![]() | ![]() Joseph Lease [II] He doubted whether he knew anyone and he could not awake the dead he needed. A bottle of Slivovitz on the kitchen table. Alter never drank on a weekday, at midday. Not his fault--a boy died, a boy fell off Alter's bus--he climbed on the rear ledge for a ride, for fun, then fell under an oncoming car. Alter didn't know the boy was there until he fell off--everyone heard the impact. My father, a seven or eight year old boy, watched his father, ashamed, in shock. Sixty-eight years after that accident, I'm in a mall. Watches with gorgeous faces, displayed in threes in windows. Laughing teenagers. The Clinique counter full of mauve oils and creams and bright blue astringent. I want to kiss between Donna's breasts. I wish we could slip into that storage room. Wearing the charcoal gray sweater she gave me, I think. This world is not real. And I think, My father liked the shirt I bought him. No one here is wealthy, but everyone here is shopping: couples walk by arm in arm and talk quietly and smile and shop for gifts and household things. No one is yelling here or haggling. This place does not smell like Coney Island in 1924: there is no ritual slaughter in this mall, no chickens are being killed in the sacred way. Next |