not into it

i was one of those babies, of whom i have heard and witnessed a number, who are entranced by the sight of their own face. my brother was the same way--we used to hold him up to the bathroom mirror and laugh incessantly at the subtle changes of expression he would present to himself. he would look straight into his own eyes, and the communications of his face were as obvious as those in a silent film:

"oh! i'm sorry, i didn't know anyone else was here."

"gee...i don't mean to be untoward, but you are arrestingly good-looking."

"oh, stop! you flatter me."

"your smile is simply enchanting."

"what luck to have met you here...i'll remember this encounter all my life."

to be fair, he was a devastatingly cute baby. we all worshiped him for his good looks--maybe that is why my dad spends so much time smacking him down as he matures.

but i was not a good-looking adolescent. i had blunt features and limp hair and an undeveloped body perpetually dressed in a big t-shirt and soccer shorts, both in saturated primary colors. (the same colors, you ask? or different? would either way make it any better?) i knew i wasn't good-looking and played to great effect a character that didn't care about it.

nonetheless, while we were holding my baby brother, with his useless feet propped against the bathroom counter, and laughing at his existential antics, my eyes continually slid over to examine my own reflection.

"this is what it looks like when i'm laughing."

then would come a break, in which some nether corner of my mind adjusted the attitude i had just encountered, like an artist playing with the pose of his model.

"so with my chin angled this way...just a little so no one will notice...but when i do that my hair curves around my brow and i look sort of mysterious..."

and inevitably i would practice these poses later, in front of my own mirror.

maybe my sisters are better-adjusted people because they shared a room and didn't have as much solitary leisure. no matter what you're doing when you're alone, you tend to be distracted by the fact that you're doing it. you know what i mean? your great virtue in studying, for example, the wrenchingly pitiful sound of your own crying.

the consciousness of how i look has always been the greatest foe to my self-expression. "The more parts of yourself you can afford to forget the more charm you have," according to F. Scott Fitzgerald...and, by the way, "When a girl feels that she’s perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That’s charm." i guess i've always known these things, instinctively--not to say you didn't; good writing tells the world what it already knows. some people are self-conscious about how loud their voice is, or that they don't have a college education, and assume those things must stick out a mile. for me, it's my physical features that stick out a mile, that i suppose everyone must be looking at and thinking, "what in the world helps her get out of bed in the morning?"

ugh. it's just how it is. i feel i could bear anything if i just looked all right, and that my faults would all be a little more forgivable. i want to forget about myself; i try to do it. that's why i like to stay busy. that's why i like to play characters.

we've all got this character inside us that we're pretty sure we could be, if it weren't for this one thing holding us down, that makes us available to all the other petty impedimentia. we're born with an instinctive motivation for flight, and also with a ball-and-chain. is it an excuse? is it a demon? is it a gift in disguise?

if it went away, would we all be better people, or would we be a world of Narcissuses? would we really be able to forget ourselves?

st. germain is deserted

The shadow of St. Sulpice bends over the river, and the street hurts my eyes with its brilliance under the two o'clock sun. Low echoes fall, like water dropping in a cave, from the empty windows above the street. People are sluggishly moving from room to kitchen, and back. The cafés are full—their hushed conversation escapes like a rat across the cobblestones—but the shaded windows hide from me the shopkeepers and businessmen taking their break.

The boulevard is clean, forsaken, blank of sound and even smell. The rowhouses hunch together in sullen confederacy. Fragmented music from a sightseers’ barge drifts through an alley, mocking the somnolence. In a storefront, the figurine salt-shakers and painted porcelain bowls lift their shiny glazed faces in a garish sob. The woven scarves trail listlessly upon the pavement. Behind me, two men in black suits emerge from a door, cross, and dissolve in the narrow shadows.

The American bookstore is closed. My friend left the city yesterday. I have no money. I stand in the broad sunlight, shaking.

(first published 6.28.07, 9.38am)

the winter carnival

Ardith Dutton had been writing to her English correspondent for seventy years. The two met through a pen-pal exchange devised by their schools, about the time that the Allies were reaching wary hands of partnership across the waters. When the bombs dropped on London, Ardith could not be pried from her post beside the Zenith Stratosphere.

"Dear Fredericka," her letter entreated, "are you all right? I am beside myself worrying about you, and I will not sleep a wink until I get a letter back in your own hand. I have been with my ear to the radio all this evening, lisetning about the boms in your city. My dad he wanted to make me come to dinner, and he bellered so loud I could not hear the radio hardly, then he tried to pick me up and carry me in to dinner but boy I fought him, I do not hardly know what posesssed me, and do you know he let me loose and stay there. And now he is calling me Spitfire. So it is like I am a plane and I wish I was a plane, Fredericka so I could fly over London and rescue you.

Ardith's mother was a woman well-disposed to the drama of their relationship; she added to the family income by the writing of lurid dime-store novels. This vocation afforded Ardith two advantages in her correspondence. Not only was she able to type her letters on an Underwood Three, but also she was encouraged by her mother to preserve the carbons of the letters she sent across the sea. Consequently, Ardith again read the foregoing to herself in the kitchen of her home on the edge of Gopher Road, only a few days before her eightieth birthday. During the occasion made of it by her nieces, nephews and cousins, and all their children, she felt fairly old. But when she was alone, moving in her rounds of daily life, she did not feel any older than she did at twenty-eight. At twenty-eight, she had not felt particularly young, nor old, either. She was simply herself, five feet and five inches tall, gnarled, like a tree in a windbreak, with hard knots of muscle along her limbs. She perseveringly fed her chickens and horses, drove her truck, walked in her fields, pulled up weeds in her garden, shoveled the snow off her walkway, and hung her laundry to dry in the wind. Her mother had passed when she was forty-two, her father when she was fifty.

By a strange coincidence unknown to either of them, the letter that Ardith read, as she baked her own birthday cake in the quietness of her kitchen, was also was the letter that Fredericka Wolsey read some few days after her own eightieth birthday, on the morning of the day that she died of renal failure.

Ardith set aside Wednesday afternoons as her time to write to Fredericka. She did a tidy amount of work during the morning but did no shopping or errands or visiting. She spent the noontime pondering different turns of phrase as she ate her lunch. At two-thirty, she would settle herself wherever it felt most apt for writing that day--sometimes the swing on the back porch, sometimes at the kitchen table, sometimes at the little secretary facing west in her bedroom, sometimes tucked into her bed. She had done that once and felt quite naughty for it; she meant to do it again one day, and chuckled to herself at the thought of it. She usually began to write in earnest at three, and seldom finished before five. She would mull on the letter all evening and night, and the next day she would copy it over on the typewriter, on proper stationery, inserting the improvements she came up with in the twelve hours preceding. The letter would be posted by noon on Thursday, which meant that Fredericka would receive it, if all went as it ought to, on the Monday that followed the second week from the date it was posted.

Avery Simms collected the mail on Gopher Road until his stroke, after which his nephew Jamison took over the route for him. Ardith was ill pleased by this change. It was Jamison who told her that the Gopher Road route was likely to be closed soon, and she would have to pick up her mail in town.

"Why on earth?" Ardith asked him, in clipped tones. "Don't I pay my taxes, state and local?"

"All the houses that useter be on thisyer road are selling out, getting pulled down," said Jamison Simms, gesturing languidly eastward. "Farms are getting bigger and folks don't wanter live so far out ther way."

"Whose houses have been pulled down?" Ardith knew the answer, even before she asked it, but she demanded a explanation of him.

"Phippses, O'Tooles, Gertlers, Paleys. All 'em building nice new places close to town, with air conditioning and whatnot." Jamison shrugged. "Ts'more convenient."

Ardith took her mail and shut the door in his face. She never used to wonder whether her letter would reach Fredericka on time, with Avery Simms carrying it. She did not always like the persistent friendly questions he made of her--"London, England, Miz Dutton? Waterloo Road? Miz Dutton, how d'you come to know somebody in London, England? D'you ever go there, Miz Dutton? Miz Dutton, I'd venture to suspect it was an admirer you have there!" But Jamison asked no such questions, never gave a second glance to the letters she gave into his care. Not surprising, she thought, if he doesn't think this route is worth his time, he's hardly likely to think an individual letter is worth his notice.

She wrote to Fredericka about the impending change. "I've never felt the pressure to sell out my house," she wrote. "It will be a cold day in hell before they buy up this land to build tract housing on it. The only possible inducement for anyone to leave this place would be of their own devising. The insolent young surrogate postman says that my neighbors have been building houses closer to town, for convenience's sake. It certainly doesn't make me eager to follow suit. But it does give me a strange feeling that I do not relish--that of being left behind, of being forgotten. I'm sure you must have felt something similar upon being sent to Canada. I'm sure your family must have felt the same, watching you leave them for how long no one could guess."

Fredericka's response after the onset of the Blitz was highly unsatisfactory to Ardith, as it came from somewhere on the sea, far to the north.

"Sweet darling Ardith," it said, "Mummy sent me your letter and that I must write to you straightaway. You are a dear and a sweet angel, thank you, I am quite well and now I am living in the town of Saint John, which is in the province of New Brunswick in Canada. It is a very pretty place now but they say it will become terribly cold in the winter and if they make me go to school here I do not know if I shall survive."

Ardith stewed in her own choler for weeks, wondering how the authorities who determined Fredericka's asylum could have been so dimwitted as not to send her where she would be best looked after. In Waring, Nebraska, the climate was temperate and the town so deeply couched in middle America that Nazis were likely to never know of its existence. She repeated the idiocy of the assignment to her mother and father every night, hinting strongly that they might exercise their adult rights to rectify the situation. "All they would have to do to find her is look across the ocean, and there she is! She's right by the sea!" Even a look at the world atlas, which showed that Saint John was well sheltered by the neighboring province of Nova Scotia, did not avail to assuage her feelings. "She would feel so much more at home here," Ardith insisted. "She doesn't know anybody in Canada." As she said this, however, she was assailed by a deep, insinuating dread that Fredericka might possibly know someone in that faraway country--that she might even have a pen pal of the same age as Ardith, even one who lived in Saint John, New Brunswick. "I'm her best friend in North America," Ardith declared, more staunchly than she felt, as the possibility occurred to her that given a choice of asylum, Fredericka had elected to stay with the Canadian correspondent. She went to bed stormily that night, and considered that she might never write to Fredericka again; "I don't want anyone else to see the letters I write for her," she told her mother each day that week. However, habit and curiosity were too strong for pride to break; on Wednesday she wrote again, perhaps more reservedly, in case interloping eyes were casting judgment on the missive. And the response was overwhelmingly rewarding. Fredericka reported that she was staying with a couple who were older than her parents, who ran a dairy farm, who had two grown-up sons, one who lived apart with his wife and the other who lived on the farm to help his aging father, and had a nose like Jimmy Durante's.

Ardith had little to say to Jamison Simms after his proclamation on the fate of Gopher Road. Her resentment grew in the weeks that followed it, and she wondered how long she might have to put up with his presence on the mail route. One rainy Thursday in April, as she was making the exchange of outgoing and receiving mail, she snipped at him, "How is your uncle coming along?"

Jamison blinked at her; it had been some time since she had done any more than sniff or grunt at him. "Coming along?" he said.

"Is is his health improving?"

Jamison shrugged. "Can't talk too good," he said. "Gets around all right, so long as he don't strain hisself trying to do too much."

Ardith had a sudden, stark picture of Avery Simms sidling feebly through his family's house, attempting to lift a pail or open a window, struggling with it until someone condescendingly guided him away from the effort and deposited him in a rocking chair.

"It's a terrible thing for the old to admit defeat," she murmured reproachfully. She shut the door softly and stood with her back against it, her chest rising and falling with unaccountable severity. Her fingers played against each other frenetically, her glance swung from one corner of the hall to another. The screech of cicadas outside pressed nervously against her, and the noise of a flight of crows swelled like a blood vessel swifting its expanding urgency toward the unsuspecting brain. She dropped her received mail on the sideboard and tripped up the stairs to her writing desk.

"Dearest Ardith, it is unimaginably cold here. I do not know how the weather is in Nebraska, but I cannot imagine that it is colder than here. I am not attending school anymore because I came down with a cough in October and it did not go away for several weeks because the building suffers terrible draughts. Instead I do my lessons beside the hearth, wrapped in a blanket. Mrs. Johns makes them herself. She is very kind. I am feeling much better now that I can stay warm always. Mr. Johns says I must get used to the cold soon, because they want to take me to the Winter Carnival, which is in Montreal, in the province of Quebec. I have asked them what it is, but they will not tell me! They say I must get strong and used to the cold, so that I can see this wonderful thing."

Ardith scribbled feverishly across the pages of her loose-leaf, her thoughts brief passages across the intransigent vision of Avery Simms' face, red and strained with effort, or pale yellow like a faded leaf against a window fastly closed.

Avery Simms, who was so friendly all their long acquaintance, had wanted to marry her once; after she gleefully refused him, he remained staunchly friendly. He married another woman he met in France, while he was in the service. She had not liked Waring at all, and they never had any children, and then she caught pneumonia one winter and died.

The following Monday was stormy and sullen, by turns. Unable to go about her usual errands and chores due to the weather, Ardith stayed in bed, with the covers pulled over her head, and dozed heavily through the morning. She awoke with a start when a window shutter banged against the window frame, and with an astonished look at the clock, though she remembered choosing to stay in bed and sleep late, she pulled on her clothes and made her way down the stairs.

Thinking of the reactionary, extraneous letter she had written, she smiled wryly to find the letter from Henley-on-Thames, where Fredericka had retired to with her husband since 1972. She perused it cursorily, as she always did, using the first pass to get a general sense of what it held before she delved into its particulars. She turned on the stove flame under the kettle, and set the letter beside the coffee mill so she could look at it as she turned the handle.

Ardith reckoned that she would not send the extra letter she had written. In light of Fredericka's cordial, dispassionate prose, it seemed to overstep the crafted parameters of their correspondence. They were always frank about their opinions, but impartial about their validity; they wrote no emotional propaganda, betrayed no effusions of vitriol or despair or enthusiasm. Ardith did not fear that Fredericka would think ill of her for reacting as she had, but she wanted to spare her the chore of deciding how to respond. Growing old was a fact, like snow was a fact, like weeds and horse shit. You could shove it out of your way, or you could wax eloquent about how it made you feel.

She set her coffee cup before her and began to read in earnest.

"Dear Ardith, Happy eightieth birthday! Everyone will tell you--no doubt has already told you--what a milestone you have reached. No doubt you are sick of hearing congratulations. Do they suppose we have learned everything at our age, and are sitting smugly on the wisdom we have amassed? I, for one, have quite the same lingering doubts about life and what is to be done with it, as I had when first we began to write, and the older I grow, the more they seem to insinuate themselves into my thoughts..."

She understands, Ardith thought, pleased and a little amazed. Perhaps--she read through the rest of the letter, and found this idea growing stronger--perhaps we are old enough to change. The following Thursday, she sent the letter she had written the previous week, with some addenda pertaining to week since.

Once the ground froze over and there was nothing to inspect in her fields, Ardith took long walks down Gopher Road. She went eastward, toward town, if she wanted to buy anything or see anyone. But usually she went west, with her shoulders back, her head toward the ground, and her boots uncompromising on the muddy ice. It did not signify that she paced over the same steps each day; the road in winter bore no vestige of its character during the rest of the year. The old live oak that had been split by lightning before she was born looked no different from as the maples that were planted as a windbreak only the previous spring, and like them were the slender silver birches that lined the road just off the drive from the Paleys' former place. The sky reduced everything that stood on the earth under it--growing, reaching things made feeble as a cry in the wind. Whatever in other seasons might mark the distance she went, was shrouded by a blinding sameness of light; Ardith often found herself startled by sudden darkness, as the sun dropped after unnoticed hours she spent plodding forward, her teeth and her fists clenched in defiance of the cold.

"Fredericka, today I walked for what must have been three hours or more, over the frozen road. I might have gone farther, I'm sure I have before, except that I happened upon a pearl necklace lying by the side of the road. I do not understand how I came to see it, for as I said the ground is all frozen and the reflection off the snow and ice practically blinds me, anywhere I look. But there it was, lying in the snow. I stood there and stared at it for some time. I suppose it must have been dropped by someone going past in a car, or perhaps it was being carried by a bird sometime in the year previous. How long might it have been lying there?

It made Ardith sick to think what she had written afterward, halting attempts at understanding some bedridden emotion that could not assert itself fully, only lurch about in her belly. She brushed away tears of angry shame, thinking how she had suddenly snatched up the necklace, hurried home with it in her fist, mincing hastily over the slippery road, and upon arrival had taken the necklace upstairs and shut it out of sight, into a drawer. She wondered at herself for scribbling such overwrought drama, and resolved that if Fredericka forgave it and condescended to write back, she must never again subject either of them to it.

She opened the door on a drippy Monday, but not to Jamison Simms. It was a woman of about thirty years old, with a square haircut and soft, sensible clothes, her shoes covered in mud, and a face like a sheep.

"Hello," said the woman to Ardith.

"I'm not buying anything today," Ardith said, more curt than even her wont, for she had a bad cold.

"No! I'm not selling anything." The woman's speech had deep, open o's and soft, upturned a's.

Ardith blinked at her, and they both stood in silence for a moment.

"Who are you?" Ardith said. Before the woman could answer, she hurriedly said,

"Is Fredericka all right?"

The woman's eyebrows shot up past her eyeglasses. "Yes!" she quickly answered. "That is...that is to say..."

They sat in the kitchen, facing each other. The light was muted and undemanding around them, having much to do with spring's hard effort outside.

Ardith faced the woman imposingly, unwilling to speak.

"I am Nigella Allan," she said, proffering her hand with some trepidation.

Ardith took it momentarily and gave it up.

"Are you here to tell me Fredericka is dead?" she asked.

The woman took a halted breath. "I...yes."

Ardith stayed upright, but her eyes dropped to the surface of the table. "When?" she gruffly demanded.

"Er..."

Ardith's eyes snapped back up, arresting the woman in her prevarication. "When!"

"Last April!" the woman blurted, terrified.

Again they sat in silence. Then Ardith's hands flew together and clenched, until the knuckles showed bone through her skin.

"April!" she croaked. "April!" A tingling sensation rushed up her arms, over her face, over her scalp; it seemed as if she could feel her hair turning its final white all at once. "A year ago!"

"April. Yes." The woman's face was flushing as pink as a young crabapple. "Ardith...Miss Dutton...please, forgive me. I've been...it's been me, writing to you. I'm Fredericka's granddaughter. She showed me your letters when I was a little girl, and we always read them together; when she died, I couldn't bear to have them stop coming. They've meant the world to me in the last few years...Ardith." She looked for permission to go on using the familiar name.

Ardith said nothing; she stared at the wall over Nigella Allan's head. The news hung in the air and dropped softly, like snowflakes falling with a mild, dissolving burn upon her skin.

"I suppose," she said, one word plodding relentlessly toward the next, "it helped you feel close to her, after her death."

"Oh! It was...more than that," said Nigella, miserably pink. "That was part of it, of course, but really it was you, Ardith. The things you wrote about were so...they helped me to understand life. Especially in the last year. I couldn't bear to lose all of that." She looked about her in despair. "I only came because...in your last few letters, you seemed to wish you had done things...gone places... And I thought, perhaps, if you couldn't go to them, being old..." She stopped, her face shrimp-colored and contorted with shame.

Ardith looked up, startled, with a thunderous frown.

"Did I say that?" she demanded.

"No," Nigella squeaked meekly. "But...I thought, perhaps it might cheer you up." Her gaze dropped to the ground; she seemed to be looking for a crack to crawl into.

The rain went about its business outside with a noise that did much to forgive the painful awkwardness created by their congress. There was a sudden, sharp noise that made them both jump; it was caused by an involuntary motion Ardith made in her chair. She had felt a creeping sensation deep within her bones, something alien and much too proprietary.

Ardith looked at Nigella determinedly.

"Where do you come from, exactly?" she asked. "Henley-on-Thames?"

"No," said Nigella, yet more shame-faced, "I posted that as the return address, but... I live in London."

London... Ardith had only a mental picture of a radio, and fish-shaped bombs falling--they fell incessantly toward indistinct spires silhouetted on a red sky.

She thought of all the foolish things she had said, in her letters, and wondered whether Fredericka had read them also to her husband, to her other friends, as well as this grandchild. She thought of foreign eyes looking at the things she felt, talking about the things she hardly understood.

A milder climate, she considered, must make people different from us. We are raised to expect the cold, and endure it. But, she thought, it seems we live a longer time.

hoping devoutly for an implosion, however slow

there is this place i know of, that is remarkably free of any kind of pressure. it isn't home; but then, what is?

when i am there, no one is watching, and somehow i'm able even to stop watching myself when i'm there. whatever is going on around me is held off just a hand away, sinking into a wrap-around ambience of mild warmth and white noise. the air is lightweight but palpable, like fog in a tropical dusk. sunlight and starlight reach in but only to paw the window glass. whoever is there doesn't mind that i am there, even if they are not there while i am there.

how did i find this place? how did i know i could go there, when i've always been so cautious in every other place and opportunity? what made me think i had a right? how did i not get myself ejected from it, in justified outrage at my outrageous confidence of entitlement to it?

it's always a late afternoon vacation in that place, no matter what the outside weather suggests.

i wish i was there now. i wish i somehow could be there all the time, when whatever is inside me can rest and forget about the parts of me that hold the reality down, heavily earthbound.

i feel this place deep inside my heart, and i blow on the spark encouragingly, hopefully, with my eyes closed to stop the analytical inclination to reduce it to a sum of parts.

certain people encourage its slow, exponential emergence; others make me forget its existence.

maybe, by writing this down, i can help myself remember it.

i know this place isn't reality, but it holds off the competing realities and affords some rest to the reality i am prone to forget, so it can regain its strength. there are always blankets on that couch, always a fire in the stove beside it, usually a cat or a dog at hand, always music or a subtle, intelligent voice on the radio. good night, sweet prince, and stay as long as you want.

dedicated to j, and w, and k and m and s. you will never, never know the extent of my love for you.

scene from home life

“Goddamit, Frank!”

The screen door slammed.

“Jeez, what?” He set down his coffee and, for a very brief moment, watched the liquid settle in the cup upon the table’s equilibrium.

“Frank!” She swished into the kitchen from the front hallway. “Frank!”

She looked at him with the weirdest mix of accusation and pleading, much how Joan of Arc must have looked when they stepped back from lighting the pile under her, he thought.

“Well, what?” His chin rested on his shoulder. No point in rushing the process, he thought.

“You can’t set the garbage can on the bricks like that.” She chopped her hand back and forth in the air. “They’re uneven? Next to the step?”

“Well?” Wait, he thought, that was not right. “I’m sorry.”

"Well! Well!?"

It was only fair, he thought. He had said that first.

“I went to put the last garbage in and the whole thing tipped over. On the sidewalk. And they’re not going to pick it up off the sidewalk. The whole thing is spilled across the bricks”

“Honey!” he moaned. “It was full already. Of course it tipped over.”

“It tipped over because you put it on the bricks that are uneven. I’ve told you. You know that.”

“But…” He knew before he said it that it would not work. “…I balanced it.”

“Frank!” Her hands on her hips made her look taller. It defied reason, he thought, looking at her. The skirt of her muu-muu flared out from under her hands. Why did she wear that? He wondered. It was old lady clothes. And yet she looked like a tropical flower, dangerous and seductive.

“Frank!” She knew he was not paying attention to her words. He smiled to think of what if she knew what he was paying attention to.

“Frank!” Again, pleading and accusatory. Amazing. Joan of Arc never got very old.

“What do you want me to do?”

“The coffee grinds are all over the sidewalk!" The import struck her suddenly. “You put coffee grinds on top of the garbage can! It was full! Frank!”

His hands turned out, palms up. “You put the paper bag on top when it was full.”

“But the coffee grinds are all over the sidewalk now.”

Amazing, he thought. He sat back and looked at her. Her face was glowing with the humidity that was already expanding the air, though it was barely seven in the morning.

“Frank, are you listening to me?”

He smiled.

“Frank!”

“Yes?” he said, still smiling.

“What in god’s name is so funny, Frank?”

He turned his body toward her, in the chair, to get a better look.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

”Come here,” he said.

“The coffee grinds are all over the sidewalk.” Before she had quite finished the sentence, she stopped. Suddenly she understood.

(first published 7.9.07, 7.24am)
dedicated to my dad

oppression

In the summer’s heat, she gets a really bad case. It used to alarm us but now we expect it. There will be a few thunderstorms at the end of May, and we sit and watch them from the veranda. They are beautiful to see. And then she rolls her eyes at me, and we smile, and we go upstairs to make love as much as we can, because soon the heat will fall.

Her belly swells up as the rest of her body drains its fluid and flesh, like wax dripping from a candle. Her eyes become like diamonds rimmed in coal, deep sunk in her face, and her face is blackened by the sun and hollow. I keep bringing bottles of water to her in buckets of ice.

It might not be so bad if she were married to someone else. But we wanted to start this inn together—she said it made her fall in love with me. So what could anyone have done? I could apologize, I could try to make her go for her own good. When I look at her to say something like that, she looks up from the stove at me and presses her lips together, her eyes soft in her dripping face. I come and kiss her as gently as I can, and I pray that the summer will be short and that it will rain much.

She is like an ostrich with her long skinny legs and long skinny neck, and her midsection swollen like a balloon. She throws her head back to drink—she can take half the bottle of water in one go, clutching it in her bulbous knuckles. Every ten minutes, she turns off the stove, drops the spoon, and strides from the kitchen with the face of one spellbound, aware and yet helpless to resist. She comes back and resumes the cooking.

We have girls to do the beds and the laundry because the heat upstairs, or coming from the vat, would probably kill her. Once we had a girl who laughed at her, at my wife. She would see her leave the kitchen suddenly and then come back, and she would look around at the other girls and laugh, throwing her head back sometimes to cackle, the way my wife does when she takes a drink. In the house my wife would walk past and the girl would put her hand over her mouth, her eyes full of mirth. I didn’t know what it was about until one night, as we were lying side by side, my wife said, “I would like to dismiss Pilar.”

I said, “Why?”

My wife said nothing for a moment. Then she sighed quietly. “She makes my belly sore.”

I really did not know what she was talking about, but the next day I looked at Pilar as I was going into town, where she was doing the laundry over the steaming vat with the other girls, and saw her looking toward the kitchen and laughing. I stopped my truck, I got out of it and walked toward them, I took Pilar by the shoulder and slapped her across the chin, as if she were a naughty child. She stared at me with innocent eyes that were filling with tears.

“Go and get your things,” I said. “I will wait for you in the truck and take you to the train station.”

I met my wife in the city, in Valencia, when we were both very young, young enough to think that we would never really fall in love with anybody. It seemed the time had passed. I met her at a party, and we talked. Other people interrupted us and we talked to them, of course, thinking we would never see each other again, that the time had passed. But then we would find ourselves talking again. I guess I must have sometime told her that night how I would like to open an inn in the country, with only a few rooms, and a bar, and serve the simplest tapas to travelers and whatever local people would accept a newcomer. Because that is what I love in the country—nobody lies in order to be your friend. It is their prerogative to accept or reject you. They won’t run you out if you don’t give them cause, but they have no reason to trust you or like you unless they choose to. I have never lived in the country, I was not brought up that way, but I wanted to live among such people because that is how I am. That is how I am with everyone except for my wife. I did not choose to trust her or like her. If you ask me now, I am not sure that I do trust or like her. I look at her, standing over the hot stove with the weather pressing in on the walls that surround her, looking down at the beans in the pan and stirring them, her brow low but calm, her skin molten, her clothes soaked with sweat, her hair piled like smoke above her head, which looks shorn naked because of the black scarf that surrounds it to hold her hair back.

Does a man choose to trust God? Does a man choose to love Him? Maybe, after a time, he says that he trusts and loves Him, that he is grateful to God, that he wishes to obey Him. But he knows all the time that God has him by the scruff of the neck, holds him like a toad in His fist. If he forgets this, God will remind him soon.

That is also how it is with my wife. When I look at her there at the stove, I am surprised to find that I don’t feel anything. I feel numb.

At night, she is so grateful to fall into bed, but she cannot let me caress her. “Not with my big belly,” she says, because she is ashamed. So I sleep as near as I can without making the heat stick between our bodies, I stroke her arm, and I smell her. She smells like everything you want—the food she has been preparing all day—coffee, chorizo, long beans and black beans, garlic, tomatoes, oil, figs, chocolate, bread, and more coffee from early in the morning, which she must have to wake up, though it hurts her belly; she smells like wood smoke and ash, like the breath off the fields of barley, like the olive-oil soap she washes her hands with all day; she smells like the peonies that sit in the window beside the sink; she smells like the perfume she dabs on her neck in the morning; she smells like sweat and that civet musk that all women excrete; and she smells a little, as she fears, like the pain in her belly.

All summer, all I can do in the night is lie awake, for it is too hot to sleep, and go half mad with smelling and not touching more than her arm. I pray for her in the night, and for rain, and autumn, and winter.

(first published 8.9.07, 11.43am)

a fatality

She thinks, “Grab it, you idiot. It’s not going to get any better than it is now.” But he doesn’t. They keep walking.

He says something about books, modern books, today’s books. She missed the point he made about them, however, because she was regretfully realigning her strap. The strap he had not touched. He had been a perfect gentleman. She was not prepared for that. She was not in the game for that.

One year left and she is restless and moody, much of the time. There was clearly no quality there, so she thought she would just follow puerile instincts, for once, and move on having had a taste of everything.

He is very kind, and polite, in an unstudied manner. He pays. He holds the door. It all looks as if he is unaware of doing it, unaware that she is a woman and he is a man and this is exceptional behavior of the kind reserved only for men to women, if they choose. She is impressed and pissed off.

They sit under the stars and streetlights. He is thinking out loud. She is listening, interested and also pissed off. Why does he have to be interesting? Why does he have to be thinking, and telling her what he is thinking?

Then he asks, “What are you thinking about?”

She’ll be damned if she is going to tell him, “You.” She only lets that one go with idiots and little boys, so that she can laugh at their pleased, “I knew it all along” faces. It is always true—she never lies—but they don’t know how she means it. They believe her smile, and the little laugh that slips out, indicates delight—in them! But if she said it to him, he might smile at her for the same reason, and she might believe the same interpretation.

She has grown weary of the upper hand but she isn’t familiar with any other kind.

Why does he have to be interested in what she is thinking about?


(first published 6.28.07, 9.20am)

return of the peking acrobats

“D’jever hear of an act like that?” Frank threw the newspaper down on the vanity. A powder puff went spinning and the incandescent dust rose in a languid cloud.

“Whatsat?” Nadine was not listening.

“There, the big square ad under your schnozz. Christ, Nadine.” He looked at his watch. “Eighteen minutes. Are you going to be ready?” He had the New Jersey way of coming down hard on the g’s in a participle.

“Keep yer shirt on don’t say Christ.” That reminded her—she tucked the cross medallion under her chemise. “You think the new piano player?”

“He’s all right. Dane’s been at him for three hours and got him soused to steady his nerves. Sixteen years old Jesus God.”

Nadine stood up, saying, “If you don’t fucking cut out the profane use of God’s name I will be headlining the nine o’clock train to Chicago. Now zip me up.”

He zipped the dress and gave her an affectionate slap as she passed by him to get to her shoes. “Feeling good?” he asked.

She was all at angles like a late Picasso, wedging the sandal onto her foot.

“Eh,” she said.

“How’s Kelly?”

“As usual.” She straightened up and shook out her dress. “All right?”

“Sure.” His head was cocked to one side, like an inquisitve dog’s, Nadine thought.

“Cut it out,” she said, batting the air with her hand. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Can’t help worry for you,” said Frank.

“Cause you’re a peach.” Nadine turned, slithered through the door into the velvet darkness of the backstage.


She had a spot just below the overhang of the mezzanine, slightly right of center, where she fixed her eyes. It gave a nice length to her throat, opened the vocal chords, and made her look wistfully distant, as if the words meant something to her. She had long ceased to wonder how anybody could buy it; just so they did.


The new piano player was truly good, and soused. When he shook her hand after closing, she kept it a careful distance from the satin of her dress.

“Gee! Gee, Miss di Nova,” the kid said continually. “Gosh, I’m just so happy…”

She gratefully wrung her hand on Frank’s handkerchief, discreetly passed to her. “It’s Mrs. You really were, sweetie, the real deal. Just keep practicing. We’ll get somewhere. Frank, you called a car?”

“Here in five minutes,” he said. “G’night, honey.” They pecked each other on the cheek. Nadine went back to the dressing room, changed into comfortable shoes and her daytime tweeds, and went out the stage door into the alley to meet the cab.

“How are you, Mrs. di Nova?” said the driver.

“Right as rain. How are you? Charlie, right?”

“No ma’am. You can’t see, I’m Raymond.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. How are you?”

“Just fine, ma’am, thank you.”

“Still plugging away at school?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good boy. How many more years before they make you a dentist?”

“No, ma’am, that’s Jamie.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve only got another year and a half before I can take the bar,” said Raymond proudly.

“Well, you’d better give me your number. A lady in show business always needs a good lawyer.”

“Yes, ma’am. You bet your boots. I will. But you’re not the sort of lady who gets into trouble, ma’am.”

“Not the exciting kind of trouble, to be sure, Raymond. But to read her contracts and negotiate and so forth.” Nadine was examining a hole opening in the thumb seam of her glove, wondering if she could fix it herself. “It’s still plenty of work, and until you make a big name for yourself and all the stars are pestering you…”

“Aw gee, Mrs. di Nova, I’d never let you down, not for a million stars.”

She looked up. “That’s a beautiful thing to say, and a beautiful way to say it. You hang on to that line, Raymond. Use it where you know it’ll do you the most good.”

He made a sound to indicate that he was blushing.

“Good act tonight, Mrs. di Nova?”

“Oh, sure. We all work hard.”

“Nice kind of work. I mean, I’d do it, if I could.”

“All work is work. It’s nice if you’re good at it.” She would try to mend the hole, but Nadine knew it would have to go to a leatherer’s. She bit her lip to keep from grumbling.


The lights were out when she got upstairs, but she could hear Kelly breathing in the dark and knew by its pattern that he was awake.

“Sweetheart?” she murmured.

Nadine hung up her coat and put the gloves on the console to attend to in the morning. She kicked off her shoes and shoved them to the side of the door.

“Still awake?” she inquired, as she crossed to the closet. She unhooked her skirt and stepped out of it, hung it up in the closet, hung her jacket beside it, rolled her stockings down from her waist.

“Headache any better?”

“No.”

She tugged gingerly at the toes of her stockings; her legs gratefully expanded in the cool air.

“Mmm! Do you want me to get you anything?”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know.” She went into the bathroom but did not turn on the light; she spread cold cream over her face in the dark. “If there’s something you want…” She brushed her teeth cursorily, spit out, and crossed toward the bed. She slid between the sheets, sighing as her lower back unraveled against the mattress. She closed her eyes and sank in surrender to rest.

“I don’t see,” said Kelly, “what you think you could do.” A match hissed as he lit up a cigarette beside her.


Rather than take the streetcar, Nadine walked downtown to the leatherer’s.

“Haven’t seen you for a time, Mrs. di Nova,” said Mr. Applebaum.

“Your work’s too good,” said Nadine.

“Can’t help myself,” said Mr. Applebaum. “Kind of a dreary day out, isn’t it?”

“I like the fog all right,” said Nadine. “Atmosphere.” She handed him the glove.

“Oh, we can set that right,” he said, turning to his tools on the counter behind him.

She took a seat to wait, crossing her left leg over her right. It was a relief not to talk; it was worth the long walk.


Nadine took the change she saved by walking to get herself an éclair in the bakery on West Twelfth Street. She bit it with self-conscious delicacy, poising her lips to save the lipstick, and chewed with slow circular motion rather like a cow’s, as she gazed at the girls passing like trains behind the glass cases of pastry. One of them had very nice features and an even hairline; Nadine pictured the girl to herself in costume, her head banded by a feather and sequin piece, and thought it was promising. She looked at the matron with narrowed eyes.

When she was ready to leave, she went to the counter and addressed the matron.

“Would you be so kind,” she said, taking a card from her case and pushing it with her fingers across the glass, “as to give this to the young lady, there, and tell her I’d be glad to see her at the Roller Room.” Without waiting for the woman to decide what attitude to take, Nadine wheeled on her heel and exited with her subtlest sway.


Frank opened the door to a pair of big blue eyes that, on closer examination, did not owe their appealing size to an excess of kohl.

“I’m here to see Miss di Nova,” the pair of eyes said. Her voice wasn’t anything special. Evidently this was a blind instinct of Nadine’s; Frank figured at the odds that the legs under the houndstooth skirt were decent.

“Sure, come in,” he said, pressing the door back and critically watching the sway of her ass as it took the hike up from the street level. There was potential, he was relieved to find. Nadine had fished out some real trouts once or twice. “Second door on your right,” he said.


Nadine started at the knock. “What? Yeah, come in.” She was still looking down at the clipping on her vanity when the latch clicked shut.

The girl waited for a moment.

“Miss di Nova?”

“Mrs. …What?” Nadine turned around to face her. “Oh. Hi, hiya, sweetheart. Yes. Come in. Sit…anywhere.” She gestured vaguely with her hand.

The girl begged mute permission of a pile of clothes on the loveseat before respectfully pushing it a little to the side. “Mrs. Anistakis said you left this card…” She held it out as proof.

“Course I did,” said Nadine. “Um. Yes, do you ever danced before?”

“I was in the majorettes in high school.”

“Think you could learn?”

“Learn…to dance? Oh, of course. I’m good at picking up routines.”

“Are you…” Nadine’s gaze had strayed back to the newspaper clipping. “…Fast on your feet?”

The girl was desperately leaning forward. “Yes, very. I’m a very fast learner, too.” A long silence dejected her. “I…I could come back at a more convenient time.” The empty response confirmed her fears, and she stood up.

Nadine roused herself.

“Oh, sweetheart, no. Sit down, don’t mind me. Sit down. What’s your name, honey?”

“Catherine…” Suggestions of glamorous stage names flashed across her hungry eyes, but she manfully finished with the truth. “Moran.”

Nadine nodded. “That’s a fine name,” she said. “I know you think it’s not special enough, but trust me, the more pizzazz in a name, the less in the act. Get it?”

The girl nodded hungrily.

“So you can pick up dances all right. That’s fine. Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry…” Nadine started to crumple.

Catherine Moran stood up again. “I can come back.”

“No, don’t! You’ve got to put up with this from…” Nadine gave a weakly bitter laugh. “What you don’t have to put up with!” She pulled the clipping off the vanity. “You ever hear of these fellers?”

The girl took the clipping and scanned it. “Um, no ma’am. I never did.”

“I’ll tell you something, honey.” But Nadine did not tell her anything; instead, she reached her fingers into a chocolate box on the corner of the vanity, yanked her fingers out of it again, and swiftly picked it up and passed it to Catherine Moran. Not wishing to be rude, the girl selected a candy without looking and bit into it with trusting obedience. Whatever was in the center was exactly disgusting to her. She tried to get her tongue around the chocolate outside without being obvious.

Nadine’s hands were folded in her lap. She looked down at them, hooking her fingers together and trying their strength.
“I told you it’s Mrs., didn’t I?”

“Yes ma’am. You did.”

“That’s not a stage name, either. He’s got a killer-diller of a name, doesn’t he?”

The girl angled her chin intently. “Who, ma’am? Oh, your…”

“I didn’t take him for that, though. I didn’t think I’d ever really work in show business, and when Kelly came along I didn’t care. I just wanted to marry him worse than anything in the world. I didn’t think he cared two straws for me until we were walking home from a ballroom and he said…” Nadine’s fingers broke apart; she smiled. “Well, I don’t know as I remember what he said.” She looked sympathetically at Catherine Moran. “A lady shouldn’t remember such things out loud, should she?”

The girl swallowed.

“We had a real nice wedding. Not so big but I never thought it could be so nice. I didn’t care anyway. I didn’t care about anything except being married to him. And not even married, see? Just him. Just Kelly, being with Kelly. I wanted to make him coffee every morning but if he’d said, no, sit in that chair and I’ll have the coffee brought in by the lady next door, I’d have sat in that chair and watched him drink it just so’s I was in the same room alone with him for a while, every day.” She pointed at the newspaper clipping that Catherine Moran was still holding, limply, in her left hand. “We saw them on our honeymoon. They were performing on the boardwalk to publicize their act at the Platinum Perch. Atlantic City. I hated Atlantic City, always did, but I didn’t even notice it was Atlantic City when we were there. I remember those fellows, though, doing a pyramid kind of thing on the boardwalk, and a girl bending her legs over her back and hooking them around her chin…Ugh. But he watched them and was grinning and eating a hot dog, and I just was looking at him and he said, Look at that! And I looked at them, those little Chinese acrobats, and…” She gazed through her fingers as if into some tranquil depth.

Catherine Moran quaveringly asked, “And what?”

Nadine looked up. “What?” Her face softened as she looked at the girl. “Are you married, sweetheart?”

“No. I’m not.”

Nadine saw her blush with distant satisfaction. “I hope you are someday,” she said, “and I hope you marry somebody you really love.” She paused. “And I hope…” A great weight seemed to press against her, insistent that she continue to speak. But she prevailed against it.

“Did Frank let you in? Fellow with a mustache?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You go out there and tell him your name. No, before you do that…” Nadine put out her hand to stop the girl’s exit. “Was somebody playing the piano when you came in?”

“Yes,” Catherine Moran answered, her face sweetly mystified.

“Here’s what you do. Go and talk to the piano player first, Mr. Bates. Old fellow, been here for years. You go and tell him to play you something you can sing. Then when Frank—that’s Mr. Ellison—comes out, you sing it over for him. Tell him I said so.”

The girl stood with her hand poised lightly on the doorknob.

“Will he…?”

Nadine shook her hand about briskly. “He’ll hear you sing and that’ll tell him where to put you in the chorus. And he’ll show you the papers. You can sign them here or take them home first, whatever you like. Show them to your dad, if you got one. If you have questions, you make sure to ask them. Frank’s a swell guy, he won’t mind.”

The girl stood a moment longer, then she collapsed forward.

“Miss…Mrs. di Nova, I just want to tell you, I can’t tell you how much this…”

“Sure, sure. Tell me if you come back to work. I have a good feeling, now shake a leg.”

When the door closed, Nadine put her head in her hands and, after a moment, moved to the loveseat to put her face in the pile of clothes.


“Excuse me.”

Dane swiveled round on the piano stool.

“I’m supposed to find Mr. Bates?” 


“Who?” he said.

“The piano player, Mr. Bates.” She stepped forward, into the first pool of stage light. Her hair lit up with a blue halo.

“Oh, he’s gone. I’m the piano player now.”

Her posture shifted uncertainly; where her skirt barely cleft to her thigh, the light made an effect positively Dutch. “Mrs. di Nova said I should speak to Mr. Bates about…”

“Oh, she must have forgot. I’m new. I guess she forgot.” He was embarrassed; his shoulders rolled forward.

“That’s all right,” she hastened to reassure him. “I just have to sing something for Mister, um…”

“Mr. Ellison, maybe?”

“Yes. The one with the mustache. He let me in.”

“That’s Mr. Ellison. Are you auditioning?”

“Yes. For the chorus.”

”Oh! Swell, that’s swell!” He spun back to the keyboard; she minced around him and came to rest her elbows on the piano lid. “What do you want to sing?”

“Oh! I’m not sure. What do you think?”

He played a careless patter of broken chords. “What voice are you?”

“I sang both when I was in the high school choir.”

“Say!” He looked up at her admiringly. “That’s something. You can sing both. Well, do you like Gershwin?”

“Oh, I’ll say I do!”

He gave her a rollicking lead which she picked up and promptly dropped, with a helpless giggle.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she confessed.


Frank rapped on Nadine’s door as he opened it.

“Goddammit, don’t you knock!”

He pulled up short. Her face was streaked with mascara.

"Hey, I’m sorry!” He stared at her.

“Well, how do you like me?” she said belligerently.

“Honey. What’s wrong?”

“Fuck off.”

He stared at her still more intently.

Her rigidity failed. She waved limply past him.

“Girl’s out there,” she croaked.

“Girl?”

“She’s all fine and dandy. Just have her sing for you or something.”

“Honey…” he began again.

“Oh, Frank!” she blubbered. “Piss off, can’t you?”

He backed slowly out. “Okay okay.”


“She’s a wonderful lady!” Catherine Moran effused as she handed the signed papers back to Frank.

“Yeah, wonderful,” He scanned the contract perfunctorily, and devoutly hoped she really could pick up routines all right. He looked over her shoulder and, through the glass pane in the door, saw Dane hovering outside.

“I just don’t understand how it’s all happened,” the girl went on breathlessly. “I mean I never gave it a thought, the stage I mean. And I don’t think I even saw her at the bakery…that’s where I work, where I used to work, my boss gave me her card, she left it there.”

“That’s Nadine, she likes to do her favors for people,” said Frank. He regarded Catherine Moran kindly. “But you must be real special to have struck her like that.” He approved of the girl’s blush. She wasn’t a shark. If she could just pick up a routine, he thought. He saw Dane’s head bobbing up and down behind the frosted glass, smiled, and frowned.

“Was she all right when you spoke with her?” he asked Catherine.

The girl’s big eyes grew bigger.

How does she do it, Frank wondered, just the right time, bet she doesn’t even know it when she does it, things go right we could go up a third. He looked again at Dane's glassy silhouette. That's where it is, he thought, it'll all come from him, with her, he’s an artistic type of kid &mdash oh Nadine, how do you do it?

“I…I don’t know, I’m not sure. She seemed…” Catherine bit her lip. “She was talking about her honeymoon.”

“She was? Her honeymoon?”

“Yes, about her husband, and Atlantic City, but she didn’t finish.”

“Was she…” Frank decided against it. “Yeah, sometimes she gets a little misty on that account. Her husband’s crippled, see. It’s a real shame, she feels real bad about it sometimes. But she doesn’t drink or nothing, don’t worry. She’s never anything but professional. It’s too bad you had to meet her when she was down.”

“Oh, I didn’t mind!” Catherine hastened to assure him. “I wish I’d known. She was so kind to notice me…”

“Well, you caught her eye.” Frank stood up and shook her hand. “Now you go out and, um, yes. I’ve got a little work to do here.”

As he trailed off, she uncertainly turned the door handle and stepped out. Looking up, Frank saw Dane snap to attention like a Waldorf bellhop. Their voices mingled, their cheap heels clacked down the hallway with symphonic youthful expectation.

give or take

He said he came down to understand the South for a book he was writing. He was born in Omaha but he went to school in other places and never lived anywhere that didn’t have a Chinese restaurant or, he said, a coffee shop. I said I didn’t think I knew what that was. He had to explain. It’s like a diner but they don’t have real food or waitresses usually.

People tell me sometimes I’m pretty but I don’t see it gets me much of anywhere, so I don’t care to hear it anymore. He never said it to me, but it didn’t matter because I knew he was thinking the same kind of thing as anybody else who has said so. They look at you like they just jumped through a hoop and you should give them a prize.

He was always asking me questions about my experience, at first, until finally I said, Look, that’s just none of your business, and I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, Mr. Landis, but around here it doesn’t take a special kind of gentleman to keep from asking a girl questions about the experience she’s had. Then he explained he just wanted to hear about my life, day to day, he said, or about my childhood, or what I remembered or what I thought. That was all he meant by experience.

I still didn’t feel much inclined to talk to him, but he was awfully nice to Jeff. He bought him comic books and, which is more, he talked to Jeff; maybe he knew that would please me some. Anyway, after a day or two I let him know a few things. He thought the commonest things were exciting, like that I hadn’t read anything beyond McGuffey’s Reader and the Bible except a couple of dime store novels that I tried out because my friend Delia said they were good. He asked if there was anybody I knew from school who read much, and I said no, they went driving or to the movies when they could until they were old enough to go to the bars. Mostly, I said, we just talk.

About what, he wanted to know.

I couldn’t think of anything. I thought a long time but I couldn’t remember anything special to tell him.

It doesn’t have to be special, he said. What did you talk about last time?

I don’t often remember, I said, because usually we’re all drinking.

What do you drink, he asked.

I started to laugh then, because it seemed so simple. What do we drink? I said. What does anybody drink? Wild Turkey or Jack or Jim Beam, unless anybody can get better, like real old bourbon or something. Sometimes somebody goes to visit friends or relatives and comes back with some moonshine and we all get real crazy.

And then what happens, he asked. Or don’t you remember that?

We don’t remember but everybody else does, I said, when we get moonshine. One time the boys jumped off the water tower. One of the soberer boys went to catch at them but he got dragged off. He was the only one hurt, because his head hit the rail. He can’t see out of that eye anymore.

Do the girls do crazy things or just the boys? He asked.

The girls do stupid things, nothing exciting. They kiss each other sometimes, you know, that kind of foolishness. They just kiss more of the boys, usually. Boys they wouldn’t usually let touch them.

Why do you think that is, he asked.

I said I didn’t know.



We went walking out in the field sometimes when he was asking me all these questions. He never looked where he was going—I led us everywhere we went—he was always looking at me, staring real hard sometimes. I kept my eyes on the road, or if I was holding something I played with it in my hands.

There was a week when he had to go to the city and when he wasn’t there I went for a walk by myself but I kind of wished he was there, to ask me questions, because I found I liked to think about the answers I was going to give.

I saw Delia at the store and she said where had I been and was I screwing the writer man. She said people saw us walking together. What people, I asked her.

Clem Johnson when he was mowing his field saw us, and other people, people just knew, she said. Was I screwing him, she wanted to know.

I looked at her real hard, like I imagined Mr. Landis would if he was there. And she said, I knew it, I knew it, is he good?



When he came back he asked me, what did you do this week?

Nothing special, I said.

Did you go driving, he asked.

No, nobody was going out, I said.

Did you talk with your friends, he asked.

Not much, I said.

What did you talk about, he asked.

That fellow in Savannah who was killing little girls, I said.

Really, he said, how did you know about that?

We know some things, I said. Abe saw it on t.v.

Tell me about your conversation, he said. He pulled a pad of paper out of his pocket.

What’s that for, I asked.

I might need to remember something, he said. I forget easily.

Did you forget everything I told you before, I asked.

He smiled and he stared real hard. I don’t think so, he said.

Then I felt all right, so I told him what we said about the fellow in Savannah.

What did you drink that night, he asked.

They were drinking Jim Beam, I said. I didn’t have but one beer. It was P.B.R., I added, in case he wanted to know.



I have a personal question to ask you, he said one day, just as we set out. I thought I would have to wait, if it was more personal that the other things he asked me all the time, but he jumped in without taking breath, Have you been in love?

I looked at him.

My book is about love, he said, as if he was explaining something hard to understand, I want to know about love. I want to know about what it was like for you. But if it’s hard to talk about…

If what’s hard to talk about, I asked.

He smiled, like he was embarrassed. Your experience, he said.

I looked at him again. He was real embarrassed, I could see.

Do you mean, I said, being in love, or do you mean getting screwed?

He stopped smiling at all, and his face got real red.

What do you mean, I asked.

He looked down at his pad of paper in his lap.

I was in love, I said, a whole mess of times…

I don’t mean, he said, sounding sort of bothered, I mean really in love. Loving somebody.

Yeah, I said.

A whole mess of times, hm, he said, in a flat voice like he didn't believe me.

Is that what you mean, I asked.

I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing, he said. I don’t mean…screwing. It was hard for him to say screw, and harder still for him to say it like it was easy. It was kind of cute to me how hard he worked at it.

I only done that a couple of times, I said. And I’m not going to talk about it, anyway.

He looked confused. But I didn’t have anything to say more than that, so he gathered himself back up.

Talk about being in love, he said, in his usual way, with the red gone mostly from his face.

Well. I didn’t quite know what to say. Have you been in love?

He looked upset.

Never? I asked him. Because it’s hard to say what it’s like, if you don’t know something about it.

He looked real mad then, so I tried to hurry and come up with something to start.

I mean, I said, it hurts real bad, like bad enough sometimes that you’d just as soon jump in the river. You know? But I never did, I don’t know anybody who did. I never really thought I would.

What kept you from it, he asked.

Well, why would you, I asked, but I wasn’t asking him, really. It’s... Then I started to laugh, because I knew I would sound crazy.

It’s what, he asked.

It’s so nice, I said, laughing. It doesn’t feel nice. But it is, anyway. I looked at him. Crazy, isn’t it?

How many times, he asked.

That set me back a minute.

Two, three, he asked.

I guess fifteen, maybe, give or take, I said.



One day I asked him, how did you get the job you have?

You mean writing, he asked. It’s not a job you get, exactly.

Then he said, I always knew I wanted to do it, you see.

I said, what do you mean it’s not a job you get.

It’s not what I do for money, he said.

I thought. Then I said, what do you do for money?

Magazine pieces, he said. I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t care to ask about it.

The books you write, you write them for free, I asked.

He rocked back in his chair a minute. Do you want to write books, he asked.

I laughed. I said, I don’t even read books.

What do you want to do, he asked. Is there something you want to do with your life?

I looked at him and kind of thought about saying yes, because I could see what he wanted. It was a deep well in his eyes, the same as I’d seen before in other people when they looked at me, when they told me I was pretty. When Jeff looked at me sometimes I saw it and was frightened by it, even though he was a little boy. It was dark and it wanted to swallow me. I think it’s crazy how an old quarry tempts you to jump in, or a pot of water boiling sort of begs you to touch, just to find out.

I said, no, I don’t think about it.

What are you afraid of, he asked, in a gentle voice like he was my father or uncle.

Nothing, I said.



He left at the end of the summer, about the time people were going to pick apples. I told him he should stay to see the beginning of fall, but I didn’t care, really. He gave Jeff a stack of comic books and a baseball glove, though Jeff can’t hold things very well and he never plays baseball. But I said thank you and he said, no, thank you.

He walked off the porch and I guess he took the train out the next morning, because I never saw him again. I wonder sometimes about the book he was writing about the south. He said he would send it to me but I haven’t seen it yet.

Delia said, I hope you didn’t tell him too much, he probably put you in it and made it real dirty, people like that. I hope you told him some great big lies to put him off.

I said, he’d have to lie if it was going to be interesting, I didn’t tell him anything worth writing in a book.

But I guess he got what he wanted out of it. I gave him everything he asked for--I always meant to. That look of his told me what he was after, and I don’t believe he’d have left if he hadn’t got it. Men aren’t that way, I don’t think. But I think it’s funny he never asked me what I thought he should put in his book. He’d have got a lot more if he had.

returning keys

A friend remarked to me that this past week I have made several things official. It’s true—I returned the keys to my former place of residence (duration being one summer) and to my former place of business (duration being four years). Both were difficult tasks, but not because I didn’t want to make these things official. I did. Here’s the weird thing—it took courage to return the keys, to look people in the eye and say “I’ve moved on from you.” Purely impersonal desire bade me do so &mdash I couldn’t fall back on necessity, such as moving out of state or coming into a staggering inheritance that required a drastic change of lifestyle. How do you tell someone “It’s been great” without feeling like an ass? There is the prize-winner’s guilt inherent in it—they’re not moving on, why should you? By leaving without compulsion, by turning someone down, are you not implying that you have better things to do? Better things that they don’t have?

…Does this make anyone else feel like an ass?

Certainly it doesn’t stop me from doing it. The first night that I slept in my new apartment, disentangled from expressions of gratitude and folksy goodbyes, brought almost as much satisfaction as if I’d built my own house.

Kissing off my past employer and all the maintenance he hadn’t done over the last four years, as well as the degraded product I had been selling for him, was a blessed relief.

But people are enduringly people, and I cringe at the thought of how many times I have watched someone leave me behind. Even when I was glad to see them go, there was always a faint feeling that I’d been had.

The one who says goodbye automatically takes the prize.

Of course, it must be remembered that if he returns, he has to return the takings and pay interest for the rest of his humiliated life.

I think that in saying “so long”, what you really take is a risk. On the upside, risk comes with a great high, if you can handle it.

(from September of 2007)

the morning after a quarter century

I’m freezing.

Here’s what I did tonight. I need to remember. Went to Tsunami. Got phone calls from mom, Jane, A and dad. Texts from Meredith and Dutta. Saw Katharina and I still have her wallet.

Drank a dry manhattan and a couple sips of Sam Adams. Did crossword with brendan. (wow.) danced when the 80s music came on (and tsunami turned into a club). Winn, L, raffi and J wright showed up…winn bought me a drink. Bummed a cig off peter and L. Danced a lot. Walker came. Danced and ran around in the rain and got quite soaked. Walker swung me around briefly. Went out for some air and overheard brendan talking to one of the Tsunami types about probably his ex. Went for a head-clearing walk with peter (didn’t work) and talked about why I have a Bible-study thing as my homepage. Irreverence was my theme. Came back, danced a little bit more, sipped off winn’s mojito and walker’s tequila-and-sprite. Then I got a walk home from yef, who wasn't what I wanted.

Never been this dizzy before. And I know L noticed. Wonder what will get back to whom and how.

Wish I could loosen up.

(originally written 10.11.07, 2.00 am)

exhale

congratulations. you're getting married.

congratulations. you're only twenty-three years old.

congratulations. you've got another year until you graduate.

congratulations. everyone is congratulating you.

i, for my part, have achieved INNER PEACE!

last tango in paris

it was a beautiful day today, and the air smelled familiar. i just don't know what that familiar smell was of. but i remember it from this time every year. it goes with the blinding sun and the sudden whim of a breeze.

everyone gets back to school this week. everyone, except me.

my summer job ends this week. the new one has already started, slowly.

oh holy moses, i'm an adult now. i mean, no vestiges of kid are left. i'm responsible whether i'm responsible or not.

it's funny to have been here four years and never yet identified that smell. it must be like a kind of burn-off smell, because it lasts until you have to start wearing a jacket even at midday, which happens toward the end of october. the trees have been baking in the sun and now they are just cindering &mdash maybe that's what it is?

when i was at the end of my summer in france, two years ago, i almost didn't spend the last ten days in paris. i was exhausted from working hard and speaking french and living in strangers' houses, and i thought about just coming home. but i stayed. those last ten days defined my trip for me. when i think of my summer in france i think not of the three weeks in nice or the four weeks in correze or the week outside le mans, but instead of the last ten days in cold, rainy paris in the end of july. walking for miles, looking like a hobo with my straggly hair and clothes, circling back to the louvre every four hours or so to use the one free bathroom in the entire city. oh, i love it there and i can wait as long as i need to in order to get back and stay for another three months. or six or eight or twelve or twenty!

i've got a similar feeling now to what i remember of those days in paris &mdash not the rapture part, but the settled certainty that the exhaustion is coming to an end. i don't know what's ahead...i didn't after leaving paris, either, except junior year of school. but at least i'd be speaking english and not working with or around manure.

sometimes all we need for an uplift of mood is the knowledge that whatever trial we're moving into, at least it's not the one we've grown accustomed to.

(first published 8.18.07, 6.37pm)

what the kids are reading now

I picked up The Subterraneans and was reading it on a bench in the park today. On my way home, I passed a kid on Main Street, sprawled on a bench and reading On the Road. I almost said something, but I didn’t. There are some writers you bond over, and some that you bond over by not saying anything about them.

Everyone is reading Jack Kerouac this summer, and you should be, too. For one thing, everyone is doing it. For another thing, unlike tiered dresses and riding Segways (which are other things that everyone is doing this summer), reading Jack Kerouac is advisable at any time of the year. But it is particularly suited to summer. And here is why…

The heat of summer puts people of all ages back into the mood of cross, irritable angst that dominates an adolescent’s life. Even if you’re a pretty easy-going person of mature years and reliable sang-froid, the summer’s heat will most likely give you acne, and suddenly you will find yourself at odds with the world through no fault of your own, and with no closure imaginable to the unanswerable questions that make you so damn cranky. Your body will expand unaccountably, you will alternate between dull and ravenous appetites, you will be fatigued during the day and sleepless at night, and on top of it all, you will be compelled by the custom of your peers to wear tight and revealing clothes that you tug at all day long, tormented additionally by the uncertainty of how you look and what everyone is thinking of you.

And, as you know, adolescents love Jack Kerouac…almost as much as they love The Catcher in the Rye. In fact, Salinger is practically passé now, left to the middle-schoolers as being far too allegorical, while the jaded upper sets get into the Beat Generation and its contempt for self-analysis. It’s all about expression, man. The great thing about Kerouac’s writing is its immediacy. It’s the tumble of the now now now, never mind what just happened in the last paragraph or even the grammatical progression of the last two words I’m on to something new now, man, because what’s done is done and now is I mean you dig me daddy-o?

Though I doubt this is what he was going for, Jack Kerouac perfectly encapsulates the adolescent experience, by betraying a very touching vulnerability under his insistent bravado and vulgarity. He puts such a strain on himself to be great, to show that he is a great writer of his time and beyond it, that it makes you kind of giggle in commiseration. “Yeah, sweetheart, I thought I was a pretty big deal once, too.”

“The adolescent cocksman having made his conquest barely broods at home the loss of the love of the conquered lass, the blacklash lovely—no confession there.—It was on a morning when I slept at Adam’s that I saw her again, I was going to rise, do some typing and coffee drinking in the kitchen all day since at that time work, work was my dominant thought, not love—not the pain which impels me to write this even while I don’t want to, the pain which won’t be eased by the writing of this but heightened, but which will be redeemed, and if only it were a dignified pain and could be placed somewhere other than in this black gutter of shame and loss and noisemaking folly in the night and poor sweat on my brow—…” (The Subterraneans)

Awww, don’t you want to just give him a hug?

Plus, you have to enter this whole world of slang that you probably left behind once you started working beyond minimum wage. Flip, hep, chick, dig—at least half the words you have to intuit, they will be so often repeated but with no contextual clues.

Finally, the loaded importance of the scene—not really what anybody does or says, half the time the actions are not clearly communicated and when they are, they don’t make sense. But it’s just where everyone is—the Mask or the Red Drum (in The Subterraneans), North Beach or Berkeley or the mountains (in The Dharma Bums), little Bretagne pubs or grey boulevards (in Satori in Paris). The importance is not on the place as a setting, but as a scene in which the characters exist, not really knowing what to do with themselves but painfully self-conscious.

Oh, the grandeur! The weight!
What a responsibility to be so young and so important!

(first published 7.16.07, 9.05pm)

feeling good (james dean, part 1)

he walks across the brick as if there is music backing him up; judging by his rhythm, it's some kind of orchestral intro to a kennedy-era striptease act. his chin is tucked down as if he's about to enter the ring; the greasy black forelock arcs over his brow, like i remember, when he was hard at work; he's smirking, damn him.

with his head cocked to one side, balancing a cigarette over his ear, he looks up from under his eyebrows, and he says, "hi, bird."

bird says, "hihowareyou."

he takes his time. i know this is just what he does, his ploy to cover a multitude of sins, and fears and passions as well. still, his insouciance, his toying with the time between us, as if all time were contained in a watch on a chain he could dangle at his side, drives me crazy. i want it. i want to see him get impatient and insistent, while i stand back and smile as if i'm the one with all the cards.

there was a time...one night...when i did have all the cards, and just for a minute i saw what i wanted to see. but then he folded. i've heard that he's since found another game.

we stand facing each other, and i know it cannot last. the breeze, unseasonably warm, stirs his clothes and throws his scent tauntingly into my face. i smell cigarettes, his undistinguished cologne, cheap fresh beer. i smell kisses that tasted like cheap fresh beer; i smell the heavy warmth of his irish cable sweater soaked in tobacco-tainted breaths; i smell the side of his face, from the brow to the jaw to the back of the ear, as surely as if i were buried in it. a renegade bolt, of what i shall try to characterize as hopeless ecstasy, vessels like a torpedo up from my feet to my face, against the current of blood. against all expectation i feel every muscle breaking the bonds they've worn ever since he left them alone; i feel cool in my head, copacetic with the breeze and the blushing autumn sunshine, languid and alive and feral and flexible. i feel as if i'd like to break his arm; i'd like him to try to break mine. i'd devour him; at least, i'd fight him like a cat. i have the feeling that comes of holding two magnets just barely out of each other's reach. whatever elements are stirred up in me have suddenly been thrown into eschatological fury. it's a mayhem of rational self-assertion pushed down, down into my gut, by the pure clarity in my head expanding, the way gases do when released from the earth. this is why it's best to meet him when we dance--then i don't have to think, then music makes harmony of these unruly elements, just as nietzsche assured me it would.

he makes me feel so good.

yes, and that's all he does.

he smiles, and then he leaves, and then it's just as if i've been punched in the throat.