Arda Collins

John Maloney

John Maloney said his uncle owns a giraffe. He owns a giraffe, he said, because
his uncle owns a zoo. “He’s rich,” he said in a tone of beatific concentration, as
though he was pouring water into a stream from a jug and imagining that others
grasped for his attention. “He’s rich,” he continued. Our desks were next to each
other’s and we had to share glue. John Maloney became a handyman. My mother
said, “Do you remember John Maloney? He came by here and gave us his card.
He’s a handyman now. He was very sweet. He’s having a baby. Kheghj pan.”
“Kheghj pan” is Armenian for “this person, he inspires pathos in me.” She died
of cancer in her bed in the house where she lived for forty-seven years. It was a
modest ranch where she had known great love. On the piano, she was learning
Franz Liszt’s composition Love Dream. The day she died she went on an inquiry
that began, “Are you blue?” She asked the question in many ways, appeared to
listen as an answer came, and spoke again. Downtown in the village, the waves in
the harbor were choppy from the wind in the bright sun. Later that night she was
still, then lavender as she changed. I knelt by her bed in an unfamiliar dark and
felt frightened this was all there would be. In the morning, the air in the room
was full. Particles were visible and turned in the sun. It was soft like sediment,
and metallic, like blood becoming light, and a knife in a dream and the dream
disappears. In its place is a live meadow. The meadow pulls apart as the day
moves.