“No, I just don’t have time to read it.”
“Oh.” Josie was disappointed. She had lent the book to Valerie in the hopes that she would read it and maybe they would talk about it and start a book group that met once a month. Josie had to start somewhere, so she started with Val.
“I’m sorry,” Val said.
“That’s okay.”
“I should’ve knocked. I’m disturbing you.”
“No, no,” Josie said. Josie wasn’t disturbed. Cleaning an oven that didn’t really need cleaning was disturbed. Cleaning an oven when one should be trying to get back into one’s thesis research was disturbed.
“And this was yours too,” Valerie handed over a patterned shawl. Josie didn’t recognize it at first and didn’t automatically move to take it from Valerie’s hands. A minute must have ticked by before Josie realized the shawl had once belonged to her.
“Wow,” Josie said, “I forgot about this.”
“I know. I’m sorry I kept it so long.”
“Didn’t I . . .” It all was coming back to Josie now. “Didn’t I give this to you? I think I did.” Josie remembered it now. She had given the shawl to Valerie ages ago, when she was pregnant with Kirin and it was wintertime. For some reason it was always cold in Valerie’s house at night; Carl had a thing about the heating bill. Josie suggested Valerie adjust the thermostat, but she declined. “It upsets him,” she said. And so Josie brought over the shawl. Josie had no qualms about giving it away. It never did suit her. It was black with large roses sprawled over it and stringy fringe. She had seen a woman in grad school with the same one artfully draped on her shoulders and Josie thought she should have one too. She thought that was what a progressive, intellectual, thinking woman would wear. It wasn’t too sixties, but it said something. It said, “I care,” and, “I think about the world.”
Josie never could find a way to wear it. It was always getting in her way or catching on something, and she felt uncomfortably dramatic swinging it across her chest and over one shoulder. She brought it over to Valerie’s thinking it would be the perfect thing to wrap around one’s self when pregnant. Funny though, Josie thought, that I never wore it when I was pregnant.
She had meant for Valerie to keep it, but Valerie was giving it back so thoughtfully, as if it meant something important to her to have remembered about the shawl and to now be giving it back.
Josie took the shawl and placed it on her kitchen counter where it deflated next to the can of oven cleaner.
Valerie looked relieved. Her face looked shiny. Her hair was long and loose and could use a brushing. Josie thought she might have lost weight. How is it, Josie thought, that I am thirty-eight and getting wider, cottage cheese thighs, and Valerie is the same age and is losing weight?
Valerie was still smiling like she wanted a gold star for bringing back the book and the shawl. Maybe Josie should give her something else to hold on to for a little while and then give back.
“You know, she has a new book out,” Josie said. “Maybe we could read that together.”
“That’s okay,” Valerie said. “I have to pick up Kirin. I was just cleaning up and going through some things. There’s a lot to do.”
“I’ll bet,” Josie said.
The front door opened and closed without warning, which usually meant it was Gretchen returning home from school. Without even a “Hi, Mom,” she disappeared up the stairs and into her bedroom.
“Gretchen?” Josie called after her. A faint television laugh track greeted her in return.
“I should go,” Valerie said quietly. She left through Josie’s back door and walked lightly through the yard on her way to the alley. Josie didn’t notice until Valerie was at the back gate that she was barefoot.
The television laughed at Josie from above the ceiling. Josie looked up. This is getting ridiculous, she thought.
Josie knocked on Gretchen’s door and let herself in.
“How about homework?” Josie asked.
“How about it?” Gretchen replied, not looking at her mother.
“How about,” Josie said, making it up as she went along, “we have a reading session together. We can spread out on the bed in me and Daddy’s room and I can read and you can do homework until Daddy gets home.”
“I kind of need to do homework at my desk,” Gretchen said as she reached over and switched off the TV. At least I got that much, Josie thought.
“Okay, well, I’ll be reading in my room,” Josie tried to convince herself it sounded like fun and that she was not, in effect, policing her daughter’s television habits.
Josie climbed onto her bed with the book Valerie returned, Passages by Gail Sheehy. She had seen the book on several people’s shelves but had never read it herself. And, actually, she still hadn’t read it. She had skimmed through the chapter about being in your thirties, but when she got to “The Age 35 Survey” and found it wasn’t actually a survey that you could fill in, but just another chapter, she began to flip through pages out of order. The tidbits she did consume were mostly about women who decided to strike out on their own and move to Big Sur, and, of course, a few who did move to Big Sur discovered they really didn’t like it that much.
Josie shut the book. She was stuck in this room now for another hour and a half. She looked over at her desk perfectly positioned between the two windows. A few months ago, she had reorganized her closet and pulled out the box containing her thesis research, abandoned since her daughter was born. She could finish her thesis and finally have her master’s degree. That could open some doors, she thought. But as she sifted through the notes and files, she found herself uninterested. She thumbed through books that used to mean the world to her, only to find herself paying more attention to what was on the radio. She arranged her scholarly materials in neat piles on her bedroom desk and bought a new ribbon for the typewriter, figuring that having these things visible and ready would spark her inspiration. But now months had gone by, and Josie had yet to study or type or call the university about rematriculating.
Josie fought the urge to get under the covers. On her husband’s nightstand was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. The book about black holes was flattened, pages down, between a lamp and the edge of the stand. Josie reached over and extracted the book. It fanned open and bold letters announced the chapter her husband had barely begun: “The Persistence of Memory.” A photograph of a giant humpback whale arching gracefully, headfirst out of the water, glistened from the opposite page. The whale was strangely, majestically vertical. It had managed, despite its mass, and without the assistance of a harpoon or crane, to defy gravity. Josie flipped forward a few pages looking at diagrams of whale song rhythms and remembering very little about the PBS television series. She flipped a few pages further and was confronted by pictures of human brains sitting on a counter like hunks of raw, wet meat. She snapped the book shut and tossed it to her husband’s side of the bed. A moment later she realized she hadn’t marked his place in the book. She closed her eyes and put it out of her mind.
THE ORDINARY DAY
Valerie awoke from a dream in which she was already awake. She had dreamt she had woken up, gotten out of bed, and started making breakfast. But when she turned to look at the clock on the stove, she realized she was horribly late. It was after ten o’clock. She hadn’t woken Kirin. School had already started. Game shows had already begun. There was nothing she could do. She ran back up to her bedroom and discovered a beautiful new closet. She opened the door and flung herself inside. She hit the back wall, which was cushioned in pink satin, and flipped around to watch the door close in her face. There was one little pull light with a Chinese lampshade hanging from the ceiling. She tugged the string, bathed herself in a rosy glow, and as she calmed down, a thought repeated over and over in her mind: You must leave this place. It will soon be too late. There will be no time. There will be no time to reach this safe closet when all the buttons have been pushed and the bombs are on their way. The CIA will surely find you. They
know where to look. They know all the hiding places. The same thing happened to your mother. She was caught and forced to disappear.
Valerie woke up.
From her pillow, she gazed forward and saw the reflection of her sleeping body in the vanity mirror across the room. She couldn’t quite make out her face. It was early and barely light out. In the mirror she saw the burly form of her husband bending over to pull on socks.
She closed her eyes. She forced herself to dream of a tropical island. She forced a pleasant dream of a beach and sunshine, a simple wooden house with a screened-in porch. Kirin was small and her husband wasn’t there. She tried to remember what the beach smelled like.
Valerie opened her eyes again. The room was empty. She hadn’t really dreamt the second dream, but she felt more prepared to deal with the first. The one that was giving her the cue:
Today
Today
Today
Today.
She tried not to breathe too deeply.
She got out of bed and walked into the hallway. At the top of the stairs she heard the toaster pop. Her husband’s waffles. Or Pop-Tarts. She paused outside Kirin’s door. It was today. Maybe Valerie was already gone. Maybe she had already passed away. She had read somewhere that if you dreamed you died, it was quite possible you would die in your sleep. You would wake up dead. This could actually be happening to Valerie. That would be good. That would be an easier plan. She thought that was the plan until she remembered that she had seen herself in the mirror. She was still here.
It didn’t matter. This was Today.
She floated down the stairs. Her feet were bare, she hadn’t put on slippers, her breath was light. She imagined she was smiling.
Her husband didn’t look at her. He was standing up, bent over the counter, reading a business report. She poured him a cup of coffee.
“Kirin’s not going to swim practice today.”
He didn’t respond. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Maybe she hadn’t said it.
“She’s not feeling well. Better to let her sleep.”
He responded with “Okay.” She barely heard it. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know. He wouldn’t be saved. He wouldn’t be a part of it. He didn’t matter. She didn’t need him.
“I still have to drive the others.”
This time the “okay” had a chirpy upswing on the end, as if to say, “Good idea.”
But the “okay” was all she needed to lower her eyes and glide out of the room. She floated back up the stairs and got dressed. When she emerged in the hallway again she tried not to look at Kirin’s door that was starting to throb with a hum of soon, soon. Things had to be done a certain way. She couldn’t simply give in or it wouldn’t work. That’s what happened last time.
As she started back down the stairs, she heard him unlock the front door and walk out of the house. She paused there, on the landing. She heard the car door open and slam shut, and finally the engine started up and her husband drove away. She stayed on the landing as silence stole in and surrounded her. For a second she forgot how to move her body. She glanced down at her feet. Her frosty-pink toenails poked out of her Dr. Scholl’s. She always wore them in the morning even though they made it slightly difficult to drive. She stared down at her toenails and commanded her feet to move, which they did, step by step, down the stairs.
She opened the front door and walked out into the pearly-gray, early light, still awkward on her wooden feet. There were already a few children leaning against her car. They were, for the most part, unhappy. For the most part, this was not their idea, early-morning swimming before school. Tuesdays and Thursdays were her days. She drove the children to the Promenade Swim Club and another mother picked them up.
One of them said hi to her between bites of a sandwich made of peanut butter and toast. Valerie thought she had used up all the words she was going to say today, so she only nodded back. She opened the car doors for the children and they slid silently into the backseat. At the end of the block she saw another child approaching with his familiar posture: towel draped over one shoulder, sneakers dragging on the pavement. He walked down the middle of the street instead of the sidewalk. Valerie always told him this was dangerous, a car could hit him. Today she said nothing and he didn’t notice.
Last always was Gretchen. Valerie got in the car and honked the horn. Gretchen would not emerge from her house otherwise. She lived the closest, but she was always the last one out.
Gretchen sat next to Valerie in the front seat. She always managed to sit up front. She was smart. She intimidated Valerie. In two or three years she would start sleeping with her friends’ husbands. She was the type. And in the end they would all blame the men for being weak. No one would blame Gretchen.
“Can I turn on the radio?”
Valerie turned to Gretchen and looked at her through her sunglasses. Valerie didn’t really need sunglasses this early in the morning, but she needed protection. She knew that’s why movie stars wore sunglasses all the time—because they were tired of people trying to look them in the eye. It gave them a sense of power to be a little bit invisible.
I could kill her, Valerie thought, I could crash the whole car and still make it back home in time.
Gretchen, always cranky in the morning, cocked her head and opened her eyes wider waiting for an answer.
Valerie smiled and turned back to the road.
Gretchen took that as a yes and flipped on the radio. She adjusted it to Q107. The Q, all the children sang along, the Q zoo in the morning!
It wasn’t until Valerie turned into the driveway of the Promenade that a voice from the backseat asked where Kirin was. Valerie knew she would have to speak. She tried to calm herself. Be as economical as possible.
“Sick.”
One word. Only one.
The children slithered out of the car like little lizards breaking out of their eggs. They gave her a few “byes” and “okays” and one “see ya.” They trudged toward the pool house and didn’t look back. Their day was ordinary.
THE MOVIE
Jeffrey thought it had a good opening. Prison bars sliding across his face. You weren’t sure if they were opening or shutting, it had something to do with the direction they were moving. You were surprised when the bars slid away and nothing was blocking the guy’s face. The guy takes a step forward and looks around. Cut to a wide shot. The guy steps outside into a prison parking lot. He’s carrying a brown paper grocery bag full of his belongings from when he was arrested. He did his time and now he’s cast back into the world.
He doesn’t say much, this guy, but you get the feeling something is bugging him.
A car pulls up and some straight-arrow suburban guy in a golf shirt rolls down the window. It’s a nice car. Expensive. European. We learn that this is his brother. The brother is all friendly, but he has a nervous way about him and he’s holding on to everything. He grips the steering wheel tightly. He adjusts the radio himself. He leans over, gets something out of the glove compartment, and shoves the door shut. He’s into his stuff. Our hero’s been up the river for three years and his brother doesn’t touch him at all.
They drive to the brother’s house; our hero is staying there until he gets settled. The wife isn’t too happy about this. The house is nice, but it’s full of messy kid stuff. The wife is pissed off that she ever had kids because it makes her less sexy and she’s not sure if she’ll ever get her figure back.
His brother shows him to his room. It’s not a room, really; it’s part of the garage that’s been sectioned off with cheap wood paneling and an old car carpet thrown on the cement floor. No window. Our hero knew what they were thinking: he’s just been in prison; this is probably a step up for him.
We soon learn that our hero did time for the brother. It had something to do with a business embezzlement, a break-in, an inside job, and a loan shark—your typical crime movie stuff. The details of it weren’t important. It was more about the fact that our hero kept his mouth
shut and took the rap so that his brother could stay with the wife and kiddies. He did the right thing. Three years. Age twenty-one to twenty-four.
One night, it’s fucking hot and he can’t stand being cooped up in his festering swamp of a room. He lifts up the garage door, ducks underneath, and walks out to sit on the curb. His brother’s house is in one of those ultra-modern suburban developments with wide white sidewalks and curvy roads. The curb itself isn’t a real curb, it’s a modern design as well—it’s sloped so that kids can get their bikes in and out of the street without the clumsy bump that could make them wipe out.
He sits down on this slanted curb and a girl comes walking along out of the night. It’s strange because no one really walks around here. Even with these big modern sidewalks, they all drive. The girl looks like a teenager, but she’s probably a little older. She’s walking fast, as if she’s worried someone is following her. She’s wearing high-heeled shoes that click across the pavement. If she were smart, she’d take them off so she’d stop making so much noise and drawing attention to herself. She’s dressed kind of slutty too, definitely not one of the PTA moms.
He’s not sure if she’s noticed him or not. He tracks her with his eyes and then decides to get up and follow her down the street. Just to make sure she gets home safely. If he doesn’t do it, who will?
He trails her by walking along the edge of the grassy front lawns that butt up against the sidewalk, that way he doesn’t make any noise. He follows her around one suburban loop and into another. She finally turns up a driveway and pulls her keys out of her purse. He gets a good look at her under her porch lamp as she opens her door and disappears inside. The heavy drapes are closed, covering the sliding glass doors that open onto the front yard. A sliver of light trickles out from underneath the curtains’ wavy trim. He could break in there if he wanted. Sliding glass doors are easy.
He stares at her house for a few minutes almost hoping the girl sees him. He wants somebody in this picture-perfect planned community to know he exists.
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