They were a perfect couple.
Insomnia
She has had insomnia and her husband has also had insomnia and she has decided it is the mattress so they go to the store and she lies down on one mattress after another and he will not. This is because he is too dignified to get in a prostrate position in a public place with his shoes resting on the plastic they use to cover the lower part of the mattress. Each mattress she lies down on she likes better than the last. “Lie down,” she says to him, “you’re going to be on it for the rest of your life after all.” But he doesn’t want to. Perhaps because of the salesman looking on. But finally he does, then gets right up again. “It’s fine,” he says, “get whichever one you like.” So they buy it and it comes that very night. But now it is four in the morning and she is still awake while her husband breathes regularly and sweetly beside her. When she tires of listening to him breathe, which takes a long time because he sounds like a child and it is beautiful to hear, she comes into the other room and looks out her window uptown and at the lights on the river. Now and then opening a can of tuna fish and thinking this fish in this room on 112th Street was originally swimming in the deep Atlantic and now it is here on the thirteenth floor. What a miracle, although not for the fish. Still. You can appreciate things at four in the morning that would go right past you during the day.
Social Security
She had to go to the Social Security office because there was confusion over her name. She had returned to her maiden name, and it all needed sorting out. They needed proof that she was herself again. It was a matter of documentation. She needed her birth certificate, her divorce papers. Her husband, who was trying to help, upon perusing this first set of papers, said, “I didn’t know you’d had a Mexican divorce,” which sent her back to the night twenty-seven years ago when she had lain weeping while the radio played. She was with the man she was going to marry, the man who was going to be her second husband, they were in a rented house in the gloomy Northwest Woods of Long Island. Abbey Road had just come out. If he had asked her why she was crying she wouldn’t have known what to say. But he hadn’t, thank God, he had just let her cry. This was a kindness on his part; he had just let her be. It was the eve of her flight to Mexico; she was twenty-seven years old. It was not that she’d wanted to stay with her first husband. Life had seemed to have sadness mixed into everything she touched.
But now, clutching all these documents, she got herself on the subway and went downtown. It took a while to find the office and a while longer to get in the elevator. She had claustrophobia and could not ride alone. Then a messenger appeared and when she explained her problem he said he would take her to six even though he was only going to two. He said he knew somebody else who felt the same way about elevators, and she said “Thank you” and tried not to stare at his thighs in their nylon tights. “Goodbye,” she said at six, “and thank you again.”
Once inside the office she found the right line to stand on and sooner than she expected she was explaining her presence to a man behind what may or may not have been a bulletproof screen. He looked at her papers and said he could fix it one-two-three, but it would take a few days. He made copies of everything. “Is that it?” she asked. She didn’t have much faith in the system, although it hadn’t failed her personally. “That’s it,” he said and waved the next person over. So it was time to leave again, and again because of claustrophobia she pretended to be absorbed in studying the wall while one after another the elevators came and went with nobody in them. Then an old man shuffled over, someone she hadn’t noticed before, and he was saying goodbye to everybody and they all said goodbye to him. It appeared that he worked there, or had once worked there and still came in; that was what she made of it.
They chatted in the elevator about the weather. Downstairs in the lobby he unexpectedly linked his arm through hers and told her he would walk her to the corner. This seemed gallant of him. He was an old man and very clean shaven, his eyes were clear, although watering a bit in the cold, and he wore a pale scarf and a porkpie hat. He told her he had written the music to many shows but had had no luck yet having them produced. He mentioned disappointments at the hands of wealthy men whose family names she recognized. She nodded and clucked. She was a grandmother but perhaps looked younger in her new green hat. He enjoyed talking to her. Then she looked down and noticed that his shoes were old and cracked and the trousers he was wearing, visible under his coat, were stained with what looked like whitewash running in streaks down to the cuffs. She felt disoriented. There she was with her three names but one person surely, and there he was with a poor person’s clothes on, yet he spoke so clearly and smelled fine. He left her on the street and she watched him heading into a warm building that contained the coffee shop where he worked on his music, and she made her way to the subway wishing she had asked him to tell her the names of some of his songs. Her mother had that very morning called to ask if she knew the words to “Hindustan,” which she did not. Then her mother called back. “I have an idea,” she said. “We will write new words to this tune. Nobody will know, because they are all dead, and we will make our fortune. Just change ‘Hindustan’ to something else.”
She thinks about it now, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, since she will never see any Social Security what with the confusion over her names, and now she thinks she may have missed her chance, having allowed the old man to disappear. Perhaps next time she has to go down (because she has no faith in the system) she will run into him again. Her mother often calls her in the early morning asking, “Do you know the words to,” and then she’ll sing a line of a song like “Just give me something to remember you by,” and then the lyric and the tune stay in her mind all day, thus ruining it with sadness and pity. As she puts the divorce papers away she wonders if perhaps the old man had written “Laura” or “Tangerine” or something else she might once have known.
Ponds
She used to feel bad for the swans that lived on little ponds and marshes off the turnpike surrounded by tin cans and old tires, although corporations pledged they were keeping the water clean and the swans seemed to be enjoying themselves. Still she thought it was awful to have to be a swan in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Then as she got older she realized it was okay. Clean water was clean water no matter what surrounded it, right? And a pond in the middle of garbage was still a pond. For some reason this was on her mind today, the word “pond” especially, such a beautiful word, and she was floating on the surface of the idea of it all morning hoping it would get her out of her poor mood, her piss-poor mood not to put too fine a point on it. A mood that came from nowhere, and settled on her like soot. Instead of a pond she saw a man relieving himself on the sidewalk, and the odd contrast between the shabbiness of his garments and the incredible force of the urine startled her and she allowed herself to be cheered up by how well his innards were working. A sign of life. When she related this to her daughter, her daughter said, “I hate it when men pee on the street because you always have to see their rubbery little penises and I really don’t want to see one unless I really want to see one.” They both found this very funny and laughed out loud in their separate cities.
This afternoon from the Broadway bus her eye is caught by the little tiny diamond bulbs making up stars on the ceiling of the Fred Astaire Dance Studio, and she can even see two people dancing, the woman light in the man’s arms, they dance in and out of sight. In the window, she sees two young men in black trousers and white shirts who stand at the ready should there be a partnerless woman to squire. “Shhh,” she wants to say to her husband as he speaks a pleasantry in her ear, “I am remembering being lonely.” He continues to speak as the bus lowers itself with a wheezing sound for an elderly passenger, like an elephant kneeling. If I were lonely and not happily married and feeling okay about myself but in need of warmth I could do worse than go there and pay for dance lessons, she thinks, still looking at the starry ceiling. Body warmth is body warmth, a young and handsome lad is sti
ll a pleasure even if you are not going to partake of him in the time-honored way. For a moment she imagines being held in a store-bought young man’s arms and somehow it’s all tied up with the pond and swans and the old things, she herself being the old thing although not discarded surely like rusty cans or flat tires (here she squeezes her husband’s hand), and you have to take gladly what life offers, she has learned that much, and sometimes you get lucky. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? There’s nothing wrong with that.
This Thanksgiving
My husband says he’s tired but won’t lie down on the green couch where our friend, my former husband, lay last year. He doesn’t want to stir up sad memories, he says. What if the kids look at him and think of our friend? The room is full of absence. I crack an egg and beat it with a little water. I add this to the cornbread, breaking it with my hands. The oven is preheating. I add rosemary, which I forgot, to the onions, and stir. Then I walk over and give him a kiss.
What Goes through the Mind
While Stripping the Meat
from the Bones
She puts all the dark meat in her mouth. The dark meat is her favorite and also the wings. She is something of a pig. Her hair tickles her face, but her hands are too full of turkey fat to scratch her forehead. The word “carcass” sounds see-through, raggedy, frail. Its ribs exposed. If you scrape out the stuffing too zealously you get bitter bits, innards to spit into your napkin. Long ago she’d have stuck the whole thing in the icebox and hoped for the best. Then thrown it out. The thought of turkey soup too awful to contemplate. But now that we are all grown-up and happy, she thinks, we save the meat for sandwiches, throw out the bones. Our thoughts are grateful if not cheerful, for we have much to be thankful for. We are still alive and still talking to one another. Voices from four generations fill the room.
Except of course your chair was empty. So was the couch you lay on last year with blankets heaped over you and children of all ages asking if they could get you anything. You were shivering. You were glad you had come. “Go,” said your doctor. “Yes, you can make the trip. Go. It will be good for you.” It was to be your last Thanksgiving, something nobody imagined, certainly not me, I thought we had a year or more and in a year anything can happen. Cures can be found. Strength regained. But you died instead.
Where Are the Kids
Where are the kids? my sister wants to know.
I can’t write about the kids, I say uneasily.
But they are part of this, she says. Their lives.
Their lives are their own, I say.
They are wonderful, my sister says, I love your kids.
I know, I say. They are the nicest people I know.
But I don’t see them in here very much, my sister says.
This is not about that, I say.
Not about what, she asks.
Not about holding them up to the light, I say.
They should be here.
But they are everywhere, I say, they are on every page. Don’t you see?
See what?
They are the whole point.
Weather
This is my favorite weather, rain and wind whistling between the buildings. I don’t feel I should be somewhere else. I don’t feel guilty for staying where I like best to be. I’m happy to be home, dropping the chicken into cold water with celery and carrots, preparing my dumplings. I should be finding bowls and spoons and setting the table. This is the weather for golden soup.
This is what you won’t be here for. Your daughter’s life. The new Japanese movie at the Film Forum. All the April birthday parties. Grandchildren growing up. Tonight’s rain. Tomorrow morning. A cup of tea.
Impatience
She is such a harridan. She can feel a fishwife inside her, screaming to get out, getting out! Climbing out of her shirtfront, a huge screaming fishwife. Part fish even. (She must have been one once.) She likes the sound of it, fishwife, as if she were married to a trout. Get under the rock, she was unable to scream when she was a fish. Get into the reeds! What a relief to be able to shout now, to tell them what to do; before she only had gills and a mouth that opened and shut in wonder or to take in food. They never listened to her before. She imagines fish tails diving back into her bosom, wet fish bodies reminiscent up and down her human flesh.
Today she was impatient with her husband. Sometimes she doesn’t know what gets into her. It’s the fishwife. She snapped at him for no reason and she is sorry and he is quiet. He is much nicer than she is in many ways, although ironically she is more tolerant. And the poor man is throwing out his mother’s stuff, some of it anyway, although a lot more is going up to the attic to be covered with sheets, because her son says that keeps everything cool. They looked at all the spoons today, really beautiful spoons, and she wants to use them. Ditto the pretty candlesticks. We can put them on the table, she said to him this morning. His mother died a month ago or more, at the age of ninety-eight. She will try to be nicer and not get that awful way. After all, she is not the only one who has lost someone.
Tonight her husband has seen something about the effects of tea. You are drinking too much tea, he says. It makes you cranky. She bridles. I am just tired, she says. No really, he goes on. You had seven cups this afternoon. Tea can give you osteoporosis, and caffeine has all sorts of ill effects, and tea has a lot of caffeine. I read it, do you want to see the article? He rummages around. I don’t want to see the article, she says. I don’t believe anything I read anywhere. Don’t be silly, he says kindly. Would you rather I drank Manhattans? she asks. She is lying in bed, four pillows behind her. Her hair has been taken down from all its barrettes and it looks (she imagines) as if she were lying in a haystack. That is not the alternative, he says. Yes it is, she snaps. Yes it is. His back is to her now. He has gone to hang something up in his closet. Quiet again. A man married to a fishwife.
Tea! She can’t even have tea now? Fuck this shit, she says, and turns over to try to sleep.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow it’s a year since you died. I don’t seem to be able to do a damn thing today. Not a damn thing yesterday either. I start something and drop it. I walk from room to room. I eat whatever is lying out on the counter and today it’s apple cake. I eat piece after piece. You weren’t here for this cake; I found the recipe after you died. You wouldn’t have liked it, though, you preferred my sponge cakes, light and drier. “I think your other cakes are better,” you’d have said with authority. I’d have wanted to scream.
Where are you? One year.
Witness to His Life
“I want a witness to my life,” he used to say. “That’s all.”
“That’s not all,” I’d say, “you also want a cook and a tailor, you want a housekeeper and a dry-cleaning establishment. You want a gourmet cook and a Kama Sutra expert and a dog walker. You want somebody to tidy up after you and love doing it. You want somebody to dance for you while the chicken is cooking.”
“Not anymore.” He paused and smiled. “Is that so much to ask? You liked to dance and as I recall you were rather good at it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No,” he’d insist. “I’m a very simple man, really. I’m easygoing. I just want a witness to my life.”
One time after we’d been divorced about five years he invited me out to breakfast. We went to Tom’s Restaurant or the College Inn or somewhere else lousy. He looked at me mournfully across the table. “Do you think you’re ready now to run a household?” he asked.
“Is that a proposal?” I asked. “Because it’s not very romantic.”
“Do you?” He wore a look of dread on his face.
Maybe he was afraid I’d say yes.
When He Told Her
She didn’t really believe it, not really, not in her heart of hearts. “It turns out I have something rather serious the matter with me,” he said, but they were at Ollie’s, on her plate a scallion pancake, on his some crispy duck. All around them the students were chattering and
eating. There was the happy clatter of dishes, the smell of Chinese food. Outside all the noise of upper Broadway, buses and so forth. She knew he was telling her something monumental, something huge, but it just wasn’t sinking in. Besides, the new hot tea had arrived, and the shrimp with snow peas, and she was busy opening five sugars, as she liked her tea very sweet. It was hard to hear really, to catch the drift.
He didn’t use the word “cancer.” He used the words “platelets” and “bone marrow.” He used the words “eighty percent” and “research.” He used the words “specialist” and “experimental drugs” and “trust.” He didn’t seem afraid, and he didn’t want to alarm her. He seemed intent only on having her understand what was happening to him, what might or might not be around the corner. After all, they had been married once. But it was in this very restaurant that she had years ago asked him to explain about the solar system. To explain about the solar system and the galaxies and which was bigger, and which was older and what was still forming, and as he’d spoken she had drawn in her notebook a bunch of suns and stars and planets and moons with arrows in order to keep straight what was what and what revolved and what got revolved around. Gravity and the moon’s pull, and all the rest of it. She had wanted to know where she stood exactly, and what was going on out there. He had explained it all carefully and clearly. So now as he talked about his disease, she realized that she’d forgotten everything she’d wanted so badly to remember, and the stars were swirling in all directions inside her head, and nothing was where it belonged. And after a while she reached across the table and she touched his sleeve and he grabbed her hand and held it fiercely.
Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Life Page 6
