Jocey is looking through photographs. A seagull in the corner of a photo. Staring intensely, blindly, ahead. A twisted little seagull so fragile and grey.
So grey and fragile. Like a piece of glass. Like a piece of glass.
She remembers the moment he quit the toy factory. Came home burdened with the news and heavy with hope. Was it hope?
Her mama was terrified. They'd be forced to move back in with her grandparents in Albuquerque. She'd leave Bobby behind. She'd leave the whispering house behind. The whispering house with the softer corners and willowy curtains and the tiled pool in the back.
-
Grey and muted but she sees him mouth these words, in her mind, in another time, on another planet. Maybe Pluto. Pluto isn't even a planet.
"Hey Jocey! Check out that one!"
Bobby's freckles pop and his boyish-young-man hand points to a cloud. He's sleepy but quick like Hermes. They're hanging in the pool. It's September and the leaves clothe the chlorine water in the tiled pool. Every water drop - under a yellowy brown skin.
-
Her dad was American but you could see the Dutch crinkle in his eyes and the broad shoulders holding up her sky. holding up the sky.
Jocey only got sentimental about her father. The rest of the world could melt away. But he stood apart from the world. She imagined him, celestial and silent, coloured green and holding an ancient scroll in his left hand. Dispensing not wisdom. Dispensing the learned life.
He would sit side by side with her. She was his equal. Her father taught Jocie to be his equal.
"Don't be afraid Jocie. We will read together and you will learn and then you will become a part of two worlds"
Her father quit the toy factory so they could move to New Hampshire. Something about Ted's (his brother) car business going under and him needing to do the honourable thing for his family.
"Your family. Y-o-u-r family! Always your family. Well of course! You damn kept your mouth shut when daddy said come into our family in the South. You lying sack of shit Joe! Where Daddy's ranching made them damn midwesterners skip goddamn Texas - goddamn Texas - to come into Raton"
Daddy this and daddy that. Everybody has a daddy.
It was all about some move or another. Joe's move down South when the ranch made Jocey's mom's side of the family millionaires back in the day. Billionaires maybe. Who knows. They had more money than cattle. And they had a lot of cattle.
This kind of fight went on for a long time.
America, drowsy and sleepy with her nightie on, hugged her long legs tightly to her. Fell asleep for the night.
The night breathed out. One breath. Daddy was on the porch. Brooding. Steel resolve.
Jocey has always felt her mom's side of the family was the stronger force. It had been the hurricane that arranged things into place without asking questions. Smack cattle ranch. Smack money. Smack Raton. Smack New Mexico.
What even was New Mexico for a New Englander like her father? What had the move meant?
When she closed her eyes, dizzy, she imagined she was thinking with her father's mind.
She saw the moments in his life put out before him like a puzzle, like a chess game. The end of something. The beginning of something else. That was it. The opening and closing of a flower.
*
Ryan had finished another movie out in Canada. He was driving to some hotel tired, groggy, a little coked out and a little hungry. Hungry. When Ryan first met Jocey she was shining like a penny. She was American and he was Canadian and maybe she knew deep down this was all so silly but her family had been moving up and down that goddamned country that he felt like she owned it all.
He felt Jocey was his America.That her beautiful northern face. No, that her beautiful Northeastern face was resting on his lap up in frozen Ontario near some lake or another. Nestled to him.
Her feet reaching all the way down to New Mexico, stretching lazily over Mexico and dipping her toes into The Gulf of California.
"Your family. Y-o-u-r family! Always your family. Well of course! You damn kept your mouth shut when daddy said come into our family in the South. You lying sack of shit Joe! Where Daddy's ranching made them damn midwesterners skip goddamn Texas - goddamn Texas - to come into Raton"
Daddy this and daddy that. Everybody has a daddy.
It was all about some move or another. Joe's move down South when the ranch made Jocey's mom's side of the family millionaires back in the day. Billionaires maybe. Who knows. They had more money than cattle. And they had a lot of cattle.
This kind of fight went on for a long time.
America, drowsy and sleepy with her nightie on, hugged her long legs tightly to her. Fell asleep for the night.
The night breathed out. One breath. Daddy was on the porch. Brooding. Steel resolve.
Jocey has always felt her mom's side of the family was the stronger force. It had been the hurricane that arranged things into place without asking questions. Smack cattle ranch. Smack money. Smack Raton. Smack New Mexico.
What even was New Mexico for a New Englander like her father? What had the move meant?
When she closed her eyes, dizzy, she imagined she was thinking with her father's mind.
She saw the moments in his life put out before him like a puzzle, like a chess game. The end of something. The beginning of something else. That was it. The opening and closing of a flower.
*
Ryan had finished another movie out in Canada. He was driving to some hotel tired, groggy, a little coked out and a little hungry. Hungry. When Ryan first met Jocey she was shining like a penny. She was American and he was Canadian and maybe she knew deep down this was all so silly but her family had been moving up and down that goddamned country that he felt like she owned it all.
He felt Jocey was his America.
Her feet reaching all the way down to New Mexico, stretching lazily over Mexico and dipping her toes into The Gulf of California.
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