The Collected Stories of Diane Williams

by Diane Williams

  She has been associated with sex and with childbirth. No less interesting, she was a traveler on this unsophisticated coun­try road.

  Her facial features are remarkably symmetrical, expressing vigor and vulnerability.

  Gulls

  The gulls in the wind looked to her like fruit flies or gnats.

  Two gulls flying suffered an in-air collision. One fell. The other briefly stood there—appearing to do next to nothing.

  The woman didn’t think she was supposed to see that.

  So how far did the injured gull fall?—for it did not show itself again.

  From the ninth floor, the adults in the street looked to her like children. But who were the children that she saw meant to be?

  “We’ll have to knock ourselves into shape, won’t we?” the woman told her husband. She had once intended to evaluate their options for the improvement of their understanding.

  She was fingering her glass that held water—the water that, of course, slides downhill when she drinks it—the water that one could say stumbles.

  Now, in the back of their building beyond the river, there is a hollow—the unfilled cavity—although nobody can escape that way.

  The woman went to bed that night with nothing much accom­plished vis-à-vis the mysteries of daily life.

  Her husband, next to her, squats carefully. Then he is on his knees above her.

  He keeps his chin down, giving proper shape to what he is trying to express—his romantic attitude toward life.

  To Revive a Person

  Is No Slight Thing

  People often wait a long time and then, like me, suddenly, they’re back in the news with a changed appearance.

  Now I have fuzzy gray hair. I am pointing at it. It’s like baby hair I am told.

  Two people once said I had pretty feet.

  I ripped off some leaves and clipped stem ends, with my new spouse, from a spray of fluorescent daisies he’d bought for me, and I asserted something unpleasant just then.

  Yes, the flowers were cheerful with aggressive petals, but in a few days I’d hate them when they were spent.

  The wrapping paper and a weedy mess had to be discarded, but first off thrust together. My job.

  Who knows why the dog thought to follow me up the stairs.

  Tufts of the dog’s fur, all around his head, serve to distinguish him. It’s as if he wears a military cap. He is dour sometimes and I have been deeply moved by what I take to be the dog’s deep concerns.

  Often I pick him up—stop him mid-swagger. He didn’t like it today and he pitched himself out of my arms.

  Drawers were open in the bedroom.

  Many times I feel the prickle of a nearby, unseen force I ought to pay attention to.

  I turned and saw my husband standing naked, with his clothes folded in his hands.

  Unbudgeable—but finally springing into massive brightness—is how I prefer to think of him.

  Actually, he said in these exact words: “I don’t like you very much and I don’t think you’re fascinating.” He put his clothes on, stepped out of the room.

  I walked out, too, out onto the rim of our neighborhood—into the park where I saw a lifeless rabbit—ears askew. As if prompted, it became a small waste bag with its tied-up loose ends in the air.

  A girl made a spectacle of herself, also, by stabbing at her front teeth with the tines of a plastic fork. Perhaps she was prod­ding dental wires and brackets, while an emaciated man at her side fed rice into his mouth from a white-foam square container, at top speed, crouched—swallowing at infrequent intervals.

  In came my husband to say, “Diane?” when I went home.

  “I am trying,” I said, “to think of you in a new way. I’m not sure what—how that is.”

  A fire had been lighted, drinks had been set out. Raw fish had been dipped into egg and bread crumbs and then sautéed. A small can of shoe polish was still out on the kitchen counter. We both like to keep our shoes shiny.

  How unlikely it was that our home was alight and that the dinner meal was served. I served it—our desideratum. The bread was dehydrated.

  I planned my future—that is, what to eat first—but not yet next and last—tap, tapping.

  My fork struck again lightly at several mounds of yellow vegetables.

  The dog was upright, slowly turning in place, and then he set­tled down into the shape of a wreath—something, of course, he’d thought of himself, but the decision was never extraordinary.

  And there is never any telling how long it will take my hus­band, if he will not hurry, to complete his dinner fare or to smooth out left-behind layers of it on the plate.

  “Are you all right?” he asked me—“Finished?”

  He loves spicy food, not this. My legs were stiff and my knees ached.

  I gave him a nod, made no apologies. Where were his?

  I didn’t cry some.

  I must say that our behavior is continually under review and any one error alters our prestige, but there’ll be none of that lift­ing up mine eyes unto the hills.

  Head of a Naked Girl

  One got an erection while driving in his car to get to her.

  Another got his while buying his snowblower, with her along. He’s the one who taught her how to blow him and that’s the one she had reassured, “You’re the last person I want to antagonize!”

  The men suspect her of no ill will and they’ve stuck by her.

  She’s enjoyed their examinations of her backside in her bed.

  And although there’s no danger, one of the men had a some­what bluff interest in her. He was handsome with dim-lit eyes. She liked to joke with him.

  While she bent forward to her comfort level, at her sink, without holding her breath, she kept her mouth open. He applied himself against her and she allowed his solution to gently drain from her.

  The paper she’d gathered together, and added to several times—to dry herself—was unfairly harsh—so often, such a number of times, regularly, usually.

  But something more. Another man, when he stopped by, noted that things had become almost too satisfactory. He saw copies of old masters on the wall, not obvious to him on his previous visits.

  “Is something wrong?” the girl asked.

  As a rule, she blamed herself—for yet another perfect day.

  Rhapsody Breeze

  Her salesman had hair like a fountain on top of his head, and then it came down around at the sides of his head to just above his shoulders. He had a boy’s physicalness, yet his mus­tache was gray and he never thanked her for the big sale.

  No one would ever say of him—He has such a nice face or that he looks like such a nice man, but he had not intended to misuse her.

  After all, hadn’t he tried to stop her from buying one of the heaviest mattresses that she surely will regret purchasing.

  That poor decision of hers is well past her now as she presses her paint roller from here to there and back while she is utter­ing little grunts that sound reasonable as she shifts her ladder.

  The ceiling turns terra-cotta—the walls will be red, the door cerulean blue, the sills and window sashes kelly green. There’ll be a turquoise mantel—and, for her dinner—more pleasure and change. She’ll cook a strong-juiced vegetable, prepare a medley salad with many previously protected and selected things in it.

  The salesman, at his home, empties a pitcher of water into a pot­ted plant that has produced several furred buds that he’s been studying and waiting on—courting, really—but it’s as if these future flowers intentionally thwart him. He assumes responsi­bility for their behavior.

  Also, he thinks he doesn’t know how to get people to do things.

  He takes a cloth and wipes the greasy face of his computer. He checks his mustache in the mirror to see if it is trim
med properly.

  He asks himself, What do you want to ask me? Will you look at that?

  To begin with he thinks he’s had enough of chewing on his mustache. The next thought after that is—What a lot of wild sprouts there are above his mouth—and he assumes responsibility for their behavior. The step after that is to get his hairbrush and the scissors and to approach the real challenge, which is to steady his oscillating hand so he can aim it at the appropriate sec­tion of his face where the offensive hairs are. Then he brushes the mustache to see how unevenly he’s cut it, and then it depends on how much time he has, not enough. Should he adjust the one side to match the other side?—because there is a limit. He may end up cutting off his entire mustache.

  He presses his face closer to the mirror. He could not make it out, could not recognize the opportunity for bewitching himself.

  Lavatory

  There had been the guest’s lavatory visit—to summarize. She did so want to be comfortable then and for the rest of her life. She had been hiking her skirt and pulling down her under­garment, just trying not to fall apart.

  Once back in the foyer, she brought out a gift for her host. “I tried to find something old for you to put on your mantel, but I just couldn’t. I tried to find something similar to what you already have, to be on the safe side, but I couldn’t.”

  It was difficult for the guest to comprehend easily what the other invitees were saying, because she wasn’t listening carefully. One man happened to have a son who knew her son. He had learned something of importance about her son—about his pros­pects. Something.

  But the guest interrupted him, “I don’t agree that there is a comfortable space for each of us out there and we have to find it. I think this is so wrong. It assumes there is a little environment that you can slip into and be perfectly happy. My notion is you try to do all the things you’re comfortable with and eventually you will find your comfortable environment.”

  A man they called Mike smoked a maduro and he had a urine stain on his trouser fly. He was very attentive to the host and to his wife Melissa.

  “Stop!” his wife cried, but he’d done it already—tipped the ashtray he’d used—the dimpled copper bowl—into the grate behind the fire screen. The ashes fell down nicely, sparsely. There was still some dark, sticky stuff leftover in the bowl.

  The host called, “Kids! Mike! Dad and Mom!” He called these copulators to come in to dinner. In fact, this group represented a predictable array of vocations—including hard workers, wor­riers, travelers, and liars—defecators, of course, urinators and music makers.

  The Romantic Life

  “Gunther should show up and act as if he’s learned something,” Rohana said. “But he has a very good situation where he is—I am sure. I don’t know why he’d want to come back here.”

  Gunther had died young and she thought he visited the house whenever she traveled. This was her explanation for why a five-hundred-pound mirror had fallen off of the wall when she was in Cannes. Gunther was to blame. And his pet dog Spark—long dead too—had trotted out of the boxwood to greet her upon her return. However, unlike Gunther, the ancient Airedale had cho­sen to stay on.

  Aunt Rohana offered me my favorite—her red porridge spe­cialty—a compote made from berries and served with heavy cream. “You can always cheer me up!” she said.

  And, really—wasn’t this a lavish new world with new and possibly better rules?—so that I would no longer be sitting along the curbing. And, I thought Rohana loved me, whereas my own mother, her sister, did not.

  I tried not to pry my thoughts away from my new surround­ings, because I had been left alone for a few hours—and I was almost successful.

  As I was a young woman without a sexual partner—aware­ness of the deprivation was not half the battle—I was thinking about sex and at the same time I was moving my attention to the furniture, the fireplace—the walls and all of the doors that bore oak carvings in art nouveau.

  Then I saw Gunther!—or he could have been a replica of the lost original. A small bent male figure was on the threshold of my room, close by a tripod table.

  He slouched toward me and there was something that was not eager in his eyes. But nevertheless, he looked determined.

  “Why don’t you speak?” he said.

  He was zipped into a fur-trimmed anorak—and not at all dressed properly for the hot summer season.

  He kicked the table.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “Dead,” he said. He made his way into the kitchen and the dog Spark and I followed him.

  He put two hands on the sink rim to begin the maneuver and next he pivoted on his heels. He pushed in the upper dishwasher tray that had been left out and was overhanging.

  The dog gasped behind me. I turned—and when I turned back around Gunther was gone.

  My memory is that Rohana had run an errand that day to get a chicken to roast, a box of soap, and a ball of twine.

  “Oh, God! What do you want me to say?” she said, when I told her.

  I stayed at Rohana’s another day or two before I went home with a new backbone for my plodding along.

  Sudden sounds didn’t frighten me and I didn’t mind the sense of being stared at when I was alone.

  Rohana has a nerve condition now, such that if she sits still and doesn’t move her left foot, she is fine. Otherwise she needs to take a lot of pain medication.

  And as Gunther has done—I have shown up in certain places with a bang. And when I come into rooms, it’s surely a relief to one and all that I am helpful.

  I feel there is so much yet to explore about how people expe­rience a “pull” toward anyone.

  The Great Passion

  and Its Context

  She bears the problems inherent in her circumstance that are not suddenly in short supply and she sways while guessing who really looks at her impatiently while she faces all of the faces—the multiple rows of the pairs of persons—the prime examples in the train aisle.

  She has her shoes back on, because she had to get up to dis­pose of her lunchtime detritus. But fortunately she did not fall onto the passenger next to her, that man, when she returned.

  They are passing through a city center with turn-of-the-century-style lanterns and ice skaters who put their feet down, somewhat decisively, all over a rink!

  Some of their legs are bowed and there are the curvilinear, stylized profiles of their legs exemplifying natural organic forms, but they’re none of them hobbling.

  This woman’s foot was recently injured and many weeks’ rest were required before she had the rapture of standing on it—in strict accordance with the doctor’s instructions.

  Oh, cover my mouth!—she thinks, as her wet nose, while she coughs, finds her forearm. And although she is usually an irate parent, she has her share of lovesick feelings, especially during intervals of freedom from her toddlers, such as this one.

  She feels the onset of arousal, of genital swelling that is trig­gered by no one in particular and she has the inability to think normally.

  What’s still to come?—a warm flat landscape?—a shallow swimming pool?—the complete ruin of her health?—her abso­lute devotion to anyone?

  The top of the woman’s foot is still puffy and she has had quar­rels at home every day this week and she goes to sleep distraught.

  With dexterity, she had managed the bundling of her lunchtime cardboard tray, some cellophane and the napkin and a waxy cup.

  Children, who belong to another woman three rows up ahead, are singing a duet—two boys—in unison, and then in contrary motion. They offer their share of resistance to you name it!—in a remote and difficult key, and in poor taste artistically.

  Specialist

  “For a blue sky, that blue’s a bit dark, don’t you think? And the sea’s a bit too choppy,” I said, “f
or that dog to be dash­ing into it.”

  “You mean the man threw something into the water?” my son said. “That’s why the dog jumped in?”

  An hour passed. Why not say twenty years?

  In the Green Room, I had fortunately ordered Frenched Chicken Breast—Chocolate Napoleon.

  And at a great height—up on a balcony, as I readied to depart—a pianist began his version of Cole Porter’s “Katie Went to Haiti.” I waved to him.

  He nodded, likely pleased by the attention, but it was hard to tell—for only his radiant pate was made visible by a tiny ceil­ing light.

  To my surprise, the air in the street was too hot to give pleas­ure and a cyclist was mistakenly on the sidewalk.

  The cyclist hit me, and it’s vile after my life ends in the after­life. Lots of incense, resin, apes, and giraffe-tails—all acquired tastes. I don’t like that kind of thing.

  The Poet

  She carves with a sharply scalloped steel blade, makes slices across the top of a long, broad loaf of yeasted bread for the dog who begs and there’s a cat there, too.

  She holds the loaf against her breast and presses it up under her chin. But this is no violin! Won’t she sever her head?

  At a Period of

  Exceptional Dullness

  The influence of the early evening’s sunset was much less bloody inside of the salon, spreading itself like red smoke or like a slowly moving red fog, unbounded.

  Yet, Mrs. Farquhar’s hair was nearly bloodred, and it behaved like dry hair.

  The hairdresser lifted a clump of it, dropped it. To soften it, she reached for her leave-in detangler.

  She looked for more signs of neglect, the thread connections that could come to light. She said, “It’s all broken. It’s much worse.”