Between the sheets
“But how could it have worked?” Jörn asks me Sunday while the pale early light began to proclaim a dove colored dawn. I am still warm and we are still close, pressed, connected to him after the nice way he woke me
“How what?” I ask with sleepy head
“You say the three of you ….”
he prompts ….
I ….slowly breathe and close him out ….slowly withdraw into myself like a turtle
In my mind ….we are on the beach …. but why is Jörn suggesting ….why ….I detach from his body; like a cork it makes a sound. I turn my back to him and look toward the view from this window ….this window pulls my thoughts towards the ocean because I can see it is somewhere beyond this window in my mind’s eye. This way faces the ocean ….
“He was a politician ….” Jörn says coaxing me to talk as he contemplates. And as I say nothing , he says, “Duva?”
I just look up at him. I don’t know what he expects me to tell him. And as he looks back at me I think again about the barn house. How it reminded me ….coming up the walk. I saw something. Maybe it was the light. How the sun shone off the snow on the roof in that way ….it was Josef—an image but it was not how he looks now and I think I only know it is him because of how it feels ….it is often said we reincarnate in groups, not always but it is common to bump into more than one again
Because of the buffer of this thought I ask,
“what?”
“He was too famous, how could it have worked?” Jörn turns me so my body faces him again, and prompts again, “a religious man and the social reaction had he married your mother!”
So I think about the smeden and I think about lifetimes and how some seek power while others seek love or wisdom
I say,
“I was a child, Jörn. I heard the plans, yes. What was he thinking? I know he loved her—I think he wasn’t thinking when it came to her. Do you know my mother was upset he only wrote two sentences about her in his autobiography!” [was not as if he’d broadcast after all the avoided headlines but my mother wanted —acknowledgment….]
“He put her in there….” Jörn seems to say more to himself
“But she got her own paragraph….” I sigh now as I tell him that ….because I am remembering him the way I knew him. I know what he wanted could have worked had what happened later not had happened; my error that destroyed the dream.
….finally I decide to say,
“Jamaica ….” I just look back up at Jörn and shrug, “how could it have worked? Where would we have lived? To escape the spotlight…. just off on his boat….bye bye USA; five minutes, just zip off.we did that all the time. He did! You should know about that as a Viking,” I half tease him but shrug, “he was very grand.”
“How did they meet?” he pulls me back to him and draws the sheets over me with him, confining me within his warm cave
“At a party in Greenwich Villege—I’ve told you this story! She was just twenty one and she never heard of him!”
“Tell me again,” he says
“It was thrown by a mutual friend. Someone she knew from Pratt….” I recall the story as it’s legendary to me how my mother first told me. “So when he arrived everyone rushed to meet him except my mother. Which is the reason he walked right over to her! She said he wore this big black coat that she said was red satin inside and he wore it like a cape— and he swept it open wide when he walked towards her and bowed!”
“So she did talk to you about him ….?”
No….
Strange.
Here I must pause
I almost laugh ….look at Jörn slowly as I carefully start to say ….
“It was years later, Jörn ….we were in Amsterdam, I must have been about fifteen…? We were talking about something else ….” I go a bit blank for a moment ….i only feel myself sitting there in our Dutch kitchen
now I say more to myself,
“I was telling her about a story …. she finds out she is the illegitimate daughter of a Russian king ….stories ….one I was writing ….and one I had read ….” I get chills but just hold my breath till it goes away.
Finally I exhale. I smile and look up at Jörn
“You see….? I didn’t remember by then anymore ….. but….that is when it all started to unravel ….Barcelona ….yes, that was the very first time ….after all those years she told me about him again … she said, ‘I’d be a widow now ….’ And then she said, ‘one day I’ll tell you everything….’ but of course she never did.”
“He was much older than your mother,” Jörn comments
“He was the same age as her father —my grandfather ….”
dearest Electra …. complex ….and dna memory
But Jörn says to himself
“for twenty years they kept it a secret ….”
“You don’t understand,” I try to laugh but it is forced, “it was my grandfather who was against her seeing him! Forbidden! They were a nice Jewish family from a good neighborhood in Forrest Hills— back then, it was not at all shabby and he was an accountant so they lived well but Ethan Rhys Jones was not for his daughter to marry. It was not just the racial thing but maybe it was too ….they forced her to marry someone —else— and someone they approved of ….he did actually ask my grandfather for her hand in marriage! My grandmother was outraged! —it is hard to imagine —isn’t it? Not long ago but ….so different then, their world then but ….she said that day in the kitchen….he was the love of her life.”
I shrug and look up at Jörn
