Object Memory, and: Pandora and the Summer Au Pair, and: Ode to Ginger

Abstract

Object Memory, and: Pandora and the Summer Au Pair, and: Ode to Ginger Sharon Dolin (bio) Object Memory Wear the cap (knitted chocolate brown) and veer back to an alpaca farm in the Negevwinter so you almost feel the wallaby nibble, claws clutching your hand full of seeds as it withdrew its ouchand after, your lover withdrew inside the whirlwind. Let the windowopen onto a fossil field you're being dragged back [End Page 71] to something and is everything you touchunpurgeable of this fog-tissue so it sits in your palmrides your sickbed-head, holds your teacup with the neuronsfolding you in folds? Take the wood-carved loon sonewly still: smaller than your pinky it rests on your deskinside your unrest gathering last summer's lakeside dust- ups. Or that sponge you just scavengedfrom the beach in St. Pete: tiny pocked breath-holes gray soggy tube hardened in air- already pipes the stroll with a petulant five-year-old. Why else clasp on this silver braceleteach morning like a talisman plucked from inside a porcelain persimmonyour husband gifted you? Eight linked dime-sized coins embossedwith Chinese characters your dad brought back from San Francisco when you were twelve: fú-lù-shòn-quán-vu-yi-jí-xiáng (Good Luck-Wealth-Longevity-Everything-as You-Wish-Auspicious-Auspicious!), [End Page 72] Aren't you triply pleased:by its resounding fortune, by the jingle the coins make each time you shake your wrist, by the private song Memory makesinside each uplifted thing? Pandora and the Summer Au Pair That you are her boss bemuses her,reclining on the overnight flight, tuckedinto her diary, disapproving of the balloon pants you wear (so dowdy, hiding her belly). Upon landing:haughty looks, hands forever on hips as thoughabout to launch into an aria of I'm not really with them. Can anyone fail to admire her thick tresses spunup with chopsticks against the Italian sun,darkly cascading in the Riviera dusk, tight Armani-sheened pants highlighting hips?(The kid I'm sitting for a complete bratI do cartwheels for on the lawn: What form!) Has anyone ever seen such perfect skin before?She thinks not. Watch her braid stray floweringweeds into a garland for her hair. (Some man [End Page 73] has got to notice.) Outwardly cool, her yearningsunder cover, she barely speaks through dinner,only rising to fetch the toddler. When she leaves her diary lying under a chair in the boy's room,how can you not open it? She's the perfectcaricature of a doting Jewish mother my sister and I would have laughed over. I cringe when she ordersthe waiters in imperious Italian while her husband sits theredrinking quietly like a Buddha. Never mind. This afternoon I met the Fiat tycoon-or is it Olivetti or Barilla pasta-it hardly matters; He's invited me to Sardegna on his privateyacht! He's the kind of man-so rich and handsome who cares if he's my dad's age-I've always dreamed of meeting . . . Hereeven you stop reading: embarrassed by the schoolgirl gush just asshe, terrified she's left the book and you might read of her disgust, tries the lock-it's well past ten-hammers at the door.Now who would have opened to that knockinstead of feeling affronted at being disturbed at such an hour and crying, "Go away! You wokeus up!"-or admitted to reading it? And whowouldn't have held such confidence like a lost key in their back pocket while she's locked out,reduced to waiting upstairs in her room-shaken,insomniac-till morning to recover her spiral book. [End Page 74] Entering the breakfast room unrushed, you say, "Oh,was this what you were missing?" holding it out. "Yes."Profuse apologies for having knocked, she glances up: the book returned over espresso cupswith a blank look confirms it unread.You're wondering now why you didn't guess when opened her book becomes a box, unleashingEnvy, Spite, Shame . . . and...