Study in Perfect (3 page)

The new house opened our eyes to design and, like thousands of others, we surfed the Internet for knockoff Sapien tower bookcases that would put our books within reach but not clutter the landscape of our great room. We shifted a small vase on the mantle until, slightly off center, it looked exactly right. On our backyard deck, we placed five Ronde armchairs, all facing southeast, like seagulls headfirst into the wind. Not coincidentally, our mailbox was stuffed with catalogs from CB
2
and West Elm, and we understood the slick TV ad in which a black-suited woman sits before her condescending architect, pulls a Kohler faucet from her purse, and says, “Design a house around
this
.”

The door is a missing piece of wall; sometimes a wall is closed and sometimes the wall is open.

—MICHAEL BARRY

Even where walls were necessary, Michael minimized their effect by cutouts, half-walls, artful absences, and subtle irregularity. A larger symmetry was implied, not doggedly spelled out. Wherever possible, he dispensed with traditional trim. Instead, between sheetrock and frame, he built a half-inch indentation, like an irrigation channel. It adds an elegance and depth to the joinery. It seems more truthful to the juxtaposition of two dissimilar materials, this crevice of shadow and mystery—a mixing space, as well as a little breathing room. We run our fingers inside when turning a corner, like caressing the valleys between knuckles.

Side by side at the dinner table, my husband and I chew silently, each of us absorbed in a book. We work in separate
wings of the house, but this distance can be intimate too. Across the great room, he shouts, “Can you get the phone? Please?” Or: “Do you have a minute? I want to read you something.” Sometimes we have no choice but to listen to each other. Sneezes, snores, sighs, the rattle of keypads, the dog on the couch licking a ripe spot—sound leaves its source, gullies, ambles, spreads. There's a strange noise somewhere and, like ship radar, we rotate our heads about, trying to locate it.

In a vertical dwelling, we stand at attention, prepared for battle, whether the conflict simmers in adolescence or the obstinacy of aged parents. We are backbones when their own skeletons are evolving or devolving. We are fence posts, traffic signs, door frames. We mark their territory and ours—this is where you should go, this not. I was always on my feet in the old house, which also was on its feet, and had been for more than a hundred years.

Now in middle age, our vision's softer, taste buds not so discerning, and one ear catches only a half-conversation at best. We've been knocked about enough to learn that no plan is a sure thing, no matter how well structured, and no body will last, no matter how well maintained. Our new house celebrates the gray areas, dissolves categories, subverts traditional outlines. A vertical house, with its right and proper posture, holds. A horizontal house releases.

Shortly after we moved in, we discovered we weren't the first to take residence since the sale. Twenty feet down the chimney, just above the flue, was a nest of barn swallows. Outside
I watched the female swoop from sky to nest without pausing to readjust her aim. Then the thrumming of her young began, faint at first, but as the summer wore on, nearly deafening, primordial. We could hardly talk without acknowledging the famished creatures. They outgrew the nest, three of them bouncing into our living room, slamming into the windows, frantic, till we could chase them down with a thrown dishtowel. Here and there, droppings on sills, stretchers, beams—evidence of their panic. My husband bought a wire screen for the chimney, but we never got around to mounting it. We were human, after all, and rather liked the role we played in nature—this swallow drama. A small part, but essential: cupping the fledglings in terrycloth, we carried them gingerly to the porch.

The birds did the rest.

Serendipity
, tasty to look at, a bright experiment for the mouth. Leading off, the meditative hum,
seren
, like a flat horizon. Then the playful up and down of the last three syllables as if our boat has encountered chop.

She flipped off the trampoline, knocking over the soldier who would soon become her lover. Isaac Newton was not beaned by a falling apple, but it's a more perfect truth, the one we love and remember. A moon called Charon emerged from a “defect” in a photograph. Before departing for vacation, Alexander Fleming failed to disinfect his bacteria cultures, only to find them contaminated with
Penicillium
when he returned.

Thoreau said, “There is a certain perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.”

There is also a certain accident in perfection, which favors the prepared mind.

Darling Amanita

 

Noli me tangere
. (Touch me not.)

Halfway through Bo Widerberg's 1967 film
Elvira Madigan
, the camera pans over a summer pasture with trees encircling. The sun is resplendent, and soon blond Elvira in her long striped skirt and white peasant blouse stumbles out of the woods with her paramour, a handsome soldier from the Swedish Army. The story is true: Thirty-four-year-old Lieutenant Count Bengt Edvard Sixten Sparre abandoned his post and family for the twenty-one-year-old acrobatic dancer, whose parents ran a small circus. Sixten and Elvira fled to the island of TÃ¥singe in Denmark, where they lived for barely two weeks.

In the film, the couple is starving, famished, and falls upon a scattering of mushrooms. They drop to their knees and stuff the mushrooms wildly into their mouths without washing or chewing. Later they are sick like animals in high grass. Perhaps
Amanita fulva
, or tawny grisette, was the culprit. This species is found in conifer, birch, beech, and oak woodlands in Europe, and, like most amanitas, it causes vomiting, gastrointestinal distress, and sometimes death. But the mushrooms don't kill Elvira and her lover. After thirteen days, Sixten knows their situation is hopeless and walks to town, where he spends the
small remainder of their money on wine, bread, olives, fruit, herring—a lavish picnic lunch. They meander into a nearby forest, the Nørreskov, and make love one last time. Sparre draws his service revolver, shoots Elvira, and then himself.

It's tragic, but not unheard of—even the most transcendent romance can double as a kind of poison, leading us to abandon our senses, families, careers, health, and sometimes, our lives.

We recognize two types of mushroom washers: those who scrub (with water), those who wipe (with towels). The first care not for the mushroom's integrity, only that it is clean, absolutely clean. A cotton dishtowel is spread next to the sink, the cold-water tap runs full blast. In her hand the scrubber holds a wooden mushroom brush with soft bristles, but as she plucks the mushrooms one by one from their blue cardboard box, she is not gentle. Every spot, every flake of peat is obliterated, till the mushroom, which absorbs water like a sponge, is exhausted and lies sodden on the towel. Sauté them and diners will be safe, but the mushroom turns soupy, is no longer firm to the bite.

The second have seen the mushroom videos. A hangar-like cool space, or a cave. Tables layered with humus, stretching far as the eye can see. The “wiper” is less fearful of bacteria, convinced by these documentarylike images. No one has studied the long-term health effects of mushroom washing. Has anyone died, by either method? Suffered nausea or parasites? Holding the mushroom by the stem, she brushes off the soil with a chamois or paper towel, careful to preserve the cap's virgin condition. A wiper relishes the spring of its flesh against
her knife. The mushroom is composed almost entirely of water, quite a trick, so why swamp its accomplishment?

In matters of love and dining, we are adventurous. Or not.

Once there was a naturalist named L. John Trott, who taught eighth grade at a small private school in Virginia. The L stood for “Little,” to distinguish him from his father, John Trott. An unfortunate coincidence, as in fact he stopped growing at only five foot two. His science curriculum consisted of ornithology and botany, with a little textbook chemistry thrown in to please the parents. Students were deeply engaged in bird banding, plant identification, and the natural histories of a dozen species.

In April one year, he led his class down a woodsy trail, pausing to identify rue anemone, bloodwort, and the demure spring beauty clustered at the base of an oak. “Ah,” he said, “here's something interesting, destroying angel, or
Amanita phalloides
—from the Latin
phallus
; the immature mushroom is shaped like an erect penis.” (Sudden interest in shoe tips. Relief when he went on.)

“Very dangerous,” he said, pulling a pair of leather gloves from his jacket, stretching them over his hands, waving his circle of fourteen-year-olds back, back, back, before he knelt. Next to the leaves, he laid a finger on each section of the mushroom, beginning with the pileus—”like an umbrella,” he explained, “designed to protect the scissor-blade gills, which in turn protect the spores, microscopic ‘seeds,' rather like our sperm”—(sideways glances)—”which you'll never see with the naked eye
unless you make a spore print, but that's another lesson. Here then is the stipe and, ringing it, a partial veil or annulus. Most significant of all, the volva—consider the female anatomy—a semidetached cup at the base of the stem. By this you'll know amanita. But be aware, the cup is often buried beneath soil or a rock.”

Sometime later, he brushed a lash from the crook of his left eye. A wayward spore burned halfway through his cornea before he arrived at the hospital.

From that point on, Little John was a changed man. His students forever associated mushrooms with cantankerous pirates, thanks to the eye patch he wore.