Marta ~ May 8

 

The washing machine surges, back and forth in the background. The cat sips. Once, I made a tape of sounds. I was about 13 and used my father's tabletop reel-to-reel recorder. I'd gotten the idea in music class, that maybe something interesting could be made just by stringing sounds together. The water running from the tap. I played the tape for my father in his room and could see that it didn't mean much to him. He liked his sounds more familiar and ordered, the classical music of his growing up. In the next house, a few years later, a different country, he played that music often in the living room with a scotch and soda in hand, after the rest of us had gone to bed upstairs. He slept downstairs, on a sofa bed in the front hallway, a space that also held a large built-in closet and a full bathroom, and that could be closed off with delicate French doors. This small wing had been added during the years that we were away so he had anticipated the desire for separation. If he couldn't have an apartment in the city, at least he could have this. In the lean years. When he felt a little more flush he'd take a room at the Yale Club, a rather spartan solution, but at least the entrance with its deferential staff and potted palms could buoy his spirits, make him feel a man of accomplishment.