As indicated in the previous post, E! and I are in Iowa visiting M and J, friends from grad school, to welcome thier little guy, Max.
Last night we ate pizza at the sweet little 1950s kitchen table they bought in Lock Haven where we would go for cheap funky stuff to fill our apartments with. The table, which sits under their three arts-and-craftsy square dining room windows, used to be tucked into their tiny apartment kitchen not far from the green couch (also from Lock Haven) where M would sit with me, speaking in soft tones about stain removal and food preparation while her hair dried. This soothing little ritual began late one day when I wandered in from my apartment down the hall, cracking under the stress of diss-completion and job searching.
Last night as we all took turns walking and jiggling Max and fondling J's new book, talking tenure clocks and teaching schedules, comparing colleagues and trading bits of news from the places we and our other friends have scattered--New York, Rhode Island, Iowa, South Carolina, Illinois, Nebraska--I noticed a few other items from the old apartment: the Day of the Dead figurine collection, now slightly larger; the gold totem-head ashtray that says Aloha Hawaii; the virgin mary candle; the glass head; the orange endtable and funky divided chip bowl.
In the room where I slept last night is a painting J once bought because the subject in the portrait, a slouchy, goateed, bespectacled fellow in a fishing hat, looked so much like J. It used to hang in the middle of their apartment. Occasionally, after a few beers, we would all just stare at the painting, stunned silent by the uncanny resemblance while Grumpus the turtle flopped around in his tank.
*title from A.M. Homes, whose fiction J introduced me to a few years back.