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Thigh High
If, during the day, the bottle isn't close enough or spills a golden thread of pungent fluid, he must be unwrapped and patted clean, but always, right till bed-time, the stockings stay dry, their tops holding their place halfway from knee to talcumed groin. Gliding over heel, calf, the polished dome of kneecap, the stubborn tautness of hamstring, the silkiness of thigh, they're closer than a lover's hand.
Although his left side is paralyzed, Sydney keeps his spine parade-ground straight. He talks of splashing toward a ketch at Dunkirk, of swimming off Baalbek where crusaders swam, of eking out his daily pint of water somewhere south of Tripoli and never saying die.
Betty and Ron come for five pounds an hour, not for history. Over Christmas and New Year with families to see, they do not come at all. Then I shave my stepfather with my own razor and have him wrap his good arm around my neck as if staggering away from battle while I wrap and unwrap, button and unbutton, floating my hand across the cashmere softness, peeling and unpeeling the tight, white stockings which, one day, I'll be old enough to wear.
He was really taken with the picture. At first, noticing the cracks in the varnish, he had felt cheated: a museum that asked him to donate eight dollars at the entrance shouldn't be offering damaged goods. Then, webbed as the wrinkles on an old fisherman's face, the cracks began to pull him in. The other paintings, whose surfaces were walls of polished glass, hadn't as much as invited him to pause.
Their weird images had mocked him--a man who appeared to have lost his skin, a woman holding up a severed and dripping head, another woman with a swan who seemed to be ... but no, surely not?--the whole collection very nasty, not much different from those aberrations in the modern wing. All but this picture. This one told a story, several stories, stories where he could lose himself.
He plunges into old-time life. Here a triumphant dentist holds out his tongs, in them a still dripping tooth--would that smell be the bad air bursting from the abscess? There two bumpkins who could lose a pound or two swing themselves around and squelch their boots in the sticky earth in time to bagpipes. Those bagpipes sound like entrants for the tomcat world series.
And, hey, the scanty little fellow with short hair and only half an ear is cutting off the lady's purse. Lady, watch out!
Mmm, the aroma of that ox-roast, the fat crispy, the lean still sizzling with juices. But how about the other smell? It's coming from the pudgy guy pressing his head against the wall of the straw-roofed inn as he takes a leak. He's been gorging on asparagus and the stink is terrible.
Jingling and clanking, a squad of soldiers advances at the double, sword blades blue in the fall sunlight. Some men heft a combination ax and spear, looking real mean. Who are they chasing? Why are they so hungry? Too late, he thinks retreat and backs away. He feels the varnish shiver, hears it crackle, but the canvas will not give.
This is my mother's story, so I cannot vouch for it--her story and the village's. Her eyes, her memories, a dozen witnesses, my hand.
A man is coming. I know him by his name, but not the look or scent of him. Since he last saw me, smelled my baby smells of piss and powder, I've gone from sprawl to crawl, from totter to trot, have learned to say no, cat, butter, daddy.
Closing on the station (which is too far to trot), an engine pipes and whooshes. It is the engine pulling the carriage carrying him. He's leaning, almost tumbling out, twisting the brass handle far too soon. Mr. Lockett Signals saw him nearly break his neck. Dangerous to thumbs and noses, the carriage door bangs shut. The man in black, waxed boots and khaki strides down Station Road, each stride a little quicker than the last.
I'm tugging at my harness. Bells jingle on my narrow, straining chest. The straps pull taut. "Steady on," my mother orders. He's marching past the green tobacco kiosk, the Women's Institute, the hot-breathed bakery, and watchful Mr. Griff Home Guard heading for us, her, me.
Shaving the corner, a man, a smiling man, a soldier man wheels smartly into sight. The reins jerk from my mother's hands; she can't keep me back, the gates are up, I'm racing. My mother scurries after, stooping, Mrs. Pugh Top House insisted, like somebody who's lost a coin.
"Daddy," I called to the man in shiny boots, the street, the air, posterity. "Dad, Dad, Daddy." I knew just what to say.
"'Framed': As a consequence of reading lots of weird stories (Poe, Bowen, Lovecraft, Wharton, Bombal, the Bensons, Villiers, Grabowski...), I used to wonder how it would feel to be absorbed by a picture. If you found yourself at a Flemish village fair, you'd need your wits about you."
"'In the Name': Lacan doesn't thrill me, but here's a story about what the old fox called 'The Name of the Father.' I'd rather think of it, though, as a micro-tribute to communal narrative."
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