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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Cad Goddeu



Cad Goddeu (English: The Battle of the Trees) is a medieval Welsh poem preserved in the 14th-century manuscript known as the Book of Taliesin. The poem refers to a traditional story in which the legendary enchanter Gwydion animates the trees of the forest to fight as his army.



The poem is especially notable for its striking and enigmatic symbolism and the wide variety of interpretations this has occasioned.
Some 248 short lines long (usually five syllables and a rest), and falling into several sections, the poem begins with an extended claim of first-hand knowledge of all things, in a fashion found later in the poem and also in several others attributed to Taliesin;
culminating in a claim to have been at "Caer Vevenir" when the Lord of Britain did battle. There follows an account of a great monstrous beast, of the fear of the Britons and how, by Gwydion's skill and the grace of God, the trees marched to battle: then follows a list of plants, each with some outstanding attribute, now apt, now obscure;
The poem then breaks into a first-person account of the birth of the flower-maiden Blodeuwedd, and then the history of another one, a great warrior, once a herdsman, now a learned traveller, perhaps Arthur or Taliesin himself. After repeating an earlier reference to the Flood, the Crucifixion and the day of judgment, the poem closes with an obscure reference to metalwork.


I have read your poems



I have read your poems with my door locked late at night and I have read them on the seashore where I could look all round me and see no more sign of human life than the ships out at sea: and here I often found myself waking up from a reverie with the book open before me. I love all poetry, and high generous thoughts make the tears rush to my eyes, but sometimes a word or a phrase of yours takes me away from the world around me and places me in an ideal land surrounded by realities more than any poem I ever read.
Bram Stoker, excerpt from a letter to Walt Whitman written c. February 1872.   

“Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802″



by William Wordsworth
 Westminster Bridge - Wikipedia

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!





I got it straight from the horse’s mouth:


The term has its origin in horse racing. If you wanted tips on how a horse was doing on a particular day, what better way than to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth?




Matriculate



In Latin knows that alma mater, a fancy term for the school you attended, comes from a phrase that means "fostering mother."
The word matriculate is distantly related to the Latin mater, but its maternal associations were lost long ago—even in terms of Latin history. It is more closely related to Late Latin matricula, which means "public roll or register."
Matricula has more to do with being enrolled than being mothered, but it is the diminutive form of the Latin matrix , which in Late Latin was used in the sense of "list" or "register" and earlier referred to female animals kept for the purposes of breeding.



Viviana Durante


Viviana Durante (born 8 May 1967) is an Italian ballet dancer, considered one of the great dramatic ballerinas of recent times. She was a principal dancer of The Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Teatro alla Scala and K-Ballet.



Claude Debussy – Suite bergamasque, L 75: Clair de Lune



Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise

American Folk: Joni Mitchell



Joni Mitchell's poetic imagery and her soaring soprano voice has made her a folk legend. Although she really wanted to be a painter, Mitchell managed to pen some of the most memorable folk songs of the past 40 years, including the preservationist tune "Big Yellow Taxi."




The House on Maple Street by Stephan King


    This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  "That charm looks splendid around your neck, Max," Gerald winced as a splash of dye stung in the corner of his eye. "Why, that old key hasn't lost a bit of its old shine."

  "Flattery will get you everywhere, Gerry," Maxine stretched to reach a paper towel on the kitchen counter, and the bronze key jangled at the end of the silver necklace her husband Richard had given her as an anniversary gift. "Now sit still before I get any more of this stain into your eyes."

  Gerald tried his best to deny a chuckle and held still upon the folding chair set in the middle of Maxine's kitchen, linoleum floor. Maxine was in high spirits that Saturday, and Gerald wished to do nothing that might frustrate her efforts to summon a young shade of dark black back to his aging, gray beard.

  "Well, look in the glass," and Maxine waved a small, hand-held mirror across Gerald's face. "You tell me if you see any spot of gray I might've missed. I'm still too young to be dating a man with gray in his beard."

  Gerald nodded as Maxine held the mirror, hardly breathing to prevent any more of the black dye from seeping off his apron to stain his shirt.

  "I think the beard looks fantastic, Max."

  Maxine pinched Gerald's ear. "Don't be so quick to answer. I tell you, I'm still too young to be sharing a bed with a gray, old man."

  Gerald was certain that Maxine had painted each course hair of his beard a deep color of black several times over. He had sat upon that folding chair placed in the middle of Maxine's kitchen each Saturday morning during the course of the spring and summer and waited while Maxine did all she could to paint clean the traces of his age. Maxine had dyed his beard black for such a long string of Saturday mornings, and yet Gerald knew that it would do no good to remind her of the previous weekends' successes, regardless of how long the boxes of dye promised effectiveness. Her mind would still regard that morning's session with Gerald as her first attempt to combat her lover’s age. Thus Gerald each Saturday morning bent his stiff knees into that folding chair without protest. He never grumbled about the fumes. He never complained about the stains. Gerald had no desire to remind Maxine of her slipping memory.

  So Gerald took the mirror into his hands and slowly passed it along his face. Old age was a cruel and diligent worker. He knew the reflection did not lie. Yet when exactly had the wrinkles expanded so wide from the corners of his eyes? When had his bronze cheeks faded into a surface of rough parchment blotched by so many age spots? How had his forehead grown so high? Why had his hair turned so wispy and thin?

  "Now that I give it a second look, Max," Gerald held the mirror above his right ear, "I think there might be a trace of gray here in my sideburns. Just enough gray to need a little more attention."

  "I'll have you looking as young as the day I first spotted you in the snow." Maxine winked, and the key fastened upon her silver necklace glistened in the kitchen's light. "I was thinking, Gerry, that we might drive by the home on Maple street later this afternoon. Would do my mood a little good to see that old house another time."

  The decades had not scraped as deeply across Maxine's face as they had Gerald's. Yet Gerald thought time had been downright wicked in its dealing with his life's one, true love. The years had refrained from so savagely contorting Maxine's face with wrinkles and splotches. Instead, the years claimed terrible measure upon Maxine's memory. Her dark eyes sparkled with all the twilight they had held when Gerald had come upon her lonely, crow figure seated upon one of the old library's cold steps in the middle of the snow. Her black hair never suffered gray's blasphemous touch. Her skin had hardly wrinkled at all, though she was but a few years younger than Gerald. For a while, after circumstance had brought precious Maxine back into his life, Gerald had envied his only, true love, before recognizing that time demanded a more terrible price from Maxine.

  "I don't know, Max," Gerald proceeded cautiously, "I don't know about looking at that old house on Maple street again."

  "Dammit! Don't move, Gerry!" Maxine flooded Gerald's sideburn with dye, and black dripped down her subject's face. "Hold still so I can reach that gray!"

  "I am holding still." Gerald hissed through his teeth.

  "One more move and I'll smack you with my fly-swatter."

  "I won't even breath, Max."

  "Sit still and we'll finish with your beard before driving to see that old house one more time."

  Gerald worried if he had invited ghosts to haunt Maxine when he had offered her that old, bronze key now tied to her necklace. He tried to deny the hurts the new days delivered to Maxine's mind. He tried to ignore the dents he found in the bumpers and panels of Maxine's car. He tried to pay little attention to how Maxine's refrigerator crowded with unopened bottles of maple syrup. He did his best to chuckle whenever Maxine repeatedly asked him to revisit that empty lot along Maple St. where an old home no longer stood. But Gerald could not ignore all those things together. He could not deny how time faded Maxine's mind.

  Maxine stepped back from the chair and smiled. "You can keep your invitation to my bed a little longer, Gerald Hollenkamp. You're not so young, but at least you're not so old as to have dried up all gray."

  Gerald smiled, very mu

ch relieved that Maxine's thoughts retreated from floating memories of that old home along Maple St. "That's pleasant to hear. Think we might turn the television on and watch the ballgame as we wait for my beard to dry?"

  Maxine rummaged behind the bottles of maple syrup stacked in her refrigerator before retrieving two cans of beer. Gerald grimaced at his first pull. He didn't want to think how stale the contents of that can may have grown at the back of Maxine's refrigerator. He watched Maxine's lips curl as she hesitated in the center of the kitchen.

  "The remote control's probably beneath one of the couch cushions, Max."

  "There's no reason for the remote to be there."

  "I think I might've left the remote there last night."

  Maxine frowned. "But you didn't sleep over here last night, Gerry."

  Gerald forced a smile, though his heart cracked to realize how Maxine's memory failed to remember his arrival yesterday afternoon. "Try the cushions all the same. Those remote controls sure have a strange way of crawling from one place to the next during the night."

  Maxine found the remote beneath a green couch cushion just as Gerald said she would. She had no difficulty in remembering what button powered the television console. She showed no trouble in finding the proper channel for the baseball game.

  "Here we go, Gerry," Maxine reclined into her favorite spot upon the couch. "I think Ace Henderson's on the mound this afternoon. Should be a certain win for the boys in blue with him throwing. Did I ever tell you of the weekend I spent with Ace Henderson?"

  Gerald pulled long at his old can of beer so that he did not sigh. Ace Henderson had not pitched for well over four decades. How many phantoms trespassed upon Maxine's days?

  "His complete game that October was sure something, wasn't it Max? A two-hit shut-out. They might not have won the championship, but no one can fault Ace Henderson for it. A shame the boys in blue haven't even made it back to the playoffs since."

  Maxine's eyes sparkled as they watched the players rotate around the diamond glowing upon her television. "I'll never forget the party we threw that year at the shoe factory. I'll never forget how widow Thurston shut down the factory so all of us could watch that game. I brought cheese potatoes for the pot-luck. Ray Smith brought a keg of beer for all of us. It tasted like champaign after Ace got the last out. That sure was something. Don't you remember that party?"

  Gerald feared Maxine didn’t recognize him as she turned her sight away from the television to regard him. Her face softened into a gaze Gerald recognized she had never intended to share with him, a look Maxine had given to a man other than Gerald Hollenkamp. Gerald didn't move on that folded chair set in the middle of Maxine's kitchen. He prayed she would still know him. He feared to consider a time that may come when she would only know him as a stranger. Gerald held his breath while he watched Maxine search for her husband Richard, twenty years ago lowered into his grave.

  Maxine frowned, and the stone strength usually so customary to her face returned with a flash. "Oh, forgive me, Gerry," Maxine sighed, "I forgot for a moment that you were still serving in the Army when the widow Thurston threw that party at the shoe factory. Forgive me if I made you feel left out of something. It was just a very special party."

  Gerald grinned and felt the dye dry upon his beard.

  "It's a wonderful to hear you describe it."

  "The boys in blue will win a championship in our time, Gerry. You just wait and see. I promise to keep you a little longer so we can share in the memory of it."

  "Promise?"

  "I promise."

  Gerald watched the game's first two innings from his fold-out chair in the kitchen. Between the top and bottom of the third, Gerald joined Maxine upon the couch, the plastic apron still fastened around his neck to keep any dye that might still be moist away from Maxine's furniture. Maxine said nothing more to him, nor he to her, as the game's outs were recorded. Both dealt with the ghosts and regrets as they knew best.

  Together, they prepared baked lasagna for dinner with the items Gerald had carried to Maxine's home. Maxine remembered each of that recipe's ingredients and steps. She betrayed no hardship in lighting the stove's burners. She promptly cleaned each pot and pan. Gerald hoped that Maxine's earlier confusion was only a sign of afternoon fatigue, of a lethargy that also came upon him, like a weariness that only needed a good, black cup of coffee to deny.

  But then Maxine opened her refrigerator and for a minute only stared at the contents she had therein gathered. She took one bottle of maple syrup after another from the cool shelves until her kitchen table crowded with the sweets. Gerald's heart mourned to see how Maxine struggled to recall any reason for purchasing such stock.

  "Maybe you were thinking your grandkids were visiting this weekend." Gerald extended his arm and softly gripped Maxine's wrist. "Maybe you wanted to be prepared for breakfast with all those grandkids over at once."

  Maxine sighed in relief. "Of course. I need all that syrup for the French Toast you and the grandkids love so much."

  Gerald's shoulders fell. He had never liked Maxine's French Toast. That sweet had always too painfully hurt his teeth. It had been Richard who had loved the French Toast Maxine made in her oldest, black skillet. Maxine again saw her late husband's ghost lingering upon Gerald's dyed, black beard.

  Gerald knew he possessed no power with which he might exorcise those ghosts who came to haunt Maxine. He knew he would be powerless as he would watch that fog settle and cloud everything Maxine had ever loved.

  "For the kids tomorrow," Maxine smiled. "We'll fill them up on French Toast, and then we'll take them along Maple St. to see that old home. Don't you think that would do us both some good?"

  "Of course," Gerald winked. "I would love to look at that house one more time."

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2 - Secrets Lost...

  Gerald Hollenkamp didn’t consider his lifetime to be any more blessed than any other man's. He would not quickly count himself among the lucky. He had never felt very wealthy. He had never been very competent in the accumulation of treasure. Yet, Gerald Hollenkamp had reason to believe in magic, and so he clutched to a faith that a power might spark and protect his hopes as he drove the miles separating him from Maxine.

  "Hold for me a little longer, Lady Luck," Gerald peeked through his windshield at the winter morning's sky of heavy gray and hoped the snow would wait out the weekend before falling. "Just a few more miles to Maxine's."

  Gerald envisioned that bronze key fastened to Maxine's silver necklace and prayed it was not yet emptied of luck. In the end, Gerald believed that key had brought them together. That key had to be something special, regardless of all the years of loss, all the years of regret. Gerald hated to think what kind of man he may have been had it not been for the faith he placed in the small key.

  Still, that key had not spared Gerald from choking on his regret. Regret still soured his tastebuds. Maxine had proposed herself to Gerald so many lost years ago following the successful completion of her sophomore year of secondary school. She had promised Gerald that a middle school education, plus two years of high school, was more than enough learning for a wife. But Gerald had declined, and he still regretted his answer. He had still enjoyed roaming about shortstop on the summer baseball team, had still thought he might rise to be something greater than the town leatherworker and tanner as was his father. He had only wanted to deny Maxine's proposal for a handful of years, for only a short time so that he might save for an appropriate engagement ring, to be able to propose to his love in a manner she deserved.

  But fortune had conspired against him, and Gerald Hollenkamp was never offered the opportunity to propose to his Maxine.

  War erupted around the globe, and airplanes and bombs wrenched Gerald's country from its slumber. Boys set down their baseball gloves and picked up rifles as men, praying the fury and the gore did not reap them from the land. Gerald sacrificed his goal to achieve a high school diploma in order to enlist. Maxine gave him all she possessed one night in that home that used to stand along Maple St., and the next day she kissed Gerald farewell as the train took him to war. She did not offer Gerald a second proposal, for neither of them possessed any illusion that war held any mercy for husbands, that it would show any soldier a kindness simply because he wore a wedding wing around his finger, or kept a wife's picture near his heart.

  In the morning the last remaining gift Maxine had to offer her lover going to war was a small, bronze key to her home's front door, the best talisman she had to give to the young soldier who had taken her heart in a snowstorm.

  With that key fastened to that necklace that held also held his dog-tags, Gerald survived bullets and bombs, food poisoning and malaria. He was not cut down in the jungle, was not burned alive in a bunker, was not drowned nor devoured at sea. He returned to a country ready to celebrate with parades. But he was haunted by shrieking demons and wailing ghosts. And so Gerald did not immediately return home to the Maxine war had forced him to leave behind. Haunted, he rambled as a railroad detective near Denver, as a forest fighter across Utah, as a dockhand in San Francisco, as a crabber off the cold, Alaskan coast. He grew a beard to shelter his wane cheeks from the cold, and he roamed the open wind to give the haunts that crowded his mind all the time he could for them to quiet.

  Maxine, meanwhile, moved forward in life, having asked Gerald to keep no promise to her, nor having offered any vow to him, the day that train pulled her young love to war. Richard Hanson, who worked as a foreman in the oil fields outside of town, courted Maxine for a month before offering her a fine diamond ring. Richard Hansen had returned from the war with the determination to raise a family, and he wed Maxine after two months of engagement during a day filled with snow. Maxine birthed a son and a daughter while Gerald drifted. Gerald's brother mailed him newspaper clippings to inform Gerald his first love was lost. Gerald had felt no shock upon reading the news.

  But throughout his wanderings, Gerald always clasped that small, bronze key close to his heart. He clasped that key to the old home on Maple St. and survived railway criminals, forest fires and storms at sea.

  Gerald imagined that key as he drove that narrow, county highway that brought him closer to Maxine.

  "It's only a little further. Just let that snow hold off a little longer."

  After three short, wonderful years following the day Maxine came back into his life, Gerald prayed to his small, good-luck key to keep Maxine safe. He prayed to that key during all those weeknights away from Maxine, when Gerald's job as warehouse watchman forced him to each Sunday afternoon drive those few hours back to his job away from Maxine's hometown. He prayed to that key's luck that Maxine did not wreck her car as she drove through stop signs. He prayed she did go for a walk in the snow and ice and break another bone. He prayed for that small, bronze key to keep Maxine safe, to protect her memory, to help her distinguish between the real world surrounding her and the realm of ghosts that claimed more and more of Maxine’s mind.

  "Don't fail me now," Gerald's heart quickened as he entered town and turned upon the street leading to Maxine's home. "That's Tony's car parked in the drive. Maxine, hold strong a little longer in front of Tony. A little longer until I can find a better way to tell him."

  Gerald parked across the street, and his knees trembled as he stepped out of his car. Maxine did not stand in her home's front window to greet him.

  "Concentrate on your corner!" A young voice shouted before a red baseball cap appeared out of the front door of Maxine's home. "Grandma's favorite picture frames are in this box, Kyle! Concentrate before you shatter them all on the ground!"

  Gerald held a breath as Maxine's grandsons Kent and Kyle Hanson wrestled against a heavy and sagging cardboard box. Gerald gripped his hands into fists so that his arms did not shake for his worry.

  "Where you boys taking all your Grandma's pictures?" Gerald feared the worst. He felt terrible for having to ask those boys, boys who had so easily found a place in the old man's heart after the years brought Maxine back to Gerald. But he needed to know before he confronted their father. "Your grandma going someplace for a vacation?"

  "Gerry!"

  Kyle, the younger of the brothers, smiled and freed a hand from the box in order to wave at Gerald.

  Gerald heard the pictures rattle as Kent roughly lowered the box to the ground to speak. "Did you see your ball team just won another three-game series? Gomez belted two homers last night. Your boys in blue just might finally make the playoffs this season."

  Gerald winked. "Sure did. But what are you boys doing with that box?"

  "Putting it in our car trunk," Kyle answered. "Grandma's coming to live in our town. Dad says she's going to be closer to us."

  Gerald concentrated on the image of that small, bronze key to prevent the panic from overwhelming him.

  "Boys!" A deep voice, a man's voice, shouted from inside the home. "Get that trunk into the car like I told you!

  The boys wrangled the box back off the ground and grunted their way to their family's car before their father stepped into the front door's frame, his face hardened, his lips locked into a frown. Tony looked more like his father than he did his mother. His wide shoulders and short legs descended from his father's line; and Tony's silver hair, his father's hair, might have convinced some that Richard had left a younger duplicate of himself behind had it not been for the pair of maternal and dark, brown eyes set deep upon his face. During that time when fortune brought Maxine back into his life, Gerald often stole a glance at Tony during the holidays and imagined what Maxine's boy may have looked like had Tony inherited Gerald's line instead of Richard's. Though Tony never spoke such a sentiment, Gerald could not help but feel how Maxine's son regarded him as a trespasser, an interloper who had no business spending weekend nig

hts with his mother beneath the roof of his dead father's home.

  Gerald forced himself to peer back into Tony's eyes.

  "You don't need to do this," Gerald whispered. "She belongs here."

  Tony's eyes burned. "How do you know what I need to do? Who are you to say where she belongs? Did you think I wouldn't find out about any of it?"

  "Who told you?"

  Tony waited for his boys to skip back into their grandmother's home in search of another packed box of mementoes before answering.

  "Do you think I heard from only one person?" Tony shook his head. "Her neighbors called me many a morning, telling me how mom tried to work their locks with her keys. The city police called to let me know how they worried about her driving, about all times she ran her car over the curb, of how she cruised, lost, around the streets until an officer escorted her home. Did you know she called the fire department three times last week, telling them that an oil fire was climbing up her kitchen walls? I'm not so many miles down that highway, Gerry. I'm hardly an hour further away than you are. And I still have friends here, who count the new dents in mom's car. I've known for a long time now, and I've made plans to give Maxine the kind of care she needs now."

  Gerald peeked at his shoes as his heart hammered. "We can care for her here, here in her home, Tony."

  Tony's eyes blazed. "I thought I opened my family to you, Gerry. My boys think so much of you. I kept waiting for you to tell me."

  "I was only trying to make the most of her days. Only helping her stay in her home."

  "How much longer do you think she will recognize this as her home?"

  "She belongs here, Tony. This is her home."

  Tony sighed. "She belongs where she can find the care she needs. There's no one left here to care for her, Gerry. No one to make sure she doesn't drive her car head-first into oncoming traffic. No one to see that she eats. She needs to be close to me now, so I can make sure she is being looked after."

  Gerald felt tears welling in his eyes. He felt his mind swoon. "I can care for her. You can't begin to understand, Tony. Let me be here with her now. Let me look after her."

  "I already gave you the chance to enter into this family," Tony replied, "and you attempted to keep this secret from me. How long has her mind been deteriorating? Since she broke her hip on the ice last year when the two of you went skating?"

  Gerald wiped at his eyes with his wrinkled hands. Tony showed no mercy in tossing that guilt at him, by heaping only more regret upon Gerald's old shoulders.

  Tony's eyes still blazed while Gerald sobbed. "Could you really look after her even if I believed you and left mother here? How would you keep your night job, Gerry? Who would look after mom when you were gone? How much have you been able to save for the choices that are going to be ahead of you both?"

  Gerald stared at the ground. He could not catch his breath.

  Tony sighed as his boys hauled another box towards their car. "You have the afternoon to remove whatever belongs to you from this house, Gerry. I'll have new locks on the doors first thing tomorrow morning. Whatever's left in that house when I get back tomorrow afternoon will be included in the estate sale. I’m taking Maxine to a place where I can see she is cared for. I don’t want you to see her. You’ll not be welcome to visit my mother."

  Gerald's lips twitched, but he could think of nothing to do to prevent Maxine from being taken another time from him. Tony left him thunderstruck. Gerald was too shocked to beg for Maxine's new address. He only stared at his shoes, lacking the breath, the will, to look back into Tony's smoldering eyes.

  Kent paused a moment before returning back into the home. "Dad, did you look in grandma's refrigerator?"

  "It's full of maple syrup bottles," Kyle added as he jumped onto the front porch, "and none of it's even opened. Why do you think grandma brought all that syrup?"

  "Leave it be, boys," Tony sighed to his sons. "We've got enough boxes for now. Time for us to head back home. I'll meet you both in the car."

  Relieved so suddenly from their day's chores, the brothers sprinted to their vehicle. Gerald kept his gaze rooted upon the ground, certain his heart would shudder if he looked up at the sound of those boys' feet pounding across the yard. He thought of those nights when Kyle and Kent had stayed with Maxine, when the four of them had ordered delivery pizza and watched old black and white films on television. Gerald had never had children of his own, and so perhaps he too foolishly fell in love with the boys of another father. They had called him grandpa.

  Gerald looked up only after Tony walked away from him and started his car. Kyle and Kent smiled and waved at him from the backseat as the vehicle pulled out of the lane of Maxine's home.

  Gerald did not wave back as tears blinded him.

  * * * * Chapter 3 - Wardrobe and Magic...

  Gerald searched through Maxine's empty home all afternoon before finally finding the bronze key buried at the bottom of a cardboard box filled with silverware.

  "It would be cruel to resent you for my ill luck now after all you’ve done for me," Gerald held the key into the light streaming in from the window above the kitchen sink. "You just looked so lovely upon Maxine's neck. How do you think I might ever find my way back to her?"

  Gerald found a spool of yarn in a dresser kept in Maxine's bedroom and fastened the key upon a strand of purple which he tied around his neck. He rambled aimlessly about the home, pausing often to consider how he had aged in a mirror, where he suspected the dark, black dye of his beard would soon fade to reveal the true gray lurking beneath so much dye. He sat upon the couch to watch the afternoon's baseball game upon the television, but he found he lacked the will to search for the remote control without Maxine's company. He imagined the sound of Maxine breathing next to him. He imagined the scent of her perfume, thought he heard her shuffling out from the kitchen, bringing him a chill beer she found behind so many bottles of maple syrup. Already, ghosts crowded Gerald's mind.

  So searching for some distraction from the regrets that plagued him, Gerald drifted through the home Maxine had for so many years shared with her husband Richard, the home in which Maxine and Richard had lived a lifetime, in which they had raised a family. Gerald paused to consider the pictures still hanging upon the walls. He imagined himself standing where Richard stood in those snapshots and portraits. He placed himself into those photos where Richard presented football trophies to Tony, where Richard hugged daughter Sarah upon college graduation. Gerald discovered a shoebox brimming with postcards from places Gerald had never realized Maxine had visited in an antique, roll-top desk. He read the scrawled notes written on the back of those cards, and he wondered why Maxine had never shared those experiences with him. Had he talked so much in Maxine's company that she never had the opportunity to tell him of her own travels? Or had Maxine thought it best to sequester the memories of one lover from another, so that the years or Richard and those of Gerald did not smear together as her memory turned ailing in her age?

  Gerald discovered a closet filled with Richard's abandoned wardrobe in the home's empty second bedroom. He was curious how much the slacks and coats might tell him of the man who had taken Maxine for his wife. He would not touch Richard's old Army uniform, but Gerald did not feel too ashamed to search through the pockets of other outfits for clues to the character of Maxine's deceased husband. Gerald had never asked Maxine about Richard, feeling such questions would have been imprudent, might have jeopardized the reunion time had granted to him. Thus while he looked upon golf shirts and bermuda shorts, Gerald wondered if Richard had been tender or cruel. Could one of Richard's vests hint if the husband had placed his wife's wishes above his own, or if that man's goals defined what aspirations Maxine might hope to achieve? Could dress shoes supply Gerald with a sense of Richard's intelligence? What might Richard's ties say of the humor of the man who had worn them?

  Gerald stretched to reach a gray Stetson gathering dust upon the closet's highest shelf. He traced the hat's brim with his finger, admired the fine feathers stitched into the hat's side, thought of older times he knew when it not yet become strange for men to wear hats. He dreamed to remember what it had felt like to wear such a Stetson, and so Gerald set it carefully upon his brow. Something burned against his chest for a second, and his fingers snatched at the key held by the purple thread around his neck. But the key was cool to his touch, and the heat he experienced, Gerald thought, had to have originated from another source.

  His skin still tingling in the surprise of that sudden heat, Gerald turned and saw his reflection in that room's tall mirror.

  Gerald gasped at the face that greeted him in the glass.

  Richard Hanson peered from that mirror where Gerald's reflection should have been.

  "How in the world?"

  Gerald winked, and Richard's reflection winked with him. Gerald clapped his hands. He hopped. He turned. He frowned and smiled. Yet though the reflection contained in the mirror never belonged to Gerald, it matched each of his movements. Gerald's beard vanished, transformed into the cropped haircut in which Richard always kept his silver hair. Weight gathered around the eyes in the mirror, sagged beneath the chin, so that Gerald could not claim the face winking back at him was his own no matter how that reflection matched each of his movements. The clothes Gerald wore were the same as those in the mirror. The necklace of purple string and the small key attached to it did not differ. It appeared that the glass dressed another in the clothes Gerald wore.

  Gerald tested the strange reflection by lifting the Stetson hat off of his head, and in a flash, his natural features returned in the glass.

  "A magic hat?" Gerald's eyebrow arched. "What would Richard Hanson have done with a magic hat? And where would he have found it?"

  That sudden heat upon Gerald's heat returned as he lowered the Stetson back upon his head. In a new wink, Richard Hansen's reflection returned in the mirror. Gerald lifted the hat again and he giggled when his bearded face returned to the glass. And as Gerald set the Stetson a third time upon his head, his eyes caught a flash from that small, bronze key kept at the end of his necklace, where his chest burned in the returning heat.

  "Is it even the hat that's doing it?" Though Gerald gripped the key so tightly that his knuckles turned white, the touch of that charm remained cool. "What else does this house hold in the closets?"

  Gerald found a crumpled, blue baseball cap on the closet floor as he shoved aside work shirts and sweaters. It was a vintage cap from Maxine's favorite team, with white salt stains still circling the brim. Gerald's fingers trembled as they traced the logo's fine stitching. He thought of Ace Henderson, of that pitcher who was always Maxine's favorite athlete. Gerald rushed back to the mirror and took a breath before closing his eyes and tugging that blue cap upon his head.

  The bronze key burned upon his chest, and when Gerald opened his eyes, a new man greeted him in the mirror.

  Ace Henderson matched each of Gerald's gestures and expressions. It was a young man's smile that twisted in the reflection along with Gerald's. The eyes that winked back at Gerald belonged to an athlete in his prime. The reflection's skin was tanned by afternoons in the sun. Sweat pasted the younger reflection's hair to his forehead, as if that image in the glass had just strode off the mound at the end of a complete game. Gerald pulled back his shirt sleeve and flexed his old arm's bicep, laughing as he watched Ace Henderson's younger and stronger muscle follow that movement.

  "It's the key. It's the old, bronze charm."

  Gerald tossed the old ball cap onto the room’s bed and hustled through the home in search of other items of wardrobe. A red scarf with yellow polka dots draped around his neck transformed Gerald's reflection into that of Maxine's second cousin Pearl, whose beautiful youth remained unforgotten among the woman's surviving, elder peers. An orange life-jacket retrieved from the home's attic shifted Gerald's reflection into that of a very young Tony, with his silver hair grown long to fall upon sunburned shoulders. Slipping into the yellow sleeves of a raincoat left forgotten in the mudroom morphed Gerald's image into that of Maxine's daughter Sarah when she had just turned seventeen, with red hair falling down her back, with the green, emerald eyes sparkling in the home's dim light.

  Gerald donned one article of clothing after another as the short, winter day shifted into night. Most of the pieces turned Gerald's reflection into that of some member of Maxine's family, into reflections that portrayed Maxine's loved ones in various stages of their time passed beneath her home's roof. A few pieces of wardrobe presented Gerald with the reflections of strangers he did not know, with faces that left Gerald imagining what connections had brought them to the Hanson home, of how such nameless reflections came to leave gloves and coats behind after Christmas parties and card games. The bronze

key burned each time he donned a new article of clothing, working its magic in every reflection Gerald found about the home.

  "Maybe the key's magic isn't just in the glass," Gerald spoke to himself as he looked upon the young, wide-shouldered form of Richard a masonic ring summoned in the mirror when slipped upon Gerald's finger. "I wonder if the mirror is only reflecting what it sees?"

  Gerald got an idea as the neighborhood dogs howled to announce the postman’s daily arrival. Gerald slipped into a raincoat found in the foyer closet and peeked at his reflection cast by a glass picture frame after his good luck key burned upon his chest. Tony’s reflection looked back at him. Tony’s face from earlier that morning smiled from the glass. Those eyes that earlier smoldered now looked upon Gerald with a glimmer. Gerald hurried through the front door as the postman climbed the porch’s steps to reach the mailbox mounted next to Maxine’s front door.

  “More hair product catalogs?” Gerald squinted so that he did not miss any expression that twisted upon the postman’s face. “She stopped styling the neighborhood matrons’ hair two decades ago, but Maxine never cancelled any of her catalogs.”

  The postman chuckled. “Well, Mr. Hanson, my mother used visit Maxine’s basement salon. I don’t think mom’s ghost will ever forgive Maxine for not setting her perm one last time before her visitation. All of us think the world of your mother.”

  Gerald nodded and swallowed a giggle. “Tell me, have you happened to have seen that Gerald Hollenkamp around much lately? You know, the man with the black beard.”

  “Sure,” the postman answered. “Comes by on the weekends. Seems a nice enough fellow.”

  Gerald couldn’t repress a grin. “That’s a relief to hear, and it means a lot to me knowing Maxine has good people keeping an eye out for her.”

  “Least we can do for Maxine, Mr. Hanson,” and the postman retreated from the porch and continued his route down the cracking sidewalk.

  Gerald hurried behind the front door and laughed in the privacy of Maxine’s home. The old, bronze key had not yet abandoned him. With a slight burn and glow, that key tied around his neck offered a little more magic for his aging days. Somehow, the key would bring Gerald back to Maxine. There yet remained undiscovered closets waiting within Maxine’s home, and Gerald’s heart skipped as he rummaged through the wardrobes gathered during Maxine’s lifetime.
  * * * * *

  Chapter 4 - A Pair of Old, Brown Shoes...

  Gerald discovered that the bronze key's power of transformation was not absolute. No matter where he donned a piece of wardrobe gathered from Maxine's closets, the key's power disguised him as the clothing's original owner. No matter how many miles separated that box of coats and pants from Maxine's home, the key morphed Gerald with a burning sensation against his chest. But the charm worked only with those gloves and scarfs, shirts and slacks that Gerald had gathered from Maxine's closets. Wearing a pair of steel-toed boots Gerald had borrowed from his brother Pete to help with weed-eating failed to motivate the key to any magic. Gerald did not turn into a tall, superstar athlete when he donned the old football jersey a professional quarterback had once worn before signing and giving to Gerald. The key worked only with articles of clothing connected in some way with the memories of Maxine.

  "I hope the ghosts forgive me." Gerald frowned as he donned another article of clothing taken from Maxine’s home. A stranger’s face peered back at him from within the mirror. "But it's not right for Tony to take Maxine away like he did. Not right to have taken her from her home."

  Gerald took a deep breath. Would Maxine see his true face? Would she comment upon how the black dye faded to show the ugly gray of his real beard? Would Maxine see through the magic Gerald hoped would disguise him from others? Or would Maxine's vision also be fooled by the small key's magic, or worse, would she fail to recognize any of the faces Gerald donned at all?

  "I'm afraid, Maxine, that I'm not going to make it easy on you. I hope your memory hasn't faded too far."

  Gerald unfolded the articles of clothing from that cardboard box and set them across his apartment's living room floor, trying to judge the pieces that would work best for his plan. He needed a disguise that Tony would not recognize should he arrive at the retirement home to check on his mother while Gerald was visiting. Gerald needed to wear a face Tony would not recognize from some snapshot taped into a photo album. Gerald didn't dare assume the guise of anyone he himself recognized, but such strategy would not guarantee that Tony would not know the face of whatever glamour Gerald chose for a mask.

  Gerald's fingers rubbed the bronze key as he considered a pair of brown, leather dress shoes. The shoes were not a snug fit, but Gerald could at least slip his feet into the soles, would be able to walk some distance before the leather might blister his ankles. He had expected to see one of Richard's faces looking back at him from the mirror. Instead, Gerald looked upon a stranger's face. Gerald suspected the face could've belonged to one of Maxine's cousins or uncles. He had not realized how little he knew of Maxine's family before witnessing the key's power. Could the face that winked back at him in the polished glass have belonged to an unknown lover, the face of an affair during those golden years with Richard that Gerald so envied? Gerald wondered if Maxine held regrets of her own.

  Gerald hoped he would have the opportunity to ask Maxine of those regrets. He hoped he would have the luck to find some time alone with her, so that he might step out of those brown shoes and show his life's love his true face should she fail to see through the magic. He hoped that Maxine's heart would not flutter upon witnessing such magic.

  The gray sky looked heavy enough to fall as Gerald loaded that box of clothing taken from Maxine's home back into his car's trunk. Gripping the cold, small key at the end of that purple strand of yarn, Gerald prayed that snow and ice would not turn the highway treacherous.

  * * * * *
Chapter 5 - A Drop of Ink in the Snow...

  The windshield wipers strained to clear the thick and heavy snow from the windshield as Gerald pushed his car through the winter storm to reach Maxine. Voices on his radio hissed and popped warnings of ice, and Gerald anticipated he would not be able to make the drive back home until the next morning. He hoped the warehouse would show him mercy for missing his shift, but Gerald knew his employer would feel little obligation to give such kindness to an employee as old as Gerald.

  Yet Gerald did not resent the snow. The snow summoned memories of that afternoon he first saw Maxine so many decades gone.

  He had just turned seventeen, an age most believed marked the beginning of a man. The football season and the fall had ended, and so Gerald lingered in the woodshop following the school day's last bell, where a man as young and as green as himself might overhear tips on finishing a table, of fixing a carburetor, perhaps on even slipping a hand casually up woman's shirt. But on a gray afternoon so many decades ago, Mr. Harold chased all of the young loiterers out of his wood shop, warning that the falling, thick snow was but a precursor to the storm that would strand any lingering student away from home.

  Much snow had fallen in that hour since the younger children had skipped and laughed after being dismissed early into the snowstorm's first flakes, and Gerald began his walk across town to his home upon streets the snow made lonely and clean. Snow gripped at Gerald's boots and taxed his steps. His ungloved fingers quickly numbed whenever Gerald pulled his hands from his pockets. Not one vehicle rumbled into his sight. None of the townsfolk watched him from a front porch. Gerald felt happy, for the white world seemed prepared for his whim, a clean slate upon which he might write whatever he chose to fancy.

  A sound other than the wind floated into Gerald's cold ears as he stepped upon the public library's open front block of snow. Gerald froze in his steps. He had come to believe that the snow had swept away everyone but himself from that town of small, white homes and concrete sidewalks. He held his breath and listened through the wind to a sobbing that carried across the chill.

  Gerald wondered how he had overlooked the girl who sat upon the library's first step. An oversized, black coat draped over her thin, sobbing shoulders. Strands of black hair fell out of a dark cap pulled low onto the girl's ears. Hands covered in red mittens rose to rub at eyes that did not gaze upward from the snow. Gerald thought that all those layers of clothing in which the girl huddled against the cold looked both too large for her thin frame, casting the impression upon him that someone had stolen a field scarecrow and dumped that mannequin upon the library step.

  "The storm's only going to get worse. They're saying the snow's going to turn to ice before nightfall. You need to get home."

  The girl's face snapped up at Gerald. "Is it really going to ice?"

  The girl's dark eyes struck Gerald the moment he looked upon them. Gerald looked into those eyes and thought of a pile of raven feathers, of ink dropped upon the snow.

  "All this white snow is just supposed to be the calm before the storm. That's why they've already closed school."

  The girl's shoulders fell as she again sobbed.

  "But it's only snow right now," Gerald felt an urge to reach out to her, but she seemed too delicate to touch or to comfort with cold, ungloved hands.

  "I don't know where to go," the girl didn’t look up from the step. "I didn't think the storm would close the library like it has the school. I just needed a warm place for a little while."

  Gerald brushed a spot on the library step next to that girl clean of snow. "Do you have very far to walk home? I've got to go all the way across town, and maybe a little company on the way home would help a little against the cold."

  The girl's dark eyes squinted into the cold wind as she shook her head.

  "Are you scared to go home?" Gerald asked. "Is there something wrong?"

  The girl sighed, and her breath frosted in the falling snow. "I don't know where home is."

  Gerald raised an eyebrow. "You must live somewhere. Have you forgotten how to get home? Are you new to town?"

  "You don't understand," the girl replied.

  "Well, where did you come from this morning?"

  The girl's mittens rubbed at her eyes. "I know where that house is. But that house is empty now. No one’s there. It's not my home anymore."

  "But where are your parents?"

  "My mother's gone," and the girl slowed her sobs and caught a new breath, "and I'm hoping my father will remember that I like the library and come here to tell me where home will be for tonight. But he won't come looking for me until after dark, and the ice is coming. I just don't know where to go."

  Gerald didn’t understand how a girl could sound so lost in a town so small. But he knew that cold could make even strong men very weak, and that crow of a girl sitting on the library's front step was very young.

  "Show me the house you came from this morning."

  The girl didn’t accept Gerald's naked and numb hand into one of her red mittens when he offered it, but she rose from the step and stomped across the thickening snow covering the library's wide, front lawn. Gerald trailed and watched the girl's boots trip as they pulled through the snow. He often pulled his cold hands from his pockets to catch the girl as she stumbled upon a growing spot of ice on the sidewalk. But the girl always caught her balance at the last moment as she pushed her way through the white storm.

  She stopped in front of a tar-paper home several blocks from the library, in a section of town usually loud with the barking and yelping of dogs. In that afternoon's snow, even the dogs turned quiet.

  "This was my home this morning," sighed the girl, "but it's empty and locked now."

  "Maybe we just need to knock. Maybe your father was out earlier."

  The girl shook her head and turned her eyes away from the house to look a new direction into the snow.

  Gerald climbed the home's creaking steps onto a crooked, front porch. He rapped loudly upon the front door, and his cold knuckles throbbed for the effort. The home remained dark and silent. Peeking through a front window, Gerald saw within empty chambers of dusty floors and peeling wallpaper. No one answered his knocking, and Gerald returned to the girl waiting in the street.

  "Are you sure this is your house?"

  The girl frowned. "It told you it's not my house anymore. It was only my house this morning."

  "But it doesn't look like anyone's lived in that house for years. It's completely empty."

  "We don't have any furniture, and we only stayed there a couple of weeks."

  "Could you have forgotten where you live?"

  The girl's eyes blazed. "I'm not a fool. I haven't forgotten anything."
Chapter 6 - A Mask and a Reunion...

  Gerald paused before walking through the glass, double doors leading into the retirement home's reception room. The magic of that key fastened to the purple strand of yawn around Gerald's neck pulsated in the doors' reflection, transforming Gerald's face into the features of a stranger. He knew nothing of that face the charm's magic summoned from the pair of brown dress shoes Gerald had scavenged from Maxine's closet, shoes he had chosen to wear in order to disguise his identity and reunite with Maxine no matter her son's efforts to keep them apart. The snow had fallen all day, and the ice had made the highway too treacherous to turn around after coming so far, and so Gerald took a breath to recapture his faith in his old charm's mutation and strode into the home, reminding himself that the odds were near impossible for anyone to recognize the face he currently wore.

  "I'd like to see Maxine Hanson, please." Gerald hoped he sounded confident to the receptionist seated behind the greeting counter.

  The receptionist's fingers tapped a short dance across a keyboard before she looked up into Gerald's smiling mask. "I'm afraid that I’m not able to immediately allow you to visit Mrs. Hanson. Her family has asked that they be allowed to screen visitors to help smooth the transition into the home. But fortunately for you, her son is at the moment with Mrs. Hanson. Let me ask if he might give us approval before we escort you to her room."

  "Certainly." Gerald forced himself to smile. How well did his mask hide his unease?

  Gerald took a seat on a crimson and gold couch and waited for Tony Hanson to appear in order to scrutinize the face who arrived to visit his mother. Gerald suspected that Tony had described his true face to the home's staff, and the fact that none in the home's powder blue uniforms paused to give him any consideration strengthened his confidence in his charm's shimmering magic. Gerald didn’t have to wait long before Tony entered the reception parlor from a hall behind the receptionist. Gerald was encouraged when the receptionist needed to escort Tony to his mother's waiting guest.

  "I thank you for coming by to visit," and Tony offered his hand as Gerald stood from the couch, "but I'm afraid I don't recognize you, and I hope you forgive me for being cautious concerning who visits my mother."

  Gerald trembled as he shook Tony’s hand. One of Tony's eyebrows rose as he squeezed Gerald's fingers, as if by touch Maxine's son recognized something didn't match between the hand he shook and the face that claimed to own it.

  "I was first an old friend of your father," Gerald started as Tony took a small step back and peered into Gerald's eyes. "I go back to the war with your dad. I met your mother through him. Used to visit more often when we were all young, and I remember how proud both of them were the day you were born."

  "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your name," Tony replied.

  "Chuck Grisham," Gerald had practiced saying the name during many of the miles driving through the falling snow, and for several nights he had studied the fiction he had written upon notecards concerning the face those shoes summoned.

  "You don't look so old for your age."

  Gerald felt his face flush beneath his key's shimmering magic. "A blessing from my mother's line, Mr. Hanson. Though my face might suggest otherwise, believe me when I say my bones tell a very different story."

  "Of course," Tony nodded. "Forgive me for all the questions."

  "No need to apologize," Gerald replied. "A person has to be skeptical these days. Maxine's lucky to have such a son."

  Gerald squeezed his toes against his shoes’ inner leather to fortify his face's mirage.

  "I have to warn you, Mr. Grisham, that Maxine may not recognize you very quickly, or at all."

  Gerald's heart raced. "I understand, son."

  "Then just follow me."

  Gerald smiled as his key's magic passed its first test, disarming Tony's suspicions and gaining him access into Maxine's new residence. Gerald followed Tony through a couple of turns in the hall before arriving at the door to Maxine's apartment. Maxine sat in a high stool set in the middle of a plastic tarp set upon the middle of the floor, her hair set in tight rollers while the fumes cast by the black hair dye stung at Gerald's eyes. Gerald couldn't resist smiling. Maxine may have suffered a severe indignation upon being uprooted into the home, but she refused to miss any appointment with the dye as was required to chase the away the gray.

  "Someone's here to visit, mom." Tony grinned as he strode into the room.

  "Surprised they found me, and surprised you let them get as far as my door."

  Tony gave no indication of feeling any slight at his mother's rebuke. "Mr. Grisham's here. Do you remember Mr. Grisham?"

  Gerald didn't breath as he stepped into the room. Maxine looked up suddenly, and her eyes widened as they fell upon Gerald, who wondered what face the magic chose to present to his life-long love, whose memory had so faded during the year. Gerald didn't have to wonder for very long, for Maxine's frown stretched into a joyous grin as her shoulders shook in an escaped, short giggle.

  "Of course I recognize him."

  Gerald stood still as stone. Did she see through his key's magical glamour? Would Maxine betray his identity? Would the magic, should Gerald be truly named, abandon him? Or did Maxine see his true face at all, only claiming to remember a Mr. Grisham to distract her son from the fog that settled upon her mind?

  "He was one of your father’s close friends, Tony," and Maxine winked at Gerald, who wrung his hands behind his back. "It's been a long, long time. I wonder if you might give the two of us the afternoon to catch up. It would mean a lot to me."

  Tony grinned and kissed his mother's cheek before retreating to the apartment door. "Take all the time you need. I'll just come back first thing tomorrow morning before work to check in on you. I'm happy to see some company make you happy. You know I'm just doing my best to care for you."

  Maxine grunted as Tony slipped down the hall. "Get over here on this stool, old man." Maxine slid off her seat and grabbed an unopened box of black dye from the counter. "The gray's all over your face, Gerry. It might all be for the best that you keep that key tied around your neck, but that doesn't mean I can't see all the gray already filling in your beard. Doesn't mean I have to live with that."

  Gerald nearly toppled the stool as he jumped upon the seat. Maxine applied the dye more heavily than ever before. His eyes watered, and Gerald felt the fumes singe the sensitive lining inside his nose. But he didn't complain at all. With a little magic and a little patience, he returned to his Maxine.