Tuxedo Park School Newsletter (Spring 2010) - Exerpt

Dear Ms. Reis,

I have just finished reading “Blairhame,” from your chapbook, Incantations and am moved to write and ask for your permission to print, frame and hang this beautiful poem in our school. Every year the English Department has a week-long poetry celebration. We would be so honored if you would pay us a visit during that time. You would be so inspiring to our budding poets.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Fiona Duffy, Alumni Associate

presents

Donna Reis

When: Sat. November 21st
4 - 6 pm

Where: Baby Grand Books
7 West Street, Warwick, NY 10990
(845) 986 - 6165
www.babygrandbooks.com

The Man-Childs, The Wormwood Scrubs,
The Counts, Pure Space, The Happy Fish
and Chicken Band, The Man-Childs II, Blue
Goose, Quarry Road, Larry and the Shoes,
The Rockabilly Shufflers, Cabin Fever, The
Secrets, Katie and The Meadow Muffins,
Gramolini, Angel Train, The Blue Hill
Kickers, The Sourmash Boys, Somebody’s
Sister, Armadillo, Celtic Clan, Sunday’s
Well, Inchicore, The Dublin City Ramblers,
The Luck of the Draw, The Urban Legends,
The Unreliable Narrators, Mister Cranky.

Donna Reis

Your dead aunt’s chimney stands
like a blacksmith’s forge as you crest
the drive, your home surrounded
by a cemetery of stone foundations,
tumbling tenant houses and trees as old
as fairy tales about to topple. A staircase
rises to the brambled sky. Your grandfather’s
mansion turned hotel now lies charred
from a jilted piano player
who murdered his lover,
then shot himself in a sea of blinking
ancestors. There are dead horses in the
paddock, remnants of the pool,
tennis courts and gardens even the deer
have long forgotten. Taxes that would kill
anyone, parched water pipes that clang,
“Go away.” Crazy Kate in the gardener’s
cottage forever building walls,
flying her blue blooded flag
like a keep-out sign, hoarding
matches, storing cans of gasoline.

-Donna Reis

That year Grandpa mailed us a Christmas card with a check enclosed. Mom wouldn’t acknowledge his gift, but Dad sneaked a thank you note into the mail. Within days we were invited to my grandparents’ home on Weed Street for Christmas. Driving down the long hedgerow lined driveway, the light grey Cape Cod with white trim that my grandfather built with the help of my mother in 1953 came into view. Even though it was the most modest house in the neighborhood, its beautifully landscaped two acre expanse of front yard gave it an understated New England elegance. Grandpa had made his living taking care of other people’s lawns and gardens and now he finally had his own.
I remember walking up the curved granite steps beside Mom as she silently carried a gift wrapped bottle of whiskey. She had barely lived in this house. Shortly after its completion when she confided her desire to marry my father, she was told to leave. Dad stepped between us and knocked on the front door. The door flooded open with the amber glow of a rippling fire reflected in hand pegged oak flooring that blazed around my grandmother’s silhouetted round five foot four frame. I don’t remember how she greeted us, but her greeting marked the genesis of a seven year alliance between her and I that is one of my fondest memories. She had a melodic brogue that could melt ice cubes like Jameson’s and wore her silver hair in waves close to her head like a flapper. She and Mom never got on, but with her red-painted nails and pierced ears, I thought she was grand.
Sitting by the fire in his worn red leather chair, my grandfather beamed as he rose to greet us. Over the years Mom has recalled how when he sat back down I toddled over and sat on the foot of his crossed leg and asked for a horsy ride. She then always goes on to say how painfully shy I was and until that moment had never spoken to an adult. I’ve always felt she was really saying how betrayed she felt as I bonded with the man who threw her out of her home.
Placed invitingly by the Christmas tree, shimmering with glass ornaments brought over from Ireland, was a little Dutch painted chair, perfectly sized for a three-year-old. I sat in the chair and watched guests arrive whose names I would come to know over the next decade. There was Annie and John O’Keefe, Hannah and Joe Nevel and Paddy Sweeny. Soon the floor bounced to music and ice clinked up and down in their glasses as they danced a jig.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
That year marked the beginning of several years of fire-lit holidays spent in New Canaan. My grandparents accepted Dad as one of their own and never brought up our different religion. No one enjoyed Grandma’s cooking on holidays more than she did. She’d brag throughout each meal how she’d out done herself that year. I loved to watch her cook. She never flicked the column of ashes from her cigarette. When it toppled in the gravy she’d stir the pot giggling, “That’ll make it tasty.”
Uncle Dicky joined us when he was on leave from the Navy. Dick was Mom’s younger brother and was deemed “The Miracle Baby” since birth. When Grandpa worked as a groom on the Clark Estate on the other side of town, he, Grandma and Mom lived in the servant’s quarters of the main house. One night they awoke to their wing on fire. Seeing the flames shooting up the back staircase, Grandma charged out their second story bedroom window breaking her back. Thinking it best, the doctor chose not to tell her she was pregnant with their second child and swore her family to secrecy. She wore a full body cast for the next eight months that left a tiny bit of extra room around her tummy.
The day she had the cast removed, Grandma treated my mother and herself to a Coca-cola before returning home. The classic family story goes like this, as she sipped her soda her compressed belly slowly emerged to its full-term pregnancy size. Humiliated, Mom whisked her out of the soda fountain as customers stared in astonishment while Grandma prattled, “Jazus, this gas is somethin’ terrible!”
Her belly didn’t go down until she gave birth to my uncle. Convinced he was a miraculous gift from God, Dicky was regarded as second only to Christ. Surrounding him like a halo, his mythic birth protected him from ever being blamed during the usual childhood escapades.
* * * * * * * * * *
Grandma and Grandpa’s house was the one place I felt free to dream the world into anything I wanted it to be. I loved to explore the grounds and the woods that surrounded them. I would follow the bridle path that led to a stream, and sit all afternoon daydreaming and watching the wildlife come to drink. It was there that I saw my first snake. He was only a Garter sunning himself, but fear paralyzed me, as I recalled how Mom told me whenever Grandma saw a snake she’d rush her into a closet and have her guard the crack under the door to make sure the snake wouldn’t slither underneath. The two of them would remain cloistered in the moth-ball-scented-darkness until Grandpa came home from work and assured them of their safety. I decided not to tell Grandma what I’d seen.
On rainy days, there was always the attic with its steamer trunks stamped Ireland and scads of furniture perfect for setting up house under the eaves. There, I spent many afternoons pretending to be married to Paul McCartney and caring for our children.
Every summer I looked forward to spending a week with my grandparents. Grandma prepared all of my favorites: cherry Jell-O, chocolate pudding and her famous rhubarb pie. She could also be counted on for her superstitions from the ole sod: “Don’t follow the Will O’ the Wisp over the bogs ‘cos you’ll never come back,” “Run barefoot in the dew every morning and your feet won’t sweat,” “Never eat a berry from a bush you don’t see a bird eat from,” “If a picture falls off a wall; a bird gets into the house; or you hear the Banshee’s wail, someone is going to die.” Once, while visiting, a crack of thunder shook Grandma’s ribbon candy church so hard it came crashing down. Fearfully silent the rest of the afternoon, Grandma and I were certain death lurked around the corner.
Shortly afterward, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. She’d battled breast cancer thirty years earlier, but after undergoing a mastectomy was told that they’d gotten it all. The cancer had quietly seeped back to the same spot and spread into every organ. For the next year, Grandma was either in bed or in the hospital. If she was in the hospital, I had to wait in the car with my grandfather as my parents visited. Stricken, he turned to me and said “She keeps asking for you.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
Grandma died in August of 1966 when I was ten. The hearse led us on a tour of downtown New Canaan and every brogue in town wagged, “Maggie must be lovin’ this ride.” “She looked beautiful at the wake, didn’t she?” “Never looked better.” Afterwards, there was a party at the house. I was furious with Annie and John O’Keefe and all the others for tossing their whiskey back and laughing as though it were a holiday. Devastated, I wondered how the sun could dare shine and the grass could remain green.
Our visits were different for the next few years. Grandpa aged rapidly as he sat in his chair drinking and reminiscing. Until the day he showed up with his new bride, Nellie. Nellie was an eccentric lass from Tipperary who was full of fun and madly in love with my grandfather. She had dyed red hair and wore blouses cut too low for her age with big brooches pinned between her breasts. She always put a saucer on top of her tea cup, “To let it brew a bit.” And when she was tipsy, she’d stand up and perform the poetry she used to recite on a radio show.
Grandpa repainted the whole house making it fresh and clean for his new misses. Knowing Grandma had been after him to paint for years, I felt injured by this gesture. I didn’t like Nellie living in my grandmother’s house and using her things as if they were her own. When we visited I spent more and more time either making up stories or taking walks.
Grandpa died soon after he retired. It seems so many men of his era shriveled up without the routine and identity of a daily job. Since Nellie took such good care of him at the end of his life, Dicky and Mom gave her the house. I mourned the loss of the little Cape with all its whiskey colored memories as much as I did my grandparents.
Years later, Nellie invited me to her home for lunch. She said, “I know how much you loved your grandmother and that you’ve never accepted me.” Having grown up, I knew what a brave gesture this was and allowed her into my heart. She showed me the projects she was working on and to my surprise she wrote poetry and sewed like I did. She taught me how to smock little girls’ dresses and make pleated drapes. One time she said, “Why don’t you go into the attic and take whatever you want of your Grandmother’s.” I brought down the glass Christmas tree ornaments and asked if I could have them. They weren’t half as nice as I remembered, much of the color was chipped and I’d never noticed before that they were each tied with a loop of dingy packing string instead of wire hangers. “Of course,” she said, “take them.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
Now in my fifties I raise a glass of wine every Christmas to Nellie who is long gone as I step back and watch the light catch the very ornaments that twinkled the night I met my grandparents. To me they’re as valuable as Waterford crystal, string and all.