Anne Germanacos

Golden

Better start with something shining, golden: the boy's curls, the hairs on the backs of the father's hands as they reach out to hold the boy, astride an average jungle gym. He is, now, standing beneath the sky, towering above them all. Truly a god.

Ambitious

A five year old with a penchant for winning.

The stalking nature of ambition.

A Particular Conjunction

Had it happened at the bank? A small boy in short pants having to pee, his father's incredible hand staying him, the stream of warmth that ran down his leg. Relief and shame claimed him, together, and perhaps forever in that particular conjunction.

Blood

Did it begin there? Or much farther back in time, a place before knowledge or consciousness. Did it happen before he was born, in the cells of a great-grandfather's existence, passed on in the blood?

He's always been concerned about blood. Who is, and who isn't. Blood and money, the only things he trusts.

In the Bank

The father's hand came up behind him, swooped him a little into the air, and down again onto the hard marble of that immense building, its ceiling like a dark sky.

Tall men moved around them, creating wind that pushed his hair against his eyes, blinding him.

Dwelling

He isn't one to dwell on the past, though some would say that's why he'll never escape it.

Ownership

He owned property. Things. Land. The sky? (Sometimes that's how it felt.)

Loving

He could love like a hurricane.

His wife:

Children:

His father, a voice

But going back, his father: the man with the hand.

Eventually, just a voice with the backing of a sturdy body.

A Deplorable State

The fury that fired them, a man and an almost-man created a deplorable state, except on the athletic field where man-in-waiting turned man, no questions asked.

His Children

The girls want to ride donkeys, because of a book their teacher read to them, or to one of them and then the other picked it up. He'd like to find donkeys for them but there are none around, except at the zoo, and everyone knows how rangy and scrawny, probably diseased, those donkeys are.

So he gets horses, one for each. They're there in the morning with the sun coming at them from behind, a sparkling horse for each of his girls. Nothing's too much for them, rounder than apples, more precious than eyes.

Handing them the sun

He would climb a ladder to the sun and bring it down for them, his girls, if any ladder reached.

Not quite aware of his folly, he finds himself thinking: There must be a ladder.

Treasure seekers

He wants them to be extraordinary children: mountain climbers, deep sea divers, cave explorers, treasure seekers.

Amazons

He gives them horses (without reins), feeds them raw things, (green-tinged) milk from a brown-and-white cow, oysters, raw cheese, raw carrots. He forces lettuce and onions down their small dark throats, and claps when they ask for more. He wants amazons, girls so strong they're larger-than-life, girls who will hold him up when he's feeble.

His own father is feeble but holds himself up marvelously. There are ways and ways of growing old.

Aiming for the sun

His girls swoop across fields, trot narrow pathways, fall in swimming pools, float to shore, aim balls at metal hoops, ride and ride to finish lines and past them, aiming for nothing but the sun.

He would give them wings, buy them years of fast minds, slow hearts, high-pealing laughter.

A new toe

The one has stubbed her toe.

He'll buy her a new one.

Flying

He's almost positive he's never felt like killing himself: now that his father is in decline, his first instinct is to go with him. But such instincts are seconds-long and disappear almost before they register. The depth of the feeling takes him low then shoots him high, like an object suddenly dislodged from the sea bed.

He is truly flying; his father's demise offers him the rest of the road that is his life.

Proprietary

It's days before he comes down, realizes what he's done, how his wife is looking at him, his girls wondering. He knows he should be able to talk about this, but can't. It's his, not theirs, and he's possessive as well as proprietary.

Face down in the indigo

He pictures himself face down in the pool, and doesn't know whether it's a death wish or the desire to get high.

The image scares him but as with most things, its power subsides. He swims in the morning before they're awake and is gone without seeing them.

Inverse

He watches his father go down—he can read the retreating years on his father's newly expressive face—who is this father?—and goes skyward as if the relationship is truly inverse.

In the Jaguar

Most mornings in the Jaguar, he's got the Rolling Stones heating him up for the day. Elevated, like bubbles in champagne, he crosses the Bridge and knows a high cable's sorrow—sky-stuck, immersed in blue.

Climbing

He strings together a series of peaks, a kind of mountain climber.

All his hours are qualified by peaks.

Homicide

His coups taste increasingly of homicide.

Family time

He doesn't use anything during the week. It's weekends, family time, when he allows external substances to combine with his blood. The children are awed and intimidated by their father, a prince.

Cocaine her husband

Cocaine became her husband, cocaine his wife. The brain circuity works splendidly on the wrong message.

Hospitalized

This is the boy who, now a man, leaves slivers of illegal substances on the surfaces of things. He won't admit that anything was left on the blue-flowered fabric spread over the bed where his older daughter sleeps.

He's smart enough or flustered enough, or simply confused enough to know denial for a friend.

Terror

Even then, at the moment of terror, he wouldn't see how he was incriminated.

Rebirth

We like to think that almost anyone is recoverable, can come at his life from another angle and be reborn. This is what the rest of us assume but so far, no fruit of this belief.

This is the boy who, flying free with waxed wings, was scorched by the sun. His burns are invisible; it's a miracle he's alive.