While downdownstairs of eternity, moons prior to moons, halves of moons, quarters, crescented slivers these falcate whatever miserly dieting wanes, Hanna pats at her swell, offers Wanda one more drink of this one doesn’t count, shot without label, nervously peeled, crumpled, and balled, she doesn’t know from liquor, anyway, neither of them do except Wanda who she wouldn’t admit, a celebration for the sake of observance, while she herself, Hanna, shouldn’t, must abstain, upon the advice of the life bottled within her.
This mensch pets with mitten His forehead thrice, then mutters again with shut eyes, holds a heart the left one as he shuckles a bissele more as he murmurs, strokes his beard, absentmindedly gripes from it all the dark hairs, curls his toes in his boots (schmuck he never took them off, left them to dry in the fireplace, he’s dirtying the house terribly inconsiderate who ever heard, how was he raised and by whom, let’s go to their house and burn the barn down, its stable for the reindeer and sleighs) then asks B, what, something, if He wants to see some pictures of his grandkinder maybe and B, iffy, was this His father, is this the mensch who’s been here seven now and one night previous, and if not, then what, if any, was the difference, and his right to sit in the Presence of, anyway nods an assent, how not to and the pictures they’re shownoff in the light of the mensch, his white, the beardhalo, balltopped cap’s gloriole, aureole, icebowed hairy halo illuminating the names of those depicted filledin-the-blanks, in red feltpen looped feminine along their snowywhite backs, where everyone was and, too, what they were doing or up to, who was married to whom and who was the whom and who else had who with whomever, what they all did to do well for themselves for a living and how they made or make out at it and the like, and how they’re all evilly elfin, small rodentlike things who don’t appear to have been made in the image of their Patriarch, if that’s what he is, but more in the opposite image, He’s thinking his under-developed, their undeveloped, the true deepest negative…until ‘Twas this knock at the door and the rednosed redeyed mensch he doesn’t rise, mouse a stir at all or even rattily twitch, merely gathers in his sack, cinches its strings tight. Hanna’s chair up against the door bolted, he’d leaned it there when he entered, came back up, it’d been purchased just last week with its twin at a discount and sugarplum soft in their vinyl upholstery, for both parents to witness their miracle they’ve never been sat in, remain unmoved, the room entire, decorated in baby’s blue for luck or hope, Mazel and filled full with stuffedanimals, pillows God everything else stuffed stomachs and heads and dinosaurs in their aeroplanes that’d seem ridiculous in a room belonging to a grown mensch, and He was grown, already, is, of B’s size by now, how the whole room is stilled: then, a softer knock pause knock knock knock at a door down the hall, the Master Bedroom maybe and the mensch stiffens, slowly rises from Israel’s chair, hesitant to go up to the door and feel a jambjammed and bleeding mitten at its fiery handle; as he rises — his chair tilts to collapse, legs knuckle, kneel, bow, Israel’s not replaced though it’s still under warranty but instead to become reassembled, weldnailed or glued perfectly together again by the Garden, in the Garden, in His own house again this one here once atop the Island atop the bay whose waters suicide themselves upon the coast of this world, as it’s known…only, then, to be burnt, to become ashed into perfection again only in the World to Come, if you’re familiar, if undead and hopeful — the covers go up again, go up over His nose, up over His eyes, blanket His forehead and hair.
Hanna resigned, sighing her soul out.
