‘Hey. Hey!’ At what felt like 3am, he asked, ‘What did you get for breakfast?’ Or that’s what she thought she heard at that hour. She began the work required to pull oneself up out of layers of deep, almost comatose primordial sleep. It was sluggish, heavy going. She heard her voice say, ‘Two kinds of sweet rolls; cinnamon with traditional white icing and the other plain with strawberry and cream icing’. Silence. ‘No doughnuts?’ ‘Nope…who asks about breakfast at 3am anyway?’ Silence. She must not have heard right and drifted off, back into deep slumber.
In the morning, she looked out the upstairs window and noted the strong winds from last night had leveled the neighbor’s swing set. The blue plastic slide jutted off at an angle and pointed toward the street. There was a large piece of black rubber lying along the edge of their property; the brown beams, swings, chains, silver nuts and bolts, and braces were all collapsed on top of themselves in a crumpled heap, broken and pointing toward the bright blue March sky. ‘Well, there goes my asymmetry problem’ she said. ‘Solved by the wind’. Last summer when the neighbors with the two small children set up the large beamed swing set, they placed it at a jaunty angle on a slight slope; the left end of it lined up crisply flush with the property line…and the far right end of it bent awkwardly inward. It was a fluke of physics; perhaps the right side was heavier than the left, or they had measured badly or the ground was uneven or muddy. Whatever the reason, the entire swing set was not symmetrical, not flush, not sequential in its ‘flow’ and she could see this from the upstairs window. It leaned drunkenly forward waiting for a stiff breeze to knock it over. ‘It makes me nuts and dizzy’ she said on more than one occasion. She had drawn the curtains in a huff. ‘Now I can’t look out my window’. He had rolled his eyes and laughed. ‘Do you want me to go tell them to fix it?’
Now the morning brightened differently; with wind damage but with symmetry. She put the coffee on to brew. She heard him coming down the stairs and turned as he entered the kitchen. ‘Hey! Hey, did you see the swing set?’ He grinned and pointed in the direction of the neighbor’s yard. ‘There’s your asymmetrical problem. Gone with the wind!’ She wandered over to the kitchen window. Looking out through the steamed glass, she glanced upwards as a sunbeam began a golden descent over the curtain’s top hem, through the window, touching the edge of the table and moving slowly in the direction of the oven.
‘The wreck of the Hesperus in the suburbs. They didn’t build that thing right’. He shook his head. ‘They didn’t pour cement to set the posts in or to lay down chains under the soil. They just sat it on top. On top of a hill!’ He shook his head again. ‘What do you expect? They’re jazz musicians. They’re gone every weekend playing those venues. Can a jazz musician pour cement?’ He sipped at his coffee. She looked at him. ‘Well…maybe. I can’t pour cement for sure. That I know’. He sipped at his coffee and tapped his spoon lightly on the edge. ‘Things better left undone’. She thought about a recent wall papering incident which had ended badly. Despite an inordinate amount of time spent measuring, the wall paper had come up short; leaving the bottom quarter of the wall uncovered. The paper came up short. Or she had come up short. No. She should not venture into the world of poured cement.
‘Hey. What’s for breakfast?’ He looked at the oven. ‘Did I ask you already?’ She stared at him. ‘Don’t you remember? At 3am? You asked if we had doughnuts?’ He stretched his neck a bit, ran his right hand over his beard and queried, ‘Doughnuts? What about sweet rolls? Are there sweet rolls?’ She sighed. ‘I have the wreck of the Hesperus out there and a Jackson Pollock in my kitchen. And no, Jazz musicians, no matter how talented probably shouldn’t pour cement. They’d hit that high note and assume it was all good. Richard Wagner seems more appropriate’. ‘Who’s he?’ he asked. ‘Nobody, nobody at all. Nobody a stiff March wind couldn’t take down’. She smiled quietly to herself.
He swallowed the rest of the coffee. ‘After I eat my doughnut, I’m going to go over there and ask if they need help setting it back up’. ‘Sweet roll’ she countered. ‘Think Wagner. Poured cement. Flush with the property line. No jazzy notes…’
690 Saint Paul 