by Susan Hahn
Added to this were the salespersons’ talk—talking down to her with the detestable “Honey” or “Dear,” not just giving her what she asked for, always trying to sell her something more, taking advantage of her all-too-obvious vulnerability which made her seem that she could easily be intruded upon and convinced to purchase anything they pitched—as if they could make her believe that a change in eye shadow, a new fragrance with a hyper-seductive name, or the cheery color of some lipstick could stabilize her. “If only,” she would think as each one chattered on. It was hard enough these days for her to just enter a store—any store—and ask for what she needed.
Everywhere she went it seemed everyone used too many words, making her mind even more a clutter. It was as if no one could appreciate the precision of efficient discourse so as to lessen the outside noise—their tongues all thickened thumbs, thumping out more sound, drumming out more nonsense of self-importance and condescension. There seemed a competition out there with so many people trying to trounce each other in the narcissistic territory of the “I,” using her current most hated word—busy. “Yes,” she emphatically thought, “more and more, people seemed to be going for the Olympic gold in busy.”
Yet, now that she realized she was about halfway there—on her path to straighten out what had been done, done to her in her twisted life story—in this jammed traffic, she felt only compassion for the people around her. She listened calmly as they pressed on their horns and studied their impatient, angry faces—all the animated energy they used as they poured more redundant, trivial talk into the receivers of their phones, and she looked at each one with a sincere patience.
She felt both a pity and an empathy for their lone-liness—as if everyone were trying to cover the jagged potholes of their lives with the thin pages of a newspaper, trying to run over the news, the truly sad stories imprinted on the fragile sheets and on themselves. Silently she thought, as she watched them, “Someday, one by one, each of you will tear or burst from all the damage done from the rock-hard edges of your life you so ceaselessly try to ignore.” But, at least on this ride she did not have the almost uncontrollable urge to roll down the car window and shout this message out to them. She wanted to tell them quietly, “The pliability and softness of the cushions all of us use to comfort ourselves can only be temporary. The multiplying hungers for distractions can only give us the feeling of safe passage to a point. Eventually all diversions lead to the same isolated destination.” The truth was, even on this mission that felt so right, she was still her old, glum self.
However, with the gun quietly resting in her purse, the voices that sometimes would scream at her saying, “Everything you do is wrong. You’re not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not smart enough. Nothing enough,” had silenced. She had bound herself to the Old Testament version of revenge. At least by her interpretation. She thought, “It’s being practiced every day if you just listened to the news—in the world, in this city, in backyards, inside homes.” She became the God of Israel, the Ineffable One. She became Yahweh, the name observant Jews never say out loud and with this thought she said His name out loud. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. And it made her feel giddy and wildly happy.
As I watched her, I could only hope some other thoughts would rise up in her to calm her, to stop her.
She ruminated on how easy it was to buy a gun—fill out an application—hedge a bit on the truth of how balanced you were—have your picture taken, and wait for it all to be processed. Just a couple of months—if that. Then come back and make a purchase. Or better yet, use an old one. One that looks like a harmless relic, but is not. One with a family history.
She deeply felt Arletta’s vision of the world was unrealistic—so simple-minded and wondered why people lined up to buy tickets to her lectures. To her it was as if when they entered the Great Hall to hear her, each picked up a blindfold to the world—all the complexities of history, all the misery caused by humans.
Arletta would tell her audience how lucky they were to be living in this country and how easily the problems here could be solved. She would do this with seemingly great respect for their intelligence, making references to the Greeks and Romans, to their history and mythology, paralleling these to the present—to current events, movies, music—and what they could learn from the long, lost past—its lessons, its mistakes, and all its glories. She did this without being pedantic—without arrogance—pronouncing that anything wrong now could be fixed through generosity of spirit, good deeds, and friendship. Her speech pattern was the perfect balance of angelic and evangelistic.
She went to listen to her three times. Since she had an insatiable craving to know everything about Ivan Durmand, to examine him from every possible angle—piece by piece, particle by particle in as microscopic fashion as possible—she also had the need to know more about the woman with whom he was living. Even though she sat hunched in a far corner with a scarf covering her head and dark glasses on so no one would notice her, she could still see that on stage Arletta looked as composed as Queen Katherine of Aragon and she remembered thinking even that elegant, aristocratic woman had lived with a monster. Yet when she thought of the comparison of Henry VIII to Ivan Durmand, she smiled at the stretch of this and how it was far too much a compliment to the latter and his very limited polluted puddle of power.
Each time she saw her, Arletta was dressed in a dark, trim, perfectly fitting designer pants suit with a striking necklace of Spanish stones, as if to remind everyone of her lineage—her adventurous and powerful heritage. Of course, she never spoke of its violent history—the tortures, the awful, senseless carnage, which, in fairness, could be the history of any country and always in the name of some god. No, Arletta would not ever go into that.
The necklace she remembered most was quite large and made of saffron colored carnelian. It had geometric squares and ended with a large, highly polished tear drop which fell at the perfect place on her skin so as to delicately, purposely, cover any hint of cleavage. Yet, the suggestion of sensuality was clearly intended and definitely effected. The color of the stones intricately entwined in the shine of thick, pink gold wire only added to the glow of her smooth, naturally sun-kissed tan skin. She thought of Celine and how that was the color she always strived for, only to end up with some variation of orange on herself from the many brands of cream she purchased during the winter months.
She imagined every woman in the audience wanting to ask her where she had bought such a necklace—and all the others she was known to wear. She certainly wanted to—however superficial the impulse. To her the brilliance of this self-decoration with its subliminal effects were far more fascinating than anything Arletta wrote or said. She just could not react the way the others did.
Today, before she left home, she put on a necklace she found at the shop. Supposedly it is authentic—the center drop of it being a circular coin sliced in half, recovered from the El Cazador shipwreck. It had a tag on it with its history. The vessel had disappeared into the winter sea in another January—1794 to be exact—and the treasure it was carrying discovered only recently—1993—by a fishing vessel named Mistake. She smiled at that when she first read it.
She wondered who wore the other half of this small, full moon disk. If it had brought them bad thoughts or good luck. She wondered, too, if Arletta would admire her necklace with the coin at the center of which was a Spanish inspired cross, embellished by four black onyx tips separated by four curved rows of four clear-colored cabochon gemstones. Her urge to buy it gave her the small hope that perhaps in wearing it she might become stronger—more like Arletta. That she could be empowered by such a neck-lace—however ridiculous that thought seemed, and was not.
Certainly Arletta’s words gave her audiences hope—a vision of Eden before the apple, gave their minds a rest like a meditation or a sermon and that for some moments after they reentered the world they felt smarter, and everything seemed brighter now that they were filled with the belief that easy solutions were possible.
At least until they got into their cars and had to deal with the incessant messages left for them by disgruntled relatives or coworkers. Or from having none at all—nothing received from the ones whose voices they truly needed to hear, so as to give them a little affirmation, a boost of positive attention to get through to the next day—a little polish for their spirit. Soon enough, the drivers next to them would begin impinging on their space and the dirty looks, obscene gestures, or the games of chicken with steel vehicles would begin and the words—always the words—when they turned on the news from the disembodied air would start spitting on them again with the events of the day so much larger than their own lives. Nothing picayune here—rage raining and reigning everywhere. Maybe then they would wonder about the validity of Arletta’s vision or perhaps just be grateful for the distraction of it. Most likely by this time they would have forgotten much of what she had said—it being too sallow in its shallowness to last even the drive home—and be left with just a small halo effect of its optimistic pleasantness.
She is a bad driver. She never knows what to do when the merging cars take their aggressive places on the highway. She always feels that this leaves her with no space. That she is being crowded out. That the road she is trying to take for herself is being intruded upon by someone far more confident. Someone stronger, someone bolder. She has tried so hard to hold on to a path in this world of being—of being a Slaughter, of knowing she was unacceptable from the beginning for being a daughter. Always with the realization of not being—not being the everlasting Rose. Of never being able to outwardly perfectly comply or inwardly deal with the rules and expectations set for her way before her birth, no matter how hard she initially had tried. Yet, as she kept touching the leather of her bag and feeling the shape of the gun, with her target closer—now just miles from here—all this seemed of no consequence. She felt what she was doing was not random; what she was doing was filled with great purpose; what she was doing had many dimensions; what she was doing was multifaceted and hard like a diamond.
It was then I became truly frightened.
She touched the sweat that now completely covered her face. It had become fluid, like a second foundation and that, too, felt perfect. Now she imagined, when the air hit her exposed skin as she stepped out of the car—so close to her goal—she would look less like the sprinkled stars in the night sky, but more unified, like a cold, hard jewel. That finally, she would resemble a gem of great value.
Suddenly, in the middle of these dot thoughts, which she knew, if she drew the lines all connected to her maze-puzzled life, she realized she was on his street and she started checking the numbers of the houses, which was difficult because it was now almost past the twilight hour in the city-filthy, dark hole of midwinter and the homes were closer together than she expected, some almost disappearing into the next with no light shining on their addresses. She was surprised by the narrowness of each house, but tried not to make of this a metaphor—let it intrude or multiply. She had to keep her mind locked into the reality of what she intended and not leap around in the possibilities of language.
When she finally saw a number near enough, she found a parking spot—one where the city had plowed the snow high, so she fit in easily. The car and her frostbitten thoughts were now imbedded in a concrete igloo of ice. She turned off the car’s lights and the ignition and paused, took some deep breaths to try to steady what felt like a not-unfamiliar arrhythmia of her heart. Then, she slipped the gun into her coat pocket, stuffed her purse under the passenger side of the seat and stared at the thick rubber soles on her boots, hoping they would keep her from slipping, keep her anchored to the ground when she got out of the car and edged along the newly fallen snow which deceptively covered layer upon layer of built-up ice.
Her plan was to find the house—the house he and Arletta bought together—by walking toward it, her head down so she would look weather-beaten like everyone else just wanting to get home at the end of a hard workday. She would go up the steps or the concrete walk to the front door—whichever it was—and ring the bell. If everything worked as she imagined, Herr M would open it, stare at her, and before he could slam it in her face she would take the gun—now resting so snugly in the deep of her pocket—point it at him, while looking straight at him so he could see her, see who was doing this to him. See her and that would be the last image he would ever see. See her. Her shooting. Her shooting him.
As she walked, all her thoughts were about death. About the soul and its being released from the mind-body and how she longed for this—for some perspective on what we do to ourselves and to each other and the poem “The Soul’s Aerial View of the Burial” started racing around in her mind, and she said it in the smallest whisper, like a prayer to the air—its frozen emptiness the perfect audience—
Everything is black or white—
the mourners’ heavy wool coats
wander over the crisp snow,
their arms holding on to whoever’s left—
while I wait for them to seal
the perfect rectangular hole
so I can go—to where
I do not know.
But for now I muse above the bony
trees, about how fragile
the dance is that they do,
and how I don’t remember
ever having such an unfettered view.
And in saying it, she hoped that when this was over, she, too, would see everything clearer and be freer. But she was not sure, for now she was beginning to feel lightheaded.
It was at this point a little hope rose up in me that she would turn around and go home … but she did not.
When she found the house, it was even narrower than the others, turn of the century old and three stories high. It was not made of brick as she had imagined, but rather a faded yellow clapboard from which the paint was peeling, perhaps with some of the strips turning to rot. The children’s story of the three little pigs jumped into her mind and she said out loud, “Not even of brick.” At that moment she felt like the wolf, quite capable of blowing this house in, which was, after all, her intention.
Then she thought, “This doesn’t look like the kind of house that Arletta would stay in for long. This doesn’t seem like a place Arletta would ever live. Surely her exit will be sooner than later.” She idealized Arletta’s future once again and pictured her gracefully dancing away into warm, spring air to a larger, grander house with lots of lawn and flowers blooming everywhere. In her mind Arletta’s story always, inevitably, led to a happy Hollywood ending.
She was unsteady, her gait definitely off, as she slowly headed up the shoveled, cracked, concrete path which ended with five overly large steps of wood. Only one light was on, in an upper front left-side room on the attic-like top floor. She imagined him there with its sloped ceilings—that were soon to fall in on him—ensconced with his books, perhaps grading papers or preparing tomorrow’s lecture—which now would never happen—or listening to some classical music or smooth jazz, feeling so safe and warm.
Perhaps he was reading Nietzche’s The Genealogy of Morals, going over his favorite part on how the world is intrinsically filled with cruelty and violence, given the instincts inherent in humans, and how it is up to a higher thinking man to develop his own code of morality, not be led or convinced by clichéd beliefs—“let us be aware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as ‘pure reason,’ ‘absolute knowledge,’ ‘absolute intelligence.’” He had read her those words early in their relationship and she thought him an expansive thinker and a passionate scholar. Now she believes he used this treatise as an excuse for any and all of his behavior, his voice becoming so theatrical as he continued, “What a mad, unhappy animal is man! What strange notions occur to him; what perversities … what bestialities of idea burst from him, the moment he is prevented ever so little from being a beast of action?” How these lines have stayed memorable in her mind, like an indelible stain. She guesses one could say she had been forewarned.
> She wondered how Arletta’s philosophy could possibly fit with such beliefs and whether or not they argued a lot about this from their not ivory but wooden tower. However before she could get entirely lost in this quagmire of thought, the rising and dying noise of someone trying and retrying to start the frozen motor of a car shocked her out of her wobbly, over-intellectualizing and returned her to the imminent impermanency of Herr M’s own situation and this made her smile and helped steady her some. As did a Life-Saver she unrolled from her other pocket with her ungloved hand and placed on her tongue. At this moment, the bitter, sugary taste of the lemon one helped unify her senses. Her eyes began to focus better.
She saw that the front porch was darkish gray. The depressing color seemed contradictory—it should have been lighter, as in a welcoming. As it was, the entrance to the house looked like a cave. The floorboards creaked as she stepped on them and there was a matching wood swing held up by rusty chains. She imagined that when it was new it had been painted white and had brought great delight to those who had swung on it. Children. Parents. Lovers. She walked around it as quietly as she could and had the urge to sit on it to rest so as to further help balance herself, though it looked like it would make loud, squeaking sounds or worse, that if any weight were placed on it, it might fall from the low, warped wood ceiling from which it hung.
It was then she thought of a title for a poem: “The Rapist’s Porch Swing,” quite aware of its multiple meanings and with this, that night two years ago quickly came back to her with too much memory: her initial bewilderment when he leaped up from his chair and pressed his open mouth onto hers; how the force of this act, coupled with the bristly hairs of his goatee made it feel as if a mask were pressing against her face; how empty this opening to his body felt—like a rough dark pit into which he was trying to swallow her; how he then quickly yanked her to the futon; how he pushed her down on it; how he would not let her up; how he kept saying, “Turn. Turn. Turn Over,” with her idiotically thinking if she did so, he would let her up and how he did not. How that was just the beginning of his pushing—his pushing himself into her any which way it pleased him.
