The garden scene alludes to Patrick Donnelly's poems "Overheard by an Unusual Man," and "The Helpless Garden." I would like to thank Patrick for giving his blessing to these allusions, and for all his encouragement and support over the years. - DP

 

 

When Dan, my husband, lost the way, I took the wheel. We were going to visit Larry, our son. Two miles from the house, Dan began just driving in circles. He pulled over and began to cry. "Nothing's familiar," he said, though we'd been dozens of times before. The next morning we took him to the hospital. It was a tumor, inoperable. He died the first of the year.

I didn't think I could go back to a hospital, alone now, to have the artery in my neck operated on. I had to do it to prevent a stroke, but there was also a five percent chance the operation would cause one. I've been home a week now. There hasn't been so much blood in my brain since I was upside — down in the womb. The world vibrates down to every last place mat and dish. Larry insists I stay inside and rest. I stare at old photos by the bed. They're four — dimensional. I'm disappointed when I look up and see the clock.

I have to get out. I have to see the world with me still in it. In the sun dress Dan says makes me look girlish, I might go anywhere. I fetch dark glasses and I knot on a scarf.

God has made a glorious day! Life rushes up like a little boy hiding a present behind his back. Flowers nod, windows open and wishes meld into memories.

My feet don't know what's happened — they aren't used to walking all over town this way! I can't drive because my neck's stiff, but walking is better suited to my way of seeing now. A film of sweat forms on my skin; the dress waltzes around me, cooling the sweat. At the bottom of the hill I turn onto the boulevard and realize... that sweet smell of times gone by... I'm in Flombania! — back where Percy and Larry set all the movies they made when they were boys! "Beautiful downtown Flombania!" How often I've wanted to see their world again. I'm about a block from Percy's Manicure Parlor and Auto Garage. Soon I'm striding up to Percy's dark window, trying to see around the flickering neon outline of a woman's hand with red nails. I rap and wave.

Percy looks up, frowning. Then he smiles and waves back, his body and face almost lost in the shadows. I see only his white hand like a drowning man waving for help. The last time I came Percy waved and turned away. I knew he was busy, God bless him, and couldn't chat. Not that he doesn't love his second mother. With the parlor and the auto garage he has so much to do, so that's all right.

But today he beckons. I hurry in and I throw my arms around him. Acetone fills my nostrils; I feel its chill on my skin. Percy's hug is stiff and needful.

"Oh, my darling!" I say. "Let me look at you, Percy dear." He smiles, mouth closed, shrugs, looks away. I ask, "Is this a bad time, sweetheart?"

"Oh no!" he says, gripping my arms suddenly. "Don't move!" He races to fetch iced tea and cookies, as though only that would keep me here. Percy, darling, I came for you!

He sets us up at an empty station by the window and he holds the chair out for me. For a few seconds we sip tea and look out the window, losing ourselves in the world beyond the glass, as if those people coming and going were a movie. I watch him. On this hot day, he's dressed in black turtle neck and brown corduroys. The top of his head begins to fade into the light behind him, and I reach for his hand. I say, "You know, the heat today reminds me of the day we met — our two families — in July of '71..." Percy squeezes my hand but doesn't speak. His world consists mostly of memories, and that worries me. Percy's 1971 and 1972 and 1973 and so on are tiny mirrors in huge, dark frames.

It was so hot by the motel pool, we invited Percy's family into our room for lemonade. Percy was twelve and chubby, and when I spoke to him he frowned at the carpet. He didn't ask for food or to use the bathroom. He waited till I offered. He talked about books and movies we'd never heard of. He impressed our son, Larry, though Larry's thing was more the athletics. Percy told us all about this movie that excited him so much, except he couldn't see it because it was rated R. His mother tried to shush him. Larry jumped up and said, "C'mon, we'll go outside!" I called after them to be careful. They disappeared forever, but came back for dinner.

We parents hit it off, too, so we made plans for Labor Day. Then Thanksgiving, then Christmas. The years the boys were growing up, we got together five or six times a year, all because of that chance meeting. I believe God meant it to be.

I ask Percy how he is now, and a frown gathers his features to the center of his face. "Business is okay," he says. He never discusses the demands of running a manicure parlor and a garage. I've never been back in the garage.

He says he's learning slowly how Flombanian business regulations are different from the United States. Still — he motions to the back wall and the garage— where else would he have this kind of opportunity? He looks out at the street. I look at him.

How things have changed! — my Dan gone, Larry with a wife and kids, out of state. Percy — my second son, I always say. From the garage I hear the clank of metal, the hot breath of a grille. I'm not a prude. I've traveled and raised a family and I don't belong to any religious right, though I try to be a good Christian. I do fall short. I wish I could embrace all things, as God does. But Percy knows there are some things I'm not used to, back there in the auto shop, the men and the grease. Still, nothing could make me love my Percy one iota less.

I want to tell him so, but when I open my mouth it's 1975 and I say, "Place a small amount of sauce in pan. Add broccoli and cheese, repeat with vegetables." I touch a finger to my lips. I hadn't meant to say that! I try again. "Pour tomato sauce over all. Bake uncovered 45-50 minutes." I clap my hand over my mouth. Tears come. "I'm sorry, darling," I gasp. He takes my hand in his. "Shh..!" But I didn't tell him what temperature! It breaks my heart to think of my second son sitting all alone at night, chewing uncooked broccoli. He stands. I feel all my efforts have failed.

He takes me out back to see his garden.

He made it from an oddly-shaped patch of dirt left over after they built the parlor and the garage. We stand on the threshold, as though the garden were an exhibit. He's planted hollyhocks, bleeding heart and purple coneflower, his favorite. He's sunken china plates in the soil, like tombstones. A broken edge sticks up at a certain angle. Only Percy is smart enough to understand each plate's true meaning. I feel as I did when he told me about those obscure movies: I should admire his taste, but I feel chastened. I gave him some of those plates. He made them special. My necessity becomes Percy's decoration.

Percy and I hold one another and his embrace is more relaxed. It's so nicely arranged out here, like a movie set without cameras, or actors even. He's placed plastic dragons and knights beneath the leaves, and in the middle, one plastic thing that I'm not going to say what it is. It sits there as though Percy invented it. Maybe that's how we think about the things we need most, though I never thought I invented God.

"Yesterday," Percy says, "someone was supposed to come and ask to stay forever. I shut the garage and opened a bottle of wine. I lit candles and put Messaien on the stereo." I don't know who that is. A girl files a nail. It smells like burning flesh.

Percy was seeing a man from the garage, but he never brought him by. Since then he hasn't had anyone that I know of. The demands of two businesses, he says. Everyone in Flombania has two businesses — one happy, one sad. You need the sad one because the taxes on the happy one are awful.

He meets my gaze. His lip curls or trembles, then he shifts his stance and draws back, still holding my arm.

"Did he come, Percy?"

He gives an unpleasant snuff of laughter. I glimpse a cynical, unbelieving Percy I don't like much. I entwine his fingers in my hands, because those who are broken or buried alive must have our love and know it. There are things I don't understand, but what difference should that make? "He will, sweetheart."

I'm about to add, "You're not alone those nights!" but I just massage his hand. Neither God nor I can give Percy with what he longs for. I will not judge Percy. Maybe he hears alleluias I can't. Or won't.

"I waited," he says. "I imagined a movie camera pulling back till I was this tiny dot of light in the dark, this whole lit-up the city behind me."

Lovely! Like an image from a movie Percy might have made.

"Those are peppers," he announces, pointing to a glossy-leaved bush with white flowers. "Or they're supposed to be. The flowers open, but the whole thing falls off at the touch of a finger — little baby pepper and all. I don't know where to turn — no gardening book says anything. Buds keep coming by the dozens, and each new batch I think, these will be the ones that'll stay. And they do, and I'm so... And more flowers open and fall off and I can't make myself fix it. Now they've started dying even before they open, babies falling to their deaths before they've opened their eyes and seen what's in the world. Yet I go on tending them like a lover on a respirator."

Resentment flashes in his eyes, then an afterglow of regret. We take a last look around the garden. I don't know if Percy could abide a man here, loving the garden and readjusting the plates. So much is invested in that plate being right there. God forgive me, but maybe a lover on a respirator would be the thing for Percy.

As we step back into the parlor I recall Percy at twelve or thirteen, telling us how he wanted to be in movies and theatre. By fifteen he'd become quiet and sullen and he grew his hair long. He looked like his sister. We were supposed to know he was an actor, but we weren't supposed to ask about it. The day he graduated he seemed happy, but I still saw him holding back — from dandelions, from sprites, from the hungers of his mouth, which was closed in the pictures, even as he smiled. There are things parents can't know, can't help with. Percy dreamed, but he wouldn't ask, wouldn't seek. He dreamed, and wondered why the things he dreamed weren't offered him. He'd visit us every now and then and seem surprised that I loved him the same as ever. Once I asked, "What do you want to do in five years?" His face went white and he smirked. "Let's get through today," he said.

"That's what I kept saying when I went in for my operation."

Then we received the letter — or I received it — saying he was in Flombania and had taken over the manicure parlor and the garage. I didn't know what to say, but I knew I loved him same as ever, and I wrote back and told him so. I didn't find out till later that Larry had received the same letter. Larry didn't respond. I asked why and he sounded nonplused. He'd never even thought of it.

The man Percy waits for would upset his garden, loving the peppers like a storm on a late July night. You have to welcome the water crashing down, the wind that smashes stalks on the wall. So long as Percy demands full say over his storm, the storm can't break. It will break elsewhere, and he'll watch from a distance the terrible baptisms and envy their victims and wonder why those deluges won't come and smash and spank his control good and hard and still he must hold that control and envy what baptisms do to others and so, in his roundabout way, he is baptized, too, by disappointment. Or maybe he's just marked, and always convalescing.

There is a baptism that knows no age. It is never too late, if only he'd surrender.

As we sit again by the window I try to form the words. But it is 1971, the boys are movie stars and all I can say is, "In a nine-by-thirteen pan, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle crumbs evenly over butter, press down lightly."

Can I not find words of love because Percy believes they don't exist, not even as he waits for a stranger to say them. I ask what he thinks of God. "I don't believe in Him." With a smile he adds, "except when something goes wrong, then I'm angry at Him." He concentrates on his iced tea.

Sometimes I resent Percy for silencing my love. I pray God will lift my resentment. I pray Percy will find Him, in his own way.

Percy stops time. I turn a corner.

Larry was supposed to call Percy after my operation. But there was confusion, and Percy never was called. Maybe he assumed that if anything went wrong, he'd hear. But I wish he'd called. It's difficult managing a manicure parlor and a garage, but I don't want to make excuses for Percy. Larry's busy, too. Three kids, and another on the way — lovely kids! They just bought a new house. I bring out pictures to show Percy. He looks at each one twice, saying, "This is great... great..."

"I have such happy memories of you boys!"

Percy nods but does not take his eyes off the pictures. He's built a wall between youth and adulthood. He longs for what's on the other side, but only in dreams can he get over it. Once over, he drifts, looking for a key. With each passing night, the key grows less useful, but each night he searches harder for it.

For Percy it's a different 1971. It's not my Larry leaning back, brush in hand, his hair glowing, bare chest open to Heaven as he painted the church steeple, nor is it Dan's work spread out on the dining room table, where I brought him coffee and sat with him and sipped. For Percy it's a strange, dirty summer. He crouches in a metal box, naked, the radio on. One day soon we'll stand on the beach in the late afternoon, searching the sky for ducks, before we turn into the wind and head home, where everyone waits for us. 1972 will be our best year yet, darling; all your dreams will come true.

Percy glances at customers coming in. I take my pictures back and get up to go. We hug and don't say anything. I can't decide if we're so close nothing needs to be said, or if we're separated by things that can't be said. Looking back through the door I see Percy's white hand waving for just a second.

In the dusty heat I'm anxious and afraid. I'm positive I have something else to do, but can't think what it is. A movie enters my mind, but going to daytime movies is such a luxury. Deep in the velvet seat I imagine myself, timeless, invisible, watching someone else's dream. The Trylon's just around the corner from the house. I could go home after and have another iced tea and lie down. Somehow this feels like a thing to do on an eternal tomorrow.

I close my eyes and pray for guidance. It comes to me that, if I stop by church, I'll know what to do.

A breeze parts the branches and Larry painted that steeple one summer but it's been repainted since. I draw back the iron gate. The foyer's dark with the smell of hymnals.

"Worship the Lord," it says above the pulpit in spidery letters.

I fit the sanctuary perfectly, wear it like a second skin. I feel His presence. I knew since I was a child that He was everywhere, but only now have I come to feel that I am permeable and He flows through me, through everything, like a string threaded through us all, some of us not even knowing. Being threaded hurts. But if you release your fortune like doves you will laugh when the needle goes through, and it will be a lovely, treasured imposition. Like bread.

"Worship the Lord." I inhale, feel the chain, paper chain of Christmas, popcorn and cranberries, exquisite shapes, nightingales. I am still of this world. I hear cars in the street, imagine the steeple stretching up to Heaven, below me the basement. God knows what is there...

In God there are few surprises. They're all in us. Percy longs to be surprised. But he would have to trade away so many ideas he holds dear. You don't have to sit up at night waiting for God.

Suddenly, I know what to do.

A shop awning flutters. There's the Trylon and... my word! They're having a Swine International Film Festival! My heart lifts up. Today it's "You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Slime," starring Larry and Percy, of course. We used to have such fun seeing the boys in their movies. I guess Percy did more with the creative part, but he let Larry have top billing. Larry once said to me, "Y'know, Mum, I'm so grateful to have such a creative friend." Did he ever tell Percy?

"You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Slime" belongs to a series starring Larry as The Good Dr. Good and Percy as The Evil Dr. Slime, slugging it out in Dr. Good's castle here in "beautiful downtown Flombania," during the reign of Queen Maude the Loud. The posters have what's on every Swine International poster: "During this film, please keep your pettifoggling snickers to yourself. Feel free to voice laughter and/or praise." The boys were so inventive! It's really "pettifogging," but the boys said "pettifoggling." Now they barely smile if I use "pettifoggling" in conversation, but I wish one of them would use it, too, once.

When I buy my ticket I don't say I'm the stars' mother. I pass on into the cool dark, red and stale and comforting, and sink into the red plush. The lights dim and suddenly the gray leader of twenty-five years ago glows dim onscreen, edges blurry.

A burst of light and I blink. I'm rescued by beautiful, young Larry as Dr. Good, his body as though sketched by God in a single stroke, standing in front of the church, one of his soccer medals around his neck, big smile showing the chipped tooth he's had since he was eleven. There's something he has to tell me, something he knows that I don't. Something I know he doesn't. But that's just a picture of him. Colors faded. Scratches dart across the screen like silverfish. They scratch my heart.

Dark. The church basement and a pale face floating: Percy as Dr. Slime, stringy hair, construction paper moustache dividing his face, and this wacky frown. He has on dark clothes, like now, that blend into whatever mess was down there. It's all underexposed. He's squatting on a mound of garbage, gripping a shovel like he's buried something. I remember being concerned years back when I saw first this shot — the dirt, the shovel, like a newsreel from a prison camp. It could have been dangerous in that basement, but try telling that to a couple of kids!

I'm not so sure they should have done all this in our church, but they meant no harm, and they never filmed in the sanctuary.

A bit of fuzz dances crazily before the film sweeps it away.

Every Dr. Good-Dr. Slime movie goes the same way; that's the fun of it. Percy breaks into Dr. Good's castle, captures Larry, ties him up and tortures him in some silly way (in this one he's forced to watch an "I Dream of Jeannie" film festival). But then when Percy isn't paying attention, Larry slips out of his ropes. Percy gets his comeuppance and Dr. Good triumphs.

The way they did it was so creative! They took turns shooting. The film cuts so smoothly from one attacking to the other fleeing, I just marvel at it. How clever and serious they were! But now I see something else. Really there are two movies. When Percy holds the camera the shots are framed at creative angles. Larry just points at whatever's going on.

When Larry's on camera, he smiles practically the whole time, going through the paces like he was told, yet framed so strikingly, as though Percy's own eyes were the lenses, or as though Larry were clay and the lens were Percy's hand, squeezing and molding. When Percy's on camera he squeezes and molds himself, and the frame kind of yaws around.

Then Percy appears in a long shots, his pale hands and face lost down dim corners of the social hall or the corridor by the nursery school, locked for summer. You can see they did use a light. It fills the foreground but doesn't reach back to Percy. Then Larry appears close up, flooded with light like honey poured over him.

Now, suddenly, a long black scratch yaws down the center of the image. It frightens me, I want it gone, but it pursues me. I run, now it looms ahead of me. I fear the film will split open. I place my hand over my chest, and still that black horror harrows my heart. The boys play on. They have no idea. Percy creeps to the end of a hallway and disappears. He looks like he's alone, being Dr. Slime for his own benefit.

The scratch ends. Dr. Good wins. He dumps Dr. Slime through the trap door in the church reception hall, where we have coffee hour. It's over so soon! Suddenly I want nothing more than to be home, sipping iced tea with the air conditioner on. On my way out of the theater I ask the popcorn girl if there'll be more Percy and Larry movies. "Oooh... sorry!" she says, "like, tomorrow's the last day!" She points behind me.

I see a huge, glossy poster for the boys' last movie, The Search. I don't think we parents ever saw it. They made it that fall, after the wonderful summer of the Dr. Good and Dr. Slime movies. A chill from the air conditioning makes me go all goose bumpy. I want to pull my sweater around me, but I don't have a sweater. In my sundress I just hug myself and shudder. "Thank you," I say, and I walk over to the poster. The lobby lights glare off the folds. I make out two pictures, superimposed: Percy with his evil grin, like Dr. Slime without the moustache, and over that a hand (Larry, I guess) reaching but not quite touching a pine twig with a dollop of light on the end. The poster says it's a world premiere — "ONE DAY ONLY."

From behind me the popcorn girl says, "Don't you just love the Percy and Larry movies?" I turn around, but I don't know what to say to her. She's blushing. "I've seen like all of them maybe like ten times!" she says, and rolls her eyes. I just stare at her and think: I should smile. I try to think how to smile, which muscles one uses to smile or to "look interested," because I simply have nothing to say!

How I wish I'd brought my sweater..!

At home I sit with a weeping glass of iced tea. I want to call Percy and tell him I saw him as Dr. Slime, and tell him how much I love him and always will. My love could be his shield. But I don't want to think right now about the movie, everything the way it was back then but with that awful scratch down the middle. I leave my iced tea and go to lie down. I don't mind nights or rainy days, as some people think. Now's the worst — sunset.

I wake in the dark. From my window I try to see the manicure parlor, but brighter lights and my own reflection obscure it. I imagine Percy with his wine, waiting. I go to the phone.

His answering machine plays a terse message muffled in echoes, as though he lived underwater. After the beep I say, "Percy?" He stands in his doorway, unaware that I'm speaking to him. "Are you there?" His eyes scan deserted sulfur light cones in the street. "Percy, I won't recite a recipe..!"

But more words fail me. I hang up and vow to try again tomorrow.

I call Larry and tell him how I saw You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Slime.

"Huh!" he says. "I'd forgotten that. Was it a good idea for you to go outside, Ma?"

"Perfectly good! And I'm so happy I did because, why, the things I saw, Larry..!"

"Really..?" His words dribble out, like bullets.

I tell him about Percy and the movies at Trylon.

"Yeah...that was a lotta years ago, Ma. I doubt those movies exist anymore..."

"Lawrence! What did I just tell you?!"

"Ma..! It's not even called 'Flombania' anymore! It's got some completely new name..!"

"What do you mean, Larry?"

"It's a whole other country, Ma. Foreign investment, the infrastructure, privatization of the water, U.S. companies own most of it. I tell you, Ma, you have to read the business section! Just ten-fifteen minutes a day, Ma. Stay informed!"

"I am informed!" My fingers want to twist the phone cord, but this is cordless. "You should visit him. You should visit Percy!" Percy with his wine in the night. "Just go say hello. I know he'd..."

"Ma, you've got to understand..." He's doing something while he speaks to me. E-mail or... "Ma, the next time I'm in Flom... Well, whatever it's called now; I can't think... I'm there on the eighteenth to meet with this sheik and this billionaire Brit who's a top authority on guided missile software, I'm there for the day, in-out, I can't... I can't be going down to...to wherever he...whatever it is...I can't, Ma, you've got to understand. I have pressures, Ma..."

"I know you do, sweetheart..."

"Sometimes I don't think you do, Ma. You don't know what the business environment's like. You have to court these people relentlessly. You have to guess what the trend is, what it's going to be. You knock your head against the wall and nothing happens. Deals fall through, people stab you in the back, you'd like to spend a day strolling in good old downtown 'Flombania,' but there's the kids, Ma, and I have...I want to think that I'm doing something, that I've achieved something, that I've reached a kind of apex where it's all important, just for a second. I... I could see him, you know. I don't know what we'd say to each other. I mean, his business and mine... What does he do, anyway, Ma?"

I wait a second or two and then I say, "Love goes on forever, Larry!"

"Uh, yeah, of course it is, Ma. And I love you, too. We all love you." A pause. "It's just it's a whole other country, Ma. Whole other country, you've got to realize. Hey, let me put the kids on. Larry Jr.'s right here..."

The ice has melted, though, making the tea gold at the top. Its tears sop the tablecloth. I woke up frightened of tomorrow, of having to see "The Search," for I know now I can't avoid it. Larry's meeting a sheik. "The Search" is my destiny. I fear what it has to tell me. I feel chastened to think the boys in those movies know some simple thing I don't. Now that they're forty, I know so much more than they do, but their knowledge at fifteen frightens me. They're fathers to me. Innocent, angry fathers with tidings that frighten me.

I reach for the comfort of being told what I know. But I feel in my heart that long, scratch in the film, like a road at night. I'm pulled down that road. My foot presses the accelerator, the film splits. Where are the edges of knowledge? Knowledge is dull knives, is nickels and dimes dropped in the street. If I go see "The Search," God will be with me. In the moment I know everything, nothing will matter.

I wake in gray light and walk the main streets of my house, all crowded with shadows. I want this over. I try to get my scarf and sunglasses together, but I can't decide which scarf and the first show is starting and I see a black scratch down the center and I think I'll never leave the house again. I pray. Finally I leave in time for the second show. I'm relieved to get outside, where I can be alone.

Only a handful of people have shown up this afternoon. I can't distinguish them, slumped down in those new high back chairs that rock and have soft drink holders. I feel as though we're the chosen, guilty remnants of a once great crowd, come to witness a rite in memory of the others, who've gone on. The lights dim. The square gray window of projected leader glows dully from the screen. I stare back and try to master my fear.

White and gold knives rip open the gray. From the knives rises an emerald heart. They must have shot this on the fields at Percy's school, late on a fall afternoon after the teams left. There's no dialogue, no music, just the tick of the projector behind us, out of sight. Larry crosses the field with a straight-ahead look. He was the handsome one then, though Percy's turned out nicely. Larry's still handsome, too, of course. He just frowns so much in pictures.

Larry, shot by Percy, squints into the sun, looking toward all things he could not have known, but that with faith he dreamed — a wife, kids, a house, it all happened and I have the pictures to prove it! — then something blocks the light and Larry starts dramatically.

Out of the knives of Sun comes Percy, shot by Larry. He crowds the camera with a wicked grin. The last thing on his mind was a manicure parlor and auto garage! Larry runs.

This scene repeats: Larry confident, striding, then Percy's evil grin and Larry fleeing.

The years have faded the gold-green soccer field, the green-black end of the day, but not a scratch mars this maiden. She aged but never was spoiled by the light. The world looks on her for the first time now. She's alone and brave, letting herself be run through that projector, letting light shine in her every corner, letting lenses blow her up while our gazes operate on her mystery. She bleeds what we've been through.

Larry jogs, shambling, but falls and tumbles in the grass, the frame whirling from his point of view, bright sky/dark earth/bright/dark/bright/dark. Percy crouches over him with a wicked grin, shoulders shaking. This movie is about something, but I don't know what -- and maybe neither did they, in 1972, '73... I wish it were then...

Larry walks again, straight into Percy's shadow, which tapers like a steeple. You can see the steeple holding a camera. Larry freezes. He turns wide-eyed and sees:

Percy, in close-up, setting sun behind him, wind tossing his hair gold, his face a grainy blank. The shot lasts a long time.

Each scene is darker. I'm anxious that they won't finish by nightfall. They'll be late for dinner or won't come at all this time. I picture them between scenes, alone in the field, the Sun setting, the two of them trying to decide what to do next, the Sun setting...

His golden face gone gray, Larry peers at a bare tree rising out of brambles. I start when I see Percy lounging sinuously along the trunk. He is dressed in the colors of the trees and fields so he blends in. He smirks and beckons to the camera, to Larry. A closer shot: Percy freezes, arms outstretched to Larry, fingers splayed like roots. Closer: hair blows across his face.

Now Larry shakes his head. He puts his palms up, backs away keeps shaking his head, then he turns and runs.

He stops in the center of the field and looks back. Percy advances, fingers like claws. Larry turns and there's Percy again, and again and again, everywhere. Through it all we sit, nearly invisible to one another sunk down in our seats, the only sound, the projector ticking. Long arms of light shuffle and reshuffle pieces on the screen. I feel as though my bones have fused.

Light-arms draw Larry over black grass, body writhing to escape Percy's steeple-shadow. Percy pushes the camera closer, as though it were a brush with which he's painting his friend. Larry's gaze shoots at us, as though Percy just called out an instruction. Larry obeys that instruction, twisting away, clambering to his feet, running into the last flare of light caught in November branches.

Cut. Now it's so dark I can no longer tell where Earth meets sky. They lost a lot of light preparing for this shot. It has to be the end. Something moves. Larry's jacket -- but I don't see him in it. It sinks to the green-black earth, then crawls toward a row of pines like judges.

His pale hand rises against blackness. The camera shakes. Percy shivers. He wants to get everything in during that last second of light, get all there is, hold it unchanging, pinned like a butterfly. The camera comes closer to Larry. His fingertips slip out of focus. They extend to within half an inch of a pine twig, drop of sap gold in the last light. But he doesn't reach it.

"The Search" is over.

The lights come up. No one applauds. Remember the last "Mary Tyler Moore Show," where they hugged like a family, then split up, went their ways, we never knew where..? Our lives went on. We died. They were always perfect in Minneapolis...

I see now that everyone here but me is a man. Each looks to be alone, as they rise and climb the aisles, fists stretching black leather pockets, grim, as though each one saw something different and private, and can't tell the others. Some glance at me. Their looks linger, as though suddenly they recognize me, as though they want something from me. I don't know any of them. Percy isn't here. He made the darkness in 1974. It visits him late at the garage. He imagines being here, maybe, to say a word about his life's accomplishment...

Why would the boys make a movie like that? I mean, why would Percy make it? I can't imagine Larry thinking up what I just saw. He would have contributed more to the Dr. Good and Dr. Slime movies. Why did they change from making funny things, just from that August to November? After "The Search" they never made another movie. We asked when they would; they just looked at us like we were passé. After that last scene in "The Search," what more could Percy do? He and Larry... You see, Percy was talented with movies and acting and all, but later, when someone could have given him a real camera and film, he didn't ask. Not that the manicure parlor and garage aren't an accomplishment. The garden's the most creative, but who sees it? Percy shouldn't be spending his life on it. Lord, You're supposed to have a reason for everything. I try to have faith that You do. Help me understand why my second son must spend his life waiting.

I haven't moved. New men fill a few seats around me. I assume they're new, though they look the same as the ones before. I will stay with them and watch "The Search" again. I think they need me.

Gray eye looks equally upon gold knives, green heart.

My son's athletic stride, eyes on the horizon, Percy with the camera saying, "Okay, you're looking for something, you don't know what it is," and Larry, fifteen and sincere, hope pinned on the future as Percy's will be again tonight. And yes, it has occurred to me that Percy, well, found Larry attractive. I just don't think...

I don't think "The Search" has to do with that, exactly. Maybe Percy wanted to be like Larry. Maybe he struggled with knowing that none of us can be anything than what we are. In "The Search"... When they made "The Search," maybe they both realized... Because I think Larry did, too... Larry wanted them to be alike, in order to save Percy, maybe. Maybe he thought, if Percy were more like him, he'd be saved... Maybe the reason they made movies, the whole reason they were friends... Because after "The Search," after that fall, they weren't so close anymore...

Maybe the whole reason our two families met was so one day our boys could learn...so that Percy could accept that he would never be Larry. And Larry...oh gosh...we're all such a grab bag of thoughts and feelings and kids get curious and adolescents are like aliens, anyway, and if Larry felt certain things I could see it, I could see it at the Trylon, a fall night in 1972 or '73, for the Cities of the Plain are gone, always gone down in glory while merciful God lets Flombania stand with its refugees, those of us with more vision, or less. Us buffalo, us pixies.

Percy, turn to Him! He is big enough to contain the hurt you'd feel, but you won't believe. Someone once told you you were outside of Him and so you went wandering beyond His golden city, and there you stay, believing only in...right there, prone on the ground, beautiful and vulnerable, captured forever acting just the way you told him to.

Then you tell him, "Quick! Run away!" And he does.

And you watch him go.

That should have been the end. Instead, you were left with this muddle of Heaven and Earth, human parts swimming in a sea of dark bees. Drowning in darkness Larry yearns toward the last sun-touched twig, but Percy keeps him from touching it. Time to put away childish things; let there be dark.

In the slow rise of yellow light, the latest scattering of men disperses. One or two smile at me. I want to seize their sleeves, stop their slow, weary climb out of my son's quandary, maybe even ask them home with me. Second son, third son, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, eleventh, twentieth... For home is what I know, I must go there, and once I'm there I will not leave for a long, long time.

I rise and stretch, re-opening my frozen skeleton.

On the sidewalk the light stabs my eyes; I put on dark glasses. Once I wanted a business. Not a manicure parlor but a shop with yarn and things, helping people with what thread to buy and suggesting patterns. But Dan didn't want me to work. And I didn't have a daughter, so all that I know dies with me, I suppose...

To long to be other than what we are is a sin. All sins lurk in that one wish to be someone else: despair, covetousness, all. To be other than what we are is, in the end, the only temptation. When we finally refuse it, then we accept a great gift.

Just one thing I don't understand. Larry was a reasonable kid; he'd go along with any- thing. Why didn't Percy ask just one time, "Let's have me be the hero this time, you be the bad guy"? Larry would have agreed in a second, and he'd have been such a fun villain!

Tonight I'm determined to call Percy and tell him I love him, and to have him hear it, really hear it.

Beep.

"Percy, darling, I just wanted to let you know how happy I was to see you yesterday." I tell him I saw "You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Slime" and "The Search," and that it was all beautiful. "Percy, you've always been so special in...in our lives, all our lives, and you always will be. Nothing can change that. Someone will come one of these nights, and he'll be a fine person. He'll love you, Percy, as much as I do, and I'll love meeting him. I know juggling the manicure and the garage and waiting like that is very difficult sometimes, but I pray you'll find peace. Don't neglect the garden, darling. He'll like the garden, he'll love it, when he comes.

"I hope I'll see you soon, darling. I have to rest since the operation, but I'll come by. I love you, Percy. And no pettifoggling! Good-bye, darling."

For a long time I hear nothing from him.

The weather turns, leaves fall.

One day I come home to a message on my answering machine:

"You won't believe this, I have peppers — just little ones... I keep waiting for them to fall off and they don't! The cold must have killed whatever was killing them. But I guess the cold's also going to keep them from getting big. They'll stop at a certain point, I won't be able to use them, but at least I finally got something! Last night I closed up early and went out and sat with them. Tonight again. I'm going to hang on as long as I can. I'll stay up all night the first frost, to be with them and watch them die. Well, sorry I took up so much space in your machine, but I have these little peppers, I thought my second mother should know. I'll be the only boy left with dead peppers in December! The only living boy in Flombania.

"Oh! One more thing. The other day, Maria, she works for me, handed me this card someone left on my night off. A business card, I mean; it said "Larry." No phone, no Internet, just 'Larry' -- in that kind of raised printing? I asked who left it, she said, 'Some kid.' I asked some more; she said he was nice, 'dressed funny,' looked kind of lost. Said he was looking for work. I think she thought I'd like, well, hired this kid for... But no. Anyway..."

And so he segués into one of his resigned good-byes. He doesn't say he loves me, but I know he does. I save the message to listen to again later on.

"Larry." How about that. Wasn't there 'some kid' at the Trylon? There must have been, there must have been several. Was one of them 'dressed funny'? Unemployed?

In the kitchen I heat dinner. How tired I am of eating alone. I get through it by pretending each time is the last. I tell myself, "I only have to go through this this one last time."

I eat, I wash my plate, fork, knife and glass, I turn out the light, go upstairs, undress and slip my white nightgown over my head. The fabric caresses like an arpeggio, setting off longing and joy. Dan, how could you leave me! When the machine beeps it's you I expect, calling to tell me there was some awful mix-up and here you are..!

I asked Larry about the boy with the card. He didn't know anything, but he said for me to say hello to Percy. "And I'll come see you, Ma, soon as I can." He sounded worried. I told him not to worry about me. I'm fitter than ever and I am perfectly sane. "We'll come see you, Ma," he says, "soon as we can figure out our schedules. It's crazy here..!"

Now Percy, darling, if I end up in that place where every hour they wake me, if you visit and the halls smell to high heaven and I'm staring out the window and I don't look at you when you say my name, just take my hand. It's all right if you cry when you say "Flombania." No, maybe you shouldn't. I'll be afraid something happened in Flombania and my friend Percy is hurt, or dead. I'll be certified -- by Larry, I suppose -- but I'll understand. He'll have to. While my first son signs the papers I'll have my second son sit by me and tell me the streets we freely walked are still there, the same, sunny and full of hope, waiting for us tomorrow.

©2002 David Pratt - Contributor's Bio