Monday, May 12, 2008
At the height of a drought, when even spiders beg for a drink, thoughts drift to the basement visits of childhood.
Sep 9, 1999 | All summer long we've been waiting for rain. We've been watching the grass turn starchy, fawn-colored, hot; the phlox gray out, like hair; the carpenter ants circle our proud purple maple, as if the tree were prey. Even Harvey, the bat who hides in our porch shutters, has been parchedly preserving his poop, and around our mailbox the vinca moans -- something about broken promises, betrayal.
Last night I couldn't sleep and I came downstairs to write, and a daddy longlegs begged for a drink. I tell the truth. He climbed a wall, he climbed a couch, he climbed a bookshelf, he stood on my knee, lunging and desperate and pleading and shaking one of his too-many long arms at me, doing his unlevel best to sip from the glass of chilled water in my hand. Finally, at 4 a.m., I took the beast outside. When I told my husband about my late-night encounter he wiped a trickle of perspiration from his freckled brow and scolded me for refusing the spider a drink.
Jeremy is doing his best to tough it out in our old, nearly AC-free house. He stocks up on Kool-Aid pops when we go to the grocery store, and he's got one in his mouth all the afternoon long, soaking his lips with their tie-dye hues. He holds them there while their coolness drips onto his tongue, his bangs pushed out straight with the goo of sweat. He goes out into the yard to play and returns within minutes, his perfect face flushed the color of tomatoes. He plops on the floor, takes off his socks and stands up, so that he can reach the freezer. Our curtains merely decorate. They do not distract the sun.
They have been talking about showerless Mondays. They have been showing the shriveling corn fields on TV. They have been reporting salt lines along with temperatures. There is nothing that anyone can do. Twice the skies bruised to a threatening purple. Twice the winds blew laterally, hard. But the clouds are parsimonious now, and maybe it's only fair -- diplomatically speaking -- when you consider the crass and savage ways we've burned and scarred our clouds.
We imagine coolness. The shadow beneath a butterfly's wings. The channels of ink inside pens. The gathering of air inside the spines of our books. The space behind couches, between mattresses, within cupboards. We remember the dark moist chocolatey places we've descried or been taken to or read about, in books. Movie theaters. Waterfalls. Streams. Seville just after Christmas. The playhouse near the creek amid the oak trees of a forest. Jeremy thinks about the basement of his grandmother's house. I think about the basement of mine. Basements are like refrigerated caverns, we could say to one another, were we speaking. Basements are like tunnels or like caves.
They have an earthy kind of smell. They have an earthy kind of taste. They are immune to the poison of the sun. "If I were at Grandmom's," Jeremy says, breaking the thick, white, sticky silence, "I would go into the basement and I would not come out."
"A good idea," I say.
"Yeah."
"What would you do there?"
"I'd explore things. I would play."
"My grandmother had a basement, too," I tell him.
"She did?"
"Yes she did."
"What kind?"
"The dark kind."
"And cool?" he wants to know.
"Very cool," I assure him. "And you had to be careful on the steps."
Jeremy gets up and retrieves another popsicle. He returns and we sit face-to-face in the glare, conjuring cool, dark, subterranean places.
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