Sun | January 08, 2006
Winter Passage
It was a morning in December. I sat in my cubicle, looking at the bruised purplish grey wall and lamenting the passing of the holiday season, in which I had taken little part. My cell phone rang. I wished it was Jake. It was my sister.
She spoke with affected friendliness. We hate each other. I try to ignore her. I think her trivial. Sure enough she had called to ask me what size her coffee filters were. Two years ago I bought her a coffee maker. I resented the fact that I knew they were size 4.
"Are you sure it's 4?"
"No," I said, for no reason.
"Does it really matter if I get the wrong size? What's the difference? Oh, I think they get bigger." Jen could not make the smallest decision without consulting someone. I welcomed the break from work so I tolerated the conversation.
"They're on sale! Twenty cents." she said. "Twenty cents, for one hundred!" she was dividing out the cost per cone. I braced myself for the result. And then decided I didn't want to hear it.
"I have to go," I said.
"I'm getting a new shampoo and conditioner."
"I have to go."
"What are you doing?"
"Work."
I got off the phone and took a walk around the floor. There was no one there. It was the week after Christmas and before the New Year. Everyone was off having a good time.
I made myself a coffee with two sugars, a little skim, and a little half and half. I sat down and gauged the size of my thighs. They had gotten fat from too many nights with mud slide.
They rubbed against each other as I walked the halls again and glanced into the empty cubicles. Seeking a reason to prolong the walk, I went down the stairwell. The stairwell was dusty. I wondered whether the air was hazardous. The walls were a wet-looking white and the steps were grey. Inexplicably there were a few small white feathers at every landing. It gave me an ominous feeling, as if a bird might suddenly fly out from around the corner.
I had never been to the bottom. At the bottom was a long hall. It was wide and tall enough for a small car. With a bicycle on top. And more. I felt liberated, and trotted down the passage. The white cinderblock gleamed. It would make a fine sordid retreat with Jake. Jake was a guy I would never have.
I know a place we can go, I say.
Let's stop here, he says, on a landing in the stairwell.
No, there's a better place at the bottom, I say. Look at those small white feathers. What do you think they're doing there?
We reach the bottom, where I paced, imagining it all. I wondered if it would be unhealthy to inhale deeply there. And if lingering there one would pick up the smell of polluted rain that stagnated in that space.
oh! oh! oh! oh!
But Jake was not the type. He worked on Wall Street. He lived on the East Side. He wouldn't think of going down there. I asked myself how long I had been down there myself. I walked to the end where there was a metal door and a sign that said: Caution: stairs immediately behind door. I pushed the bar and peered down the stairs to the door at the end, but did not go.
"Where'd ja go?" Alex asked. He always asked where I had been.
"Nowhere," I said.
He did not reply. I began to feel regretful. "I went down the stairwell," I said a few minutes later.
Alex was interested in me, but I was not interested in him. He was too cheery. I had moved beyond that long ago, and I could not go back. And yet--
"I'll show you something," I said.
"Ok," he said. Around the corner and down the stairwell we went. He did not see the feathers on the ground. He did not see things unless they were pointed out to him. It was one reason why I disliked him. And when we were at the bottom and walking down the long, remote hall, he did not see its potential.
"Well," he said, looking at the clammy walls. "It's like another place entirely."
We are in another place, I would have said, but I didn't. I turned around and led the way back. I supposed I must be a little insane for looking at that clammy hallway and thinking of anything besides the clammy hallway.
At 6 as I got up to leave, he got up also. "Time for a drink?" he asked.
"Okay."
We had not taken ten steps when he said, "or do you want to get sushi." It was alarming, the way he proceeded without caution. And yet I thought, perhaps this is the only way things will happen. Jake and I were both so cautious, and doubtful, that nothing would ever happen.
"Cheers," he said, lifting his glass of sake. He brought it to his lips with a lascivious look. It seemed improper and premature and completely unfounded. He raised an eyebrow and nodded knowingly. He reminded me of my mother, who talked on and on, without checking to see if anyone was listening.
I drank. My charm bracelet jingled as I put my arm down. He reached over and felt it. I reflexively extended my arm to make it easier for him. He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. I drew it back.
"The sushi is good," he said.
My face had flushed with the wine, and as we walked down the street past unknown people on the sidewalk and past buildings and apartments full of more unknown, I felt drawn to this convenient, immediate person next to me. As we stopped at a crosswalk, I suddenly put my hand in his elbow.
"It's cold!" I said. "It's colder than it was before."
"My apartment is warm," he said, "and so is my bed."
I broke free of his arm. His eyes glinted in the lamplight. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. I wanted to say something to him. I wanted to tell him he was crazy for the way he proceeded without caution.
"Look at that," he said, pointing off to the side. I looked. He stepped forward and his lips were on my neck. The wetness touched me to the bones.
The bothersome pest dissolved and I clung to the warmth and the shared breath. I laughed. He stood close and pushed against and upwards. It was unabashedly crass. He did it again. I gave no reaction. I was thinking. But I was trying to think as I hung about his shoulders and it was useless. My mind had collapsed and spilled over like melted candlewax.
His bed was higher than mine, and it felt as if we had gotten on stage. But we were on a boat, on a river, and it was a relief to be there.
"A cigar," he said afterwards. I thought of how to go back. It was impossible.
He had put on his robe and sat on a low armchair. He did not think to offer me anything. I took his shirt and crawled onto his lap. I thought of the stairwell and its dusty steps. And of the hall at the bottom-- how it glowed with that strange, slimy white paint. His apartment seemed large and well decorated. There was a fabric hanging on the wall. On the next wall, there was another fabric.
On the table, there was a wooden puzzle of several interlocking pieces. I walked over and picked it up.
"Don't take that apart," he said languidly, "I don't know how to put it back together." I found the piece that slid out, and it fell to pieces on the table.
"My God," he said with genuine consternation.
"I'll fix it," I said. I began to study the small logs and their indentations.
I took a few pieces back to the armchair and he put his arms around my waist. It was a pleasant constraint. I did not resist-- in fact I wanted to feel them tighter. Reaching under his robe I felt his chest, and kissed him again and again.
I picked one piece up and counted the nicks. Three. And the next piece had two. As I put them together, flipped and tried, he advised, "they don't fit side by side. You have to line up the identical pieces and then fit them crosswise."
He went to sleep. I stayed up. I thought of how when Jake held the door he was thinking, let me get the door for her. Alex did it thinking, I'm a swell guy. It was no good, I knew.
It was late. "Alex," I said. He had fallen asleep. I got into the bed and waited, sleeping and waking, for the morning.
Posted by Lily at 02:15 AM
Thu | November 17, 2005
Ava's Escape
Ava had a recurrent dream. She worked at an old building. It had a yellow glow instead of the fluorescence at the office where she worked in real life. She went out on the roof. A moment ago it was day, but out on the roof it was night. There was a playground-- a large plastic playground like the one she never had when she was a kid. At the top of the playground was a red, yellow and blue striped tent. The stripes ran vertically with the pomp of a flag. There was wet rain and a postcard view of the Manhattan skyline. She passed the playground. She went to the edge of the roof and --woke up.
Withdrawl. That is my method, she thought to herself, as she pushed 3, 5, 8 to get into the bathroom. I invite condescension. I bring it on myself. It's in the way I carry myself. Open, just waiting for someone to stab me. She looked down as she undid her grey plaid pants with the pink and yellow cross-hatches. As she sat on the toilet, she smoothed out the pink ribbon that served as a belt. She did not need to go to the bathroom. She had gone there to think.
What makes Jen so great? She doesn't fool me for a second. I don't believe she's accomplished anything. I haven't either-- but at least I don't act like I'm so great. Ava wished she was a squirrel. She wished she worked at McDonald's. She wished life was simpler. She wished she was ugly and dumb. The ugly and dumb were never expected to do things. She was cute and smart. Everyone assumed that everything about her was peachy. She looked at her cute outfit and thought perhaps it was not such a good outfit. It made her look like a nice girl. On top she wore a cream cardigan. Her hair was in french braids. There was no one to look cute for. There were only people to look vulnerable to.
I bring it on myself. I act happy even when I'm not. I act happy especially when I'm not.
She had gone over to Mark's cubicle. Mark had always been nice to her. He had often caught her up in his girlish energy. He was tall and wore close-fitting black shirts. They looked plain and casual but they were very expensive.
"Hi," Ava said.
"Hi," said Mark. But he didn't look up. He flipped through his papers as if he were concentrating on finding something. Ava walked away.
She had almost gone to Nicole. Nicole was the office pariah. Her body was like a twig, like the letter K. She scurried around like a confused ant. She started every sentence twice. No one had the patience to talk to her. As beaten as Ava was, Nicole was abused even more-- and openly. Was there a word for this, Ava wondered? It was not shadenfreude. That was pleasure at seeing others suffer. She wanted a word that meant the relief you feel that someone is worse off than you.
Ava had nowhere to go so she went to the bathroom.
"I don't do the cataloging," Jen had said a few weeks ago, as if it were a low thing to do. Ava had been doing just that for the past several months. And now Jen had ruined the credibility of her current project. It would not matter what Ava did. Whatever it was would acquire a tinge of worthlessness because of how Jen spoke of it. Jen was above everything; thus Jen did nothing-- nothing but erode the reputation of Ava. All she did was judge and make everything good into bad. She was like Midas but worse. Everything she touched turned to shit.
Ava estimated that she had been gone about twenty minutes. She thought of what she would say when she got back. She would try and pretend nothing had happened. But during her time in the bathroom stall the emotions had built up in her, rather than subsided. She thought she might cry. She would say she felt sick and take the rest of the day off.
She left the bathroom and thought of something else. Instead of going back, she went into the stairwell. She had never been in the stairwell. Up and up she went. She went as quickly as she could, not noticing how far up she went. The exertion relieved her frustration and she kept going. As she neared the top she remembered her dream. She had never remembered it before. She had only thought, right after she woke up, that she had had it before. And then she forgot it.
It came to her as she got to the top and saw the black door with a bar and a wheel. She tried to remember if that was the door in her dream but she didn't know. She put her hand on the door and felt its coolness. It was locked.
She returned to her cubicle. No one had noticed she was even gone.
Posted by Lily at 07:38 PM
Thu | August 25, 2005
Field of Flowers
This assignment was to write the story in a painting.
Claudia sat on the fold-up stool and looked at her daughter in the field of flowers. Her daughter Veronica had retained her figure despite having had a child. The boy, now four, played with Marie's six-year old daughter. They tumbled in the grass. They wrestled, and the girl straddled the boy in pure innocence.
Her daughter wore a pastel blue dress which flattered her graceful figure. Claudia had helped her choose the dress when they were at the shop in town. It matched the blue lavendar in the field. She could not make out her daughter’s facial expression, however. It was a blur. Claudia’s sight was deteriorating. The children were mere shapes in the grass. She saw that behind them, there were three slender trees with tall, dark trunks, but the leaves were indistinct patches of green and blue.
Veronica carried a parasol which completed the picture for Claudia. But for Veronica the purpose of the parasol was not to look beautiful, but to shield herself from the sun. Veronica was practical. She had been told since a young age that she was beautiful, and thus thought little of it.
"Veronica," she called. "I am getting old," she said as her daughter approached. She knew that this bothered her daughter but she could not help it. It had become as natural as 'hello' or 'how are you' and she could not open a conversation otherwise.
"Stop saying that," said Veronica. "You are the healthiest sixty-year old woman in the world."
"What would you like to have for dinner?" Claudia asked.
"I’d like to try that bistro we saw in the town," said Veronica.
"Ah yes. I am going to order the duck. And afterwards we can go to the theater. Marie will take care of the children."
An artist had come to the field and the children gathered around to observe him. Soon their little hands grasped at the pastel charcoals and the frenchman courteously prevented them. "Désolé," said Veronica as she swept both of the children up in her arms and took them away.
As they departed Claudia remarked, "When I was young I wanted to be a painter."
"I never knew that your appreciation of art had that connection," said Veronica.
"I was very young. Until I was ten, twelve, and a little beyond that. I liked to draw. I drew and I painted all day, for hours on end. When I was not drawing or painting I was imagining how I would draw or paint whatever was around me."
"And what happened?"
"Nothing. I was a child. My mother told me I spent too much time with my drawings and I should spend more time socializing with friends. So I did."
"I liked to draw a bit too, when I was a child."
"I was pleased when you took that on. But you did not continue. Did you ever want to be an artist?"
"No, I thought of it as a small hobby."
"I would have given my life to it, and not known it had passed."
"I am sure you would have made a fine artist, mom." She had not received the intended impact of her mother's statement. Like many people, Veronica did not take the talk of elderly people very seriously— especially not her own mother's. This is how Claudia knew she was getting old— she could say anything.
"If your child shows any inclination for art you will encourage him."
"Of course."
They walked through the field of flowers. The golds and the greens were like an enchanted land in a fairy tale. She marvelled anew that her daughter, herself so exquisite, did not feel inspired and uplifted in the presence of beauty. Veronica did not notice things. The frenchman had thrown her a mischievous look but she had barely seen him. They progressed slowly. The mother and daughter walked in a straight line, and the children ran ahead and around them in all directions.
Claudia and her daughter had taken this trip to France for her sixtieth birthday. They were in Provence, away from the asphalt they saw daily in Pennsylvania. At the edge of the field they sat waiting for the car that would take them into town.
"I am weak," said the mother.
"You've had too much sun," said the daughter.
"That's not what I mean," said Claudia. "I am weak in spirit. I never had the audacity to do what I wanted. I found a decent man to marry and I married him. Then I lived a mundane life of petty, trivial problems. How to arrange the furniture in the living room. What kind of toaster to get. The things to cook for dinner. How to liven up the salad. I know a million variations on the theme of dinner."
"That's what life is."
"I wonder if I could have been a painter. A great one. I was afraid to even try. And you- have no such desire."
"I have a great appreciation for art but I have no desire to create it myself. Is there anything wrong with that?"
"No, nothing at all," said Claudia. She saw the car approaching at a distance and nodded towards it. "Let's go have that duck."
Posted by Lily at 02:23 PM | comment
C said on Dec 29, 06 02:22 PM:
I thought the story would more interesting if you focused more on the theme of the child missing the point of most of what her mother is saying. A commentary on how we often hear but do not listen. But, don't point this out in the story. Make the reader figure it out.
Or maybe that's what you are trying to say. That last line with the mother saying - Let's go have that duck - is her giving up trying to get her point across to the child.
Sun | August 21, 2005
roommates
I don’t know why I wrote this. It has no place except here.
Whenever Shawn had a disagreement with Lauren, he said, "we’ll flip for it." Lauren always called tails. She always lost. The coin was double-headed. Shawn had gotten it awhile ago from a street vendor on Houston Street. When he saw it, he knew it would be good on her, because she always called tails.
"Let’s get a new couch," she had been saying. When he got home he went over to the couch and exaggerated his search for a good spot to sit. He sat demonstrably on the worn springs, letting his feet up in the air to show how low he sank. Sure enough she said it again. "Let’s flip for it," he said, taking out the coin.
It didn’t happen often enough for her to suspect. In this way he saved himself a couple of hundred of dollars he would have spent splitting the cost of a new couch, a 7 am run to the grocery store for milk, and Texas barbecue instead of pizza one Saturday night.
One day she said, "you always use a penny. Use a quarter." And sure enough, she won. From then on they always used a quarter.
Posted by Lily at 05:24 PM | comment
Mon | August 01, 2005
the compromise
The eyebrow is of great importance-- a sign of beauty and refinement, and awareness of current trends. Plucked and arched, but not overplucked, to one extreme, or too heavily drawn, to another, good eyebrows enhance the face but are not immediately apparent. They are a sidekick, there to provide support but never to be the center of attention.
These facts were lost on Genny Waterhouse, whose unibrow was the first thing you noticed about her and the thing you then made a conscious effort to forget, but never quite could, and ended up simply not looking at her at all, talking instead to the wall, or at some object in the corner.
Genny plucked the hairs below her brow, but not inbetween. Her friend had told her that one does not pluck the hairs between the brows, and as an impressionable fifteen year old, Genny believed her. It was two years later, and she had still not realized that her eyebrows were an error. This mistake kept her at the lowest rung of the ladder in her social group.
She was already on the way there regardless of the unibrow. She was homely and pictures and portraits of her were the main decoration in her parents' apartment. Her face was round; her body was round also. It was not an amorphous blob-- it was curvy. She had breasts and hips, but they were maternal, rather than sexy.
And yet a senior asked her to the prom because he knew they could have sex and he felt safe doing it with her. She was into poetry and her brain was mushy and associative, and she would do it just for the sensation. There was no delusion of love involved. Or there was and there wasn't, on her part. She would imagine how it might feel if she really were in love. It would be like reading a poem. So she would get a certain amount of emotional juice out of it, even if it was mostly about the sex itself. It was this level of comfort with emotions and sex, that arose out of her reading of literature and poetry, that the boy sensed, and felt she would be a good date to the prom.
For her part she knew she was homely; when she looked in the mirror she saw she was not the beauty described in poetry. She had fair, luminous skin, though, and this was the one connection to beauty that she clung to and drew confidence and reassurance from. She also grew her brown hair long. She kept it in a braid because the private school she attended required that long hair be tied back. She imagined it was romantic and mysterious. She would only let it loose, she told herself, in the bedroom. But that being such a rare occasion and long in coming, she also let it out every once in awhile on a weekend.
At seventeen she had experienced many of the best things in life, or had acquired an understanding of them-- sex and relationships, mostly, but also love, and life, and careers. What was left but to execute them? There was newness but there was also jadedness. Awareness of process is a loss to those who are told, and told early, how the world works. Having the benefit of others' experience, they are denied the experience of struggle, mistake, and disillusionment. They have disillusionment but it is a letter in the mail. They never float, wondering what they are, in absolute space. There is instead always a sense of place within a system.
When she was ten she brought leftover pizza for lunch and her friends Lia and Vicky thought it was cool. They declared that every Wednesday must be pizza day, and that Genny would bring one slice for herself and one to split between her friends.
When she was twelve she was surprised to be the first to get her period. Lia and Vicky were so much more prepared for it, since they carried pads around with them everywhere they went. She waited for a month, and then another, to tell them, at which point she lied and said it had only been a month ago. It was the subject of conversation for the next month, during which Genny got practice describing things that are somewhat indescribable, or at least very difficult to describe.
She said yes when Rob Barnes asked her to the prom and she knew what it meant, or of the many things it meant she knew what was most important. It would be a strength, a contribution to her social group, for her to do it and tell her friends about it later. This is why they went shopping with her and all tried on dresses, even though they were not all going to the prom, and played most of the evening out in detail, over several shopping trips, in all its possible variations, up until the point when Rob and Genny would be alone in their hotel room. At that point things became a bit unclear.
Genny went to the prom in a black structured off-the-shoulder knee-length dress. The structure did its best to bring elegance and grace to her curves. The fabric was a textured brocade and her shoes were pointy Jimmy Choos. Her hair was down, and curled in soft waves. Her unibrow was the same as always. To avoid eye contact with the brow her date spent most of the evening dancing cheek to cheek, or talking with his friends.
Her date had rented a hotel room at the Hilton, as had his friends. They even hung out for a bit and extended the party into the hotel. The girls kicked off their shoes and those who were friends talked to each other, but not to Genny. She had no choice but to sit dumbly by her date's side. The television was switched on and it looked as if it would go on indefinitely. But Rob, for one, was determined to see it through. He wanted to get it over with, to have this experience and check it off his list. Genny, detecting his thoughts, and feeling the same way, said she was tired.
There wasn't a lot of kissing. There was touching and there was some hesitance and confusion, but then there was sex. When it happened they looked into each other's eyes and they smiled at the success.
She told Lia and Vicky what she could, as best she could, and found ways to make knowing reference to it over the next few years, in particular when she felt she might be around those who were less experienced than she was. She was ever the resource and gentle informer. Her ambition would lead her to try other things just to add them to her resume. But what she would never have was sex driven by its own force, its own need and its true nature, instead of as a deliberate experiment, act or experience.
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notes
This was sort of carelessly written, and not revised, but I don't like it enough to go back through it. There is a rush to it at points where I prolly should have written more, filled in more, especially towards the end/ second half/ last third. Perhaps some other day.