The Almanac Branch Read Free Page A

from aeons of sea and wind working away at it. She hadn’t liked what she saw. Aside from the thin green trace of horizon, and the blue line of ocean, which reminded her of the blue line the police barricade makes along the avenue and the green line they paint on the pavement when they’re going to have a St. Patrick’s parade, the very thought of which cheered her flagging spirits, everything in the image felt prehistoric and desolate to her, and wholly untenable.
    I heard my parents talking that last night, when I couldn’t sleep, when I stood there at my window trying my best to ask the light people to come out to say good-bye, knowing that since I didn’t have a megrim there was little chance they’d be conjured. I heard her ask him why she had to leave home and he didn’t. She said, “I hate the country, I hate the idea of having to water trees”(to which he answered, “For chrissake you don’t water trees, Erin”)—and so forth. I do remember her reminding him, and about in these words, “You’ve always preached to the children that you’ve got to stand square and fight your demons”—so wasn’t this exodus to Shelter Island just the supreme example of how not to face problems? And could he deny her the claim—she was crying, then, and it made me afraid, how hysterical her voice sounded—that he was all for this island move because it would leave him free to spend his time in town, building “your goddamn Geiger,” while the family moldered, safely out from under his feet, in bucolic isolation? I didn’t know what bucolic meant, but I can remember the word because it was said when the flare man came out, much to my delight, for just an instant.
    What gives, girl?
    I have the distinct sense that he may have invited me to crawl out onto the ledge and give him a farewell kiss, but that doesn’t sound very flare-man to me, now. That is to say, he wasn’t much of a sentimentalist, more of a performer—so if he did, it would have been in the cause of showmanship, or else to murder me.
    What gives?
    â€œWe’re going away.”
    Want to see a trick, real neat one?
    My mother’s voice came pushing in toward my room, and I did my best to close it and her off, then looked at the flare man again, who tonight was a mustard yellow. “I said we’re going away, didn’t you hear me?”
    Well, do you want to see, or not?
    â€œYou want to come, too?”
    Grace, he said, impatient.
    I still don’t understand how imagination works, what it is, what its relation to the body is, because the flare man was so sophisticated, and I, who (surely must have) created him there on his ailanthus branch, so young to have invented this. He flipped himself over onto one skeletal finger of one hand and balanced on the branch, then filliped himself to a twig, still aloft on the finger. A wiggly tongue of yellow light streamed from his navel, and he slowly lifted his finger up so that he was perched on the yellow stream, which just barely touched the twig. Arms and legs extended, he turned his face toward mine and a wry smile began to curl across his lips, a wry and yet loving smile. He didn’t say anything, though usually, in my experience with him, he would have said something at about this point during one of his exhibitions, something like, Can you believe this, or, Check this out, or, Am I amazing or am I amazing? Rather, he winked, and seemed to concentrate, and then he did something I never thought was possible for him to do. He pulled the yellow light back into his skeleton belly, and turned his head in order to look at me full in the face. He was floating.
    I stood there in awe. He knew that I’d seen him do some fantastic tricks before, but never abandon the tree itself. He didn’t brag, though. What he said was this. He said, Open your eyes wide, girl.
    â€œWhy?”
    Open them, go on.
    I