Daniel in Deep Summer

by Peter Magliocco

Daniel's face is an accident of nature, the most grotesque abnormality for a boy of seven to bear.

God or whoever watches over the panoply of this creation deserted Daniel, leaving him to the ministrations of poor humans like his mother Elbe, who would like to mercifully end the boy's life.

Sitting at a breakfast table in her living room one morning, sometime after the hurricane which upset Myrtle Beach, I try to talk her out of such attempts. She says it's getting to be like there's no dignity left anyone. The T.V. in the far corner televises a premonitory news program that, despite being "live," seems like a re-run from an earlier year. I realize what a hypocrite I am trying to talk the attractive Elbe out of her just design. Corruption has unfolded upon me from too many prostitutes of the past, and -- though Elbe is simply an Army wife -- I see myself in younger years being cradled by dead mothers of sin.

Sequestered in his bedroom far down the hall, I imagine Daniel can't hear us talking. I've seen his face a thousand times before but still can't get over its hideousness. The lipless, distended mouth is only a toothy-opening beneath his grossly misshapen nose. These features look unnatural there. Skin has been grafted into a scar-tissued mound that passes for a chin; looking at it, one detects no bone structure there, only a cosmetic add-on. His right eye sags out of line with the left, also burdened by scar tissue. It is a "face" no one can look at for a long time without hating the reason for its creation.

When I look at Elbe, I can't understand how a beautiful woman like herself had such a child. It's almost inconceivable. Maybe that's why I adore her, I tell myself:  the contrasts between herself and offspring are illuminating, like ungraspable Zen tenets. Gazing out her kitchen window, pushing back the white fabric of curtain, the natural world outside appears pallid in comparison to the interior world of Elbe's house.

I ask about her husband. "Is he at work?"

"Yes," she answers, "he is at Fort Bragg."

Armed with my alibi -- a freelance photographer "on assignment" -- I've spent long minutes pondering the inevitability of private desires superseding my work ethic. I wonder if this is a kind of love or lust overtaking me. She's in no hurry either to have Daniel or herself photographed, despite the reward of good money my photographs might bring her. She's almost ashamed now to have consented to this unfortunate session which doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Sensing Elbe's vulnerability, I reach out and caress her sweatered shoulder, which is warmly solid -- something even apart from her, another entity or sentient being. Then I kiss her:  slowly, insistently, on the pliant lips which (like excrescent worms of candy) her son will never have, tasting the dissolving sweetness there more piquant than perfume. This brings tears from her, and I stop to assize her short-tressed head between the bookends of my hands, trembling. She's just a kid in her late 20s, more green-eyed than any maritime creature breathing with labor in this otherworldly Southern element of summer, deep summer. A residue of sweat stays like a white-crystal patina to her fine pale skin, the skin of otherworldly madonnas, and I endeavor to hold this essence (of all she is and can be) as one does palm-cupped liquid.

A quiet pervades the room, my Nikon camera and attachments remain untouched and become a still-life on Elbe's kitchen table. I stare at her for the longest time -- seeing the deep wounded youth of her, and the more refined evidence of grief aging her -- and know that if there's a god-giving power in life, she must become it.

I rise from the table and continue down the hallway to Daniel's bedroom. With its broken toys and stuffed animals, the room seems just another ordinary youngster's. There on the bed I see the boy reclining with a mongrel terrier in his lap. Being repeatedly petted, the dog is perhaps Daniel's only companion in life, and I linger there, staring. Daniel senses there's more in my gaze than the focusing observations of a photographer as I wait, pillow in hand, wondering if I should crush the life from him, if need be, to steal the affections of a bad mother's love for myself.

That thought causes me to pause. I begin to look more closely into Daniel's eyes -- his most saliently normal features, which border on a strange perfection -- and realize they belong to someone much older, someone in the adult, even much-aged realm; and a kind of calm overtakes me, the ugly tensions inside me have vaporized into some invisible kingdom. I bow my head, in a way stricken by a remorse I believed long non-existent, and the pillow becomes weightless feather-down sprayed into the furthest reaches of clouds, where the unknown doves flutter with flying fish, achieving a perfect blend. Are Daniel's eyes mine? I advance forward, wanting to see my reflection in a greater light, needing once again to photograph and preserve evidence of lost beauty.

Daniel smiles, knowing.