A Literary Feast

Fatherless in Ypsilanti

Posted on September 30th, 2013

The chief problem with Michigan was that there was so goddamn much of it. And, as with anything large and obvious, its sheer accumulation of facts made it difficult to see. Which is why its disappearance at first registered only with startled birds, farmers, lake lovers, that June. Miles away, on an eastern shore, Milo would tell himself later that he felt the echo of it going when it happened, the way Kepler claimed to have felt the faint warmth of moonlight on the backs of his hands some solitary evening. Mostly because it was a good story, and mostly because of Kate.

 

They’d only dated for a few months, when he’d worked on Abner’s lobster pots, and she’d had the misfortune to be captivated by his forearms and silence, mistaking the latter for thoughtfulness. She was beautiful, in the way most of the girls he’d been snared by had been, the way that things you desired were, so long as you were convinced of their ability to broadcast your worth soundlessly up and down the docks of Rockland. The fact that they had nothing to say to one another was hardly a fact at all, so long as it was summer. Right up until Michigan had the poor grace to vanish.

 

They’d been eating lunch. He couldn’t remember why he hadn’t been on the boat that day, only that he hadn’t, and he was watching, instead, the long white line of her shin bone fall in and out of shadow beneath a sundress, as she swung it over the water. Her foot was some soft, naked thing in the heating air. The sea vegetable smell wreathed their heads, and she’d started to crumble the last edge of her sandwich down into the green murk of the sea. “Michigan is gone,” she said, the way she might’ve announced a plan to go swimming, or an intention to see a film later that evening.

 

“What?”

 

“Yeah. It was on the news this morning. Nebraska, last month.”

 

It had been something, when Nebraska had departed for shores unknown, but, it had been an abstraction, an outline on a map fading into ether. This, her blandly stated pronouncement from that plum red mouth, this stopped his breathing. Michigan. His dad. The world tipped on its axis and grew loud in his ears. Gone.

 

He remembered, in some dim, rational, still-functional way, that they’d never talked about where he was from, that it had been immaterial to getting her out of a sundress. She couldn’t know. His vision wavered at the edges, blackening and then coming back, hysterically firm. Every barnacle below them glittered, real and whole, and Michigan was no more. And neither was his father, alone in the house. Unless he’d left, the way he’d said he would. How would he know? The phone hadn’t rung in months. He’d pictured his postcards stacking by the door, their lighthouses and lobsters quietly humming away in the front hall.

 

He still hadn’t said anything, when she said, staring out towards the head light, “I think I’m sad about it, too, today. It’s definitely making me sad.” But she said it in the way that you’d mention, casually, that you were bummed out about the last good muffin going missing from the basket, about losing one earring from a pair, and he knew that whatever he’d told her over the past few months was chaff, was pretty much a lie. He got up.

 

“I’ve gotta go home.”

 

She didn’t stop him, when he started running. Or say that she’d see him, later. He supposed that was what the sum total effect of geographic loss was, for her, on that dock, on that afternoon. Fear drove his legs through the dead grass and into the trees, away from the water, sweating. He had to get to the phone. He had to try.

 

 

 

When he reached the outbuilding that had been his home since he’d arrived in late March, it took him whole minutes to locate his phone, behind a shoe, towards the back of the room. The message indicator light blinked at him, blue, breathing. He’d known it would be there. His finger hovered over the screen, trembling across the ‘play’ arrow.

 

“Milo. Milo, it’s dad. Bud, I don’t want you to worry but…they’re starting some relocations. Pastor Fran feels that something’s coming down the pike, and doesn’t want…well, doesn’t want things to go the way they have elsewhere. I’m taking the boat north, then maybe east. I have your cards. I’ll be in touch, when…whenever we get to where it is. I lo–”

 

And, of course, of course the message clipped there. The insects and distant sea slowly filtering back in, beyond his breathing, and the shimmer of the lost word, hanging there in the dim green light of the cabin. First, he thought, first, sandwiches.

 

And then, north.

 

Categories: Uncategorized

Like My Chowder, The Air Is Too Salty

Posted on August 19th, 2013

Like my chowder, the air is too salty today. I push it aside and glare, not quite hungrily, at my over cooked steak. You might wonder why I’d order a steak at a fish house anyway.

If Mom were still alive, she’d probably wonder the same thing and give me that look. Or, depending on if it was her 2nd or 3rd vodka soda, she might warble shrilly, “You come all the way to the Vineyard and you order the steak, for Christ’s sake Billy, don’t you appreciate anything?”

“Is everything ok, sir?”

The waiter is a college-aged dude of a dude–his name tag reads “Tomas from Odessa, Ukraine”. He’s got a mini-turd of fuzz on his chin, a buzz cut and a tryzub tattoo on his neck. But, he is a genuine kid, so I swallow my misgivings about the fare and order another whiskey and water.

I reach for the red plastic basket of onion rings and peek over at the bar. Nope, nothing yet. The after dinner crowd won’t show up for an hour or so, but sometimes I’ll be lucky and a burnt brown divorcee might show up this early or even that annual high school reunion full of boisterous middle-aged women trying to impress one another with how much fun they can have. Alas, it appears it’s another night of drinking alongside Connecticut Dads named Chip or Stanton and their sons,Yale-bound Worthington and the fuck up Tad who finally graduated after his 6th year at Skidmore. I wave to Tomas for the check and begrudgingly make my way up to the bar.

I pull up a stool and nod to Cassie, the cute and bubbly, 23-year-old 3rd summer bartender. She grabs me a PBR and plops it down on a Red Stripe embroidered paper napkin with a grin, a head tilt and a lilted “What’s Up?!” The guy to my right is a large hairy-armed fellow in a wife-beater with a George Constanza haircut. He is mowing down his cod fritters and pounding Bud heavies.

To my left, is Tad or Chip or Worthington Sr, he’s got his golf outfit on; face buried in his iPhone, and is drinking, barely, a Corona Light.

I shrug and sigh and look back into the kitchen. And then I see it. Man do I, it’s huge and dead. I look directly in its blank black bean of an eye and wonder why I hadn’t read the specials board. Or why Tomas sucks so bad at his job. For all of the times I had come to the Vineyard, for even the two summers I had lived in the shack of a house in West Tisbury, I had never tried shark. Somehow the magic of shark week had always escaped me. But, now, sitting next to Greaseball, and Stanton pink shirt IV, I was very clearly, plum out of excuses.

“Cassie, let me try the shark”

“The Mako?”

“Sure.”

20 minutes later, I am face to face with 6 balls of deep fried shark. I shunned the fork and tossed the crunchy tidbit of ocean monster directly into my mouth. Holy shit! It is delicious. I let out the delighted squeak of a tween getting birthday Beiber tickets. Greaseball and Brooks Pemberbutton look over at me bewildered and I shrug.

“I don’t give a shit if this thing is almost endangered, it’s fucking fantastic.”

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Mahango and Mutete

Posted on August 19th, 2013

Dust, red and yellow and all shades of tan. Heat, outside the windows of the car. We have been driving for a long time, on an unwavering road through an unbroken vista of thorn trees, warthogs dodging across the tarmac, a lone gemsbok watching us with doleful eyes from the bush. The sky is huge and blue and unending. This is Africa, this is Namibia, the land fenced and quartered but still open, still empty.

At a crossroads, we turn past a petrol station and suddenly are in the thick of Rundu on payday, the streets teeming with people buying, selling, walking to buy or sell, or standing in the long line at the ATM in order to do either. It is noon, and everyone is out. We drive slowly, looking to do our own buying: food, lunch, a cold drink and a hot meal. Perhaps with a view? We see a tiny silver slice of water down the hill in the distance: the Okavango River, with Angola on the far banks. The air smells like cooking meat and sounds like Bob Marley playing from the radio in the doorway of the shebeen where payday money goes to Windhoek Lager and oshikundu, millet beer. Everyone is smiling.

We drive through town, double back, re-cross roads looking for somewhere to eat. There is a bumpy dirt lane down to a lodge by the river, but the gate is closed and the parking lot is empty and a dog under a planted palm tree cocks his head at us, lazy and curious about the strangers in the midday heat. We pull into the bricked courtyard of another inn, where an open restaurant patio beckons us, but there is no view of the water, and that is wanted. So we continue on down the hill, on another long empty road, leaving bustling Rundu at our backs until we find what we are looking for.

What we are looking for is unexpected. A deserted resort on the banks of the Okavango, where herds of fat helmeted guineafowl dash across the cut grass lawns that spread out to empty cottages. The pool is empty, the tree branches above it bare. It is hot June summer where we came from but winter here in Namibia, and the tourists are elsewhere, if they ever came to Rundu to begin with. The restaurant by the office door is empty too, but there is chatter from a loft above the bar, where a football match plays itself out on the television. It is too dark inside to see the river, but we are too hungry now to care.

A waitress appears with the menus, and we expect the usual Afrikaaner fare: boerewors sausage, Greek salad, fried potatoes, bitter lemon soda. A passable meal and what we are willing to eat but also a variation on the theme of every meal we’ve yet had in Namibia. We have been eating the white man’s Africa, and it tastes like Germany and cold winter nights, not the red dust that stains your shoes and sunsets that stain the sky and birds the color of malachite and crimson and hippos that bark in the depths of the river at twilight.

But there are two words, neither English nor Afrikaans, above the grilled cheeses and the pizzas and the salamis. Mahango and mutete. Mashed millet porridge and cabbage stewed with green tomatoes, chilies, and onions. Everywhere we have gone in this small piece of Africa, we have asked what grows here and what is eaten and the answer is always the same: millet, dried greens, dried meat, all flavored and mixed with this stew of greens, tomatoes, chilies, and onions. In a market in Zambia, the raw ingredients surrounded us by the basketful, flies buzzing in the late afternoon heat. In the Caprivi Strip, we passed a village garden full of what we would have called collard greens, the huge fan-like leaves startling against the barren dust, the women picking them straightening up to watch us as we drove on by. We are Americans, tourists, and not of this place, that is clear. Yet we wonder, and we wish that we could taste it, just a little.

Here, at this table in the far, dusty north of Namibia, off a road that goes to nowhere, in a tourist resort without tourists, next to a bar stocked with bottles of South African beer, we eat like Namibians. The mahango is thick and creamy and slightly sweet. The mutete has a sour tang that is leavened by butter and matched by the spice of chili. We wolf it down, eyes wide, because it is so good and so right. It settles us, this meal, and we relax a little, shrug the road weariness out of our shoulders, begin to talk quietly, begin to think about the next destination instead of the one we’ve just left. All of Namibia is down that highway heading south, and we don’t have to go home for a while yet. We eat with pleasure and the guineafowl strut outside the door as the fan whirs and the red dust settles against the car doors and the insects sing in the bare, black trees and someone laughs behind the kitchen door.

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Epazote: A Rhoda No Longer

Posted on August 19th, 2013

It’s only my first summer as a backyard gardener, but I’m already anthropomorphizing my plants. I think of the tomatoes as the Mary Tyler Moore of the backyard plot — perfect, pure, sweet, and understandably popular. An informal poll of my social group indicates that most people (including me) would give up nearly anything — cheese, chocolate, even gluten — before submitting to tomato abstention. They’re just that lovable.

If my precious heirloom tomatoes are Mary Tyler Moore, then the nearby potted epazote plants are the equivalent of Rhoda, Mary’s spunky (and underappreciated) best friend.

Epazote doesn’t get much in the way of summer lovin’. It’s never had a glossy layout in a culinary magazine and, unless you’ve worked in a Mexican restaurant or are well-versed in Oaxacan cuisine, you’ve probably never heard of it. The plants came to me as a gift from my mother-in-law, who discovered it while living on the Mexican-food-rich West Coast. If you google epazote, the Internet offers up the following summary:

1) Epazote is a weed that grows wild throughout the southwestern United States and Mexico.

2) The word epazote is a combination of the Aztec words for “skunk” and “sweat.”

3) Some people describe the flavor as being reminiscent of “ turpentine or creosote.”

4) It can reduce intestinal gas.

Skunk sweat? Turpentine? Intestinal gas? Sure, there are benefits to growing an underappreciated herb (stumping more experienced gardeners, being able to say I Did It Before It Was Cool), but mostly it just makes me sad. The poor thing could really use a public relations agent.

It wouldn’t be a difficult job; the talking points practically write themselves. Epazote is easy to grow (go weeds!), and imparts a rich, deep flavor to black beans, mole sauces, and stews. You can even fold whole leaves into quesadillas for an instant blast of umami flavor. And – most importantly – it’s still outside the mainstream. Heading off to a fancy dinner party? Stick a sprig in your soup and BOOM you’re instantly hip and culturally aware.

Get ready, epazote. You’re gonna be a star.

Categories: Uncategorized

Lobster

Posted on August 19th, 2013

They say sing

and you do, blithely, bright

as a bird, as the cracked

meat, red on a white

plate

and I sit, stoppered

up, shy, private

with my hands

doing some small

dance on my hidden

lap–

my playing, better

but yours, public–

 

some future date

some stray breath of

sea snaps

the line taut once

more and there, the distant

glitter of the

off key–I still don’t

perform to

strangers, any of

the secrets, knuckle

deep, shell

sweet.

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“I know what you ate last summer…And the summer before that, And the summer before that…”

Posted on August 19th, 2013

Grapes that gush – with cotton candy?
Melons that melt – into lemonade?
This universe is more diverse
For cousins bred and heirlooms saved.

 

 

 

For school, I took a big red apple.
Delicious? Once, but now no more.
And then Pink Lady turned my head;
The doctor’s advice again is sure.

 

 

 

Get thee to a local garden –
Plant a seed, and watch it grow –
Then savor the flavor of all your efforts!
(The monocrop’s a dinosaur.)

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A Job Well Done

Posted on August 19th, 2013

The sun is hot, but not heavy. I can feel my skin heating up, first warm to the touch, but then hot. Every bit of exposed skin is tingling, tightening. Soon I will burn. My face starts to sweat. I can feel it running down my neck, leaving trails in the dirt like an old map.

My hands are working furiously. Gently, each branch needs to be lifted, pinching between the thorns. The ripe berries hang, weighing down the branches. They stain my fingers. I pick as quickly as I can, it seems like they are ripening faster than I can pick. Soon the bucket is full. Heavy. Rich with possibility.

By the time I get home my heart is pounding. My hands are pink, covered in scratches, but I don’t care. I can still feel the sun on my shoulders. That thing is happening where I press my fingers on my chest and pale white hand prints are left, and then fade. I put my old white colander in the sink and carefully spill the berries out. They tumble and bounce, and I catch them with my left hand as they try to escape. I turn on the faucet, and gently run water over my harvest. The sink is shiny and a river of crimson runs down the drain. Evidence of my victory.

The fruit is heavy. It makes a satisfying plunking sound as I tumble the fruit into my heavy sauce pan. I click on the stove. Sugar. Lemon juice. Time. Soon I hear liquid sizzle in the bottom of the pan. I stir with my old wooden spoon, gently, trying not to spill any over the side. I stand at the stove, stirring, listening, watching the raspberries break apart and lose their shape.

Soon, the whole kitchen smells. Sweet. Hot. My hands keep moving as I lose myself in the motions. Around and around, and soon there is a sticky mass moving in the pan. The bubbles pop and splatter my arms. For a second it burns, but soon cools to a red sticky spot. Soon there are tiny spots all over my arms. The day is visible on my body. Grass stains on my knees, dirt and red juice everywhere. Lemon juice burns the tiny scrapes in my knuckles. The pot is steaming. My face is sweating again. But its only going to get hotter.

Back to the sink. I take the biggest pot I own and fill it with water. It seems like it takes forever, and I watch the water swirl around and eventually there is enough. I lug it over to the stove and turn the burner up as high as it will go. Soon the kitchen is full of steam and sweetness and heat, I carefully lower the empty jars and their parts into the boiling water.

The raspberries are unrecognizable, now a mass of hot, red, sticky, saucy goodness. I scrape the bottom of the pot and the spoon leaves a sizzling trail that closes in on itself. I start to fill the jars. I try to be careful but still I leave deep red polka dots across the counter. The jars are hot to the touch and the big boiling pot on the stove behind me is surging clouds of steam into the kitchen. Its a small room but feels even smaller than usual. One by one I fill the jars, carefully screwing the lids on and finally lowering them into the boiling water. The bubbles surge around them, and even though I clamp on the lid, steam still escapes as the lid clatters around. The water is powerful, surging, hot and dangerous, slowly turning my little jars of raspberry mush into shelf-stable memories of the day.

Ten minutes pass, and the timer beeps and scares me. I expect it, but the noise jerks me out of the hypnosis of my afternoon. Somehow it has gotten very late. It is dark out, but still so hot. I take the lid off the pot and a huge cloud of steam fills the kitchen. I pull the rack up and try like hell not to burn myself taking the jars out. I line them up like chessmen on a towel. I smile at the neat little row of perfect jars of homemade jam.

The kitchen is still hot, but I can feel the temperature of my skin changing. That shift that happens in the evening after a long, hot day in the sun. I feel a chill creeping up my arms, my skin still tight and red from the sun. I am smeared with dirt and fruit juice. I heave the big pot of water back over to the sink, and slowly pour out the contents. The last of the steam evaporates and I sit down, exhausted and happy. And then I hear it. Ping! The sound echoes through the kitchen, a tiny metallic snap. My first jar is done. I can feel a satisfied smile creep across my lips. Pop! Another one, then another, until finally I hear all my tiny jars shout from the other room.

Categories: Uncategorized

Brief History

Posted on August 19th, 2013

I.

The fish is not large enough. It is black and nearly round, and then other colors when it lands, spines out, in my palm, and we have killed it anyway. It drifts cockeyed beneath the cement that makes up this small bridge. The road is dusty. I lie down on my stomach, and stretch a still pale arm, a burning back, down to catch the body as it makes its way into the tunnel. It slips against my fingers. Don’t tell anyone, you say, laughing, and I say that I won’t, only now, I have. The beer smell won’t leave my water bottle for a month. The sunburn goes, after two days. The bruised plum that I eat in the hot car on the way home leaks juice down my chin. I should, I think, be better at killing something than this.

II.

When I leave the theater, it is dark, and it has rained. My bike seat is wet. I climb the hill back to the room I have for the summer. It is as hot as breath, under the eaves, and still. I eat a pound of dark, ripe, heavy cherries that leave all of my fingers blood red. Yesterday morning, I found a note on my dresser, propped up against a bar of orange soap. The corner had a bite taken out of it, the clean marks of teeth. “Dear self: You wondered if this tasted like it smelled. Guess what. It does.”

III.

The conversation that we are having is only one version of it, and in the other, I say better, truer, more vulnerable things. In this one, I talk about bands, and stone fruit, and wonder why William Carlos Williams already figured out how to say everything with plums, and I have no words left.  I love you is a pit that catches in my throat.

IV.

A dirt plume rises from the unmarked road.  The farmer’s son, shotgun on the seat, truck wincing over the earth.  What are you doing here, he asks, of my basket, of my bonnet, of my ankle length dress.  The fish are fat and complacent underneath the water.  Nothing, I say.  Nothing at all.  Because I am ten years old.  Go home, is the prescription.  I look towards the hazy tree line, the cows, pushing their foreheads against the grass, against the fence.  I can only guess at the place he means, picking up the basket, shuffling the silver bodies back into the pond.  Coiling the line into my palm, slick and sure.  It’s not the prairie, and my hair is short.  I don’t have the words that Laura would say.  I have ‘okay’ and ‘sorry’ and ‘I’ll do that’, sticking in my teeth.

V.

When Gary Snyder wants me to see ah, the lovers, in the mouth of bread, some yeast driven high Sierra tumbling, kissing, I say no.  I couldn’t find this word, before.  I say its solid syllable to the dark, stacking one letter upon the other.  I practice it, alone, walking in the woods.  Its companion, yes, is a country I cannot name.

 

VI.

The stars fall. This rock that I’m sitting on has gone cold. When I read the line ‘what we’ve had and had to lose, to be what we are/what continues without us/and somehow, because’, I have to close my eyes. Slowly, behind each lid, one at a time: Fish. Cherries. Plums.

Categories: Uncategorized

Howard

Posted on August 19th, 2013

[The Fourth of July.  A suburban backyard, two hours before sundown.  Mismatched Sedans and SUVs line the ring of the Cul-De-Sac in front of the house.  About two dozen adults sip canned beer from cozies and participate in conversations of as many as six and as few as one other adult.  Roughly the same number of children run zig-zag patterns and yell wordlessly throughout the yard, portions of the adjacent yards, and the Cul-De-Sac.  Two plastic washtubs, one filled with beercans floating in water that was ice not long ago, the other likewise but with soda, sit in the sun next to a worn wooden deck, slowly growing warmer.  An arm’s length away sits a slightly rusted charcoal grill, the white-grey ash collected in the drum no longer too warm to hold in your bare hand.  Atop the grill sits one wrinkled, slightly charred all-beef kosher hot dog, now with that peculiar coldness that once-hot food rapidly acquires as it becomes not-hot.  In front of the grill stands HOWARD.  HOWARD is 16 and fat.  Not obese but more than chubby; squarely “fat”. He wears a loosely-fitting dark colored t-shirt, beneath which mild gynecomastia hints at itself.  HOWARD eyes the hot dog.  For all intents and purposes, the hot dog eyes HOWARD.  He salivates slightly and sweats profusely (which is status quo for young HOWARD), scraping the tips of his fingers repeatedly against the inside of his warm, moist palms and squinting as the sun refracts through his glasses.  Enter ARIEL, HOWARD’s sister, 14 and sprightly.]

ARIEL: Hey! Howie!

HOWARD [transfixed by hot dog]: …

ARIEL: Howie!!

HOWARD: … huh?

ARIEL: We’re gonna play soccer! Kuh-mahn!

HOWARD: Not… uh, later, Ariel.

ARIEL: Not later, Howie, right.  The cousins are waiting for you.

HOWARD: No, I mean I don’t feel like playing.

ARIEL: Puhh! Howie, you always do this! Kuh-mahn kuh-mahn, how often do we get enough kids our age together for two whole teams? Pleeeeez pleez pleez!!

[ARIEL heaves her body dramatically as she pleads with her brother.  Quite unlike HOWARD, there is not a drop of sweat to be seen on her; she seems as naturally inclined to the summer sun as a worm is to dirt, and the heat has done nothing to curtail a day’s worth of semi-structured recreation and spasmodic flailing.  Enter MOM, initially headed towards the tub of beercan soup but, noticing the half-animated interaction between her children, she diverts and intervenes with gentle and good-humored faux seriousness.]

MOM [arms akimbo]: What’s all the commotion, Miss Ariel?

ARIEL: Momma, me and all the cousins were ready to play soccer but Howie says he doesn’t wanna play and I told him how it is that we never get to play soccer with teams cuz we never have enough people and and [a deep breath in] aww Howie, kuh-mahn!

MOM: You don’t want to play soccer with Ariel and your cousins, How?

[HOWARD looks over towards the assembled clique of cousins, who have been watching the above scene unfold from a distance, then back up at MOM.  He shakes his head gravely.]

ARIEL [throws the top half of her body forward and down, letting her knuckles fall to the neatly trimmed grass, in her best exhibition of complete exasperation]: How-eee!

MOM: I’m quite sure that’s not going to convince him, Miss.  If Howie doesn’t want to play, that’s up to him.  You guys’ll just have to figure out how to play with an odd number.

[ARIEL marches back towards the mass of cousins, waiting to straighten her posture until she believes herself out of the line of sight of HOWARD and MOM (which, in fact, she is not), then breaking into a full sprint]

MOM: How come you don’t want to play with your cousins, How? Feelin alright?

[HOWARD lowers his head to fix his line of sight on a patch of grass somewhere between his mother’s feet and the wheels of the grill, while simultaneously pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose to counteract the slippage caused by his considerable perspiration.  After a brief pause, he nods.]

MOM [taking a knee, to make her eyes level with her son’s]: What’s up, bud? How come you don’t wanna play?

HOWARD [mumbling, not making eye contact]: mm tuh fup…

MOM: What?

HOWARD [louder, still not making eye contact]: I’m too fat.

[MOM looks down to the ground, sighs, and looks back up at her son.  She places a hand on his shoulder.  HOWARD looks her in the eye.]

HOWARD: I’m just gonna get really sweaty and out of breath and I’m not gonna be able to keep up

MOM: Howie… we’ve talked about this before, buddy.  What did we decide on together?

[HOWARD, looking back down at the ground, kicks at a clump of dirt with his toe.  He does not answer.]

MOM: Howie?

HOWARD [mumbling]: um num supussa…

MOM: Speak up, How.

HOWARD [eyeing his cousins, then looking back down at the ground]: I’m not supposed to let my weight keep me from doing things.  I can do anything I wanna do… no matter how big or small I am.

MOM: Right, exactly.  Now, come on.  Your cousins only come around a couple times a year.  Do you want them to think of you as their fun cousin who plays soccer with them, or their mopey cousin who hangs around by himself on the sidelines?

HOWARD: …

MOM: Howie?

HOWARD: … Fun.  Not mopey.

MOM [smiling]: That’s what I thought.  [Playfully] Now, quitcher mopin and go play!

[MOM resumes her interrupted route to the beer cooler, and then falls back into place amongst her trio of sisters chatting idly in the shade beneath a sycamore on the border with the neighbor’s house.  HOWARD stands alone.  He turns to contemplate the grill, now casting a crooked, elongated shadow on the neatly-trimmed grass.  He takes a deep breath, turns, and begins to march toward the writhing mass of cousins now fully engaged in their peculiarly chaotic brand of soccer.  HOWARD hesitates.  He stands and watches his kin at play, the awful smooth dynamism of their tan, muscled little bodies.  He can feel how the sweat makes his shirt cling weirdly to his back and shoulders.  HOWARD retreats.  Sitting alone on the steps of the deck, chewing mutely on the cold, wrinkled lone-survivor that had remained on the grill, HOWARD sighs.]

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