TODAY the sun is bright and kids are playing hockey in the street. I spend an hour putting on toenail polish, as if planning to appear somewhere in sandals. Barbara calls, very tense about her party. I turn up the radio, pretending someone else is here, promise to call back later. Then I make a pot of gunpowder tea and, as though back in high school, write down this dream I had.
A white-trashy house where I’m staying in Los Angeles, old TV sets in the yard and an avocado tree no one ever picks from. A big screen porch with everybody sitting on car seats, or the floor, men with ponytails and marijuana-leaf belt buckles. Woman in underwear with runny nose, two others passing a can of mushroom soup, spoon sticking out. Can’t understand how these people have three Hindu servants (father, two small sons in bellboy suits). Disparaging remarks made to and about servants. Laughter. Very nasty. I say to frog-faced man, “You should keep your fucking mouth shut,” start to leave. “Is this civilization?” he asks. I say, very righteous, “No, just decency.” Then walking past motel where there’s been some disturbance, street littered with broken glass: green, milky, clear, ribbed, frosted. Nature of perception. Real possibilities. Walk on to unkempt park, eucalyptus leaves on ground, newspapers in lake. Police everywhere. A child has been murdered, they need a culprit and I’m handy. Hemmed in with questions, knocked down. They’re kicking me. Black jackets, yelling. Then Corey pushes in to the rescue, but they grab his hair and it comes off. His head is all white. Running in the water to escape is when I wake up.
Barbara calls a little after four, very upset. The artichoke bisque has scorched. The illustrators have quarreled and aren’t coming. Okay, okay. The minute I hang up, I realize the only thing I have to wear that’s interesting needs to be cleaned.
I’m the last one there, the only one wearing a dress, and Barbara seems mad. I say how nice everything looks, and what are these called?
“Flowers,” she growls, vanishing into the kitchen.
We drink Algerian wine and talk about the furniture. The same piano piece plays again and again because no one will turn the record over. I smoke Luckies till there’s nothing left to hold. Dinner (spaghetti with mussels) is easier since the woman from NPR gets going and everyone can relax and be mute. She asks if Israeli men aren’t naturally legalistic and oppressive, doesn’t wait for the answer. Dessert is by the oncologist, bread pudding soaked in sherry. I imagine the stout girl alone in her dorm room; she methodically finishes a box of cinnamon doughnuts, then makes herself throw up.
Barbara serves coffee and I see that glitter again which I’d taken for the effect of snow. I wonder if authenticity is something she worries about in her writing. “How about a game of Botticelli?” she says.
We pretend not to hear.
Sue Willens is terribly horny, repeats this confidence to everyone as if she’s trying to borrow five dollars.
ALICE stayed in all weekend. “It wasn’t so depressing. I made cupcakes and read up on Watteau.”
I untie the green ribbon and peel away Saran Wrap. With rainbow sprinkles, Alice has outlined a steep profile in the icing.
“Watteau at twenty,” she explains.
One by one I pick off the sprinkles, swallow them whole.
This morning, looking for someplace to park, I watched a dutiful student strap on a shiny black motorcycle helmet, and in it, for just a second before he rode away, a distorted reflection of trees. I thought: Corey wore a helmet, but it didn’t protect his head. Then I repeated this aloud and my speech condensed on the window. I should get the heater fixed.
“Baking,” Alice says, “baking is not an art.”
I have removed all components of the head, but the shape is still distinct in their oblong tracks, a pattern: Cut on dotted line. I smear and smooth the icing with my thumb. Inside, I make what seems to be a point: You are so complacent you don’t even regret it. But I can’t repeat this one out loud. Alice, back turned, is watching me.
Darker than usual, heavier, the river could divide two disputed zones. Curfew patrol, interrogation by broom handle — just pictures that we know. Out of the car, I walk about, peer. Snow tires hum above on the bridge decking. The SX-70 slides easily out of last year’s gift box. Before pushing down, I close my eyes. Green Dumpster. Standpipe. Rust-streaked wall. Loading bay with pallets. I watch them pass from yellow haze to unilateral form. History condensed to a minute is wrong. More chemical tampering, and we’ll pay for it all. I spread treated squares across the hood; they’re so shiny against crackled blue paint, like artificial food. With black tape from the trunk, I stick each picture to its subject: nametags. Hello, I’m …
Too bad you can’t see them from the road.
I DON’T have the kind of mentality (acquisitive, analytical) that I need for my job. This revelation comes, uselessly, every few days. I put on lipstick, wipe it off before sucking at coffee I know will burn me. The active life-style, the impossible dream — just slogans that we know. Corey’s father called this morning for advice, and I gave some.
“He can’t relive his childhood, but you can.”
It’s snowing again and the car won’t start. Barbara will already have left and Alice lives too far away; a cab to school means twelve or fifteen dollars.
Why shouldn’t they believe I’ve got the flu? But I have to double over on the bed, hack into the phone. Behind my complacent scrim, I could be a cheap broad in no time. A luxury? Then I’m under the covers with my boots on, scanning an Italian design magazine. Right now the stout girl is taking vitamins. Barbara, on the highway, composes paragraphs in her head. A minitractor plows the campus drive. Chrome twinkles in Milan. The river folds.
I want to swirl in a great black cape, but I only have the lining. And Fridays.
SLOW GROUNDER
UP OR DOWN, IN motion or asleep and half asleep, Speed has the same musical questions that slosh in his head. How could you play twelve years in the majors and end up like this? Did you go stupid on purpose? Where is the curly wife birdfeeding you popcorn tinged with lipstick? And the little girls begging to stand on your big feet to be danced in circles? The Barca-lounger? The riding mower? The tropical aquarium? Going, going, all long gone.
So now Speed has transistor radios in his place, on sills and ledges, hanging by wrist straps from bedpost and cabinet knob, on top of the fridge and the toilet tank. They have silver aerials that always point up. They have leather casings that snap over the top like overalls; or go naked in turquoise Jap plastic. Below, their countable speaker dots and on top a grid of numbers make super dominoes. Very advanced. Dominoes from Outer Space.
But even playing all together so Lurtsema downstairs spears his ceiling with a mop handle, they can’t drown out Speed’s musical questions. What happened to the four-bedroom house with skylight and sundeck? To the Chrysler New Yorker with gray velour upholstery Kimmie called mouseskin, chanting it at her sister and bouncing?
Back in Dakota, when he was still Russell and a boy, there’d been Gramp in his chair. Gramp clicking his plates on the stem of a cold pipe. Gramp in full expectation, bird gun across his knees, and sooner or later the door would suck open on a winter-crazed redskin come to take, and let him reach for one potato or lump of coal, Gramp would blast him back across the frozen porch.