Lizzie

by Melita Schaum

We cannot always have intensity. Sometimes the rain comes down like
phantom hands smudging the air's canvas. Today is a day without
shadows, a day when the heart goes forward slowly, dragging its
schoolbooks. Lying on the sofa, paging through art catalogues, I come
across a Fairfield Porter oil, a portrait of a breakfast table in the
sun. The meal is over but the cloth has not been cleared-among the
objects are a book, a China jar, a spoon and vase, a pot of marmalade
and, surveying it all, a child with eyes as bright and keen as agates.
She has just been fed and now is looking down the day, down the shining
barrel of what's next to come. Still in her highchair, the morning
arrives for her, is served on blue and white-the Delft pattern of the
sky, the porcelain and eggshell lights-and she is its centerpiece,
gathered like greenery and bloom. The date is 1958. Christ, I think,
these last months that I have wasted despising the boundaries of my
life. Time lost, yet the sensation of time remains. Today is nothing
but an ache between my ribs. Things pass. Some days even art is beyond
enduring.

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