196 v The second striped beach chair had become...
196
v
The second striped beach chair had become a
fixture at the heavyset guy's table, and as I drew
closer to it, we sometimes shouted a little
conversation back and forthIt was a strange way
to strike up an acquaintance, but pleasantThe
day after Pam's e-mail, with its surface concerns
and buried subtext (You could be as sick as my
father, Eddie, maybe even sicker), the fellow down
the beach yelled: "How long before you get here,
do you think?"
"Four days!" I yelled back"Maybe three!"
"You that set on making a round trip?"
"I am!" I said"What's your name?"
His deeply tanned face, although growing fleshy,
was still handsomeNow white teeth flashed there,
and his incipient jowls disappeared when he
grinned"Tell you when you get here! What's
yours?"
"It's on the mailbox!" I called
"The day I stoop to reading mailboxes is the day I
start getting my news from talk radio!"
197
I gave him a wave, he gave me one in turn, called
"Hasta rolex watches ladies manana!" and turned to look at the water
and the cruising birds once more
When I got back to Big Pink, the flag of my
computer mailbox was sticking up, and I found this:
KamenDoc to EFree19
2:49 PM
January 25
Edgar: Pam sent me copies of your latest e-mail
and your picturesLet me say first and foremost
that I am STUNNED by the rapidity of your growth
as an artistI can see you shying away from the
word with that patented sidelong frown of yours,
but there is no other word
Concerning her worries: there's probably nothing
to themStill, an MRI would be a good ideaDo
you have a doctor down there? You're due for a
physical - soup to nuts, my friend
Kamen
EFree19 to KamenDoc
198
3:58 PM
January 25
Kamen: Good to hear from youIf you want to call
me an artist (or even an "artiste"), who am I to
argue? I currently have no Florida sawbonesCan
you refer me to one or would you rather I went
through Todd Jamieson, the doc with his fingers
most recently gucci boston bag in my brain?
Edgar
I thought he'd refer, and I might even keep the
appointment, but right then a few dropped words
and linguistic oddities weren't a priority
Walking was a priority, and reaching the striped
beach chair that had been set out for me was also
sort of a priority, but my main ones as January
waned were Internet searches and painting pictures
I had reached Sunset with Shell No16 only the
night before
On January twenty-seventh, after turning back only
two hundred yards or so shy of the waiting beach
chair, I arrived at Big Pink to find UPS had left
a packageInside were two gardening gloves, one
199
with HANDS printed in faded red on the back and
the other similarly printed with OFFThey were
beat-up from many seasons in the garden but clean
- she'd laundered them, as I had expectedAs I
had, in fact, hopedIt wasn't the Pam who had
worn them during the years of our marriage that I
was interested in, not even the Pam who might gucci paolo watch have
worn them in the Mendota Heights garden the past
fall, while I was out at Lake PhalenThat Pam was
a known quantityI'll tell you something
else that's happening, my If-So-Girl had said,
unaware of how eerily like her mother she had
looked when she was saying itShe's seeing an
awful lot of this guy down the street
That was the Pam I was interested in - the one who
had seen an awful lot of the guy down the streetThat Pam's hands had laundered
these gloves, then picked them up and put them in
the white box inside the UPS package
That Pam was the experimentor so I told myself,
but we fool ourselves so much we could do it for a
livingThat's what Wireman says, and he's often
right
200
vi
I didn't wait for sunset, because at least I
didn't fool myself that I was interested in
painting a picture; I was interested in painting
informationI took my wife's unnaturally clean
gardening gloves (she must have really rammed the
bleach to them) up to Little necklace chanel Pink and sat down in
front of my easelThere was a fresh canvas there,
waitingTo the left were two tablesOne was for
photos from my digital camera and various found
objectsThe other stood on a small green
tarpaulinIt held about two dozen paint-pots,
several jars partly filled with turpentine, and
several bottles of the Zephyr Hills water I used
as rinseIt was quite the messy, busy little
work-station
I held the gloves in my lap, closed my eyes, and
pretended I was touching them with my right handNo pain, no itching, no sense
of phantom fingers caressing the rough, worn
fabricI sat there willing it to come - whatever
it was - and got more nothingI might as well
have been commanding my body to shit when it
201
didn't need toAfter five long minutes, I opened
my eyes again and looked down at the gloves on my
lap: HANDSUseless fucking things
Don't get mad, get even, I thoughtAnd then I
thought, Too lateAt these gloves and
the woman who wore motorcycle balenciaga the