Garbage Man

Eventually my stepfather grew tired

of his exile in the basement

and left. She wept and begged him

not to go but he packed his Hummingbird

guitar and soldering irons and moved in

with a woman he’d met at the corner store.

And my mother took up with a garbage man.

When my stepfather found out, he went

down to the sanitation department and

burst into the main office, crying

and waving a gun and demanding to see the guy.

My mother, telling me about it, paused

at this point in her story to say

with a kind of scornful amusement,

Can you imagine him with a gun?

I started to laugh; I could not.

Where he got a gun, my mother continued,

eyebrows ascending dramatically to her hairline

in the manner of Groucho Marx describing

the elephant in his pajamas, I  have no idea.

But the garbage man was very upset.

I almost lost my job because of

your husband, he told her. I can’t have that

happening where I work.

I see what you mean, my mother said,

and I know exactly how she said it,

a light gravity in her voice folding up the situation

as she might a cloth on which ink had been spilled,

tucking it into her purse with the intention

to bleach it back into service, only to forget

it was there until, fishing for a tissue or her keys,

her hand emerged a deep and striking blue.