Bluebeard's Egg Read Free Page A

can. Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic. Men, for some mysterious reason, find life more difficult than women do. (My mother believes this, despite the female bodies, trapped, diseased, disappearing, or abandoned, that litter her stories.) Men must be allowed to play in the sandbox of their choice, as happily as they can, without disturbance; otherwise they get cranky and won’t eat their dinners. There are all kinds of things that men are simply not equipped to understand, so why expect it of them? Not everyone shares this belief about men; nevertheless, it has its uses.
    “She dug up the shrubs from around the house,” says my mother. This story is about a shattered marriage: serious business. My mother’s eyes widen. The other women lean forward. “All she left him were the shower curtains.” There is a collective sigh, an expelling of breath. My father enters the kitchen, wondering when the tea will be ready, and the women close ranks, turning to him their deceptive blankly smiling faces. Soon afterwards, my mother emerges from the kitchen, carrying the tea pot, and sets it down on the table in its ritual place.

    “I remember the time we almost died,” says my mother. Many of her stories begin this way. When she is in a certain mood, we are to understand that our lives have been preserved only by a series of amazing coincidences and strokes of luck; otherwise the entire family, individually or collectively, would be dead as doornails. These stories, in addition to producing adrenalin, serve to reinforce our sense of gratitude. There is the time we almost went over a waterfall, in a canoe, in a fog; the time we almost got caught in a forest fire; the time my father almost got squashed, before my mother’s very eyes, by a ridgepole he was lifting into place; the time my brother almost got struck by a bolt of lightning, which went by him so close it knocked him down. “You could hear it sizzle,” says my mother.
    This is the story of the hay wagon. “Your father was driving,” says my mother, “at the speed he usually goes.” We read between the lines: too fast . “You kids were in the back.” I can remember this day, so I can remember how old I was, how old my brother was. We were old enough to think it was funny to annoy my father by singing popular songs of a type he disliked, such as “Mockingbird Hill”; or perhaps we were imitating bagpipe music by holding our noses and humming, while hitting our Adam’s apples with the edges of our hands. When we became too irritating my father would say, “Pipe down.” We weren’t old enough to know that his irritation could be real: we thought it was part of the game.
    “We were going down a steep hill,” my mother continues, “when a hay wagon pulled out right across the road, at the bottom. Your father put on the brakes, but nothing happened. The brakes were gone! I thought our last moment had come.” Luckily the hay wagon continued across the road, and we shot past it, missing it by at least a foot. “My heart was in my mouth,” says my mother.
    I didn’t know until afterwards what had really happened. I was in the back seat, making bagpipe music, oblivious. The scenery was the same as it always was on car trips: my parents’ heads, seen from behind, sticking up above the front seat. My father had his hat on, the one he wore to keep things from falling off the trees into his hair. My mother’s hand was placed lightly on the back of his neck.

    “You had such an acute sense of smell when you were younger,” says my mother.
    Now we are on more dangerous ground: my mother’s childhood is one thing, my own quite another. This is the moment at