Ironic Witness. Diane Glancy
the Inferno. The tower of Babel also was a ziggurat, upright as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, though the Guggenheim is inverted, its smaller rings growing larger as it climbs. Other ziggurats started larger and became smaller as they ascended. Dante’s Inferno began with the larger rings and became smaller as they descended. The tower of Babel and the Inferno would make a palindrome, if the ziggurats were language.
Most of my ziggurats did not even look like ziggurats. They were my interpretation. My indirect approach. What a ziggurat was at its essence. Its abstraction. Its meaning. There was something about the word I loved.
The brain is amazing. It is a ziggurat that cannot be penetrated. It can hide a city inside it. The coils of the brain are gray ropes of clay worked together, inextricable as a body wrapped around the broken pieces of a car. I was the shaper of those clay forms. The maker of larger rings growing smaller as they ascended—or descended to the pit of Dante’s Inferno, as if ropes let down to retrieve Daniel, a son who took our love for him and turned it into fury so malformed that no one guessed it could be love.
—
I was in my work shed behind the house working with another form when I heard the car.
It couldn’t be the children. They weren’t scheduled to arrive for several hours.
I returned to my clay, knowing Frank could answer the door. It was probably someone for him anyway.
At dawn, the side of a shed in the distance reflected the morning sun. Otherwise, during the day, I didn’t know the shed was there. It disappeared among the trees in the woods. By afternoon, in the other direction, the sun moved toward the west, shooting its light backwards across a field. It was then that I watched the rows of crops and pasturelands. Sometimes I marked my ziggurats with their rows. Usually, I worked until I could look at the trees in the yard and know they were tired after holding up their arms all day. Sometimes the different rungs of the circles of my ziggurats caught my attention as I passed there, maybe the way Dante stopped to take note of who was in the rings of his inferno and why.
I heard Frank call my name, irritated enough that I knew it had not been his first call. Our visitor was Edwin Harsler, an old friend of ours who had been recently widowed. He made a habit of driving around the country, stopping at houses where he knew people. Ours must have been the house of the day, but I was at work with my clay and didn’t want to leave. Frank called again.
I didn’t want to stop work. I felt inhospitable. When I passed through those moods, I felt a sourness I didn’t feel otherwise. Spaces appeared in the ziggurats I didn’t know were there.
I went to the house and found Edwin at the table with Frank. The coffee pot was empty. Frank could have made more coffee, but he used it as an excuse to call me.
“How are you, Edwin?”
“Fine,” he answered. “I was on my way to town when I passed.”
“I’m glad you stopped.” What was I saying? Was that me or Frank who spoke? It was me, I saw by Frank’s eyes. He was enjoying seeing me uncomfortable at the interruption. He liked the way I covered my feelings.
“My daughter’s coming for a visit. I wonder if you’d drop by.”
“Our children are coming also,” I said. “Why don’t you and Helen come by here and we’ll all have dinner and catch up?”
That must have been what he was looking for, because he seemed pleased.
“She’s bringing someone with her. A young man she’s been dating.”
“Is it serious?”
“I don’t know, but I suspect it is. She doesn’t usually bring anyone with her. Or if she does, it’s been girlfriends.”
“Winnie used to bring boys, but none of them ever seem to come back,” I said.
“You think it’s us?” Frank asked. “After they see the mess in my study and your clay infernos covering every open space in our house, they must find excuses to make an exit.”
“Yes, it’s harder to get married these days,” Edwin said. “The young are not so anxious. Or they take longer. To make sure, I suppose.”
“How are you doing, Edwin?” Frank asked. “There’re widows at every turn.”
I looked at Frank. When had he begun noticing widows? And what widows was he noticing?
He looked away.
“Yes, I’ve been invited to dinner several times. I’ve found a basket of biscuits on my doorstep. Saide doesn’t bark any more when the women leave a casserole on my porch or stop to slip an invitation in the mailbox.”
Was Frank wishing he could ride with Edwin past all the mailboxes, reviewing the names of widows of men who had passed on?
I returned to my work shed when Edwin left.
—
Our children: Winifred and Warren—the two who were left from the three.
Winnie came to me once saying she hated her name. Winnie Winscott. Why not Minnie Mascot?
I apologized for the cuteness. It seemed all right when she was small. But now?
“Well, call yourself by your full name—Winifred Winscott.”
“No.”
“Is it the alliteration?”
“Of course it is. Didn’t you know I would grow up to be an adult?”
“Yes, Winifred, I did. But when you were born, I had Frank’s parents standing over me and Grandma Winifred, of course, who wanted you named after her, just as she had been named after her grandmother.”
“But Winscott wasn’t her last name until she married. You should have refused.”
“Change your name,” I said.
“You should have insisted.”
“They were a formidable group,” I told her. “Blame your father. They were his relatives.”
“I didn’t know you were so spineless.”
“I have a spine. I didn’t mind the name. Winifred Eugena Winscott. Is it my name also to which you object?”
“No, it’s hidden between the two Ws,” she said. “I hardly know it’s there. You could have been more original.”
“Warren doesn’t complain about his name,” I reminded her.
“Because Warren Winscott isn’t as ruffled as Winnie Winscott.”
“I get your point. When you have a daughter, you can name her something removed from family ties. When you marry, you can take your husband’s name.”
“It would entice me to marry,” she said.
“I hope his name is Willets.”
—
There were times after Daniel died when I went through my blue mood. When I passed that place, which was most of the time, I felt things I didn’t feel otherwise. It was like that shed in the distance that only appeared when the morning sun passed over the hill.
One of the reasons I dreaded the children’s return was that they would leave again, taking Daniel with them also. Now I waited for another visit, suiting up to feel the loss of Daniel again. Why couldn’t I just appreciate the two children I had left?
The weather was often unpredictable, and we had waited in airports for hours for their arrival, sometimes making the long drive back home in rain or snow after canceled flights. Now Warren and Winnie rented a car. We began having our Christmas in July. The children would arrive with presents, unwrapped because of airline regulations.
I stayed in my work shed until I heard their car in the drive. I also stayed in the shed when they left.
—