Onze Labs

Can't Touch This

It's not as light as it looks. Not as wispy, fine. Up close it like to jab you, take out an eye. Jimmy said Touch it. He said, You don't make something like that and not want people to touch it. Come on now. I said You touch it. He said I said you touch it. I've got the camera, I'll take your picture. By the time I get over there someone'll come in, then it's too late. I said, See, we're not supposed to touch it.

Jimmy has ideas. Jimmy knows how the world is. He's right: Why would you put those swirly curly colors shining, pointed,  smooth, right in people's face if you want everyone to keep hands off?

I wasn't afraid of getting in trouble. I get in trouble all the time for doing stuff Jimmy says. But I don't get in as much trouble as he would if he did it, and when people see me with him they know how it is, they can tell I work for him. There's advantages and disadvantages to everything, Jimmy says, Whether you're the big brother or the little brother, there's pluses and minuses. You're lucky you're cute, Jimmy tells me. People can't stay mad at you long.

I know this is true.

So I stood very still for a second that felt very long. I looked around the room and listened for someone coming, but we were all alone. I looked up to the top of that thing, and it was crazy and beautiful and I wanted to go bigger than Jimmy asked, I wanted to show him how much I knew he was right and I looked back at him to see if the camera was ready and Jimmy was ready and I nodded. I put out my hand and took one of those candy things in my hand and it was so easy I grabbed another. And climbed.

 

Photo by Patti Weissler

House

The house was supposed to give them space to breathe, room to expand into the family they had talked about becoming. It was supposed to be proof that they were adults, growing into the world they had resisted through their twenties, establish them as responsible and full willing participants in society now.

The house was a small Queen Anne on a quiet street. The front door opened into a  hall, the spine off which sat a parlor to the left and a dining room to the right. The hall ran straight to the kitchen, which was large enough for both a table and beyond which was a solarium where they would put small sofa, so that they could do all their living in the back of the house.

Two bedrooms were upstairs. They chose the one in the back, the one with the bathroom in it, the deck, and the view. Guests would use the small room and the bathroom that had been a closet. Until the babies came. Then guests would sleep downstairs, I. the parlor, and they would have to come upstairs to bathe.

Their friends loved the house. From the start they felt ownership too, they sized up the house, looked around and thought about what they would do with the dining room (make it a guest room or office or home gym) and how they would arrange their furniture, if this we were their house. "Will you do curtains or blinds?" they asked, and nodded in agreement with he reply or tipped their heads to the side, trying to understand choices they would never have made if this really were their house. One marveled at the decor and another secretly fumed how the couple was ruining the opportunities for expression presented by this house.

Many dinners we were had at the house. The invitations we were always the same: "Come over to the house!" It took people a while to learn to bring just flowers or chocolate or a nice bottle of wine or olive oil, rather than a significant contribution to the meal. They learned to sit nicely, not stir the pot. They learned to be served, to be guests in the house. They watched the pair become man of the manor and lady of the house; some resented the new roles and others aspired to step into them, in their own house.

The children came in unexpected ways: as nieces and nephews who painstakingly crayoned the wainscoting while in the solarium the wine flowed and loosened the stories, which gave way to tears over someone who was not spending so much time anymore in the house and how could she get pregnant if she was always working--if that's what she was doing after all he had done to get her this house.

They went on that way for a while, chasing each other around and about the house, which is still small, on that quiet street, still holding everything they ever put inside.

Our Love Is Like Clockwork

High noon, we are indistinguishable. Then you're off to make your rounds. I plod to the next mark and still it takes you 65 minutes to meet me. A brief kiss, then you sweep past.

There is only one place I would stop the hands of time but how long really could that last?

Lip Shtick

I am wearing lipstick because Caitlin wanted me to. The second-to-last time I came over she asked me, "Are you wearing makeup?" and when I told her I wasn't, she asked me why not.

"I don't wear it every day. I save it for special occasions."

"What? I'm not special?"

This took me aback, her candor, her openness in letting me know she wanted to be special to me. So I tried to explain.

"I wear it when I go out—to dinner or a party." This only dug me deeper into the hole.

"But we're having dinner." I could not deny this. A gourmet mac & cheese gratinée was baking as we spoke. It would turn out to be the best I have ever made, and yet Caitlin would deem it "burnt," she would pick at it, eat around the delectable crusty shell until I would rescue her by bringing on the salad course—which she would eat out of duty, pity, or maybe she didn't want to just sit there until dessert.

I sighed at her observation, knowing she was not going to give up, and offered, without any kind of oratorical fanfare, a half-hearted riposte.

"I mean when I'm wearing a party dress, high heels, super-styled hair—that kind of dressed up."

She looked me in the eye and considered my remark. She didn't want me to retreat. She wanted to win on the merits. But first she had to get me back in the game.

"But you look so pretty! You've got your pretty hair so nice, your pretty earrings. You're pretty, so you should wear makeup. No—you're so pretty you don't need makeup."

I smiled. Perhaps I blushed. But before I could say anything, she came back with the coup de grace: "It's a special night, because you came here, and we're having dinner. Two of the three things are happening, so I think you should wear makeup."

She flipped her hands in the air, indicating the matter was done. But not forgotten. The last time I came over, she squinted at me and observed that I had, again, not worn makeup for a special evening with dinner.

And so, I am wearing just lipstick—I had no time for powder, blush, or mascara—and I feel ridiculous as I talk to the 16-year-old monitor of the afterschool program about how first grade went today. She grins unabashedly and can't keep her eyes off my rosy maw. I will find when we get home that in the haste of my last-minute decision to concede Caitlin's point, I have colored a bit outside the lines.

I take Caitlin's hand and lead her home, tell her what we're going to make for dinner tonight, while her parents are kept late at work. I wonder how long it will take her to notice that I have complied with her decree, and whether it will matter at all.

 

 

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