Claire and the Egg
There’s a path through the hills that leads to the mouth of a cave. It’s desolate and brutally hot along the way. Even in the shade of the linden trees it feels scorched and alien, and the shale makes for loose and treacherous footing . As I pick my way through the hills I look for signs of Claire and try to picture her walking here balancing the egg on her spoon, careful of every step. Her red hair, her worried mouth, the blue skirt with its green ,red and purple flowers. Maybe she was singing as she passed this way “Oh Suzanna” or “ Wondering what the Lilacs wonder”, in her strong, unwavering voice. Along the path there are bits refuse and pages torn out of newspapers and magazines, both automotive and pornographic, candy bar wrappers strewn around in artless stabs of color, Coke cans, Hostess cup cake boxes with lids torns off. No sign of Claire though. I begin to fear that she has already found the cave and placed the egg on the alter of Mr Angelico.
We were directly across from each other when the room was divided up, and it was, of course, magical how we were chosen for each other. I bought seven pounds of ham-hocks from the knackers that day and dropped them off on her front step for her father’s approval. He said it was a considerate and the two of us sat in the kitchen smoking cigarettes and talking about Notre Dame football until at last her mother appeared in the doorway looking pretty inebriated. “You get the very best thing this family ever did. Probably the only good thing between us” she said, scowling ruthlessly at her husband. Then Claire came bouncing into the kitchen in her blue skirt with its green, red, and purple flowers. Her brother , Teddy came in behind her playing a hurried wedding march on his kazoo while Katalina, her older and purportedly debauched sister flourished a set of crimson pom-poms.
Two O’clock we’re meeting with Mr Angelico to decide on the nature of our progeny. Claire says it ought to be a she and that she should be sweet and innocent and remain that way throughout her life even if that means having Down Syndrome to do it. Immediately, I object. What sort of life is that? Shouldn’t our child have all the advantages of a full blooded male? If not, I argue ,sensing a moral summit, where does a father go to console himself in his failings as a man? Who conquers the gates of Troy? Who empties the water bucket over old man Dalrimple’s back after beating Piedmont in the semi-finals. Claire goes into a total frenzy about this. I’m not surprised. It’s been escalating since breakfast when we quarreled over who should read the newspaper aloud and who should bemoan the fate of the economy. Claire likes to do the bemoaning , but honestly, she doesn’t know very much about economics , so her lament consist mainly of saying stuff like “ Well, doggone it, what’s dem moneymen doin’when dem moneymen do dat moneyman ting” which I say is straight out racist .But she says talking in a different voice is fun and engaging for the egg which sits at the table in cushioned tea-cup. I’ve been reading Joseph Schumpeter lately and have become sort of fond of his theory of business cycles which eschew Keysian variables thus allowing for a resurgence of all previously eschewed theories. I see also fractals playing an important role in Joseph Schumpeter’s neo classical economic theory, or whatever it is. But fractals, for certain. Claire seems to think me and my theories suffer from a surplus of stink and she tells me so, which gets us slapping at each other , and crying because it’s scary to get that mad. And that’s where were at again, even in front of Mr Angelico. While the egg remains quietly absorbed in its situation.
Way up in the hills the air is thinner and you would think it would be a lot cooler ,but it’s not. I shed my Second World War aviator jacket and hang it on the branch of a linden tree. Because we left off on such bad terms I’m having trouble evoking Claire’s dulcet tones inside my head. All I’m getting is a high pitched whining noise like my brother’s model Cessna makes. I need to concentrate on the good times, I tell myself. I try singing in falsetto and skipping from side to side, but this sadness, or nostalgia , or whatever it is a man feels for his lost betrothed is on me like axel grease.
Mr. Angelico insisted we buy an intercom device that would transmit the sounds of the egg to the bunk room where we slept. We lay there many nights listening carefully. If Claire started to say something I would shush her, and visa versa, because we didn’t want that to be the moment when the egg chose to articulate it’s vision for itself and we’d miss it making some mundane remark about the color of the moon in the window, or the thickness of Ms.Prothero’s mustache. We listened and never heard a thing, and now I find myself wondering whether the egg has spoken to Claire during the journey, and if so, what the hell was it that it had to say that it took so long putting the words together. It almost makes me angry, but I’m sick with longing for both of them.
“Whatever happens now is o.k with me” , I tell the hills, “so long as there’s a place for me in this story.”
At first we were shy with each other, and it was awkward walking the streets of our town with an entourage of her parents and relatives behind us. We had trouble coming up with things to say, but having the egg between us provided some latitude. No matter how far we strayed from our respective comfort zones we always had that to return to. We attributed to the egg sentimental visions of place and adventure; for myself, a kind of elaborate Crusoe-esque tree house grown out in the kudzu behind maybe an ante-bellum, or French colonial estate. While Claire thought of it as being a raft that glided safely over an otherwise terrifying river. These were the sanctuaries of our hearts, and I always had a nice feeling about Claire’s river motif, though I would have slept easier if she’d chosen something more grounded. “ If you ever passed by in your raft you know I would throw you a line and we could have dinner together” I mused. But she just laughed.
“ No, really I would. I’d set up a pulley system to make it easier. We could signal each other with flags .”
She seemed perplexed by this. “ But I think the river would tear your tree-house right out of the branches and you would probably drown” she warned.
“ Well, my tree-house is strong and the tree is very old and sturdy” I assured her.
“ No, it isn’t” she said flatly. “ You’d drown and your body would be pulled behind the raft and dashed on the rocks.”
I told her that she had a distorted opinion of my tree-house which probably had a lot to do with growing up in family with an alcoholic mother. She observed that my father seemed very “ handsy” whenever he embraced her, and wondered what that was all about.
I’ve become panicky. My thoughts come in pairs like tragic lovers. I see now how the world has been divided between what I have in my hands and what Claire has in hers. Such things are shown to me with piercing clarity. The low shrubby plants along the path (sage, I think) eking an existence out of God knows what almost certainly belong in my hands; while she has the egg which is far larger than Claire and myself and our combined lots. In fact, the egg is even larger than itself. The essence of it dominates over its own ostensibly small domain like a huge cloud enveloping a mountain. The hills, the sky, the birds watching from the branches of the linden trees absorb the remaining folio. There is nothing to be said for my situation. If there were anything to be said it would come as a question. Maybe that is what the hills are doing in all this emptiness and heat.. They are asking me: Are you expecting someone?
I had been selfish, pre-occupied, easily agitated. While the moon hung graciously over the eaves of the porch where Claire sang a lovely lullabye to the egg radiantly sleeping, I was climbing through a burning undergrowth with a grease gun, swearing drunken oaths at the municipal grange, throwing block and tackle around in wet idiot blackness and chaos.; shooting morphine, reading comic books, chasing snakes and dancing with divorced women. Claire wrote a paper on Anne of Greene Gables while I took stock of my graying skin. Etc. Except every now and then the abbey bells would play Ode to Joy and Claire and I would play checkers in the window seat at home with her mother watching stoically from the kitchen and her father reading aloud from the Big Book of Alchoholics Anonymous. The egg carefully observing the game, learning and assimilating.
The hills continue, the path narrows at times, steepens. Mostly what I see is what is right in front of me, what is blocked in by the linden trees who chaperone this great chase we’re involved in. For all I know Claire is right around the next corner. But as I arrive, the distance is once again shored up by the lindens as if someone were cutting strips of map and laying out the pieces in front of me. I long to see more than what I’m given. In my pocket I have a Bit o’ Honey, Claire’s favorite. The whole time I fixate on seeing her, producing the Bit o’ Honey, and how she smiles, puts a hand on her breast in feigned astonishment, touched by my romantics. But now I’m becoming very hungry. Perhaps a little bite, wouldn’t hurt any. The candy is neatly perforated- I could break one small section off and the rest, the remaining 5/6th of the taffy would be hers. It might even help to highlight my sacrifice if I took one small piece. As if to say- all this is for you.
Suddenly an animal with a huge sloped back lopes across the path ahead. Its breathing is loud and labored and there’s a rank stink in the air like old, wet oven mitts and spilled cat-food, burnt hair, bourbon and cigarettes, noxious sugars. I’m stopped cold.
I can see the shadow proceeding up the next rise in the hill where a flock of grackles startle into the air. They keep going. This is bad, I say to myself. Worst case bad. Claire up ahead somewhere walking carefully with the egg and this thing coming right up behind her with God knows what on its mind. My first instinct to cry out and warn her is quelled by the immediate realization that I would be alerting the animal to my presence. If I had a little time to strategize I might have half a chance to beat it, but my legs are quaking and I can barely keep myself from urinating. I start thinking about all the good things borne of this assignment: The hours playing checkers, smoking cigarettes with her father. Sitting in a twilit garden with the egg lit like a star between us. Claire laughing. But nothing moves.
I see Claire stumbling along, aware now of the creature behind her, whispering vague assurances to the egg dangerously teetering. I see black endless night coming down over us like a kidnapper’s blanket, and Mr. Angelico shaking his head at all the broken things I have to show him. It’s beyond his comprehension; so much more than failure. It belongs to the realm of bad luck, Bad fate. Infinite sadness. The path is gone. There is no path between myself and this thing. There is no need for geography. It is a red fixed point I race towards on my hands and knees. As I near the animal it darts back into the brush and I follow in a blind rage grabbing it by its hind leg. I lift it into the air and bash out its brains on a linden tree.
It takes a long time laying there with the blood and sweat crystallizing on my hands and arms, panting in the dry, scorching heat ,before the moment finally settles. I see the animal’s eyes pinned forward, the tongue lolled out, groaning. Dying. A final concentration of self must have come over this thing that stares ahead like a child remembering music. The birds return to the trees and make small talk. It is very possible I could spend the rest of my life in this place absorbed in the interpretation of changing shadows on the ground. I could dig a deep well and pull out water. Build a house around a stone hearth and feed off the carcass for years to come. People would visit from time to time and bringing liquor and cigarettes, begging me to tell them about the bones on the mantle. I would show them a rough sketch of the situation as I saw it at the time, stressing the pragmatic influence of nature, and accepting only the meanest portion of glory. But I would hear them saying to me “You’ve done enough.” And then closing my eyes with the birds in forest gradually letting off, I might sleep for a very long time.
