I turned in the response when it was due, on the last day of school. It was just an “effort” thing, you know. It could be whatever. Five extra-credit points on the final, as long as you turned it in. Respond to one work of literature we studied over the course of this year. Nothing serious, or it wasn’t meant to be. But I kept thinking about Vardaman and that one-sentence chapter from As I Lay Dying—“My mother is fish”—and I couldn’t stop myself—I tried very hard. I worked on it all night.
When the final was over, we were all just sitting at our desks. Ms. Poss walked to the front of the room.
Ms. Poss: “Class, I am in love with this response here, listen. One of you has penned a poem inspired by As I Lay Dying. It’s called ‘I’ll Never Eat Fish-Eggs and Why,’ and I bet y’all will pick up on the reference to Vardaman’s famous chapter—shh, class!—the one with the famous ‘My mother is a fish’ sentence—quiet now!—I’ll read it to y’all.”
Ms. Poss (clearing her throat): “ ‘I am vegetarian. I make no exceptions for fish-eggs, no— / though fish-eggs, some argue, is, was, were, depends / are you be, will you be, have you been / eating them? If so, will soon— / Once hardly, if ever, was truly a fish.
“ ‘My mother is a fish, or so she / drinks, I mean / “thinks.” / We aquarium on weekends together, and she believes / they are our ancestors / Pink, bright blue, and yellow slippers— / “We were bright-colored like that too once,” she says.’ ”
Someone fake snoring.
“Stop that now! Have some respect! ‘My mother is a vegetarian. / My grandpa is a fisherman. / So that is complicated. / At family dinners, our plated ancestors / my mother and I both, staring down at ours. / And my grandpa’s longtime girlfriend is there / like a grandmother / insists / “Eat! Eat!” / My mother says we were bright-colored like that too, once.’ ”
With Ms. Poss reading it aloud, the whole thing felt much longer than I thought it would feel.
I mean, I had spent the whole night working on the poem. But on the page, once I printed it, it had turned out to be so short-looking—disappointing really—all that work and so much feeling, for it to turn out to be so small.
But then, when Ms. Poss was reading it out loud, it had felt like it might never end. It was the worst of both worlds really. I felt flattered that she liked it, or at least that it stood out amid the other responses. But some people were laughing, so I also felt embarrassed about that. They didn’t know it was me, but I was sitting right there.
And then Luca, who was looking right over at me, like he’d known all along—maybe he had.
If you knew me at all, you might know it was me. But Luca was the only one who really knew me.
“I can’t believe you had the balls to write about her drinking like, I mean, what if Ms. Poss had decided to, like—” Luca paused. He started to whisper. “Call authorities? Also, since when do you write poetry?” I was going slow, packing my things. I wanted to talk to Ms. Poss about the poem, so stalling. Someone kicked my desk, right beside my hand, but I won’t say who. Doesn’t matter. Since it’s the last day of school, they go away shortly. (Except for Luca, who stays.)
“Well, call me on Susannah when you get home,” Luca said. “Susannah” is what we named my landline. I don’t have a cell phone. “I have some news,” he said, “I think you’ll like to hear.”
Ms. Poss had a special bookcase. Ms. Poss was standing in front of the special bookcase when Luca left, finally.
“Thank you for saying that about my poem, Ms. Poss.” But maybe, next time, ask my permission first, before you read it aloud to the whole class.
“Berryman, Dickinson, Dove,” Ms. Poss narrated. “And why not Ginsberg and Myles”—she put a book called Sorry, Tree onto the stack, and I loved that title so much I could have cried—“Oh, and Frank O’Hara! It’s summer, after all. Why not have a little fun? And if you’re writing about the mother, then you’ve got to read Sexton—and Plath. So we’ve got the Plath, and here’s the Sexton. And here’s Adrienne Rich—you’ll like her.” A stack of six became a stack of seven, became a stack of eight, became.
A stack of nine.
I stared.
Was it too much?
She wanted to lend them all to me?
“Oh, sure. Just bring them all back when school starts.” She flicked her hand back over her shoulder. “I really did love the poem, Avery. You have a voice, you have talent.”
Pal, my grandpa—and the fisherman from my poem—was waiting for me in the parking lot.
Murky grit on his I’d Rather Be Fishing bumper sticker. Truck engine off.
Sometimes if he left the truck engine on, somebody would say something. Always made him feel bad.
He loved trees. Loved water.
(Gone Fishin’ reads the bulletin)
(one bulletin for each person who pays respects)
(nervous we printed way too many)
(nervous he wasn’t loved as much as we feel he deserved)
(as much as he deserved)
Now Pal, as most of you knew him, actually founded an organization in 2005 called The Great Outdoors, a gathering of progressive outdoor sportsfolk, and we’d gather every month to write our government officials about the dangers of oil, of littering, overfishing certain bodies of water—you name it. We gathered once a month every month for the entire duration of George W’s second term.
(he pronounced “W” like Pal always did)
(“Dubya”)
Now if it offends any of you all that I’m getting a little political here, allow me to speak for our dearly departed—our dear Pal—when I put it bluntly, “I don’t care.”
(some laughter)
(I look at Mom)
(she smiles)
And while he certainly wasn’t perfect—none of us are—
(some nodding)
Pal was as close to a perfect friend as I ever could have asked for.
Local through federal, Pal wrote his officials with concerns about pollution. But sometimes it would slip his mind to turn his truck engine off.
This time the engine wasn’t running, but the radio was on. I don’t think he realized how on. Tuned to B08.1-The Trolling Motor, “—always!” That was the radio station’s tagline: “—always!” and Pal—short for “Grandpal,” the name he gave himself when I was born—was always tuned in.
“Hey, partner! I thought you’re supposed to be getting rid of books today, not packing more in!”
Truck window down.
Some people stared. Looking from the truck to me, back to him to me, to the truck.
“Have a nice summer!” I waved to them. I piled into the truck. “It’s been real,” I tried, and then, “Goodbye!”
And see—just like that, they’re gone.
Next, we went to McDonald’s. Pal got an extra McFlurry—“what, it’s for Babs!” he said. Not true. He would definitely end up eating it himself. Pal hoarded those things like secrets inside his little shop freezer-fridge, and besides, Babs didn’t even like sweets. Although, sure enough, last Valentine’s Day, the heart-shaped box had come out—To Babs, Love, Pal—and what could Babs do but accept it with an eye roll? Pal and I divided the chocolates up and ate them, eventually. Pal could be selfish in this way he had. He wouldn’t mean it, but he could be.
“Last-day-of-school! Last-day-of-school!” The people in the drive-through were chanting, and we clapped along.
Next, he dropped me off at my house. “All right, partner!” Then he pulled across the street and parked in his garage. He stood at its mouth and called over to me.
“You get bored and want to come over later, come on! I know Babs’d love to see you.”
I was digging my keys out of my backpack, distracted. “Oh okay,” I said absently, barely looking up.
Took my shoes off in the mudroom.
I stacked the stack of books beside a stack of bills on the kitchen table. The bills were for me, and there was a note too, from Mom—Ave, Happy last day! Will you enter these bills into QuickBooks for me? Would be a huge help. Love, Mom—and Susannah was blinking. She had a message on her machine. Beside her, a mason jar sweated. Melting ice with light brown in it. It could have been iced tea, easily, I reasoned.
I pressed the play button—“This message is for Avery Fowell, back in 1973 or some other time when landlines weren’t obsolete. Avery, call me when you get a second. I have exciting news. Or you can just come over. Whatever. Byeeee.” Luca lived right next door. Made him kind of hard to avoid.
I moved the stack of bills to my desk and the stack of books to my bed. There was something exciting about the books, seeing them there, on the bed. Sexy even. The way they were just strewn there. The poets. I wanted one to choose me, not for me to have to choose. I decided that for every bill I stuck into QuickBooks, I got one online search of a poet.
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963); notable works The Colossus, The Bell Jar: A Novel, Ariel, the latter published posthumously; famous poems “Tulips,” “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” “Fever 103°”; death by carbon monoxide poisoning, a suicide, put her kids to bed and sealed herself inside her
kitchen & turned on the gas in the oven & opened the door &
Pal cared fiercely for his family, his Kris and his Avery
(okay, okay, now don’t try to make us cry)
and even after she passed away, it’s no secret he kept right on loving Nell
(Nell, Mom’s mom)
(no mention of Babs, and Babs is here, I saw her)
and it does me good to think they are reunited now—
(awkward)
(because I can’t)
John Berryman (1914–1972); notable works 77 Dream Songs, and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, both later collected in one volume as The Dream Songs; famous poems “Dream Song 14,” “Dream Song 29,” “Dream Song 76 (Henry’s Confession),” “The Dispossessed”; death by suicide, threw himself from a bridge, and missed the water;
hearsay is he waved before he jumped
in this next phase of
their journey,
(this guy, Pal’s friend, is crying now)
to think they’re back together
(it’s a heartfelt elegy—I mean eulogy)
after all this time apart,
at the gates of Heaven, her saying, “Pal, where ya been?”
Anne Sexton (1928–1974); notable works Live or Die, Transformations, The Awful Rowing toward God, the latter published posthumously; famous poems “Suicide Note,” “45 Mercy Street,” “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator,” “Rapunzel”; death by carbon monoxide poisoning, a suicide, hard at work on a new book, had just been to a meeting with her editor, took off her rings, poured a glass of vodka, put on her
mother’s coat & walked into her garage, locked herself inside, turned on the car
Mom stuck her head inside my room. I hadn’t heard her come home. “What’re all these?” She sat on my bed. She picked up the Sexton.
If she had picked up the Berryman or the Plath—
“They’re books of poems. Ms. Poss loaned them to me. She read my poem aloud in class today. She said she thinks I have a lot of talent.”
and now Avery, the grandson, is going to come up here and read us a poem. Aren’t you, Avery?
(yes, that is the plan. it’s in the bulletin. why are you asking me from the pulpit?)
“Awesome.” Mom did not open the Sexton. She just cooled it in her lap.
“I have to drop these graduation cakes off at the lake club.” Life as a professional, self-employed caterer. “Six total. Can you come with me? I don’t want them to go sliding all over the Volvo.”
Did not ask me to drive. Just asked me to ride. So, she hadn’t been drinking—how do I know? Because she would have asked me to drive. She had asked me before, when she’d been drinking.
She would have asked me. She would have.
“Yeah, definitely,” I said. “Just a second.” One more search once she leaves the room.
Frank O’Hara (1926–1966); notable works Meditations in an Emergency, Lunch Poems, The Collected Poems, the latter published posthumously; famous poems “The Day Lady Died,” “My Heart,” “Homosexuality,” “Personal Poem”; death by accident, struck by a dune buggy
on a beach on Fire Island & taken to a hospital where he died, one day later
so at least that wasn’t a suicide.