The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  Ducklike the swan king moves toward his goal. His bullfrog swallowed whole. Bullfights over now. In the center of the arena earth mother, Veronica, spreads her legs but not for him. Nat waits, watching from the corner of his eye, wondering if this is the right season or reason. Only the moon moves. It is time for a philosophical view of life. One that has elegance and symmetry. Time for a view of the world that’s as pale as the moon. Matador, natador, it’s the drum major that this place belongs to after all, unless maybe the moon comes out at noon. Some say, “Dog is dead and Nat does not yet follow Veronica into some sunset or other” (and would some ever say, “Nat is Dog”?), but Dog lies in his own diarrhea… his last dying diarrhea and for Nat it is the real beginning.

  Nothing moves.

  Moon.

  Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974

  One Part Of The Self Is Always Tall And Dark

  STOPPED speaking in mid-sentence (something went beep, beep outside. Perhaps a truck.), wanting to relax into cozy madness and chew on an old sock. Why did I ever grow up? I wondered. Just because it was expected?

  I’m writing this with careless abandon, partly because I know it will not be my last story. (They say always do something as though it were your last chance, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to die tomorrow.) And not only not the last story, but not the most important. Perhaps the least important, written on the backs of old envelopes. Stories do not change the world. I’ve learned that. But perhaps in some secret, subtle way…. I mean it’s not the world I want to change.

  Intelligence, or the lack of it, is the least of my worries. On the other hand, I have always wanted to go mad. I confess it. I’ve already felt glimmerings of each kind: Catalepsy, manic depressive, schizoid…. Sometimes I’m speechless and frozen, sometimes in a frenzy. Whenever I see a mad person I feel a sense of oneness, especially if they are struggling in a straitjacket. He suspects it. He always says, “That’s crazy.”

  As usual I must ask myself: What do I give up? What do I gain? And, most important, when should I do it?

  If someone grabbed me around the neck from behind, I would bite their wrist no matter how sweaty and hairy. It was at that thought that I stopped speaking in mid-sentence when something went beep, beep.

  He wasn’t listening. He didn’t notice.

  Many things are happening: Cars pass outside. A fish is defrosting in the sink, a faucet drips, moths are in the soy beans. There’s a tree that, if it falls, will hit the roof and, most probably, do some damage. Because of these there’s a sense of suspense in the air.

  There are other reasons for suspense, too, not the least of which is that I have a little pillbox in my purse in which I carry an assortment of vitamins, including a large, brown, hard-to-swallow, suspicious-looking multi-vitamin pill. I’m always afraid the police will stop me and look in my purse and see this multi-colored assortment of pills, accuse me of trafficking in drugs, and haul me off to jail. They search me even in the most private places of my body, all the policemen taking a look to confirm that there are no vitamins hidden there. I tell them I don’t even drink. I tell them I never had a traffic ticket. I tell them I never lie and never even stole from the five-and-ten when I was a kid, and when somebody gives me too much change I always give it back, so what would my kind of person be doing with drugs? “That’s what they all say,” they say. I’m in jail for a week. Other prisoners keep me awake at night. I almost go crazy. Finally they analyze the vitamins and find out what they are. When they let me go, they say they’re sorry.

  When I really do go crazy at last, I envision a place not at all like jail. It’s a large country mansion. Everyone has a monk-like private room with a cot and a chest of drawers. The room is painted white. The furniture is dark. There’s a little desk and chair in front of the barred window. I’ll bring all the books I have that I haven’t read yet. It’s a little like going to college.

  The telephone rings.

  It’s for him.

  It’s a call from California. He gets many such calls.

  I would have liked to have gotten a call from California myself.

  Yesterday I wanted to make sure he understood that it wasn’t my fault we hadn’t made love for a month. I wanted that clearly understood. I made a remark to that effect. Of course it made him angry, and I must say nothing much was accomplished for the rest of the day.

  I’m hoping things go better today. I’m going to be careful to not mention that anything is not my fault.

  He assures me that he loves me.

  I show a breast for his inspection.

  The telephone rings.

  The ground around that tree is wet and soft from spring rains, and I think the tree is leaning even closer to the house than usual, but we are still not doing anything about it. We’re thinking instead of world betterment and of the feasibility of setting up some sort of committee or society. Perhaps we should begin a nationwide movement, but before we can get anything under way, the house fills with teenagers who are eating things that were planned for other meals.

  I ask him, “Can I count on the teenagers in an emergency?” (The question has a special importance considering what is to come.) He tells me they are older than they look. He’s standing in the yard looking up at the tree with a quizzical expression. Seen at close range, his face helps me to become aware of my own confusion.

  One of the teenagers is having a nervous breakdown. I was hoping I’d be the one to do that. I’m spending the next few days being extra-nice to the teenager, though things will probably right themselves since, under the advice of the school psychologist, the teenager has dropped chemistry. I have nothing I can drop, but I seem to go on after a fashion… so far.

  I’m writing a survey of unusual needs and desires, especially those peculiar to women. Also those expressed in dreams because, in spite of it all, I do sleep well and dream up satisfactions. Erections, for instance, as far as the eye can see. Phallic temples raised to the essential femaleness of myself. But perhaps I sleep too much. It’s another way of going crazy, though I would prefer the violent. To strike out, even in sadness and grief. To leer, wink, smirk, drool; to talk a language all my own, or to laugh and not stop laughing. My ears buzz. I interpret this as the sounds of jokes I can’t quite hear. If I seem sane, it’s only for those times when I have the illusion I’m the heroine of my own life.

  There are several different ways of going mad. There are almost as many ways to go mad as there are people going mad. There’s a best way for everybody. As yet, I’m not in any serious financial trouble, so I can afford to go mad in almost any way I like and pay for whatever damage I do.

  I’m reading the later works of Nietzsche. Also Zelda’s biography. I’m singing one of the last sad songs Schuman wrote just before he was taken off to an asylum. The words are about leaving behind something one loves.

  The teenagers are throwing shoes and hats back and forth. Later, even though a fish is defrosting in the sink, they want to go eat at Arthur Treachers. One is climbing into the tree. I look in the other direction because he has told me not to be over-protective. Suspense mounts, during which time I try to think of Fred Astaire. I was in love with him when I was the teenagers’ ages. I think back as far as I can, and I can’t remember ever not being in love with someone, but the reason I’m remembering Fred Astaire right now is because one of the teenagers is interested in tap-dancing and has been reading his autobiography. Fred Astaire was very much in love with his wife. When she died, he didn’t get married again or have any other women (that we know of). Her name was Phyllis. I would be ill at ease if Fred came for a visit. I would hardly even know how to sit, whether to cross my legs or be natural in my jeans and sweatshirt and with my knees apart as usual. I would try to be natural, but it would be how I think I am when I’m natural. Fred Astaire and I would make a good pair because when I go mad I would like to wear a top and tails all the time. Perhaps when I do go mad, I won’t have any choice in the matter.

  The t
eenager falls out of the tree, but it’s all right, he only sprains his ankle.

  I dream solutions. I dream words of warning. I dream toilet dreams where the fixtures are so strange you can’t figure out what they’re for. I dream three-letter words. In this dream, every word in the world has only three letters. It’s beautiful how things fit together. Lines no longer need adjusting. I decide to write according to this plan:

  Now all men can say Who was she any way Ask Qui est How can one not say she was Mrs Red Hat Mrs big eye She was far out and tip top too All the men got set for sex One was the top ten toe tap man Boy was she hot for him She let him too Sin was bad but fun Ohs and Ahs for sex now See how one sly man can get her But she set her cap for him too and she let him get his way The sun was out all day for her and the man hes not bad and did his bit Now she has one son Bob was her shy boy You may say the dad won but its not all rip off for the mom

  One day she ask Why are you sad All men get mad and hit out and say Hey you old hag Why not fly off one day Set out for the sea any way you can get out Dim Wit Why are you not yet far off Her eye was wet Its Sad but Hes not fit for her any way

  Her man was toe and leg man and arm lip and ear man too She let him pay for her new out fit but hes too far off now

  Her son Bob say Wow Mom won not bad Out our way you pay the fee and you can get all the art you can buy Its not new but its art She can get art too Art was her way and sex but one tit was too low THE END

  I have submitted my case to the insane asylum more than once. They think I’m bluffing. I explain that, though I’ve only had one real hallucination in my life, I’ve heard voices calling my name on six separate occasions when I was alone. I send them my picture with the wild look in my eyes. I write that I say, “I give up,” and, “I give in,” at least once a day. The fear of not going crazy is driving me crazy.

  Agnes went crazy. She couldn’t stop talking. She collected rubber bands. (She ate some.) She heard nasty voices. She went to bed and didn’t get up for three days. (Why didn’t I think of that?) Other times she seemed perfectly sane, as I do. Even so, they took Agnes away.

  Dogs on leashes are walked by. Gifted poets arrive in New York from Russia. The day is so bright, for a minute I think I can play the piano. I forgot the many years it takes of practice. I sit down and bang out a few dissonant chords.

  He listens. “I give in,” I say, and, “take me” (whipping off my sweatshirt). We begin, but then we remember that one of us has to drive out to pick up one of the teenagers at eleven or so.

  He assures me that he loves me.

  The telephone rings.

  I write: Caught up in an absurd, abstemious rigmarole of days and nights full of crises…. I write: Locked out somewhere on the other side of insanity…. I write: When I was thirteen and in love with Fred Astaire…. Also I write advice to the young: Beware of warm mayonnaise, swollen cans, heights, drivers your own age, and, when in burning houses, rescue yourselves, not the goldfish. Fall in love wisely!

  Oh, how I want to be the mother of the Great American Poet! How I want to be the mother of doctors that go to Africa, the mother of an ombudsman, and, especially, I want to be the mother of an opera star. It’s a hard thing for the teenagers to understand.

  That book I mentioned before says that Fred Astaire spent many a summer at a place in Pennsylvania next door to where my father grew up. It’s strange to think that many times my father and Fred Astaire must have passed each other on the road up and down the mountain to and from Wernersville, though I don’t think my father would have recognized Fred Astaire even after he (Fred, that is) had become famous. My father was not one for going to the movies.

  I mention something of the sort to him. He says, “I think you’re crazy.”This makes me angry. When I say I want to go crazy this isn’t what I mean.

  I think the teenagers are learning a lot about life from watching us.

  I feel like going out and sitting under the about-to-fall tree.

  I fill in all the Os in a page of my writing, and I connect them (also the periods) using a ruler.

  At the mansion for mad people, the day will be divided into hours for this and that, not at all like it is here, where anything can happen at any time and always does. One hour will be for cleaning up, one hour for exercise, one hour free time, one hour for a nap, one hour for dinner, one hour for TV, one hour for a little walk. A bell will ring each hour on the hour. I can hardly wait.

  Higher gusts today. I can tell without turning on the weather. Even so, the tree still stands, though the suspense is becoming unbearable. Somehow the anticipation gives me a sense of euphoria. I find I clap at the slightest excuse. I say, “Yes,” and, “Hooray!” I guess all the “Guess what’s?” even though madness-wise I seem no closer than I was yesterday. I think I’ll jot down some ideas for an uplifting work of art. I’ll start with a list of all the non-disastrous aspects of the world. There must be some.

  Much later, when I’m feeling that good kind of tiredness that means I can sit down and watch two hours of bad TV and deserve it, he sits down beside me and apologizes for his past failures. That is ground gained, I think. He doesn’t look at all like Fred Astaire, but a part of everyone’s self is always a little bit short and fat, even Nureyev’s. I must remember that. I tell him I’m sorry, too, though I’m not sure for what. We glance sideways into each other’s eyes in a shy (and sly) way. We’re both thinking the same thing….

  The telephone rings.

  Confrontation No. 14, 1977

  Escape Is No Accident

  I HEAR myself making a sound like an animal.

  I come to slowly.

  Dizzy.

  Having fallen out of the sky.

  Crashed here at two o’clock Eastern Standard time.

  No hope of rescue.

  But I’m already hoping.

  Certain I must have landed in or near New York because my first view was of, yes, blue eyes and beard. I didn’t recognize him. Lying back in his arms, I was wondering who he was.

  He warmed me the best way he could, with his own body stretched out next to mine, and all the while making soft word-sounds I couldn’t understand.

  He guessed who I was.

  I never did.

  Later on he carried me inside and dressed my wounds. I was a mass of cuts and bruises, and childlike at the time.

  He always says he didn’t do it and I never said he did.

  I know it’s my fault. I came in much too fast. I always do and I think I had a dizzy spell even before. I had passed all the tests devised for it so far, but I know I wasn’t up to my usual standards and maybe I shouldn’t have tried, but I wanted, just this once, to cross the celestial equator by myself and send back messages of grandeur, hope and good luck, though it isn’t every morning you face yourself, plucking out gray hairs and sweating, knowing your reflexes are shot—which is maybe another reason why I missed the night side and landed, two o’clock, on the opposite continent right in my own backyard. Or so he says.

  “Me, husband.” Pointing to himself. “Uh, uh.”

  “What am I doing crash-landed here in my own backyard?” I ask, but he doesn’t understand me anymore than I can understand him.

  “You, wife. Yeah.”

  Under the circumstances I feel vaguely as if I had fallen off a ladder while painting the upstairs window sills, but that can’t be.

  “Me from sky,” I say, pointing up. “We got messages. We got the picture with one of each sex, man and woman, and a sun. We understood all that. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Yeah, I get it. Sex and that.”

  How many days did I lie there in his bed, semiconscious, feverish and frightened, waking up screaming sometimes, not knowing who I was and my husband—his hairy arms around me—comforting me? How many days drifting up from sickness and back, his hand on my breast?

  “What day is this? What time? What place? I hardly recognize it.”

  “Me, husband. Uh… listen, we call this here,pan; t
his,potholder, spoon, mop an’ stuff.”

  I think he expects something of me now that I’m fully recovered, but I feel I need a long rest and I had hoped, wherever I might be, to have a fairly creative career, and actually, every time I fell asleep lately I was hoping to wake up someplace else entirely.

  “Hey, you….”