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Why I Don't Write Page 7
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The drain is clogged and I need to replace the broken—
* * *
Come to bed.
* * *
Despite having said the opposite thing that morning…
Denied that he knew…
Denied he had said…
* * *
“I don’t look anymore.”
* * *
The recipe in last week’s—
* * *
Suspension of service.
* * *
Forgetting I met him.
Forgetting the weekend. Not meaning to be hurtful.
Forgetting to show up for the meeting.
* * *
I heard they were sharing a boat down the Nile. I heard they went to Algeria. I wondered, When did they make these plans with each other?
* * *
You figure: about twenty more good years. You feel something strange.
* * *
“Was that the IPA or the Pilsner?”
* * *
Passing a man who holds your gaze!
* * *
At lunch one of the people returns the bill to the small tray. “We each owe eighty-five dollars,” she announces.
* * *
Passing stylish people speaking French.
* * *
“You’re a woman. Why would you think that?”
* * *
What’s going on with this cold, with this heat, with this rain.
* * *
He slept on his side next to the bank vent. Or was it a she?
* * *
I was choking with rage and at the end of the plank where my grief walked I finally stepped off and the weeping stopped. All was calm. I was blank and numb.
* * *
“We couldn’t be happier.”
“We’re all full up.”
* * *
Why are we here?
* * *
The impact killed her instantly.
* * *
Sorry, I have other plans.
* * *
The cool air at night.
* * *
Lucky to be alive. A miracle to be alive.
* * *
You write if without it you would die.
* * *
In the morning passing a man and a woman kissing each other goodbye, leaning onto each other, drawing strength for the day.
* * *
Beethoven getting loud, Beethoven getting soft.
* * *
Never see enough of you.
* * *
Is this as unbelievable as I think it is?
* * *
All men do that. Not worth worrying.
* * *
With extra whipped cream, please.
* * *
Wetting a watercolor cube. Touching the paintbrush to stiff paper.
* * *
Tolstoy.
* * *
Women writers without children: many. Women writers with children: few.
* * *
Use of the drug was up 33 percent in the last six months.
* * *
Can’t you take a joke?
* * *
My friend says, “Vibrationally I think it’s easier to move forward if we stick to the truth.”
* * *
Shakespeare.
* * *
No need to make up anything. The world will up you.
* * *
Another loss. Will lose again. Each time you feel it more. Each time you feel it less.
* * *
You can get those removed, you know. It’s not that expensive.
* * *
Wallace Stevens, insurance man. Nabokov: lepidopterist. Goethe: horticulturalist.
* * *
The lights go down. The curtain opens. The comets streak.
* * *
Medication made all the difference.
* * *
Frank Sinatra suddenly singing in Starbucks from another world.
* * *
He didn’t get back to me.
* * *
Watched the second season.
* * *
spinach
sesame oil
maple syrup
oranges/apples
milk
* * *
His statement contradicted the truth.
* * *
The drain clogged again. Something else more important.
* * *
While dying, he took no painkillers.
* * *
Tree branches flashing by the car window. The beauty.
* * *
Jane Austen. Flannery O’Connor. The Brontë sisters. Husbands?
* * *
Need new socks. New underwear. Tomorrow.
* * *
Of the billions of creatures alive today and of the billions of creatures who have lived, not one has come up with an adequate explanation of why we are here.
* * *
I watch my daughter dance with a frown on her face and a warm feeling washes across my chest.
* * *
Dust haloing the lampshade.
* * *
On her deathbed, she said in a shaky voice, “We had a good time, didn’t we?”
* * *
The pipes are shot. Need to be redone.
* * *
Another story will come.
* * *
See above.
• WHILE IT LASTS •
“But you can’t leave,” cried Isabel when she spotted Bonnie and George getting into their coats in the bright hall. She hurried toward them, knees locked, arms thrown down in outrage. Bonnie and George smiled at her sheepishly.
“We had a lovely time,” Bonnie said.
“Dinner was delicious,” said George.
“You two are no fun anymore,” Isabel said. “Falling in love is antisocial.”
George gazed around him, as if trying to recall something. Being tall he regarded objects near the ground as possibly too far away to bother with. “Did you see where I put my…?”
Bonnie smiled up at him.
“You two are ridiculous,” said Isabel. She lit a cigarette. “I never should have introduced you.”
George wandered off into another room. He was the sort of person who didn’t always remember people’s names, who didn’t worry about being on time for a plane. Bonnie was spellbound by his lack of anxiety. She had worries that plagued her—how to get by on her teaching salary, what was going to happen when the lease was up, how to put something fine into the world. Being near George was like sitting unconcerned on a cloud.
Bonnie kissed Isabel on the cheek. She would be happy to stay—Isabel was a dear friend and normally she’d have been there to the end, helping Isabel clean up and talking about who had been at dinner—but she was just as happy to go. She found a new satisfaction in doing what George wanted to do. Was she giving herself up? Was she turning herself over to him? She didn’t care.
“I’m sorry Richard got here so late,” Bonnie said, remembering to think of Isabel’s feelings.
Isabel shrugged, but showed it had bothered her. Richard worked too hard. “Par for the course,” she said. Then brightly, “You wait, it will happen to you. When the first blush wears off…”
Bonnie nodded sleepily, hearing the words from far away. It was hard to imagine George letting work take over. Work, like many other things, seemed hardly to touch him. He rarely talked about what he did, treating it as something unconnected to his real life, something apart from him. One of the things Bonnie had liked about George when she first met him was exactly that: he was not overly concerned about his career. Somehow it made Bonnie feel all the more important to him. He was simply a person, engaged in the moment right
in front of him. One felt he would do whatever he wanted whenever and however he wanted to do it. Earlier in the evening while Bonnie was helping peel potatoes in the narrow kitchen, Isabel had asked if Bonnie had figured out exactly what it was that George did. Bonnie gave the usual computer business explanation, sounding unconvincing—she didn’t know much about either business or computers—and said that Isabel should just ask him herself.
“I’ve tried,” Isabel said, and one eyebrow went up. “He won’t tell me.”
“Found it,” George said and held up a knapsack. Isabel and Bonnie exchanged a look. The olive-green knapsack was torn and stained and George didn’t notice, or didn’t care. In the knapsack were the mysterious papers he carted around from office to office, doing consulting work. Bonnie, who taught English literature, understood little of what he’d told her, though some of the language was intriguing—optical chips, WORMS, Macintosh—while other language was not: multitasking systems, hypertext, Usenet. Sometimes he borrowed empty apartments to work in. He had ideas for projects of his own, but they were in an incubation stage, nothing ready to put into practice…
“Rushing back to their love haven,” Isabel said. She caught sight of herself in the giant hall mirror—the apartment belonged to her stepmother who lived in Paris—and sucked in her cheeks and plucked at her bangs. “So tell me,” she said, “how many times are you going to do it tonight?” She puffed on her cigarette, holding it up near her ear. “Come on, how many?”
Bonnie colored and smiled. She didn’t know how to joke this way very well. “Just once,” she said with a flippant tone, making no joke whatsoever. She didn’t want to gloat. Isabel and Richard had not been having the best time lately in that department.
George’s eyes glittered. He was an expert at being flippant, not inclined to take things too seriously, and he and Isabel joked often. “All night long though,” he said. Bonnie liked being near their banter. It made her feel—well—not so serious.
George pressed the button for the elevator.
“How can you leave me?” Isabel cried. She grabbed Bonnie’s sleeves, and gazed up at George. “You’re abandoning me to the elections!” She glanced over her shoulder toward a glow of candles in the maroon darkness of the dining room. Past high candlesticks was Richard, tie loosened, leaning back in his chair, admiring a cigar. The man beside him—someone named Froy—was nodding, tossing a balled-up napkin into the air and catching it. A woman, headless because she was standing, poured coffee into Isabel’s stepmother’s china cups. “It could go on all night!” Isabel said with a withered expression.
“Too bad,” George said. He put his leather motorcycle jacket on. “Work tomorrow.”
“Work,” Isabel said. “I bet you two have been getting a lot of work done lately. What do you do—call in sick?”
“Naturally,” George said. Bonnie wondered idly whom he would call.
“Work has sort of fallen by the wayside,” Bonnie said. Admitting it made the old worry resurface—the unread papers, the classes shoddily prepared for, the book review ignored. Before meeting George these were things she was diligent about. She looked up at his smooth face with no worry on it. How much energy she had wasted, for so long, on worrying! Her own expression softened again as if drugged. She hugged Isabel goodbye.
“You two are ridiculous,” Isabel said again.
“And you are wonderful,” said George. It was the perfect thing to say to Isabel. He kissed her good night. “Hey, great boots,” he said, and she lifted her foot to be praised, “though nothing compared to the legs in them.” Isabel beamed.
“I’m glad somebody notices my legs.” Then she pouted. The elevator door opened, right there in the foyer, rousing her. “You can’t leave me!” she cried.
“Evening, Isabel,” said the man in the elevator.
“Oh, Mr. Buffy!” she cried. “I want to come with them. They’re in love!”
Bonnie and George stepped into the elevator and waved at Isabel. The door slid shut. “Madly in love!” they heard behind it.
Mr. Buffy spoke, his voice gruff and startling in the purring elevator. “Love is for the birds,” he said.
Bonnie glanced up at George and saw his thoughts were elsewhere. It pleased her that she was able to read his looks. He was anxious to get home. He was holding her hand. With a thrill she realized that it was to be with her. “Is it?” she said to Mr. Buffy.
“I’m not saying I wasn’t in love,” Mr. Buffy said in a low voice. He tipped his ear in their direction, but kept his back to them, with his hand on the elevator handle, doing his job. “Twenty years ago. But it doesn’t last.” Mr. Buffy shook his head. “Not that I don’t love my wife,” he went on, “but things change. You’ll see. Things get different.” He shrugged. “That’s why it’s for the birds.”
Bonnie noticed that Mr. Buffy was not wearing his usual brass-buttoned uniform. It gave her a pang of worry for him. He was wearing a cardigan and crimson athletic pants. She figured he had not planned to be on duty tonight, and was filling in for the night doorman. She felt how fortunate she and George were. Except for classes, she could juggle her hours, and George did not appear to answer to anyone. No job would force either of them away from home on a cold night. George squeezed her hand and she looked up at his handsome profile, his boyish face. It was a face which seemed untouched. For one dizzy moment, Bonnie felt Mr. Buffy was far more real.
The elevator reached the lobby and she and George stepped out hand in hand. Mr. Buffy followed them across the black-and-white floor, hands deep in his pockets, head lowered. “Isabel,” Mr. Buffy said philosophically, “she used to be in love.”
Bonnie said, “Oh, but she is again.”
“Sure, sure,” said Mr. Buffy. “Every week, every month, every hour, Isabel’s in love.” Bonnie smiled. Mr. Buffy was right. Isabel would end up examining her boyfriends with an eye to their attributes and inevitably they didn’t measure up. This one drank too much, this one had no sense of humor, another was not interested enough in sex. That was the wonderful thing about Bonnie’s love for George so far—it didn’t have to do with characteristics or personality. She loved him wholeheartedly, no questions asked.
Mr. Buffy stood in front of the glass door with the iron leaf grillwork behind and held the doorknob. But he didn’t turn it; he was keeping them there. “That’s why it’s for the birds,” he said. It seemed as if no one wanted them to leave tonight. Bonnie found a sort of comfort in it. It made her feel warm. George was not responding in the same way.
“Well, we’ll wait and see,” he said tersely.
“But you enjoy it,” said Mr. Buffy, speaking in a low voice to Bonnie, who was, at least, receptive. “While you can.” The door slowly opened.
The night air was cold and sharp. “We will,” she said. George’s hand was at the small of her back, urging her forward. She let herself be pushed by the force of the hand, and sank back against the authority of it, but the worry had appeared again, making her slightly uneasy. “Night,” she called back to Mr. Buffy.
Bonnie and George headed off on the sidewalk.
“Because—” they heard. It was Mr. Buffy calling after them. Bonnie turned, craning her neck over George’s leather shoulder. Mr. Buffy was standing in the freezing cold in his cardigan sweater with one arm raised underneath the stark light of the awning’s bulb. He had come out after them with something more to say. But Bonnie would never know what it was: George whisked her around the corner.
Everything lately was going fast. It was like being in a wave. Normally she’d still be upstairs chatting with Isabel over coffee, taking in the rosy afterglow of dinner. She was, she had to admit, behind at work. A stack of papers she’d put on her desk had, after a couple of days, begun to look permanent, and it was harder to think about moving it. Other things that had mattered a great deal to her a month ago she could hardly recall—it was a
s if they had become weightless objects and were drifting about in a gravity-free air, no longer of concern to her. Instead, substantial before her was George’s untroubled face.