The Collected Stories of Diane Williams

by Diane Williams

  A Mere Flask Poured Out

  The heavily colored area—it became a shade dingier—after I knocked over her decanter and there was the sourish smell of the wine.

  I saw Mother reaching toward the spill, but the time that was left to her was so scant as to be immaterial.

  The little incident of the accidental spill had the fast pace of a race, hitherto neglected or unknown.

  “Go home!” Mother said. And I didn’t look so good to her she said. “How dare you tell me what to do—when you threw me away! You threw your brother away, too!”

  Within a month, Mother was dead.

  I inherited her glass carafe with its hand-cut, diamond-and-fan design, which we now use on special occasions.

  We do well and we’ve accomplished many excellent things.

  “Don’t do it that way!” I had cried. My daughter had tried to uncork a bottle of wine, but since I thought it was my turn, I took it from her.

  Here are other methods I use to apply heavy pressure: I ask her where she is going, what does she want, how does she know and why. She should increase her affectionate nature, be success­ful and happy. Mentally, she must show me she has that certain ability to try.

  Bang Bang on the Stair

  I said, “Would you like a rope? You know that haul you have is not secured properly.”

  “No,” he said, “but I see you have string!”

  “If this comes into motion—” I said, “you should use a rope.”

  “Any poison ivy on that?” he asked me, and I told him my rope had been in the barn peacefully for years.

  He took a length of it to the bedside table. He had no con­cept for what wood could endure.

  “Table must have broken when I lashed it onto the truck,” he said.

  And, when he was moving the sewing machine, he let the cast iron wheels—bang, bang on the stair.

  I had settled down to pack up the flamingo cookie jar, the cut­lery, and the cookware, but stopped briefly, for how many times do you catch sudden sight of something heartfelt?

  I saw our milk cows in their slow parade in the pasture and then the calf broke through with a leap from behind—its head was up, its forelegs spread.

  “Don’t leave!” Mother screamed at me, and she had not arrived to help me.

  She tripped and fell over a floor lamp’s coiled electrical cord.

  There’s just a basic rule of conduct that applies here—also known as a maxim—so I held out my hand.

  She gripped and re-gripped my palm hard and all of my fin­gers before hoisting herself by pulling on me.

  She kept tugging on my hand on her deathbed also for a long stretch, until she died. For don’t little strokes fell great oaks?

  A girl from the neighborhood rang the bell today to ask if I had a balloon. I didn’t have any and I hadn’t seen one in years.

  “That’s all you need?” I asked her. “How about some string?”

  I noticed that the girl’s eyes were bright and intelligent and that she was delighted, possibly with me.

  I went to search where I keep a liquid-glue pen, specialty tape, and twine. I kept on talking while I pawed around for some reason in the drawer.

  A Little Bottle of Tears

  It should have been nicer—our friendships, our travel, our romances secretly lived—if we weren’t so old. But still it was an interesting situation to be in.

  We all but ignored the wife’s tears—which could have filled a small bottle.

  And the wife was petite and well groomed and I knew why she was crying. She thought her trials were all about adultery at that time.

  As the evening proceeded, the wife cheered up for some of it and her conversation was drawing us in with topics she knew we would feel comfortable talking about, because potentially our relationship could be adversarial and her husband was tend­ing to pontificate, showing off his legal wings with paragraphs upon paragraphs.

  You find yourself in a situation where you have agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed and you realize this is not such a good agreement.

  How did all this end? Oh, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine—although our process of digestion—they’d served us kartoffelpuffer and sauerbraten—was not yet complete—when the husband said finally about his wife, “Bettie’s tired.”

  To my mind—she’s hysterical, sincere, easily distracted, and not adaptable. I remember when I wanted to know even more about her.

  They lived only on the ground floor—the rest was rented out. A trestle table, where you could put your gloves, stood in the long hall that had stone floor tiles set on the diagonal.

  Bettie’s thumbs were as I remembered—heavy and clubbed—and she wore the eye-catching turquoise ring, circa 1890, with three pearls, that I knew she was proud of because I had given it to her.

  “Bettie’s tired,” the husband repeated.

  “I am tired,” Bettie said.

  And there was no polite way for him to tell us, “Fuck off now.”

  There’d be no more condescending talk, no fresh subjects, never likely an opportunity to privately reminisce with Bettie about the times when we were side by side, experiencing that alternating rhythm forward and back.

  “Can we give you a lift home?”

  “No, that’s not necessary, we drove,” we said.

  I went into their bathroom to urinate before we left. I am a man, if that wasn’t clear before this, and not a drunken one, not cruel—and I was holding myself then, gently—somewhat lovingly, to relieve myself.

  I washed my hands and face and looked into the mirror. My face has changed so much recently. The lines of age were drawn everywhere like the marks made by a claw, and they looked to me freshly made. Then there are those growing fleshy abutments around my jaw and under my chin.

  It was rainy outside and we were significantly dampened by the time we reached our car. And, in addition, a smelly ailan­thus tree tossed a pitcherful of storm water—as if from a sacred fount—all over my head. There were continuing showers—it was dripping, gushy.

  Still it was all so charming and heartening—that is—the summer storm, and the trees and our sky, alongside those sev­eral memories of Bettie and me.

  My wife said to me en route, “Well, I suppose I’m on the wrong track, too.”

  Of course, it took a long time for her to go downhill, all the way down it.

  Meanwhile, we became very friendly with the DePauls—Clifford and Daisy.

  They lived in an apartment crammed with blue-and-white china, for one thing. I thought Daisy usually looked pensive and sad and my wife thought that her scowl meant that she detested us.

  A large oil painting of a female nude—hands together as if prayerful—had been suspended over their mantel. Their apart­ment was in disarray.

  But, there’s always a moment before it all becomes okay.

  When I Was Old and Ugly

  The creature had come absurdly close to our window. It had lifted its chin—face—specifically toward mine while we were at breakfast in the country.

  I’d say the animal looked and looked at me and looked, ardently.

  I was reminded how to fall in love by meeting its eyes and by how long the rendezvous lasted—until doomsday, say.

  I am unhappily married. Today I was dressed up in red-fox orange—orangutan orange—apricot orange, candlelight orange. I had on a wool plaid coat and had been racketing around my city precinct doing errands.

  Returning home, while in the elevator of our building, facing the closed door, I combed nearly every hair—all that thinning hair along the sides of my skull.

  That massive man that I didn’t know at all, who had a stiff­ness of manner at the back of the elevator, he acknowledged me. And the doorman Bill had not averted his eyes.

  No, not the sort of thing that I usually report
. No, that I had withdrawn the tortoiseshell comb from my purse to do the smooth­ing with and then re-stowed it on the way to 3A, our apartment.

  The comb I keep in the quilted sack, where I also conceal a tiny toothpaste, the easy-to-carry traveler’s toothbrush, and my eyeglass-lens polishing cloth.

  The carpet was unmarked by dirt, but one important thing in our foyer was missing—the color with the green leaves in a vase. The old floor gets better with age, but boy it needed to be cleaned up—then it will shine.

  I also have affectionate and friendly wishes for the brass, crystal, silver dishes, vases and pitchers.

  My conversation with my husband was as follows: “Are you all right? What do you want? You’re looking at me.”

  In the park I had wanted to talk today to a bird who wasn’t interested in talking to me.

  Lust and temptation are sometimes personified. I heard the bird cry—Chew! Chew! I took pains to say Chew! Chew!—loudly, too.

  Palm against Palm

  It is a pity there is also the nature of the surface of the skin—combined with the error of her eyes and the divots at the centers of her breasts.

  Her tiny skirt is much like a figure skater’s skirt that may—as she lets her legs fling forward to walk—flap.

  Clap. Clap.

  The girl—to get here—goes in the direction of the vanish­ing point, on up the steep grade.

  These living quarters with the man, that she has entered, are bordered in the front by bluet and merrybells and by the myrtle and foam flowers at the back.

  Her exit requires her to go through a door that shuts, ta-ta!—with those two little beats of sound.

  Come along!—for wonderful it may seem that those hills are presenting themselves not just as technical details or as small regions near the tollway.

  Did she see those birds that were falling like leaves?—the leaves that were flying like birds?

  The girl will extend herself to travel and to sway beyond the sweepgate into somebody else’s household and she will hurry to meet up with somebody.

  So when she arrives at the northern suburb, she finds a high house with a heavy gate. There is a seat near the door.

  Whose house is this?

  There is a tent bed, a hearth, and a sectional bookcase.

  “At least I don’t keep people waiting. Am I doing everything?” the girl asks.

  “Hey!”

  “Now look at you.”

  Then she was pulling her blouse together and she went to get a glass of water, a pot of coffee.

  The brightly scaled moon was rising, but this girl never became a well-liked businesswoman with a growing family in the community.

  Neither is she endowed with any remarkable qualities. We never spoke of her specialized skills or of her inclination to be otherwise. My fault. Go fuck herself.

  Apology accepted.

  NEW STORIES

  The Beauty and the Bat

  “Please don’t say that about me, Diane,” Rae said.

  “Well then,” I said, “you have always worked like a dog.”

  “Babka,” said a lady who joined us. We were at Rae’s.

  And the lady had a piece of cake on a plate and she sat down behind a slant-top desk that appeared to cut off her head at the neck.

  But her face was a vivid face I would have been proud of, had it belonged to me, and it was fully in sight until she ducked down to fork up the cake.

  Who was she? Should I have known?

  As I mulled this, Rae’s daughter—came in to ask—“How do you murder (she meant, how do you pound thin) chicken breasts?”

  The lady chased her back out—as the pricking of my wig clips against my scalp grew worse.

  So, then I was left alone and irritable with Rae, who was saying, “A rolling pin.”

  And who is Rae?

  She is my cousin who lives with her paradisiac vistas of Central Park, delphinium with peonies in a vase, and there’s the herringbone floor.

  In her kitchen, I saw the pink lobes of the chicken breasts beneath plastic wrap.

  “Did you wash it first?”—the lady, who was waving a heavy discolored utensil—was asking Maud—that is, Rae’s daughter.

  And then the lady turned to ask me, “What are you doing here?”

  “Tea would be nice,” I said.

  I saw nearly an entire babka tucked beneath a glass dome.

  “And, may I have some cake, please?”

  Maud had left the room and the lady did not turn back to answer me and with her tool she began again slapping at the meat.

  Then the door opened and a young man—my son—stood there who was not invited in.

  “What are you doing here?” the lady asked.

  “Be nice to me!” he said.

  “Close the door! Go away!”

  With both her arms briefly stretched above her head, she looked like a woman whose identity I knew I should have known.

  Surrounding her, on the surfaces, were peas in their pods in a vine leaf, green bowl and some drops of blood.

  I stepped farther forward over the checkered black and white linoleum to where there is a charming view of a sphered copper church roof that draws to a point, with a golden cross atop it.

  A pair of pigeons were busy mating on a parapet and this looked so hazardous. I could feel talons—Do pigeons even have them?—digging painfully into my back. And then I was distracted by a large, proud aqua mix-master.

  Not immediately, but I turned just in time to see the beauty put down her bat.

  Speaking of beauty, she was standing in the awful fluorescent light—her heaving and her lifting well over by then.

  Would now be the time to take the cake?—I thought.

  I admired the color of her shoes, how her hair was coiled and braided. I knew who she was well enough, by then—a competent woman in earnest who didn’t like me.

  So, she did get excited when I just shoved the bowl of peas aside to make more room for the cake’s cover.

  While I ate my first mouthful, I saw her mouth open and close as I opened and closed mine.

  What she did do—she posed quietly.

  All that she said was, “You are Diane Williams? Do you even know what most of your friends say about you?”

  Witchcraft Today

  Other cars with their slit eyes were coming toward us and passing us, as my sister discussed with me her experiments that can save the world.

  We were aiming for Vladmir’s Vacuum Cleaner Service and Repair, so I drove us down the hill to where a dog was leashed to a parking meter—barking out constructively, his words to the wise.

  I put on the brakes in front of Vladmir’s for my sister and for her broken down machine. So then, I was feeling tired to death and I cupped my hands and blew into them.

  Two women appeared embracing two of a kind—that is each woman held onto a globular lamp base that had luster.

  Fused with their lamps—this matching set—the pair went northward alongside New and Used Firearms, and Massage by Jan and then they reversed their direction and came back at us.

  Of course, nobody was there to greet me when I reentered my house.

  The exterior of the house is deep bloodred and usually I am alone in it. The day’s mail was in the mailbox and a letter had arrived from my son, posted from a distant land. Here in darkish-blue ink was my reminder.

  I closed my eyes in order to come round to, to pick up on, to further nose out something like Fresh Flowers For All Occasions—nothing gamey, raw, but true—rather this is a doctrine geared to help me to sleep or to drive, or to again park my car.

  The Forgotten Story

  Please let me speak—I used to want to, but I was still unready at the banquet to air my views, nor was I going to provide any explanation in an area of si
gnificance.

  Although, I told myself that I would, and then I scheduled something else. I ate the food—pulpous and semisolid and I still have some level of pride. I was wearing my new Swiss vintage wristwatch with its good sword hands.

  Now more than ever—I got not much further than at the point of arrival, when I said, “Where is the restroom? Is elevator service available?” and “Could I use the bathroom now?”

  I had taken the tiny single-serve butter packs that were provided and the tiny half-and-half tubs and made of them a colonnade that then tipped and leaned itself intact against my water goblet.

  One should be able, in conversation to recall, just so, an attitude or an impressive deed in one’s life, slot it in, watch it climb.

  “Do you know this lady?”—a woman I didn’t know pointed at me.

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s my wife,” the man across from me said.

  “Why aren’t we listening to this nice woman?” the interlocutor continued. “For instance, what does she think about Trey Gowdy?”

  My little tower fell down. There was laughter and then a shadow the size and shape of an unclad foot, whose toes were wagging, showed up behind the head of the man, so that I was not left with a positive feeling.

  I looked at my empty restaurant plate. It had a green-stripe around its border and a logo with an eagle and the date nearby it.

  Oh, listen, I didn’t say a word. A waiter brought bread that I took between my hands, broke into bits, and scattered about on the plate. I regained my senses and made a small province with the crumbs, or country.

  Don’t Talk to Him

  for Such a Long Time

  In due course, Arthur Churl took some of my ideas, but he had his own angle—he was effecting a sort of spiritual awakening. He had produced an outdoor living room—lounge chairs, a dining set, an umbrella.