Something In Her Voice
Lyons, Stephen
SOMETHING IN HER VOICE Stephen Lyons ~ hen I call Rose, who is at her mother's on this dark winter evening for her visitation week, I can hear something wrong in my daughter's voice....
...I am driving a tractor raking fall oat straw in northern Michigan...
...I guess these years are finally catching up with me...
...I ask, in my most welcoming tone, desperately not wanting her to hang up...
...she is climbing trees and sniffing Northcoast rhododendrons...
...twirling a dance, eyes cbsed, in the Western wind in a blue corduroy jumper and white tights...
...Strong's fourth-grade class...
...I am holding still in this room, searching for faith with my own small remainder, affirming one child, remembering another...
...A trouble that needs to escape and come home...
...Mountain ranges I still climb at night in my bed...
...When I look at Keith's picture, I think of all the children I've known in my life...
...She is also irritable and short with me, wishing this conversation would end...
...Stephen Lyons, a writer, lives in Pullman, Washington...
...Photos are not easy to look at...
...He tied a rope to his bedroom door and jumped off his bed...
...He seemed happy...
...Tonight there is nothing automatic in our goodbyes...
...A child's life, with my own intertwined, is held within the covers of this photo album...
...He's at the edges of the classroom on one of the days I visited...
...I flunked my math test...
...Don't worry, Papa, I would never do anything like that...
...Memories are never simple...
...Maybe the dark brown color of his hair...
...I put down the receiver and get out the family album that holds class pictures for each of the last seven years...
...Everybody knew him...
...I remember how I've watched them grow...
...I recall eyes and a smile...
...I remember the times I've teased them, held them, been shocked by their deaths, despaired as their parents split up to form new families...
...I can't easily untangle the joy from the pain, and if I am to survive separation and divorce, I am forced to choose the better moments of our lives...
...I find Keith with Rose in C. Anderson's third-grade class, and in Mrs...
...I can hold each picture and slip into a time frame of emotions...
...Precious fragments of field and wood...
...That's when I remember Keith just for an instant, like a light drop of rain...
...and her mother holding her wrapped in a towel fresh from a bath, both of them radiant...
...All the rooms and houses stare back at me...
...I never would have thought he would do something like this...
...More pages: Rose with tricycles and summer Popsicles...
...Spence's English class and tried to talk about it...
...What's wrong, sweetie...
...I am suddenly shivering, but not from the weather...
...I see him looking at me...
...We sat in small groups in Mrs...
...Keith Jensen committed suicide today...
...There is nothing in Keith's face that could forewarn what happened today...
...She talks on with emotion and without hesitation, as if she is the river and I am the ocean...
...And I've been inspired by their bravery in the face of it all...
...I listen without interruption...
...This is what I'm looking for tonight: a reckoning, a validation that the years just didn't pass without notice...
...He is smiling out at me along with the other children I have watched over the years: in the noisy playground at Russell Elementary School, on stage at the annual holiday concerts, and at my annual visits on Career Days to talk about writing...
...It's a long-standing tradition with us that when we are separated and we end our conversation that we each say "I love you...
...An emotional quality that a phone cannot disguise...
...I think of the connection they share with all the world's children and how their lives ripple through our community, affecting each and every one of us...
...I hear Rose's voice again...
...there are April tulips and Rose playing cello...
...I close the album...
...I don't understand...
...A long pause...
...She walks under the halflight of a redwood f o i s t holding my hand and dances with me, her feet on my own for balance...
...I am haunted tonight...
...I continue turning the pages of the album to watch the lives of my daughter...
...Meals, friends, seasons, and landscapes of desert and rain...
...Now we are connected...
...nothing to prepare any of us for the idea of a twelve-year-old going to elaborate measures to hang himself...
...Then, out of nowhere, my daughter says, "Don't worry, Papa, I would never do anything like that...
...And then suddenly it is freed...
...I want to remember everything about my daughter...
...All the various Western towns where I tried to hold us together and failed...
...Commonweal 3 0 January 16,1998...
...School was weird...
...And that is all I remember...
...I look outside the kitchen window at the drifts of heavy snow...
...Some of the kids were crying because the last words they said to him were, 'Shut up Keith!' "No one could do any work...
...What fine actors we ultimately must become...
...I am balancing baby Rose on the hood of our ancient green truck at a Reno rest-stop...
...There are so many rumors...
...In every photograph her fingers are busy, her eyes twinkling, and her face reflects the light of each day...
...I ask Rose if she knew Keith well...
Vol. 125 • January 1998 • No. 1
