Sherman’s study
You see a large sun-lit room looking out over a Minnesota lake and evergreens. It is still too cold to open the uncurtained casement windows but late Spring light streams through them. There is a comfortable armchair with a fringed white throw over it. Next to the chair are half-finished bits of notes, books, papers, jottings of stories and poems, pictures. Neatly stacked is the current work-in-progress and letters to be mailed. The long knotty pine room extends to a kitchen. Stoneware huddles on its counters like a circle of women and the smell of soup fills the air like the Spring light.
Obvious exits:
Michael is here.
Michael says, “The ten thousand firs you planted whisper Kaddish for you in the wind of the Minnesota night.”
Michael says, “This text lives with those who died during the time of its writing. This text lives with all the dying things, even the marriage which began in the living room of your Iowa City house with stoneware and soup.”
Michael says, “The son you never saw asked me about the postcard from Joel Oppenheimer which I keep framed in my study. ‘Michael,’ it says, ‘Ghastly summer, in and out of the hospital for radiation. Why don’t you take a trip over this way since I won’t be able to travel...’ ”
Michael says, “I told him I keep it there to remember Joel and to remember to honor the dying with whatever presence you can offer.”
Michael says, “It was Sherman who urged *me* to write the essay on Joel when I told him Joel was dying. Though I wrote the essay, I never made the trip.”
Michael says, “As we cleaned my mother's gravestone I asked my son if he would sometime tend to mine. ‘Sure,’ he said.”
Michael says, “Sherman, I loved you as much as I have any man.”
Michael says, “Is anyone here?”
Michael says, “Mother?”
Michael chants the song of the wind through the trees.