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Show Moon -192 There will have to be sonograms and needles into the belly, or perhaps I will get ready to welcome whatever sort of baby has decided to invent itself. The smell of Evanston is a surprise. I remember it, and I haven't been here for decades. The elms have nearly disappeared, but a few of them are still hanging onto each other at the top. I wonder how violently this gracious town will change once these trees are entirely gone. Gloria turns the car down a street that has the look of old dreams, experiences before words. The houses here are Victorian, with wide verandas and enormous front lawns with trees spaced so evenly they seem to be holding up an invisible roof. Gloria stops the car in front of the biggest house. The veranda goes all the way around, and there's a swing near the front door. A little off to the side is an elm tree that would be huge had its branches not been sawed off. "This is where you lived," she says. "Ruth and Grandad's house?" I reply, not yet believing. "And Esther and Alice and your mother." She pauses. "And Michael." We are silent a while, just sitting there looking at the house. I try to remember what it felt like to be there, but the feelings are too overlaid with words, with pictures drawn by others and with trying to make sense out of scattered memories, so there is nothing left raw enough to be a real memory, the kind you can smell. "Michael was in such a rush to get to Oregon," Gloria says. "We rented a cottage on a bluff overlooking a circle of black rocks that sent up the tide like geysers. The fog rolled in every evening, rolled out in the morning. Even though we were very sad, it was the best time of our lives." |
