Then he wrote and said it was happening at last, she was nearly gone. Is there anything we can do? we wrote. Anything at all? Well, he said, could we call? She might like to hear us. We determined to and sat there afraid by the phone. We discussed it. How could we call after all this shameful time? He wrote again several hours later—so she was already many hours closer to death—and said, Maybe you could send her a text that I could read to her?
A text? What could we say in a text? Imagine what she’d been going through, the tremendous rounds of radiation, imagine watching your body come apart, your ambitions shrinking, your ideas about what you want getting simpler, more elemental, your joys smaller, until they are nothing but a few words murmured after another day of not being able to sit up, not being able to eat, not being able to vomit, though you have to. We could say, We’ll miss you, but that sounded selfish. We could say, Good luck, but how much sense did that make? Or, We are praying for you, though none of us had ever believed in God. We are thinking of you did not seem strong enough. Besides, how much could we have been thinking of her if we hadn’t visited, hadn’t called, hadn’t sent a photo or an email or a note? What was there to say? What was left? We wrote, We are with you. We are there by your side.
Decorate, Decorate
I’m just going to leave it pretty empty in here, she thought. She wasn’t going to have any decorations that bring in mud or require too much tending. She knew better than to overdecorate.
But maybe that was wrong? She decorated sparingly, that’s for sure. She left a lot out. Now she hurries to look for substitutes to drag in quickly over the grass, tries to throw out the ones that don’t take up enough space and instead puts in one that is big and bulky and requires lots and lots of attention. “Now, that’s a decoration!” she says, slapping its side. Can you top that? That decoration needs some effort, some hard work. You can’t leave that one in the shed. You can’t turn the light off on that one. You have to bring that one around with you everywhere you go. It keeps you busy.
Is this all there is? she wonders, looking at her decoration. It was an old question, one she used to ask back when she had hardly any decorations and her rooms were so empty. She considers it now.
What if this decoration stops working or goes away someplace and never comes back? Then where will she be? She needs another backup decoration, perhaps in the basement. She’ll need to leave it in the dark, locked away. But what kind of decoration could that be? She walks off through the snow, her decoration whining and crawling behind her, and she contemplates it, tries to see its future.
37 Seconds
The time it takes for her to verify the problem.
For him to say that it isn’t his fault, and for her to cry out, Well, it isn’t hers either.
(Mango falls in field nearby.)
The time it takes for her to dig once more through her bag,
to gather the documents, to count them,
to attempt to account for the missing one,
to arrange them in a pile,
to lament their disarray.
For a longing look at the other side of the border: scrub trees, cactus bush, the green of a brown mountain, of a white sky.
To consider going back, forgetting the whole thing.
His next suggestion, not a perfect one, but …
Her complaint: “You never understand anything!”
Both of them, brooding.
For her to consent to his plan even though it won’t work. She knows what will happen. She speaks the language, after all, not he.
The slow walk to the kiosk.
For her to lean over the counter, speak into the little mouth cup in the glass,
to shove the stack of papers into the slot,
to retrieve a paper fallen to the ground, to catch the other ones slipping.
The length of her explanation, her supplication,
meanwhile he in a patch of dry grass, observing.
For the lady to reject their application.
The slow walk from the kiosk.
For a pause to glance back, to see the vendors over the border—she can see them from here—a man selling blankets, copper mirrors, a woman selling rings.
Seventy thumps in the chest between them. What are they going to do now?
Eighty thumps in the chest between them. Their trip, ruined!
The emergence of a cramp behind his left eye.
The emergence of a thought in her mind, the suppression of it, its reemergence,
the contemplation of it: it’s his fault!
He was supposed to be in charge of the documents. He had one small job—
Not enough time to figure out what he could reasonably say, but less time than it takes to have said it, heard a response, and shouted something else.
For her to recite a list, another list, of other things he has forgotten, on other trips, and elsewhere, beginning with aspirin, ending with umbrella, and all the items in between— birthdays, promises, punch lines.
Four blinks from him, seven from her (watery eyes).
For it to register that he is insulted, for him to comment on the insult, that he is insulted like this often.
(A vulture drifts by overhead. Mountains, low red sky.)
The time it takes to go from being depossessed to repossessed (as in: car) of the missing document. He suddenly remembers it’s in his suitcase.
Or decompressed, an exhalation of relief (an in: air mattress),
or pressed (olives), two halves of a suitcase back together,
or possessed by an urge to forgive,
or compressed (as in: compression of the brain [1% compression of a brain]), any lingering resentments, squashed, shoved down in there hard.
The apology (forlorn cows standing around, military police a few meters off): she didn’t mean it, she loves him, he is wanted.
The slow walk back to the kiosk.
To place a happy coin in the palm of a nearby boy.
The sight of two tourists limping off before the boy looks away.
Interview
I can’t promise you that my next book will be published or, if it is, that anyone will read it or like it or like me, or that anyone will review it, or if someone does review it, that they won’t hate it and make humiliating insults that will reflect not only on me and my work, but also on you and your institution (should you hire me), and that this won’t damage me, possibly permanently, so that instead of the confident woman you see here before you, you have an emotional cripple on your hands who will look sad-faced as she walks down your hallways and will secretly sit in a dim room and watch enormous amounts of TV and lose interest in the work you have assigned her, and be bitter and resentful and increasingly unkind, and then seem to disappear entirely for at least a year—but in fact be taking long walks far from the grounds of your institution, learning about plants, volunteering at the shelter, falling in love with a man whom she meets there, another volunteer, a doctor, and then I will go away with him on a long trip to a foreign land.
Flaws
They went through every family relation they could think of, all that was wrong with each one. They ranked them according to most embarrassing or annoying features—the one who talked too much, the one who reddened when drunk, the one who demanded to be retrieved from the airport. When they ran out of casual insults, they dug deeper—the one who might be on the autism spectrum, the one who was mouthy to her kids— and they spread further—their friends: the bores, the louts, how loud their friends were, how they seemed to be always around. They joked about one of the friends coming to live with them and shrilled with laughter. And when they exhausted that, could think of no one else to criticize and nothing more ill to say, they turned on each other, pointing out their flaws, and they screamed.
The One Fondly Mentioned
Every time we speak, she and I, she talks about her other friends. She repeats conversations, tells me how long she talked to each on the phone. She says cheery things about th
em. “What I admire about Sue is the way she can take criticism,” she says, or “It’s so important to have someone to confide in and Mary is that person for me.” She talks about them in a certain tone that’s warm and nice and that makes one think Sue or Mary must be very agreeable. Sometimes I happen to know the friends she’s talking about, because they are friends of mine, too, and I think, What’s the fuss? I can listen as well as them, I can take a crack on the head. She’s not my favorite person but still I wonder whether or not she talks that way about me. We laugh about something and I think, Will she mention this funny joke I made the next time she talks to Mary? I doubt it and then I feel resentful that I’m not the one fondly mentioned. I think I ought to be, not Sue. Yes, Sue is prettier than me, but I’m more independent, which is a more interesting, or at least a more mentionable, quality. On the other hand, I complain a lot, which is not interesting or mentionable, while Mary is sugar-tongued and therefore more of all of those qualities.
Then I decide it doesn’t matter what sort of qualities I have, but what sort of qualities I have to her. I court her. I call often, have long conversations with her, and I make intriguing remarks about the intriguing remarks others have made that she mentions. I bring her takeout—her favorite—when she’s sick, so she’ll call the others and say “that sweet friend” and my name. I wonder later if she told anyone else. There isn’t any real way of knowing. I try to think of ways to draw out the truth: did she or did she not talk about me in that nice tone? “I saw Mary on the street,” I say. “I didn’t know if you had mentioned about when you were sick.” “What about it?” she says.
One time, I know she had to mention me. Once, she sank into a deep depression that dragged on for weeks and weeks and finally people stopped calling her because she was so depressed and difficult to talk to, but I was there, on the phone for hours at a time, every day. I neglected my work, skipped lunch to be on the phone with her. I listened and listened and listened, and she told me about her boyfriend and her father and her brother and I thought, Good God, well, now she’ll certainly have to talk about me in that nice tone!
Then she brightened up a bit and I never did find out if she mentioned me. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I never know, because at least the possibility is there. Years from now I might be in a shop, having a coffee with a friend, and this woman could be so far from my thoughts that the mention of her name would trigger nothing, and at that same moment, she might be seven time zones away, lying in a bed staring at a water stain on the ceiling, and she might think of me, say my name. Or she might be low, sitting in her car in the parking lot after work, letting the messages, bills, clothes pile up because who? cares? and one night in a bar in a chat with a stranger, she might remember me, mention my loyalty when she knew me. It could happen anytime.
Draft
Everywhere she looks she finds pieces of the story she wanted to write. A shred here, a shred there. She even made an audio recording, though she sounds halting and frozen, her voice weak and unnatural, her word choices graceless. Still, all the pieces add up only to scraps—more racket than song, more stones than statue, more rags than rug, more twigs than nest, more brambles, more dust, more flotsam than mermaid, more failing ocean, more drying river, more coming darkness, more clumsy removal of clothing with a stranger, decaying skin, dreams scattering at the alarm, shifting dots of sunshine on the floor, less alphabet, less table of elements, more stuttering excuse, more racing doubts, more hesitation, drifting thoughts, more spreading universe, more space debris, lost star system, more wheelchair-assisted disembarkation than stride, more botched bloody murder where you’re chasing a half-dead deer through the woods and aren’t you proud that you almost but did not kill an animal cleanly.
Welcome
I finally figured it out and I said it: “You want me to leave?”
I said this because I did have small evidences. The day before out of nowhere they seemed a little mean, one of them especially, the bigger one, the one who had earlier been my champion. But I didn’t understand. I had been having such a nice time. I was bewildered. Why did they suddenly not love me?
Then the next morning it happened again. The big one had an angry look on his face. The little one figured she didn’t need to have an ugly look on her face, because the big one was taking care of it, so she could just stand to the side and look on, bemused. But I was so foolish, I still didn’t understand. I looked at the little one as if to say, Why is he acting this way?
It finally occurred to me: “You want me to leave?”
Of course he wants me to leave!
“You do?” I said.
They’d been wanting me to leave for days already! Didn’t I realize? What was I thinking, to be taking over in there like this, hanging around all day? Anyone else would have had the courtesy to clear out days before.
“Oh, I’m very sorry!” I said. “I’ll leave right away!”
They were private people, after all, and I should know that. And I’d been in the way continuously, what a headache for them both! Other people came to stay and they were no trouble. Other people were gone before either of them woke, took over the room for only two or three days. And when I was there, I just expected them to be with me all the time. They had no idea I’d be such a hassle.
The big one followed me up and down the stairs while I tried to pack up my stuff.
“You don’t have to explain,” I kept saying. “I assure you I get the point!”
But the big one went on. How could I not see that he was trying to work? Didn’t I see that the room I was staying in was the one that the little one worked in? Didn’t I see her working in every room in the house, carrying her computer around like a homeless person in her own house? They needed the room I was in. And he was certain I’d heard them talking about how the little one’s parents were coming and how they were going to get no break from visitors.
“I’m going, I’m going!” I shouted, throwing my things into my bag. “I understand!” I said, jumping on my suitcase to get it shut.
They just had no idea I’d be staying there for so long, so unbelievably long, they had to put their foot down. How could they have known that I would do that? That that was my plan, to show up there and stay and stay and stay and be so demanding on top of it? What, with my weird eating habits, my slothful oversleeping, my pedestrian reading tastes, my inability to learn a single word of the language of their country. For Christ’s sake! There were places I could stay that weren’t so expensive!
“I have money!” I cried. “Really, I have plenty!”
Not to mention—did he need to remind me that they hardly knew me? How many times had they even met up with me before this interminable preposterous visit? Aside from the few times that we all ran into each other at events or because of people we had in common, how many times, he wondered, had they phoned me up and made a date to see me—only me individually?
“I don’t know!” I cried.
Twice! said the big one. And the first time didn’t really count because it was my husband they wanted to see, not me. And the second time didn’t count either because they wanted to see me just to find out why my husband and I had split. So frankly, said the big one, neither time counted, and, even if they both had, it would not have amounted to such a strong friendship that it would mean I could descend on them in this manner. Get out!
“I do understand!” I said. “Of course, of course!” I said, running down the street, him behind me. He was following me now, raising his arms to the hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and quaint inns that stood all around us. On every corner, sometimes two side by side. COME STAY HERE, WELCOME, WELCOME, signs everywhere read.
“I assure you,” I cried over my shoulder, “I do see what you mean! You’ll get no argument from this quarter!”
What could possibly be the matter with me? the big one marveled. What kind of person behaved this way? There was a name for women like me, he called as I ran off.
Boulder
The movers came and left boxes all over her house, like gifts or bombs or simply boulders everywhere she turned, so that it felt less like being inside than out on a rocky landscape. Later she sank into a sadness, though she didn’t know why, and instead of unpacking sat on the sofa and watched drama after drama, each one corresponding to one of the boulders, each one a boulder in her mind or in front of her face. In the morning she spoke to a friend and what the friend said made her uneasy and it sat like a boulder beside the dramas and boxes. Later she forced herself off the sofa and went out for a long walk with the dog. He kept pulling on the leash, running sideways, each yank like a boulder tripping her on her path, but at last they reached a field and the two set off through the grass into the sunshine.
The Last Composer
I don’t think we were expecting quite so many composers to turn up. We made fun of them when they were out of the room.
One composer heard us and protested. “It’s not nice to talk about the new guy that way.” He turned to a third one. “They say the same thing about us when we’re not around.”
He was wrong. We didn’t say the same thing about the composer he was talking to. We thought that composer was funny and cute. He made us laugh with his cowboy songs and his English accent.
“That guy is a riot.” That’s what we said about him. “He’s okay with us.”
We don’t talk bad about many people. But there were some awful composers around that season. Every time they got near we hurried away, holding our hair.
“What if we had to sit next to them at dinner!” we said to each other. “Think how bad that would be!”
Wait Till You See Me Dance Page 13
