Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of Bliss Review of Atheist Manifesto Review of The Stones Cry Out Film review of "Karov La Bayit" Creative Nonfiction A Reverence for Words By Virginia Hendry For the Wife of Bath and the Wife of Yeats, I Give Thanks By Sara J. Ford Birth By Clint Pearson Poetry Gong Fu By Tim J. Brennan Phases By Tolu Ogunlesi They Are Driving Their Cars Again, They Are Driving... By Anne Cammon Death of the Travelers By Abigail Grant Leaves By Matt Gee Fiction The Wood Splitter By Michael Phillips Boogie & Sarah Leigh By Sandra L. West What Happened to Matt Dillon By Chris Drangle Red, Manhattan, 523 By Beth Hogan Titanic Hat By D.K. McGill About the Contributors © 2007, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Vacant Policy Director - PA State Rep. Jess Stairs Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Senior Editor - Patti Kurtz Senior Editor - Neeldhara Misra Senior Editor - Mike Munsil Assistant Editor - Steve MacNeil Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs Blog Contributing Editor - Maggie Koster Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/subs.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit VolunteerMatch.

Red, Manhattan, 523 By Beth Hogan Ms. Margaret Mapp arose every day, promptly at 5:30 a.m. She placed her feet carefully on the cold tile floor and held onto the bedpost, “finding her legs” she called it. Everything was very slow first thing in the morning. Every movement had to be taken back from the stiffening clutches of the night, patiently regained like a forgotten dance step. She bathed sitting on the rubber tipped bench in the tub and let the warm water run over her and around her like a summer rainstorm. During the last thirty seconds of the shower, she turned the chrome faucet fully to the left until the water was as cold as the spring overflow of the Sacco River in New Hampshire where she had washed her dolls as a youngster and where she swam naked, on a dare, as a young girl. She could only bear the shock of the cold for a few seconds but it acted like a tonic for her and a more youthful mobility and alertness seemed to return as she moved toward the kitchen to make her breakfast. This was a special day for Margaret Mapp and she wanted to savor each step of her morning routine. Her son Donald would be picking her up at 10:30 for a doctor’s appointment followed by what she hoped would be an elegant lunch at the Briarwood Hotel and then, who knows, a short walk in the park, a gift of chocolates, the kind that thrilled her taste buds and made her teeth ache with the onslaught of delicious sweetness. Anything was possible. It was her 85th birthday and Margaret was preparing for a day of pleasures and delights. This date also marked the tenth anniversary of her move to this elders’ facility called “Pine Towers”, named for no other reason she could think than the single pine that stood twenty feet from the front entrance of the building like a lone sentinel. She allowed the memory to slip in despite its bittersweet nature. After all, she had adjusted finally, adjusted and grown fond of her neighbors. Bea across the hall baked and then shared manicotti with her every other Thursday and Margaret reciprocated with double chocolate fudge brownies every other Tuesday. Louise next door read three newspapers a day, followed CNN and was ever anxious to talk about current events and the state of the country and they chatted about these topics over tea on many afternoons. Dozens of shared kindnesses threaded through the ways that they all lived together and watched out for each other; for the occasional theft, for the danger signs of uncollected mailers or magazines and unanswered phone calls, or for the person not seen in a day or two. And she had gained a greater sense of independence. She couldn’t clearly say why this should be so, why this unattractive, aging square of concrete, these six floors of uniform beige paint and cement walls that wouldn’t allow a nail to be hammered into them, why the smell of urine in elevators and the slightly overripe scent of prepared ‘meals on wheels’ arriving at many doors, should evoke this feeling, but they did and so she didn’t mind thinking about it. It began, her fall from grace that is, with a bout of shingles. Sort of an elderly version of chickenpox, she found out, only more painful and debilitating and an occurrence that lasted for weeks and sometimes, the doctor had said, for months. For her son Donald it was an awakening. He had always viewed his mother as indomitable, the touchstone of dependability in his life and this sudden and what seemed, irreversible change in her health altered, entirely, the way that he viewed her. It occurred to Margaret as she thought about those months that Donald had easily been responding as much to his own life crises as to her illness. He was then a newly made middle school principal, newly divorced and as he had put it, newly impoverished father of two “with no rights and lots of bills”. The decision to move Margaret out of her house and into a “senior” facility was his idea. “Mother, I can’t be all things to all people. What with my new responsibilities, visitation with the kids and your illness, I really can’t take on one more thing. Right now, this house needs new porch steps and a paint job. The combination windows are so old I almost gave myself a hernia trying to pull the storms down. Moving to a place where everything is done for you will be easier all around. Then we can either rent the old place out or sell it. It’s up to you.” Margaret grunted at that remark, knowing that her choices had already narrowed down to nothing. “And we can add the money from the house sale to the living trust.” What a curious arrangement of words, ‘living trust’. Was there “dead trust” she had mused? She knew that once the house was sold, her hold on the money was all but gone. But then again, she had no use for it. And what did those things matter to her in the long run? In the end, she drew this conclusion without rancor and with the sincere desire that she should be able to leave some material proof that she had lived and accomplished something. That she had a son and a daughter-in-law and two beautiful grandchildren who could enjoy what she had gathered, pleased her even if she couldn’t quite imagine how the divorce would effect the parceling out of her goods. She felt this even though Donald was never a very strong boy, not emotionally. It was perhaps a mistake not to have adopted and given him a playmate and sibling to share his later years with but after her hysterectomy, her husband, Raymond, had been firm. “I always imagined that we would have three or four children Margie, and I know how deeply disappointed you must feel but I simply cannot take the chance of inheriting someone else’s biological or emotional disasters. Just too risky.” She had meant to say, “Isn’t child rearing always risky? Doesn’t your job require that you seek out and love all children, even or perhaps, most of all, the unwanted?” but she didn’t and let the decision stand as she had let many decisions stand in those days. He was a stubborn man and once he had made a decision, she had never known him to change it. Being a minister’s wife had not left much room for rebellion or self-expression. She took this into stride early in her marriage and learned to enjoy her time with her son and her work with the parishioners. Yes, indeed, she did call it work although never to her husband and mostly to herself but work it was. She had formed a poetry and drama group for the children that she called a “play group” and a book group for the women that she called a “prayer group” since they occasionally read non-fiction of a devotional nature. She developed a taste for some of the more obscure or, what the group would refer to as “high literary” poets before the war and had even gone to a few readings, unbeknownst to her husband. A long forgotten line surfaced from one of her old favorite poets, Gabriela Mistral; “Man, blind, does not know that where you pass, you leave a flower of living light.” Mistral was referring to children in the poem but Margaret had always found a broader comfort in the words. It was in good part her secret perusal of the lives and works of such writers that elevated her heart and made it possible for her to maintain the duties of her semi-sequestered life. Armed with this secret inner life, she became expert, she thought, at going around the object rather than climbing it. The amusement brought by this conclusion was cut short as the acrid smell of burning toast grabbed her attention. Please not the smoke alarm, she thought. None of the windows opened so she moved as quickly as she could for the air conditioner and turned it on ‘exhaust’ and then opened the oven door where the two offending objects lay on tin foil, blackened and smoky. Donald always asked her why she didn’t use the toaster but she preferred the oven broiler and most of the time it worked fine except for those occasions when she forgot. “ Do you fall asleep? Is that it Mom? I need to know.” “No I don’t fall asleep. I simply forget things. I get lost in thought. Don’t you?” Margaret knew that the time she had remaining was between old age and death. It neither frightened her nor robbed her of hope but what she did fear was the loss of independence. One of her earliest memories as a child was visiting her cousin in the Portsmouth hospital who had undergone an emergency appendectomy. She had been shooed out into the waiting room when too many visitors began to fill the four-bed room. Margaret set out along the corridor as if she were hiking the Appalachian Trail, peeking into each door as she went along. There were no real surprises, although she caught a look at an old man’s backside whose Johnny gave her more nakedness than she’d bargained for. He turned and yelled “hey you”. She giggled, dashed into another room and was confronted with a large metal cylinder with the head of a young blonde girl sticking out, her face crowned on all sides with mirrors. It was not just the thought of the iron lung or polio that terrified Margaret but the notion of living out your life trapped, paralyzed and utterly dependent on anyone and everyone for the most basic functions. With a towel, she waved away the smoke so that the alarm would stop sounding but just as she felt she had succeeded, the blare filled the air and startled her so that she dropped the two burned pieces on the floor. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph”, she cursed and then laughed louder than the blaring alarm. She hadn’t used language like that since she was a child, mimicking her Uncle Joe who was a devout Catholic and whose conversion from his Methodist birthright, as a gesture to his wife, made him an oddity, if not the black sheep in the family. “A real mackerel snapper” her Father had called him. When she had mimicked this frequently heard curse, her five-year old mouth was washed out with soap. “Jesus Mary and Joseph”, she said again reaching for her silver-handled cane that she raised into the air and used to press the button on the smoke alarm. It ceased its noise and she expelled a deeply held breath. Well now, she thought, I really must get dressed. She chose her clothes carefully the way that she chose her friends and her fruit and vegetables and her magazine subscriptions and the few remaining pieces of jewelry she had allowed herself to keep. Brown wool skirt, white blouse crisply creased from the laundry, her one extravagant habit, retained in deference to her gnarled, arthritic hands that could not easily navigate an iron. She checked herself in the mirror, fluffed out her white, permed hair picked up her lipstick and on each cheek made three dots, which she rubbed vigorously until her face took on a healthy, rosy glow. There were many adjustments to be made when Margaret first moved into this small three-room apartment. She had spent fifty years accumulating possessions and spreading them throughout an eight-room rambling Victorian and somehow she was expected to choose a handful of things to take with her into the final years of her life. She began the task with tears and anger, blaming Donald for pushing her into this position and resenting him for refusing to take any of her furniture or belongings. “Save what’s important to you, Ma”, he mumbled sheepishly. “I can’t cope with the furniture and stuff I already have.” It felt in the end like losing a lot of weight or shedding skin. She cleared out the mish-mash from all of the junk draws in the house, emptied closets, packed boxes full of clothes and books and unwanted kitchen utensils and figurines, mirrors and table lamps and end tables and bed ticking and gave them away. Most of the clothes went to a homeless shelter that she had heard of for women and their children. They took her linens and small pieces of furniture as well. She sent the books to the county correctional facility. What she couldn’t give away she threw out but not without a last, careful scrutiny that involved reviewing every era of her life as represented by the objects’ texture and smell and color, and even the gradual loss of those characteristics over time. Before she moved into her current apartment, she prepared the top draw of her bureau with stacking storage trays, like the kind used for fishing gear or by a seamstress for spools of thread and bobbins and small swatches of cloth. Into these spaces she carefully placed an array of objects that represented markers in her life; births, deaths, friendships, bright and intense moments crystallized, for her, within the shape of otherwise valueless and to the unschooled eye, bizarre objects. She felt the urge to review them today, as part of her birthday celebration. Having dressed, she lifted the trays carefully from the draw and unstacked them on her bed, giving herself enough room to peruse the content of each small cubby. One square held two of Donald’s baby teeth and a dental bridge made for her mother, the silver still untarnished and gleaming as it curled away from the enamel tooth in hooks, shaped to wrap around adjoining teeth. In the next square was a swatch that she unfolded revealing an ensign’s insignia. She thought at first that it must be from her husband’s Naval uniform, but she was positive that he was at least a lieutenant when he left service. Puzzled, she wondered where it might have come from. She was mildly troubled that in assembling these historical artifacts she might have misread meaning or confused the significance of an object. She was positive that Raymond had been a lieutenant. Another cubby held tarnished earrings that had once belonged to a set Raymond had brought home from Naples after the war. They were silver with blue stones meant to be aquamarine but of a quality that soon faded into a cloudy greenish color just as the silver overlay began to chip. She never said anything to her husband about it and he never asked why she didn’t wear the set. He preferred to leave the question buried with the rest of his war memories, compressed into an unreachable record of anguish. He had spent three years on an aircraft carrier tending to the spiritual needs of his shipmates. They began in the Pacific, left port in San Francisco, and ended finally in Tokyo Bay, following the Japanese surrender. The ship had been bombed twice. On the second occasion, Raymond had written: I feel strangely in need of my own counsel tonight but inadequate to the task. Earlier today our ship was hit by Japanese fire. I was on deck at the time having lent my sleeping quarters to my good friend and the ship’s radar man, Hal Bailey who had been displaced from his own bunk by the attack. Suddenly a kamikaze pilot hit the side of our ship just below the flight deck and as it turned out, hit my bunk with the sleeping Bailey, in it. It is as if…I don’t know, as if my life is stolen now. I don’t know how to make it right. Forgive me. I must pray for guidance as I hope you will pray for me. He must have carried the letter around for weeks finally posting it from Tokyo where it arrived to Margaret three months later, stained and slightly tattered but uncensored. He never mentioned the event again until he lay dying in the hospital, forty-some years later. “Margie, Do you remember Bailey that I told you about?” “Bailey”, she’d repeated vaguely. “The radar man” he’d rasped impatiently. Margaret recalled but was both puzzled and taken aback. “Yes, I remember. What makes you think of that? Why now, after all these years?” He spoke slowly pacing each word to arrive after the intake of a breath. “I ..felt … somehow …that young man was… cheated. I got something… I didn’t deserve. His friendship was very important….two years…we were shipmates. He meant so much…. and then …he loses his life… instead of me. It affected my faith… I couldn’t believe…for a long time. I felt like…he was punished…for our friendship…that it was wrong for us …to be so close…. Or maybe me….Maybe it was my punishment.” He paused having used more energy and oxygen than he had to give. “I hope …I was…not too disappointing… as a husband… to you.” She cradled him more tenderly than she had since they were courting. “Whatever you mightn’t have done, whatever enjoyment you didn’t take, it’s mostly yourself that you cheated, no one else. You’ve been a good husband to me. Just gather up those good moments and hold them close to you.” She wondered just how many he had but held his hand tightly and as he nodded to her, she felt his grip loosen until it fell away and lay slack on the crisp hospital sheets. Margaret dropped the earring on her quilt. She hadn’t meant to conjure those particular memories but of course it wasn’t something you could control, like a golf swing or a swim across the river. She shook off the gloomy tightness that had descended into her throat and chest and was preparing to delve into the next cubby like a child readying to taste a forbidden candy when the buzzer rang. She got up quickly to reach the buzz-in button and in her haste tipped one of the trays on the floor. “Jesus, Christ, Almighty”, she cursed for the third time that morning. “Why ever am I so clumsy today?” And she laughed again despite the scattered bits of this and that sent skittering across her bedroom and halfway onto the shiny green, bathroom tile. Just as she had feared, Donald entered the apartment while it was still lightly scented with the smell of scorched food and looked around at the scattered bits of debris strewn across the floor. He peered at her over the tops of his glasses like the bad humored school principal he was becoming and asked, “Are you o.k. to come out today or is this one of your ‘bad days’?” Margaret straightened herself from the task of picking up bric-a-brac from the floor. She couldn’t recall when exactly she had begun to have ‘bad days’ according to Donald’s canon. “Of course. I’m fine. Just these old tree stumps for hands that I have. Not as easy to hold on to things as it used to be.” Donald habitually rocked back and forth from sole to heel when he was particularly impatient and just as his heel came back down, a tiny crunch sounded. “Oh, now Donald you’ve stepped on one of my little treasures.” Donald reached under his heel and pulled off a small pin that had imbedded itself into the rubber. He looked at it closely. “One of Dad’s Naval pins I guess. Looks like a Radar insignia.” Margaret looked at him quickly. “Whatever makes you think that?” She’d regarded that pin a hundred times and never noticed that it wasn’t Raymond’s pin. How many times had she looked at all of these little objects and failed to understand their significance. She suddenly thought of Raymond’s friend Hal, “deathbed Hal” she had dubbed him in her mind and she tried to get her hands around the memory. Why would her husband have another man’s pin? Was that Hal’s uniform insignia as well? How much of it had she gotten wrong? Donald dropped the pin into her outstretched palm. “I used to teach History, remember? Kids get a kick out of learning about uniforms and all the other customs of each branch of the service. I remember this insignia. The technical ones are the coolest according to the kids. Why, what does it mean?” “Oh nothing dear, just some bric-a-brac from the war.” They drove silently to the doctor’s office with Margaret glancing occasionally at Donald’s silhouette and remarking to herself that he’d let himself go since the divorce. His thinning beige hair was unkempt and badly in need of a cut and jowls had begun to sag from his cheeks and neck. Too young, she thought not to care about how he looked. As far as she knew he wasn’t seeing anyone either and it was ten years since the divorce and at least half that since he’d been interested in anyone else. He turned to her as if sensing her thoughts. “Are you really O.K? Ma? You seem so distracted and forgetful lately” “Why of course I’m all right. As for ‘forgetful’, just wait until you’re juggling 85 years worth of memories.” She nodded her head slightly for emphasis, pleased with the point that she’d made. “All right Ma, but I want to let you know that I’ve made an additional appointment today to follow your regular check-up.” “What kind of an appointment?” She asked with a tone that was both sharp and fearful. “Now don’t get all uptight on me, Ma. There’s a geriatric psychiatrist in the same medical complex that was recommended to me.” She pushed her hands against the seat beneath her as if the balance of the car depended upon it. “There’s nothing wrong with me for a psychiatrist to ask questions about.” “Please Ma. It will only take twenty minutes for him to ask you a few questions. I just want to make sure that there’s nothing unusual about your memory lapses.” “I don’t have ‘memory lapses’, I simply get lost in thought is all.” “Humor me.” Donald reached over and patted her hand. “I’ll feel better to hear from him that you’re fine.” Donald covered her hand with his in an uncharacteristic display of affection and Margaret retreated into a fitful acquiescence. With Donald she needed to choose her battles. Their first stop was her internist and she shooed Donald away as she walked in to see Dr. Mack. Margaret had been seeing Mackie for twenty-five years and they talked like old friends making quick and obscure references to Red Sox baseball, the city elections, a local zoning controversy and the common annoyances of aging bodies. Mackie was at least seventy himself. “Well, Margaret” he said retying the back of her Johnny, if we can keep those hips of yours from turning into cement you’ll be living the good life until you’re a hundred.” “Or a hundred and one. What can I do, Dr. M. for my hips?” “If I were you, I’d get myself to the nearest heated, indoor pool a few times a week and exercise those joints. I promise you that you’ll notice the difference.” “Donald wants me to see a head doctor.” Dr. Mack looked around sharply. “Whatever for?” “He thinks I’m losing my memory” Mackie barked out a laugh. “Who isn’t?” “What should I do Dr. Mack?” “Are you happy Margaret? No bouts of sadness or listlessness? Any unaccounted for time lapses?” Margaret gave the question thought. “I’m reasonably happy I believe. My mind seems perfectly fine to me. It seems to me that youth just cannot grasp the centrality of memory in an old person’s life. They mistake reverie for illness.” He smiled as he handed her a prescription for her beta-blocker. “You’re quite the poet today, Margaret” “I wish I was, Mackie. I wish I had the right words for my son. I only agreed to see this Dr. Beamish to keep Donald quiet ” “Dr. Beamish eh. He’s all right, I guess - in the next building from here. I’ve referred patients to him myself. Just hold your ground, Margaret. And if you need some support in the midst of this, let me know.” Donald and Margaret walked the long corridor out of one building and into the next. “I’m getting hungry, Donald, I hope this won’t take long.” ”Just twenty, Mom, I promise.” ‘Dr. Harry Beamish’, the plaque announced and Margaret entered the small reception area with her hands held out slightly in front of her as if she were passing through a pitch-black room at midnight. She couldn’t recall at what point her eyes had begun to undermine the confidence in her walk but there it was. Probably she should use her cane more but she’d forgotten it. And she would never use a damned walker. She’d rather have wheels inserted into her rump and push herself around like a go-cart. She carried this image with her into the office, Margaret the go-cart. It wasn’t much to look at. The furniture was this side of shabby, the remnants of his first house, she thought or perhaps his first marriage. He looked a little worse for the wear himself. He held out his hand to her and took hers lightly as if it were he was afraid that she might break. His gaze was steady and friendly and his face unremarkable, even forgettable save for a scar she noted under his left eye. She resisted the urge to trace it with her hand. Margaret backed into her chair and Dr. Beamish backed into his tugging what she was sure was a cashmere sweater down over a slightly protruding pot-belly, smoothing the sides of his hair back and then folding his hands in his lap like a choir boy. “Your son tells me, Mrs. Mapp, that you’ve been having problems keeping track of a few things.” He stated this in a voice that was evenly modulated and careful. Margaret rearranged herself in her seat. “I prefer to be called Ms.” “Miss?” “No. Ms., Not Mrs. Or Miss but Ms. I’ve been a widow for nearly twenty years and I prefer it that way” “Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat and cast a sideward glance at Donald who simply looked befuddled. “I want you to understand, Ms. Mapp, that I will be asking you a few preliminary questions to establish a baseline from which we can work. Do you have difficulty sleeping at night?” “Not usually. I try not to nap during the day.” “Have you had feelings of sadness or anxiety lately?” Margaret pursed her lips. “Well Dr. Beamish, I typically don’t smile unless I mean it.” She cleared her throat quietly, “Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled” she began, “Whose falsehood left these broken-hearted;” She was really quite pleased with herself. This was going better than she ever could have expected. “That’s Shelley, Dr. Beamish, Shelley’s poem on Coleridge.” “Very nice Ms. Mapp. I’m an admirer of the Romantics myself. ” He re-crossed his legs. “But back to your emotional state. Do you feel sadness or a lack of desire to do things? Eating for example or walking about?” “I don’t mope around Doctor. I still cook for myself and take the taxi to the supermarket and read books and newspapers and even poetry if the mood hits me.” “All right Ms. Mapp. That’s fine. We are just going to play a couple of memory games so just relax. This is just as if I were hitting your kneecap to check your reflexes. Nothing more. Please state your full name.” Margaret pursed her lips in slight annoyance and said, “My name is Ms. Margaret Mary Mapp. Three Ms like the tape.” “Yes. Now tell me quickly who is the President of the United States?” “ Why, Bush 2. And I like him even less than Bush 1.” Margaret felt that she was in rare form. Dr. Beamish moved his chair to be directly in front of her. “I want you to repeat after me, Red, Manhattan, 523.” She began to form the word ‘red’ when somehow the sounds coalesced into bright pictures that flashed like a slideshow behind her eyes. The words shivered through her like a sharp, cold wind. She was thirty-three, plunked into the crossroads of her life, before she knew enough to fear old age, when possibilities still quivered on overhead branches like fragile blossoms. She was in New York City, the day that World War II ended. Raymond was still in Tokyo and she had come with a church group to Manhattan for an all day symposium on pastoral work with victims of war. She felt so happy to be outside of the confines of the parsonage where she had been sharing space with the wife and children of another minister as they waited to be transferred to Philadelphia. The war had tumbled them all together and then apart so that being in the bright, open excitement of New York on a late summer’s day, even overcast as it was, felt like the first spring of her life. In truth the pastoral symposium was a ruse, at least in her own mind. She had really come, had wanted with all of her heart to hear Gabriela Mistral speak and recite some of her poetry at Barnard College. Gabriela had just won the Nobel Prize in literature and Margaret adored her poetry. It was mid morning on August 14th, 1945 when Margaret boarded the Broadway 104 bus headed for the West Side. She was dressed in a wine-red, light wool suit with matching pumps. She tugged lightly on the waist-length jacket and smoothed the front of her skirt as she walked confidently down the aisle. It was nearly empty except for a young man sitting toward the back. She couldn’t say why she deliberately sat across from him in the two seats that faced each other; it was an impulse that felt as easy as repeating a series of words. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed with high cheekbones and a perfectly shaped mouth. Initially, he avoided looking at Margaret but she saw that he held a book of Mistral’s poems in his hand and she impulsively asked if he was headed for the reading. He looked eagerly at her then, his eyes full of warmth, and smiled. “Yes. I am. Yes. Are you?” She nodded and they commented that it was a remarkable coincidence. “My name is Tomas Paniagua.” He offered his hand and she shook it slightly, timidly. “I am Margaret Mapp,” she responded without reference to her marital status. Indicating the Mistral book he said, “This is her last publication. It has been out for a couple of years but it is not yet translated to English.” He patted the spot beside him on the seat indicating that she should sit next to him and opened the book. That she did so without hesitation always seemed extraordinary to Margaret when she thought of it later, just as it was extraordinary that they read poems together, he translating and she repeating the words and then emerging from the bus on 116th street holding hands and chattering about poetry like school children. Tomas was a schoolteacher in Manhattan, the son of Chilean immigrants and in love with poetry of every sort. Walking next to him she felt a heat rise up between the two of them as if they were standing over a hot air grate. It made her feel slightly light-headed and dreamy, yet she never hesitated for an instant from her decision to continue in the company of Tomas. They sauntered into the lecture hall where they sat together on hard, wooden-backed seats and continued to hold hands awaiting Gabriela’s entrance. Tomas turned over Margaret’s hand and placed his next to it. “You have such small hands,” he said. “Mine are big. I have my father’s hands. He worked as a shipbuilder in Chile and when he came here he worked in a garment factory. I feel soft and clumsy compared to him but he always told me that he wanted me to work with my head, to use the gifts God had given me.” Margaret nodded in response and left her arm intertwined with his as the reading began. When she took the podium, Gabriela’s presence owned the room. Her hair was close-cropped and plain, her voice was deep and resonant and her figure stocky and utterly commanding. Rather than the ethereal figure Margaret had imagined, Gabriela was solid and earthbound, a mortal that you could anchor your dreams to and be upheld. The poem that Margaret remembered was about color: Gentle red and blood Of rose and carnation--- when green grows weary, it leaps into play like a champion They dance, Pitted against each other, And who knows which is better. The reds dance with so much fire. They consume themselves with passion When the reading was over, Tomas stood in line to have his book of poetry signed but Margaret held back, shy, preferring her admiration to remain unspoken and anonymous. How she wished now that she had stayed in line, that she had followed through in what she had begun and met the poet. They walked onto the bus that would return them to downtown Manhattan. Margaret didn’t want the interlude to end but couldn’t grasp where it might go from here. Would she accompany him back to his room? She wasn’t even shocked that such a thought had entered her head. It seemed like the natural order of things. They would certainly exchange addresses and telephone numbers. As they held hands he was suggesting where they might have a light supper when it seemed suddenly that a floodgate had been opened and a sea of people were surrounding the bus yelling and banging on the doors, not so much wanting to get in as to have the passengers join them. Then Margaret caught the shout of a passing woman. ”The war is over”, she screamed at the bus. The driver, as if in response, pulled the bus to the side of the street slowly. “All you folks better get off here. I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere for quite a long time. You’ll get to where you’re going faster, if you walk.” Descending into the street from the stairs of the bus was like entering the rushing flow of a river and Margaret wrapped the jacket of her red suit close to her in a gesture of protection. Tomas was at her elbow when the tide of people seemed to increase suddenly and move her in a direction that she didn’t want to go. The current drew her along for blocks and she was helpless to stop it. Each time that she tried to break away from the push of the crowd, she nearly fell. She remembered looking for Tomas, and calling his name across the sound of hundreds of shouting, jubilant voices. She finally pushed through the crowd at a spot that was blocks away from where the bus had left her off but he was nowhere to be seen. She realized that somehow the Mistral book of poetry had ended up in her hand. She could still feel the pressure of Tomas’ hand around hers, the soft smooth skin of someone who has done no manual labor. And of course she had the book where Gabriela had written in Spanish, she later discovered, “To my fellow countryman with fondness”. For Margaret, that moment felt like the closing of a portal. Something different and glimmering and warm had materialized before her and had just as quickly disappeared. She thought of trying to reach him later, had looked in the New York phone book at the library but not found his name. A year or so after that, when she and Raymond were having a very difficult time, she called the New York Board of Education and said that she worked for a life insurance company and wanted to confirm Tomas Paniagua’s employment. They said that no such person worked for them. They could not provide her with additional information. For years after, Margaret would think that she saw Tomas in a theatre or in a department store or at a lecture and then she stopped remembering him at all. Moisture had gathered in her eyes and it was this phenomenon that brought her back to the drab reality of Dr. Beamish’s office. Both men were staring at her with concerned looks on their faces. “Ma what’s wrong? Where have you been?” her son asked in a grave tone. She cleared her throat. “You must excuse me, gentlemen. You would be amazed at the coincidental nature of the words that you spoke to me, Doctor. They caused me to recall a rather compelling incident from my life.” “Would you like to tell us about it?’ Dr. Beamish asked. If the tone of his voice had been less neutral, if he had sounded as if he were truly interested in the story and not trying to root out some underlying pathology, Margaret might have obliged. But the intense nature of the memory had left her feeling shaken and vulnerable. She had completely lost her early advantage with the doctor and she wanted the game to end now. She drew her hands together as if in prayer and said, “Dr. Beamish I appreciate your time and Donald I thank you for your concern but there is nothing wrong with me. You’ll forgive me Doctor for presuming to inform you of what it is like to be old but you must understand that I am gathering things up, like someone walking along the beach after a storm recovering bits and pieces brought up by the waves and trying to make sense of them. Red, Manhattan, 523 were remarkably familiar pieces. It brought me back to a time in New York when I lost something important. And it was 5:23 in the afternoon.” “Ms. Mapp, I know that you think you are fine and sometimes lapses in memory are nothing but simple lapses.” Dr. Beamish rolled a pencil between his hands as he spoke. ”On the other hand there could be something organically wrong with you. Or you may be in the early stages of a mental condition that will make it difficult for you to continue living on your own.” He and Donald exchanged a look full of mutual understanding. So that’s where we are, she thought. “Please, both of you. This is enough now. I don’t feel sick and at my age I don’t want to start being tested for every tiny symptom that raises its head. Dr. Mack can consult with either of you and tell you that I’m fine. I just pray to God he outlives me so that I can at least count on him as my witness. Donald, please take me home.” They were utterly silent on the ride back and Margaret felt a profound calm descend upon her as if she had awakened from a restful sleep. As she traced the veins on the back of her hand she pictured her apartment and the trinkets that were still half strewn across the floor and then the radar insignia that belonged to some strange man, a radar man that her husband had recalled on his death bed. She allowed a question to enter, a wild unutterable question-what if they had been more than friends? What if they had loved each other? What if her husband had been even more of a stranger to her than she could ever fathom? Rather than feeling distraught or aggrieved, this possibility increased her sense of serenity as if such knowledge would explain a great deal, that such a truth would release her from the nagging sense that she had failed in her marriage. Raymond had tried to tell her but was too reserved even as he faced death to allow her the ultimate intimacy of knowing who or what he loved. She wondered if it was possible to truly know another human being at all. Her mind drifted briefly again to Tomas and the bright intensity of those moments and not what might have been but simply what was. She decided that she would take herself out to dinner. In fact she would call Louise, her neighbor and invite her to go. They would order a taxi and Margaret would have strawberry shortcake for her dessert and perhaps she would buy herself some red carnations. And she would read some poetry before going to sleep.