I stepped out the door this morning to a scarf of blood in the snowy driveway. Like a bad omen, or a threat, or a gruesome valentinea tire track, and the flattened fur of a small brown rabbit. The florist must have run it over, delivering the roses, running late already by nine oclock in the morning. When she handed me the long white box at the door she never mentioned having killed anything in my driveway. Maybe she never noticed. Its our busiest day of the year,” she said, breathless, of course.” I was running late myself when I saw it. What could I do? The damage had already been doneutterly crushed, completely beyond hopeand cleaning it up seemed pointless. It was already snowing again. Soon, the evidence would be buried. But I also felt such a pang of grief, seeing that bit of brown fur in the blood, that I had to steady myself at the door. Was it one of the baby bunnies Id startled from their hole in the garden last spring while planting morning-glory seeds? Id screamed when they scurried out of the soft dirt, and didnt go near that edge of the flower bed again all spring, into summer. The mother rabbit abandons them, doesnt she, if she smells a human on them? It would have been impossible to know if this dead one was one of those, but I felt sick with it. Guilt. My valentine roses had brought this sad end to something that had only been, moments before, making its way back to its little den under the snow. If I were a better woman, I thought, in less of a hurry, Id get Jons shovel out of the garage and dig a gravea proper burial, maybe a cross made of Popsicle sticks, the kind Chad, when he was seven, made for Trixies grave. But it was such a bitter cold morninga harsh wind out of the east, and so cold that the snow, even in that wind, lingered before it fell, as if the air were heavier than the flakes. And Id lost my gloves again. (Left them in the supermarket cart on Saturday?) Out there with my car keys and no gloves, I thought it would have been impossible to dig a grave, anyway, in the frozen ground. Already, a couple of crows were sitting in the branches of the oak, waiting for me to leave. VALENTINES: From Jon, the dozen roses, delivered half an hour after hed left for work, timed to surprise me as I walked out the door, and a little card on which the florist had written for him in her girly cursive, To my dear wife, the only valentine Ill ever need. I love you, and will always love you, Jon.” And from Chad, the first valentine ever to arrive from him by mail. From college. A strange sad moment at the mailbox as I recognized, slowly, the handwriting on the red envelope with a postmark from California: Ma, you know I love you. Tell Dad I love him tootoo weird to send him a valentine. But I miss you both. Am having a great time here. Love, Chad. I couldnt help but think, thenpredictably, sentimentallyof those crude cutout construction-paper hearts. His crayon scrawl. I still have one of them pinned to the bulletin board above my desk at work, although the pink has begun to yellow and the edges have curled: I VEOL YU, CHAD. And the year he licked away half of a heart-shaped lollipop before wrapping it in a tissue and giving it to me. This year, even Brenda sent me a card (my nest empty now that Chads off to college, a way of reminding me about it while pretending to try to make me feel better)a black-and-white photograph of two little girls in fancy hats and To my sister-in-law with love. Sue brought me some heart-shaped cookies the twins had made, and one of my students, a charming Korean girl, gave me a little box of chocolates, which I left for the secretaries in the English department. And even some secret admirer (or prankster?) left me a piece of paper, torn from a legal pad, folded into fourths, stuffed into a campus envelope, and put in my mailbox at schoolred pen in an unfamiliar hand: Be Mine. ANOTHER accident on the freeway this morning. I keep telling Jon we need to get out of the suburbs now that Chads gone, move closer to our jobs, quit this commute. But he just says, Never.” To him, its not the suburbs, its the country, where, as a boy in an apartment in the city, hed always dreamed of living. To him, its not ten acres of scrubbrush, its a farm, the family farm,” and hes never leaving his garage full of gadgets, his shooting range set up out backtarget nailed to a pile of sandbagshis bird feeders, his riding mower. Its the little boys dream left over from the days when he would watch Lassie on the black-and-white television in the cramped apartment he shared with two brothers, a sister, and his overworked mother. Someday, he thought then, hed have an old farmhouse in the country, a .22, a dog. Well, the dog is dead. And the old farmhouse is surrounded now by subdivisions with names like Willow Creek Estates and Country MeadowsMcMansions erected overnight with billboards at the edge of the road proudly stating STARTING AT $499,000. (Are we supposed to be impressed by the expense, or seduced by the bargain?) And so much traffic now that hardly a day goes by that the freeway isnt closed down for an hour or two while the debris of some accident is cleared away. Twice in the last year weve been contacted by developers offering to buy our house, knock it down, and build four nicer, newer houses on our property. And Id do it, myself, sell it, pack up, move into a condogood-bye to all thatbut Jons not yet done living his boyhood dream. I dont think the neighbors in our condo in the city would appreciate hearing me shooting my .22,” he says. He doesnt care that he puts five hundred miles on his Explorer every week, and that the price of gas is going up every day, and that the earth has nearly been drained of its fossil fuels. No one seems to care. Were all driving wildly, blindly, out of our suburbs and into the future without giving it a second thought. Fine,” I told Jon, but if they keep building subdivisions, and the traffic gets even worse, Im going to start staying in a motel in the city on the nights I have to teach.” He shrugged. Poor, beautiful, blue-eyed Jon. I can still see, in those eyes, the child who never had the tire swing he wanted or the high grass to wade through with a Mason jar for catching cricketsand the true absence he will never get overa father. Oh, Jon, Ill live here forever for you if I have to. But when I passed the flashing lights and the crumpled cars at the side of the road again this morning, I thought, Jesus Christ. When I finally got to the college, I found MayBell in hysterics outside my office. Shed lost her verb-tense transparencies, and could she borrow mine? Well, Id been planning to use mine, too, but gave them to her anyway. I am, I believe, a whole lot better at winging it than MayBell is. And, indeed, my class went well. Habib read a whole paragraph of As I Lay Dying out loud in a southern drawl, and we all laughed so hard that a few of us ended up crying. After work, Jon and I met in the city for our Valentines dinner. I thanked him for the roses and told him about the anonymous note, the valentine left in my mailbox at school: Be Mine. Wow,” he said. He raised his eyebrows and looked at me as if seeing me for the first time in a long time. His wife. A woman with a secret admirer. Hed ordered his steak rare, and there was a doily of blood all over his white plate. Who do you think it is?” he asked. Truly, I told him, I had no idea. Theres Robert Z, our departments poet, who complimented me this morning on my clothes (a white blouse and olive suede skirt) with what seemed like true exuberance. (Wow, Sherry. Very sharp!”) He liked another outfit, too, last week black skirt and a crocheted black sweaterand even touched the sweaters sleeve, feeling the texture of the wool. I like your style,” he said. Like a classy country-western star.” But, surely, Robert Z is gay. Hes never told anyone hes gay, but weve all assumed it since he first got hired. Thirty-five, no wife, no kids, no ex-wife, no girlfriendand those green eyes, the great fashion sense, the gym-hard body. Weve allthe women in the department, which is nearly all womenexamined the poetry for evidence (two books, university presses, Gray Thoughts and The Distance Between Here and There). But its so fragmented, elusivehard little riddlish poemsif theres any reference to romance, or sexual preference, who could tell?
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