Open Shutters Read Online Free PDF

from the wrapper,
    pressed it between his fingers, let it spring
    and slide across the table like a snake.
    There were red snakes on our placemats too, and dragons,
    monkeys and rats. “This story that I see
    before me”—and he studied the zodiac’s
    combination plate of animals—
    “occurs, how perfect, in the Year of the Horse.
    In ’54. Did you know the Japanese,
    maybe the Chinese too, think it’s unlucky
    to be born in one of them if you’re a girl?”
    “I
was
born in ’54.”
                             “Right, I forgot!
    But that’s perfect too. Everything fits today.
    I just took Val for her final sonogram.
    Next comes the birth. I’d never seen her move—
    my daughter. Today I saw my daughter swim
    inside Val, fuzzily, for the first time.
    We’re used to seeing
anything
on TV,
    so for a second that seemed almost normal.”
    “1999. Is this a Year of the Horse?
    Is that what you’re trying to say? I’m sure she’s fine.”
    “Of course she is.” He studied the mat again.
    “We ride to the millennium on the back
    of the Rabbit—see? Fertility!—and then
    the Dragon’s waiting for us at the gates
    of the year 2000. That number sounded
    impossible, didn’t it, when we were kids?
    Amazing that it’s matched up with the only
    chimera for any year, the Dragon …”
    “So come on. What’s the story, anyway?”
    He sighed, took a gulp of tea; then sat up straight.
    “I don’t—I can’t describe it. Last night, Val
    and my father and I watched a video
    from 1954. Or just a clip
    from a home movie, made by a family friend
    who’d had it saved on video. A surprise
    for my mother’s younger child, age 46.
    It was the only record of my mother,
    moving and breathing, that I’ve ever seen.
    My mother who died when I was two, whose death
    has haunted me more than anything—”
                                            “I know—”
    “because I can’t remember her. There she was.
    Sick, on her last vacation, in Venezuela—
    you like the exotic touch? It was as if
    she was destined always to be worlds away—
    and standing at the counter of some store,
    trying out perfumes. You can see her lift
    a bottle up, to study it like a doctor
    checking an IV. No, she was happy.
    She lifts the bottle, you can see her smile,
    laugh, even, and say to Dad,
It’s beautiful
—
    I mean you can read her lips. Of course, no sound.”
    He raised his chopsticks, like a magic wand.
    “What I would give to hear her! I must have played
    those few seconds back a dozen times, as if
    the next time, anytime, I’d hear her voice.
    As if, I swear to God, I’d learn to crawl
    inside that crystal bottle of perfume
    like a little genie. As if in the end
    I’d smell what my mother smelled.
                             “Imagine,” he went on,
    “your mother says just one thing in your life,
    and what she says is,
It’s beautiful.
You see?
    But there was more. This morning I understood
    how lucky I was. First I saw my mother move,
    half a century after it couldn’t happen.
    And then my daughter. I got to see her move—
    the child you know I feared I’d never have
    because I married late—and in a way
    I saw her outside her lifespan, like my mother.
    And all within the space of twenty-four hours.
    On two TV screens! Nothing more banal.
    I’d looked in my past and future crystal ball.”
    Our soup had come. Meanwhile, unwatched, the screen-
    saver of the laptop I’d left on
    at home was open, a window onto icons
    of windows flying forward endlessly
    like long-dead stars still seeking by their light
    and at the speed of light a match in words.
    “What do you think?” he asked. “Is it too neat
    to write about? Would anyone believe it?”
    “Probably not,” I said, dipping a spoon
    into the cosmos of my egg-drop soup,
    and inhaling, as I leaned down, the aroma
    of the moment’s vapor. “Still. It’s beautiful.”

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