The Visible World by Mark Slouka Page B

under light blankets with the weeds and the thistles growing up all around us and ate with our fingers, draping the floppy crepes between our thumbs and pinkies so the preserves wouldn’t come out and feeding them into our mouths. We laughed about stupid things and pretended to signal to a waiter who stood in the old strawberry patch and to be frustrated when we couldn’t catch his eye.
    “What do you think he’s doing?” my mother said.
    “He’s not paying attention to us,” I said. I waved my arms wildly, as if signaling a boat far offshore.
    “Careful,” my mother said.
    I put my cup of tea on its saucer down on the ground, making a space between the long grasses. I waved my arms again. “Can I get some more jam,” I called out. “And some hot chocolate, please.”
    My mother was looking at the overgrown strawberry patch as though a man actually stood there in the weeds. “What do you suppose he’s thinking about?” she said, as if to herself.
    I didn’t know what to say.
    “I think he’s thinking about a girl,” my mother said. She was looking at the strawberry patch. A small breeze moved the pieces of shade and sun on the ground, then returned them to where they had been. She laughed strangely. “I don’t think we can get his attention.”
    “Why don’t I throw something at him,” I said, and leaning over, I picked up a short, thick piece of branch and sent it flying through the air above the strawberry patch. It fell in the weeds at the far end of the garden. “Missed,” I said. I reached over for another stick. “This time I’ll...”
    “He’s smoking,” said my mother. “Look at the way he brings it to his mouth. The way he stands with his elbows back on the bar.”
    I looked at her, wanting to follow her, to play on this new field she was making.
    “I bet he gets in trouble,” I said.
    She nodded slowly, agreeing with something I hadn’t said. “I don’t think he’s the kind of man who would care very much. I don’t think he’ll care at all.” She looked around the dead garden, then shook her head and smiled, as if remembering an old joke. “So here we are. Nothing to do but call for the check.”
     
    That afternoon I remembered what my father had said the night before about the date and checked the slightly mildewed calendar that hung on the wall in the kitchen next to the refrigerator. Nobody had turned the month. May showed a picture of boys playing baseball. One, no older than myself, had just slid into home on his stomach with his cap falling over his eyes. A fat man was waving him safe. The page was curling in at the corners; a row of mold spots, like sloppy stitching, walked across the white frame. I turned to June. In the picture, a boy with ridiculously blue pants was sitting by the side of a pond, fishing. The mold had touched a corner of the sky. Flowering trees were overhead and you could see his red bobber on the black pond. A few feet away, a small brown dog was lapping at the water.
    I went back to the living room and looked at the
New York Times,
open on the dining room table. The date was June 18.
     
    My mother worked on her flowers all that afternoon, sitting at the wooden card table in the shade, a cup of coffee and a cigarette next to her, cupping big handfuls of black soil from the small mountain she’d spilled on the table next to her, packing the pots, then making a space for the root ball by pushing the dirt to the side with her fingers the way a potter shapes the sides of a vase. I went off to play for a while, then returned to find her sitting with her elbows on the table. She was holding the cigarette and the cup of coffee in her right hand as though just about to pick them up, and her head was tilted slightly to the side. She was looking at a spot on the grass a short distance away.
    I didn’t want to disturb her, so I sat down quietly on the wooden steps to wait until she started working again. Everything was still. Far across the water a