Lying in Bed by J. D. Landis Page A

Clara’s favorite songs) quilt from Ohio, and next to that Jacob’s Ladder, also from Ohio, a Maze or Labyrinth from Kentucky that puts me in mind of Pope’s “Love inthese labyrinths his slaves detains” (far better a line than those he wrote so poor Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater could be sung in English), and above, toward our immensely high ceiling, Birds in the Sky from Massachusetts, a Log Cabin Streak of Lightning from New York, and another anniversary present, a Star of Bethlehem from Maine on whose points I sometimes picture Clara’s hands as I lie on my back on this bed with my penis in her mouth and the straight furrow of her ass at the tips of my fingers.
    Clara has always placed her quilts strategically (and separate from the Madonnas I have given her as gifts) and with the sense of humor that I had never imagined could accompany sexual mystery. She keeps threatening to find a quilt called Trip Around the World to hang like a flag from the ceiling above our bed, and already, on the wall behind the bed, there is an Amish Puss in the Corner, and there, directly across from our bed, is a Swastika from Missouri, perfect evidence of the corruption of beauty in the mêlée of history.
    She has also joked to me that someday she is going to buy me a Contained Crazy if I don’t get out more.
    But I don’t want to get out more. I prefer my life here in the loft, which has become my version of Wittgenstein’s eternal hut, though he, lover of men, chose always to live in the utter solitude I had believed to be my own destiny B.C., as I might denote my life Before Clara. I remain, however, some kind of underground man, even if in my case I am buried in the sky. (Though I must confess that when I still dared read fiction I was infinitely more impressed with that other madman’s voice that could say, “It was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.”) And with these quilts all around me, and the little antique rugs and samplers Clara has put hereand there, I feel I am in the very midst of America, right in its fist, as it were, as I so often find myself in Clara’s fist and I see myself as she sees me and learn to love myself as she loves me in that great generous blessing of self-acceptance that marriage, finally, sweetly, kindly brings.
    As I have said, this loft is one great room. We designed it ourselves and deliberately created no place for either of us to hide. The only private spaces are the two bathrooms, hers of Italian tile and with a bidet, mine of stone and with a sauna, and the two giant closets.
    Those closets are nearly as large as other people’s studio apartments, and while neither of us has had occasion to hide in our closet, we do keep all our things in them, for when you live in one big room and are as menseful as we two and want that room to be as orderly as we want ours, you must have a place to put all the incredible number of things one accumulates on this earth, from clothes and papers to weapons and toys.
    I have never been in Clara’s closet, and she has never been in mine. (Only Elspeth, our maid, who comes but once a week, like all good maids on Thursday, 10:00 A.M ., has been in both.) We agreed, when we created this large public space of ours, that each of our closets would be off limits to the other. In the beginning of our marriage, we locked our closets. But I have not locked mine in months (years, now that I think of it), and to judge from the way she will open her closet door after a long day at work and throw in her clothes before coming to me with a smile and a greeting to get her hug and glass of wine, I don’t believe she locks hers either.
    My clothes are in my closet. (I haven’t many, and they are as conservative as I, Clara’s attempt to Armani-ize and brief me notwithstanding; I have always been the first toadmit that it is my mind that is dandified, not my