“The narrator,” Alonzo said.
“The narrator appears. It’s a real shock when the poem alligator-tails around and says, ‘My mind’s not right.’”
“What do you know about Robert Lowell?” Alonzo asked.
“Only what you’re about to tell me.”
Our food arrived. Alonzo always ordered Tom’s Big Breakfast. It comes with octopus and bacon. I always ordered the daily egg-white scramble with fruit. God, I depressed myself.
“Can I have your bacon?” I said.
“Robert Lowell was born to Boston Brahmins,” Alonzo said, placing the thick strips on a saucer. “He battled mental illness his whole life and was in and out of institutions.”
“Oh!” I suddenly had an idea. I waved over the waitress. “You know how you sell cookies and mints and that garlic spread? Can you make me a gift basket?”
For Sydney Madsen. Another bugbear was the way she always arrived with little presents for me. Today being different, I would bring her one too.
Alonzo continued. “The poet John Berryman suggests that ‘Skunk Hour’ depicts the moment when the ‘I’ of the poem—”
“The ‘I’ of the poem?” I had to laugh. “You’re among friends. Just say it: Robert Lowell.”
“When Robert Lowell recognizes a depression is coming on that will leave him hospitalized. ‘A catatonic vision of frozen terror,’ Berryman called this poem.”
“‘I myself am hell; nobody’s here. Only skunks,’” I said. Something occurred to me. “Only. Another one of our poems hinged on the word only.”
Alonzo frowned.
“‘Dover Beach’!” I practically shouted because how on earth did I remember that when I can’t remember what year it is? “‘Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray’… That’s when that poem turns on its axis too.”
Alonzo pointed to my printout. “May I?”
“Go ahead.”
He tore off a corner and wrote only.
“Look at me, making the page!” I said. “Will you use that in one of your poems?”
Alonzo cocked an eyebrow mysteriously and pulled out his wallet, bursting with similar scraps. Among the stacked credit cards, a blue stripe with white block letters—
“Hey,” I said before I could think it through. “Why do you have a Louisiana driver’s license?”
“It’s where I grew up.” Alonzo handed over a long-haired version of himself. “New Orleans.”
With those two words: the sucker punch.
“Are you okay?” Alonzo asked.
“I’ve never been to Louisiana” were the words that came out, a bizarre nonanswer and a lie. Now I needed to say something true. “I have no connection to New Orleans.”
Just hearing myself speak the name made me drop my fork into my breakfast.
The waitress bounced up with a gift basket the size of a car seat. “Someone’s gonna be happy today!” Seeing my face, she quickly added, “Or not. We good here?”
“I’m good,” Alonzo said.
“I’m good.” To prove my point, I lifted my fork out of my eggs and gave the handle a defiant lick.
The waitress pivoted on her heel and scrammed.
“A question,” I said, fumbling for the poem. I needed to get this morning back on track. “‘Spar spire.’ Would that be the steeple?”
“A spar is a ship’s mast,” Alonzo said. “So probably—”
My phone jumped to life. GALER STREET SCHOOL.
“There is no way,” I said.
“Is this Eleanor? It’s Lila from Galer Street. Everything’s fine. It’s just Timby seems to have a tummy ache.”
Three times in the past two weeks I’ve had to pick him up early! Three times there was nothing wrong.
“Does he have a fever?” I asked.
“No, but he’s looking awfully miserable lying here in the office.”
“Please tell him to cut it out and go back to class.”
“Ooh,” Lila said. “But if he is sick…”
“That’s what I’m telling you—” There was no arguing. “Okay, I’ll be right there.” I slid out of the booth. “That kid. I’ll show him fear in a handful of dust.”
I bade adieu to Alonzo, grabbed the gift basket, and split. As I opened the door, I glanced back. Alonzo, bless him, seemed more disconsolate than I that our poetry lesson had come to such an abrupt end.