ON DRIVING BY BETH BROWN'S HOUSE, 20 YEARS LATER
"Daddy's rifle in my hand felt reassurin;
He told me 'Red means run, son, numbers add up to nothin...'"
--Neil Young, "Powderfinger"
So now I'm driving down this street, in an old neighborhood
in Charlotte, dodging the SUV's
parked at the curb in front of the grand old houses
on a grand old street
now occupied by Yuppies. One of these
was your parents' house
(they were grand old folks, I remember).
Your mom had seen it starting 15 years before--
obvious as the nose on your face--
rich, anonymous Yuppies moving in where the Grand Old Folks had been,
the old folks somehow disappearing
like disgraced Stepford Wives, I said,
being replaced by more suitable substitutes.
I tell you, that's creepy.
Your dad thought that hilarious,
demanded I explain, go on, elaborate;
the two of them kept me talking the whole meal
the first in what became a long series of meals with girlfriends' parents
from which I emerged hungry.
(By the way: transformation complete. I'll bet dollars to pesos
that every tube on the block is tuned in to Martha Stewart Living.
Tell your Mom that next time you see her.)
You always gave better than you got, I'll give you that. In exchange
for promised (never delivered)
guitar lessons, & for the poem I never wrote you
you introduced me to Joni Mitchell & Joan Armatrading
music that was, for a budding guitarist,
illuminating.
Later, on the night
when your parents were gone
You taught me that I could become so full of emotions
that I was choking on them, that I could, if not careful,
rub my own soul raw
trying to get closer, closer, closer
to my sense of the world.
(You never knew that. You just smiled.)
And that was just talking. That was before
you kissed me with your stale cocoa breath
& wrapped your sweatered arms around me
so tightly that I couldn't cry out loud.
But the last straw was the night
you needed to know how to believe in God.
What the hell?
How was I supposed to deal with that? I was just then learning how deep
my own crises & faith could run.
I was 17 & knew everything,
except what to tell you.
So I sat there with you, in your backyard
on that night that was either hot or cold or temperate
(who knows?)
tearing a sweetgum leaf into strands and veins, thinking
that if I stalled long enough, I might think of something
truly brilliant
to say
(Here's what I would have said, but didn't say, that night:
I do believe in God, but damned if I'll admit it to you.)
I know it's one of these houses, along here somewhere.
I can't even pick the goddamned thing out now.
It doesn't have anything in particular to make me remember it,
No parapet, no widow's walk, no arched doorway,
nothing with which I might prise it
from the bedrock of Myers Park.
It doesn't really matter. I'm mainly just avoiding Sunday morning church traffic
and I guess that's okay
so long as I can drive down this road
remembering the time
we stood together in the cold March night
looking up at a banner of wind driven clouds
flowing over the full moon
like a river.