Phone Call: Lesson in Style
for my mother’s 98th birthday
“Everything feels all swollen and puffy, like my brain
isn’t mine—I’d like to see it cleaned out, cleaned out
in clean sweeps—there’s a kind of foreignness to so much
of what I used to call reality…now it’s all so damned
boring, there’s so much repetitiousness. I keep seeing
Dad’s gravestone and trying to remember what I had carved
on it, two adjectives after Kenneth I. Sleigh, ‘steadfast something
husband to Rosamond…’ And then I thought about that boy
in my AP class who when I called the roll, and when
everybody else would say, Prepared!, he’d say day after day
in the most happy go lucky way, Unprepared! He was going
through something at home, and that was his way of
dealing with it, so that I admired, oh, what’s the word,
his insouciance! Yes, insouciance! I feel so uncertain, Tom—
sitting in the classroom calling Unprepared when
death comes this close to me? Which means you’re ready
for suppositions: I feel such self-violence these days
that, if I could ever walk again, I’d go to the kitchen
and get a knife. I feel so outside of my life—
but I remembered just today after working to find the word
that Russian artist’s first name, Marc! Marc Chagall—
the one with all the ladies floating in the air
that your dad and I went to see in Canada. Marc,
spelled with a “c”—thank you, mind—I like to talk to it
and give it a little pat—it may not be on call but it’s still there—
now listen, Tom, this is your Mother: I’m worried about you.
You know, we’re in a battle here—and we’re gonna lose it—
and it’s OK to lose it. Now, you’ve gotta quit, you’ve gotta
quit killing yourself trying to keep your mother
alive. Let me tell you, your dad was way ahead of you,
he was way ahead of me, but he’s right here: it’s OK; your mother
will give it the best she can. This isn’t for the faint of heart—
so be calm, be ready…don’t wear yourself to a frazzle…
I love you too, Son. Bye…”
The Story of Civilization
1
Now that I can never talk
to you again, your voice leads me on,
a little scratchy from too much use
like a record played back
on a gramophone:
“When you read to me, Tom,
from The Story of Civilization
all about the Romans
it sounded more like
a Who’s Who of assassination:
maybe the Democrats
should do to who’s-it, that Republican
with the Dumbo ears, what they did to Cicero,
cut off his hands, cut out his tongue
and nail them
to the Senate rostrum.
Still, the fact that someone
like me, who hadn’t walked on her own
for eight years could still say,
before I died like a Roman by my own hand,
“assassination,” “exsanguinate,”
even a word as crazy
as “pusillanimous” to describe Caesar’s killers
gives me pleasure: Beware the Ides of March, Tom, beware!
At least back then older women were good
for keeping the Olympic flame going—
but I’ll bet they weren’t near as old as me…
Remember how my hand started shaking so bad
from Parkinsons that I couldn’t hold a match
to light the stove? I was heartbroken
when they wouldn’t let me bring Leo to that awful “home”
to live with me. Before you all
insisted I move there,
he had his cat castle next to my chair
and the two of us would nap side by side.
I got so angry sometimes…I’d sit there listening
to you reading about those bloody-minded Romans
and how everything the Greeks thought up, some Roman
debased by making it useful, practical—
and I’d bite my tongue, wondering why
my “nice little” room, with you kids’ and your dad’s photos
on the wall, felt like that moment when that crazy fool Lear
says, “Let’s away to prison…somethingsomething…And we’ll
take upon us the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies…”
but you were my spy, and I was your Ma,
and neither of us believed in anything like God.
It made me so sad to leave you…but everyone
had to get on with their lives, and besides,
the money was almost gone. I knew I had to do it
before rent was due in the middle of the month, so I did—
not like a Roman with a razor
but with poison like a Greek—simpler all round…and no blood
to mop up after.
The week before I died,
they brought in a dog
for all of us to pet. The dog smiled at me
in the way they do, his fur was soft and curly,
and he stared into my eyes for a long time—
Emma used to do that too, poor little Emma
that I had to put down when the cancer
got so bad she couldn’t walk. I wonder
if deep down cats and dogs aren’t more human
than humans can ever be,
more understanding
of what it’s like to be so old, half blind,
unable to walk, to find it hard to find a reason
to keep on living. I don’t think anyone younger
can really understand what old people feel
the way little Emma did, or that dog
they brought in, or even Leo.
And even though Emma growled
at you and nipped your ankles
and I’d tell her NO NO,
maybe I’m going to come back as a dog,
her little soul transmigrating into mine.
Remember how she bit that litigious
woman who sued me for fifteen thousand dollars? It was lucky
your landlord brother had insurance
or right then we’d have had to put her down.
Just like me…. Son, I miss you. But when I
come back to you, you’ll know
it’s me by the way I’ll bite you to the bone.”
2
Have I sentimentalized your voice,
wanting you to be a measured Greek when really
you were Caesar on a bender out for blood?
But your death is all your own, nothing I
can do or say will make it less severe:
filling up a brown plastic bottle halfway
from the bathroom sink, I gave the powdered meds
a good shake so that the elixir
would work its fatal magic. You gulped
it down with one hand while I held the other.
And just before you nodded off, my eyes
fixed on yours; and as you stared across
the room, you gave a little laugh and gravely
said, You’ll have to forgive me if I snore.
