The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clocks strike, is hollow and old; The pilot’s relief on landing is no release. These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect and public endings… —Weldon Kees, “The Smiles of the Bathers” So we move to upstate New York, into a house on a leafy block with a skylit master bedroom off which is a balcony so buried in branches that it feels like a tree fort where you can smoke cigars and shoot off a pop gun. Is it Warren’s August birthday or Christmas when I get him a golden retriever puppy from Deb’s dog’s new litter? Grace, we call her. There’s a park two blocks away we go to every day and a pond with ducks and a trail in the woods. Dev walks to kindergarten in the frosted mornings with his backpack on. Warren and I keep differing orbits and finally start sleeping in separate rooms. I whipsaw back and forth on whether to stay or go, but no solid message shows up, as if the magic 8-ball’s still saying, Ask again later.
