Ten Feet from It

His body shifts and gets closer to me in a shady part of our house where hardly any natural light can get to, unless a bathroom door is open fully. At no time during this is he more than two or three feet away from me, and always he keeps turn­ing to me so I can see how he is, not to prove anything to me. He is not the kind to do that. I am.

He is my son, one of them.

My other son broke down for me later in this day, my husband the same, a few days ago, my brother later in this day. My mother said to me, “I am not with it,” just after we both witnessed my brother.

I can put the sight of any of them up in front of myself again anytime I want to: my son in grief because I would not believe that he really is; my other son the same; my husband, when he told me, “That broke the ice,” after what I had said to him—whatever it was; my brother, as he was telling me his life is at stake.

My mother, her grief is the most overwhelming.

She was sitting with her Old Testament which has such tissue-thin pages and she was making the pages make a noise when I found her.

The biggest, broadest window of her house was in front of her, where she was sitting with the open book. I have the same dark red leather-bound version of the text.

I said to my mother, “Let me kiss you.” I was up close to her, my hands on her forearms to get closer to her, but I did not get closer. For some reason she was stand­ing at that time, perhaps to let me try, and then she was down, sitting at the desk which had been my desk when I was a girl.

She was looking at the shake-shingled roof, at the plum tree, at the trees all pushed together beyond it, at the violent plunging-down that our land takes below that window where one of my sons killed himself, be­cause he was trying to keep my other sons from killing themselves, just about ten feet from the plum tree. He was shouting at those boys, or he was talking softly to those boys, who were talking softly to him, so all of them had to lean so far over to hear what they had to hear, so one of them could die.

It is just a sight with the body of my mother in front of it.

I can refer to the window glass. I can refer to the sky which might as well be the sea.

I go down the stairs of my mother’s house, satisfied and slowly.

I cannot get a sight up in front of me now of little boys or of grown-ups together, so that I can hear what they are saying, so that I would want to repeat what it was they were saying, so that what they have said would change everything once and for all.