The Collected Stories of Diane Williams

by Diane Williams

  I cannot get a sight up in front of me now of little boys or of grown-ups together, so that I can hear what they are saying, so that I would want to repeat what it was they were saying, so that what they have said would change everything once and for all.

  Dropping the Masters

  There was a clatting sound, for all this kissing, for all this copulation. My boys could get those Masters of the Universe up and onto the dresser top in one swoop up—a kiss to the bride! a kiss to the bride!—it was the only way they got them married, the way my youngest boy had decided they should get them married. One swoop down and then they could rock a pair and make those Masters copulate just as long as they wanted them to. Until I let my boys see me so that I saw the faces of I’m hot and I’m caught, and I saw the faces of this has got to stop—that’s the way I saw them when they were stopping, when a hand was up with a Master, when a boy the height of our dog beg­ging was up on his knees like he was handing out a bone.

  I was going nowhere after I stopped them, just down the hall toward the bathroom, just stuck almost at the end of the top of our house so that of course I didn’t want to stay there where I had no business being or intention, where I felt stupid and strange almost in the bathroom. Now their door was shut so that I could hear the sound of them, but I could get no meaning. I could hear rough scrubbing and more clatting and not know anything about it at all. But I was back in front of the shut door of their room and there was nowhere else I wanted to be more than watching again or just to know what they knew—to know everything about what they knew and so that is where I stood.

  So then I opened their door.

  But this time the stopping was not like the stopping before, it was an altogether different kind of stopping. This was how dare you with the Masters being deeply ground down I thought maybe so they would break because these Masters break.

  What I got to see then was the sluggishness of let’s do another thing—the turning away and then the boys hopping the Masters and then dropping them.

  These Masters weren’t broken, they were only done—and my boys were walking out on me, finished.

  There Should Be

  Nothing Remarkable

  There should be nothing remarkable about reading a lovey-dovey Hallmark card out loud to your old father, nothing, please bear with me, as bad as the hope that you are being smuggled into the United States, so that you can be a restaurant host­ess, and then you end up in a brothel, as a slave, in New York, San Francisco, or Colorado—or nothing, let me go further boldly, as remarkable as the difference be­tween announcing this notion of extreme affection with words which are not your own, and the fate of a poor girl, which might be the same, if you would indulge me wildly, as the difference between a duck! which my father asked me about when I was a girl.

  Perhaps it wasn’t his own question—original with him—“What’s the difference between a duck?”—but I worked on it as if it were, not even hopelessly. Right away, in my mind, I’d search those webbed feet, or my eyes would rise up the white neck of the duck, ever so slowly, alert for the presto change-o, so I could be the first one to tell him what the difference was. I am sure I tried to tell him. I don’t remember the words.

  I have seen the photograph of this act, of my father waiting for me. The envelope is cocked, the card is on the way out, my hand is on it, and I am positively demure with my eyes cast shyly down. I think he waits the way the beauty would wait—imagining—“This way,” her own elegance, “please,” so correctly distant, so that those prospective eaters could worship her from any distance, before, during, or after being led off.

  Speaking for myself, the worst fate I can imagine would be a restaurant job of any kind. I don’t think my attitude about that will change, ever, unless I have become near dead with hunger—wasted—but in that case, I could not get a real job. You must look the part of a worker to get yourself paid, and isn’t money very much to the point? or what is it which is the root of all evil—how you sign yourself away? physical beauty? You be my slave—you throw yourself at somebody’s feet—I am yours—it is so cozy, what I have done. It is my idea of family.

  Baby

  Nobody was getting up close to me, whisper­ing, “Do you get a lot of sex?” Nobody was making my mouth fall open by running his finger up and down my spine, or anything like that, or talking dirty about dirty pictures and did I have those or anything like those, so I could tell him what I keep—what I have been keeping for so long in my bureau drawer underneath my cable-knit pink crew—so I could tell him what I count on happening to me every time I take it out from under there. Because it was a baby party for one thing, so we had cone paper hats and blowers, so we had James Beard’s mother’s cake with turquoise icing, and it was all done up inside with scarlet and pea-green squiggles, and the baby got toys.

  Nobody was saying, “Everybody has slept with my wife, because everybody has slept with everybody, so why don’t we sleep together?” so I could say at last, “Yes, please. Thank you for thinking of me.” I would be polite.

  Just as it was nothing out of the ordinary when the five-year-old slugged the eleven-year-old on the back and they kept on playing, looking as if they could kill for a couple of seconds. We didn’t know why. And then the baby cried in a bloodthirsty way.

  My husband sat stony-faced throughout. I don’t think he moved from his chair once. What the fuck was wrong with him? He left the party early, without me; he said to get a little—I don’t know how he was spelling it—I’ll spell it peace.

  I spoke to a mustached man right after my husband left. He was the first man all night I had tried to speak to. I know he loves sports. I said to him, “I think sports are wonderful. There are triumphs. It is so exciting. But first, you have to know what is going on.”

  Then my boy was whining, “Mom, I want to go home.” He was sounding unbearably tired.

  The baby’s aunt said she’d take us. She didn’t mind. She had to back up her car on the icy drive. She said, “I don’t know how we’ll get out of here,” when we got into the car. “The windows are all fogged up.” She said, “I don’t think I can do it.” She opened the window and poked her head out. She said, “I don’t think so.”

  When she closed the window, we went backward terrifically fast. I don’t know how she knew when to spin us around into the street. It was like being in one of those movies I have seen the previews for. It was like watching one of those faces on those people who try to give you the willies. It was like that, watching her—while she tried to get us out.

  Cloud

  How it was in the aftermath of it, was that her body was in the world, not how it had ever been in the world before, in her little room or in their rooms—the people who owned the rooms—or at least were managing the rooms, their hallways, or the stairwell, which was not hers either, that she went through and through and through. A man laughed at her for what she had said, and then someone had brought her to this bed.

  She looked at the bed stacked high with so many coats and she decided, It all stops here.

  She was clearing up to be helpful before she left, steering herself, when she saw her purse go flying and then it fell down into a corner.

  She was down too, walloped by a blow, by some man, and she thought, I understand. She thought, This is easy. She thought, It’s as easy as my first fuck. She had opened up so wide.

  In the street, crossing to go home, her purse swung on her arm by its strap. She thought the dark air was so soft to walk through.

  And for all that the girl knew there had not been a jot on her when she looked—no proof jack was here! on her skin in red and in bright green ink, with any excla­mation she could see, about them doing things, or about any one of them being of the opinion that her tits sucked.

  And for the rest of her life, the girl, the woman, she never made a mark on anyone either that proved any­thing absolutely for certain, tha
t she could ever see, about what she had done at any time, and this does not break her heart.

  Forty Thousand Dollars

  When she said forty thousand dollars for her diamond ring, where did I go with this fact? I followed right along with her, hoping, hoping for a ring like hers for myself, because of what I believe deep down, that she is so safe because she has her ring, that she is as safe as her ring is big—and so is her entire family—her husband who gave her the ring, all of her children—and no one has ever tried to talk me out of believing this fact, because I would never speak of it, that the entire quality of her life is totally secure because of the size of that ring—that the ring is a complete uplift—that every single thing else about her is up to the standard the size of her ring sets, such as even her denim espadrilles, which I love, which she was wearing the day she was talking to me, or her gray hair pulled back, so serene, so that she is adored, so that she is everlastingly loved by her husband, and why not?—just look at her!—and she is loved by her children, and by everyone like me who has ever laid eyes on her and her ring.

  She was waggling it, which I loved her to do, because I loved to see it move, to see it do anything at all, and she said, “I make my meat loaf with it.” She said, “I like that about it, too,” and I saw the red meat smears she was talking about, smearing up the ring the way they would do, the bread all swollen up all over it, all over the ring part and the jewel. I saw my whole recipe on that ring.

  She said, “It goes along with me to take out my garbage, and I like that,” and I saw what she meant, how it would take out the garbage if it were taking it out with me, how it would go down with me, down the steps and out the back door—the ring part of the ring buried in the paper of the bag—and the dumping we would do together of the bag into the sunken can, before the likelihood of a break or a tear, or maybe I’d have to step on top of a whole heap of bags that was already down in there and then stamp on the top of the heap myself, to get it all deep down, to get the lid on with the ring on.

  She said, “I never knew I was going to get anything like it. All that Harry said was, ‘We’ll need a wheelbar­row for you and the ring when you get it.’ A wheelbar­row!” she said. “But now don’t worry,” she said to me. “You’ll get one someday, too. Somebody will die,” she said, “then you’ll get yours—” Which is exactly what happened—I never had to pay money for mine, and mine ended up to be even bigger than hers. “This much bigger—” I showed her with two fingers that I almost put together, the amount, which is probably at least another carat more, but mine is stuck inside an old setting and cannot be measured. That was the day I walked behind her, that I showed her, that I walked with her to her car when she was leaving my house.

  The rings were of no account outside, when we were saying goodbye, when we were outside my house going toward the back side of her car, because we were not looking at the rings then. The heels of her denim es­padrilles, which matched her long, swinging skirt, were going up and down, so was her strong ponytail, and her shoulders, and I wanted to go along with her to wherever she was going.

  And then the sense I had of not being able to stay behind her—of not being able to see myself in my own clothes walking away—the sense I had that I was not where I was, that I could not possibly follow in my own footsteps, was gone.

  Pornography

  I just had a terrible experience—I’m sorry. I was yelling at my boy, “Don’t you ever!” I saw this crash. I saw this little old man. The door of the car opened and I saw this little old man tottering out. Somebody said, “I saw him!” The same somebody said, “He’s already hit two cars.”

  There was this kid. He wasn’t a kid. He was about nineteen. He was screaming and screaming on a bi­cycle.

  Then I saw him, the kid, on the stretcher.

  That little old man did more for me than any sex has ever done for me. I got these shudders.

  The same thing with another kid—this one tiny, the same thing, on a stretcher, absolutely quiet in a play­ground, and I was far enough away so that I did not know what had happened. I never found out. Same thing, shudders that I tried to make last, because I thought it would be wonderful if they would last for at least the four blocks it took me to get home and they were lasting and then I saw two more boys on their bicycles looking to get hit, not with any menace like they wanted to do anything to me, because I wasn’t even over the white crossing line, not yet, and the only reason I saw either one of them was because I was ready to turn and I was looking at the script unlit yellow neon l on the cleaner’s marquee which was kitty-corner to me, when just off that l I saw the red and the orange and my driver’s leg struck up and down hard on the brake without my thinking, even though I think I was ready to go full out at that time, because where was I going, anyway? back home to my boy?

  My car was rocking, the nose of it, against the T-shirts of those boys, first the red one, and then the orange one, and they each of them, they looked me in the eye.

  Back home, my boy, he’s only five, he’s going to show me, making himself into a bicycle streak down our drive, heading, he says, for my mother’s house, heading for that dangerous curve where so many horrible acci­dents have happened or have almost happened. What I did was yell at him don’t you do that! but he was already off, and then this goddamn little thing, this animal, this tiny chipmunk thing races with all its stripes right up at me, but not all the way to me, and then the thing, it whips around and runs away, like right now with my boy—I can’t—there is no other way to put it—I can’t come.

  Here’s Another Ending

  This time my story has a foregone conclusion.

  It is true also.

  After I tell the story, I say, “You could start a religion based on a story like that—couldn’t you?”

  The story begins with my idea of a huge dog—a Doberman—which is to me an emblem—cruel, not lovable.

  The dog is a household pet in a neighborhood such as mine, with houses with backyards which abut.

  The huge dog is out and about when it should not be. It should never be.

  When the dog returns to its owners, it is carrying in its mouth a dirty dead rabbit.

  The dog’s owners exclaim—one of them does—“The neighbor’s rabbit! He’s killed it!” The dog’s owners conclude, “We must save our dog’s reputation at all costs.” They think, Our dog is in jeopardy.

  The dog’s owners shampoo the dead rabbit and dry it with a hair dryer. At night, they sneak the rabbit back into their neighbor’s yard, into its cage.

  The morning of the following day, the dog’s owners hear a shriek from the rabbit owners’ yard. They think, Oh! The dead rabbit has been discovered! They rush to see what’s what.

  One of the rabbit’s owners—the father in the fam­ily—is holding the limp, white rabbit up in the air. He says to the dog’s owners, “We buried her two days ago!”

  The dog’s owners explain nothing. They won’t, but not because they are ashamed of themselves.

  There is another, more obvious reason.

  My Female Honor Is of a Type

  I did some V last night of a kind I have not done before. I gave myself permission. I said to myself calmly in my mind—on this occasion I will give you permission to do the following—listen carefully to yourself: you are allowed to cut up your husband’s money which is on his bureau top, just the single bills, there are not too many of them; cut up his business card which is in his card case, and then cut up a folded piece of paper—you do not know what it is. There, you are cutting paper.

  He gave me permission when he saw me, even, even when he saw me leafing through big bills with the scissors and the card case, flipping to choose, and sort­ing the paper, the opportunity for cutting.

  The occasion for this V which I permitted and which my husband permitted was anger of a type.

  I said to her, “You should fear
for your life!” Tonight I said, “Tell them you feared for it!” Whereas my husband would have left. He would have walked out mildly and back to home.

  They say so, and then their head is in your vision, only their spooky eyes, or their bony nose shaking, not even their mouth is in your vision because you are too close, maybe some of this someone’s platinum hairs mixed up with silver and brown and white, and pale pale yellow hairs, antiseptic hairs is what I call it, clean out of grease or refuse.

  But not the hairs on her head, not the crisply cut card with the credentials she put for me to see, hairy letters on a hairy card, the card of someone who ran the whole show, that I could not even see the name, because of hair, nor did I want to.

  “You’ve got what you wanted!” she said, so that all the hairs were not enough hairs, or the telephone in the bag she gave me, the black phone. All the hairs were not like the hairs on her head which she pinned up or she pulled down which she waved, which she lustered fully out. All the little rings on the black cord to put your finger in, to hold your finger, all the little rings that stretch to ringlets, all the twirlies.

  We left. It was between her and her. The husband and the mild-mannered boy behind her, and the hus­band did not play key roles. We ran the show and when I left something did die, a little something, and later on she will know something teeny keeled. I took that teeny thing, and the fat phone in the fat bag. I took the teeny tiny pathetic, that can climb in between hairs all by itself, that can lay down their eggs to hatch.

  I would not do murder for a phone. I would do it for hair.

  Glass of Fashion