Alison McGhee

Here is a father story.

Once, a father called his daughter on her 33rd birthday.

“Happy 33rd,” he said. “Happy 33rd.”

Pause. Pause. Pause.

His daughter stood by her answering machine, wondering if that was the end of it. Then came a clearing of the throat and a mumbled I love you.

The daughter opened up the answering machine – this was when answering machines were things, not disembodied cyber messages flying through space – and snatched out the tape on which her father’s message was recorded. She put the tape away in a drawer.

Twenty years later she still has it. She showed it to me, an old Radio Shack cassette tape with a pencil mark at the exact place where her father said those words.

Blessings on the fathers, all the fathers.

The fathers who are able to say “I love you” easily and often, and the fathers who aren’t. The father who pushes his child on the swing, higher and higher, and the father who lets his child hitch a ride on his wheelchair.

The father who scratches out a budget in pencil on lined yellow paper, the better to show his child where it all goes when she says in teenage superiority, But where could it all go? How can there be none left at the end of the month?

The father who comes stumbling out of his baby’s bedroom late at night and throws himself into a chair, saying, I spend half my life in a dark room, singing.

The father who untangles his child’s bobber from the weeds where she has cast it yet again, and the father who stands  his child on his feet to dance her around the room.

Blessings on the father who wore blue coveralls on from the barn and washed up in Lava soap. Blessings on the father who grew old and forgot where he left the car.

On the father who let his child twirl on the stool at the diner. Who pulled her up the hill on the toboggan. Who taught her how to make scrambled eggs.

And blessings also on the father who screams at his child. On the father who let his children live through all those Christmases without him. On the father who never wrote or called.

Blessings on the father who cried on  the plane home from visiting his first grandchild, who told his wife I wish I could do it all over. I wish I had been a better father.

Blessings on the father, not hers, who appeared to her in a dream, nodding from the other side: Keep going, you’re doing a good job.

Blessings on the fathers, known and unknown. Blessings on the  fathers, and blessings on their sons, and on their daughters.

You are bad at many things, but the subject of today’s badness is meditation, at which you are particularly bad.

How you long to be a good meditator, like some of your friends, the ones who have been meditating for thirty or more years and can call up that pervasive sense of calm whenever they’re in trouble, or self-doubting, or afraid.

You’re in trouble and self-doubting and afraid much of the time.

You want to live in the present moment. Has that not been your goal your entire life? You remember being a baby, looking through the stair railing, knowing how fast it would all go by, and thinking remember this.

You remember riding your bike as fast as you could down Anken’s hill, looking at the speedometer you got for your birthday, seeing it read 35mph, feeling a giant surge of life, and thinking remember this.

You remember clutching your books to your chest as you walked through the alley on the way to the firehouse, and realizing that you were eleven years old and everything – everything – was possible to you, and thinking remember this.

And so many other moments. That night on the beach with the quilt. That morning with the fishing boat in the fog. The way that old man dropped the knife and looked around the table to see if anyone had noticed. How you came out the door and they were gone, and how you called after them. That late night listening to Nick Lowe sing long-limbed girl. Waking in your car in the Everglades that dawn. How the baby boy bent over and laughed and called the unfurling fern a dinosaur.

And these moments are still with you, those feelings still come to you, even at this age that you are right now, which is not eleven. You do remember. You with your faulty and random memory (“Very nice to meet you! . . . oh, we’ve already met?. . . of course, of course, now I remember. . . not) – these things, those days, those moments, you remember.

Return to the breath. When your thoughts stray, gently return to the breath. Focus on the breath. Breathe in. Breathe out.

But that is your breath, you think. That bike ride, that night on the sand, the look on the old man’s face. Long-limbed girl, where are you now?

You picture a telephone operator from the 1940’s, speaking into her microphone, plugging into this line and then that line and then that other line. That is you, all the ages you ever were, all the times you ever lived through.

Right here, right now, you are thousands of glimmering moments.

Breathe.

Three new books all came out in the last month.

Why all in the last month? Because when it rains books it rains them in threes, I guess.

Always is about a dog and his girl. I love dogs, in case you couldn’t tell from reading this blog, and this is my homage to doghood.

The idea originally came from a three square-inch pencil sketch that Pascal Lemaitre sent me: a tiny dog guarding a large castle.

The tiny pencil-sketch dog reminded me of the valiance of dogs, their fearlessness when it comes to guarding their homes and their humans, and how – unlike their humans – dogs are only and always themselves.

I wrote the words, Pascal the artist did the lovely pictures, and thar she blows: Always.

* * *

Julia Gillian and the Quest for Joy is the second book in a trilogy that Drazen Kozjan, another amazing artist (how do they do it? I break out in a sweat when I try to draw, say, a smiley face), and I are collaborating on.

Julia Gillian is a ten-year-old with a first name for a first name and a first name for a last name, and everyone always calls her by both names, which is something that she enjoys.

And which I enjoy too, because that’s one of the perks of being a writer – if you want to enjoy yourself sometimes, you can.

Julia Gillian has a St. Bernard (see, I told you I love dogs, which is another perk of being a writer – if you love something, you can stick it in a book) named Bigfoot. His name was originally Tiny, but I abandoned that in favor of Bigfoot, partly because a friend told me that Tiny was too cutesy when referring to a St. Bernard, and partly because I’ve always wanted to find Bigfoot tracks in the snow.

Her best friend besides Bigfoot is a boy named Bonwit Keller, and they’re both going into fifth grade, and they’ve been looking forward to learning the trumpet (which they can do once they’re fifth-graders) because their dream is to become world-famous jazz trumpeters and tour the world together, especially Paris.

At any rate, what more can I tell you about this book? Probably a ton, but I stink at synopses, and besides, if I told you more then I’d be giving away some of the mystery, which would detract from your pleasure in reading the book. If you found it pleasurable at all, that is.

So there you have it: Julia Gillian and the Quest for Joy. Drazen’s and my previous book together, Julia Gillian and the Art of Knowing, is just out in paperback, too. Affordable!

* * *

And finally we come to Song of Middle C, in which our unnamed and extra-confident piano-playing heroine suffers a crisis of confidence once she’s finally up on that stage.

Scott Menchin, another artist (so many great artists in the world, and I’m jealous of all of them and what they can do with their pencils and pens and brushes) and I collaborated on this book.

Piano recitals were a formative part of our childhoods, and this is our ode to long-suffering piano teachers everywhere.

I simply cannot tell you anything more about this book and its unnamed heroine because if I did I would totally be giving away the ending, but suffice it to say that the piano piece she plans to play (four P’s in a row, wow – we call that alliteration, don’t we, even though it was unintentional alliteration) is called “Dance of the Wood Elves.”

And she’s wearing her lucky underwear.

And she says HOO BOY a lot, which is something that I really enjoyed saying while I was working on this book, which is yet another perk of being a writer – if you’re taken with a particular phrase at a particular time in your life, you can sprinkle it liberally throughout the book you’re working on.

Of course, one of the un-perks of being a writer is that sometimes you become disenchanted with a particular phrase, but if you’ve sprinkled it liberally throughout a book, and the book gets published, you’re stuck with it for life. Something to think about.

So there you have it – which is a phrase I know I overuse but I can’t seem to help myself – three new books, all at once.

What else am I working on? Good heavens, I don’t even know how to answer that. I keep trying and trying to make two picture books that I’ve been working on for a year good, but so far, no luck.

And I’ve been poking at an adult historical novel set in Martha’s Vineyard and Boston for, oh, like, eight or more years now, but so far, no luck.

And I’ve been working on a comedy for, oh, like, six or so years now, but so far, no luck.

So can it still be said that I’m working on these books, even if there has been no luck thus far? Now isn’t that a big fat question. Let us turn to our dead authors and ask them.

What Would Flannery O’Connor Say in answer to that big fat question? A big fat NO, no doubt, which is an answer I prefer to discard. Besides, she was extremely curmudgeonly. I bid you adieu, Flannery, in favor of James Joyce.

What Would James Joyce Say? His answer, for our purposes here, will come straight out of Ulysses, and here it is:  “and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Thank you, James, for that vote of confidence. I salute you. And in your honor I shall watch John Huston’s The Dead tonight, right after the baseball game.

You’re thinking about pigs.

You grew up with pigs.

You raised them, if “raise” is the right word for what you did, which was toss them buckets of slops every night and watch them root about in the dirt and grass and then in the broken-down barn, where they broke it down more with those astonishing snouts of theirs.

Pigs are what you’re thinking about right now.

You’re remembering them as babies, piglets in the back of a dirty white truck.

Hauled one after the other over the tailgate, knives flicking off marbles as the squeals rise high.

A sow lying on her side, mauled by miniature snouts smelling milk.

As a child’s bank, with painted curly eyelashes and a slot in a high pink back.

Galumphing across a field to a bucket of mash and tight whistled call of Soooo-eeeee, which actually is the way those who raise pigs call their pigs home.

As going to market or staying home.

As eating and enjoying egg shells, coffee grounds, and corncobs.

As having roast beef.

As taking half an hour to mate, as your young daughters pointed out once at the Oliver Kelley Farm.

As going whee whee whee whee all the way home.

As heat-seeking mamas lying on a sun-soaked country road, stopping the schoolbus.

As Spamtown raw material, slaughtered daily in numbers five times higher than the highest number guessed by a tableful of friends the other night.

As thinskinned purses with gold clasps.

In labor, huge and groaning, at the Miracle of Birth Barn at the State Fair, while humans gather around to point and stare.

As the small, anxious friend of Pooh.

As having none.

Why is this extremely tall hairless man grinning so happily as he holds his orange bowl? Perhaps because he loves the color orange, and orange is not that easy to find in a ceramic bowl, and yet here he is, having found the perfect orange ceramic bowl.  Merriment!

Or, maybe the tall hairless man is grinning at a funny text message on his cell phone. Perhaps he grins because he just got new glasses, and until today he had no idea just how beautiful and sharp-edged the world is. Or maybe he just did his laundry, mixing whites with coloreds, and he loves the new grayness of his formerly white t-shirt.

Maybe he’s happy because he has no hair, and he relishes the thought of all the money he’s saving on shampoo, conditioner, and “product.”

In truth, he was placed here on this page because the orange bowl is a stand-in for orange juice, and orange juice – not the tall hairless man in his grayish t-shirt – is the subject of this post. Yet the writer of the post, in her search for orange juice images on the internet from which to download a free, no-copyright-permission-necessary orange juice image, was mildly dissatisfied with all the images she found.

Too sterile, most of them. Perfect orange juice being poured into crystal wineglasses, or perfect orange juice displayed on a tray containing a perfect breakfast, about to be presented to someone wearing a perfect nightgown, sitting up perfectly in a perfect bed.

Also, no pulp. This is a subject on which the writer of this post can wax eloquent, or at least obnoxious. Why is it that so few citizens of her country enjoy orange juice with pulp in it? Why do most cartons of fresh-squeezed, not-from-concentrate orange juice have that NO PULP sign proudly emblazoned across the top?

In her grocery store, NO PULP or PULP FREE takes up the most room, followed by SOME PULP, and lagging far, far behind is the little nearly-hidden row of MOST PULP.

What are you afraid of, people? Despite the fact that even in her own home she is the only pulp drinker, she still buys MOST PULP. You don’t want pulp, strain it. Pulp is what gives orange juice its tastiness, its texture, its tangibility. (Is tangibility a word? Suddenly it doesn’t look right. If it’s not a word, it should be, so it’s staying in.)

She grew up drinking orange juice rarely. Theirs was a frugal household and it was expensive. When she drank it, it was stirred together from a can of frozen concentrate mixed with three, or was it four, cans of cold water.

In her late teens she tasted fresh-squeezed orange juice, and the orange juice of her past immediately and permanently receded down a dusty lane labeled “made from concentrate.”

Later, in her mid-twenties, at a terrible time in her life, she spent some time in Miami at a friend’s apartment.  He went to work in the morning and she sat on his balcony eating bowls of cereal and closing her eyes and tilting her face up to the sun.

She also played John Fogerty loud, extremely loud, so loud that to this day she still can’t believe no one called the cops to make her turn it down. When Centerfield came on she danced around the apartment, which her friend had divided in two with a tall navy blue curtained partition. She used the partition as an unreflecting mirror and danced in front of it.

From the balcony she could see across the street to a shack from which a family sold fruit. It was hot – it was Miami – and the sun beat down on the tin roof of the shack. One day, craving fruit, she went down to the shack. Bananas turning brown, melons going soft, papayas and mangoes and starfruit, which she loved and had not seen since she lived in Taiwan.

And orange juice. Orange juice from a juicer, surrounded by piles of oranges and squeezed into a big jar with a piece of tinfoil laid haphazardly across the opening. Juice that flies buzzed around, and bees. Juice that was not refrigerated and never had been. Juice that she could hear almost all her friends whispering in her ear not to buy, do not buy that, my God the germs, look at those flies.

She bought it and took it back across the street, high up into the apartment, out onto the balcony. So what if it was germy? Didn’t people need germs? That would make them strong, fighting off the germs.

She drank it down. All that pulp. Faintly warm from the sun. The best juice she’d ever had.

Some memories are defining. Did she know back then that it would be that juice, from that shack, that juicer, those flies buzzing around, that she thinks of, to this day, when she thinks “orange juice”?

Now she drinks her non-cold orange juice from the glass she lets sit all morning on the counter and thinks about that family, looking at her in bemusement as every day she bought the juice, the going-bad fruit. John Fogerty blasting so loudly he drowned out her thoughts, which was what she wanted. That balcony and the sun. The dark blue curtain that she couldn’t see herself in.

She buys one a week, usually on Wednesday, which, even though it’s her least favorite day, somehow seems to contain more lottery juju than Saturday.

She lets the machine do the picking. She used to have a complicated system of birthdays, ages, personal lucky number and multiples thereof, but then she decided to throw caution to the winds and let the machine, in its infinite wisdom, decide what was best for her.

These days it’s Powerball, because if you’re going to dream, you might as well dream big, right?

Back in the day, when she and Oatie and the roaches shared their fourth-floor walkup in Boston, she bought Megabucks. Once a week she and Oatie would walk down the block to Joby Liquor, where Oatie would buy a six-pack of cheap beer and she would buy her lottery ticket.

Nowadays she buys her Powerball at Winner Gas, at 44th and Nicollet. Winner is a lucky store with a lucky name, and besides, she loves Winner Gas. Everyone who works behind the counter is nice, and the store is a cross-section and meeting place for all manner of human beings, which is one of the great pleasures of urban life. Or should be.

Once bought, the ticket goes straight into its special powerball compartment in her fat black wallet. She doesn’t look at the numbers, because why should she? She has given over her lottery fate to the machine.

Now commences the dreaming, but only after she has plotted out how to get her sweetheart to share the many millions that are about to come their way. She’s done her research. The back of the ticket must be signed before the millions can be collected, in the form of that enormous check that will be presented to them on television (the thought of which she hates, but she’ll do it anyway because, after all, it’s a small price to pay).

So she will have to persuade him to sign the back of the ticket too. Despite the fact that he is ardently against powerball on principle’s sake, and despite the fact that he scoffs at her Wednesday purchase, she feels sure that she can get him to sign his name by dangling before him the thought of all the cool things they will then be able to do for all the people they love.

That will get him.  And if it doesn’t, she’ll tell him that she won’t collect the cash without him. She will rip this ticket into tiny little shreds unless you sign your name on the back. To show how serious she is, she will even begin to rip it a tiny bit if he won’t sign.

If he still, still refuses to share the cash, will she take the money anyway? This is a moral dilemma over which she has pondered more than she wants to admit. The answer is probably, but then she will buy him all sorts of  things which he will not be able to resist, such as  a flat in Paris, a small herd of goats, and a lifetime supply of chili dogs.

Now that that problem is solved, she can begin to dream. What first?

The financially prudent thing to do would probably be to put it all into an account right away and spend the interest only, but surely winning the powerball means a little fun is in order. How pathetic that would be, to win the powerball and just be all grim about it.

First they will take care of their families. How do you take care of your family best, though? Do you pay off everyone’s mortgage for them? What if some are doing fine financially and others are struggling – do you still give everyone the same amount? For those with children, do you give them the money in the form of college funds for their children? Any parent would surely welcome a college fund for their child, right?

Great care must be taken to insure (ensure? she always struggles over the “i” vs. “e.” But maybe she’s tempted to put “e” because she’s thinking of Ensure, that milkshakey type beverage that gives you all your daily vitamins and a bunch of calories, a beverage that she herself has partaken of in the past and which is much tastier than you’d think, given all the vitamins and minerals) that everyone happily accepts the cash and doesn’t get thorny about it.

So maybe the college fund idea is best. But then what about family members who don’t have children? What’s the best way to give them their cash? Maybe just set up a trust fund of some kind, however those things work.

She’s sure that there exist many certified financial planners out there who would be happy to advise her on how to set up college funds and trust funds in return for a reasonable hourly rate.

So, good. Family members, all set.

Now on to friends. This gets a little dicey, because they have many beloved friends, and she wants to just throw big wads of cash at them and sing a happy song about how “Here is some money for you! Do with it what you wish!” But where do you draw the line? Lots of friends + lots of cash = greatly diminished powerball winnings before the bank account sees its first deposit.

She doesn’t like thinking about where to draw the line, so she quits thinking about it.

Back to the fun. Which always includes an apartment – small, nothing big – in an old building near Columbus Circle. They’d be near the Park, on virtually all the subway lines, easy access to Chelsea and the Whitney and the rivers.

And a houseboat, which ever since she was a little girl and read that book about the girl who lived on a houseboat she has wanted. A small houseboat. It wouldn’t even have to run very well, because really all they want to do is live on it, hooked up by a rope to a dock somewhere. Or a tree, even.

And can they also buy a canned Airstream ham? Have you ever seen one of them? All her life she’s loved trailers, and an Airstream is a kind of trailer, only it’s the best – so beautiful and shiny – and the canned ham is the tiniest one of all. Everything in a canned ham fits perfectly, and that’s how she likes it.

What would be the most fun of all? Setting up a private foundation – surely that reasonable-hourly-fee financial person would know how to do that too – and then giving away tons of money. To whoever they want! (whomever? yes, she thinks that it’s whomever, but will leave up the whoever so as not to be grammar-police-ish.)

Little micro-grants to artists in need, but only artists who really are in need. Of money, not ideas and talent, because ideas and talent should be a given in an artist.

First, last and security on apartments for homeless people.

Quarters placed in gum machines everywhere, to make small children happy.

Micro-loans to penniless people with great ideas as to how to help other people.

Paying for the groceries of the person with the nice smile ahead of them in line at the grocery store.

See how fun it is? This is her favorite part of the powerball dream. This is where the virtually-free entertainment aspect of the weekly powerball ticket comes in. Way better than most movies, for example, and only 1/8 of the cost of a movie ticket, let alone the bucket o’ popcorn (free refill, and believe her, she’s taken advantage of that more than once) and large Hawaiian Fruit Juicy Punch.

If there’s money left over, and it wouldn’t have to be much, maybe she could indulge herself in a few clothes. Some vintage cowboy shirts to add to her collection? How about that tunic coat that she can see so clearly in her mind but that doesn’t seem to exist in real life, not that she would know because she and shopping don’t mix well.

And, to go out on a limb, what about some handmade shoes for the both of them? He is a shoe fanatic and her feet are tough to fit, tough tough tough, and she always thinks about the olden days, when the cobbler came around and made a last that fit your foot exactly, so that the damaged nerves in the right one would be cushioned, somehow. It’s impossible to find that in a store-bought shoe, but a handmade one, surely it would be possible. Italian leather, maybe.

Everything is possible, with powerball. Even if for only an hour or so, on a Wednesday, at Winner Gas on 44th and Nicollet.