Garbage Man
Eventually my stepfather grew tired
of his exile in the basement
and left. She wept and begged him
not to go but he packed his Hummingbird
guitar and soldering irons and moved in
with a woman he’d met at the corner store.
And my mother took up with a garbage man.
When my stepfather found out, he went
down to the sanitation department and
burst into the main office, crying
and waving a gun and demanding to see the guy.
My mother, telling me about it, paused
at this point in her story to say
with a kind of scornful amusement,
Can you imagine him with a gun?
I started to laugh; I could not.
Where he got a gun, my mother continued,
eyebrows ascending dramatically to her hairline
in the manner of Groucho Marx describing
the elephant in his pajamas, I have no idea.
But the garbage man was very upset.
I almost lost my job because of
your husband, he told her. I can’t have that
happening where I work.
I see what you mean, my mother said,
and I know exactly how she said it,
a light gravity in her voice folding up the situation
as she might a cloth on which ink had been spilled,
tucking it into her purse with the intention
to bleach it back into service, only to forget
it was there until, fishing for a tissue or her keys,
her hand emerged a deep and striking blue.
