It might be a book cover from the eighties. You know, the image on top, solid color below where the title and author are stacked. Then, for contrast—an enormous bare beech tree, with its split trunk, arterial branches, and thin tendrils.
     Or, it might be a quilt. Don't be embarrassed. There's satisfaction in cutting squares from various discarded fabrics—gingham, corduroy, tweed, even velvet—pinning and stitching these scraps together till each individual pane comes together, makes a whole. It's something to hang on the wall or crawl into on a night below zero. And look—a new horizontal, this one made of cloud. A nasty Western front, moving in. As the light dims, the landscape deflates. Even the trees are diminished, their fringes blurred and cottony. Head over to the other six-over-six on the south side of the cabin—just to be certain we're not in for a squall or a tornado. But here too, the view reveals only one piece of the real, not nearly enough to predict what's coming.

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TWO EXHIBITIONS                                                                    

Trespassers

It's all cast in gray: the metal wheels of our skateboards, the cobblestones with their ancient streetcar rails leading to Georgetown University. The ride made our jaws quiver thanks to those wheels, rails, and stones shaped like an old person's teeth. We were never allowed to skate on campus. We knew that, but there were three of us, looking for adventure and the back parking lot had just been resurfaced: empty except for a maintenance truck or two, smooth as ganache. So we carried our boards down the crisscrossing sidewalks, as if we were students taking a stroll. We walked past the Jesuits and Healy Hall, with its two hundred foot cast iron clock tower constructed of granite and its clock, "subject to many thefts, mostly by freshmen." The meticulously manicured trees and bushes and landscaping were a Wonderland, with students and professors smoking pipes and cigarettes. We hurried along, silently, until we arrived at the acre-wide lot. All clear: It was a sea of tarmac, begging for waves, so we took off with a shout, splashed right into it, made tracks for an hour till I noticed a beat-up Dodge in one corner. The door to that car squealed open, and a man stepped out wearing a plastic raincoat yes a raincoat on a moisture-free day. Did anyone else worry? Did they assume he'd walk right past us (but why park so far away? And the shambles of his car?) Not long before I noticed his hand at the crotch, his fingers wrapped around it—the flaccid blue-veined-thing he waved back and forth like a flag or an upside-down pendulum. I'd never ever seen such a thing. I said to my sisters, let's go home. I don't feel like being here anymore. And they objected and called me strange and what's-the-matter-with-you-we're having fun. But they finally agreed and we skated home.
      I said nothing. We weren't Catholic but I knew what my Catholic friends felt: afraid and ashamed, for it was my error, my crime, my dirty eyes. I could have told my mother, slipped into her kitchen while she peeled onions, waited until no one else was around. I didn't because I was sweating. I didn't tell anyone for years, that creepy flag forever lodged in a corner of my brain. And then she died, my mom. But I'm telling you now.

The Magnificent Seven

In the mid-sixties, we seven piled into our exhaust-spewing Rambler, drove across D.C. to RKO Keith's, a voluminous theater on the other side of town. We climbed the carpeted stairs to the balcony: Dad, Mom, five daughters, seven packages of Twizzlers, and seven (small) cartons of popcorn. Our tickets were cheap: 50 cents for the kids, 75 for the grown-ups. The titles scrolled, music swelled; the setting was Western. And soon the horses galloped, dust rising as the story opened up—a small village on the Mexican border is besieged by robbers, who regularly squander the villagers' supplies and steal their food. For fear of being raped, the women hide in closets, blanket trunks, or a crawl space in the roof; the townsmen are tied up, humiliated. Finally, they've had their fill. Like a miracle, "Cajun" Yul Brynner shows up—so competent, heroic in black hat, shirt, jeans, boots, atop a black horse. My crush. He assembles a crew of deadly gunslingers, played by Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and more I don't remember. Brynner hires them—for practically nothing—to fortify the town and supply the villagers with weapons. All they want is to do the right thing. How I loved them!
     And then, a man smelling of piss wandered in and sat directly behind me. Quiet at first, he began kicking my seat, harder, more rhythmically, moaning. I felt his tiger breath on the back of my neck, leaned forward to escape it, held my nose. I checked my sisters on each side, then my parents, but they were all oblivious. Hadn't they noticed our row of connected seats, trembling a little with each thud? Hadn't they caught the stink like the alley behind our house with its garbage and loogies? Why did he choose me, the only one of the seven to covet and claim? The story onscreen thinned to flickers of yellow and brown, the sky milky blue. Even the gunshots failed to register or mow down the enemy or send the bandits flying, never to return. I no longer cared, and thought of going to the bathroom, but he might follow. Then my sneaker adhered to a sticky patch on the floor. What was that? Oh God, was he here before me, sitting in my very own seat?  The blows to my back never let up, even as the monster rose, buckled his pants and quickly slipped out to the street, a rumpled tower of cringe.
     We left too, me on the heels of my mother. Back in the car, our father grilled us with the usual questions: "How did you like the movie? What was your favorite part? What lesson did you learn from these gunslingers that rescued the town? Did the story have a moral? Are there some men who deserve to die?

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SMALL MIRACLE                                                              

Oh littlest sister, oh Jenny the sweet one we took pleasure in harassing. That day, she bounced on our parents' bed, sucking on a sourball. You remember them—marble-sized, in lemon, cherry, orange, grape, lime, and individually wrapped in cellophane. Irresistible. She jumped this way and that, one leg or two, sometimes landing in a sitting position or flat on her back, but never quite reaching the altitude for flip.
      She was our mother's darling and had always wanted a trampoline.
      We siblings were sprawled over a canvas-covered couch, distracted by Patty Duke arguing on television with her identical paternal cousin Cathy (also played by Patty Duke)—unaware of Jenny doing that thing that she loved so much. And then the jumping stopped. And then there was a sound like a bird pecking a Styrofoam cup. It was Jenny hunched on the floor, tugging on her ears. "What stupid thing are you doing now," I said. "Always looking for attention," we hissed.
      Until she went limp and we screamed for our mother.
      Who among us had heard of the Heimlich maneuver? It was more than a decade in the future, this simple method of unblocking an airway. No classes or handbooks for sisters or mothers. Nine year-old Nancy, the only sensible one, locked her arms under Jenny's ribs and hoisted her three feet off the ground. The candy burst out of her windpipe like a bullet—bounced off the bedpost, landed on the rug, sticky, but intact. And she breathed. And mother was in the room hugging her, and then, hugging Nancy.

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Questions I have asked myself:

Is there really such a thing as a good secret?

Why do the ugly ones have so much power? 

When you confess a secret, does it blow away or burrow deeper into your brain.

Does when matter?

Is this my only secret?

Do my secrets form a line, waiting to be revealed?

Here is a line I once wrote: There's the story you tell, and the one that actually happened, clinging like a folded bat.