A Hedge of Rubber Trees
By Amy Clampitt
The West Village by then was changing; before long
the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge
would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived,
impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of
rubber trees, with three cats, a canary--refuse
from whose cage kept sifting down and then
germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around
the saucers on the windowsill--and an inexorable
cohort of roaches she was too nearsighted to deal
with, though she knew they were there, and would
speak of them, ruefully, as of an affliction that
might once, long ago, have been prevented.
Unclassifiable castoffs, misfits, marginal cases:
when you're one yourself, or close to it, there's
a reassurance in proving you haven't quite gone
under by taking up with somebody odder than you are.
Or trying to. "They're my friends," she'd say of
her cats--Mollie, Mitzi and Caroline, their names were,
and she was forever taking one or another in a cab
to the vet--as though she had no others. The roommate
who'd become a nun, the one who was Jewish, the couple
she'd met on a foliage tour, one fall, were all people
she no longer saw. She worked for a law firm, said all
the judges were alcoholic, had never voted.
But would sometimes have me to dinner--breaded veal,
white wine, strawberry Bavarian--and sometimes, from
what she didn't know she was saying, I'd snatch a shred
or two of her threadbare history. Baltic cold. Being
sent home in a troika when her feet went numb. In
summer, carriage rides. A swarm of gypsy children
driven off with whips. An octogenarian father, bishop
of a dying schismatic sect. A very young mother
who didn't want her. A half-brother she met just once.
Cousins in Wisconsin, one of whom phoned her from a candy
store, out of the blue, while she was living in Chicago.
What had brought her there, or when, remained unclear.
As did much else. We'd met in church. I noticed first
a big, soaring soprano with a wobble in it, then
the thickly wreathed and braided crimp in the mouse-
gold coiffure. Old? Young? She was of no age.
Through rimless lenses she looked out of a child's,
or a doll's, globular blue. Wore Keds the year round,
tended otherwise to overdress. Owned a mandolin. Once
I got her to take it down from the mantel and plink out,
through a warm fuddle of sauterne, a lot of giddy Italian
airs from a songbook whose pages had started to crumble.
The canary fluffed and quivered, and the cats, amazed,
came out from under the couch and stared.
What could the offspring of the schismatic age and a
reluctant child bride expect from life? Not much.
Less and less. A dream she'd had kept coming back,
years after. She'd taken a job in Washington with
some right-wing lobby, and lived in one of those
bow-windowed mansions that turn into roominghouses,
and her room there had a full-length mirror: oval,
with a molding, is the way I picture it. In her dream
something woke her, she got up to look, and there
in the glass she'd had was covered over--she gave it
a wondering emphasis--with gray veils.
The West Village was changing. I was changing. The last
time I asked her to dinner, she didn't show. Hours--
or was it days?--later, she phoned to explain: she hadn't
been able to find my block; a patrolman had steered her home.
I spent my evenings canvassing for Gene McCarthy. Passing,
I'd see her shades drawn, no light behind the rubber trees.
She wasn't out, she didn't own a TV. She was in there,
getting gently blotto. What came next, I wasn't brave
enough to know. Only one day, passing, I saw
new shades, quick-chic matchstick bamboo, going up where
the waterstained old ones had been, and where the seedlings--
O gray veils, gray veils--had risen and gone down.
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1. List your five favorite beverages.
Water
Chai
Cranberry juice
Vanilla Coke
Ginger peach tea
2. List your five favorite websites.
My Friends page
trektoday.com
amazon.com
rugbytackling.com
tarotschool.com
3. List your five favorite snack foods.
Junior Mints
Smoked almonds
Macademia nuts
Pretzels dipped in jalapeno mustard
Cheetos
4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.
Monopoly
Gin rummy
Blackjack
Uno
Clue
5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.
Note: I have never played any of these. I watch my kids. I may not even have the titles right.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (GameCube)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (GameCube)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Game Boy)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Game Boy)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Game Boy)
5. Are you ready to scream if you see one more Christmas episode or special?
Yes.
1. Do your fandoms do Christmas specials? If so, do you like them or not?
No, thank heavens, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings are both wonderfully Christmas-free. Yule stories are generally enjoyable, and I actually once wrote a Chanukah Space: 1999 story on a dare, but I am sick to death of Christmas stories per se.
2. Does the fan fiction in any of your fandoms take into consideration that not everyone celebrates Christmas?
Yes. People who write Trek fiction in particular seem very attuned to this. The reason I wrote the Space: 1999 story is that there are Christmas stories in that fandom but I had never seen a Chanukah story, yet both Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, who played the principal characters, are Jewish. So, for that matter, are William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
3) What is the best Christmas episode you’ve seen for any show? Why?
You know, I'm sure there must be one, but for the life of me I can't think what it could be right now. Maybe that episode of The Avengers where John Steed tells Emma Peel that he has gotten a letter from Cathy Gale and he can't figure out what she's doing at Fort Knox. (Note: If anyone knows where there is Steed-Peel Avengers fic to be found, please tell me!)
4) Do you slash any Christmas shows? If so, which ones?
Bwahahaha! Frosty and Rudolph. No, I don't slash any Christmas shows, unless slashing Jesus and Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar counts.
And speaking of slashing, this ought to be interesting...gacked from
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