M.

1818
-------
London

White. White white white white. Blinding white. Brazen morning.
Scattered blackbirds in the sky. A cough in the distance - belonging to a young man.

High on a pigeon's wing, light enters the west dormitory.
White pillows stiff. White hands intertwined evangelically. Prophetically. Not a death. A sleep.
Severity. Slits deepened in the rough penumbras of a face unlike other faces. A still, stilled face.
Distilled. Years of wisdom separating the atmospheric pressures from such a face.
A face whose ugliness is disregarded because aesthetic conception is not welcomed. A face inviting truth.
Maximillian is not old. Maximillian is aging. He has spoken to the sparrows and they've assured him, the sparrow have, the sparrows have assured have assured have assured him that light will come on a pigeon's wing tomorrow.

And it does.
Light comes at once. Maximillian breathes in deeply, finally. With finality and wakes. He wakes up to light the way a person would punctuate their sentence. Carefully, timed, with patience, with the voluntary assumption of a foreseeable and nearly approaching future. A close future, a tiny prospective that is assured. For now.
Watching Maximillian wake is a manifestation. 

Fucking hell.
I been telling Mama to just drop it.
I know what I've done. I know I'm beyond any sort of waking up at this point. I know how deep it is. It's deep.
I know the bad blood that's recycled here. I know the weeping will reverse and I will feel waterfalls inside. Bobby used to reassure me. Bobby bobby bobby bobby would bobby would bobby would. Yes he would.
We would swing on cut up tires hanging from inside the Paradise. Paradise - a peninsula - conveniently separated we'd say. Convenience. Separation. that's all I know now. Smokin' fucking cigarettes by the barrels, no word from him whatsoever, just sitting here and hoping for an answer the way dogs wait for bones. The way bones wait for the grit. The way stars wait in invisible sunshine to bathe the cloaked rocks around their splendour. Dirt and stars. Fucking hell Bobby, I miss you. Where are you?
 Wit was coin. Coin was nowhere to be found. I got my vodka shots from them city boys who loved the freckles that exploded down my shoulders in the summers.
I've got lots going now. Fair fair fair fair swallowing men like air like air. fair like air. fair fair. fair fare. like air. eyre. jane eyre. JeeeeiiinnnEyre.

"You know Jocelyn, baby, you'll suffer one day"
Static. I'm chewing my pen. I don't understand what the bloody hell Proust means here.
"Ya Mama, I don't worry about that now. I told you New England is different. It's not like them dusty barren fields mamma. Boston's alive."
If I say this enough, she'll understand my reasons, my need for anonymity, for obscurity. For delicious separation. Joined still, yet distant.
"Jocelyn, Jocey baby girl, oh my baby"
My mother starts weeping. I hate her weakness. She's so stupid. I want to slam the telephone down, and scream.
"Mama, please be calm. What do you think Harvard means? You think it's all talk? Well it goddamn ain't. Them professors stroll with their tweed and know how to stand straight and all them things our folks forgot when the Civil War messed everything up. Now shush"
I can feel Mama rearranging her gorgeous hair and I can feel the spark she got in her eye.
"How fine are them folk?"
"They're special mama. I'll write more, I promise. This is costing loads" I slam the phone and breathe in.

I breathe out. I breathe out. Breathe out breathe breathe breathe breathe...
In a haze
In medias res

I look at my hands. I close them. They're fists. Bloody thoughts. Suffocating. Fur. My fur. My lipstick. Opera tickets are cheap this night because the understudies are performing for pennies.
I'll just get my ticket at the door, smoke a few, got my red dress, curled my hair, eyeliner. Black black black black. Fade fade fade.
I look in the mirror. Interesting. I like it.

I dash, the heels click. Clickity clliicckkkk-kkiityy. Scratch pavement. Thick thudding. I love it. Asphalt like hardened chocolate cake.
I find a bloke. He's tall. I just look up. I do a half smile. Like a tiny moon. It's too easy. The jerky crescent. The blokes here are too easy.
We make out beside the opera house. I smoke his cigs. Five. I had one left. Morning cig. He buys my ticket. I cry the entire night in his pillow.

Maximillian waits for breakfast. He waits for his waiting butler. He's waiting while someone is waiting on him. A gentleman. He sits poised on the recamier. Alert like a hunting dog. German short-haired pointer. He lives slowly. With a tacit smile. His smile is reassuring. His smile knows money. His smile has traveled and has slept in crisp linen. Known pressed lavender. 
The slender hand that alights on his left shoulder. Swish of chiffon. Pale lilac chiffon. Apples. She smells like apples today. With striking chestnut hair and cat eyes. Lady Ava. Blank face and tiny voice. She's empty. She's a vase. She's holding flowers. Maximillian knows she is the extent of his happiness. It's as if his entire life trajectory was placed in the hands of this new wife. She is the remote limit towards which he aspires. She is distant, yet present. Alive, yet ephemeral. She has defined the extent of his reach. She has placed her lovely body in an illuminated hallway and said, mouthing each word as if she were biting into meat, "this is the limit, my darling"
And he has understood. He has understood. Her mathematical certainty by virtue of her beauty suffices.

Maximillian will inherit the house on Gloucester Road. His brother will be sent into obscurity. Will not survive the bad blood. He will seek America. That will be later.
His brother, my grandfather.