Decorations

The streamers from the surprise party had not yet been taped to the underside of the deck when they were left out. The storm surprised her. I missed it all because I had to work late. I don't know how much I had to work. Maybe I just didn't feel like going to the party. When I came home, I saw so many of the decorations battered. The rain made them bleed their colors. It was the opposite of summer snowballs and the way the flavors blossomed inside the shaved ice, getting deeper and darker as the attendant poured. I knew nothing was reusable. The party was spoiled and must have moved indoors without the festive good cheer. I tried to imagine her disappointment. Standing here under the deck down by the basement door, I thought of something that I would like to say to her. Something…the letters for happy birthday now looking like swollen rice noodles…something that would have connected the end of one point to the beginning of another.

I remember the parties we had when we were younger and the neighbors would bring their chairs and we would all sit in the backyard when it was unfenced and huge, and the children would catch fireflies in glass Coke bottles. I am sad to see that this party was not what she wanted. We didn't have decorations for those summer parties. They just happened. But those were many years ago when the days were much longer and the rain didn't get us quite so wet.

I am alone. The last person to the party. The distance in my mind. She is probably upstairs, wrapped up in the white linen sheets. I'm sure there's food left in the refrigerator. That's how long it took me to get home. Long enough for her to erase it all and pack it into plastic. I guess it was still raining when she finally decided to go to bed, and so she left everything out here like this for me to clean. I'll get it in the morning. I'm hungry and I'm tired. And even though it stopped raining, I can't think of that thing that I wanted to say to her. I'm hoping it will pop into my head soon so that when I crawl into bed I might have something nice to say to her if she wakes up and asks me why I was late.

“Work. You missed the party getting spoiled. It would have been good if you were here to help suffer the rain. I tried my best to save it, but my heart gave out. It just didn’t seem important to me as it didn’t seem important to you.”

I undressed and stood at the end of the bed. She was curled in a ball with her back to me. She was on my side of the bed. This was her not so subtle way of telling me to stay out.

“I am sorry, Sadie. Work came unraveled, and I got lost trying to fix things. It was wrong of me to miss this. The decorations must have been lovely until the rain–”

“Work unraveled?” Bullshit. This was her way of cursing at me. “Unraveled. That’s some fancy poetry, Henry.” As a professor of creative writing, I knew how to choose words. I might have planted that word to hurt her a bit. I was quietly angry that she was angry with me. When there’s a freshman writer discovering my book and my mentors, siting in the big chair across from my desk, it’s hard to cut him off.

“Your father was from Germany, yes?” He was looking at the poem I had written for my honors thesis.

“That’s right. Rolf. Such a German name.” I had chuckled over this tired joke so many times that the laugh was genuine because I was actually just laughing at my own stupidity. I could see his wheels turning, though. Their wheels always turned with that poem.

“So he was in the GERMAN army.” He paused, closed the book and looked up at me as they always do. “He was a Nazi.”

I didn’t shift my relaxed posture. I just gestured. “He was a soldier. Drafted by Nazis. But he was no Nazi.”

“Did he kill jews.” How many times had I heard this question?

“I don’t know who he killed or if he killed anyone. He was killed by the Russian winter.”

The young man reopened my book carelessly. “I am sorry. I lost my dad to cancer. My mother is Russian, but her jewish ancestors came to America a hundred years ago. Like Fiddler on the Roof, you know?” Oh, I knew. My own guilt led me to explore Judaism from every awkward angle. Being the son of a Nazi wasn’t quite as bad as surviving the Holocaust especially since my father did not survive it himself.

“Your mother shows up in your poems over and over. She moved to Florida. That’s the one poem about her slide towards the equator, or as you call it ‘the belly of the Earth.’”

He looked down and smiled sheepishly.

“It’s a powerful poem, Dale. Your mother must be a remarkable woman.”

“‘Must have been.’” He looked up at me with his dark eyes and crooked nose. “She’s dead.” He seemed a bit crushed because I did not remember this from his poems.

“I am sorry to hear that. As you know, I lost my father when I was only a baby. My mother died three years ago.”

“We are orphans, Professor.”

“I suppose we are.”

He held the book up. “It’s a beautiful collection. You’re quite a good poet, I am glad I took this class. May I keep the book?” The book was for sale at the University bookstore, but I nodded.

“Sure, Dale. It’s yours. I am glad it resonates with you.”

“I didn’t say that. I just like it.” He was so full of fear and confidence. Such a deadly concoction. “Didn’t you say you had a party to attend?”

Good lord. Now the students are proxies for my wife. The truth is, I enjoyed these sessions when a young poet finds me, an old poet, relevant. My book, my only book of poems, is in his hands and his heart. He has read and re-read it. They often do, especially the young men who respond to my masculinity. It’s the German accent that died in me when I was twelve and I moved here to the US. But it leaks out of my poems. I find that the Jewish students are always rather obsessed with the poem about my father (the Nazi).

“Yes. I should go." I wondered if it’s still raining. My wife was planning an outdoor pool party, a Caribbean Island themed party. I am not sure the rain cared much for this idea. It did hit me that I would be in trouble at home, but I just couldn’t get enough of this idol worshipping.

“Professor Muller…do you think I have a book like this in me?” You see, here in this little office with a sliver of a window and my degrees and Degas hung on the walls, I, Hans Muller, was not a disappointment. I was a man with answers. But once I went home, I had no original voice. My wife had heard all of my poems spoken in excuses and disappointments. Tonight would be no different. It was hard for me not to soak up the sunshine of this young man’s worshipping uncertainty.

“You have something brilliant in those poems about your mom, Dale.”

The young man smiled sheepishly. 'Thank you' was written all over his young glowing face. “Are you going to make the party?”

“I hope so, Dale. I hope so.”

“I know your job is important. Young writers come to you for guidance and clarity and inspiration. I love that about you, Hans, I do. But this party was important.”

I slipped out of my shoes and shirt and pants and socks. I snuck into the bed and found a way to wrap myself around her. “I know. I let you down. I will clean the mess I missed. I promise. I love you, Birdie.”

She resisted for a moment, but she melted. It wasn’t my poetry she loved. She loved my strong German arms. She didn’t care about my Nazi father. She just wanted me to find her diction and meter. She wanted her heartbeat to be the rhythm of my words.

“I love you.” I pulled her into me. I was strong. She melted. “I love you. I do.”

“I love you, too, Hans. I love you.” She was trying to convince me but mostly herself. "I love you. I love you, you old fool." She closed her eyes and said in once more with resignation in her voice.

"Ich liebe dich, mein geliebter Mann. Ich tue. I do."