Very Good
When he was young he believed he had it in him to be great. Music swirled around his head like moths at a lamppost, so thick it would make him dizzy. There were moments when the violin felt organic, a part of his body. The bow was an extension of his hand, musical cartilage. His fingers seemed to move of their own accord, as though the music bypassed his brain and sizzled directly through his hands.
But those were moments, only moments. The great violinists, he discovered, felt that sensation every waking hour. He realized he was not great and never would be. He wasn't even excellent. He was merely very good. The gap between very good and great is exceedingly narrow to the untrained ear. To him it was a galactic expanse...immeasurable, cold, alien.
Very good was enough to get him work. No concert halls for him, no symphonies or command performances, but he was hired to play at tables of good restaurants and in hotel lobbies. He worked at catered events and performed at weddings on weekends. Very good was just barely enough to earn a small living.
Being very good filled him with despair. It gave him the ability to recognize and appreciate true greatness and to know he'd never achieve it. At times he wished he'd been born tone deaf. But then he'd pick up his violin and play a measure of Mozart's Sonata for Violin and Piano in B Major. And it was very good. Good enough to break his heart from joy and from anguish.
Very good violinists do not get record contracts. They get no royalties. They have no pension plans, no retirement accounts. As he grew older, they no longer hired him at the restaurants. He was no longer welcome in the hotel lobbies. He was not asked to play at weddings. He played instead in the parks and in the subway stations.
And still there were moments, brief beautiful moments, when the music would swirl moth-like round his head, when his gnarled fingers moved on their own, when the music seemed to rise straight and pure from his own resonating skeleton and the violin was its voice. One day, he knew, those moments would disappear. And then, finally, he'd be able to lay down his violin.
Persistence of Memory
The years and the drink dull the mind and diffuse the memory. Sometimes too much; sometimes not enough. But I remember her. Her face, her voice, what she said.
Was she lovely? I remember her as lovely. For a week, a wet and dismal week, she haunted the harborside. I saw her several times, always at dusk, wandering the rain-slick streets, looking curiously at the faces of the men who walked with a sailor's gait. She was small and dressed all in black, as if in mourning.
On the last day she spoke to me. She was standing, I think, by the pier. Was the pier still standing then, or had the storm already destroyed it? Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. I stepped aside to let her pass, and she stopped and looked up at me.
I was a handsome young buck back then, cocky and confident, and accustomed to being looked at by women. Her eyes were dark, dark but not serious. Almost merry. She spoke to me in a voice as gentle as soft rain. She said, "The sea murders pretty men like you. She drags them down and holds them in her cold arms. Sometimes she lets their bodies go, but she never releases their souls. Never." She smiled then, smiled sweetly, and she fastidiously stepped around me. I never saw her again.
Was she talking about me? Was she talking about a dead lover lost at sea? Was she talking about all sailors? I didn't know, and being young I didn't care. For the next twenty-two years I continued to work the seas. And when I thought of her, I'd smile. Friends died at sea during those years, they had accidents that cost them fingers and eyes and occasionally a limb. But nothing touched me.
After twenty-two years I had the sailor's dream. I'd saved enough money to buy a tavern in some harbor town, and I had a cache of wild stories to tell my customers. After being ashore for half a year, I realized I had no real friends in town; they were either dead or still at sea. I had no family but the family of sailors. I had no wife, I had no child, I had no home but a room above the tavern. I looked older than my years; the sea had aged me. I had nothing but stories and memories and the empty company of customers.
More and more, my memories turn to her. Her smallness, her smile, her voice, her eyes. Her eyes, her eyes. For a while I feared that one day she'd step through the door of my tavern. Now I fear she won't.
White Gloves, Bronze Feet
He wasn't the man for swans, according to Wallace Stevens. He might have been the Tom Cruise of communism, but he disturbed the swans. Here is a fact I've just made up: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the most statued person in the world. There are more statues of Lenin than there are of the Buddha. This newly-minted fact may even be true.
As I sit on the steps by Lenin's feet, none of that matters to me in the least. I don't care about Lenin's politics, I don't care about his sociopathic personality, I don't care about his dictatorial policies. I don't care about his cute little cap or his massive Duncan McLeod-Highlander coat (there can be only one!). What I care about is this: redemption.
Not of his soul. Bugger his soul. I mean redemption in a purely utilitarian way. This sixteen foot bronze statue was torn down after the fall of communism. If the world made any sense at all, it should have been melted down and recast into bells and cymbals for oppressed peoples to play on the anniversary of Lenin's death. But the world doesn't make sense. So seven tons of bronze molded in the shape of one of the world's greatest criminals was shipped at great cost across the crumbling Soviet Union, shipped across the ocean, transported over American soil and erected right here, amid a forest of Mexican take-out restaurants. That's what I call redemption.
And that means there's hope for us all. That means even us slackers lazing against Lenin's scooter-sized feet and sipping on Snapple Peach Iced Tea can reasonably hope for a second chance. I mean, nothing we do will ever be nearly as bad as what Lenin did.
Lenin told us "You cannot make a revolution in white gloves." I don't know what that means, but I'm gonna get it printed onto a hoodie. I'll trademark it and sell them over the internet. I'll make millions. That'll be
my redemption.
Comrade Bragg said it. The revolution is only a t-shirt away.
Lunch Hour
She only truly exists in the half shadows, the interstitial territory between reality and Faerie. She's a programmer for an actuarial company in Providence. On her lunch hour she walks to a nearby park, where she eats homemade falafel.
If you just looked at her you'd see an earnest young professional woman, quiet, modestly-dressed, solitary, aloof. If you looked at her and actually
saw her, you'd see her as she truly is. And if you saw her as she truly is, the buildings of Providence would turn transparent and fade away like pale wisps of white smoke. The park benches would reveal themselves as stelae of green-veined marble, delicately etched with symbols that tickle at the contours of your memory and seem almost, almost,
almost intelligible. Birdsong, muted by the cough of diesel bus motors and the incessant hum of traffic, would become perfectly mellifluous and so absolutely clear that the sound of it would resonate through the bones of your jaw. If you truly saw her, the smells of the small city park...exhaust fumes layered over french fry grease and the post-nasal stink of pesticides...would dissipate and the air would be filled with the scent of something not-quite-jasmine and not-quite-lilac. And she herself would be clad in tribal garb and painted with pallid, aboriginal daubs. The Roberta Chiarella barrettes in her hair would be transformed into ornately plaited leafs and feathers.
But to see her as she truly is, you must use a different set of eyes. Your eyes must be much much older, or much much younger. Then, when her lunch hour ends and she walks back to her office building and to her fourth floor computer station, you could see that on the bench where she ate her falafel lies a single peacock feather.
Proud as Stones
My son stacks rocks. He's an artist. Doesn't paint, doesn't draw stuff, doesn't carve stuff, doesn't do any of the stuff you think artists are supposed to do. What he does, he stacks rocks. Museums pay him huge amounts of money to come and stack rocks. Then they charge people ten bucks a pop to come and look at the stacks of rocks. He goes to a museum, stacks rocks for a couple of days, makes more money than I do in a month.
I tell him I'm proud of him. He's my son, after all. What else am I gonna to say? Am I gonna tell him I don't understand any of this? Am I gonna tell him I think stacking rocks is silly? Am I gonna tell him I'm embarrassed by it?
Down to the plant I hear people talking about him. They're laughing at him. Oh, they're impressed as hell by all the money he makes, but they're still laughing. And the truth is I'd be laughing too, if he wasn't my son.
He invites us, me and his mom, to the openings of his...his 'installations,' he calls them. They're not installations. A rock isn't something you install. We go, of course. He invites us, of course we're going. I eat them little snacks they serve and tell everybody who asks how proud his mom and I are, but I don't know what the hell they're talking about.
I've looked real hard at some of the stacks of rocks. They're sorta pretty, I guess. Sometimes, if I squint my eyes or right after I sneeze, they sort of remind me of mountains. Like the ones I saw in this TV show on China. I asked him once, was the rocks supposed to look like China. He said, "Do they look like China to you?" I told him yeah, and he said "Then that's what they're supposed to look like."
What sorta answer is that to give to your old man? I may not know anything about art or stacking rocks, but I'm damned well not stupid. I don't have to be talked down to by my own boy. So I told him, "Just tell me what the fuck I'm supposed to see when I look at them, in case some was to ask me."
I didn't mean to get mad at him. It's just, sometimes I wish he was a normal kid with a normal job. I wish I could brag about him down to the plant. People come up to me, they ask me "How's that boy of yours, he still stacking them rocks?" "All the way to the bank," is what I say. I don't let them see I'm embarrassed. A man shouldn't never be ashamed of his son.
All that and a croissant
"This is just coffee," she said.
"Pardon?"
"What we're doing. We're only having a cup of coffee together."
"I thought I'd have a croissant too, but I understand what you mean. Yes, just coffee."
"I just want to be clear."
"And you've succeeded admirably," he said.
"I mean, I'm not...I should let you know that I'm not, well, not available for any sort of romantic, uh, entanglement."
"Okay. Fortunately, this is just a short term caffeine entanglement. Are you saying you're married? Or involved with somebody?"
"No, no, it's just...I don't know why I agreed to do this. I'm really not very good at this sort of thing."
"I can see that. You probably just need practice."
"Why did you ask me to coffee?"
"I like your earrings."
"What?"
"I like your earrings. And your book selection. Look, I see you at the library two, three times a month. In the fiction section, in history, in the bios, in the reference department. You check out interesting books. And you wear interesting dangly earrings. So I thought you'd be an interesting person to talk to. Over coffee."
"I'm not."
"Oh?"
"Well, I am. Usually. I think. Just not right now. You must think I'm nuts, acting like this. Blathering."
"Not yet. But then, this is the first time we've spoken. I've never seen you act any other way. How do you normally act?"
"Different. You're very sure of yourself, aren't you."
"I am right now. It's easier to be sure of yourself when it's the other person who's blathering. Had you asked me to coffee, I'd be the one blathering now."
"I wouldn't have asked you to coffee."
"Oh."
"I didn't mean it like that. Don't look so deflated. I just meant I wouldn't have had the nerve."
"Ah. Maybe if I wore dangly earrings?"
"Maybe. Here comes your croissant. I love a croissant, but there's something about the shape that seems rather larval."
"Larval."
"Oh dear, that's not a very appetizing image, is it."
"Not for a human."
"I told you I wasn't very good at this."
"You're getting better. And you're eyeing my larval croissant. Would you like a taste?"
"I would, actually, but it seemed forward to ask."
"Am I such an imposing figure?"
"No. You're not at all imposing."
"Oh."
"No, no, I meant...."
"I'm sorry, I know what you meant. I was just trying to get you to smile."
"Then maybe you should try wearing dangly earrings."
"If I did, would you ask me for coffee?"
"What are you expecting from this? From asking me for coffee."
"I don't know. Pleasant conversation. A chance to make a new friend. An interesting diversion for an hour, before I go back home and do last night's dishes."
"All that?"
"All that and a croissant. What are my chances?"
"Well, I've already eaten half your croissant. We'll see about the rest."
A Map is Not the Terrain
A few years ago an obscure literary magazine published one of my short stories. It was about a woman resigned to the fact that she'd never marry. She was determined to have a child all the same. She couldn't afford a fertility clinic, so she had casual sex with several men. She became pregnant, delivered a daughter and was happy for seven years. The daughter fell off a swing and broke her neck. The story was about grief and mourning.
A publishing house saw the story and asked me to expand on it, turn it into a novel. I did, and the novel sold very well. I've even been asked to sell the screen rights. Based on the novel, the media decided I was an expert on a mother's grief. I'm asked for interviews anytime a child's death is reported on the news. I sometimes agree. It's hard to say no.
I'm also contacted by women who have lost children, or by women whose children are fatally ill. I'm asked for advice, for comfort, for emotional support. I'm asked to attend the wakes and funerals of children. I sometimes agree. It's hard to say no.
There is an axiom in the military: the map is not the terrain. It's a representation of the terrain. You can't know the terrain until you've walked it.
I'm not a mother; I have no children. I've never suffered the loss of a child. The closest I've come was the death of a beloved cat when I was in my first year of college. I know nothing about grief; I know nothing about mourning. I made up a story, that's all. I imagined it and wrote it down. I drew a map of grief.
I sometimes give interviews. I sometimes attend wakes and funerals. I drew the map; the least I can do is stand by it. A map is not the terrain, but it might help you avoid getting lost.
The Pure Note
Find the spot where the tiles change color, take three steps to the left, and sit on the cement floor. The acoustics are perfect. A foot or two in either direction, a foot higher or lower, and it's gone. But
right there God conspired with the laborers to create a perfect chamber.
Every note you sing is so pure it can make you weep. You can hum the alto part of Pastores Quidnam Vidistis and it fills the hallway with such a sweetness that the heart swells and the soul resonates in response. You can hold a single low note...so low it's almost subvocal...and it hovers in the air like a disembodied spirit. Passers-by aren't sure if they hear music or the beating of their own heart. They look around uncertainly as they pass, expecting to see...who knows what? Some mystery, some magic, some supernatural force at work.
Instead, they see only me. And surely, they think...and I can actually
see this thought pass behind their eyes...surely such a sound can't come from a human. And they're right.
God made this spot for me. God drew me here. God gave me the temper that ruined my singing career, and God hardened the hearts of my friends who eventually refused to give me money, and God filled the heart of my landlord with greed causing him to turn me out. God filled me with despair, destroyed my every hope, smashed my every dream and led me into the subway to hurl myself beneath the wheels of a train. God put me on my knees in the one spot in all the world where perfection can be found. A foot in either direction, a foot higher or lower, and there's nothing. This one spot.
I no longer have a temper. I no longer feel despair. I no longer have friends or a home. I no longer have dreams and hopes. I have God and this one spot and the pure note.
Nothing in Common
We have nothing in common.
Her closet looks like the last day of a jumble sale. She selects what she's going to wear seemingly at random. A pair of man's camouflage fatigue trousers, an ultra-suede blouse the color of raw liver, a scarf apparently woven out of discarded dish towels, a pale pink coat with a faux fur collar that looks like the bedraggled corpse of a drowned civet cat, and a lime green bag that would be visible to the space shuttle even on a cloudy day.
She owns two semi-dogs. Two. One wasn't enough. Two. Tiny, inquisitive, clever, yappy beasties that, if field-dressed, would barely provide enough meat for a sandwich. Surprisingly aggressive, persistent near-canines with needle-like teeth sharp enough to penetrate through my best leather shoes. Feral robo-dogs who've never forgiven me for moving in and who have a secret, malevolent plan to murder me in my sleep, but who still manage to present themselves as sweet, defenseless, cutie pies when she's in the room.
She puts salsa on everything.
She is incapable of throwing away a magazine. She refuses to own a watch, claims she doesn't want her life to be regulated by mechanical concepts of time, but doesn't think it at all incongruous to ask me what time it is fifteen times a day. She wants to spend a summer herding cattle on a ranch. She farts...not delicate, tiny, feminine gaseous emissions, but silent acid farts that would burn off your eyebrows. Farts that could scorch the paint off a battleship. She'll try to claim it was one of the dogs and then chastizes me for feeding them french fries, which I've never in my entire life done.
She believes in ghosts. She reads medical thrillers. She doesn't separate her colors from her whites when she does her laundry. She calls herself a painter and buys antique frames at flea markets for her work, but she hasn't put brush to oil in nearly two years. We have almost three dozen ornate, empty frames stacked in a slowly collapsing pile in a corner of the bedroom. The leaning stack of frames is the only thing in life capable of frighening the dogs.
She thinks recycling is a scam. She cried during the scene in
Harvey when Jimmy Stewart agrees to take the medicine that will cure him of seeing the giant white rabbit. She thinks Michael Jackson is actually innocent. She would eat pizza five nights a week if I wasn't around, and she'd put salsa on it. She calls me 'Spoon' and won't tell me why.
We have nothing in common.
Only When It Rains
She only does it when it rains. Rain makes it easier. Rain provides the proper ambience. She loves the city when the sky turns a baleful, tumorous grey, when the air grows heavy and smells like slugs, when the wet streets seem slick as slime trails. Rain reinforces anonymity.
When it rains she leaves her apartment, she wanders the street until she finds the right person. She doesn't have any concrete criteria for picking the person. It might be an old woman hurrying along, clutching a tacky plastic folding rainhat over her head. It might be a prosperous businessman protecting himself with an understated Pasotti umbrella. It might be a young man...like this young man waiting for the train...bareheaded, exposed, resigned to the rain.
The actual person is unimportant; what matters is that the person is moving with a purpose. What matters is that the person is going someplace. Then she follows along. She thinks of it as shadowing, and finds the term amusing since there is no sun to make shadows.
She follows to see where they go, to see what their lives are like. It's oddly comforting to her to know there are people who have lives entirely independent of her own, people who have no notion that she exists, who wouldn't notice if she ceased to exist. There must be a reason those people occupy the world. Their lives must matter somehow; surely they don't exist just to add depth and color to her world. And if they exist for a reason, then surely she must as well.
The rain that falls on them also falls on her. They share the same disinterested rain, they walk the same inattentive street, they step in the same neutral, phlegm-colored puddles. They were linked in some diluvial way, although only she was aware of it.
But she only does it when it rains.
