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Beginnings
FICTION by Bernard Schwartz
1.
Before she left, Anna decided to buy him a present. It wasn’t Christmastime—It
wasn’t birthday time—but she was moving out and wanted to get him something.
She got him a box of ten white envelopes. In the middle of each envelope she
wrote her new address. Then she took the box of envelopes (and the requisite
number of stamps) and wrapped them in brown paper. On the outside of the brown
paper she wrote two words.
“Write me,” she wrote.
And he tried. She hadn’t provided him any paper, but it was easy enough to
track down. He found paper and pen, a comfortable chair and the right time of
day, and he sat down to write her. He sat down to honor this last request of
hers.
He wondered if this might be the last thing she ever asked of him, sitting
there staring at the blank pages, and he turned angry. Anger made him smaller,
not bigger. It made him shrink, like a turtle. He should have been able to
transform this anger into words. Instead, he wrote nothing at all. Instead, he
watched as his mind projected onto the blank page all the images she had left
for him there. They came randomly, and in full color.
2.
Darrell did not know where the pain came from. He did not know where it came
from and he could not articulate it. He did not know where it came from and he
could not articulate it, but worst of all was the fact that even if someday
somehow he managed to figure it out, there was no one there to talk to.
Where had they gone?
As Darrell’s creator, and the creator of his pain, I know the answer to this
question. Or, that should be corrected. I will know the answer to this
question before you do.
3.
She did not hate the people who made her, only what they made her do.
4.
First, you must write a poem.
But I don’t write poems. What if it’s a bad poem?
Then it’s a bad poem.
You’ll think less of me.
No.
Yes, you’re a poet. You’ll think less of me.
How do you think I became a poet?
In the first place?
In the first place.
I don’t know.
Guess.
You wrote good poems?
I wrote poems.
Give me the pen.
5.
A poem.
He jumped up and down and beat his belly like a drum. “Like my dance?” he
asked her. He was happy. Standing under the water, he was happy. She was
happy, too. Watching him, she was happy.
How do I know? Because I heard the two of them. And I am a good listener. From
my bedroom, which shares a wall with the bathroom, I sit up in bed, slow my
breathing, close my eyes, and listen to the sounds that they make.
But the sounds of happiness are difficult for me to hear.
Do you like my dance, he said.
Let me under the water, she said.
I’m getting cold and I have to wash my hair, she said.
Let me wash it for you, he said.
No, she said.
Why, he said.
You know why, she said.
That doesn’t bother me, he said.
It bothers me, she said.
That bothers me, he said.
It shouldn’t, she said.
(then silence)
What if I went bald, she said.
I’m going bald, he said.
We could go bald together, he said.
You’re not going bald, she said.
I’ve seen your grandfather, she said.
Which one, he said.
Both, she said.
You will always have hair, she said.
I’m getting out, he said.
I love you, he said.
6.
Stanley missed the Subway. It had been more than a year since the stroke, and
he had regained most of his memory and some of his motor skills, and one of
the things he remembered was that he missed the Subway and wanted to go for a
ride.
He asked Evelyn, the nurse, what she thought.
“What about all those stairs?” she asked.
Evelyn was Stanley’s live-in help. They had been living together for more than
a year, though neither had marked the occasion of their first anniversary with
so much as a word or gesture.
“What about all those people?” she asked. Won’t they knock you down, get
pissed off at the slow old man who can’t get out of their way?
“I don’t pay you to think about other people,” Stanley replied.
7.
Max kept a notebook sometimes, and in it he wrote things like this:
Query 1: Do the deaf wear mittens?
Query 2: Do the blind empathize?
Query 3: What is a yawn?
Query 4: What is a sneeze?
These queries did not please him, but writing them down did. His goal was to
fill a whole notebook. Other times, he wrote things like this:
Story idea: A man mourns the loss of his wife by buying a Golden retriever and
moving to middle Europe and becoming a medieval scribe who learns the art of
calligraphy and commits himself to copying down the Bible in his own hand.
These ideas did not please him, but writing them down did. And writing them
down, he got closer to reaching his goal, the goal of filling a whole
notebook. Many times, though, he wrote things like this:
Go.
Please go.
Why?
Just go.
I don’t understand.
You’re not supposed to.
But I want to.
Come here.
8.
He married her for the money, but she refused to die. She had promised him it
would happen within the year—that’s what the doctor had said, given the type
of cancer (breast) and the disease’s remarkable progress since its initial
diagnosis (all the way to her brain)—but here they were, their first
anniversary, and there she was, across from him at her favorite table, at her
favorite restaurant, trying to get the waitress to tell her what she wanted
for dinner. He knew, of course, that short of committing suicide (he had
offered to help) there was nothing she could do about breaking her promise,
but, still, the body’s refusal to die, this uncertainty, her happiness—it was
all too much. He interrupted the waitress on her third recitation of the
specials.
“Just order already,” he demanded.
She looked at him, surprised at his rudeness—interrupting the waitress like
that.
“It’s too hard to choose,” she said. “Everything is so good, after all.”
She glanced up at the waitress and winked. The waitress grinned and hoped that
the woman tipped as well as she winked. (She didn’t.)
“Do you remember our wedding, John?” she asked.
This wedding story she was about to tell, whichever one it was, was for the
waitress, not him. He knew this and refused to play along.
“Yes,” he said. And inside he was pleased that this act of cruelty, performed
bitterly and in the face of a dying woman’s persistent happiness, hadn’t made
him feel too guilty, unmanageably guilty. “Yes, of course I remember our
wedding. The question is, dear, do you?”
9.
Betsy stormed out of the apartment. She had reacted to his “Where are you
going?” by slamming the door and stomping down the stairs. He got up from the
couch and walked over to the bedroom window. Looking down, he saw her holding
the building’s front door for Mrs. Helm. He saw Mrs. Helm nod with gratitude.
And he watched as Betsy walked into the little grocery store across the
street.
She hadn’t gone far, he thought. Usually when they fought she stormed out of
the apartment and stayed out for hours. Going to the grocery store, this meant
she would be back soon. But his relief was soon replaced with anxiety. This
was new for Betsy, what was she doing? Worse, he couldn’t help thinking that
she might be in there buying the ingredients for a particularly nasty meal
and, as punishment, planning to serve it for dinner that night.
10.
The phone rings. It rings and rings and rings some more. Standing there in the
airport terminal, he holds the receiver to his ear and listens to the rings.
He tries to calculate in number of rings the length of time it will take his
grandmother to sit up in bed, slide on her slippers and walk down the hall and
into the kitchen where she keeps the only phone in the house.
On the tenth ring, he shifts his weight from his right foot to his left. On
the fifteenth ring, he entertains the following possibility: Maybe she’s not
home. Then, on the twenty-third ring, this:
“Hello?”
“Hi, grandma. It’s your grandson. I’m at the airport.”
“Sammy?”
“Do you have any other grandsons?”
“I thought you were coming in tomorrow.”
“I need directions to the house. I have to tell the cab driver where to go.”
“Hold on, let me get your grandfather.”
Now, as a kind of punishment, he forced himself to swallow his gum. He had
been warned about this. His mother had warned him not to ask too many
questions.
He hung up the phone. He hung up the phone, took a deep breath and called
back. Listening to it ring and ring and ring some more, he tried to calculate
in number of rings the length of time it would take his grandmother to
remember that his grandfather, her husband, had been dead 15 years. |
