Why I Don't Write Page 6
They drove for a while.
“Can I ask if you talked to her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how was it?” Fran said.
“She slapped me,” said Tom.
“She what?”
“She slapped me. Across the face.” Tom began to look happier.
“Why?” Fran asked with astonishment.
“I don’t know. She must have been angry with something I said.”
“Obviously,” Fran said. She gazed up at Tom, waiting, but he didn’t speak. “So?” she said finally.
“So what?” Tom said innocently.
“What did you say to her to make her hit you?” Fran enunciated each word.
“Don’t know.” Tom shrugged. “I guess it was something about her dress.”
“What was it?”
“I told her she looked like a hooker.”
“You didn’t.”
Tom nodded. “Then she slapped me.”
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say,” Fran whispered.
“She didn’t seem to think so either,” Tom said. “Oh, God, now what? Are you crying?”
“It upsets me.”
“Why?”
“It just does.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down.”
Fran pressed herself against the door of the car. “She does care. She obviously does. I knew she did!”
“It’s the past,” Tom said. “You can’t do anything about the past. Forget about it.”
“It happened now.” She sobbed and put her forehead to the black window. “I’m not thinking about the past. I’m thinking about the future.”
“The future?” Tom tried to glimpse her face as headlights came toward them and flashed past.
“Ours.”
“You’re insane,” Tom said.
“You always say that.” Fran was suddenly hushed. She looked at Tom. “Why do you always say that?”
“I don’t.”
“You do. A lot.”
“Maybe because you act insane,” Tom said. “Where do you get these ideas?”
“They’re not ideas, they’re feelings.” Fran straightened her back, attempting to compose herself. “Why did you say that to her?”
“Because it was true.” Tom lifted his hand in the shape of a spade.
Fran stared at him for a long time. “If you two had gotten married, a lot of those people would have been at the wedding, wouldn’t they?”
“We were never going to get married,” Tom said.
“Yes, but if you had.”
“Not a lot of them.” Tom thought a moment. “Some.”
“I bet she was thinking that, too.” Fran looked out at the black night, once and yet still green.
“I doubt it. She does have another boyfriend, you know.”
“Why wasn’t he there?”
“Buster didn’t invite him,” Tom said.
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t approve,” Tom said. “He thinks the guy is sleazy.”
Fran laughed bitterly. “Ha. Buster probably liked her himself.”
“Actually,” Tom said, and the thought made him smile. “Not that long ago, he did.”
• WHY I DON’T WRITE •
What do you do all day? she said.
* * *
In the morning, there is the counter with the teapot and the bag of tea in the white cup, the milk from the carton in the fridge door, the chair, which chair, the paper, the notebook, which notebook, the folder, the letters on the screen, the emails asking, the computer keyboard—then it all stops.
* * *
She handed me the paper. “Here’s the bad news,” she said.
* * *
It takes courage to be happy.
* * *
The headlines:
FINGERS POINT, DENIALS SPREAD AND FURY RISES
THE PUFFIN VANISHES
SUPREME COURT NOMINEE CHALLENGED
SYRIAN FORCES HAVE CONFLICTING REPORTS
I read parts of them, read the whole article through of: the suicide of a dancer who jumped off a building on the Upper West Side.
* * *
On the page in front of me in ink: The road shot forward like an arrow disappearing in the clouds between a bluff and rocky hills.
* * *
Before waking I found a deep slash in my upper arm; out of the opening floated small lobsters.
* * *
Overheard: Telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen.
* * *
He went off his medication.
* * *
The morning dishes, the tacky slick on the shelf, the flickering light, the cabinet door slipped off its hinge, the rotted sill, the curling screen.
* * *
Your system must be overloaded. Or you have a virus.
* * *
Where was the daughter? She was frozen, head bent down, her face awash in a light blue glow as if spotlit by aliens. Her finger flicked over the screen like a conductor.
* * *
What shall we have for dinner? More eggs.
* * *
Sponge. Lemon. Milk.
* * *
I used to be ruled by feeling; it asked for words.
* * *
What’s going on with the weather.
* * *
What are you looking at? I ask my daughter staring at the phone.
Why do you care?
Just wondering what’s going into your brain.
Mom, leave me alone.
* * *
Arthur Rimbaud gave up writing poetry at age twenty-one.
* * *
During the sad movie I feel a pain spread in my chest, becoming so sharp I felt I was having a heart attack.
* * *
Where was the daughter? What time was the doctor?
What was eaten?
What was smoked?
What made her cry?
She was late. She told a lie.
She was beautiful and laughing.
* * *
Take fifteen minutes out of the day.
* * *
I walk on an empty road at dusk. Far off on the water I hear a boat humming. I hear the flute call of a loon. Then silence.
* * *
Something dripping. Life is not right.
* * *
We hope you will make it. We’d love to see you. It’s been too long. Shall we meet for lunch? Let’s have that drink. You should come to Copenhagen. There’s a two fifty-five show. I have an extra ticket for tomorrow. The lines aren’t too long. You have to see it. You have to watch it. You have to read it.
* * *
Your balance total is—
* * *
All day you ask yourself, What are you doing all day?
* * *
Fifty-three dead not including the shooter.
* * *
When you take the plant out of the plastic container, pull the thin roots to dangle down and place into the hole. Give it water.
* * *
Tunnel, no light at the end of. One hour, then another.
* * *
The title of the song: “Crawl to Me, Baby, Crawl to Me.”
* * *
Are you going to the march?
* * *
As soon as you gave them a donation, they bombarded you with continual requests for more.
* * *
They heard back from the doctor: it was not good news.
* * *
That’s not what the fire marshal said.
* * *
I walk around the city and listen to people as I pass them on sidewalks. Usually they ar
e talking on their phones. Often they are not looking at where they are going; they are looking into their palms.
* * *
“You are in the wrong line; your line is over there.”
* * *
The sweet air in the morning, warmed by the sun.
* * *
She slammed the door and the molding cracked. How many coats of paint the wood had gotten was amazing.
* * *
Headache.
* * *
Hunger.
* * *
The thumping far below the floor.
* * *
Death estimates ran from 150 to 500, but could not be confirmed.
* * *
You write if you have to.
* * *
The spine of a book, sugarcane yellow with an embossed palm tree half hooked in a circle. Pages with deckle edge. The first line: In March 1912, when a big mail-boat was unloading in Naples, there was an accident about which extremely inaccurate reports appeared in the newspapers…
You read eagerly on, hopeful.
* * *
Cleaning out the closets. Cleaning out the drawers. Clearing out the basement.
* * *
We used to be friends.
* * *
Beckett’s “I can’t go on.”
Then his: “I’ll go on…”
But
* * *
Suicide by hanging. Just an hour before, the designer had been—
* * *
Housing rates, fiscal responsibility, sleep deprivation.
* * *
I’ll bring some coconut rice; you bring your pie.
* * *
He didn’t show up.
* * *
Payment details. Tuition total. Balance due.
* * *
The kids are exhausted.
* * *
Marinate it in the soy, oil, garlic, sugar mixture.
* * *
Caring used to have a ragged pain, sometimes wafty, sometimes sharp as needles. Its magnet weight kept me connected.
* * *
For a long time I would return to the black-and-white room.
* * *
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
* * *
The one with the wedge heel. The striped linen. A pair with a high waist.
* * *
Probably three years ago.
No, actually it was seven.
* * *
More garbage bags.
* * *
Didn’t you see it on Instagram?
* * *
Before he died, he was screaming for painkillers.
* * *
Will be subject to late fees.
* * *
“Nobody’s going to leave themselves too exposed right now,” said the man on his phone. He paused at the corner and repeated it. “Nobody’s going to leave themselves too exposed right now.”
* * *
The keys have to be replaced.
* * *
I haven’t seen him in over twenty years.
* * *
An hour ago, I felt calm, now I am heartbroken with worry. Is it the dentist? Is it the daughter’s distress? Is it death?
* * *
“Come to bed.”
* * *
Open any page of Emily Dickinson and have the top of your head taken off.
* * *
No one saying, “Come to bed.”
* * *
She died, God, is it already ten years ago? It was awful. Death used to be more awful. One was destroyed.
* * *
You saw him? How was he?
He was great. Looked older though.
* * *
It was hard to explain. So I gave up.
* * *
He got another one, prettier, younger.
* * *
A child watches his dad lose his patience: the look in the child’s eye.
* * *
Only in tomorrow night, hope you are free. Where do you have to be? Where are you coming from?
* * *
Wish I could see him.
* * *
Looks better ironed.
* * *
The woman turning the corner: I used to wear my hair like that.
* * *
He was found slumped on the floor, having put on one sneaker, about to go running.
* * *
Another story became more important.
* * *
Wish I could go there.
* * *
How delicious is that?
* * *
It didn’t matter anymore.
* * *
Is this as unbelievable as I think it is?
* * *
At dinner they all laughed and laughed and the next day she couldn’t remember what had been so funny.
* * *
Gazes used to slide off me.
* * *
She had a temperature of 102.7.
* * *
“I don’t read it anymore.”
* * *
The ways that Bob Dylan says
1. He’s all right, and
2. He’s not all right.
* * *
I passed her on our street. She didn’t see me, she was looking at the flowers.
* * *
“I don’t read anymore.”
* * *
Taste this.
* * *
A FINAL TURN OFF NOTICE IS IN EFFECT.
* * *
I see a cupped hand inside me as if through layers of bulletproof Plexiglas. It’s there, but it isn’t in charge.
* * *
“I don’t believe it anymore.”
* * *
Did you ever apologize?
* * *
Star-splashed sky. Wind in the grass. Butterfly. Bee seeming to be in fast motion, burrowing in a flower. A flower you never saw before.
* * *
The cat hissed. Probably four to six more years to live.
* * *
Wasn’t asked back.
* * *
Chekhov, doctor. Virginia Woolf, mental struggles.
* * *